Chapter 1 Telemachus
STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently-behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: 
-- Introibo ad altare Dei. 

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely: 

-- Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit. 

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak. 

Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly. 

-- Back to barracks, he said sternly. 

He added in a preacher's tone: 

-- For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all. 

He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm. 

-- Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you? 

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips. 

-- The mockery of it, he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek. 

He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him wearily half way and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck. 

Buck Mulligan's gay voice went on. 

-- My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid? 

He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried: 

-- Will he come? The jejune jesuit. 

Ceasing, he began to shave with care. 

-- Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly. 

-- Yes, my love? 

-- How long is Haines going to stay in this tower? 

Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder. 

-- God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English. Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus; you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade. 

He shaved warily over his chin. 

-- He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said. Where is his guncase? 

-- A woful lunatic, Mulligan said. Were you in a funk? 

-- I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am off. 

Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily. 

-- Scutter, he cried thickly. 

He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen's upper pocket, said: 

-- Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor. 

Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said: 

-- The bard's noserag. A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can't you? 

He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly. 

-- God, he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks. I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look. 

Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbour mouth of Kingstown. 

-- Our mighty mother, Buck Mulligan said. 

He turned abruptly his great searching eyes from the sea to Stephen's face. 

-- The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me have anything to do with you. 

-- Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily. 

-- You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you. 

He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips. 

-- But a lovely mummer, he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all. 

He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously. 

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown grave-clothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the well-fed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting. 

Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade. 

-- Ah, poor dogsbody, he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks? 

-- They fit well enough, Stephen answered. 

Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip. 

-- The mockery of it, he said contentedly, secondleg they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You'll look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when you're dressed. 

-- Thanks, Stephen said. I can't wear them if they are grey. 

-- He can't wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers. 

He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth skin. 

Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes. 

-- That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan, says you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane. 

He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk. 

-- Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard. 

Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack, hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too. 

-- I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Buck Mulligan said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps plain-looking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula. 

Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen's peering eyes. 

-- The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you. 

Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness: 

-- It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen's and walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them. 

-- It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them. 

Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steelpen. 

-- Cracked lookingglass of a servant. Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it. 

Cranly's arm. His arm. 

-- And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one that knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe. 

Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces: they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another, O, I shall expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. I don't want to be debagged! Don't you play the giddy ox with me! 

Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms. 

To ourselves... new paganism... omphalos. 

-- Let him stay, Stephen said. There's nothing wrong with him except at night. 

-- Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it up. I'm quite frank with you. What have you against me now? 

They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly. 

-- Do you wish me to tell you? he asked. 

-- Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don't remember anything. 

He looked in Stephen's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes. 

Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said: 

-- Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's death? 

Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said: 

-- What? Where? I can't remember anything. I remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God? 

-- You were making tea, Stephen said, and I went across the landing to get more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked you who was in your room. 

-- Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget. 

-- You said, Stephen answered, O, it's only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead. 

A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Buck Mulligan's cheek. 

-- Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that? 

He shook his constraint from him nervously. 

-- And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You saw only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissecting room. It's a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn't matter. You wouldn't kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it's injected the wrong way. To me it's all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the doctor Sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it's over. You crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I don't whinge like some hired mute from Lalouette's. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn't mean to offend the memory of your mother. 

He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly: 

-- I am not thinking of the offence to my mother. 

-- Of what, then? Buck Mulligan asked. 

-- Of the offence to me, Stephen answered. 

Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel. 

-- O, an impossible person! he exclaimed. 

He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post, gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks. 

A voice within the tower called loudly: 

-- Are you up there, Mulligan? 

-- I'm coming, Buck Mulligan answered. 

He turned towards Stephen and said: 

-- Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach wants his morning rashers. 

His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level with the roof. 

-- Don't mope over it all day, he said. I'm inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding. 

His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of the stairhead: 

And no more turn aside and brood 
Upon love's bitter mystery 
For Fergus rules the brazen cars.
Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide. 
A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Stephen: love's bitter mystery. 

Where now? 

Her secrets: old feather fans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of Turko the terrible and laughed with others when he sang: 

I am the boy 
That can enjoy 
Invisibility.
Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed. 
And no more turn aside and brood
Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's shirts. 
In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes. 

Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat. 

Ghoul! Chewer of corpses! 

No mother. Let me be and let me live. 

-- Kinch ahoy! 

Buck Mulligan's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry, heard warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words. 

-- Dedalus, comedown, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Haines is apologizing for waking us last night. It's all right. 

-- I'm coming, Stephen said, turning. 

-- Do, for Jesus' sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for all our sakes. 

His head disappeared and reappeared. 

-- I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean. 

-- I get paid this morning, Stephen said. 

-- The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one. 

-- If you want it, Stephen said. 

-- Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. We'll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns. 

He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent: 

O, won't we have a merry time 
Drinking whisky, beer and wine, 
On coronation, 
Coronation day? 
O, won't we have a merry time 
On coronation day?
Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shaving-bowl shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten friendship? 
He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant. 

In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan's gowned form moved briskly about the hearth to and fro, hiding and revealing its yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high barbicans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning. 

-- We'll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door, will you? 

Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open the inner doors. 

-- Have you the key? a voice asked. 

-- Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I'm choked. He howled without looking up from the fire: 

-- Kinch! 

-- It's in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward. 

The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief. 

-- I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when . 

But hush. Not a word more on that subject. Kinch, wake up. Bread, butter, honey. Haines, come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where's the sugar? O, jay, there's no milk. 

Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet. 

-- What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight. 

-- We can drink it black, Stephen said. There's a lemon in the locker. 

-- O, damn you and your Paris fads, Buck Mulligan said. I want Sandycove milk. 

Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly: 

-- That woman is coming up with the milk. 

-- The blessings of God on you, Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up from his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can't go fumbling at the damned eggs. He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates, saying: 

-- In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. 

Haines sat down to pour out the tea. 

-- I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan, you do make strong tea, don't you? 

Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman's wheedling voice: 

-- When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water. 

-- By Jove, it is tea, Haines said. 

Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling: 

-- So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma'am, says Mrs Cahill, God send you don't make them in the one pot. 

He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his knife. 

-- That's folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind. 

He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his brows: 

-- Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads? 

-- I doubt it, said Stephen gravely. 

-- Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray? 

-- I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann. 

Buck Mulligan's face smiled with delight. 

-- Charming, he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming. 

Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf: 

-- For old Mary Ann 
She doesn't care a damn, 
But, hising up her petticoats...
He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned. 
The doorway was darkened by an entering form. 

-- The milk, sir. 

-- Come in, ma'am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug. 

An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen's elbow. 

-- That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God. 

-- To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure. Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker. 

-- The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak frequently of the collector of prepuces. 

-- How much, sir? asked the old woman. 

-- A quart, Stephen said. 

He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour. 

-- It is indeed, ma'am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups. 

-- Taste it, sir, she said. 

He drank at her bidding. 

-- If we could only live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly, we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives' spits. 

-- Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked. 

-- I am, ma'am, Buck Mulligan answered. 

Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman; me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes. 

-- Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her. 

-- Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines. 

Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently. 

-- Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you? 

-- I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from west, sir? 

-- I am an Englishman, Haines answered. 

-- He's English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in Ireland. 

-- Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows. 

-- Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely. Fill us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am? 

-- No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the milkcan on her forearm and about to go. 

Haines said to her: 

-- Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Mulligan, hadn't we? 

Stephen filled the three cups. 

-- Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it's seven mornings a pint at twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling and one and two is two and two, sir. 

Buck Mulligan sighed and having filled his mouth with a crust thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his trouser pockets. 

-- Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him smiling. 

Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers and cried: 

-- A miracle! 

He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying: 

-- Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give. Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand. 

-- We'll owe twopence, he said. 

-- Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning, sir. 

She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan's tender chant: 

-- Heart of my heart, were it more, 
More would be laid at your feet.
He turned to Stephen and said: 
-- Seriously, Dedalus. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects that every man this day will do his duty. 

-- That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your national library today. 

-- Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said. 

He turned to Stephen and asked blandly: 

-- Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch? 

Then he said to Haines: 

-- The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month. 

-- All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let honey trickle over a slice of the loaf. 

Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke: 

-- I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me. 

Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here's a spot. 

-- That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol of Irish art is deuced good. 

Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen's foot under the table and said with warmth of tone: 

-- Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines. 

-- Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just thinking of it when that poor old creature came in. 

-- Would I make money by it? Stephen asked. 

Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of the hammock, said: 

-- I don't know, I'm sure. 

He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to Stephen and said with coarse vigour: 

-- You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for? 

-- Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think. 

I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and then you come along with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes. 

-- I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him. 

Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen's arm. 

-- From me, Kinch, he said. 

In a suddenly changed tone he added: 

-- To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they are good for. Why don't you play them as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get out of the kip. 

He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying resignedly: 

-- Mulligan is stripped of his garments. 

He emptied his pockets on to the table. 

-- There's your snotrag, he said. 

And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie, he spoke to them, chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged in his trunk while he called for - a clean handkerchief. Agenbite of inwit. God, we'll simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of his talking hands. 

-- And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said. 

Stephen picked it up and put it on: Haines called to them from the doorway: 

-- Are you coming, you fellows? 

-- I'm ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door. Come out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow: 

-- And going forth he met Butterly. 

Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket. 

At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked: 

-- Did you bring the key? 

-- I have it, Stephen said, preceding them. 

He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses. 

-- Down, sir. How dare you, sir? Haines asked: 

-- Do you pay rent for this tower? 

-- Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said. 

-- To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder. 

They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last: 

-- Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it? 

-- Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when the French were on the sea. But ours is the omphalos. 

-- What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen. 

-- No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Thomas Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made to prop it up. Wait till I have a few pints in me first. 

He turned to Stephen, saying as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose waistcoat: 

-- You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you? 

-- It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer. 

-- You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox? 

-- Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes. It's quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father. 

-- What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself? 

Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in loose laughter, said to Stephen's ear: 

-- O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father! 

-- We're always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And it is rather long to tell. 

Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands. 

-- The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said. 

-- I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o'er his base into the sea, isn't it? 

Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires. 

-- It's a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to halt again. 

Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent. The seas' ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat, vague on the bright skyline, and a sail tacking by the Muglins. 

-- I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father. 

Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a doll's head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice: 

-- I'm the queerest young fellow that ever you heard. 
My mother's a jew, my father's a bird. 
With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree, 
So here's to disciples and Calvary.
He held up a forefinger of warning. 
-- If anyone thinks that I amn't divine 
He'll get no free drinks when I'm making the wine 
But have to drink water and wish it were plain 
That I make when the wine becomes water again.
He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted: 
-- Goodbye, now, goodbye. Write down all I said 
And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead. 
What's bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly 
And Olivet's breezy... Goodbye, now, goodbye.
He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdlike cries. 
Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Stephen and said: 

-- We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner? 

-- The ballad of Joking Jesus, Stephen answered. 

-- O, Haines said, you have heard it before? 

-- Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily. 

-- You're not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God. 

-- There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said. 

Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it. 

-- Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette. 

Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of his hands. 

-- Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose? 

-- You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought. 

He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after me, calling Steeeeeeeeeephen. A wavering line along the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is mine, I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes. 

-- After all, Haines began... 

Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not all unkind. 

-- After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own master, it seems to me. 

-- I am the servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an Italian. 

-- Italian? Haines said. 

A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me. 

-- And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs. 

-- Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean? 

-- The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church. 

Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke. 

-- I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame. 

The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen's memory the triumph of their brazen bells: et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam: the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields. 

Hear, hear. Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu! 

-- Of course I'm a Britisher, Haines' voice said, and I feel as one. I don't want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That's our national problem, I'm afraid, just now. 

Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman. 

-- She's making for Bullock harbour. 

The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain. 

-- There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when the tide comes in about one. It's nine days today. 

The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, salt white. Here I am. 

They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him moved slowly frogwise his green legs in the deep jelly of the water. 

-- Is the brother with you, Malachi? 

-- Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons. 

-- Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her. 

-- Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure. 

Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth. 

Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone. 

-- Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army. 

-- Ah, go to God, Buck Mulligan said. 

-- Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily? 

-- Yes. 

-- Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money. 

-- Is she up the pole? 

-- Better ask Seymour that. 

-- Seymour a bleeding officer, Buck Mulligan said. 

He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying tritely: 

-- Redheaded women buck like goats. 

He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt. 

-- My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the Uebermensch. Toothless Kinch and I, the supermen. 

He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay. 

-- Are you going in here, Malachi? 

-- Yes. Make room in !he bed. 

The young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone, smoking. 

-- Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked. 

-- Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast. Stephen turned away. 

-- I'm going, Mulligan, he said. 

-- Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise flat. 

Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his heaped clothes. 

-- And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there. 

Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly: 

-- He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake Zarathustra. 

His plump body plunged. 

-- We'll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish. 

Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon. 

-- The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve. 

-- Good, Stephen said. 

He walked along the upwardcurving path. 

Liliata rutilantium. 
Turnia circumdet. 
Iubilantium te virginum
The priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go. 
A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far out on the water, round. 

Usurper. 


体态丰满而有风度的勃克•穆利根[1]从楼梯口出现。他手里托着一钵肥皂沫，上面交叉放了一面镜子和一把剃胡刀。他没系腰带，淡黄色浴衣被习习晨风吹得稍微向后蓬着[2]。他把那只钵高高举起，吟诵道：

我要走向上主的祭台。

他停下脚步，朝那昏暗的螺旋状楼梯下边瞥了一眼，粗声粗气地嚷道：

“上来，金赤[3]。上来，你这敬畏天主的耶酥会士[4]。”

他庄严地向前走去，登上圆形的炮座。他朝四下里望望，肃穆地对这座塔[5]和周围的田野以及逐渐苏醒着的群山祝福了三遍。然后，他一瞧见斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯就朝他弯下身去，望空中迅速地画了好几个十字，喉咙里还发出咯咯声，摇看头。斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯气恼而昏昏欲睡，双臂倚在楼梯栏杆上，冷冰冰地瞅着一边摇头一边发出咯咯声向他祝福的那张马脸，以及那顶上并未剃光[6]、色泽和纹理都像是浅色橡木的淡黄头发。

勃克•穆利根朝镜下瞅了一眼，赶快阖上钵。

“回到营房去，”他厉声说。

接着又用布道人的腔调说：

“啊，亲爱的人们，这是真正的克里斯廷[7]：肉体和灵魂，血和伤痕。请把音乐放慢一点儿。闭上眼睛，先生们。等一下。这些白血球有点儿不消停。请大家肃静。”

他朝上方斜睨，悠长地低声吹了下呼唤的口哨，随后停下来，全神贯注地倾听着。他那口洁白齐整的牙齿有些地方闪射着金光。克里索斯托[8]。两声尖锐有力的口哨划破寂静回应了他。

“谢谢啦，老伙计，”他精神抖擞地大声说。“蛮好。请你关上电门，好吗?”

他从炮座上跳下来，神色庄重地望着那个观看他的人，并将浴衣那宽松的下摆拢在小腿上。他那郁郁寡欢的胖脸和阴沉的椭圆形下颚令人联想到中世纪作为艺术保护者的高僧。他的唇边徐徐地绽出了榆快的笑意。

“多可笑。”他快活地说。“你这姓名太荒唐了，一个古希腊人[9]。”

他友善而打趣地指了一下，一面暗自笑着，走到胸墙那儿。斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯爬上塔顶，无精打采地跟着他走到半途，就在炮座边上坐下来，静静地望着他怎样把镜子靠在胸墙上，将刷子在钵里浸了浸，往面颊和脖颈上涂起皂沫。

勃克•穆利根用愉快的声调继续讲下去。

“我的姓名也荒唐，玛拉基•穆利根，两个扬抑抑格。可它带些古希腊味道，对不?轻盈快活得正像只公鹿[10]。咱们总得去趟雅典。我要是能从姑妈身上挤出二十镑，你肯一道去吗?”

他把刷子撂在一边，开心地大声笑着说：

“他去吗，那位枯燥乏味的耶酥会士?”

他闭上嘴，仔细地刮起脸来。

“告诉我，穆利根，”斯蒂芬轻声说。

“嗯?乖乖。”

“海恩斯还要在这座塔里住上多久?”

勃克•穆利根从右肩侧过他那半边刮好的脸。

“老天啊，那小子多么讨人嫌!”他坦率地说。“这种笨头笨脑的撒克逊人，他就没把你看作一位有身份的人。天哪，那帮混账的英国人。腰缠万贯，脑满肠肥。因为他是牛津出身呗。喏，迪达勒斯，你才真正有牛津派头呢。他捉摸不透你。哦，我给你起的名字再好不过啦：利刃金赤。”

他小心翼翼地刮着下巴。

“他整宵都在说着关于一只什么黑豹的梦话，”斯蒂芬说，“他的猎枪套在哪儿?”

“一个可悯可悲的疯子!”穆利根说。“你害怕了吧?”

“是啊，”斯蒂芬越来越感到恐怖，热切地说，“黑咕隆咚地在郊外，跟一个满口胡话、哼哼卿卿要射杀一只黑豹的陌生人呆在一块儿。你曾救过快要淹死的人。可我不是英雄。要是他继续呆在这儿，那我就走。”

勃克•穆利根朝着剃胡刀上的肥皂沫皱了皱眉，从坐着的地方跳了下来，慌忙地在裤兜里摸索。

“糟啦，”他瓮声瓮气地嚷道。

他来到炮座跟前，把手伸进斯蒂芬的胸兜，说：

“把你那块鼻涕布借咱使一下。擦擦剃胡刀。”

斯蒂芬听任他拽出那条皱巴巴的脏手绢，捏着一角，把它抖落开来。勃克•穆利根干净利索地揩完剃胡刀，望着手绢说：

“‘大诗人’[11]的鼻涕布。属于咱们爱尔兰诗人的一种新的艺术色彩，鼻涕绿。简直可以尝得出它的滋味，对吗?”

他又跨上胸墙，眺望着都柏林湾。他那浅橡木色的黄头发微微飘动着。

“喏!”他安详地说。“这海不就是阿尔杰所说的吗：一位伟大可爱的母亲[12]?鼻涕绿的海。使人的睾丸紧缩的海。到葡萄紫的大海上去[13]。喂，迪达勒斯，那些希腊人啊。我得教给你。你非用原文来读不可。海!海[14]!她是我们的伟大可爱的母亲。过来瞧瞧。”

斯蒂芬站起来，走到胸墙跟前。他倚着胸墙，俯瞰水面和正在驶出国王镇[15]港口的邮轮。

“我们的强有力的母亲[16]，”勃克•穆利根说。

他那双目光锐利的灰色眼睛猛地从海洋移到斯蒂芬的脸上。

“姑妈认为你母亲死在你手里，”他说。“所以她不计我跟你有任何往来。”

“是有人害的她，”斯蒂芬神色阴郁地说。

“该死，金赤，当你那位奄奄一息的母亲央求你跪下来的时候，你总应该照办呀，”勃克•穆利根说。“我跟你一样是个冷心肠人。可你想想看，你那位快咽气的母亲恳求你跪下来为她祷告。而你拒绝了。你身上有股邪气……”

他忽然打住，又往另一边面颊上轻轻涂起肥皂沫来。一味宽厚的笑容使他撇起了嘴唇。

“然而是个可爱的哑剧演员，”他自言自语着。“金赤，所有的哑剧演员当中最可爱的一个。”

他仔细地把脸刮得挺匀净，默默地，专心致专地。

斯蒂芬一只肘支在坑洼不平的花岗石上，手心扶额头，凝视着自己发亮的黑上衣袖子那磨破了的袖口。痛苦——还说不上是爱的痛苦——煎熬着他的心。她去世之后，曾在梦中悄悄地来找过他，她那枯槁的身躯裹在宽松的褐色衣衾里，散发出蜡和黄檀的气味;当她带着微嗔一声不响地朝他俯下身来时，依稀闻到一股淡淡的湿灰气味。隔着槛褛的袖口，他瞥见被身旁那个吃得很好的人的嗓门称作伟大可爱的母亲的海洋。海湾与天际构成环形，盛着大量的暗绿色液体。母亲弥留之际，床畔曾放着一只白瓷钵，里边盛着粘糊糊的绿色胆汁，那是伴着她一阵阵的高声呻吟，撕裂她那腐烂了的肝脏吐出来的。

勃克•穆利根又揩了揩剃刀刃。

“啊，可怜的小狗[17]!”他柔声说，“我得给你件衬衫，几块鼻涕布。那条二手货的裤子怎么样?”

“挺合身，”斯蒂芬回答说。

勃克•穆利根开始刮下唇底下凹陷的部位。

“不是什么正经玩艺儿，”他沾沾自喜地说，“应该叫作二腿货。天晓得是哪个患了梅毒的酒疯子丢下的。我有一条好看的细条纹裤子，灰色的。你穿上一定蛮帅。金赤，我不是在开玩笑。你打扮起来，真他妈的帅。”

“谢谢，”斯蒂芬说，“要是灰色的，我可不能穿。”

“他不能穿，”勃克•穆利根对着镜中自己的脸说，“礼数终归是礼数。他害死了自己的母亲，可是不能穿灰裤子。”

他利利索索地折上剃胡刀，用手指的触须抚摩着光滑的皮肤。

斯蒂芬将视线从海面移向那张有着一双灵活的烟蓝色眼睛的胖脸。

“昨儿晚上跟我一道在‘船记’[18]的那个人，”勃克•穆利根说，“说是你患了痴麻症。他是康内利•诺曼的同事，在痴呆镇工作[19]。痴呆性全身麻痹症。”

他用镜子在空中划了半个圈子，以便把这消息散发到正灿烂地照耀着海面的阳光中去。他撇着剃得干干净净的嘴唇笑了，露出发着白光的齿尖。笑声攫住了他那整个结实强壮的身子。

“瞧瞧你自己，”他说，“你这丑陋的‘大诗人’。”

斯蒂芬弯下身去照了照举在跟前的镜子。镜面上有一道弯曲的裂纹，映在镜中的脸被劈成两半，头发倒竖着。他和旁人眼里的我就是这样的。是谁为我挑选了这么一张脸？这只要把寄生虫除掉的小狗。它也在这么问我。

“是我从老妈子屋里抄来的，”勃克•穆利根说。“对她就该当如此。姑妈总是派没啥姿色的仆人去伺候玛拉基。不叫他受到诱惑[20]。而她的名字叫乌水苏拉[21]。”

他又笑着，把斯蒂芬直勾勾地望着的镜子挪开了。

“凯列班在镜中照不见自己的脸时所感到的愤怒，”[22]他说。“要是王尔德还在世，瞧见你这副尊容，该有多妙。”

斯蒂芬后退了几步，指着镜子沉痛地说：

“这就是爱尔兰艺术的象征。仆人的一面有裂纹的镜子[23]。”

勃克•穆利根突然挽住斯蒂芬的一只胳膊，同他一道在塔顶上转悠。揣在兜里的剃胡刀和镜子发出相互碰撞的丁当声。

“像这样拿你取笑是不公道的，金赤，对吗?”他亲切地说。“老天晓得，你比他们当中的任何人都有骨气。”

又把话题岔开了。他惧怕我的艺术尖刀，正如我害怕他的冷酷无情的钢笔。

“仆人用的有裂纹的镜子。把这话讲给楼下那个牛津家伙[24]听，向他挤出一基尼[25]。他浑身发散着铜臭气，没把你看成有身份的人。他老子要么是把药喇叭[26]根做成的泻药卖给了祖鲁人[27]，要么就是靠干下了什么鬼骗局发的家。喂，金赤，要是咱俩通力合作，兴许倒能为本岛干出点名堂来。把它希腊化了[28]。”

克兰利的胳膊[29]。他的胳膊。

“想想看，你竟然得向那些猪猡告帮!我是唯一赏识你的人。你为什么不更多地信任我呢?你凭什么对我鼻子朝天呢?是海恩斯吗?要是他在这儿稍微一闹腾，我就把西摩[30]带来，我们会狠狠地收拾他一顿，比他们收拾克莱夫•肯普索普的那次还要厉害。”

从克莱夫•肯普索普的房间里传出阔少们的喊叫声。一张张苍白的面孔，他们抱在一起，捧腹大笑。唉呀。我快断气啦!要委婉地向她透露这消息，奥布里[31]!我这就要死啦!他围着桌子一瘸一拐地跑，衬衫被撕成一条条的，像缎带一般在空中呼扇着，裤子脱落到脚后跟上[32]，被麦达伦学院那个手里拿着裁缝大剪刀的埃德斯追赶着。糊满了桔子酱的脸惊惶得像头小牛犊。别扒下我的裤子!你们别拿我当呆牛耍着玩!

从敞开着的窗户传出的喧嚷声，惊动了方院的暮色。耳聋的花匠系着围裙，有着一张像煞马修•阿诺德[33]的脸，沿着幽幽的草坪推着割草机，仔细地盯着草茎屑末的飞舞。

我们自己……新异教教义……中心[34]。

“让他呆下去吧，”斯蒂芬说。“他只不过是夜间不对头罢了。”

“那么，是怎么回事?”勃克•穆利根不耐烦地问道。“干脆说吧。我对你是直言不讳的。现在你有什么跟我过不去的呢？”

他们停下脚步，眺望着布莱岬角[35]那钝角形的海岬——它就像一条酣睡中的鲸的鼻尖，浮在水面上。斯蒂芬轻轻地抽出胳膊。

“你要我告诉你吗?”他问。

“嗯，是怎么回事?”勃克•穆利根回答说。“我一点儿也记不起来啦。”

他边说边端详斯蒂芬的脸。微风掠过他的额头，轻拂着他那未经梳理的淡黄头发，使焦灼不安的银光在他的眼睛里晃动。

斯蒂芬边说边被自己的声音弄得很沮丧：

“你记得我母亲去世后，我头一次去你家那天的事吗?”

勃克•穆利根马上皱起眉头，说：

“什么?哪儿？我什么也记不住。我只记得住观念和感觉[36]。你为什么问这个?天哪，到底发生了什么事？”

“你在沏茶，”斯蒂芬说，“我穿过楼梯平台去添开水。你母亲和一位客人从客厅里走出来。她问你，谁在你的房间里。”

“咦?”勃克•穆利根说。“我说什么来看?我可忘啦。”

“你是这么说的，”斯蒂芬回答道，“哦，只不过是迪达勒斯呗，他母亲死得像头畜生。”

勃克•穆利根的两颊骤然泛红了，使他显得更年轻而有魅力。

“我是这么说的吗?”他问道。“啊？那又碍什么事?”

他神经质地晃了晃身子，摆脱了自己的狼狈心情。

“死亡又是什么呢?”他问道，“你母亲也罢，你也罢，我自己也罢。你只瞧见了你母亲的死。我在圣母和里奇蒙[37]那里，每天都看见他们突然咽气，在解剖室里被开膛破肚。这是畜生也会有的那种事情，仅此而已。你母亲弥留之际，要你跪下来为她祷告，你却拒绝了。为什么？因为你身上有可诅咒的耶稣会士的气质，只不过到了你身上就拧啦。对我来说，这完全是个嘲讽，畜生也会有的事儿。她的脑叶失灵了。她管大夫叫彼得•蒂亚泽爵士[38]，还把被子上的毛莨饰花拽下来。哄着她，直到她咽气为止呗。你拒绝满足她生前最后的一个愿望，却又跟我怄气，因为我不肯像拉鲁哀特殡仪馆花钱雇来的送葬人那样号丧。荒唐!我想必曾这么说过吧。可我无意损害你母亲死后的名声。”

他越说越理直气壮了。斯蒂芬遮掩着这些话语在他心坎上留下的创伤，极其冷漠地说：

“我想的不是你对我母亲的损害。”

“那么你想的是什么呢?”勃克•穆利根问。

“是对我的损害，”斯蒂芬回答说。

勃克•穆利根用脚后跟转了个圈儿。

“哎呀，你这家伙可真难缠!”他嚷道。

他沿着胸墙疾步走开。斯蒂芬依然站在原地，目光越过风平浪静的海洋，朝那岬角望去。此刻，海面和岬角朦朦胧胧地混为一片了。他两眼的脉搏在跳动，视线模糊了，感到双颊在发热。

从塔里传来朗声喊叫：

“穆利根，你在上边吗？”

“我这就来，”勃克•穆利根回答说。

他朝斯蒂芬转过身来，并说：

“瞧瞧这片大海。它哪里在乎什么损害?跟罗耀拉[39]断绝关系，金赤，下来吧。那个撒克逊征服者[40]早餐要吃煎火腿片。”

他的脑袋在最高一级梯磴那儿又停了一下，这样就刚好同塔顶一般齐了。

“不要成天为这档子事闷闷不乐。我这个人就是有一搭无一搭的。别再那么苦思冥想啦。”

他的头消失了，然而楼梯口传来他往下走时的低吟声：

莫再扭过脸儿去忧虑，

沉浸在爱情那苦涩的奥秘里，

因黄铜车由弗格斯驾驭[41]。

树林的阴影穿过清晨的寂静，从楼梯口悄然无声地飘向他正在眺望着的大海。岸边和海面上，明镜般的海水正泛起一片白色，好像是被登着轻盈的鞋疾跑着的脚踹起来的一般。朦胧的海洋那雪白的胸脯。重音节成双地交融在一起。一只手拨弄着竖琴，琴弦交错，发出谐音。一对对的浪白色歌词闪烁在幽暗的潮水上。

一片云彩开始徐徐地把太阳整个儿遮住，海湾在阴影下变得越发浓绿了。这钵苦水就躺在他脚下。弗格斯之歌，我独自在家里吟唱，抑制着那悠长、阴郁的和音。她的门敞开着，她巴望听到我的歌声。怀着畏惧与怜悯，我悄悄地走近她床头。她在那张简陋的床上哭泣着。为了这一句，斯蒂芬，爱情那苦涩的奥秘。

而今在何处？

她的秘藏：她那上了锁的抽屉里有几把陈旧的羽毛扇、麝香熏过的带穗子的舞会请帖和一串廉价的琥珀珠子。少女时代，她家那浴满阳光的窗户上挂着一只鸟笼。她曾听过老罗伊斯在童话剧《可怕的土耳克》[42]中演唱，而当他这么唱的时候，她就跟旁人一起笑了：

我就是那男孩

能够领略随心所欲地

隐身的愉快。

幻影般的欢乐被贮存起来了，用麝香熏过的。

莫再扭过脸儿去忧虑……

随着她那些小玩艺儿，被贮存在大自然的记忆中了[43]。往事如烟，袭上他那郁闷的心头。当她将领圣体[44]时，她那一玻璃杯从厨房的水管里接来的凉水。在昏暗的秋日傍晚，炉架上为她焙着的一个去了核、填满红糖的苹果。由于替孩子们掐衬衫上的虱子，她那秀丽的指甲被血染红了。

在一个梦中，她悄悄地来到他身旁。她那枯稿的身躯裹在宽松的衣衾里，散发出蜡和黄檀的气味。她朝他俯下身去，向他诉说着无声的密语，她的呼吸有着一股淡淡的湿灰气味。

为了震撼并制伏我的灵魂，她那双呆滞无神的眼睛，从死亡中直勾勾地盯着我。只盯着我一人。那只避邪蜡烛照着她弥留之际的痛苦。幽灵般的光投射在她那备受折磨的脸上。当大家跪下来祷告时，她那嗄哑响亮的呼吸发出恐怖的呼噜呼噜声。她两眼盯着我，想迫使我下跪。饰以百合的光明的司铎群来伴尔，极乐圣童贞之群高唱赞歌来迎尔[45]。

食尸鬼[46]!啖尸肉者!

不，妈妈!由着我，让我活下去吧。

“喂，金赤!”

圆塔里响起勃克•穆利根的嗓音。它沿着楼梯上来，靠近了，又喊了一声。斯蒂芬依然由于灵魂的呼唤而浑身发颤，听到了倾泻而下的温煦阳光以及背后的空气中那友善的话语。

“迪达勒斯，下来吧，乖乖地快点儿挪窝吧。早点做好了。海恩斯为夜里把咱们吵醒的事宜表示歉意。一切都好啦。”

“我这就来，”斯蒂芬转过身来说。

“看在耶稣的面上，来吧，”勃克•穆利根说。“为了我，也为了咱们大家。”

他的头消失了，接着又露了出来。

“我同他谈起你那爱尔兰艺术的象征。他说，非常聪明。向他讨一镑好不好?我是说，一个基尼。”

“今儿早晨我就领薪水了，”斯蒂芬说。

“学校那份儿吗?”勃克•穆利根说。“多少呀?四镑？借给咱一镑。”

“如果你要的话，”斯蒂芬说。

“四枚闪闪发光的金镑，”勃克•穆利根兴高采烈地嚷道。“咱们要豪饮一通，把那些正宗的德鲁伊特[47]吓一跳。四枚万能的金镑。”

他抡起双臂，咚咚地走下石梯，用东伦敦口音荒腔走调地喝道：

啊，咱们快乐一番好吗?

喝威士忌、啤酒和葡萄酒，

为了加冕，

加冕日。

啊，咱们快乐一番好吗?

为了加冕日[48]。

暖洋洋的日光在海面上嬉戏着。镍质肥皂钵在胸墙上发着亮光，被遗忘了。我何必非把它带去不可呢?要么就把它撂在那儿一整天吧，被遗忘的友谊?

他走过去，将它托在手里一会儿，触摸着那股凉劲儿，闻着里面戳着刷子的肥皂沫那粘液的气味。当年在克朗戈伍斯[49]我曾提过香炉[50]。如今我换了个人，可又是同一个人。依然是个奴仆。一个奴仆的奴仆[51]。

在塔内那间有着拱顶的幽暗起居室里，穿着浴衣的勃克•穆利根的身姿，在炉边敏捷地镀来镀去，淡黄色的火焰随之忽隐忽现。穿过高高的堞口，两束柔和的阳光落到石板地上。光线汇合处，一簇煤烟以及煎油脂的气味飘浮着，打着旋涡。

“咱们都快闷死啦，”勃克•穆利根说。“海恩斯，打开那扇门，好吗?”

斯蒂芬将那只刮胡子用的钵撂在橱柜上。坐在吊床上的高个子站起来，走向门道，拉开内侧的两扇门。

“你有钥匙吗?”一个声音问道。

“在迪达勒斯手里，”勃克•穆利根说。“老爷爷，我都给呛死啦。”

他两眼依热望着炉火，咆哮道：

“金赤!”

“它就在锁眼里哪，”斯蒂芬走过来说。

钥匙刺耳地转了两下，而当沉重的大门半开半掩时，怡人的阳光和清新的空气就进来了。海恩斯站在门口朝外面眺望。斯蒂芬把他那倒放着的旅行手提箱拽到桌前，坐下来等着。勃克•穆利根将煎蛋轻轻地甩到身旁的盘子里，然后端过盘子和一把大茶壶，使劲往桌上一放，舒了一口气。

“我都快融化了，”他说，“就像一枝蜡烛在……的时候所说过的。但是别声张。再也不提那事儿啦。金赤，振作起来。面包，黄油，蜂蜜。海恩斯，进来吧。开饭啦。‘天主降福我等，暨所将受于主，普施之惠。’[52]白糖呢?哦，老天，没有牛奶。”

斯蒂芬从橱柜里取出面包、一罐蜂蜜和盛在防融器中的黄油。勃克•穆利根突然气恼起来，一屁股坐下。

“这算是哪门子事呀?”他说。“我叫她八点以后来的。”

“咱们不兑牛奶也能喝嘛，”斯蒂芬说。“橱柜里有只柠檬。”

“呸，你和你那巴黎时尚统统见鬼去吧，”勃克•穆利根说。“我要沙湾牛奶。”

海恩斯从门道里镀了进来，安详地说：

“那个女人带着牛奶上来啦。”

“谢天谢地，”勃克•穆利根从椅子上跳起来，大声说，“坐下。茶在这儿，倒吧。糖在口袋里。诺，我应付不了这见鬼的鸡蛋。”

他在盘子里把煎蛋胡乱分开，然后甩在三个碟子里，口中念诵着：

因父及子及圣神之名[53]。

海恩斯坐下来倒茶。

“我给你们每人两块方糖，”他说。“可是，穆利根，你沏的茶可真酽，呃?”

勃克•穆利根边厚厚地切下好儿片面包，边用老妪哄娃娃的腔调说：

“葛罗甘老婆婆[54]说得好，我沏茶的时候就沏茶，撒尿的时候就撒尿。”

“天哪，这可是茶。”海恩斯说。

勃克•穆利根边沏边用哄娃娃的腔调说：

“我就是这样做的，卡希尔大娘，她说。可不是嘛，老太太，卡希尔大娘说，老天保佑，你别把两种都沏在一个壶里。”

他用刀尖戳起厚厚的面包片，分别递到共餐者面前。

“海恩斯，”他一本正经地说，“你倒可以把这些老乡写进你那本书里。关于登德鲁姆[55]的老乡和人鱼神[56]，五行正文和十页注释。在大风年由命运女神姐妹[57]印刷。”

他转向斯蒂芬，扬起眉毛，用迷惑不解的口吻柔声问道：

“你想得起来吗，兄弟，这个关于葛罗甘老婆婆的茶尿两用壶的故事是在《马比诺吉昂》[58]里，还是在《奥义书》[59]里?”

“恐怕都不在，”斯蒂芬严肃地说。

“你现在这么认为吗?”勃克•穆利根用同样的腔调说。“请问，理由何在?”

“我想，”斯蒂芬边吃边说，“《马比诺吉昂》里外都没有这个故事。可以设想，葛罗甘老婆婆跟玛丽•安[60]有血缘关系。”

勃克•穆利根的脸上泛起欣喜的微笑。

“说得有趣!”他嗲声嗲气地说，露出洁白的牙齿，愉快地眨着眼，“你认为她是这样的吗?太有趣啦。”

接着又骤然满脸戚容，一边重新使劲切面包，一边用嘶哑刺耳的声音吼着：

因为玛丽•安老妪，

她一点也不在乎。

可撩起她的衬裙……

他塞了一嘴煎蛋，一边大嚼一边用单调低沉的嗓音唱着。

一个身影闪进来，遮暗了门道。

“牛奶，先生。”

“请进，老太太，”穆利根说，“金赤，拿罐儿来。”

老妪走过来，在斯蒂芬身边停下脚步。“多么好的早晨啊，先生，”她说。“荣耀归于天主。” 

“归于谁?”穆利根说着，瞅了她一眼。“哦，当然喽!”

斯蒂芬向后伸手，从橱柜里取出奶罐。

“这岛上的人们，”穆利根漫不经心地对海恩斯说，“经常提起包皮的搜集者[61]。”

“要多少，先生?”老妪问。

“一夸脱[62]，”斯蒂芬说。

他望着她先把并不是她的浓浓的白奶倾进量器，随后又倒入罐里。衰老干瘪的乳房。她又添了一量器的奶，还加了点饶头。她老迈而神秘，从清晨的世界踱了进来，兴许是位使者。她边往外倒，边夸耀牛奶好。拂晓时分，在绿油油的牧场里，她蹲在耐心的母牛旁边，一个坐在毒菌上的巫婆，她的皱巴巴的指头敏捷地挤那喷出奶汁的乳头。这些身上被露水打湿、毛皮像丝绸般的牛，跟她熟得很，它们围着她哞哞地叫。最漂亮的牛，贫穷的老妪[63]，这是往昔对她的称呼。一个到处流浪、满脸皱纹的老太婆，女神假借这个卑贱者的形象，伺候着她的征服者与她那快乐的叛徒[64]。她是受他们二者玩弄的母王八[65]。来自神秘的早晨的使者。他不晓得她究竟是来伺候的呢，还是来谴责的[66]。然而他不屑于向她讨好。

“的确好得很，老太太，”勃克•穆利根边往大家的杯子里斟牛奶边说。

“尝尝看，先生，”她说。

他按照她的话喝了。

“要是咱们能够靠这样的优质食品过活，”他略微提高嗓门对她说，“就不至于全国到处都是烂牙齿和烂肠子的了。咱们住在潮湿的沼泽地里，吃的是廉价食品，街上满是灰尘、马粪和肺病患者吐的痰。”

“先生，您是医科学生吗?”老妪问。

“我是，老太太，”勃克•穆利根回答说[67]。

斯蒂芬一声不吭地听着，满心的鄙夷。她朝那个对她大声说话的嗓门低下老迈低头，他是她的接骨师和药师; 她却不曾把我看在眼里。也朝那个听她忏悔，赦免她的罪愆，并且除了妇女那不洁净的腰部外，为她浑身涂油以便送她进坟墓的嗓门[68]低头，而妇女是从男人的身上取出来的[69]，却不是照神的形象造的[70]，她成了蛇的牺牲品[71]。她还朝那个现在使她眼中露着惊奇、茫然神色保持缄默的大嗓门低头。

“你听得懂他在说什么吗?”斯蒂芬问她。

“先生，您讲的是法国语吗?”老妪对海恩斯说。

海恩斯又对她说了一段更长的话，把握十足地。

“爱尔兰语，”勃克•穆利根说。“你有盖尔族[72]的气质吗?”

“我猜那一定是爱尔兰语，”她说，“就是那个腔调。您是从西边儿[73]来的吗，先生?”

“我是个英国人，”海恩斯回答说。

“他是一位英国人，”勃克，穆利根说，“他认为在爱尔兰，我们应该讲爱尔兰语。”

“当然喽，”老枢说，“我自己就不会讲，好惭愧啊。会这个语言的人告诉我说，那可是个了不起的语言哩。”

“岂止了不起，”勃克•穆利根说。“而且神奇无比。再给咱倒点茶，金赤。老太太，你也来一杯好吗？”

“不，谢谢您啦，先生，”老妪边说边把牛奶罐上的提环儿套在手腕上，准备离去。

海恩斯对她说：

“你把帐单带来了吗?穆利根，咱们最好给她吧，你看怎么样?”

斯蒂芬又把三只杯子斟满。

“帐单吗，先生?”她停下脚步说。“喏，一品脱[74]是两便士喽七个早晨二七就合一先令[75]二便士喽还有这三个早晨每夸脱合四个便士三夸脱就是一个先令喽一个先令加一先令二就是二先令二，先生。”

勃克•穆利根叹了口气，并把两面都厚厚地涂满黄油的一块面包皮塞进嘴里，两条腿往前一伸，开始掏起裤兜来。

“清了账，心舒畅，”海恩斯笑吟吟地对他说。

斯蒂芬倒了第三杯。一满匙茶把浓浓的牛奶微微添上点儿颜色。勃克•穆利根掏出一枚佛罗林[76]，用手指旋转着，大声嚷道：

“奇迹呀!”

他把它放在桌子面上，朝老妪推送过去，说着：

别再讨了，我亲爱的，

我能给的，全给你啦。[77]

斯蒂芬将银币放到老姻那不那么急切的手里。

“我们还欠你两便士，”他说。

“不着急，先生，”她边接银币边说。“不着急。早安，先生。”

她行了个屈膝礼，踱了出去。勃克•穆利根那温柔的歌声跟在后面：

心肝儿，倘若有多的，

统统献在你的脚前。

他转向斯蒂芬，说：

“说实在的，迪达勒斯，我已经一文不名啦。赶快到你们那家学校去，给咱们取点钱来。今天‘大诗人们’要设宴畅饮。爱尔兰期待每个人今天各尽自己的职责[78]。”

“这么一说我倒想起来了，”海恩斯边说边站起身来，“今天我得到你们的国立图书馆去一趟。”

“咱们先去游泳吧，”勃克•穆利根说。

他朝斯蒂芬转过身来，和蔼地问：

“这是你每月一次洗澡的日子吗，金赤？”

接着，他对海恩斯说：

“这位肮脏的‘大诗人’拿定主意每个月洗一次澡。”

“整个爱尔兰都在被湾流[79]冲洗着，”斯蒂芬边说边听任蜂蜜淌到一片面包上。

海恩斯在角落里正松垮垮地往他的网球衫那宽松领口上系领巾，他说：

“要是你容许的话，我倒想把你这些说词儿收集起来哩。”

他在说我哪。他们泡在澡缸里又洗又擦。内心的苛责。良心。可是这儿还有一点污迹[80]。

“关于仆人的一面有裂纹的镜子就是爱尔兰艺术的象征那番话，真是太妙啦。”

勃克•穆利根在桌子底下踢了斯蒂芬一脚，用热切的语气说：

“海恩斯，你等着听他议论哈姆莱特吧。”

“喏，我是有这个打算，”海恩斯继续对斯蒂芬说着。“我正在想这事儿的时候，那个可怜的老家伙进来啦。”

“我能从中赚点儿钱吗？”斯蒂芬问道。

海恩斯笑了笑。他一面从吊床的钩子上摘下自己那顶灰色呢帽，一面说道：

“这就很难说啦。”

他漫步朝门道踱了出去。勃克•穆利根向斯蒂芬弯过身去，粗声粗气地说：

“你这话说得太蠢了，为什么要这么说？”

“啊？”斯蒂芬说。“问题是要弄到钱。从谁身上弄？从送牛奶的老太婆或是从他那里。我看他们两个，碰上谁算谁。”

“我对他把你大吹了一通，”勃克•穆利根说，“可你却令人不快地斜眼瞟着，搬弄你那套耶酥会士的阴郁的嘲讽。”

“我看不出有什么指望，”斯蒂芬说，“老太婆也罢，那家伙也罢。”

勃克•穆利根凄惨地叹了口气，把手搭在斯蒂芬的胳膊上。

“我也罢，金赤，”他说。

他猛地改变了语调，加上一句：

“千真万确，我认为你说得对。除此之外，他们什么也不称。你为什么不像我这样作弄他们呢？让他们统统见鬼去吧。咱们从这窝里出去吧。”

他站起来，肃穆地解下腰带，脱掉浴衣，认头地说：

“穆利根被强剩下衣服[81]。”

他把兜儿都掏空了，东西放在桌上。

“你的鼻涕布就在这儿，”他说。

他一边安上硬领，系好那不听话的领带，一边对它们以及那东摇西晃的表链说着话，责骂它们。他把双手伸到箱子里去乱翻一气，并且嚷着要一块干净手绢。内心的苛责。天哪，咱们就得打扮得有点特色。我要戴深褐色的手套，穿绿色长统靴。矛盾。我自相矛盾吗？很好，那么我就是要自相矛盾[82]。能言善辩的[83]玛拉基。正说着的当儿，一个黑色软东西从他手里嗖地飞了出来。

“这是你的拉丁区[84]帽子，”他说。

斯蒂芬把它拾起来戴上了。海恩斯从门道那儿喊他们：

“你们来吗，伙计们？”

“我准备好了，”勃克•穆利根边回答边朝门口走去。“出来吧，金赤，你大概把我们剩的都吃光了吧。”

他认头了，一面迈着庄重的脚步踱了出去，一面几乎是怀着悲痛，严肃地说：

“于是他走出去，遇见了巴特里[85]。”

斯蒂芬把木手杖从它搭着的地方取了来，跟在他们后面走出去。当他们走下梯子时，他就拉上笨重的铁门，上了锁。他将很大的钥匙放在内兜里。

在梯子脚下，勃克•穆利根问道：

“你带上钥匙了吗？”

“我带着哪，”斯蒂芬边说边在他们头里走着。

他继续走着。他听见勃克•穆利根在背后用沉甸甸的浴巾抽打那长得最高的羊齿或草叶。

“趴下，老兄。放老实点儿，老兄。”

海恩斯问道，

“这座塔，你们交房租吗？”

“十二镑，”勃克，穆利根说。

“交给陆军大臣，”斯蒂芬回过头来补充一句。

他们停下步来，海恩斯朝那座塔望了望，最后说：

“啊，冬季可阴冷得够呛。你们管它叫作圆形炮塔吧?”

“这些是比利•皮特[86]叫人盖的，”勃克•穆利根说，“当时法国人在海上[87]。然而我们那座是中心。”

“你对哈姆莱特有何高见？”海恩斯向斯蒂芬问道。

“不，不，”勃克•穆利根烦闷地嚷了起来，“托巴斯•阿奎那[88]也罢，他用来支撑自己那一套的五十五个论点也罢，我都甘拜下风。等我先喝上几杯再说。”

他一边把淡黄色背心的两端拽拽整齐，一边转向斯蒂芬，说：

“金赤，起码得喝上三杯，不然你就应付不了，对吧？”

“既然都等这么久了，”斯蒂芬无精打采地说，“不妨再等一阵子。”

“你挑起了我的好奇心，”海恩斯和蔼可亲地说，“是什么似非而是的怪论吗？”

“瞎扯!”勃克•穆利根说。“我们早就摆脱了王尔德和他那些似非而是的怪论了。这十分简单。他用代数运算出，哈姆莱特的孙子是莎士比亚的祖父，而他本人是他亲爹的亡灵。”

“什么？”海恩斯说着，把指头伸向斯蒂芬。“他本人？”

勃克•穆利根将他的浴巾像祭带[89]般绕在脖子上，纵声笑得前仰后合，跟斯蒂芬咬起耳朵说：“噢，老金赤[90]的阴魂！雅弗在寻找一位父亲哪！[91]”

“每天早晨我们总是疲倦的，”斯蒂芬对海恩斯说，“更何况说也说不完呢。”

勃克•穆利根又朝前走了，并举起双手。

“只有神圣的杯中物才能使迪达勒斯打开话匣子，”他说。

“我想要说的是，”当他们跟在后面走的时候，海恩斯向斯蒂芬解释道，“此地的这座塔和这些悬崖不知怎地令我想到艾尔西诺。濒临大海的峻峭的悬崖之巅[92]——对吧？”

勃克•穆利根抽冷子回头瞅了斯蒂芬一眼，然而并没吱声。光天化日之下，在这沉默的一刹那间，斯蒂芬看到自己身穿廉价丧服，满是尘埃，夹在服装华丽的二人之间的这个形象。

“那是个精采的故事，”海恩斯这么一说，又使他们停下脚步。

他的眼睛淡蓝得像是被风净化了的海水，比海水还要淡蓝，坚毅而谨慎。他这个大海的统治者[93]，隔着海湾朝南方凝望，一片空旷，闪闪发光的天边，一艘邮船依稀冒着羽毛形的烟，还有一叶孤帆正在穆格林沙洲那儿抢风掉向航行。

“我在什么地方读过从神学上对这方面的诠释，”他若有所思地说，“圣父与圣子的概念。圣子竭力与圣父合为一体。”

勃克•穆利根的脸上立刻绽满欢快的笑容。他望着他们，高兴地张开那生得很俊的嘴唇，两眼那股精明洞察的神色顿然收敛，带着狂热欢快地眨巴着。他来回晃动着一个玩偶脑袋，巴拿马帽檐颤动着，用安详、欣悦而憨朴的嗓门吟咏起来：

我这小伙子，无比地古怪，

妈是犹太人，爹是只鸟儿[94]。

跟木匠约瑟，我可合不来，

为门徒[95]和各各他[96]干一杯。

他伸出食指表示警告：

倘有人认为，我不是神明，

我造出的酒，他休想白饮。

只好去喝水，但愿是淡的，

可别等那酒重新变成水[97]。

为了表示告别，他敏捷地拽了一下斯蒂芬的木手杖，跑到悬崖边沿，双手在两侧拍动着，像鱼鳍，又像是即将腾空飞去者的两翼，并吟咏道：

再会吧，再会，写下我说的一切，

告诉托姆、狄克和哈利，我已从死里复活[98]。

与生俱来的本事，准能使我腾飞，

橄榄山[99]和风吹——再会吧，再会！

他朝着前方的四十步潭[100]一溜烟儿地蹿下去，呼扇着翅膀般的双手，敏捷地跳跳蹦蹦。墨丘利[101]的帽子迎着清风摆动着，把他那鸟语般婉转而短促的叫声，吹回到他们的耳际。

海恩斯一直谨慎地笑着，他和斯蒂芬并肩而行，说：

“我认为咱们不该笑。他真够亵渎神明的。我本人并不是个信徒，可以这么说。然而他那欢快的腔调多少消除了话里的恶意，你看呢？他管这叫什么来看？《木匠约瑟》?”

“那是《滑稽的耶稣》[102]小调，”斯蒂芬回答说。

“哦，”海恩斯说，“你以前听过吗？”

“每天三遍，饭后，”斯蒂芬干巴巴地说。

“你不是信徒吧？”海恩斯问，“我指的是狭义上的信徒，相信从虚无中创造万物啦，神迹和人格神[103]啦。”

“依我看，信仰一词只有一种解释，”斯蒂芬说。

海恩斯停下脚步，掏出一只光滑的银质烟盒，上面闪烁着一颗绿宝石。他用拇指把它按开，递了过去。

“谢谢，”斯蒂芬说着，拿了一支香烟。

海恩斯自己也取了一文，啪的一声又把盒子关上，放回侧兜里，并从背心兜里掏出一只镍制打火匣，也把它按开，自己先点着了烟，随即双手像两扇贝壳似的拢着燃起的火绒，伸向斯蒂芬。

“是啊，当然喽，”他们重新向前走着，他说。“要么信，要么不信，你说对不？就我个人来说，我就容忍不了人格神这种概念。你也不赞成，对吧?”

“你在我身上看到的，”斯蒂芬闷闷不乐地说，“是一个可怕的自由思想的典型。”

他继续走着，等待对方开口，身边拖着那棍棒木手杖。手杖上的金属包头沿着小径轻快地跟随着他，在他的脚后跟吱吱作响。我的好搭档跟着我，叫着斯蒂依依依依依芬。一条波状道道，沿着小径。今晚他们摸着黑儿来到这里，就会踏看它了。他想要这把钥匙。那是我的。房租是我交的。而今我吃着他那苦涩的面包[104]。把钥匙也给他拉倒。一古脑儿。他会向我讨的。从他的眼神里也看得出来。

“总之，”海恩斯开口说……

斯蒂芬回过头去，只见那冷冷地打量着他的眼色并非完全缺乏善意。

“总之，我认为你是能够在思想上挣脱羁绊的。依我看，你是你自己的主人。”

“我是两个主人的奴仆，”斯蒂芬说，“一个英国人，一个意大利人。”

“意大利人?”海恩斯说。

一个疯狂的女王[l05]，年迈而且爱妒忌：给朕下跪。

“还有第三个[106]，”斯蒂芬说，“他要我给他打杂。”

“意大利人?”海恩斯又说，“你是什么意思?”

“大英帝国，”斯蒂芬回答说，他的脸涨红了，“还有神圣罗马使徒公教会[107]。”

海恩斯把沾在下唇上的一些烟叶屑抹掉后才说话。

“我很能理解这一点，”他心平气和地说。“我认为一个爱尔兰人一定会这么想的。我们英国人觉得我们对待你们不怎么公平。看来这要怪历史[108]。”

堂堂皇皇而威风凛凛的称号勾起了斯蒂芬对其铜钟那胜利的铿锵声的记忆，信奉独一至圣使徒公教会，礼拜仪式与教义像他本人那稀有着的思想一般缓慢地发展并起着变化，命星的神秘变化。《马尔塞鲁斯教皇[109]弥撒曲》[110]中的使徒象征[111]，大家的歌声汇在一起，嘹亮地唱着坚信之歌；在他们的颂歌后面，富于战斗性的教会那位时刻警惕着的使者[112]缴了异教祖师的械，并加以威胁。异教徒们成群结队地逃窜，主教冠歪歪斜斜；他们是佛提乌[112]以及包括穆利根在内的一群嘲弄者；还有为了证实圣子与圣父并非一体而毕生展开漫长斗争的阿里乌[114]，以及否认基督具有凡人肉身的瓦伦廷[115];再有就是深奥莫测的非洲异教始祖撒伯里乌[116]，他主张圣父本人就是他自己的圣子。刚才穆利根就曾用此活来嘲弄这位陌生人[117]。无谓的嘲弄。一切织风者最终必落得一场空[118]。他们受到威胁，被缴械，被击败；在冲突中，来自教会的那些摆好阵势的使者们，米迦勒的万军，用长矛和盾牌永远保卫教会。

听哪，听哪。经久不息的喝采。该死！以天主的名义![119]

“当然喽，我是个英国人，”海恩斯的嗓音说，“因此我在感觉上是个英国人。我也不愿意看到自已的国家落入德国犹太人的手里[120]。我认为当前，这恐怕是我们民族的问题。”

有两个人站在悬崖边上眺望着，一个是商人，另一个是船老大。

“她正向阉牛港[121]开呢。”

船老大略带轻蔑神情朝海湾北部点了点头。

“那一带有五[]深，”他说，“一点钟左右涨潮，它就会朝那边浮去了。今儿个已经是第九天[122]啦。”

淹死的人。一只帆船在空荡荡的海湾里顺风改变着航向，等待一团泡肿的玩艺儿突然浮上来，一张肿胀的脸，盐白色的，翻转向太阳。我在这儿哪。

他们沿着弯曲的小道下到了湾汊。勃克•穆利根站在石头上，他穿了件衬衫，没有别夹子的领带在肩上飘动。一个年轻人抓住他附近一块岩石的尖角，在颜色深得像果冻般的水里，宛若青蛙似地缓缓踹动着两条绿腿。

“弟弟跟你在一起吗，玛拉基？”

“他在韦斯特米思。跟班农[123]一家人在一起。”

“还在那儿吗？班农给我寄来一张明信片。说他在那儿遇见了一个可爱的小姐儿。他管她叫照相姑娘[124]。”

“是快照吧，呃？一拍就成。”

勃克•穆利根坐下来解他那高腰靴子的带子。离岩角不远处，抽冷子冒出一张上岁数的人那涨得通红的脸，喷着水。他攀住石头爬上来。水在他的脑袋以及花环般的一圈灰发[125]上闪烁着，沿着他的胸脯和肚子流淌下来，从他那松垂着的黑色缠腰市里往外冒。

勃克•穆利根闪过身子，让他爬过去，瞥了海恩斯和斯蒂芬一眼，用大拇指甲虔诚地在额头、嘴唇和胸骨上面了十字[126]。

“西摩回城里来啦，”年轻人重新抓住岩角说，“他想弃医从军呢。”

“啊，随他去吧！”勃克•穆利根说。

“下周就该受熬煎了。你认识卡莱尔家那个红毛丫头莉莉吗?”

“认得。”

“昨天晚上跟他在码头上调情来看。她爸爸阔得流油。”

“她够劲儿吗？”

“这，你最好去问西摩。”

“西摩，一个嗜血的军官，”勃克•穆利根说。

他若有所思地点点头，脱下长裤站起来，说了句老生常谈：

“红毛女人浪起来赛过山羊。”

他惊愕地住了口，并摸了摸随风呼扇着的衬衫里面的肋部。

“我的第十二根肋骨没有啦，”他大声说。“我是超人[127]。没有牙齿的金赤和我都是超人。”

他扭着身子脱下衬衫，把它甩在背后他堆衣服的地方。

“玛拉基，你在这儿下来吗？”

“嗯。在床上让开点儿地方吧。”

年轻人在水里猛地向后退去，伸长胳膊利利索索地划了两下，就游到湾汊中部。海恩斯坐在一块石头上抽着烟。

“你不下水吗？”勃克•穆利根问道。

“呆会儿再说，”海恩斯说，“刚吃完早饭可不行。”

斯蒂芬掉过身去。

“穆利根，我要走啦，”他说。

“金赤，给咱那把钥匙，”勃克•穆利根说，“好把我的内衣压压平。”

斯蒂芬递给了他钥匙。勃克•穆利根将它撂在自己那堆衣服上。

“还要两便士，”他说，“好喝上一品脱。就丢在那儿吧。”

斯蒂芬又在那软塌塌的堆儿上丢下两个便士。不是穿，就是脱。勃克•穆利根直直地站着，将双手在胸前握在一起，庄严地说：

“琐罗亚斯德如是说[128]：‘偷自贫穷的，就是借给耶和华……’[129]”

他那肥胖的身躯跳进水去。

“回头见，”海恩斯回头望着攀登小径的斯蒂芬说，爱尔兰人的粗扩使他露出笑容。

公牛的角，马的蹄子，撒克逊人的微笑[130]。

“在‘船记’酒馆，”勃克•穆利根嚷道。“十二点半。”

“好吧，”斯蒂芬说。

他沿着那婉蜒的坡道走去。

饰以百合的光明的

司铎群来伴尔，

极乐圣童贞之群……[131]

壁龛里是神父的一圈灰色光晕，他正在那儿细心地穿上衣服[132]。今晚我不在这儿过夜。家也归不得。

拖得长长的、甜甜的声音从海上呼唤着他。拐弯的时候，他摆了摆手，又呼唤了。一个柔滑、褐色的头，海豹的，远远地在水面上，滚圆的。

篡夺者[133]。
Chapter 2 Nestor
YOU, COCHRANE, WHAT CITY SENT FOR HIM? 
-- Tarentum, sir. 

-- Very good. Well? 

-- There was a battle, sir. 

-- Very good. Where? 

The boy's blank face asked the blank window. 

Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us then? 

-- I forgot the place, sir. 279 B.C. 

-- Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book. 

-- Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for. 

That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear. 

-- You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus? 

-- End of Pyrrhus, sir? 

-- I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said. 

-- Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus? 

A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissues of his lips. A sweetened boy's breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico Road, Dalkey. 

-- Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier. 

All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay. 

-- Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the book, what is a pier. 

-- A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the waves. A kind of bridge. Kingstown pier, sir. 

Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he watched their faces. Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle. 

-- Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge. The words troubled their gaze. 

-- How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river. 

For Haines's chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop. 

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death? They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind. 

-- Tell us a story, sir. 

-- Oh, do, sir, a ghoststory. 

-- Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another book. 

-- Weep no more, Comyn said. 

-- Go on then, Talbot. 

-- And the history, sir? 

-- After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot. 

A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text: 

-- Weep no more, woful shepherd, weep no more 
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor...
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquillity sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. 
Talbot repeated: 

-- Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves, 
Through the dear might...
-- Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything. 
-- What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward. 

His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again having just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven on the church's looms. Ay. 

Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro. 
My father gave me seeds to sow.
Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel. 
-- Have I heard all? Stephen asked. 

-- Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir. 

-- Half day, sir. Thursday. 

-- Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked. 

They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily: 

-- A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir. 

-- O, ask me, sir. 

-- A hard one, sir. 

-- This is the riddle, Stephen said. 

The cock crew 
The sky was blue: 
The bells in heaven 
Were striking eleven. 
Tis time for this poor soul 
To go to heaven.
-- What is that? 
-- What, sir? 

-- Again, sir. We didn't hear. 

Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane said: 

-- What is it, sir? We give it up. 

Stephen, his throat itching, answered: 

-- The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush. 

He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed dismay. 

A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called: 

-- Hockey! 

They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them. Quickly they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and clamour of their boots and tongues. 

Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open copybook. His tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail's bed. 

He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the headline. Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal. 

-- Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to you, sir. 

Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility. 

-- Do you understand how to do them now? he asked. 

-- Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy said I was to copy them off the board, sir. 

-- Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked. 

-- No, sir. 

Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him under foot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled under foot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. 

Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field. 

Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend. 

-- Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself? 

-- Yes, sir. 

In long shady strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands. 

Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned. 

The sum was done. 

-- It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up. 

-- Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered. 

He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to his desk. 

-- You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen said as he followed towards the door the boy's graceless form. 

-- Yes, sir. 

In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield. 

-- Sargent! 

-- Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you. 

He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He turned his angry white moustache. 

-- What is it now? he cried continually without listening. 

-- Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen cried. 

-- Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I restore order here. 

And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice cried sternly: 

-- What is the matter? What is it now? 

Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed head. 

Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end. 

A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his rare moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table. 

-- First, our little financial settlement, he said. 

He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them carefully on the table. 

-- Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away. 

And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money, cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and this, the scallop of Saint James. An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells. 

A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth. 

-- Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand. These are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for shillings, sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See. 

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings. 

-- Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right. 

-- Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers. 

-- No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it. 

Stephen's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket. Symbols soiled by greed and misery. 

-- Don't carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You'll pull it out somewhere and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very handy. 

Answer something. 

-- Mine would be often empty, Stephen said. 

The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times now. Three nooses round me here. Well. I can break them in this instant if I will. 

-- Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't know yet what money is. Money is power, when you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy purse. 

-- Iago, Stephen murmured. 

He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare. 

-- He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth? 

The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating. 

-- That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets. 

-- Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail. 

-- I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way. 

Good man, good man. 

-- I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe nothing. Can you? 

Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties. Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Kohler, three guineas, Mrs McKernan, five weeks' board. The lump I have is useless. 

-- For the moment, no, Stephen answered. 

Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox. 

-- I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We are a generous people but we must also be just. 

-- I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy. 

Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the shapely bulk of a man in tartan fillibegs: Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. 

-- You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things. 

Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters' covenant. The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie down. 

Stephen sketched a brief gesture. 

-- I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the spindle side. But I am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all Irish, all kings' sons. 

-- Alas, Stephen said. 

-- Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so. 

Lal the ral the ra 
The rocky road to Dublin.
A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John. Soft day, your honour... Day... Day... Two topboots jog dangling on to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra, lal the ral the raddy. 
-- That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr Dedalus, with some of your literary friends: I have a letter here for the press. Sit down a moment. I have just to copy the end. 

He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter. 

-- Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates of common sense. Just a moment. 

He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly, some times blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error. 

Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. Framed around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, 1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing King's colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds. 

-- Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this important question... 

Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek of the canteen, over the motley slush. Even money Fair Rebel: ten to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange. 

Shouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle. 

Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain, a shout of spear spikes baited with men's bloodied guts. 

-- Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising. 

He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up. 

-- I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It's about the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on the matter. 

May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez faire which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than she should be. To come to the point at issue. 

-- I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on. 

Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Mürzsteg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous offer a fair trial, Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the hospitality of your columns. 

-- I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see at the next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I am trying to work up influence with the department. Now I'm going to try publicity. I am surrounded by difficulties, by... intrigues, by... backstairs influence, by... 

He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke. 

-- Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands of the jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital strength. I have seen it Coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. Old England is dying. 

He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again. 

-- Dying, he said, if not dead by now. 

The harlot's cry from street to street 
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which he halted. 
-- A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not? 

-- They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. And you can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to this day. 

On the steps of the Paris Stock Exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabbles of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew the years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh. 

-- Who has not? Stephen said. 

-- What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked. 

He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me. 

-- History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. 

From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick? 

-- The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God. 

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying: 

-- That is God. 

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! 

-- What? Mr Deasy asked. 

-- A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders. 

Mr Deasy looked down and held for a while the wings of his nose tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free. 

-- I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the end. 

For Ulster will fight 
And Ulster will be right.
Stephen raised the sheets in his hand. 
-- Well, sir, he began. 

-- I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long at this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong. 

-- A learner rather, Stephen said. 

And here what will you learn more? 

Mr Deasy shook his head. 

-- Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher. 

Stephen rustled the sheets again. 

-- As regards these, he began. 

-- Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can have them published at once. 

Telegraph. Irish Homestead. 

-- I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors slightly. 

That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the City Arms Hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get it into your two papers. What are they? 

-- The Evening Telegraph... 

-- That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to answer that letter from my cousin. 

-- Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. Thank you. 

-- Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like to break a lance with you, old as I am. 

-- Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back. 

He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate; toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the bullockbefriending bard. 

-- Mr Dedalus! 

Running after me. No more letters, I hope. 

-- Just one moment. 

-- Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate. 

Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath. 

-- I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why? 

He frowned sternly on the bright air. 

-- Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile. 

-- Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly. 

A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the air. 

-- She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why. 

On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. 


“你说说，科克伦，是哪个城市请他[1]的？”

“塔兰图姆[2]，老师。”

“好极了。后来呢？”

“打了一仗，老师。”

“好极了。在哪儿？”

孩子那张茫然的脸向那扇茫然的窗户去讨教。

记忆的女儿们[3]所编的寓言。然而，即便同记忆所编的寓言有出入，总有些相仿佛吧。那么，就是一句出自焦躁心情的话，是布莱克那过分之翅膀的扑扇[4]。我听到整个空间的毁灭，玻璃碎成碴儿，砖石建筑坍塌下来，时光化为终极的一缕死灰色火焰[5]。那样，还留给我们什么呢？

“地点我忘记啦，老师。公元前三七九年。”

“阿斯库拉姆[6]，”斯蒂芬朝着沾满血迹的书上那地名和年代望了一眼，说。

“是的，老师。他又说，再打赢这么一场仗，我们就完啦[7]。”

世人记住了此语。心情处于麻木而松驰的状态。尸骸累累的平原，一位将军站在小山岗上，拄着矛枪，正对他的部下训话。任何将军对任何部下。他们洗耳恭听。

“你，阿姆斯特朗，”斯蒂芬说。“皮勒斯的结尾怎么样？”

“皮勒斯的结尾吗，老师？”

“我晓得，老师。问我吧，老师，”科敏说。

“等一等。阿姆斯特朗，你说说，关于皮勒斯，你知道点什么吗？”

阿姆斯特朗的书包里悄悄地摆着一袋无花果夹心面包卷。他不时她用双掌把它搓成小卷儿，轻轻地咽下去。面包渣子还沾在他的嘴唇上呢。少年的呼吸发出一股甜味儿。这些阔人以长子进了海军而自豪。多基[8]的韦克街。

“皮勒斯吗，老师？皮勒斯是栈桥[9]。”

大家都笑了。并不快活的尖声嗤笑。阿姆斯特朗四下里打量着同学们，露出傻笑的侧影。过一会儿，他们将发觉我管教无方，也想到他们的爸爸所缴的学费，会越发放开嗓门大笑起来。

“现在告诉我，”斯蒂芬用书戳戳少年的肩头，“栈桥是什么？”

“栈桥，老师，”阿姆斯特朗说，“就是伸到海里的东西。一种桥梁。国王镇[10]桥，老师。”

有些人又笑了，不畅快，却别有用意。坐在后排凳子上的两个在小声讲着什么。是的。他们晓得，从未学习过，可一向也不是无知的。全都是这样。他怀着妒意注视着一张张的脸。伊迪丝、艾塞尔、格蒂、莉莉[11]。跟他们类似的人，她们的呼吸也给红茶、果酱弄得甜丝丝的，扭动时，她们腕上的镯子在窃笑着。

“国王镇码头，”斯蒂芬说，“是啊，一座失望之桥[12]。”

这句话使他们凝视着的眼神露出一片迷茫。

“老师，怎么会呢？”科敏问。“桥是架在河上的啊。”

可以收入海恩斯的小册子[13]。这里却没有一个人听。今晚在豪饮和畅叙中，如簧的巧舌将刺穿罩在他思想外面的那副锃亮的铠甲。然后呢？左不过是主人宫廷里的一名弄臣，既被纵容又受到轻视，博得宽厚的主人一声赞许而已。他们为什么都选择了这一角色呢？图的并不完全是温存的爱抚。对他们来说，历史也像其他任何一个听腻了的故事，他们的国土是一爿当铺[14]。

倘若皮勒斯并未在阿尔戈斯丧命于一个老太婆手下[15]，或是尤利乌斯•恺撒不曾被短剑刺死[16]呢？这些事不是想抹煞就能抹煞的。岁月已给它们打上了烙印，把它们束缚住，关在被它们排挤出去的无限的可能性的领域里[17]。但是，那些可能性既然从未实现，难道还说得上什么可能吗？抑或惟有发生了的才是可能的呢？织吧，织风者[18]。

“给我们讲个故事吧，老师。”

“请讲吧，老师。讲个鬼故事。”

“这从哪儿开始？”期蒂芬打开另一本书，问道。

“莫再哭泣，”科敏说。

“那么，接着背下去，塔尔博特。”

“故事呢，老师？”

“呆会儿，”斯蒂芬说。“背下去，塔尔博特。”

一个面色黧黑的少年打开书本，麻利地将它支在书包这座胸墙底下。他不时地瞥着课文，结结巴巴地背诵着诗句：

莫再哭泣，悲痛的牧羊人，莫再哭泣，

你们哀悼的利西达斯不曾死去，

虽然他已沉入水面下……[19]

说来那肯定是一种运动了，可能性由于有可能而变为现实[20]。在急促而咬字不清的朗诵声中，亚理斯多德的名言自行出现了，飘进圣热内维艾芙图书馆那勤学幽静的气氛中；他曾一夜一夜地隐退在此研读[21]，从而躲开了巴黎的罪恶。邻座上，一位纤弱的暹罗人正在那里展卷精读一部兵法手册。我周围的那些头脑已经塞满了，还在继续填塞着。头顶上是小铁栅围起的一盏盏白炽灯，有着微微颤动的触须。在我头脑的幽暗处，却是阴间的一个懒货，畏首畏尾，惧怕光明，蠕动着那像龙鳞般的裙皱[22]。思维乃是有关思维的思维[23]。静穆的光明。就某种意义上而言，灵魂是全部存在，灵魂乃是形态的形态[24]。突兀、浩翰、炽烈的静穆：形态的形态。

塔尔博特反复背诵着同一诗句：

借着在海浪上行走的主那亲切法力[25]，

借着在海浪上……

“翻过去吧。”斯蒂芬沉静地说，“我什么也没看见。”

“您说什么，老师？”塔尔博特向前探探身子，天真地问道。

他用手翻了一页。他这才想起来，于是，挺直了身子背诵下去。关于在海浪上行走的主。他的影子也投射在这些怯懦的心灵上，在嘲笑者的心坎和嘴唇上，也在我的心坎和嘴唇上。还投射在拿一枚上税的银币给他看的那些人殷切的面容上。属于恺撒的归给恺撒，属于天主的归给天主[26]。深色的眼睛长久地凝视着，一个谜语般的句子，在教会的织布机上不停地织了下去。就是这样。

让我猜，让我猜，嗨哟嗬。

我爸爸给种籽叫我播。[27]

塔尔博特把他那本阖上的书，轻轻地放进书包。

“都背完了吗？”斯蒂芬问。

“老师，背完了。十点钟打曲棍球，老师。”

“半天儿，老师。星期四嘛。”

“谁会破谜语？”斯蒂芬问。

他们把铅笔弄得咯吱咯吱响，纸页窸窸窣窣，将书胡乱塞进书包。他们挤作一团，勒上书包的皮带，扣紧了，全都快活地吵嚷起来：

“破谜语，老师。让我破吧，老师。”

“噢，让我破吧，老师。”

“出个难的，老师。”

“是这么个谜儿，”斯蒂芬说：

公鸡打了鸣，

天色一片蓝。

天堂那些钟，

敲了十一点。

可怜的灵魂，

该升天堂啦。[28]

“那是什么？”

“什么，老师？”

“再说一遍，老师，我们没听见。”

重复这些词句时，他们的眼睛越睁越大了。沉默半晌后，科克伦说：

“是什么呀，老师？我们不猜了。”

斯蒂芬回答说，嗓子直发痒：

“是狐狸在冬青树下埋葬它的奶奶[29]。”

他站起来，神经质地大笑了一声，他们的喊叫声反应着沮丧情绪。

一根棍子敲了敲门，又有个嗓门在走廊里吆唤着：

“曲棍球!”

他们忽然散开来，有的侧身从凳子前挤出去，有的从上面一跃而过。他们很快就消失了踪影，接着，从堆房传来棍子的碰击声、嘈杂的皮靴声和饶舌声。

萨金特独自留了下来。他慢慢腾腾地走过来，出示一本摊开的练习本。他那其乱如麻的头发和瘦削的脖颈都表明他的笨拙。透过模糊不清的镜片，他翻起一双弱视的眼睛，央求着。他那灰暗而毫无血色的脸蛋儿上，沾了块淡淡的枣子形墨水渍，刚刚抹上去，还湿润得像蜗牛窝似的。

他递过练习本来。头一行标着算术字样。下面是歪歪拧拧的数字，末尾是弯弯曲曲的签名，带圈儿的笔划填得满满当当，另外还有一团墨水渍。西里尔•萨金特：他的姓名和印记。

“迪希先生叫我整个儿重写一遍，”他说，“还要拿给您看，老师。”

斯蒂芬摸了一下本子的边儿。徒劳无益。

“你现在会做这些了吗？”他问。

“十一题到十五题，”萨金特回答说。“老师，迪希先生要我从黑板上抄下来的。”

“你自己会做这些了吗？”斯蒂芬问。

“不会，老师。”

长得丑，而且没出息，细细的脖颈，其乱如麻的头发，一抹墨水渍，蜗牛窝。但还是有人爱过他，搂在怀里，疼在心上。倘非有她，在这谁也不让谁的世间，他早就被脚踩得烂成一摊无骨的蜗牛浆了。她爱的是从她自己身上流进去的他那虚弱稀薄的血液。那么，那是真实的喽？是人生唯一靠得住的东西喽[30]？暴躁的高隆班[31]凭着一股神圣的激情，曾迈过他母亲那横卧的身躯。她已经不在了，一根在火中燃烧过的小树枝那颤巍巍的残骸，一股黄檀和温灰气味。她拯救了他，使他免于被践踏在脚下，而她自己却没怎么活就走了。一副可怜的灵魂升了天堂：星光闪烁下，在石楠丛生的荒野上，一只皮毛上还沾着劫掠者那血红腥臭的狐狸，有着一双凶残明亮的跟睛，用爪子刨地，听了听，刨起土来又听，刨啊，刨啊。

斯蒂芬挨着他坐着解题。他用代数运算出莎士比亚的亡灵是哈姆莱特的祖父[32]。萨金特透过歪戴着的眼镜斜睨着他。堆房里有球棍的碰撞声，操场上传未了钝重的击球声和喊叫声。

这些符号戴着平方形、立方形的奇妙帽子在纸页上表演着字母的哑剧，来回跳着庄重的摩利斯舞[33]。手牵手，互换位置，向舞伴鞠躬。就是这样，摩尔人幻想出来的一个个小鬼。阿威罗伊和摩西•迈蒙尼德[34]也都离开了人世，这些在音容和举止上都诡秘莫测的人，用他们那嘲讽的镜子[35]照着朦朦胧胧的世界之灵[36]。黑暗在光中照耀，而光却不能理解它[37]。

“这会子你明白了吧？第二道自己会做了吗？”

“会做啦，老师。”

萨金特用长长的、颤悠悠的笔划抄写着数字。他一边不断地期待着得到指点，一边忠实地描摹着那些不规则的符号。在他那灰暗的皮肤下面，是一抹淡淡的羞愧之色，忽隐忽现。母亲之爱[38]：主生格与宾生格。她用自己那虚弱的血液和稀溜发酸的奶汁喂养他，藏起他的尿布，不让人看到。

以前我就像他：肩膀也这么瘦削，也这么不起眼。我的童年在我旁边弯着腰。遥远得我甚至无从用手去摸一下，即便是轻轻地。我的太遥远了，而他的呢，就像我们的眼睛那样深邃。我们两人心灵的黑暗宫殿里，都一动不动地盘踞着沉默不语的一桩桩秘密:这些秘密对自己的专横已感到厌倦，是情愿被废黜的暴君。

题已经算出来了。

“这简单得很，”斯蒂芬边说边站起来。

“是的，老师。谢谢您啦，”萨金特回答说。

他用一张薄吸墨纸把那一页吸干，将练习本捧回到自己的课桌上。

“还不如拿上你的球棍，到外面找同学去呢，”斯蒂芬边说边跟着少年粗俗的背影走向门口。

“是的，老师。”

在走廊里就听见操场上喊着他名字的声音：

“萨金特!”

“快跑，”斯蒂芬说，“迪希先生在叫你哪。”

他站在门廊里，望着这个落伍者匆匆忙忙地奔向角逐场，那里是一片尖锐的争吵声。他们分好了队，迪希先生迈着戴鞋罩的脚，路过一簇簇的草丛踱来。他刚一定到校舍前，又有一片争辩声喊起他来了。他把怒气冲冲的白色口髭转过去。

“这回，怎么啦？”他一遍接一遍地嚷着，并不去听大家说的话。

“科克伦和哈利戴分到同一队里去啦，先生，”斯蒂芬大声说。

“请你在我的办公室等一会儿，”迪希先生说，“我把这里的秩序整顿好就来。”

他煞有介事地折回操场，扯着苍老的嗓子严厉地嚷着：

“什么事呀？这回又怎么啦？”

他们的尖嗓门从四面八方朝他喊叫，众多身姿把把团团包围住，刺目的阳光将他那没有染好的蜂蜜色头发晒得发白了。

工作室里空气浑浊，烟雾弥漫，同几把椅子那磨损咸淡褐色的皮革气味混在一起。跟第一天他和我在这里讨价还价时一个样儿。厥初如何，今兹亦然[39]。靠墙的餐具柜上摆着一盘斯图亚特[40]硬币，从泥塘里挖出来的劣等收藏品:以迨永远[41]。在褪了色的紫红丝绒羹匙匣里，舒适地躺着十二使徒[42]，他们曾向一切外邦人宣过教[43]，及世之世[44]。

沿着门廊的石板地和走廊传来一阵急促的脚步声。迪希先生吹着他那稀疏的口髭，在桌前站住了。

“头一桩，把咱们那一小笔帐结了吧，”他说。

他从上衣兜里掏出一个用皮条扎起来的皮夹子。它啪的一声开了，他就从里面取出两张钞票，其中一张还是由两个半截儿拼接起来的，并把它们小心翼翼地摊在桌子上。

“两镑，”他说着，把皮夹子扎上，收了起来。

现在该开保险库取金币了。斯蒂芬那双尴尬的手抚摩着堆在冰冷的石钵里的贝壳，蛾螺、子安贝、豹贝，这个有螺纹的像是酋长的头巾，还有这个圣詹姆斯的扇贝[45]。一个老朝圣者的收藏品，死去了的珍宝，空洞的贝壳。

一枚金镑，锃亮而崭新，落在厚实柔软的桌布上。

“三镑，”迪希先生把他那只小小的攒钱盒在手里转来转去，说。“有这么个玩艺儿可便当啦。瞧，这是放金镑的。这是放先令的，放六便士的，放半克朗的。这儿放克朗。瞧啊。”

他从里面倒出两枚克朗和两枚先令。

“三镑十二先令，”他说。“我想你会发现没错儿。”

“谢谢您啦，先生，”斯蒂芬说，他难为情地连忙把钱拢在一起，统统塞进裤兜里。

“完全不用客气，”迪希先生说。“这是你挣的嘛。”

斯蒂芬的手又空下来了，就回到空洞的贝壳上去。这也是美与权力的象征。我兜里有一小簇。被贪婪和贫困所砧污了的象征。

“不要那样随身带着钱，”迪希先生说。“不定在哪儿就会掏丢了。买上这样一个机器，你会觉得方便极啦。”

回答点儿什么吧。

“我要是有上一个，经常也只能是空着，”斯蒂芬说。

同一间房，同一时刻，同样的才智，我也是同一个我。这是第三次[46]了。我的脖子上套着二道绞索。唔。只要我愿意，马上就可以把它们挣断。

“因为你不攒钱，”迪希先生用手指着说。“你还不懂得金钱意味着什么。金钱是权，当你活到我这把岁数的时候嘛。我懂得，我懂得。倘若年轻人有经验……然而莎士比亚是怎么说的来看？只要把银钱放在你的钱袋里[47]。

“伊阿古，"斯蒂芬喃喃地说。

他把视线从纹丝不动的贝壳移向老人那凝视着他的目光。

“他懂得金钱是什么，”迪希先生说。“他赚下了钱。是个诗人，可也是个英国人。你知道英国人以什么为自豪吗？你知道能从英国人嘴里听到的他最得意的话是什么吗？”

海洋的统治者。他那双像海水一样冰冷的眼睛眺望着空荡荡的海湾:看来这要怪历史，对我和我所说的话也投以那样的目光，倒没有厌恶的意思。

“说什么在他的帝国中，”斯蒂芬说，“太阳是永远不落的。”

“不对!”迪希先生入声说。“那不是英国人说的。是一个法国的凯尔特族[48]人说的。”

他用攒钱盒轻轻敲着大拇指的指甲。

“我告诉你，”他一本正经地说，“他最爱自夸的话是什么吧。我没欠过债。”

好人哪，好人。

“我没欠过债。我一辈子没该过谁一先令。你能有这种感觉吗？我什么也不欠。你能吗？”

穆利根，九镑，三双袜子，一双粗革厚底皮鞋，几条领带。柯伦，十基尼。麦卡恩，一基尼。弗雷德•瑞安，两先令。坦普尔，两顿午饭。拉塞尔，一基尼，卡曾斯，十先令，鲍勃•雷诺兹，半基尼，凯勒，三基尼，麦克南太太[49]，五个星期的饭费。我这一小把钱可不顶用。

“现在还不能，”斯蒂芬回答说。

迪希先生十分畅快地笑了，把攒钱盒收了回去。

“我晓得你不能，”他开心地说。“然而有朝一日你一定体会得到。我们是个慷慨的民族，但我们也必须做到公正。”

“我怕这种冠冕堂皇的字眼儿，”斯蒂芬说，“这使我们遭到如此之不幸。”

迪希先生神情肃然地朝着壁炉上端的肖像凝视了好半晌。那是一位穿着苏格兰花格呢短裙、身材匀称魁梧的男子，威尔士亲王艾伯特•爱德华[50]。

“你认为我是个老古板，老保守党，”他那若有所思的嗓音说。

“从打奥康内尔[51]时期以来，我看到了三代人。我记得那次的大饥荒[52]。你晓得吗，橙带党[53]分支鼓动废除联合议会要比奥康内尔这样做，以及你们教派的主教、教长们把他斥为煽动者，还早二十年呢!你们这些芬尼社社员[54]有时候是健忘的。”

光荣、虔诚、不朽的纪念[55]。在光辉的阿马的钻石会堂里，悬挂着天主教徒的一具具尸首[56]。沙哑着嗓子，戴面罩，手执武器，殖民者的宣誓[57]。被荒废的北部，确实正统的《圣经》。平头派倒下去[58]。

斯蒂芬像画草图似的打了个简短的手势。

“我身上也有造反者的血液，”迪希先生说。“母方的。然而我是投联合议会赞成票的约翰•布莱克伍德爵士的后裔。我们都是爱尔兰人，都是国王的子嗣[59]。”

“哎呀，”斯蒂芬说。

“走正路[60]，”迪希先生坚定地说，“这就是他的座右铭。他投了赞成票，是穿上高统马靴，从当郡的阿兹[61]骑马到都柏林去投的。”

吁——萧萧，吁——得得，

一路坎坷，赴都柏林。[62]

一个粗暴的绅士，足登锃亮的高统马靴，跨在马背上。雨天儿，约翰爵士。雨天儿，阁下……天儿……天儿…一双高统马靴荡悠着，一路荡到都柏林。吁——萧萧，吁——得得。吁——萧萧，吁——得得。

“这下子我想起来啦，”迪希先生说。“你可以帮我点儿忙，迪达勒斯先生，麻烦你去找几位文友。我这里有一封信想投给报纸。请稍坐一会儿。我只要把末尾誊清一下就行了。”

他走到窗旁的写字台那儿，把椅子往前拖了两下，读了读卷在打字机滚筒上那张纸上的几个字。

“坐下吧。对不起，”他转过脸来说，“按照常识行事。一会儿就好。”

他扬起浓眉，盯看看肘边的手稿，一面咕哝着，一面慢腾腾地去戳键盘上那僵硬的键。时而边吹气，边转动滚筒，擦掉错字。

斯蒂芬一声不响地在亲王那幅仪表堂堂的肖像前面坐下来，周围墙上的那些镜框里，毕恭毕敬地站着而今已消逝了的一匹匹马的形象，它们那温顺的头在空中昂着：黑斯廷斯勋爵的“挫败”，威斯敏斯特公爵的“跨越”，波弗特公爵的“锡兰”，一八六六年获巴黎奖[63]。小精灵般的骑手跨在马上，机警地等待着信号。他看到了这些佩带着英王徽记的马的速度，并随着早已消逝了的观众的欢呼而欢呼。

“句号，”迪希先生向打字机键盘发号施令。“但是，立即公开讨论这个最为重要的问题……”

为了及早发上一笔财，克兰利曾把我领到这里来;我们在溅满泥点子的大型四轮游览马车之间，在各据一方的赛马赌博经纪人那大声吆唤和饮食摊的强烈气味中，在色彩斑驳的烂泥上穿来穿去，寻找可能获胜的马匹。“美反叛”[64](!“美反叛”!大热门][65]以一博一;冷门马以十博一。我们跟在马蹄以及戴竞赛帽穿运动衫的骑手后边，从掷骰摊和玩杯艺[66]摊跟前匆匆走边，还遇上一个大胖脸的女人——肉铺的老板娘。她正饥渴地连皮啃着一掰两半的桔子，连鼻孔都扎进去了。

操场上传来少年们一片尖叫声和打嘟噜的哨子声。

又进了一球。我也是他们当中的一员，夹在那些你争我夺、混战着的身躯当中，一场生活的拼搏。你指的是那个妈妈的宠儿“外罗圈腿”吧？他好像宿酒未醒似的。拼搏啊。时间被冲撞得弹了回来，冲撞又冲撞。战场上的拼搏、泥泞和喊声，阵亡者弥留之际的呕吐物结成了冰，长矛挑起鲜血淋漓的内脏时那尖叫声。

“行啦，”迪希先生站起来说。

他踱到桌前，把打好了的信别在一起。斯蒂芬站了起来。

“我把这档子事与得简单明了，”迪希先生说。“是关于口蹄疫问题。你看一下吧。大家一定都会同意的。”

可否借用贵报一点宝贵的篇幅。在我国历史上屡见不鲜的自由放任主义原则。我国的牲畜贸易。我国各项旧有工业的方针。巧妙地操纵了戈尔韦建港计划[67]的利物浦集团。欧洲战火。通过海峡那狭窄水路的[68]粮食供应。农业部完完全全无动于衷。恕我借用一个典故。卡桑德拉。由于一个不怎么样的女人的关系[69]。现在言归正题。 

“我够单刀直入了吧？”斯蒂芬往下读时，迪希先生问道。

口蹄疫。通称科克配方[70]。血清与病毒。免疫马的百分比。牛瘟。下奥地利慕尔斯泰格的御用马群。兽医外科。亨利•布莱克伍德•普赖斯[71]先生，献上处方，恭请一试。只能按照常识行事。无比重要的问题。名副其实地抓住公牛角[72]。感谢贵报慷慨地提供的篇幅。

“我要把这封信登在报上，让大家都读到，”迪希先生说。“你看吧，下次再突然闹瘟疫，他们就会对爱尔兰牛下禁运令了。可是这病是能治好的。已经有治好的了。我的表弟布莱克伍德•普赖斯给我来信说，在奥地利，那里的兽医挂牌医治牛瘟，并且都治好了。他们表示愿意到这里来。我正在想办法对部里的人施加点影响。现在我先从宣传方面着手。我面临的是重重困难，是……各种阴谋诡计，是……幕后操纵，是……”

他举起食指，老谋深算地在空中摆了几下才说下去。

“记住我的话，迪达勒斯先生，”他说。“英国已经掌握在犹太人手里了。占去了所有高层的位置，金融界、报界。而且他们是一个国家衰败的兆头。不论他们凑到哪儿，他们就把国家的元气吞掉。近年来，我一直看看事态的这种发展。犹太商人们已经干起破坏勾当了，这就跟咱们站在这里一样地确凿。古老的英国快要灭亡啦。”

他疾步向一旁走去，当他们跨过一束宽宽的日光时，他的两眼又恢复了生气勃勃的蓝色。他四下里打量了一番，又走了回来。

“快要灭亡了，”他又说，“如果不是已经灭亡了的话。”

妓女走街串巷到处高呼，

为老英格兰织起裹尸布。[73]

他在那束光里停下脚步，恍惚间见到了什么似的睁大了眼睛，严峻地逼视着。

“商人嘛，”斯蒂芬说，“左不过是贱买贵卖。犹太人也罢，非犹太人也罢，都一个样儿，不是吗？”

“他们对光[74]已下了罪，”迪希先生严肃地说。“你可以从他们的眼睛里看到黑暗。正因为如此，他们至今还在地球上流离失所。”

在巴黎证卷交易所的台阶上，金色皮肤的人们正伸出戴满宝石的手指，报着行情。嘎嘎乱叫的鹅群。他们成群结队地围着神殿[75]转，高声喧噪，粗鲁俗气，戴着不三不四的大礼帽，脑袋里装满了阴谋诡计。不是他们的，这些衣服，这种谈吐，这些手势。他们那睁得圆圆的滞钝的眼睛，与这些言谈，这些殷切、不冲撞人的举止相左，然而他们晓得自己周围积怨甚深，明白一腔热忱是徒然的。耐心地积累和贮藏也是白搭。时光必然使一切都一散而光。堆积在路旁的财宝:一旦遭到掠夺，就落入人家手里。他们的眼睛熟悉流浪的岁月，忍耐着，了解自已的肉体所遭受的凌辱。

“谁不是这样的呢？”斯蒂芬说。

“你指的是什么？”迪希先生问道。

他向前边了一步，站在桌旁。他的下巴颏歪向一边，犹豫不定地咧着嘴。这就是老人的智慧吗？他等着听我的呢。

“历史，”斯蒂芬说，“是我正努力从中醒过来的一场恶梦L76]。”

从操场上传来孩子们的一片喊叫声。一阵打嘟噜的哨子声，进球了。倘若那场恶梦像母马[77]似的尥蹶子，踢你一脚呢？

“造物主的做法跟咱们不一样，”迪希先生说。“整个人类的历史都朝着一个伟大的目标前进，神的体现。”

斯蒂芬冲着窗口翘了一下大拇指，说：

“那就是神。”

好哇!哎呀!呜噜噜噜!

“什么？”迪希先生问。

“街上的喊叫[78]，”斯蒂芬耸了耸肩头回答说。

迪希先生朝下面望去，用手指捏了一会儿鼻翅。他重新抬起头来，并撒开了手。

“我比你幸福，”他说。“我们曾犯过许多错误，有过种种罪孽。一个女人[79]把罪恶带到了人世间。为了一个不怎么样的女人，海伦，就是墨涅拉俄斯那个跟人跑了的妻子，希腊人同特洛伊打了十年仗。一个不贞的老婆首先把陌生人带到咱们这海岸上来了，就是麦克默罗的老婆和她的姘夫布雷夫尼大公奥鲁尔克[80]。巴涅尔[81]也是由于一个女人的缘故才栽的跟斗。很多错误，很多失败，然而惟独没有犯那种罪过。如今我已经进入暮年，却还从事着斗争。我要为正义而战斗到最后。”

因为阿尔斯特要战斗，

阿尔斯特在正义这一头。[82]

斯蒂芬举起手里那几页信。

“喏，先生，”他开口说。

“我估计，”迪希先生说，“你在这里干不长。我认为你生来就不是当老师的材料。兴许我错了。”

“不如说是来当学生的，”斯蒂芬说。

那么，你在这儿还能学到什么呢？

迪希先生摇了摇头。

“谁知道呢？”他说。“要学习嘛，就得虚心。然而人生就是一位伟大的老师。”

斯蒂芬又沙沙地抖动着那几页信。

“至于这封信，”他开口说。

“对，”迪希先生说。“你这儿是一式两份。你要是能马上把它们登出来就好了。”

《电讯报》，《爱尔兰家园报》[83]。

“我去试试看，”斯蒂芬说，“明天给您回话。我跟两位编辑有泛泛之交。”

“那就好，”迪希先生生气勃勃地说。“昨天晚上我给议会议员菲尔德先生写了封信。牲畜商协会今天在市徽饭店开会[84]。我托他把我的信交到会上。你看看能不能把它发表在你那两家报纸上。是什么报来着？”

“《电讯晚报》……”

“那就好，”迪希先生说。“一会儿也不能耽误。现在我得回我 表弟那封信了。”

“再会，先生，”斯蒂芬边说边把那几页信放进兜里。“谢谢您。”

“不客气，”迪希先生翻找着写字台上的文件，说。“我尽管上了岁数，却还爱跟你争论一番哩。”

“再会，先生，”斯蒂芬又说一遍，并朝他的驼背鞠个躬。

踱出敞开着的门廊，他沿着砂砾铺成的林荫小径走去，听着操场上的喊叫声和球棍的击打声。他迈出大门的时候，一对狮子蹲在门柱上端；没了牙齿却还在那里耍威风。尽管如此，我还是要在斗争中帮他一把。穆利根会给我起个新外号：阉牛之友派“大诗人”[85]。

“迪达勒斯先生!”

从我背后追来了。但愿不至于又有什么信。

“等一会儿。”

“好的，先生，”斯蒂芬在大门口回过身来说。

迪希先生停下脚步，他喘得很厉害，倒吸着气。

“我只是要告诉你，”他说。“人家说，爱尔兰很光荣，是唯一从未迫害过犹太人的国家。你晓得吗？不晓得。那么，你知道是为什么吗？”

他朝着明亮的空气，神色严峻地皱起眉头。

“为什么呢，先生？”斯蒂芬问道，脸上开始漾出笑容。

“因为她从来没让他们入过境[86]，”迪希先生郑重地说。

他的笑声中含着一团咳嗽，抱着一长串咕噜咕噜响的粘痰从他喉咙里喷出来。他赶快转过身去，咳啊，笑啊，望空挥着双臂。

“它从来没让他们入过境，”他一边笑着一边又叫喊，同时两只鞋上戴罩的脚踏着砂砾小径。“就是由于这个缘故。”

太阳透过树叶的棋盘格子，往他那睿智的肩头上抛下一片片闪光小圆装饰，跳动着的金币。
Chapter 3 Proteus
INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO MORE, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see. 
Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the nebeneinander ineluctably. I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'. 

Won't you come to Sandymount, 
Madeline the mare?
Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: deline the mare. 
Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see. 

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end. 

They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one. 

Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin. 

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever A lex eterna stays about him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long on the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch. In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts. 

Airs romped around him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan. 

I mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile. Yes, I must. 

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to Aunt Sara's or not? My consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother Stephen lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt Sally? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us Stephen, how is uncle Si? O weeping God, the things I married into. De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers. And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less. Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ. 

I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage. 

-- It's Stephen, sir. 

-- Let him in. Let Stephen in. 

A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me. 

-- We thought you were someone else. 

In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends over the hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the upper moiety. 

-- Morrow, nephew. 

He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the eyes of Master Goff and Master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and common searches and a writ of Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald head: Wilde's Requiescat. The drone of his misleading whistle brings Walter back. 

-- Yes, sir? 

-- Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she? 

-- Bathing Crissie, sir. 

Papa's little bedpal. Lump of love. 

-- No, uncle Richie... 

-- Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky! 

-- Uncle Richie, really... 

-- Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down. 

Walter squints vainly for a chair. 

-- He has nothing to sit down on, sir. 

-- He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our Chippendale chair. Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw air here; the rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. We have nothing in the house but backache pills. 

All'erta! 

He drones bars of Ferrando's aria de sortita. The grandest number, Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen. 

His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees. 

This wind is sweeter. 

Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine faces. Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell. Lantern jaws. Abbas father, furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! Descende, calve, ut ne nimium decalveris. A garland of grey hair on his comminated head see him me clambering down to the footpace (descende), clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, bald poll! A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about the altar's horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat. 

And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating it. Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx. Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own cheek. Dringdringl Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that, invincible doctor. A misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled his brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang in diphthong. 

Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain: naked women! What about that, eh? 

What about what? What else were they invented for? 

Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand year, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once... 

The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath. He coasted them, walking warily. A porter-bottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells. 

He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going there? Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer sand towards the Pigeonhouse. 

-- Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position? 

-- C'est le pigeon, Joseph. 

Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, he lapped the sweet lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face. Lap, lapin. He hopes to win in the gros lots. About the nature of women he read in Michelet. But he must send me La Vie de Jésus by M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend. 

-- C'est tordant, vows savez. Moi je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en l'existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire à mon père. 

-- Il croit? 

-- Mon père, oui. 

Schluss. He laps. 

My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want puce gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I was in Paris, boul' Mich', I used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui, c'est moi. You seem to have enjoyed yourself. 

Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a dispossessed. With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache. Encore deux minutes. Look clock. Must get. Fermé. Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that's all right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all right. Shake a shake. O, that's all only all right. 

You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the slimy pier at Newhaven. Comment? Rich booty you brought back; Le Tutu, five tattered numbers of Pantalon Blanc et Culotte Rouge, a blue French telegram, curiosity to show: 

-- Mother dying come home father. 

The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't. 

Then here's a health to Mulligan's aunt 
And I'll tell you the reason why. 
She always kept things decent in 
The Hannigan famileye.
His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, along by the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled stone mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is there, the slender trees, the lemon houses. 
Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air. Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hands. In Rodot's Yvonne and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan breton. Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores. 

Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. Un demi setier! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. Il est irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez? Ah oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais. Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well: slainte! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M. Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, La Patrie, M. Millevoye, Félix Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, bonne à tout faire, who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. Moi faire, she said. Tous les messieurs. Not this Monsieur, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing. I wouldn't let my brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious thing. Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people. 

The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose tobacco shreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw facebones under his peep of day boy's hat. How the head centre got away, authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil orangeblossoms, drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed, wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here. 

Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you, I'll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day's stations, the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone. Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her outcastman, madame, in rue G?t-le-Coeur, canary and two buck lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time. Mon fils, soldier of France. I taught him to sing. The boys of Kilkenny are stout roaring blades. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice that. Old Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow's castle on the Nore. Goes like this. O, O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand. 

O, O the boys of 
Kilkenny...
Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them. Remembering thee, O Sion. 
He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots. The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I? He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. Turn back. 

Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbicans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it? He has the key. I will not sleep there when this night comes. A shut door of a silent tower entombing their blind bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting flood. 

The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get back then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the sedge and eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a grike. 

A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensablé, Louis Veuillot called Gautier's prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here. And there, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats. Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you don't get one bang on the ear. I'm the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloods odz an Iridzman. 

A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand. Lord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be master of others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking shoreward across from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They have tucked it safe among the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog. He is running back to them. Who? 

Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter sun. Danevikings, torcs of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Malachi wore the collar of gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, hobbling in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city a horde of jerkined dwarfs, my people, with flayers' knives, running, scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the spluttering resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to me. 

The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia meditans. A primrose doublet, fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce's brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings' sons. Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House of... We don't want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. Natürlich, put there for you. Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sands quickly, shell cocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet I want his life still to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me out of horror of his death. I... With him together down... I could not save her. Waters: bitter death: lost. 

A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet. 

Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves. 

Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags, and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffing rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody. Here lies poor dogsbody's body. 

-- Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel. 

The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk back in a curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped, dawdled, smelt a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He trotted forward and, lifting his hindleg, pissed quick short at an unsmelt rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then scattered sand: then his forepaws dabbled and delved. Something he buried there, his grandmother. He rooted in the sand, dabbling delving and stopped to listen to the air, scraped up the sand again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in spouse-breach, vulturing the dead. 

After he woke me up last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it. That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against my face. Smiled: creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come. Red carpet spread. You will see who. 

Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face her hair trailed. Behind her lord his helpmate, bing awast, to Romeville. When night hides her body's flaws calling under her brown shawl from an archway where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in O'Loughlin's of Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in rogue's rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell. A shefiend's whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally's lane that night: the tanyard smells. 

White thy fambles, red thy gan 
And thy quarrons dainty is. 
Couch a hogshead with me then. 
In the darkmans clip and kiss.
Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, frate porcospino. Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons dainty is. Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on their girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets. 
Passing now. 

A side-eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit I am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun's flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te veniet. He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's kiss. 

Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss. No. Must be two of em. Glue 'em well. Mouth to her mouth's kiss. 

His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her womb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy's letter. Here. Thanking you for hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter. 

His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now. Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think? Flutier. Our souls, shame-wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more. 

She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jess of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park, with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits? 

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me. 

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note and pencil into a pocket, his hat tilted down on his eyes. That is Kevin Egan's movement I made nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et vidit Deus. Et erant valde bona. Alo! Bonjour, welcome as the flowers in May. Under its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far. 

And no more turn aside and brood. 

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs nebeneinander: He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another's foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you: girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde's love that dare not speak its name. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all. 

In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling. 

Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary: and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens ingemiscit. To no end gathered: vainly then released, forth flowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters. 

Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing landward, a pace a pace a porpoise. There he is. Hook it quick. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy now. 

Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun. 

A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: beware of imitations. Just you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. 

Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and staff and his my sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself. 

He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still. Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end. By the way next when is it? Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet. Già. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, gentleman journalist. Già. My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder? Feel. That one is going too. Shells. Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that money? That one. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or does it mean something perhaps? 

My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up? 

His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn't. Better buy one. 

He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, carefully. For the rest let look who will. 

Behind. Perhaps there is someone. 

He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees, homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship. 


可视事物无可避免的形式[1]：至少是对可视事物，通过我的眼睛认知。我在这里辨认的是各种事物的标记[2]，鱼的受精卵和海藻，越来越涌近的潮水，那只铁锈色的长统靴。鼻涕绿，蓝银，铁锈：带色的记号[3]。透明的限度。然而他补充说，在形体中。那么，他察觉事物的形体早于察觉其带色了。怎样察觉的?用他的头脑撞过，准是的。悠着点儿。他歇了顶，又是一位百万富翁。有学识者的导师[4]。其中透明的限度。为什么说其中?透明，不透明。倘若你能把五指伸过去，那就是户，伸不过去就是门。闭上你的眼睛去看吧。

斯蒂芬闭上两眼，倾听着自己的靴子踩在海藻和贝壳上的声音。你好歹从中穿行着。是啊，每一次都跨一大步。在极短暂的时间内，穿过极小的一段空间。五，六：持续地[5]。正是这样。这就是可听事物无可避免的形态。睁开你的眼睛。别，唉!倘苦我从濒临大海那峻峭的悬崖之颠[6]栽下去，就会无可避免地在空间并列着[7]往下栽!我在黑暗中呆得蛮惬意。那把梣木刀佩在腰间。用它点着地走：他们就是这么做的。我的两只脚穿着他的靴子，并列着[8]与他的小腿相接。听上去蛮实，一定是巨匠[9]造物主[10]那把木槌的响声。莫非我正沿着沙丘[11]走向永恒不成?喀嚓吱吱，吱吱，吱吱。大海的野生货币。迪希先生全都认得。

来不来沙丘，

母马玛达琳[12]?

瞧，旋律开始了。我听见啦。节奏完全按四音步句的抑扬格在行进。不。在飞奔。母马达琳。

现在睁开眼睛吧。我睁。等一会儿。打那以后，一切都消失了吗?倘若我睁开眼睛，我就将永远呆在漆黑一团的不透明体中了。够啦[13]!看得见的话，我倒是要瞧瞧。

瞧吧，没有你，也照样一直存在着，以迨永远，及世之世[14]。

她们从莱希的阳台上沿着台阶小心翼翼地走下来了——婆娘们[15]。八字脚陷进沉积的泥沙，软塌塌地走下倾斜的海滨。像找，像阿尔杰一样，来到我们伟大的母亲跟前。头一个沉甸甸地甩着她那只产婆用的手提包，另一个的大笨雨伞戳进了沙滩。她们是从自由区[16]来的，出来散散心。布赖德街那位受到深切哀悼的已故帕特里克•麦凯布的遗孀，弗萝伦丝•麦凯布太太。是她的一位同行，替呱呱啼哭着的我接的生。从虚无中创造出来的。她那只手提包里装着什么?一个拖着脐带的早产死婴，悄悄她用红糊糊的泥绒裹起。所有脐带都是祖祖辈辈相连接的，芸芸众生拧成一股肉缆，所以那些秘教僧侣们都是。你们想变得像神明那样吗?那就仔细看自己的肚脐[17]吧。喂，喂。我是金赤。请接伊甸城。阿列夫，阿尔法[18]，零，零，一。

始祖亚当的配偶兼伴侣，赫娃[19]，赤身露体的夏娃。她没有肚脐。仔细瞧瞧。鼓得很大、一颗痣也没有的肚皮，恰似紧绷着小牛皮面的圆楯。不像，是一堆白色的小麦[20]，光辉灿烂而不朽，从亘古到永远[21]。罪孽的子宫。

我也是在罪恶的黑暗中孕育出的，是被造的，不是受生的[22]。是那两个人干的，男的有着我的嗓门和我的眼睛，那女幽灵的呼吸带有湿灰的气息。他们紧紧地搂抱，又分开，按照撮合者的意愿行事。盘古首初，天主就有着要我存在的意愿，而今不会让我消失，永远也不会。永远的法则[23]与天主共存。那么，这就是圣父与圣子同体的那个神圣的实体吗?试图一显身手[24]的那位可怜的阿里马老兄，而今安在?他反对“共在变体赞美攻击犹太论”[25]，毕生为之战斗。注定要倒楣的异端邪说祖师。在一座希腊厕所里，他咽了最后一口气，安乐死[26]。戴着镶有珠子的主教冠，手执牧杖[27]，纹丝不动地跨在他的宝座上;他成了鳏夫，主教的职位也守了寡[28]。主教饰带[29]硬挺挺地翘起来，臀部净是凝成的块块儿。

微风围着他嫡戏，砭人肌肤的凛例的风[30]，波浪涌上来了。有如白鬃的海马，磨着牙齿，被明亮的风套上笼头，马南南[31]的骏马们。

我可别忘了他那封写给报社的信。然后呢?十二点半钟去。船记”。至于那笔款呢，省着点儿花，乖乖地像个小傻瓜那样。对，非这么着不可。

他的脚步放慢了。到了。我去不去萨拉舅妈那儿呢?我那同体的父亲的声音。最近你见那位艺术家哥哥斯蒂芬一眼了吗?没见到?他该不是到斯特拉斯堡高台街找他舅妈萨利[32]去了吧?难道他不能飞得更高一点儿吗，呢?还有，还有，还有，斯蒂芬，告诉我们西[33]姑父好吗?啊呀，哭泣的天主，我都跟些什么人结上了亲家呀。男娃子们在干草棚里。酗酒的小成本会计师和他那吹短号的兄弟。可敬的平底船船夫[34]!还有那个斗鸡眼沃尔特，竟然对自己的父亲以“先生”相称。先生。是的，先生。不，先生。耶酥哭了[35]：这也难怪，基督啊。

我拉了拉他们那座关上百叶窗的茅屋上气不接下气的门铃，等着。他们以为讨债的来了，就从安全的地方[36]朝外窥伺。

“是斯蒂芬，先生。”

“让他进来。让斯蒂芬进来。”

门栓拉开了，沃尔特把我让进去。

“我们还只当是旁人呢。”

一张大床，里奇舅舅倚着枕头，裹在毛毯里，隔着小山般的膝盖，将壮实的手臂伸过来。胸脯干干净净。他洗过上半身。

“外甥，早晨好[37]。”

他把膝板放到一旁。他正在板上起草着拿给助理法官戈夫和助理法官沙普兰•坦迪看的讼费清单，填写着许可证、调查书以及携带物证出庭的通知书。在他那歇了顶的头上端，悬挂着用黑樫木化石做的镜框。王水德的《安魂曲》[38]。他吹着那令人困惑的口哨，单调而低沉，把沃尔特唤了回来。

“什么事，先生?”

“告诉母亲，给里奇和斯蒂芬端麦牙酒来。她在哪儿?”

“给克莉西洗澡呢，先生。”

跟爸爸一道睡的小伴儿，宝贝疙瘩。

“不要，里奇舅舅……”

“就叫我里奇吧。该死的锂盐矿泉水。叫人虚弱。喔[威]士忌!”

“里奇舅舅，真地……”

“坐下吧，不然的话，我就凭着魔鬼的名义把你揍趴下。”

沃尔特斜睨着眼找椅子，但是没找到。

“他没地方坐，先生。”

“他没地方放屁股吗，你这傻瓜。把咱们的奇彭代尔[39]式椅子端过来。想吃点儿什么吗?在这里，你用不着摆臭架子。来点儿厚厚的油煎鲱鱼火腿片怎样?真的吗?那就更好啦。我们家除了背痛丸，啥都没有。”

当心哪!

他用低沉单调的声音哼了几小节费朗多的“出场歌”[40]。斯蒂芬，这是整出歌剧中最雄伟的一曲。你听。

他又吹起那和谐的口哨来了，音调缓和而优雅，中气很足，还抡起双拳，把裹在毛毯中的膝盖当大鼓来敲打。

这风更柔和一些。

没落之家[41]，我的，他的，大家的。你曾告诉克朗戈伍斯那些少爷，你有个舅舅是法官，还有个舅舅是将军。斯蒂芬，别再来这一套啦。美并不在那里。也不在马什图书馆[42]那空气污浊的小单间里。你在那儿读过约阿基姆院长[43]那褪了色的预言书。是为谁写的?为大教堂院内那长了一百个头的乌合之众。一个憎恶同类者[44]离开他们，遁入疯狂的森林，鬃毛在月下起着泡沫，眼珠子像是星宿。长着马一般鼻孔的胡乙姆[45]。一张张椭圆形马脸的坦普尔、勃克•穆利根、狐狸坎贝尔、长下巴颏儿[46]。隐修院院长神父，暴跳如雷的副主教[47]，是什么惹得他们在头脑里燃起怒火?呸!下来吧，秃子，不然就剥掉你的头皮[48]。他那有受神惩之虞的头上，围着一圈儿花环般的灰发，我看见他往下爬，爬到祭台脚下(下来吧[49]!)，手执圣体发光[50]，眼睛像是蛇怪[51]。下来吧，秃瓢儿!这些削了发、除了圣油、被阉割、靠上好的麦子[52]吃胖了的、靠神糊口的神父们，笨重地挪动着那穿白麻布长袍的魁梧身躯，从鼻息里喷出拉丁文。在祭台四角协助的唱诗班用威胁般的回声来响应。

同一瞬间，拐角处一个神父也许正举扬着圣体。叮玲玲[53]!相隔两条街，另一位把它放回圣体柜，上了锁。叮玲玲!圣母小教堂里，又一个神父正在独吞所有的圣体。玎玲玲!跪下，起立，向前，退后。卓绝的博士丹•奥卡姆[54]曾想到过这一点。英国一个下雾的早晨，基督人格问题这一小精灵搔挠着他的头脑。他撂下圣体，跪下来。在他听见自己摇的第二遍铃声与十字形耳堂里的头一遍铃声(他在举扬圣体)而站起来时，又听见(而今我在举扬圣体了)这两个铃的响声(他跪下了)重叠成双元音。

表弟斯蒂芬，你永远也当不成圣人。这是圣者的岛屿[55]。你从前虔诚得很，对吗?你向圣母玛利亚祷告，祈求她不要叫你的鼻子变红。你曾在蛇根木林荫路[56]上向魔鬼祈求，让前面那个矮胖寡妇走边水洼子时把下摆撩得更高一些。啊，可不是嘛[57]!为了那些用别针别在婆娘腰身上的染了色的节片，出卖你的灵魂吧。务必这么做。再告诉我一些，再说说!当你坐在驰往霍斯[58]的电车的顶层座位上时，曾独自对着雨水喊叫道：一丝不挂的女人!一丝不挂的女人!那是怎么回事，呃?

那又怎么啦?难道女人不就是为了这个而被创造的吗?

每天晚上从七本书里各读上两页，呃?我那时还年轻。你对着镜子朝自己鞠躬，脸上神采奕奕，一本正经地走上前去，好像要接受喝彩似的。十足的大傻瓜，万岁!万岁!谁都不曾看见，什么人也别告诉。你打算以字母为标题写一批书来着。你读过他的F吗?哦，读过，可是我更喜欢Q。对，不过W可精彩啦。啊，对，W。还记得你在椭圆形绿页上所写的深奥的显形录[59]吗?深刻而又深刻。倘若你死了，抄本将被送到世界上所有的大图书馆去，包括亚历山大在内。几千年后，亿万年后，仍将会有人捧读，就橡皮克•德拉•米兰多拉[60]似的。对，很像条鲸[61]。当一个人读到早已作古者那些奇妙的篇章时，就会感到自己与之融为一体了，那个人曾经……

粗沙子已经从他脚下消失了。他的靴子重新踩在咯吱一声就裂开来的湿桅杆上，还踩着了竹蛏，发出轧轹声的卵石，被浪潮冲撞着的无数石子[62]，以及被船蛆蛀得满是窟窿的木料，溃败了的无敌舰队[63]。一滩滩肮里肮脏的泥沙等着吸吮他那踏过来的靴底，污水的腐臭气味一股股地冒上来。[一簇海藻在死人的骨灰堆底下闷燃着海火[64]。]他小心翼翼地绕道而行。一只竖立着的黑啤酒瓶半埋在瓷实得恰似揉就的生面团的沙子里。奇渴岛上的岗哨。岸上是破碎的箍圈；陆地上，狡猾的黑网布起一片迷阵;再过去就是几扇用粉笔胡乱涂写过的后门，海岸高处，有人拉起一道衣绳，上面晾着两件活像是钉在十字架上的衬衫。林森德[65]那些晒得黧黑的舵手和水手长的棚屋。人的甲壳。

他停下脚步。我已经走边了通往萨拉姑妈家的路口。我不去那儿吗?好像不去。四下里不见人影儿。他拐向东北，从硬一些的沙地穿过，朝鸽房[66]走去。

“谁使你落到这步田地的呢?”

“是由于鸽子，约瑟。”[67]

回家度假的帕特里克在麦克马洪酒吧跟我一道暖热牛奶。巴黎的“野鹅”[68]凯文•伊根[69]的儿子。我的老子是鸟儿[70]。他用粉红色的娇嫩舌头舔着甜甜的热奶[71]，胖胖的兔子脸。舔吧，兔子[72]。他巴望中头彩[73]。关于女子的本性，他说是读了米什莱[74]的作品。然而他非要把利奥•塔克西尔先生的《耶酥传》[75]寄给我不可。借给他的一个朋友了。

“你要知道，真逗。我呢，是个社会主义者。我不相信天主的存在。可不要告诉我父亲。”

“他信吗?”

“父亲吗，他信[76]。”

够啦[77]。他在舔哪。

我那顶拉丁区的帽子。天哪，咱们就得打扮得像个人物。我需要一副深褐色的手套。你曾经是个学生，对吧?究竟念的是什么系来着?皮西恩。P•C•N•[78]，你知道：物理、化学和生物[79]。哎。跟那些打抱嗝的出租马车车夫们挤挤碰碰在一块儿吃那廉价的炖牛肺[80]，埃及肉锅[81]。用最自然的腔调说：当我住在巴黎圣米歇尔大街[82]时，我经常。对，身上经常揣着剪过的票。倘若你在什么地方被当作凶杀嫌疑犯给抓起来，好用来证明自己不在犯罪现场。司法神圣。一九0四年二月十七日晚上，有两个证人目击到被告。是旁人干的，另一个我。帽子，领带，大衣，鼻子。我就是他[83]。你好像自得其乐哩。

昂首阔步。你试图学谁的模样走路哪?忘掉吧，穷光蛋。揣着母亲那八先令的汇款单，邮局的司阍朝你咣当一声摔上了门。饿得牙痛起来。还差两分钟哪[84]。瞧瞧钟呀。非取不可。关门啦[85]。雇佣的走狗!用散弹枪砰砰地给他几梭子，把他打个血肉横飞，人肉碎片溅脏了墙壁统统是黄铜钮扣。满墙碎片哔哔剥剥又嵌回原处。没受伤吗?喏，那很好。握握手。明白我的意思吧，明白了吗?哦，那很好。握一握。哦，一切都很好。

你曾有过做出惊人之举的打算，对吗?继烈性子的高隆班[86]之后，去欧洲传教。菲亚克[87]和斯科特斯[88]坐在天堂那针毡般的三脚凳[89]上，酒从能装一品脱的大缸子里洒了出来，朗朗发出夹着拉下文的笑声。妙啊!妙啊!你假装把英语讲得很蹩脚，沿着纽黑文[90]那泥泞的码头，抱着自己的旅行箱走去，省得花三便士雇脚夫。怎么[91]?你带回了丰富的战利品;《芭蕾短裙》[92]，五期破破烂烂的《白长裤与红短裤》[93]，一封蓝色的法国电报，足以炫耀一番的珍品：

母病危速回父

姑妈认为你母亲死在你手里，所以她不让……[94]

为穆利根的姑妈，干杯!

容我说说缘由。

多亏了她，汉尼根家，

样样循规蹈矩。[95]

他忽然用脚得意地打起拍子，跨过沙垄，沿着那卵石垒成的南边的防波堤走去。他洋洋自得地凝视着那猛犸象的头盖骨般的垒起来的石头。金光洒在海洋上，沙子上，卵石上。太阳就在那儿，细溜儿的树木，柠檬色的房舍。

巴黎刚刚苏醒过来了，赤裸裸的阳光投射到她那柠檬色的街道上。燕麦粉面包那湿润的芯，蛙青色的苦艾酒，她那清晨的馨香向空气献着殷勤。漂亮男人[96]从他妻子之姘夫的老婆那张床上爬了起来，包着头巾的主妇手持一碟醋酸，忙来忙去。罗德的店铺里，伊凡妮和玛德琳用金牙嚼着油酥饼[97]，嘴边被布列塔尼蛋糕[98]的浓汁[99]沾黄了，脂粉一塌糊涂，正在重新打扮。一张张巴黎男人的脸走了过去，感到十分便意的讨她们欢心者，鬈发的征服者[100]。

晌午打盹儿。凯文•伊根用被油墨弄得污迹斑斑的手指卷着黑色火药烟丝，呷着他那绿妖精，帕特里斯喝的则是白色的[101]。在我们周围，老饕们把五香豆一叉子一叉子地送下食道。来一小杯咖啡[102]!咖啡的蒸气从打磨得锃亮的大壶里喷出来。他一招呼，她就来侍候我。他是爱尔兰的。荷兰的?不是奶酪。两个爱尔兰人，我们，爱尔兰，你明白了吗?啊，对啦[103]!她还以为你要叫一客荷兰[104]奶酪呢。就是你那饭后的[105]。你晓得这个词儿吗?饭后的。以前在巴塞罗那，我认识一个古怪的家伙，他常把这叫作饭后的。好的，干怀[106]!一张张嵌着石板面的桌子周围，酒气和咽喉的呼噜声混在一起。他的呼吸弥漫在我们那沾着辣酱油的盘子上空。绿妖精的尖牙从他的嘴唇里龇出来。谈到爱尔兰，达尔卡相斯一家[107]，谈到希望、阴谋和现在的阿瑟•格里菲思[108][以及A•E•[109]，派曼德尔，人类的好牧人[110])。要把我也套进去，充当他的轭友，大谈什么我们的罪孽啦，我们的共同事业啦。你不愧为你父亲的儿子。一听声音我就知道。他身上穿的是件印有血红色大花的粗斜纹布衬衫，每当他吐露秘密时，西班牙式的流苏就颤悠。德鲁蒙[111]先生，著名的新闻记者德鲁蒙，你知道他怎么称呼维多利亚女王吗?满嘴黄板牙的丑婆子。长着黄牙齿[112]的母夜叉[113]。莫德•冈内[114]，漂亮的女人;《祖国》[115]，米利沃伊[116]先生;费利克斯•福尔[117]，你知道他是怎么死的吗?一帮好色之徒。在乌普萨拉[118]的澡堂。一个未婚女子[119]，打杂女侍[120]替赤条条的男人按摩。她说，对所有的先生我都这么做[121]。我说，这位先生[122]免了吧。这是再淫荡不过的习俗。洗澡是最不能让人看到的。连我弟兄，甚至亲弟兄，都不能让他看到。太猥亵了。绿眼睛[123]，我看见了你。尖牙[124]，我感觉到了。一帮好色之徒。

蓝色的引线在两手之间炽热地燃着，火苗透亮透亮的。卷得松松的烟丝点燃了：火焰和呛人的烟把我们这个角落照亮了。晓党[125]式的帽子底下，露出脸上那粗犷的颧骨。核心领导[126]是怎么逃之夭夭的呢?有个可靠的说法。化装成年轻的新娘，你呀，纱啊，桔花啊，驱车沿着通向乌拉海德[127]的路疾驰而去。确实是这样的。败退了的首领[128]们啦，被出卖者啦，不顾一切的逃遁啦。伪装，急不暇择，逃走了，不在这里啦。

遭到冷落的情人，不满你说，当年我曾是个魁梧结实的年轻小伙子哩，等哪一天我把相片拿给你看。确实是这样。他作为一个情人，由于热恋她，就跟族长的后继者[129]理查德•伯克上校一道溜着克拉肯韦尔[130]的大墙下走。正蜷缩在那里的当儿，只见复仇的火焰把那墙壁炸得飞到雾中。玻璃碎成碴儿，砖石建筑坍塌下来。他隐遁在灯红酒绿的巴黎。巴黎的伊根，除了我，谁也不来找他。他每天的栖身之所是，肮脏的活字箱，经常光顾的三家酒馆，还有睡上一会儿觉的蒙特马特的窝，那是在金酒街[131]上，用脸上巴着苍蝇屎的死者肖像装饰起来。没有爱情，没有国土，没有老婆。她呢，被驱逐出境的男人不在身边，却也过得十分舒适自在。圣心忆街[132]上的房东太太养着一只金丝雀，还有两个男房客，桃色腮帮子，条纹裙子，欢蹦乱跳得像个年轻姑娘。尽管被赶了出来，他并不绝望。告诉帕特[133]你看见了我，好吗?我曾经想给可怜的帕特找工作来着。我的儿子[134]，让他当法国兵。我教会了他唱《基尔肯尼的小伙子，个个是健壮的荡子》。会唱这首古老的民谣吗?我教过帕特里斯。古老的基尔肯尼，圣卡尼克教堂，那是诺尔河衅的强弓[135]的城堡。这么唱。噢，噢。纳珀•坦迪[136]握住了我的手。

噢，噢，基尔肯尼的

小伙子……

一只瘦削、赢弱的手，放在我的手上。他们忘掉了凯文•伊根，他却不曾忘记他们。想起了你。噢，锡安[137]。

他走近海滨，靴子踩在湿沙子上吱吱作响。新鲜空气拨弄着粗犷神经的弦来迎迓他。野性的风所撒下的光明的种子。喏，我该不是正走向基什[138]的灯台船吧?他摹地站住了，两只脚徐徐陷进松软的泥沙。折回去吧。

他过往回走，边打量着南岸，双脚又缓缓地踩进新坑里。塔里的那间冰冷、拱顶的屋子在等待着他。从堞口射进来的两束阳光不断地移动着，缓慢得就像我那不断地往下陷的双脚，沿着日晷般的石板地爬向黄昏。夜幕降临了，蓝色的薄暮，湛蓝的夜晚，他们在黑暗的穹隆下等待着，杯盘狼藉的餐桌周围，是他们那推到后面的椅子和我那只方尖碑形手提箱。谁去拾掇?钥匙在他手里。今天入夜后，我不在那儿睡。沉默之塔的一扇紧闭的大门，把他们那盲目的肉体埋葬在里面。黑豹老爷和他的猎犬[139]。呼唤嘛，没有回应。他从沙坑里拨出脚，沿着卵石垒成的防波堤[140]踱回去。全拿去，你们统统留下好了。我的灵魂和我一道走，形态的形态。这样，在月光厮守着的夜晚，我身穿沫浴着银光的黑貂服，沿着巉岩上的小径走去，并倾听艾尔西诺那诱人的潮水声[141]。

涨上来的潮水尾随着我。我从这里可以看见它流过去了。那么，顺着普尔贝各路折回到那边的岸滩去吧。他踏过蓑衣草与鳝鱼般黏滑的海藻，坐在凳子形的岩石上，并将自己那梣木手杖搭在岩隙里。

一具胀得鼓鼓的狗尸耷拉着四肢趴在狸藻上。前面是船舷的上椽，船身已埋在沙里。路易•维伊奥称戈蒂埃的散文为埋在沙子里的公共马车[142]。这沉重的沙子乃是潮与风在此积累而成的一种语言。那是已故建筑师垒起的石壁，成了鼬鼠的隐身处。在那儿埋金子吧。不妨试试看。你不是有一些吗。沙子和石头。被岁月坠得沉甸甸的。巨人劳特[143]爵士的玩具。小心不要挨个耳刮子。俺是血腥的棒巨人，把那些血腥的棒巨石统维推滚过来，铺成俺的踏脚石。吭，吭。俺闻见了爱尔兰人的血腥味。

一个小点点，一只活生生的狗映入眼帘，越变越大，从沙滩那头跑过来了。唉呀!难道它要朝我袭击吗?尊重它的自由。你不会成为旁人的主人或奴隶。我有这根手杖。坐着别动。从遥远的彼方，两个人影正背着冒白沫的潮水走向岸滩。两个女土著[144]。她们把它妥藏在宽叶香蒲从中了。玩捉迷藏。我看了你们啦。不，是狗。它正朝着她们跑回去。是谁呀?

一艘艘湖上人的大帆船曾驶到这岸边，来寻觅掠夺品[145]。它们那血红的喙形船首，低低地停泊在融化了的锡镴般的碎浪里。玛拉基系着金脖套的年月里[146]。丹麦海盗胸前总闪烁着战斧形的金丝项圈。炎热的晌午，一群表皮光滑的鲸困在浅滩上喷水，满地翻滚。于是，穿着紧身皮坎肩的矮个子们，我的同族就成群结队地从饥饿的牢笼般的城里冲出来。他们手执剥皮用的小刀，奔跑、攀登、劈砍那满是肥厚的绿色脂肪的鲸肉。饥荒、瘟疫和大屠杀。他们的血液流淌在我的血管里，他们的情欲在我身上骚动。在冰封的利菲河上，我在他们当中活动[147]。我，一个习性无常的人，被松脂噼啪作响的火把映照着。我跟谁都不曾搭话，也没有人跟我攀谈。狗吠着向他奔来，停住，又跑了回去。我的仇人的狗。我脸色苍白，只是站在那儿，一声不响，随它吠去。你的作为何等可畏[148]。身穿淡黄色心的命运之奴仆[149]，看到我的恐惧，泛出微笑。你渴望的就是他们那狗吠般的喝彩吗?篡位者们，随他们怎么去生活吧。布鲁斯的弟弟[150];绢骑士托马斯•菲茨杰拉德[151];约克家的伪继承人珀金•沃贝克[152]，穿着白玫瑰纹象牙色绸马裤，昙花一现;还有兰伯特•西姆内尔[153]加了冕的厨房下手，他的扈从是一群女仆和随军酒食小贩。统统都是国王的子嗣。自古至今，此地是僭君的乐园。他[154]搭救了快要溺死的人们，你呢，听到一条野狗叫唤也瑟瑟发抖。然而曾嘲笑来自圣迈克尔大教堂的圭多的那些朝臣们，是在自己的老家里。……的老家[155]。我们完全不希罕你们那中世纪装模作样的考证癖。他干过的，你干得了吗?假定附近就有只船。当然[156]，那儿还会为你摆个救生圈。你干不干?九天前有个男子在少女岩的海面上淹死了。他们正等着尸体浮上来。说实话吧，我想干。我想试一试。我不擅长凫水。水冰凉而柔和。当我在克朗戈伍斯把脸孔进一脸盆水星的时候，就什么都看不见了。谁在我背后哪?快点上来，快点上来!你没看见潮水从四面八方迅疾地往上涨吗?刹那间就把浅滩变成一片汪洋，颜色像椰子壳。只要我的脚能着地，我就想救他一命，但也要保住我自己的命。一个即将淹死的人。他的眼睛从死亡的恐怖中向我惊呼。我……跟他一道沉下去……我没能救她[157]。水，痛苦的死亡;消逝了。

一个女人和一个男人。我瞧见她的裙子了。准是用饰针别着的。

他们的狗在被潮水漫得越来越窄的沙洲上到处游荡，小跑着，一路嗅着。它在寻觅着前世所失去的什么东西。它猛地像跳跃着的野兔一般蹿过去，耳朵向后掀着，追逐那低低掠过的海鸥的影子。男人尖细的口哨声传到它那柔软的耳朵里。它转身往回蹦，凑近了些，一闪一闪地迈着小腿，小跑着挨过来。一片黄褐色旷野上的一只公鹿，没有长角，优雅，脚步轻盈地蹿来蹿去。它在花边般的水滨停下来，前肢僵直，耳朵朝着大海竖起。它翘起鼻尖儿，朝着那宛如一群群海象般的浪涛声吠叫。波浪翻滚着冲着它的脚涌来，绽出许许多多浪峰，每逢第九个，浪头就碎裂开来，四下里迸溅着。从远处，从更远的地方，后浪推着前浪。

拾海扇壳的。他们涉了一会儿水，弯腰把他们的口袋浸在水里，又提起来，蹚着水上了岸。狗边吠着边向他们奔去，用后肢站着，伸出前爪挠他们。又趴下来，再用后肢站直，像熊似的默默地跟他们撒欢。当他们走向干燥些的沙洲时，尽管没去理睬那狗，它还是一直缠着他们，两颚之间气喘吁吁地址着狼一般的红舌头。它那斑驳的身躯在他们前头款款而行，随后又像头小牛犊那样一溜烟儿跑开了。那具尸骸挡住了它的去路。它停下步子，嗅了一阵，然后轻轻地绕着走了一圈;是弟兄哩，把鼻子挨近一些，又兜了一圈，以狗特有的敏捷嗅遍了死狗那污泥狼藉的毛皮。狗脑壳。狗的嗅觉，它那俯阚着地面的眼睛，向一个巨大目标移动。唉，可怜的狗儿!可怜的狗儿的尸体就横在这里。

“下三烂!放开它，你这杂种!”

这么一嚷，狗就怯懦地回到主人跟前，它被没穿靴子的脚猛踢了一下，虽没伤着，却倦缩着逃到沙滩另一头。它又绕道踅回来。这狗并不朝我望，径自沿着防波堤的边沿跳跳蹦蹦，磨磨蹭蹭，一路嗅嗅岩石，时而抬起一条后腿，朝那块岩石撒上一泡尿。它又往前小跑，再一次抬起后腿，朝一块未嗅过的岩石迅疾地滋上几滴尿。真是卑贱者的单纯娱乐。接着，它又用后爪扒散了沙子，然后用前爪刨坑，泥沙四溅。它在那儿埋过什么哪，它的奶奶。它把鼻尖扎进沙子里，刨啊，溅啊，并停下来望天空倾听着，随即又拼命地用爪子刨起沙子。不一会儿它停住了，一头豹，一头黑豹，野杂种，在劫掠死尸。

昨天夜里他把我吵醒后，做的还是同一个梦吗？等一等。门厅是敞着的。娼妓街[158]。回忆一下。哈伦•拉希德[159]。大致想起来了。那个人替我引路，对我说话。我并不曾害怕。他把手里的甜瓜递到我面前。漾出微笑：淡黄色果肉的香气。他说，这是规矩。进来吧，来呀。铺着红地毯哩。随你挑。

红脸膛的埃及人[160]扛着口袋，踉踉跄跄踱着。男的挽起裤腿，一双发青的脚噼喳叭喳踩在冰冷黏糊糊的沙滩上，他那胡子拉碴的脖颈上是灰暗的砖色围巾。她迈着女性的步子跟在后边，恶棍和共闯江湖的姘头。她把捞到的东西搭在背上。她那赤脚上巴着一层松散的沙粒和贝壳碎片。脸被风刮皴了，披散着头发。跟随老公当配偶，朝着罗马维尔[161]走。当夜幕遮住她肉体的缺陷时，她就披着褐色肩巾，走边被狗屎弄脏了的拱道，一路吆唤着。替她拉皮条的正在黑坑的奥劳夫林小酒店里款待着两个都柏林近卫军士兵。吻她并讲江湖话，把她搂抱在怀里。哦，我多情的俏妞儿!她那件酸臭破烂的衣衫下面，是魔女般的白皙肌肤。那天晚上，在凡巴利小巷里，有一股由制革厂吹来的气味。

双手白净红嘴唇，

你的身子真娇嫩。

跟我一道睡个觉，

黑夜拥抱并亲吻。[162]

啤酒桶肚皮的阿奎那管这叫作阴沉的乐趣[163]。箭猪修士[164]。失足前的亚当曾跨在上面，却没有动情。随他说去吧：你的身子真娇嫩。这话丝毫也不比他的逊色。僧侣话，诵《玫瑰经》的念珠在他们的腰带上嘁嘁喳喳；江湖话，硬梆梆的金币在他们的兜里当榔当啷。

此刻正走过去。

他们朝我这顶哈姆莱特帽斜瞟了一眼。倘若我坐在这儿，突然间脱得赤条条的呢?我并没有。跨过世界上所有的沙地，太阳那把火焰剑尾随于后，向西边，向黄昏的土地移动[165]。她吃力地跋涉，schlepps、trains、drags、trascines[166]重荷。潮汐被月亮拖曳着，跟

在她后面向西退去。在她身体内部淌着藏有千万座岛屿的潮汐。这血液不是我的，葡萄紫的大海[167]，莆萄紫的暗色的海。瞧瞧月亮的侍女。在睡梦中，月潮向她报时，嘱她该起床了。新娘的床，分娩的床，点燃着避邪烛的死亡之床。凡有血气者，均来归顺[168]。他来了，苍白的吸血鬼。他的眼睛穿过暴风雨，他那蝙蝠般的帆，血染了海水，跟她嘴对嘴地亲吻[169]。

喏，把它记下来，好吗?我的记事簿[170]。跟她嘴对嘴地亲吻。不。必须是两人的嘴。把双方的牢牢粘在一起。跟她嘴对嘴地亲吻。

他那翕动的嘴唇吮吻着没有血肉的空气嘴唇：嘴对着她的子宫口。子宫，孕育群生的坟墓[171]。他那突出来的嘴唇吐出气来，却默默无语。哦嗬嗬，瀑布般的行星群的怒吼。作球状，喷着火焰，边吼边移向远方远方远方远方远方。纸。是纸币，见鬼去吧。老迪希的信。在这儿哪。感谢你的隆情厚谊，把空白的这头撕掉吧。他背对着太阳，屈下身去在一块岩石的桌子上胡乱写着。我已经是第二次忘记从图书馆的柜台上拿些便条纸了。

他弯下腰去，遮住岩石的身影就剩下一小截了。为什么不漫无止境地延伸到最远的星宿那儿去呢?星群黑魆魆地隐在这道光的后面，黑暗在光中照耀[172]，三角形的仙后座[173]，穹苍。我坐在那儿，手执占卜师的梣木杖，脚登借来的便鞋。白天我呆在铅色的海洋之滨，没有人看得见我;到了紫罗兰色的夜晚，就徜徉在粗犷星宿的统驭下。我投射出这有限的身影，逃脱不了的人形影子，又把它召唤回来。倘若它漫无止境地延伸，那还会是我的身影，我的形态的形态吗？谁在这儿守望着我呢?什么人在什么地方会读到我写下的这些话?白地上的记号。在某处，对某人，音色宛若用长笛吹奏出来的。克洛因的主教[174]大人从他那顶宽边铲形帽里掏出圣堂的幔帐：空间的幔帐，上面有着彩色的纹章图案。使劲拽住。在平面上着了色，是的，就是这样。我看看平面，然后设想它的距离，是远还是近。我看看平面，东方，后面。啊，现在看吧!幕突然落下来了，幻象冻结在实体镜上。戏法咔嗒一声就要完了。你觉得我的话隐晦。你不认为我们的灵魂里有着含糊不清的东西吗?像长笛吹出的优美音色。我们的灵魂被我们的罪孽所玷污，越发依附我们，正如女人拥抱情人一般，越抱越紧。

她信任我，她的手绵软柔和，眼睛有着长长的睫毛。而今我真不像话，究竟要把她带到幕幔那边的什么地方去呢?进入无可避免的视觉认知那无可避免的形态里。她，她，她。怎样的她?就是那个黄花姑娘，星期一她在霍奇斯•菲吉斯书店的橱窗里寻找你将要写的一本以字母为标题的书。你用敏锐的目光朝她瞥了一眼。她的手腕套在阳伞上那编织成的饰环里。她是一位爱好文学的姑娘，住在利逊公园，心情忧郁，是个有些轻浮的姐儿。跟旁人谈这去吧，斯蒂维，找个野鸡什么的[175]。但是她准穿着那讨厌的缀有吊袜带的紧身褡和用粗糙的羊毛线织成的浅黄长袜。跟她谈谈苹果布丁的事例更好一些[176]。你的才智到哪儿去啦?

抚摩我，温柔的眼睛。温柔的、温柔的、温柔的手。我在这儿很寂寞。啊。抚摩我，现在马上就摸。大家都晓得的那个字眼儿是什么来看[177]?我在这儿完全是孤零零的，而且悲哀。抚摩我，抚摩我吧。

他直着身子仰卧在巉岩上，把匆忙中写的便条和铅笔塞进兜里，将帽子拉歪，遮上眼睛。伊然是凯文•伊根打磕睡时的动作，安息日的睡眠。天主看他所创造的一切都非常好[178]。喂!日安[179]!欢迎你如五月花[180]。从帽檐底下，他隔着孔雀毛一般颤悠的睫毛眺望那向南移动的太阳。我被这炽热的景物迷住了。潘[181]的时刻，牧神的午后[182]。在饱含树脂的蔓草和滴着乳汁的果实间，在宽宽地浮着黄褐色叶子的水面上。痛苦离得很远。

不要再扭过脸儿去忧虑。

他的视线落在宽头长统靴上，一个花花公子[183]丢弃的旧物，并列着[184]。他数着皮面上的皱纹，这曾经是另一个人暖脚的窝。那脚曾在地上路着拍子跳过庄严的祭神舞[185]，我讨厌那双脚。然而，当埃丝特•奥斯瓦特的鞋刚好合你的脚时，你可高兴啦。她是我在巴黎结识的一位姑娘。哎呀，多么小的一双脚[186]!忠实可靠的朋友，贴心的知己，王尔德那不敢讲明的爱[187]。他的胳膊，克兰利的胳膊。而今他要离我而去。该归咎于谁?我行我素。我行我素。要么得到一切，要么一无所有[188]。

像是倒一根长套索似的，水从满满当当的科克湖[189]里溢了出来，将发绿的金色沙滩淹没，越涨越高，滔滔滚滚流去。我这根梣木手杖也会给冲走的。且等一等吧。不要紧的，潮水会淌过去的，冲刷着低矮的岩石;淌过去，打着漩涡，淌过去。最好赶紧把这档子事干完。听吧，四个宇组成的浪语，嘶——嗬——嘘——噢。波涛在海蛇、腾立的马群和岩石之间剧列地喘着气。它在岩石凹陷处迸溅着：唏哩哗啦，就像是桶里翻腾的酒。随后精力耗尽，不再喧嚣。它潺潺涓涓，荡荡漾漾，波纹展向四周，冒着泡沫，有如花蕾绽瓣。

在惊涛骇浪的海潮底下，他看到扭滚着的海藻正懒洋洋地伸直开来，勉强地摇摆着胳膊，裙裾撩得高又高[190]，在窃窃私语的水里摇曳并翻转着羞怯的银叶。它就这样日日夜夜地被举起来，浮在海潮上，接着又沉下去。天哪，她们疲倦了。低声跟她们搭话，她们便叹息。圣安布罗斯[191]听见了叶子与波浪的叹息，就伫候着，等待时机成熟。它忍受着伤害，日夜痛苦呻吟[192]。漫无目的地凑在一起;然后又徒然地散开，淌出去，又流回来。月亮朦朦胧胧地升起，裸妇在自己的宫殿里发出光辉，情侣和好色的男人她都看腻了，就拽起海潮的网。

那一带有五噚深。你的父亲躺在五噚深处。他说是一点钟[193]。待发现时已成为一具溺尸。都柏林沙洲涨了潮。尸体向前推着轻飘飘的碎石，作扇状的鱼群和愚蠢的贝壳。自得像盐一样的尸体从退浪底下浮上来，又一拱一拱的，像海豚似地漂向岸去。就在那儿。快点儿把它勾住。往上拽。虽然它已沉下水去，还是捞着了。现在省手啦。

尸体泡在污浊的咸水里，成了瓦斯袋。这般松软的美味可喂肥了大群鲦鱼。它们嗖嗖地穿梭于尸首中那扣好钮扣的裤档隙缝间。天主变成人，人变成鱼，鱼变成黑雁，黑雁又变成堆积如山的羽绒褥垫[194]。活人吸着死者呼出来的气，踏着死者的遗骸，贪婪地吃着一切死者那尿骚味的内脏。隔着船帮硬被拽上来的尸首，散发出绿色坟墓似的恶臭。他那患麻风病般的鼻孔朝太阳喷着气。

这是海水的变幻[195]，褐色眼睛呈盐灰色。溺死在海里，这是亘古以来最安详的死。啊，海洋老爹。巴黎奖[196]。谨防假冒。你不妨试试看。灵验得很哪。

喏，我口渴[197]。云层密布[198]。哪儿也没有乌云，有吗?雷雨。我说，永不沉落的晓星[199]。傲慢的智慧之闪电，被火焰包围着坠落[200]。没有。我那顶用海扇壳装饰的帽子、手杖和既是他的也是我的草鞋[201]。踱向何方?踱向黄昏的国土。黄昏即将降临。

他攥住梣木手杖的柄，轻轻地戳着，继续磨磨蹭蹭。是啊，黄昏即将降临到我内心和外部世界。每一天都必有个终结。说起来，下星期二是白昼最长的一天[202]。在快活的新年中，妈妈[203]，啷，嘡，啼嘚嘀，嘡。草地•丁尼生[204]，绅士派头的诗人。有着黄板牙的丑婆子[205]。可不是嘛[206]。还有德鲁蒙[207]先生，绅士派头的记者。可不是嘛[208]。我的牙糟透了。我纳闷，怎么回事呢?摸了摸。这一颗也快脱落了。只剩了空壳。我不晓得要不要用那笔钱去看牙医？那一颗，还有这一颗。没有牙齿的金赤是个超人[209]。为什么这么说呢?或许有所指吧？

我记得，他把我那块手绢丢下了。我捡起它来了没有?

他徒然地在兜里掏了一番。不，我没有捡。不如再去买一块。

他把从鼻孔里抠出来的干鼻屎小心翼翼地放在岩角上。变成功了请喝彩[210]。

后面，兴许有人哩。

他回过头去，隔着肩膀朝后望:一艘三桅船[211]上那高高的桅杆正在半空中移动着。这艘静寂的船，将帆收拢在桅顶横桁上，静静地道潮驶回港口。
Chapter 4 Calypso
MR LEOPOLD BLOOM ATE WITH RELISH THE INNER ORGANS OF BEASTS and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod's roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. 
Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish. 

The coals were reddening. 

Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high. 

-- Mkgnao! 

-- O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire. 

The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writing-table. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr. 

Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly, the lithe black form. Clean to see: the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees. 

-- Milk for the pussens, he said. 

-- Mrkgnao! the cat cried. 

They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Wonder what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me. 

-- Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens. 

Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. 

-- Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly. 

She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the dresser, took the jug Hanlon's milkman had just filled for him, poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor. 

-- Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap. 

He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they can't mouse after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind of feelers in the dark, perhaps. 

He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with this drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton kidney at Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced round him. No. 

On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by the bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter she likes in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way. 

He said softly in the bare hall: 

-- I am going round the corner. Be back in a minute. 

And when he had heard his voice say it he added: 

-- You don't want anything for breakfast? 

A sleepy soft grunt answered: 

-- Mn. 

No. She did not want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer, as she turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes, of course. Bought it at the governor's auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I'm proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now that was farseeing. 

His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat, and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto's high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of paper. Quite safe. 

On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back anyhow. 

He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of George's church. Be a warm day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black conducts, reflects (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn't go in that light suit. Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in happy warmth. Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn, travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a city gate, sentry there, old ranker too, old Tweedy's big moustaches leaning on a long kind of a spear. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet. Wander along all day. Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques along the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark language. High wall: beyond strings twanged. Night sky moon, violet, colour of Molly's new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of these instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I pass. 

Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself. What Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland. He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in the northwest. 

He approached Larry O'Rourke's. From the cellar grating floated up the flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the city traffic. For instance M'Auley's down there: n. g. as position. Of course if they ran a tramline along the North Circular from the cattle market to the quays value would go up like a shot. 

Bald head over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an ad. Still he knows his own business best. There he Is, sure enough, my bold Larry, leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the aproned curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him off to a tee with his eyes screwed up. Do you know what I'm going to tell you? What's that, Mr O'Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians, they'd only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the Japanese. 

Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor Dignam, Mr O'Rourke. 

Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the doorway: 

-- Good day, Mr O'Rourke. 

-- Good day to you. 

-- Lovely weather, sir. 

-- 'Tis all that. 

Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then think of the competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Save it they can't. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three and carry five. What is that? A bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the town travellers. Square it with the boss and we'll split the job, see? 

How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Ten. Fifteen. He passed Saint Joseph's, National school. Brats' clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee double you. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom. 

He halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies, black and white. Fifty multiplied by. The figures whitened in his mind unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links packed with forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pig's blood. 

A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the items from a slip in her hand. Chapped: washing soda. And a pound and a half of Denny's sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldfish. New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it, by George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack. 

The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there like a stallfed heifer. 

He took up a page from the pile of cut sheets. The model farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt swinging whack by whack by whack. 

The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime sausages and made a red grimace. 

-- Now, my miss, he said. 

She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out. 

-- Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you, please? 

Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went slowly, behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose: they never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast. For another a constable off duty cuddled her in Eccles Lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, I'm lost in the wood. 

-- Threepence, please. 

His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket. Then it fetched up three coins from his trousers' pocket and laid them on the rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the till. 

-- Thank you, sir. Another time. 

A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze after an instant. No: better not: another time. 

-- Good morning, he said, moving away. 

-- Good morning, sir. 

No sign. Gone. What matter? 

He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim: planter's company. To purchase vast sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay eight marks and they plant a dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your name entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten down and the balance in yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15. 

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it. 

He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silvered powdered olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still alive in Saint Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Molly in Citron's basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high prices too Moisel told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them in soiled dungarees. There's whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn't see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is like that Norwegian captain's. Wonder if I'll meet him today. Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven. 

A cloud began to cover the sun wholly slowly wholly. Grey. Far. 

No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's clutching a noggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world. 

Desolation. 

Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned into Eccles Street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow's exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes. 

Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley Road, swiftly, in slim sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind. 

Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stopped and gathered them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quick heart slowed at once. Bold hand. Mrs Marion. 

-- Poldy! 

Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm yellow twilight towards her tousled head. 

-- Who are the letters for? 

He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly. 

-- A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you. And a letter for you. 

He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of her knees. 

-- Do you want the blind up? 

Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow. 

-- That do? he asked, turning. 

She was reading the card, propped on her elbow. 

-- She got the things, she said. 

He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back slowly with a snug sigh. 

-- Hurry up with that tea, she said. I'm parched. 

-- The kettle is boiling, he said. 

But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed. 

As he went down the kitchen stairs she called: 

-- Poldy! 

-- What? 

-- Scald the teapot. 

On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded and rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the kettle then to let water flow in. Having set it to draw, he took off the kettle and crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the lump of butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed hungrily against him. Give her too much meat she won't mouse. Say they won't eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers, ringwise, from the chipped eggcup. 

Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks: new tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan's seaside girls. 

The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby, smiling. Silly Milly's birthday gift. Only five she was then. No wait: four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring. 

O Milly Bloom, you are my darling. 
You are my looking glass from night to morning. 
I'd rather have you without a farthing 
Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.
Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the platform. And the little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O, look what I found in professor Goodwin's hat! All we laughed. Sex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was. 
He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it? Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle. 

Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it on the chair by the bedhead. 

-- What a time you were, she said. 

She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. The warmth of her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she poured. 

A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread. 

-- Who was the letter from? he asked. 

Bold hand. Marion. 

-- O, Boylan, she said. He's bringing the programme. 

-- What are you singing? 

-- La ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love's Old Sweet Song. 

Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater. 

-- Would you like the window open a little? 

She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking: 

-- What time is the funeral? 

-- Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper. 

Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole. 

-- No: that book. 

Other stocking. Her petticoat. 

-- It must have fell down, she said. 

He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorvez. Wonder if she pronounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the orange-keyed chamberpot. 

-- Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There's a word I wanted to ask you. 

She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text with the hairpin till she reached the word. 

-- Met him what? he asked. 

-- Here, she said. What does that mean? 

He leaned downwards and read near her polished thumbnail. 

-- Metempsychosis? 

-- Yes. Who's he when he's at home? 

-- Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls. 

-- O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words. 

He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eye. The same young eyes. The first night after the charades. Dolphin's Barn. He turned over the smudged pages. Ruby: the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we'll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they metempsychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul after he dies. Dignam's soul... 

-- Did you finish it? he asked. 

-- Yes, she said. There's nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the first fellow all the time? 

-- Never read it. Do you want another? 

-- Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has. 

She poured more tea into her cup, watching its flow sideways. 

Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that's the word. 

-- Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives. 

The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Better remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An example. 

The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece: and for instance all the people that lived then. 

He turned the pages back. 

-- Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs, for example. 

Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her, inhaling through her arched nostrils. 

-- There's a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire? 

-- The kidney! he cried suddenly. 

He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping hastily down the stairs with a flurried stork's legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an angry Jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only a little burned. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it. 

Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that about some young student and a picnic? He creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his mouth. 

Dearest Papli, 
Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me splendid. Everyone says I'm quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy's lovely box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs will send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells he sings Boylan's (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan's) song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best respects. Must now close with fondest love. 

Your fond daughter, MILLY. 

P.S. Excuse bad writing, am in a hurry. Byby. 
M.

Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman. Lots of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy wouldn't live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would be eleven now if he had lived. 
His vacant face stared pitying at the postscript. Excuse bad writing. Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL Café about the bracelet. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox. He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she might do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter again: twice. 

O well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. Vain: very. 

He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. 

Day I caught her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. An&Aelig;mic a little. Was given milk too long. On the Erin's King that day round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair. 

All dimpled cheek's and curls, 
Your head it simply swirls.
Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers pockets, jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says. Pier with lamps, summer evening, band, 
Those girls, those girls, 
Those lovely seaside girls'
Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Marion. Reading lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling, braiding. 
A soft qualm regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing kissed. Full gluey woman's lips. 

Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two and six return. Six weeks off however. Might work a press pass. Or through M'Coy. 

The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper, nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing. Wants to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back to the fire too. 

He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up, undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him. 

-- Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready. 

Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the landing. 

A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as I'm. 

In the table drawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed. 

Listening, he heard her voice: 

-- Come, come, pussy. Come. 

He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The maid was in the garden. Fine morning. 

He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall. Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The hens in the next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Best of all though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies' kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday. 

He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny, I don't remember that. Hallstand too full. Four umbrellas, her rain cloak. Picking up the letters. Drago's shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown brilliantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got away James Stephens they say. O'Brien. 

Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agenda what is it? Now, my miss. Enthusiast. 

He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered through a chink up at the nextdoor window. The king was in his counting house. Nobody. 

Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper turning its pages over on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our prize titbit. Matcham's Masterstrike. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers' club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three. Three pounds thirteen and six. 

Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently, that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive one tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the master-stroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of three pounds thirteen and six. 

Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a story for some proverb which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her nether Hip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.15. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot. 

Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stocking calf. Morning after the bazaar dance when May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the hours. Explain that morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then night hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good smell off his breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of music that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on her woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Peering into it. Lines in her eyes. It wouldn't pan out somehow. 

Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then black with daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea pink, then golden, then grey, then black. Still true to life also. Day, then the night. 

He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it. Then he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled back the jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air. 

In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully his black trousers, the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What time is the funeral? Better find out in the paper. 

A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George's church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron. 

Heigho! Heigho! 
Heigho! Heigho! 
Heigho! Heigho!
Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air, third. 
Poor Dignam! 


利奥波德•布卢姆先生吃起牲口和家禽的下水来，真是津津有味。他喜欢浓郁的杂碎汤、有嚼头的胗、填料后用文火焙的心、裹着面包渣儿煎的肝片和炸雌鳕卵。他尤其爱吃在烤架上烤的羊腰子。那淡淡的骚味微妙地刺激着他的味觉。

当他脚步轻盈地在厨房里转悠，把她早餐用的食品摆在盘底儿隆起来的托盘上时，脑子里想的就是腰子的事。厨房里，光和空气是冰冷的，然而户外却洋溢着夏晨的温煦，使他觉得肚子有点饿了。

煤块燃红了。

再添一片涂了黄油的面包，三片，四片，成啦。她不喜欢把盘子装得满满的。他把视线从托盘移开，取下炉架上的开水壶，将它侧着坐在炉火上。水壶百无聊赖地蹲在那儿，噘着嘴。很快就能喝上茶了。蛮好。口渴啦。

猫儿高高地翘起尾巴，绷紧身子，绕着一条桌腿走来走去。

“喵!”

“哦，你在这儿哪。”布卢姆先生从炉火前回过头去说。

猫儿回答了一声“眯”，又绷紧身子，绕着桌腿兜圈子，一路眯眯叫着。它在我的书桌上踅行时，也是这样的。噗噜噜。替我挠挠头。噗噜噜。

布卢姆先生充满好奇地凝视着它那绵软的黑色身姿，看上去干净利落，柔滑的毛皮富于光泽，尾根部一块钮扣状的白斑，绿色的眼睛闪闪发光。他双手扶膝，朝它弯下身去。

“小猫眯要喝牛奶喽，”，他说。

“喵!”猫儿叫了一声。

大家都说猫笨。其实，它们对我们的话理解得比我们对它们更清楚。凡是它想要理解的，它全能理解。它天性还记仇，并且残忍。奇怪的是老鼠从来不嗞嗞叫，好像蛮喜欢猫儿哩。我倒是很想知道我在它眼里究竟是个什么样子。高得像座塔吗？不，它能从我身上跳过去。

“它害怕小鸡哩，”他调侃地说，“害怕咯咯叫的小鸡。我从来没见过像小猫眯这么笨的小猫。”

“喵噢!”猫儿大声说了。

它那双贪馋的眼睛原是羞涩地阖上的，如今眨巴着，拉长声调呜呜叫着，露出乳白色牙齿。他望着它那深色眼缝贪婪地眯得越来越细，变得活像一对绿宝石。然后他到食具柜前，拿起汉隆[1]那家送牛奶的刚为他灌满的罐子，倒了一小碟还冒着泡的温奶，将它慢慢地撂在地板上。

“咯噜!”猫儿边叫着边跑过去舔。

它三次屈身去碰了碰才开始轻轻地舔食，口髭在微光中像钢丝般发着亮。他边注视着，边寻思：说要是把猫那撮口髭剪掉，它就再也捕不到老鼠了，不晓得会不会真是那样。这是为什么呢？兴许是由于它那口髭的尖儿在暗处发光吧。要么就是在黑暗中起着触角般的作用。

他侧耳听着它吱吱吱舐食的声音。做火腿蛋吧，可别。天气这么干旱，没有好吃的蛋。缺的是新鲜的清水。星期四嘛，巴克利那家店里这一天也不会有可口的羊腰子。用黄油煎过以后，再撒上胡椒面吧。烧着开水的当儿，不如到德鲁加茨肉铺去买副猪腰子。猫儿放慢了舔的速度，然后把碟子舔个一干二净。猫舌头为什么那么粗糙？上面净是气孔，便于舔食。有没有它可吃的东西呢？他四下里打量了一番。没有。

他穿着那双稍微吱吱响的靴子，攀上楼梯，走到过道，并在寝室门前停下来。她也许想要点好吃的东西。早晨她喜欢吃涂了黄油的薄面包片。不过，也许偶尔要换换口味。

他在空荡荡的过道里悄声儿说：

“我到拐角去一趟，一会儿就回来。”

他听见自己说这话的声音之后，就又加上一句，

“早餐你想来点儿什么吗？”

一个半睡半醒中的声音轻轻地咕哝道：

“唔。”

不，她什么都不要。这时，他听到深深的一声热呼呼的叹息。她翻了翻身，床架上那松垮垮的黄铜环随之叮零噹啷直响。叹息声轻了下来。真得让人把铜环修好。可怜啊。还是老远地从直布罗陀运来的呢。她那点西班牙语也忘得一干二净了。不知道她父亲在这张床上花了多少钱，它是老式的。啊，对，当然喽。是在总督府举办的一次拍卖会上几个回合就买下的。老特威迪在讨价还价方面可真精明哩。是啊，先生。那是在普列文[2]。我是行伍出身的，先生，而且以此为自豪。他很有头脑，竟然垄断起邮票生意来了。这可是有先见之明。

他伸手从挂钩上取下帽子。那下面挂的是绣着姓名首字的沉甸甸的大笔和从失物招领处买到的处理雨衣。邮票。背面涂着胶水的图片。军官们从中捞到好处的不在少数。当然喽。他的帽里儿上那汗碱斑斑的商标默默地告诉他，这是顶普拉斯托的高级帽子。他朝帽子衬里上绷的那圈鞣皮瞥了一眼。一张白纸片[3]十分安全地夹在那里。

他站在门口的台阶上，摸了摸后裤兜，找大门钥匙。咦，不在这儿，在我脱下来的那条裤子里。得把它拿来。土豆[4]倒是还在。衣橱总咯吱咯吱响，犯不上去打扰她。刚才她翻身的时候还睡意朦胧呢。他悄悄地把大门带上，又拉严实一些，直到门底下的护皮轻轻地覆盖住门槛，就像柔嫩的眼皮似的。看来是关严了。横竖在我回来之前，蛮可以放心。

他躲开七十五号门牌的地窖那松散的盖板，跨到马路向阳的那边。太阳快照到乔治教堂的尖顶了。估计这天挺暖和。穿着这套黑衣服，就更觉得热了。黑色是传热的，或许反射(要么就是折射吧？)热。可是我总不能穿浅色的衣服去呀。那倒像是去野餐哩。他在洋溢着幸福的温暖中踱步，时常安详地闭上眼睑。博兰食品店的面包车正用托盘送着当天烤的面包，然而她更喜欢隔天的面包，两头烤得热热的，外壳焦而松脆，吃起来觉得像是恢复了青春。清晨，在东方的某处，天刚蒙蒙亮就出发，抢在太阳头里环行，就能赢得一天的旅程。按道理说，倘若永远这么坚持下去，就一天也不会变老。沿着异域的岸滩一路步行，来到一座城门跟前。那里有个上了年纪的岗哨，也是行伍出身，留着一副老特威迪那样的大口髭，倚着一杆长矛枪，穿过有遮篷的街道而行。一张张缠了穆斯林头巾的脸走了过去。黑洞洞的地毯店，身材高大的可怕的土耳克[5]盘腿而坐，抽着螺旋管烟斗。街上是小贩的一片叫卖声。喝那加了茴香的水，冰镇果汁。成天溜溜达达。兴许会碰上一两个强盗哩。好，碰上就碰上。太阳快落了。清真寺的阴影投射到一簇圆柱之间。手捧经卷的僧侣。树枝颤悠了一下，晚风即将袭来的信号。我走过去。金色的天空逐渐暗淡下来。一位作母亲的站在门口望着我。她用难懂的语言把孩子们喊回家去。高墙后面发出弦乐声。夜空，月亮，紫罗兰色，像摩莉的新袜带的颜色;琴弦声。听。一位少女在弹奏着一种乐器——叫什么来着？大扬琴。我走了过去。

其实，也许完全不是那么回事。在书上可以读到沿着太阳的轨道前进这套话。扉页上是一轮灿烂的旭日。他暗自感到高兴，漾出微笑。阿瑟•格里菲思[6]曾提过《自由人报》[7]社论花饰：自治的太阳从西北方向爱尔兰银行后面的小巷冉冉升起。他继续愉快地微笑着。这种说法有着犹太人的味道，自治的太阳从西北方冉冉升起。

他走近了拉里•奥罗克的酒店。隔着地窖的格子窗飘出走了气的黑啤酒味儿。从酒店那敞着的门口冒出一股股姜麦酒、茶叶渣和糊状饼干气味。然而这是一家好酒店，刚好开在市内交通线的尽头。比方说，前边那家毛丽酒吧的地势就不行。当然喽，倘若从牲畜市场沿着北环路修起一条电车轨道通到码头，地皮价钱一下子就会飞涨。

遮篷上端露出个秃头，那是个精明而有怪癖的老头子。劝他登广告[8]算是白搭。可他最懂得生意经了。瞧，那准就是他。我那大胆的拉里[8]啊，他挽着衬衫袖子，倚着装砂糖的大木箱，望着那系了围裙的伙计用水桶和墩布在拖地。西蒙•迪达勒斯把眼角那么一吊，学他学得可像哩。你晓得我要告诉你什么吗？——哦，奥罗克先生？——你知道吗，对日本人来说，干掉那些俄国人就像是八点钟吃顿早饭那么轻而易举。[10]

停下来跟他说句话吧，说说葬礼什么的。——奥罗克先生，不幸的迪格纳穆多么令人伤心啊。

他转进多塞特街，朝着门道里面精神饱满地招呼道：

“奥罗克先生，你好。”

“你好。”

“天气多么好哇，先生。”

“可不是嘛。”

他们究竟是怎么赚的钱呢？从利特里姆[11]郡进城来的时候，他们只是些红头发伙计，在地窖里涮空瓶子，连顾客喝剩在杯中的酒也给攒起来。然后，瞧吧，转眼之间他们就兴旺起来，成为亚当•芬德莱特尔斯或丹•塔隆斯[12]那样的富户。竞争固然激烈，可大家都嗜酒嘛。要想穿过都柏林的市街而不遇到酒铺，那可是难上加难。节约可是办不到的。也许就在醉鬼身上打打算盘吧。下三先令的本钱，收回五先令。数目不大不碍事，这儿一先令，那儿一先令，一点一滴地攒吧。大概也接受批发商的订货吧。跟城里那些订货员勾结在一起，你向老板交了账，剩下的赚头就二一添作五，明白了吗？

每个月能在黑啤酒上赚多少呢？按十桶算，纯利打一成吧。不，还要多些，百分之十五呗。他从圣约瑟公立小学跟前走过去。小鬼们一片喧哗。窗户大敞着。清新的空气能够帮助记忆，或许还有助于欢唱。哎哔唏、嘀咿哎呋叽、喀哎啦哎哞嗯、噢噼啾、呃哎咝吐喂、哒哺唲呦[13]。他们是男孩子吗？是的。伊尼施土耳克，伊尼沙克，伊尼施勃芬[14]，在上地理课哪。是我的哩。布卢姆山[15]。

他在德鲁加茨的橱窗前停下步子，直勾勾地望着那一束束黑白斑驳、半熟的干香肠。每束以十五根计，该是多少根呢？数字在他的脑子里变得模糊了，没算出来。他怏怏地听任它们消失。他馋涎欲滴地望着那塞满五香碎肉的一束束发亮的腊肠，并且安详地吸着调了香料做熟的猪血所发散出来的温暾气儿。

一副腰子在柳叶花纹的盘子上渗出黏糊糊的血，这是最后的一副了。他朝柜台走去，排在邻居的女仆后面。她念着手里那片纸上的项目。也买腰子吗？她的手都皴了。是洗东西时使碱使的吧。要一磅半丹尼腊肠。他的视线落在她那结实的臀部上。她的主人姓伍兹。也不晓得他都干了些什么名堂。他老婆己经上岁数了。这是青春的血液。可不许人跟在后面。她有着一双结实的胳膊，嘭嘭地拍打搭在晾衣绳上的地毯。哎呀，她拍得可真猛，随着拍打，她那歪歪拧拧的裙子就摇来摆去。

有着一双雪貂般眼睛的猪肉铺老板，用长满了疤、像腊肠那样粉红色的指头掐下几节腊肠，折叠在一起。这肉多么新鲜啊，像是圈里养的小母牛犊。

他从那一大摞裁好的报纸上拿了一张。上面有太巴列湖畔基尼烈模范农场的照片[16]。它可以成为一座理想的冬季休养地。我记得那农场主名叫摩西•蒙蒂斐奥雷[17]。一座农舍，有围墙，吃草的牛群照得模糊不清。他把那张纸放远一点来瞧，挺有趣。接着又凑近一点来读，标题啦，还有那模模糊糊、正吃草的牛群。报纸沙沙响着。一头白色母牛犊。牲畜市场[18]上，那些牲口每天早晨都在圈里叫着。被打上烙印的绵羊，吧嗒吧嗒地拉着屎。饲养员们脚登钉有平头钉的靴子，在褥草上踱来踱去，对准上了膘的后腿就是一巴掌，打得真响亮。他们手里拿着未剥皮的细树枝做的鞭子。他耐心地斜举着报纸，而感官和意念以及受其支配的柔和的视线却都凝聚在另外一点上:每拍打一下，歪歪扭扭的裙子就摆一下，嘭、嘭、嘭。

猪肉铺老板从那堆报纸上麻利地拿起两张，将她那上好的腊肠包起来，红脸膛咧嘴一笑。

“好啦，大姐。”他说。

她粗鲁地笑了笑，伸出肥实的手脖子，递过去一枚硬币。

“谢谢，大姐。我找您一先令三便士。您呢，要点儿什么？”

布卢姆先生赶紧指了指。要是她走得慢的话，还能追上去，跟在她那颤颤的火腿般的臀部后面走。大清早头一宗就饱了眼福。快点儿，他妈的。太阳好，就晒草。她在店外的阳光底下站了一会儿，就懒洋洋地朝右踱去。他在鼻子里长叹了一下，她们永远也不会懂人心意的。一双手都被碱弄皴了。脚趾甲上结成硬痂。破破烂烂的褐色无袖工作服，保护着她的一前一后。[19]由于被漠视，他心里感到一阵痛苦，渐渐又变成淡淡的快感。她属于另一个男人，下了班的警察在埃克尔斯街上搂抱她来着。她们喜欢大块头的[20]。上好的腊肠。求求你啦，警察先生，我在树林子里迷了路。[21]

“是三便士，您哪。”

他的手接下那又黏糊又软和的腰子，把它滑入侧兜里。接着又从裤兜里掏出三枚硬币，放在麻面橡胶盘上。钱撂下后，迅速地过了目，就一枚一枚麻利地滑进钱柜。

“谢谢，先生。请您多照顾。”

狐狸般的眼睛里闪着殷切的光，向他表示谢意。他马上就移开了视线。不，最好不要提了，下次再说吧。[22]

“再见。”他边说边走开。

“再见，先生。”

毫无踪影，已经走掉了。那又有什么关系呢？

他沿着多尔塞特街走回去，一路一本正经地读着报。阿根达斯•内泰穆[23]，移民垦殖公司。向土耳其政府购进一片荒沙地，种上按树。最适宜遮阳、当燃料或建筑木材了。雅法[24]北边有桔树林和大片大片的瓜地。你交八十马克，他们就为你种一狄纳穆[25]地的橄榄、桔子、扁桃或香橼。橄榄来得便宜一些，桔子需要人工灌溉。每一年的收获都给你寄来。你的姓名就作为终身业主在公司登记入册。可以预付十马克，余数分年付。柏林，西十五区，布莱布特留大街三十四号。

没什么可试的。然而，倒也是个主意。

他瞅着报纸上的照片：银色热气中朦朦胧胧望到牛群。撒遍了银粉的橄榄树丛。白昼恬静而漫长，给树剪枝，它逐渐成熟了。橄榄是装在坛子里的吧？我还有些从安德鲁那家店里买来的呢。摩莉把它们吐掉了。如今她尝出味道来啦。桔子是用棉纸包好装在柳条篓里。香橼也是这样。不晓得可怜的西特伦[26]是不是还住在圣凯文步道[27]？还有弹他那把古色古香的七弦琴的马斯添斯基。我们在一起曾度过多少愉快的夜晚。摩莉坐在西特伦那把藤椅上。冰凉的蜡黄果实拿在手里真舒服，而且清香扑鼻。有那么一股浓郁、醇美、野性的香味儿。一年年的，老是这样。莫依塞尔告诉我，能卖高价哩。阿尔布图新小街[23]：普莱曾茨[29]街：当年美好的岁月。他说，一个碴儿也不能有。[30]是从西班牙、直布罗陀、地中海和黎凡特[31]运来的。雅法的码头上摆了一溜儿柳条篓，一个小伙子正往本子上登记。身穿肮脏的粗布工作服、打赤脚的壮工们在搬运它们。一个似曾相识的人露面了。你好啊!没有理会。点头之交是令人厌烦的。他的后背倒挺像那位挪威船长[32]。也不晓得今天能不能碰见他。洒水车。是唤雨用的。在地上，如同在天上一样。[33]

一片云彩开始徐徐把太阳整个遮蔽起来。灰灰地。远远地。

不，并不是这样。一片荒原，不毛之地。火山湖，死海。没有鱼，也不见杂草，深深地陷进地里。没有风能在这灰色金属般的、浓雾弥漫的毒水面上掀起波纹。降下来的是他们所谓的硫磺。平原上的这些城市，所多玛、蛾摩拉[34]、埃多姆[35]，名字都失传了。一应在死亡的土地上的死海，灰暗而苍老。而今它老了。这里孕育了最古老、最早的种族。一个弯腰驼背的老妪从卡西迪那家酒店里走了出来，横过马路，手里攥着一只能装四分之一品脱的瓶子嘴儿。这是最古老的民族。流浪到遥远的世界各地，被俘虏来俘虏去，繁殖，死亡，又在各地诞生。如今却躺在那儿，再也不能繁衍子孙了。已经死亡。是个老妪的。世界的干瘪了的灰色阴门。

一片荒芜。

灰色的恐怖使他毛骨悚然。他把报纸叠起，放到兜里，拐进埃克尔斯街，匆匆赶回家去。冰凉的油在他的静脉里淌着，使他的血液发冷。年齿用盐[36]外套将他包裹起来。喏，眼下我到了这儿。对，眼下我到了这儿。今天早晨嘴里不舒服，脑子里浮现出奇妙的幻想。是从不同于往日的那边下的床。又该恢复桑道式健身操[37]了。俯卧撑。一座座布满污痕的褐色砖房。门牌八十号的房子还没租出去呢。是怎么回事呢？估价为二十八英镑。客厅一扇扇窗户上满是招贴：托尔斯啦，巴特斯比啦，诺思啦，麦克阿瑟啦。[38]就好像是在发痛的眼睛上贴了好多块膏药似的。吸着茶里冒出来的柔和的水蒸气和平底锅里嗞嗞响的黄油的香气。去贴近她那丰腴而在床上焐暖了的肉体。对，对。

一束炽热暖人的阳光从伯克利路疾速地扑来。这位金发随风飘拂的少女足登细长的凉鞋，沿着越来越明亮的人行道跑来，朝我跑来了。[39]

门厅地板上放着两封信和一张明信片。他弯下腰去捡起。玛莉恩•布卢姆太太。他那兴冲冲的心情立即颓丧下来。笔力遒劲:玛莉恩太太。

“波尔迪!”

他走进卧室，眯缝着眼睛，穿过温煦、黄色的微光，朝她那睡乱了的头走去。

“信是写给谁的？”

他瞧了瞧。穆林加尔。米莉。

“一封是米莉给我的信，”他小心翼翼地说，“还有一张给你的明信片。另一封是写给你的信。”

他把明信片和信放在斜纹布面床单上，靠近她膝头弯曲的地方。

“你愿意我把百叶窗拉上去吗？”

当他轻轻地将百叶窗拽上半截的时候，他那只盯着后面的眼睛[40]瞥见她瞟了一眼那封信，并把它塞到枕下。

“这样就行了吧？”他转过身来问。

她用手托腮，正读着明信片。

“她收到包裹啦，”她说。

她把明信片撂在一边，身子慢慢地蜷缩回原处，舒舒服服地叹了口气。他伫候着。 

“快点儿沏茶吧，”她说，“我渴极啦。”

“水烧开啦，”他说。

可是为了清理椅子，他耽搁了片刻，将她那条纹衬裙和穿脏了胡乱丢着的亚麻衬衣一古脑儿抱起来，塞到床脚。

当他走下通往厨房的阶梯时，她喊道：

“波尔迪!”

“什么事？”

“烫一烫茶壶。”

水确实烧开了，壶里正冒着一缕状似羽毛的热气。他烫了烫茶壶，涮了一遍，放进满满四调羹茶叶，斜提着开水壶往里灌。沏好了，他就把开水壶挪开，将锅平放在煤火上，望着那团黄油滑溜并融化。当他打开那包腰子时，猫儿贪馋地朝他喵喵叫起来。要是肉食喂多了，它就不逮耗子啦。哦，猫儿不肯吃猪肉。给点儿清真食品吧。来。他把沾着血迹的纸丢给它，并且将腰子放进嗞嗞啦啦响着的黄油汁里。还得加上点儿胡椒粉。他让盛在有缺口的蛋杯里的胡椒粉从他的指缝间绕着圈儿撒了下来。

然后他撕开信封，浏览了一眼那页信。谢谢。崭新的无檐软帽[41]。科格伦[42]先生。赴奥维尔湖野餐。年轻学生[43]。布莱泽斯•博伊兰[44]的《海滨的姑娘们》。

红茶泡出味儿来了。他微笑着把自己的搪须杯[45]斟满。那个有着王冠图案仿造德比的瓷器[46]还是傻妞儿米莉送给他的生日礼物哩，当时她才五岁。不对，是四岁。我给了她一串人造琥珀项链，她给弄坏了。还曾替她往信箱里放些折叠起来的棕色纸片。他笑嘻嘻地倒着茶。

哦，米莉•布卢姆，你是我的乖，

从早到晚，你是我的明镜，

凯西•基奥虽有驴和菜地，

我宁肯要你，哪怕一文不名。[47]

可怜的老教授古德温。[48]老境狼狈不堪。尽管如此，他不失为一个彬彬有礼的老头儿。当摩莉从舞台上退场时，他总是照老规矩向她鞠个躬。他的大礼帽里藏着一面小镜子。那天晚上，米莉把它拿到客厅里来了。噢，瞧瞧我在古德温教授的帽子里找到了什么!我们全都笑了。甚至那时候她就情窦初开了。可真是个活泼的小乖乖啊。

他把叉子戳进腰子啪的一声将它翻了个个儿。然后把茶壶摆在托盘上。当他端起来的时候，隆起来的盘底凹了下去。都齐了吗？抹上黄油的面包四片，白糖，调羹，她的奶油。齐啦。他用大拇指勾住茶壶柄，把托盘端上楼去。

他用膝盖顶开门，端着托盘进去，将它撂在床头的椅子上。

“瞧你这蘑菇劲儿!”她说。

她用一只胳膊肘支在枕头上，敏捷地坐起来时，震得黄铜环叮零噹啷响，他安详地俯视着她那丰满的身躯和睡衣里面像母山羊奶子那样隆起的一对绵软柔和的大乳房之间的缝隙。她那仰卧着的身上发散出的热气同她斟着的茶水的清香汇合在一起。

凹陷的枕头底下露出一小截撕破了的信封。他边往外走，边停下脚来抻了抻被子。

“信是谁写来的？”他问。

笔力道劲。玛莉恩。

“哦，是博伊兰。他要把节目单带来。”

“你唱什么？”

“和J•C•多伊尔合唱《手拉着手》[49]，”她说，“还有《古老甜蜜的情歌》[50]。”

她那丰腴的嘴唇边啜茶边绽出笑容。那种香水到了第二天就留下一股有点酸臭的气味，就像是馊了的花露水似的。

“打开一点窗户好不好？”

她边把一片面包叠起来塞到嘴里，边问:

“葬礼几点钟开始？”

“我想是十一点钟吧，”他回答说，“我没看报纸。”

他顺着她所指的方向从床上拎起她那脏内裤的一条腿。不对吗？接着是一只歪歪拧拧地套在长袜上的灰色袜带。袜底皱皱巴巴，磨得发亮。

“不对，要那本书。”

另一只长袜。她的衬裙。

“准是掉下去啦，”她说。

他到处摸索。我要，又不愿意。[51]不知道她能不能把那个字咬清楚，我要。[52]书不在床上，想必是滑落了。他弯下身撩起床沿的挂布。书果然掉下去了。摊开来靠在布满回纹的尿盆肚上。

“给我看看，”她说，“我做了个记号。有个词儿我想问问你。”

她从捧在手里的杯中呷了一大口茶，麻利地用毛毯揩拭了一下指尖，开始用发夹顺着文字划拉，终于找到了那个词儿。

“遇见了他什么？”他问。

“在这儿哪，”她说，“这是什么意思？”

他弯下身去，读着她那修得漂漂亮亮的大拇指甲旁边的字。

“MetempsyChosis？”

“是啊，他呆在家里哪，能遇见什么人呢？”[53]

“Metempsychosis，”他皱着眉头说，“这是个希腊字眼儿，从希腊文来的，意思就是灵魂的转生。”

“哦，别转文啦!”她说，“用普普通通的字眼告诉我!”

他微笑着，朝她那神色调皮的眼睛斜瞟了一眼。这双眼睛和当年一样年轻。就是在海豚仓[54]猜哑剧字谜后那第一个夜晚。他翻着弄脏了的纸页。《马戏团的红演员鲁碧》[55]。哦，插图。手执赶车鞭子的凶悍的意大利人。赤条条地呆在地板上的想必是红演员鲁碧喽。好心借与的床单。[56]怪物马菲停了下来，随着一声诅咒，将他的猎物架猛扔出去。内幕残忍透了。给动物灌兴奋剂。亨格勒马戏团的高空吊。[57]简直不能正眼看它。观众张大了嘴呆望着。你要是摔断了颈骨，我们会笑破了肚皮。一家子一家子的，都干这一行。从小就狠狠地训练，于是他们转生了。我们死后继续生存。我们的灵魂。一个人死后，他的灵魂，迪格纳穆的灵魂……

“你看完了吗？”他问。

“是的，”她说，“一点儿也不黄。她是不是一直在爱着那头一个男人？”

“从来没读过。你想要换一本吗？”

“嗯。另借一本保罗•德•科克[58]的书来吧。他这个名字挺好听。”

她又添茶，并斜眼望着茶水从壶嘴往杯子里淌。

必须续借卡佩尔街图书馆那本书，要不他们就会寄催书单给我的保证人卡尔尼[59]。转生，对，就是这词儿。

“有些人相信，”他说，“咱们死后还会继续活在另一具肉体里，而且咱们前世也曾是那样。他们管这叫作转生。还认为几千年前，咱们全都在地球或旁的星球上生活过。他们说，咱们不记得了。可有些人说，他们还记得自己前世的生活。”

黏糊糊的奶油在她的红茶里弯弯曲曲地凝结成螺旋形。不如重新提醒她这个词儿，轮回。举个例会更好一些。举个什么例子呢？

床上端悬挂着一幅《宁芙[60]沐浴图》。这是《摄影点滴》[61]复活节专刊的附录，是人工着色的杰出名作。没放牛奶之前，红茶就是这种颜色。未尝不像是披散起头发时的玛莉恩，只不过更苗条一些。在这副镜框上，我花了三先令六便士。她说挂在床头才好看。裸体宁芙们，希腊。拿生活在那个时代的人们作例子也好嘛。

他一页页地往回翻。

“转生，”他说，“是古希腊人的说法。比方说，他们曾相信，人可以变成动物或树木。譬如，还可以变作他们所说的宁芙。”

正在用调羹搅拌着砂糖的她，停下手来。她定睛望着前方，耸起鼻孔吸着气。

“一股糊味儿，”她说，“你在火上放了些什么东西吗？”

“腰子!”他猛地喊了一声。

他把书胡乱塞进内兜，脚趾尖撞在破脸盆架上，朝着那股气味的方向奔出屋子，以慌慌张张的白鹳般的步子，匆忙冲下楼梯。刺鼻的烟从平底锅的一侧猛地往上喷，他用叉子尖儿铲到腰子下面，将它从锅底剥下来，翻了个个儿。只糊了一丁点儿。他拿着锅，将腰子一颠，让它落在盘子上，并且把剩下的那一点褐色汁子滴在上面。

现在该来杯茶啦。他坐下来，切了片面包，涂上黄油。又割下腰子糊了的部分，把它丢给猫。然后往嘴里塞了一叉子，边咀嚼边细细品尝着那美味可口的嫩腰子。烧得火候正好。喝了口茶。接着他又将面包切成小方块儿，把一块在浓汁里蘸了蘸，送到嘴里。关于年轻学生啦，郊游啦，是怎么写的来着？他把那封信铺在旁边摩挲平了，边嚼边慢慢读着，将另外一小方块也蘸上汁子，并举到嘴边。

最亲爱的爹爹：

非常非常谢谢您这漂亮的生日礼物。我戴着合适极了。大

家都说，我戴上这顶新的无檐软帽，简直成了美人儿啦。我

也收到了妈妈那盒可爱的奶油点心，并正在写信给她。点心

很好吃。照相这一行，现在我越干越顺当。科格伦先生为我

和他太太拍了一张相片，冲洗出来后，将给您寄去。昨天我

们生意兴隆极了。天气很好，那些胖到脚后跟的统统都来啦。

下星期一我们和几位朋友赴奥维尔湖作小规模的野餐。问妈

妈好，给您一个热吻并致谢。我听见他们在楼下弹钢琴哪。星

期六将在格雷维尔徽章饭店举行音乐会。有个姓班农的年轻

学生，有时傍晚到这儿来。他的堂兄弟还是个什么大名人，他

唱博伊兰(我差点儿写成布莱泽斯•博伊兰了)那首关于海

滨姑娘们的歌曲。告诉他[62]，傻米莉向他致以最深切的敬意。

我怀着挚爱搁笔了。

热爱您的女儿

米莉

又及，由于匆忙，字迹潦草，请原谅。再见。

米

昨天她就满十五岁了。真巧，又正是本月十五号。这是她头一回不在家里过生日。别离啊。想起她出生的那个夏天的早晨，我跑到丹齐尔街去敲桑顿太太的门，喊她起床。她是个快活的老太婆。经她手接生来到世上的娃娃，想必多得很哩。她一开始就晓得可怜的小鲁迪[63]不长。——先生，天主是仁慈的。她立刻就知道了。倘若活了下来，如今他已十一岁了。

他神色茫然，带些怜惜地盯着看那句附言。字迹潦草，请原谅。匆忙。在楼下弹钢琴。她可不再是乳臭未干的毛丫头啦。为了那只手镯的事，曾在第四十号咖啡馆和她拌过嘴。她把头扭过去，不吃点心，也不肯说话。好个倔脾气的孩子。他把剩下的面包块儿都浸在浓汁里，并且一片接一片地吃着腰子。周薪十二先令六便士，可不算多。然而，就她来说，也还算不错哩。杂耍场舞台。年轻学生，他呷了一大口略凉了些的茶，把食物冲了下去。然后又把那封信重读了两遍。

哦，好的，她晓得怎样当心自己了。可要是她不晓得呢？不，什么也不曾发生哩。当然，也许将会发生。反正等发生了再说呗。简直是个野丫头。迈着那双细溜的腿跑上楼梯。这是命中注定的。如今快要长成了。虚荣心可重哩。

他怀着既疼爱又不安的心情朝着厨房窗户微笑。有一天我瞥见她在街上，试图掐红自己的腮帮子。她有点儿贫血，断奶断得太晚了。那天乘爱琳王号绕基什一周[64]，那艘该死的旧船颠簸得厉害。她可一点儿也不害怕，那淡蓝色的头巾和头发随风飘动。

鬈发和两腮酒窝，

简直让你晕头转向。

海滨的姑娘们。撕开来的信封。双手揣在兜里，唱着歌儿的那副样子，活像是逍遥自在地度着一天假的马车夫。家族的朋友。他把“晕”说成了“云”。[65]夏天的傍晚，栈桥上点起灯火，铜管乐队。

那些姑娘，那些姑娘，

海滨那些俏丽的姑娘。

米莉也是如此。青春之吻，头一遭儿。早已经成为过去了。玛莉恩太太。这会子想必向后靠着看书哪，数着头发分成了多少绺，笑眯眯地编着辫子。

淡淡的疑惧，悔恨之情，顺着他的脊骨往下串。势头越来越猛。会发生的，是啊。阻挡也是白搭，一筹莫展。少女那俊美、娇嫩的嘴唇。也会发生的啊。他觉得那股疑惧涌遍全身。现在做什么都是徒然的。嘴唇被吻，亲吻，被吻。女人那丰满而如胶似漆的嘴唇。

她不如就呆在眼下这个地方。远离家门。让她有事儿可做。她说过想养只狗作消遣。也许我到她那儿去旅行一趟。利用八月间的银行休假日[66]，来回只消花上两先令六便士。反正还有六个星期哪。也许没法弄到一张报社的乘车证。要么就托麦科伊[67]。

猫儿把浑身的毛舔得干干净净，又回到沾了腰子血的纸那儿，用鼻子嗅了嗅，并且大模大样地走到门前。它回头望了望他，喵喵叫着。想出去哩。只要在门前等着，迟早总会开的。就让它等下去好了。它显得烦躁不安，身上起了电哩。空中的雷鸣。是啊，它还曾背对着火，一个劲儿地洗耳朵来着。

他觉得饱了。撑得慌；接着，肠胃一阵松动。他站起来，解开裤腰带。猫儿朝他喵喵叫着。

“喵!”他回答，“等我准备好了再说。”

空气沉闷，看来是个炎热的日子。吃力地爬上楼梯到平台[68]那儿去，可太麻烦了。

要张报纸。他喜欢坐在便桶上看报。可别让什么无聊的家伙专挑这种时候来敲门。

他从桌子的抽屉里找到一份过期的《珍闻》[69]。他把报纸叠起来，夹在腋下，走到门前，将它打开。猫儿轻盈地蹿跳着跑上去了。啊，它是想上楼，到床上蜷缩作一团。

他竖起耳朵，听见了她的声音:

“来，来，小咪咪。来呀。”

他从后门出去，走进园子，站在那儿倾听着隔壁园子的动静。那里鸦雀无声。多半是在晾晒着衣服哪。女仆在园子里。[70]早晨的天气多好。

他弯下身去望着沿墙稀稀疏疏地长着的一排留兰香。就在这儿盖座凉亭吧。种上红花菜豆或五叶地锦什么的。这片土壤太贫瘠了，想整个儿施一通肥。上面是一层像是肝脏又近似硫磺的颜色。要是不施肥，所有的土壤都会变成这样。厨房的泔水。怎么才能让土壤肥沃起来呢？隔壁园子里养着母鸡。鸡粪就是头等肥料。可再也没有比牲口粪更好的了，尤其是用油渣饼来喂养的牛。牛粪可以做铺垫。最好拿它来洗妇女戴的羔羊皮手套。用脏东西清除污垢。使用炭灰也可以。把这块地都开垦了吧。在那个角落里种上豌豆。还有莴苣。那么就不断地有新鲜青菜吃了。不过，菜园子也有缺陷。圣灵降临节的第二天，这里就曾招来成群的蜜蜂[71]和青蝇。

他继续走着。咦，我的帽子呢？想必是把它挂回到木钉上啦。也许是挂在落地衣帽架上了。真怪，我一点儿也记不得。门厅里的架子太满了。四把伞，还有她的雨衣。方才我拾起那几封信的时候，德雷格理发店的铃声响起来了。奇怪的是我正在想着那个人。除了润发油的褐色头发一直垂到他的脖颈上。一副刚刚梳洗过的样子。不知道今天早晨来不来得及洗个澡。塔拉街[72]。他们说，坐在柜台后面的那个家伙把詹姆斯•斯蒂芬斯[73]放跑了。他姓奥布赖恩[74]。

那个叫德鲁加茨的家伙声音挺深沉的。那家公司叫阿根达斯什么来着？——好啦，大姐。[75]狂热的犹太教徒[76]。

他一脚踢开厕所那扇关不严的门。还得穿这条裤子去参加葬礼哪，最好多加小心，可别给弄脏了。门楣挺矮，他低着头走进去。门半掩着，在发霉的石灰浆和陈年的蜘蛛网的臭气中，解下了背带。蹲坐之前，隔着墙缝朝上望了一下邻居的窗户。国王在他的帐房里[77]。一个人也没有。

他蹲在凳架[78]上，摊开报纸，在自己赤裸裸的膝上翻看着。读点新鲜而又轻松的。不必这么急嘛。从从容容地来。《珍闻》的悬赏小说：《马查姆的妙举》，作者菲利普•博福伊[79]先生是伦敦戏迷俱乐部的成员。已经照每栏一基尼付给了作者。三栏半。三镑三先令。三镑十三先令六便士。[80]

他不急于出恭，从从容容地读完第一栏，虽有便意却又憋着，开始读第二栏。然而读到一半，就再也憋不住了。于是就一边读着一边让粪便静静地排出。他仍旧耐心地读着，昨天那轻微的便秘完全畅通了。但愿块头不要太大，不然，痔疮又会犯了。不，这刚好。对。啊!便秘嘛，请服一片药鼠李皮[81]。人生也可能就是这样。这篇小说并未使他神往或感动，然而写得干净利索。如今啥都可以印出来，是个胡来的季节。他继续读下去，安然坐在那里闻着自己冒上来的臭味。确实利索。马查姆经常想起那一妙举，凭着它，自己赢得了大笑着的魔女之爱，而今她……开头和结尾都有说教意味。手拉着手。写得妙!他翻过来又瞅了瞅已读过的部分，同时觉出尿在静静地淌出来，心里毫无歹意地在羡慕那位由于写了此文而获得三镑十三先令六便士的博福伊先生。

也许好歹能写出一篇小品文。利•玛•布卢姆夫妇作。由一句谚语引出一段故事如何？可哪句好呢？想当初，她在换衣服，我一边看她梳妆打扮，一边把她讲的话匆匆记在我的袖口上。我们不喜欢一道换装。一会儿是我刮胡子，刮出了血，一会儿又是她，裙腰开口处的钩子不牢，狠狠地咬着下唇。我为她记下时间，九点一刻，罗伯兹付你钱了没有？九点二十分，葛莉塔•康罗伊[82]穿的是什么衣服？九点二十三分，我究竟着了什么魔，买下这么一把梳子!九点二十四分:吃了那包心菜，肚子胀得厉害。她的漆皮靴上沾了点土。于是轮流抬起脚来，用靴子的贴边灵巧地往袜筒上蹭。在义卖会舞会上，梅氏乐队[83]演奏了庞契埃利的《时间之舞》。[84]那是第二天早晨的事。你解释一下，早晨的时光，晌午，随后傍晚来临，接着又是晚上的时光。她刷牙来着。那是头一个晚上。[85]她脑子里还在翩翩起舞。她的扇柄还在咯嗒咯嗒响着。——那个博伊兰阔吗？——他有钱。——怎见得？——跳舞的时候，我发觉他呼出浓郁的、好闻的气味。那么，哼哼唱唱也是白搭。还是暗示一下为好。昨天晚上的音乐可妙哩。镜子挂在暗处。于是，她就用自己的带柄手镜在她那裹在羊毛衫里的颤巍巍的丰满乳房上敏捷地擦了擦。她照着镜子，然而眼角上的鱼尾纹却怎么也抹不掉。

黄昏时分，姑娘们穿着灰色网纱衫。接着是夜晚的时光，穿黑的，佩匕首，戴着只露两眼的假面具。多么富于诗意的构思啊，粉色，然后是金色，接着是灰色，接着又是黑色。也是那样栩栩如生。先是昼，随后是夜。

他把获奖小说吱啦一声扯下半页，用来揩拭自己。然后系上腰带和背带，扣上钮扣。他将那摇摇晃晃关不紧的门拽上，从昏暗中走进大千世界。

在明亮的阳光下，四肢舒展爽朗起来。他仔细审视着自己的黑裤子，裤脚、膝部、腿窝。丧礼是几点钟来看？最好翻翻报纸。

空中响起金属的摩擦声和低沉的回旋声。这是乔治教堂在敲钟。那钟在报时辰，黑漆漆的铁在轰鸣着。

叮当!叮当!

叮当!叮当!

叮当!叮当!

三刻钟了。又响了一下。回音划破天空跟过来。第三下。

可怜的迪格纳穆!
Chapter 5 Lotus Eaters
BY LORRIES ALONG SIR JOHN ROGERSON'S QUAY MR BLOOM WALKED soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask's the linseed crusher's, the postal telegraph office. Could have given that address too. And past the sailors' home. He turned from the morning noises of the quayside and walked through Lime street. By Brady's cottages a boy for the skins lolled, his bucket of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding her battered caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won't grow. O let him! His life isn't such a bed of roses! Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma, da. Slack hour: won't be many there. He crossed Townsend street, passed the frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And past Nichols' the undertaker's. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay Corny Kelleher bagged that job for O'Neill's. Singing with his eyes shut. Corney. Met her once in the park. In the dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name and address she then told with my tooraloom tooraloom tay. O, surely he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a whatyoumaycall. With my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom. 
In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental Tea Company and read the legends of lead-papered packets: choice blend, finest quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom Kernan. Couldn't ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still read blandly he took off his hat quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent his right hand with slow grace over his brow and hair. Very warm morning. Under their dropped lids his eyes found the tiny bow of the leather headband inside his high grade ha. Just there. His right hand came down into the bowl of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card behind the headband and transferred it to his waistcoat pocket. 

So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing around in the sun, in dolce far niente. Not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness in the air. Walk on roseleaves. Imagine trying to eat tripe and cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah, in the dead sea, floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn't sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the. Or is it the volume is equal of the weight? It's a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum. What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per second, per second. Law of falling bodies: per second, per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It's the force of gravity of the earth is the weight. 

He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk with her sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the folded Freeman from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise in a baton and tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouserleg. Careless air: just drop in to see. Per second, per second. Per second for every second it means. From the curbstone he darted a keen glance through the door of the postoffice. Too late box. Post here. No-one. In. 

He handed the card through the brass grill. 

-- Are there any letters for me? he asked. 

While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the recruiting poster with soldiers of all arms on parade: and held the tip of his baton against his nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No answer probably. Went too far last time. 

The postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with a letter. He thanked and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope. 

Henry Flower, Esq. 
c/o P. O. Westland Row, 
City.
Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket, reviewing again the soldiers on parade. Where's old Tweedy's regiment? Castoff soldier. There: bearskin cap and hackle plume. No, he's a grenadier. Pointed cuffs. There he is: royal Dublin fusiliers. Redcoats. Too showy. That must be why the women go after them. Uniform. Easier to enlist and drill. Maud Gonne's letter about taking them off O'Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith's paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal disease: overseas or halfseasover empire. Half baked they look: hypnotised like. Eyes front. Mark time. Table: able. Bed: ed. The King's own. Never see him dressed up as a fireman or a bobby. A mason, yes. 
He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. Talk: as if that would mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a forefinger felt its way under the flap of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks. Women will pay a lot of heed, I don't think. His fingers drew forth the letter and crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Something pinned on: photo perhaps. Hair? No. 

M'Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company when you. 

-- Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to? 

-- Hello, M'Coy. Nowhere in particular. 

-- How's the body? 

-- Fine. How are you? 

-- Just keeping alive, M'Coy said. 

His eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect: 

-- Is there any... no trouble I hope? I see you're... 

-- O no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral is today. 

-- To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time? 

A photo it isn't. A badge maybe. 

-- E... eleven, Mr Bloom answered. 

-- I must try to get out there, M'Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only heard it last night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You know Hoppy? 

-- I know. 

Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the door of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She stood still, waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her, searched his pockets for change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a day like this, looks like blanketcloth. Careless stand of her with her hands in those patch pockets. Like that haughty creature at the polo match. Women all for caste till you touch the spot. Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her once take the starch out of her. 

-- I was with Bob Doran, he's on one of his periodical bends, and what do you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway's we were. 

Doran, Lyons in Conway's. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. In came Hoppy. Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing far from beneath his veiled eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the braided drums. Clearly I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight perhaps. Talking of one thing or another. Lady's hand. Which side will she get up? 

-- And he said: Sad thing about our poor friend Paddy! What Paddy? I said. Poor little Paddy Dignam, he said. 

Off to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots with laces dangling. Well turned foot. What is he fostering over that change for? Sees me looking. Eye out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two strings to her bow. 

-- Why? I said. What's wrong with him? I said. 

Proud: rich: silk stockings. 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. 

He moved a little to the side of M'Coy's talking head. Getting up in a minute. 

-- What's wrong with him? he said. He's dead, he said. And, faith, he filled up. Is it Paddy Dignam? I said. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it in the Arch. Yes, he said. He's gone. He died on Monday, poor fellow. 

Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch! 

A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between. 

Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and the peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace street hallway. Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering the display of. Esprit de corps. Well, what are you gaping at? 

-- Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone. 

-- One of the best, M'Coy said. 

The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich gloved hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker: the laceflare of her hat in the sun: flicker, flick. 

-- Wife well, I suppose? M'Coy's changed voice said. 

-- O yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks. 

He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly: 

What is home without 
Plumtree's Potted Meat? 
Incomplete. 
With it an abode of bliss.
-- My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet. 
Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I'm off that, thanks. 

Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness. 

-- My wife too, he said. She's going to sing at a swagger affair in the Ulster hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth. 

-- That so? M'Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who's getting it up? 

Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread and. No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens. Dark lady and fair man. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope. 

Love's 
Old 
Sweet 
Song 
Comes lo-ve's old...
-- It's a kind of a tour, don't you see? Mr Bloom said thoughtfully. Sweet song. There's a committee formed. Part shares and part profits. 
M'Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble. 

-- O well, he said. That's good news. 

He moved to go. 

-- Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around. 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. 

-- Tell you what, M'Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral, will you? I'd like to go but I mightn't be able, you see. There's a drowning case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself would have to go down if the body is found. You just shove in my name if I'm not there, will you? 

-- I'll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That'll be all right. 

-- Right, M'Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I'd go if I possibly could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M'Coy will do. 

-- That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly. 

Didn't catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I'd like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped corners, riveted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his for the Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings of it from that good day to this. 

Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in its way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don't you know? In the same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would. Can't he hear the difference? Think he's that way inclined a bit. Against my grain somehow. Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope that smallpox up there doesn't get worse. Suppose she wouldn't let herself be vaccinated again. Your wife and my wife. 

Wonder is he pimping after me? 

Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane's Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery's summer sale. No, he's going on straight. Hello. Leah tonight: Mrs Bandman Palmer. Like to see her in that again. Hamlet she played last night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed suicide? Poor papa! How he used to talk about Kate Bateman in that! Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to get in. Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was always talking about where the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his face. 

-- Nathan's voice! His son's voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his father and left the God of his father. 

Every word is so deep, Leopold. 

Poor papa! Poor man! I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at his face. That day! O dear! O dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was the best for him. 

Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn't met that M'Coy fellow. 

He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid the sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn all they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags. Too full for words. Still they get their feed all right and their doss. Gelded too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp between their haunches. Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very irritating. 

He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer. 

He passed the cabman's shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies, all weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. Voglio e non. Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying syllables as they pass. He hummed: 

La ci darem la mano 
La la lala la la.
He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade's timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court with its forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a squatted child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantel not to wake her. Open it. And once I played marbles when I went to that old dame's school. She liked mignonette. Mrs Ellis's. And Mr? He opened the letter within the newspaper. 
A flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not annoyed then? What does she say? 

Dear Henry, 
I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real meaning of that word. Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you. Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often think of the beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we meet? I think of you so often you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty boy, if you do not write. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling. I have such a bad headache today and write by return to your longing 

MARTHA. 

P.S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.

He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then, walking slowly forward, he read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word. Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume. Having read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket. 
Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did she write it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me, respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you: not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic. Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of-words, of course. Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time. 

Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it. Common pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere: pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses without thorns. 

Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in the Coombe, linked together in the rain. 

O, Mary lost the pin of her drawers. 
She didn't know what to do 
To keep it up 
To keep it up.
It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife use? Now could you make out a thing like that? 
To keep it up. 

Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also the two sluts in the Coombe would listen. 

To keep it up. 

Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there: quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been, strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of the well stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest. 

Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter then all sank. 

Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen millions of barrels of porter. 

What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the same. 

An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach. Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth. 

He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M'Coy for a pass to Mullingar. 

Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend John Conmee S. J. on saint Peter Claver and the African mission. Save China's millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Prayers for the conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious. The protestants the same. Convert Dr. William J. Walsh D. D. to the true religion. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks? Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguished looking. Sorry I didn't work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose. 

The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps, pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere. 

Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt at the altar rails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? Corpus. Body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it; only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse why the cannibals cotton to it. 

He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in its corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here and there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to melt in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth: it's that sort of bread: unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it's called. There's a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel. First communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party, same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I'm sure of that. Not so lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a big spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near that confession box. Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the arms of Kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time next year. 

He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel an instant before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace affair he had on. Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn't know what to do to. Bald spot behind. Letters on his back I. N. R. I.? No: I. H. S. Molly told me one time I asked her. I have sinned: or no: I have suffered, it is. And the other one? Iron nails ran in. 

Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up with a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here with a ribbon round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the sly. Their character. That fellow that turned queen's evidence on the invincibles he used to receive the, Carey was his name, the communion every morning. This very church. Peter Carey. No, Peter Claver I am thinking of. Denis Carey. And just imagine that. Wife and six children at home. And plotting that murder all the time. Those crawthumpers, now that's a good name for them, there's always something shiftylooking about them. They're not straight men of business either. O no she's not here: the flower: no, no. By the way did I tear up that envelope? Yes: under the bridge. 

The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank what they are used to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale (aromatic). Doesn't give them any of it: shew wine: only the other. Cold comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they'd have one old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is. 

Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music. Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make that instrument talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner street. Molly was in fine voice that day, the Stabat Mater of Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan's sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but don't keep us all night over it. Music they wanted. Footdrill stopped. Could hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her voice against that corner. I could feel the thrill in the air, the full, the people looking up: 

Quis est homo! 

Some of that old sacred music is splendid. Mercadante: seven last words. Mozart's twelfth mass: the Gloria in that. Those old popes were keen on music, on art and statues and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example too. They had a gay old time while it lasted. Healthy too chanting, regular hours, then brew liqueurs. Benedictine. Green Chartreuse. Still, having eunuchs in their choir that was coming it a bit thick. What kind of voice is it? Must be curious to hear after their own strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they wouldn't feel anything after. Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh don't they? Gluttons, tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One way out of it. 

He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about and bless all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Bloom glanced about him and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up at the gospel of course. Then all settled down on their knees again and he sat back quietly in his bench. The priest came down from the altar, holding the thing out from him, and he and the massboy answered each other in Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began to read off a card: 

-- O God, our refuge and our strength. 

Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw them the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass? Gloria and immaculate virgin. Joseph her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great weapon In their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying to. And I schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look down at her ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears. Husband learn to his surprise. God's little joke. Then out she comes. Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Flowers, incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation army blatant imitation. Reformed prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the Lord. Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they work the whole show. And don't they rake in the money too? Bequests also: to the P. P. for the time being in his absolute discretion. Masses for the repose of my soul to be said publicly with open doors. Monasteries and convents. The priest in the Fermanagh will case in the witness box. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for everything. Liberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors of the church: they mapped out the whole theology of it. 

The priest prayed: 

-- Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God restrain him, we humbly pray): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. 

The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The women remained behind: thanksgiving. 

Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate perhaps. Pay your Easter duty. 

He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the time. Women enjoy it. Annoyed if you don't. Why-didn't you tell me before. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a (whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn't farther south. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the main door into the light. He stood a moment unseeing by the cold black marble bowl while before him and behind two worshippers dipped furtive hands in the low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of Prescott's dyeworks: a widow in her weeds. Notice because I'm in mourning myself. He covered himself. How goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet. Better get that lotion made up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny's in Lincoln place. Chemists rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to stir. Hamilton Long's, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot churchyard near there. Visit some day. 

He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the other trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair. O well, poor fellow, it's not his fault. When was it I got it made up last? Wait. I changed a sovereign I remember. First of the month it must have been or the second. O he can look it up in the prescriptions book. 

The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher's stone. The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character. Living all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te Virid. Smell almost cure you like the dentist's doorbell. Doctor whack. He ought to physic himself a bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Test: turns blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy where you least expect it. Clever of nature. 

-- About a fortnight ago, sir? 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. 

He waited by the counter, inhaling the keen reek of drugs, the dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your aches and pains. 

-- Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then orangeflower water... 

It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax. 

-- And white wax also, he said. 

Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to her eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my cuffs. Those homely recipes are often the best: strawberries for the teeth: nettles and rainwater: oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk. Skinfood. One of the old queen's sons, duke of Albany was it? had only one skin. Leopold yes. Three we have. Warts, bunions and pimples to make it worse. But you want a perfume too. What perfume does your? Peau d'Espagne. That orangeflower. Pure curd soap. Water is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. Time to get a bath round the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water. Combine business with pleasure. Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then all day. Funeral be rather glum. 

-- Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a bottle? 

-- No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I'll call later in the day and I'll take one of those soaps. How much are they? 

-- Fourpence, sir. 

Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax. 

-- I'll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny. 

-- Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you come back. 

-- Good, Mr Bloom said. 

He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the coolwrappered soap in his left hand. 

At his armpit Bantam Lyons' voice and hand said: 

-- Hello, Bloom, what's the best news? Is that today's? Show us a minute. 

Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To look younger. He does look balmy. Younger than I am. 

Bantam Lyons' yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants a wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears' soap? Dandruff on his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling. 

-- I want to see about that French horse that's running today, Bantam Lyons said. Where the bugger is it? 

He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar. Barber's itch. Tight collar he'll lose his hair. Better leave him the paper and get shut of him. 

-- You can keep it, Mr Bloom said. 

-- Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum the second. 

-- I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said. 

Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly. 

-- What's that? his sharp voice said. 

-- I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw it away that moment. 

Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread sheets back on Mr Bloom's arms. 

-- I'Il risk it, he said. Here, thanks. 

He sped off towards Conway's corner. God speed scut. 

Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it lately. Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large tender turkey. Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming embezzling to gamble then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They never come back. Fleshpots of Egypt. 

He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you of a mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He eyed the horseshoe poster over the gate of college park: cyclist doubled up like a cod in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a wheel. Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports: and the hub big: college. Something to catch the eye. 

There's Hornblower standing at the porter's lodge. Keep him on hands: might take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr Hornblower? How do you do, sir? 

Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather. Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can't play it here. Duck for six wickets. Still Captain Buller broke a window in the Kildare street club with a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line. And the skulls we were acracking when M'Carthy took the floor. Heatwave. Won't last. Always passing, the stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all. 

Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream. This is my body. 

He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.


布卢姆先生沿着停在约翰•罗杰森爵士码头上的一排货车稳重地走去，一路经过风车巷、利斯克亚麻籽榨油厂和邮政局。要是把这个地址也通知她就好了。走过了水手之家。他避开了早晨码头上的噪音，取道利穆街。一个拾破烂的少年在布雷迪公寓[1]旁闲荡，臂上挎了一篮子(提梁是用绳子绑的)碎肉，吸着人家嚼剩的烟头。比他年纪小、额上留有湿疹疤痕的女孩朝他望着，懒洋洋地擦着个压扁了的桶箍。告诉他，吸烟可就长不高了。算啦，随他去吧!他这辈子反正也享不到什么荣华富贵。在酒店外面等着，好把爹领回家去。爹，回家找妈去吧。酒馆已经冷清下来，剩不下几位主顾啦。他横过汤森德街，打绷了面孔的伯特厄尔前面走过。厄尔，对，“之家”。阿列夫、伯特[2]。接着又走过尼科尔斯殡仪馆。葬礼十一点才举行，时间还从容。我敢说准是科尼•凯莱赫[3]替奥尼尔殡仪馆揽下今天这档子葬事的。科尼这家伙总是闭着眼睛唱歌，“有一回在公园里，我和她不期相遇，摸着黑儿真有趣。给警察盯上了哩，问她姓名和住址，她就哼唱了一通：我的吐啦噜，吐啦噜，呔。”哦，肯定是他兜揽下来的。随便找个地方花不几个钱把他埋掉算啦。“我的吐啦噜，吐啦噜，吐啦噜，吐啦噜。”

他在韦斯特兰横街的贝尔法斯特与东方茶叶公司的橱窗前停了下来，读着包装货物的锡纸上的商标说明：精选配制，优良品种，家用红茶。天气怪热的。红茶嘛，得到汤姆•克南[4]那儿去买一些。不过，在葬礼上不便跟他提。他那双眼茫然地继续读着，同时摘下帽子，安详地吸着自己那发油的气味，并且斯文地慢慢伸出右手去抚摩前额和头发。这是个炎热的早晨。他垂下眼皮，瞅了瞅这顶高级帽子衬里上绷着的那圈鞋皮的小小帽花。在这儿哪。他的右手从头上落下来，伸到帽壳里。手指麻利地掏出鞣皮圈后面的名片，将它挪到背心兜里。

真热啊，他再一次更缓慢地伸出有手，摸摸前额和头发，然后又戴上帽子，松了口气。他又读了一遍，精选配制，用最优良的锡兰[5]品种配制而成。远东。那准是个可爱的地方，不啻是世界的乐园;慵懒的宽叶，简直可以坐在上面到处漂浮。仙人掌，鲜花盛开的草原，还有那他们称作蛇蔓的。难道真是那样的吗?僧伽罗人在阳光下闲荡，什么也不干是美妙的。成天连手都不动弹一下。一年十二个月，睡上六个月。炎热得连架都懒得吵。这是气候的影响。嗜眠症。怠惰之花。主要是靠空气来滋养。氮。植物园中的温室。含羞草。睡莲。花瓣发蔫了。大气中含有瞌睡病。在玫瑰花瓣上踱步。想想看，炖牛肚和牛蹄吃起来该是什么味道。我在什么地方看到过一个人的照片，是在哪儿拍的呢?对啦，他仰卧在死海上，撑着一把阳伞，还在看书哪。盐分太重，你就是想沉也沉不下去。因为水的重量，不，浮在水面上的身体的重量，等于什么东西的重量来着?要么是容积和重量相等吧?横竖是诸如此类的定律。万斯在高中边教着书，边打着榧子。大学课程，紧张的课程[6]。提起重量，说真的，重量究竟是什么?每秒三十二英尺，每秒钟。落体的规律，每秒钟，每秒钟。它们统统都落到地面上。地球。重量乃是地球引力。

他掉转方向，溜溜达达地横过马路。她拿着香肠，一路怎样走来着?是照这样走的吧。他边走边从侧兜里掏出折叠起来的《自由人报》，打开来又把它竖着卷成棍状。每踱一步便隔着裤子用它拍一下小腿，做出一副漫不经心的样子，像是只不过顺路进去看看而已。每秒钟，每秒钟。每秒钟的意思就是每一秒钟。他从人行道的边石那儿朝邮政局门口投了锐利的一瞥。迟投函件的邮筒。倒可以在这儿投邮。一个人也没有。进去吧。

他隔着黄铜格栅把名片递过去。

“有没有给我的信?”他问。

当那位女邮政局长在分信箱里查找的时候，他盯着那征募新兵的招贴。上面是各兵种的士兵在列队行进。他把报纸卷的一端举起来按在鼻孔上，嗅着那刚印刷好的糙纸的气味。兴许没有回信。上一次说得过火了。

女邮政局长隔着黄铜格栅把他的名片连同一封信递了过来。他向她道了谢，赶快朝那打了字的信封瞟上一眼：

亨利•弗罗尔先生

本市

韦斯特兰横街邮政局转交

总算来了回信。他把名片和信塞到侧兜里，又望了望行进中的士兵。老特威迫的团队在哪儿?被抛弃的兵。在那儿，戴着插有鸟颈毛的熊皮帽。不，那是个掷弹兵。尖袖口。他在那儿哪。都柏林近卫步兵连队。红上衣。太显服了。所以女人才追他们呢。穿军装。不论对入伍还是操练来说，这样的军服都更便当些。莫德•冈内来信提出，他们给咱们爱尔兰首都招来耻辱，夜间应当禁止他们上奥康内尔大街去。格里菲思的报纸如今也在唱同一个调子。这支军队长了杨梅大疮，已经糜烂不堪了。海外的或醉醺醺的帝国。他们看上去半生不熟，像是处于昏睡状态。向前看!原地踏步!贴勃儿：艾勃儿。贝德：艾德。[7]这就是近卫军。他从来也没穿过消防队员或警察的制服。可不是嘛，还加入过共济会哩。[8]

他慢慢腾腾地踱出邮政居，向右转去。难道靠饶舌就能把事情办好吗!他把手伸进兜里，一只食指摸索到信封的口盖，分几截把信扯开了。我不认为女人有多么慎重。他用指头把信拽出，并在兜里将信封揉成一团。信上用饰针别着什么东西，兴许是照片吧。头发吗?不是。

麦科伊走过来了。赶紧把他甩掉吧。碍我的事。就讨厌在这种时刻遇上人。

“喂，布卢姆。你到哪儿去呀?”

“啊，麦科伊。随便溜溜。”

“身体好吗?”

“好。你呢?”

“凑合活着呗，”麦科伊说。

他盯着那黑色领带和衣服，关切地低声问道，

“有什么……我希望没什么麻烦事儿吧。我看到你……”

“啊，没有，”布卢姆先生说，“是这样的，可怜的迪格纳穆，今天他出殡。”

“真的，可怜的家伙。原来是这样。几点钟呀?”

那不是相片。也许是一枚会徽[9]吧。

“十一点钟，”布卢姆先生回答说。

“我得想办法去参加一下，”麦科伊说，“十一点钟吗?昨天晚上我才听说。谁告诉我来着?霍罗翰。你认识‘独脚’吧?”[10]

“认识。”

布卢姆先生朝着停在马路对面格罗夫纳饭店门前的那辆座位朝外的双轮马车望去。脚行举起旅行手提箱，把它放到行李槽里。当那个男人——她的丈夫，也许是兄弟，因为长得像她——摸索兜里的零钱时，她静静地站在那儿等候着。款式新颖的大衣还带那种翻领，看上去像是绒的。今天这样的天气，显得太热了些。她把双手揣在明兜里，漫不经心地站在那儿，活像是在马球赛场上见过的那一位高傲仕女。女人们满脑子都是身份地位，直到你触着她的要害部位。品德优美才算真美。为了屈就才那么矜持。那位可敬的夫人……而布鲁图是个可敬的人[11]。一旦占有了她，就能够使她服贴就范。

“我跟鲍勃•多兰在一块儿来着，他犯了老毛病，又喝得醉醺醺的了，还有那个名叫班塔姆•莱昂斯[12]的家伙。我们就在那边的康韦酒吧间。”

多兰和莱昂斯在康韦酒吧间。她把一只戴着手套的手举到头发那儿。“独脚”进来了，喝上一通。他仰着脸，眯起眼睛，看见颜色鲜艳的鹿皮手套在强烈的阳光下闪烁着，也看见镶在手套背上的饰钮。今天我可以看得一清二楚了。兴许周围的湿气使人能望到远处。这家伙还在东拉西扯。她有着一双贵夫人的手。到底要从哪边上车呢?

“他说:‘咱们那个可怜的朋友帕狄真是可惜呀!’‘哪个帕狄?’我说。‘可怜的小帕狄•迪格纳穆。’他说。”

要到乡间去，说不定是布罗德斯通[13]吧。棕色长统靴，饰带晃来晃去。脚的曲线很美。他没事儿摆弄那些零钱干什么?她发觉了我在瞅着她，那眼神儿仿佛老是在物色着旁的男人——一个好靠山。弓上总多着一根弦。

“‘怎么啦?’我说。‘他出了什么事?’我说。”

高傲而华贵，长统丝袜。

“晤，”布卢姆先生说。

他把头略微偏过去一点，好躲开麦科伊那张谈兴正浓的脸。马上就要上车了。

“‘他出了什么事?’他说。‘他死啦，’他说。真的，他就泪汪汪的了。‘是帕狄•迪格纳穆吗?’我说。乍一听，我不能相信。至少直到上星期五或星期四，我还在阿奇酒店见到了他呢。‘是的，’他说，‘他走啦。他是星期一去世的，可怜的人儿。’”

瞧哇!瞧哇!华贵雪白的长袜，丝光闪闪!瞧啊!

一辆沉甸甸的电车，叮叮噹噹地拉响警笛，拐过来，遮住了他的视线。

马车没影儿了。这吵吵闹闹的狮子鼻真可恶。觉得像是吃了闭门羹似的。“天堂与妖精”。[14]事情总是这样的。就在关键时刻。那是星期一，一个少女在尤斯塔斯街[15]的甬道里整理她的吊袜带来着。她的朋友替她遮住了那露出的部位。互助精神[16]。喂，你张着嘴呆看什么呀?

“是啊，是啊，”布卢姆先生无精打彩地叹了口气说，“又走了一个。”

“最好的一个，”麦科伊说。

电车开过去了。他们的马车驰向环道桥[17]，她用戴着考究的手套的手握着那钢质栏杆。闪烁，闪烁，她帽子上那丝质飘带在阳光下闪烁着，飘荡着。

“你太太好吧?”麦科伊换了换语气说。

“啊，好，”布卢姆先生说，“好极了，谢谢。”

他随手打开那卷成棍状的报纸，不经意地读着，

倘若你家里没有，

李树[18]商标肉罐头，

那就是美中不足，

有它才算幸福窝。

“我太太刚刚接到一份聘约，不过还没有谈妥哪。”

又来耍这套借手提箱的把戏[19]了。倒也不碍事。谢天谢地，这套手法对我已经不灵啦。

布卢姆先生心怀友谊慢悠悠地将那眼睑厚厚的眼睛移向他。

“我太太也一样，”他说，“二十五号那天，贝尔法斯特的阿尔斯特会堂举办一次排场很大的音乐会，她将去演唱。”

“是吗?”麦科伊说，“那太好啦，老伙计。谁来主办?”

玛莉恩•布卢姆太太。还没起床哪。王后在寝室里，吃面包和。[20]没有书。她的大腿旁并放着七张肮脏的宫廷纸牌。黑发夫人和金发先生[21]。来信。猫蜷缩成一团毛茸茸的黑球。从信封口上撕下来的碎片。

古老

甜蜜的

情

歌，

听见了古老甜蜜的……

“这是一种巡回演出，明白吧，”布卢姆先生若有所思地说，“甜蜜的情歌。成立了一个委员会，按照股份来分红。”

麦科伊点点头，一边揪了揪他那胡子茬儿。

“唔，好，”他说，“这可是个好消息。”

他移步要走开。

“喏，你看上去蛮健康，真高兴，”他说，“咱们说不定在什么地方又能碰见哩。”

“是啊，”布卢姆先生说。

“话又说回来啦，”麦科伊说，“在葬礼上，你能不能替我把名字也签上?我很想去，可是也许去不成哩。瞧，沙湾出了一档子淹死人的事件，也许会浮上来。尸体假若找到了，验尸官和我就得去一趟。我要是没到场，就请你把我的名字给塞上好不好?”

“好的，”布卢姆先生说着就走开了。“就这么办吧。”

“好吧，”麦科伊喜形于色地说，“谢谢你啦，老伙计。只要能去，我是会去的。喏，应付一下，写上C•P•麦科伊就行啦。”

“一准办到，”布卢姆先生坚定地说。

那个花招没能使我上当。敏捷地脱了身。笨人就容易上当。我可不是什么冤大头。何况那又是我特别心爱的一只手提箱，皮制的。角上加了护皮，边沿还用铆钉护起，并且装上了双锁。去年举办威克洛[22]艇赛音乐会时，鲍勃•考利把自己那只借给了他。打那以后，就一直没下文啦。

布卢姆先生边朝布伦斯威克街溜达，边漾出微笑。“我太太刚刚接到一份。”满脸雀斑、嗓音像芦笛的女高音。用干酪削成的鼻子。唱一支民间小调嘛，倒还凑合。没有气势。你和我，你晓得吗，咱们的处境相同。这是奉承话。那声音刺耳。难道他就听不出其中的区别来吗?想来那样的才中他的意哩。不知怎地却不合我的胃口。我认为贝尔法斯特那场音乐会会把他吸引住的。我希望那里的天花不至于越闹越厉害。她恐怕是不肯重新种牛痘了。你的老婆和我的老婆。

不晓得他会不会在盯梢?

布卢姆先生在街角停下脚步，两眼瞟着那些五颜六色的广告牌。坎特雷尔与科克伦姜麦酒(加了香料的)。克勒利[23]的夏季大甩卖。不，他笔直地走下去了。嘿，今晚上演班德曼•帕默夫人的《丽亚》[24]哩。 巴不得再看一遍她扮演这个角色。昨晚她演的是哈姆莱特[25]。女扮男装。说不定他本来就是个女的哩。所以奥菲利娅才自杀了。可怜的爸爸!他常提起凯特•贝特曼[26]扮演的这个角色。他在伦敦的阿德尔菲剧场外面足足等了一个下午才进去的。那是一八六五年——我出生前一年的事。还有里斯托里[27]在维也纳的演出。剧目该怎么叫来着?作者是莫森索尔。是《蕾洁》吧?不是的。[28]他经常谈到的场景是，又老又瞎的亚伯拉罕[29]听出了那声音，就把手指放在他的脸上。

拿单的声音!他儿子的声音!我听到了拿单的声音，他离开了自己的父亲，任他悲惨忧伤地死在我的怀抱里。他就这样离开了父亲的家，并且离开了父亲的上帝[30]。

每句话都讲得那么深沉，利奥波德。

可怜的爸爸!可怜的人!幸而我不曾进屋去瞻仰他的遗容。那是怎样的一天啊!哎呀，天哪!哎呀，天哪!嗬!喏，也许这样对他最好不过。

布卢姆先生拐过街角，从出租马车停车场那些耷拉着脑袋的驽马跟前走边。到了这般地步，再想那档子事也是白搭。这会子该给马套上秣囊了。要是没遇上麦科伊这家伙就好了。

他走近了一些，听到牙齿咀嚼着金色燕麦的嘎吱嘎吱声，轻轻地咀嚼着的牙齿。当他从带股子燕麦清香的马尿气味中走过时，那些马用公羊般的圆鼓鼓的眼睛望着他。这才是它们的理想天地。可怜的傻瓜们!它们一无所知，对什么也漠不关心，只管把长鼻头扎进秣囊里。嘴里塞得那么满，连叫都叫不出来了。好歹能填饱肚子，也不缺睡的地方。而且被阉割过，一片黑色杜仲胶在腰腿之间软软地耷拉下来，摆动着。就那样，它们可能还是蛮幸福的哩。一看就是些善良而可怜的牲口。不过，它们嘶鸣起来也会令人恼火。

他从兜里掏出信来，将它卷在带来的报纸里。说不定会在这儿撞上她。巷子里更安全一些。

他从出租马车夫的车棚前走边。马车夫那种流浪生活真妙。不论什么样的天气，也不管什么地点、时间或距离，都由不得自己的意愿。我要，又不[31]。我喜欢偶尔给他们支香烟抽。交际一下。他们驾车路过的时候，大声嚷出一言半语。他哼唱着：

咱们将手拉着手前往。[32]

啦啦啦啦啦啦。

他拐进坎伯兰街，往前赶了几步，就在车站围墙的背风处停下了。周围一个人也没有。米德木材堆放场。堆积起来的梁木。废墟和公寓。他小心翼翼地踱过“跳房子”游戏的场地，上面还有遗忘下的跳石子儿。我没犯规[33]。一个娃娃孤零零地蹲在木材堆放场附近弹珠儿玩，用灵巧的大拇指弹着球。一只明察秋毫的母花猫，伊然是座眨巴着眼睛的斯芬克斯[34]，呆在暖洋洋的窗台上朝这边望着，不忍心打搅他们。据说穆罕默德曾为了不把猫弄醒，竟然将斗篷剪掉一块。把信打开吧。当我在那位年迈的女老师开的学校就读时，也曾玩过弹珠儿，她喜爱木樨草。埃利斯太太的学校[35]。她丈夫叫什么名字来着?用报纸遮着，他打开了那封信。

信里夹的是花。我想是。一朵瓣儿已经压瘪了的黄花。那么，她没生我的气喽?信上怎么说?

亲爱的亨利：

我收到了你的上一封信，很是感谢。遗憾的是，你不喜

欢我上次的信。你为什么要附邮票呢?我非常生气。 我多么

希望能够为这件事惩罚你一下啊。我曾称你作淘气鬼，因为

我不喜欢那另一个世界[36]。请告诉我那另一个字真正的含

意。你在自己家里不幸福吗?你这可怜的小淘气鬼? 我巴不

得能替你做点什么。请告诉我，你对我这个可怜虫有什么看

法。我时常想起你这个名字有多么可爱。亲爱的亨利，咱们

什么时候能见面呢?你简直无法想像我多么经常地想念你。我

从来没有被一个男人像被你这么吸引过。弄得我心慌意乱。请

给我写一封长信，告诉我更多的事情。不然的话我可要惩罚

你啦，你可要记住。你这淘气鬼，现在你晓得了，假若你不

写信，我会怎样对付你。哦，我多么盼望跟你见面啊。亲爱

的亨利，请别拒绝我的要求，否则我的耐心就要耗尽了。到

那时候我就一古脑儿告诉你。现在，再见吧，心爱的淘气鬼。

今天我的头疼得厉害，所以一定要立即回信给苦苦思念你的

玛莎

附言：一定告诉我，你太太使用哪一种香水。我想知道。

他神情严肃地扯下那朵用饰针别着的花儿，嗅了嗅几乎消失殆尽的香气，将它放在胸兜里。花的语言。[37]人们喜欢它，因为谁也听不见。要么就用一束毒花将对方击倒。于是，他慢慢地往前踱着，把信重读一遍，东一个字、西一个词地念出声来。对你郁金香 生气 亲爱的 男人花 惩罚 你的 仙人掌 假若你不 请 可怜虫 勿忘草 我多么盼望 紫罗兰 给亲爱的 玫瑰 当我们快要 银莲花 见面 一古脑儿 淘气鬼 夜茎[38] 太太 玛莎的香水。读完之后，他把信从报纸卷里取出来，又放回到侧兜里。

他心中略有喜意，咧开了嘴。这封信不同于第一封。不知道是不是她亲笔写的。装出一副生气的样子：像我这样的良家少女，品行端正的。随便哪个星期天，等诵完玫瑰经，不妨见见。谢谢你，没什么。谈恋爱时候通常会发生的那种小别扭。然后你追我躲的。就跟同摩莉吵架的时候那么麻烦。抽支雪茄烟能起点镇静作用，总算是麻醉剂嘛。一步步地来。淘气鬼。惩罚。当然喽，生怕措词不当。粗暴吗，为什么不?反正不妨试它一试，一步步地来。

他依然用指头在兜里摆弄着那封信，并且把饰针拔下。这不是根普通的饰针吗?他把它扔在街上。是从她衣服的什么地方取下来的，好几根饰针都别在一起。真奇怪，女人身上总有那么多饰针!没有不带刺的玫瑰。

单调的都柏林口音在他的头脑里响着。那天晚上在库姆[39]，两个娘子淋着雨，互相挽着臂在唱：

哦，玛丽亚丢了衬裤的饰针。

她不知道怎么办，

才能不让它脱落，

才能不让它脱落。

饰针?衬裤。头疼得厉害。也许她刚好赶上玫瑰期间[40]。要么就是成天坐着打字的关系。眼睛老盯着，对胃神经不利。你太太使用哪一种香水?谁闹得清这是怎么回事!

才能不让它脱落。

玛莎，玛丽亚。如今我已忘记是在哪儿看到那幅画了。是出自古老大师之手呢，还是为赚钱而制出的赝品?他[41]坐在她们家里，谈着话。挺神秘的。库姆街的那两个姨子也乐意听的。

才能不让它脱落。

傍晚的感觉良好。再也不用到处流浪了。只消懒洋洋地享受这宁静的黄昏，一切全听其自然。忘记一切吧。说说你都去过哪些地方和当地的奇风异俗。另一位头上顶着水罐，在准备晚饭：水果，橄榄，从井里打采的沁凉可口的水。那井像石头一样冰冷，像煞阿什汤的墙壁上的洞[42]。下次去参加小马驾车赛[43]，我得带上个纸杯子。她倾听着，一双大眼睛温柔而且乌黑。告诉她，尽情地说吧。什么也别保留。然后一声叹息，接着是沉默。漫长、漫长、漫长的休息。

他在铁道的拱形陆桥底下走着，一路掏出信封，赶忙把它撕成碎片，朝马路丢去。碎片纷纷散开来，在潮湿的空气中飘零。白茫茫的一片，随后就统统沉落下去了。

亨利•弗罗尔。你蛮可以把一张一百英镑的支票也这么撕掉哩。也不过是一小片纸而已。据说有一回艾弗勋爵[44]在爱尔兰银行就用一张七位数的支票兑换成百万英镑现款。这说明黑啤酒的赚头有多大，可是人家说，他的胞兄阿迪劳恩勋爵[45]依然得每天换四次衬衫，因为他的皮肤上总繁殖虱子或跳蚤。百万英镑，且慢。两便士能买一品脱黑啤酒，四便士能买一夸脱，八便士就是一加仑。不，一加仑得花一先令四便士。二十先令是一先令四便士的多少倍呢?大约十五倍吧。对，正好是十五倍。那就是一千五百万桶黑啤酒喽。

我怎么说起桶来啦?应该说加仑。总归约莫有一百万桶吧。

入站的列车在他的头顶上沉重地响着，车厢一节接着一节。在他的脑袋里，酒桶也在相互碰撞着，黏糊糊的黑啤酒在桶里迸溅着，翻腾着。桶塞一个个地崩掉了，大量混浊的液体淌出来，汇聚在一起，迂回曲折地穿过泥滩，浸漫整个大地。酒池缓缓地打着漩涡，不断地冒起有着宽叶的泡沫花。

他来到诸圣教堂那敞着的后门跟前。边迈进门廊，边摘下帽子，并且从兜里取出名片，塞回到鞣皮帽圈后头。唉呀，我本可以托麦科伊给弄张去穆林加尔的免费车票呢。

门上贴的还是那张告示。十分可敬的耶稣会会士约翰•库米布道，题目是：耶稣会传教士圣彼得•克莱佛尔[46]及非洲传道事业。当格莱斯顿[47]几乎已人事不醒之后，他们仍为他皈依天主教而祷告。新教徒也是一样。要使神学博士威廉•詹•沃尔什[48]皈依真正的宗教。要拯救中国的芸芸众生。不知道他们怎样向中国异教徒宣讲。宁肯要一两鸦片。天朝的子民。对他们而言，这一切是十足的异端邪说。他们的神是如来佛，手托腮帮，安详地侧卧在博物馆里。香烟缭绕。不同于头戴荆冠、钉在十字架上的。“瞧!这个人!”[49]关于三叶苜蓿，圣帕特里克想出的主意太妙了。[50]筷子[51]?康米。马丁•坎宁翰[52]认识他。他气度不凡。可惜我不曾在他身上下过功夫，没托他让摩莉参加唱诗班，我却托了法利神父。那位神父看上去像个傻瓜，其实不然。他们就是被那么培养出来的。他总不至于戴上蓝眼镜，汗水涔涔地去给黑人施洗礼吧，他会吗?太阳镜闪闪发光，会把他们吸引住。这些厚嘴唇的黑人围成一圈坐着，听得入了迷。这副样子倒蛮有看头哩，活像是一幅静物画。我想，他们准是把他传的道当作牛奶那么舐掉了。

圣石发出的冰冷气息呼唤着他。他踏着磨损了的台阶，推开旋转门，悄悄地从祭坛背后走进去。

正在进行着什么活动，教友的聚会吧。可惜这么空空荡荡的。要是找个不显眼的位子，旁边有个少女倒不赖。谁是我的邻人呢?[53]听着悠扬的音乐，挤在一起坐上一个钟头。就是望午夜弥撒时遇见的那个女人，使人觉得仿佛上了七重天。妇女们跪在长凳上，脖间系着深红色圣巾[54]，低看头。有几个跪在祭坛的栏杆那儿。神父嘴里念念有词，双手捧着那东西，从她们前边走过。他在每个人面前都停下来，取出一枚圣体。甩上一两下(难道那是浸泡在水里的不成?[55])，利利索索地送到她嘴里。她的帽子和头耷拉下去。接着就是第二个。她的帽子也立即垂下来。随后是旁边的那个：矮个子的老妪。神父弯下腰，把圣体送进她的嘴里，她不断地咕哝着。那是拉丁文。下一个。闭上眼，张开嘴。是什么来着?Corpus[56]: body。 Corpse[57]。用拉丁文可是个高明的主意。首先，那就会使这些女人感到茫然。收容垂死者的救济院[58]。她们好像并不咀嚼:只是把圣体吞咽下去。吃尸体的碎片，可谓异想天开，正投食人族之所好。

他站在一旁，望着蒙起面纱的她们，沿着过道顺序走来，寻找各自的座位。他走到一条长凳跟前，靠边儿坐下，帽子和报纸捧在怀里。我们还得戴那种活像是一口口深锅的帽子。我们理应照着头型缝制帽子。这儿，那儿，周围那些系着深红色圣巾的女人们依然低看头，等待圣体在她们的胃里融化。真有点像是无酵饼[59]，那种上供用的没有发酵的饼。瞧瞧她们。这会子我敢说圣体使她们感到幸福。就像是吃了棒糖似的。可不是嘛。对，人们管它叫作天使的饼子。这背后还有个宏大的联想，你觉得，心里算是有了那么一种神的王国。初领圣体者[60]。那其实只不过是一便士一撮的骗人的玩艺儿。可这下子她们就都感到是家族大团聚。觉得像是在同一座剧场里，同一道溪流中。我相信她们是这样感觉的，因而也就不大孤独了。因为大家都属于“咱们的教团”了。多余的精力发泄个够，然后，像是狂欢了一场般地走了出来。问题在于，你得真心笃信它。卢尔德[61]的治疗，忘却的河流，诺克[62]的显圣，淌血的圣像[63]。一位老人在那个忏悔阁子旁边打盹儿哪，所以才鼾声不断。盲目的信仰。安然呆在那即将降临的天国怀抱里[64]，一切痛苦都止息了。明年这个时候将会苏醒。

他望到神父把圣体杯收好，放回尽里边，对着它跪了片刻，身上那镶有花边的衣裙下边，露出老大的灰色靴底。要是他把里头的饰针弄丢了呢?他就不知道该怎么办啦。后脑勺上秃了一块。他背上写的是I.N.R.I.[65]吗?不，是I•H•S•[66]。有一回我问了问摩莉，她说那是：“I have sinned.”要么就是:“I have suffered.”另外那个呢?是：“Iron nails ran in.”[67]

随便哪个星期天诵完玫瑰经之后，都不妨去见见。请别拒绝我的要求。她蒙着面纱，拎上一只黑色手提包，背着光，出现在暮色苍茫中[68]。她在脖颈间系着根丝带进堂，却暗地里干着另一种勾当，就是这么个性格。那个向政府告密、背叛“常胜军”的家伙，他叫凯里，每天早晨都来领圣体。就在这个教堂里。是啊，彼得•凯里。不，我脑子里想的是彼得•克拉弗。唔，是丹尼斯•凯里[69]。想想看。家里还有老婆和六个娃娃哪。可还一直在策划着那档子暗杀事件。那些“假虔诚”——这个绰号起得好——他们总是带着那么一副狡猾的样子。他们也不是正经的生意人。啊，不，她不在这里。那朵花儿，不，不在。还有，我把那信封撕掉了吗?可不是嘛，就在陆桥底下。

神父在涮圣爵，然后仰脖儿把剩下的酒一饮而尽。葡萄酒。这 要比大家喝惯了的吉尼斯黑啤酒或是无酒精饮料——惠特利牌都柏林蛇麻子苦味酒或者坎特雷尔与科克伦姜麦酒(加了香料的)都要来得气派。这是上供用的葡萄酒，一口也不给教徒喝;只给他们面饼。一种冷遇。这是虔诚的骗局，却也做得十分得体。不然的话，一个个酒鬼就都会蜂拥而至，全想过过瘾。整个气氛就会变得莫名其妙了。做得十分得体。这样做完全合理。

布卢姆先生回头望了望唱诗班。可惜不会有音乐了。这儿的管风琴究竟是由谁来按的呢?老格林有本事让那架乐器响起来，发出轻微颤音。[70]大家说他在加德纳街[71]每年有五十英镑的进项。那天摩莉的嗓子好极了，她唱的是罗西尼[72]的《站立的圣母》[73]。先由伯纳德•沃恩神父讲道：基督还是彼拉多?基督，可是不要跟我们扯上一个晚上。大家要听的是音乐。用脚打拍子的声音停下了。连掉根针都能听见。我曾关照她，要朝那个角落引颈高唱。我感觉到那空气的震颤，那洪亮的嗓门，那仰望着的听众。

什么人……[74]

有些古老的圣教音乐十分精采，像梅尔卡丹特的《最后七句话》[75]。莫扎特的《第十二弥撒曲》，尤其是其中的《荣耀颂》[76]。以前的教皇们热衷于音乐、艺术、雕塑以至各种绘画。帕莱斯特里纳[77]就是个例子。他们生逢盛世，享尽了清福。他们也都健康，准时吟诵《圣教日课》，然后就酿酒。有本笃酒[78]和加尔都西绿酒[79]。可是让一些阉人[80]参加唱诗班却大煞风景。他们唱出什么调调呢?听完神父们自己洪亮的男低音，再去听他们那种嗓音，会觉得挺古怪吧。行家嘛。要是被阉后就毫无感觉了呢?从某种意义上来说，是无动于衷。无忧无虑。他们会发福的，对吧?一个个脑满肠肥，身高腿长。兴许是这样的吧。阉割也是个办法。

他看见神父弯下腰去吻祭坛，然后转过身来，祝福全体教友。大家在胸前面了十字，站起来。布卢姆先生四下里打量了一下，然后站起身，隔着会众戴起的帽子望过去。朗诵福音书时，自然要起立喽。随即又统统跪下。他呢，静悄悄地重新在长凳上落坐。神父走下祭坛，捧着那东西，和助祭用拉丁文一问一答着。然后神父跪下，开始望着卡片诵读起来，

“啊，天主，我们的避难所和力量……”[81]

布卢姆先生为了听得真切一些，就朝前面探探头。用的是英语。丢给他们一块骨头。我依稀想起来了。上次是多久以前来望过弥撒?光荣而圣洁无玷的圣处女。约瑟是她的配偶。彼得[82]和保罗[83]。倘若你能了解这个中情节，就会更有趣一些。这个组织真了不起，一切都接班就绪，有条不紊。忏悔嘛，人人都想做。那么我就一古脑儿对您说出来吧。我悔改，请惩罚我吧。他们手握大权，医生和律师也都只能甘拜下风。女人最渴望忏悔了，而我呢，就嘘嘘嘘嘘嘘嘘。那么你喳喳喳喳喳喳了吗?为什么要这么做?她低头瞧着指环，好找个借口。回音回廊，隔墙有耳。丈夫要是听见了，会大吃一惊的。这是天主开的一个小小的玩笑。然后她就走出来了。其实，所忏悔的只不过是浮皮潦草。多么可爱的羞耻啊。她跪在祭坛前祷告，念着《万福玛利亚》和《至圣玛利亚》。鲜花，香火，蜡烛在融化。她把羞红的脸遮起。救世军[84]不过是赤裸裸的模仿而已。改邪归正的卖淫妇将当众演说：我是怎样找到上主的。那些坐阵罗马的家伙们想必是顽固不化的，他们操纵着整套演出。他们不是也搜刮钱财吗? 一笔笔遗赠也滚滚而来，教皇能够暂且任意支配的圣厅献金[85]。为了我灵魂的安息，敞开大门公开献弥撒。男女修道院。弗马纳[86]的神父站在证人席上陈述。对他吹胡子瞪眼睛是不灵的。所有的提问他都回答得恰到好处。他维护了我们神圣的母亲——教会的自由，使其发扬光大。教会的博士们编出了整套的神学。

神父祷告道：

“圣米迦勒总领天使，请尔护我于攻魔，卫我于邪神恶计。(吾又哀求天主，严儆斥之!)今魔魁恶鬼，遍散普世，肆害人灵。求尔天上大军之帅，仗主权能，麾入地狱。”

神父和助祭站起来走了。诸事完毕。妇女留下来念感谢经。

不如溜之乎也。巴茨[87]修士。他也许会端着募款盘前来：请为复活节捐款。

他站了起来。咦，难道我背心上这两颗钮扣早就开了吗?女人们喜欢看到这样。她们是决不会提醒你的。要是我们，就会说一声，对不起，小姐，这儿(哦)有那么一点儿(哦)毛毛。要么就是她们的裙子腰身后边有个钩子开了，露出一弯月牙形[88]。倘若你不提醒一声，她们会气恼的：你为什么不早点儿告诉我?可她们喜欢你更邋遢一些。幸而不是更靠下边的。他边小心翼翼地扣上钮扣，边沿着两排座位之间的通道走去。穿出正门，步入阳光中。他两眼发花，在冰凉的黑色大理石圣水钵旁边伫立片刻。在他前后各有一位信徒，悄悄地用手蘸了蘸浅浅的圣水。电车，普雷斯科特洗染坊的汽车，一位身穿丧服的寡妇。因为我自己就穿着丧服，所以马上就会留意到。他戴上帽子。几点钟啦?十点一刻。时间还从容。不如去配化妆水。那是在哪儿来着?啊，对，上一次去的是林肯广场的斯威尼药房。开药铺的是轻易不会搬家的。他们那些盛着绿色和金色溶液作为标志的瓶子太重了，不好搬动。汉密尔顿•朗药房，还是发大水的那一年开的张呢。离胡格诺派[89]的教会墓地不远。赶明儿去一趟吧。

他沿着韦斯特兰横街朝南踱去。哎呀，处方在另外那条裤子里哪，而且那把大门钥匙我也忘记带了。这档子葬事真令人厌烦。不过，噢，可怜的伙计，这怪不得他。上次是什么时候给我开的处方呢?且慢。记得我是拿一枚金镑让他找的钱，想必是本月一号或二号喽。对，他可以查查处方存根嘛。

药剂师一页页地往回翻着。他好像发散出一股粗涩、枯萎的气味。脑壳萎缩了。而且上了年纪。炼金术士们曾四处寻找点金石。麻醉剂使你的神经亢奋起来，接着就使你衰老。然后陷入昏睡状态。为什么呢?是一种副作用。一夜之间仿佛就过了一生。会使你的性格逐渐起变化。从早到晚在草药、药膏、消毒剂中间消磨岁月。周围都是些雪花石膏般纯白的瓶瓶罐罐。乳钵与乳钵槌。Aq.Dist.FoL.Laur. Te Virid，[90]这气味几乎教你一闻就百病消除，犹如牙科医生的门铃。庸医[91]。他应该给自己治治病。干药糖剂啦，乳剂啦。头一个采下药草试看医治自己的那个人，可真得需要点勇气哩。药用植物。可得多加小心。这里有的是足以使你神志昏迷的东西。做个试验吧，能把蓝色的石蕊试纸变成红色。用氯仿处理。服用了过量的鸦片酊剂。安眠药。春药。止痛用的鸦片糖浆对咳嗽有害处。要么是毛气孔被堵塞，要么就是粘痰反而会多起来。唯一的办法是以毒攻毒。在你最意想不到的地方能找到疗法。大自然多么乖巧啊。

“大约两周以前吗，先生?”

“是的，”布卢姆先生说。

他在柜台跟前等待着，慢慢地嗅着药品那冲鼻子的气味以及海绵和丝瓜瓤那满是灰尘的干燥气味，得花不少时间来诉说自己这儿疼那儿疼呢。

“甜杏仁油、安息香酊剂，”布卢姆先生说，“还有香橙花液……”

这确实使她的皮肤细腻白净如蜡一般。

“还有白蜡，”他说。

那会使她的眸子显得格外乌黑。当我扣着袖口上的链扣的时候，她把被单一直拉到眼睛底下望着我，一派西班牙风韵，并闻着自己的体臭。这种家用偏方往往最灵不过：草莓对牙齿好，荨麻加雨水；据说还有在脱脂乳里浸泡过的燕麦片。皮肤的滋润剂。老迈的女王的儿子当中的一个——就是那位奥尔巴尼公爵吧?对，他名叫利奥波德[92]。他只有一层皮肤。我们有三层。更糟的是，还长着疣子、腱膜瘤和粉刺。然而，你也想要香水啊。你太太使用哪一种香水?西班牙皮肤[93]。香橙花液多么清新啊。那些肥皂的味儿好香，是纯粹的乳白肥皂。还来得及到拐角处去洗个澡——土耳其式的蒸汽浴，外带按摩。泥垢总是积在肚脐眼里。要是由一位漂亮姑娘给按摩就更好了。我还想干那个。是啊，我。在浴缸里干。奇妙的欲望，我。把水排到水星。正经事同找乐子结合起来了。可惜没有时间按摩。反正这一整天都会感到爽快的。葬礼可真教人阴郁。

“哦，先生，”药剂师说，“那是两先令九便士。您带瓶子来了吗?”

“没带，”布卢姆先生说，“请给调配好。今天晚些时候我来取吧。我还要一块这种肥皂。多少钱一块?”

“四便士，先生。”

布卢姆先生把一块肥皂举到鼻孔那儿。蜡状，散发着柠檬的清香。

“我就要这块，”他说，“统共是三先令一便士。”

“是的，先生，”药剂师说，“等您回头来的时候一道付吧，先生。” 

“好的，”布卢姆先生说。

他从药房里溜达出来，把卷起的报纸夹在腋下，左手握着那块用纸包着、摸上去凉丝丝的肥皂。

从他的腋窝下边传来班塔姆•莱昂斯的声音，并且伸过一只手：

“喂，布卢姆，有什么顶好的消息?这是今天的报纸吗?给咱看一眼。”

哎哟，他又刮了口髭!那长长的上唇透出一股凉意。为的是显得少相些。他看上去确实傻里傻气的。比我年轻。

班塔姆•莱昂斯用指甲发黑的黄色手指打开了报纸卷儿。这手也该洗一洗了，去去那层泥垢。早安。你用过皮尔牌肥皂吗[94]?他肩膀上落着头皮屑，脑袋瓜儿该抹抹油啦。

“找想知道一下今天参赛的那匹法国马的消息，”班塔姆•莱昂斯说，“他妈的，登在哪儿呢?”

他把折叠起来的报纸弄得沙沙响，下巴颏在高领上扭动着。长了须癣。领子太紧，头发会掉光的。还不如干脆把报纸丢给他，摆脱了拉倒。

“你拿去看吧，”布卢姆先生说。

“阿斯科特。金杯赛。等一等，”班塔姆•莱昂斯喃喃地说，“等一会儿。马克西穆姆二世[95]。”

“我正要把它丢掉呢，”布卢姆先生说。

班塔姆•莱昂斯蓦地抬起眼睛，茫然地斜瞅着他。

“你说什么来着?”他失声说。

“我说，你可以把它留下，”布卢姆先生回答道，“我正想丢掉[96]呢。”

班塔姆•莱昂斯迟疑了片刻，斜睨着，随后把摊开的报纸塞回布卢姆先生怀里。

“我冒冒风险看，”他说，“喏，谢谢你。”

他朝着康威角[97]匆匆走去。祝这小子成功。

布卢姆先生微笑着，将报纸重新叠成整整齐齐的四方形，把肥皂也塞了进去。那家伙的嘴唇长得蠢。赌博。近来这帮人成天泡在那儿。送信的小伙子们为了弄到六便士的赌本竟去偷窃。只要中了彩，一只肥嫩的大火鸡就到手了。你的圣诞节正餐的代价只是三便士。杰克•弗莱明就是为了赌博而盗用公款的，然后远走高飞去了美国。如今在开着一家饭店。他们是再也不会回来的了。埃及的肉锅[98]。

他高高兴兴地朝那盖得像是一座清真寺的澡堂走去。红砖和 尖塔都会使你联想到伊斯兰教的礼拜寺。原来今天学院里正举行运动会[99]。他望了望贴在学院运动场大门上的那张马蹄形海报：骑自行车的恰似锅里的鳕鱼那样蜷缩着身子[100]。多么蹩脚的广告!哪怕做成像车轮那样圆形的也好嘛。辐条上排列起“运动会、运动会、运动会”字样，轮毂上标上“学院”两个大字。这样一来该多醒目啊。

霍恩布洛尔正站在门房那儿。跟他拉拉关系。兴许只消点点头他就会放你进去转一圈哩。你好吗，霍恩布洛尔先生?你好吗，先生?

天气真是再好不过了。要是一辈子都能像这样该有多好。这正是宜于打板球[101]的天气。在遮阳伞下坐成一圈儿，裁判一再下令改变掷球方向。出局。在这里，他们是没有希望打赢的。六比零。然而主将布勒朝左方的外场守场员猛击出一个长球，竟把基尔达尔街俱乐部的玻璃窗给打碎了。顿尼溪集市[102]更合他们的胃口。麦卡锡一上场，我们砸破了那么多脑壳。[103]一阵热浪，不能持久。生命的长河滚滚向前，我们在流逝的人生中所追溯的轨迹比什么都珍贵。[104]

舒舒服服地洗个澡吧。一大浴缸清水，沁凉的陶瓷，徐缓地流着。这是我的身体。[105]

他预见到自己那赤裸苍白的身子仰卧在温暖的澡水之胎内，手脚尽情地舒展开来，涂满溶化了的滑溜溜的香皂，被水温和地冲洗着。他看见了水在自己那拧檬色的躯体和四肢上面起着涟漪，并托住他，浮力轻轻地把他往上推;看见了状似肉蕾般的肚脐眼;也看见了自己那撮蓬乱的黑色鬈毛在漂浮;那撮毛围绕着千百万个娃娃的软塌塌的父亲——一朵凋萎的漂浮着的花。
Chapter 6 Hades
MARTIN CUNNINGHAM, FIRST, POKED HIS SILKHATTED HEAD INTO the creaking carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr Power stepped in after him, curving his height with care. 
-- Come on, Simon. 

-- After you, Mr Bloom said. 

Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying: 

-- Yes, yes. 

-- Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along, Bloom. 

Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door to after him and slammed it tight till it shut tight. He passed an arm through the armstrap and looked seriously from the open carriage window at the lowered blinds of the avenue. One dragged aside: an old woman peeping. Nose whiteflattened against the pane. Thanking her stars she was passed over. Extraordinary the interest they take in a corpse. Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Job seems to suit them. Huggermugger in corners. Slop about in slipper-slappers for fear he'd wake. Then getting it ready. Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming making the bed. Pull it more to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know who will touch you dead. Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip the nails and the hair. Keep a bit in an envelope. Grow all the same after. Unclean job. 

All waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. I am sitting on something hard. Ah, that soap in my hip pocket. Better shift it out of that. Wait for an opportunity. 

All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front turning: then nearer: then horses' hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move, creaking and swaying. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds of the avenue passed and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar. At walking pace. 

They waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were passing along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. Quicker. The wheels rattled rolling over the cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook rattling in the doorframes. 

-- What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both windows. 

-- Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick street. 

Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out. 

-- That's a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died out. 

All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by passers. Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the smoother road past Watery lane. Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in mourning, a wide hat. 

-- There's a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said. 

-- Who is that? 

-- Your son and heir. 

-- Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across. 

The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway before the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, swerving back to the tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering wheels. Mr Dedalus fell back, saying: 

-- Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates? 

-- No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone. 

-- Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, the Goulding faction, the drunken little cost-drawer and Crissie, papa's little lump of dung, the wise child that knows her own father. 

Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros the bottleworks. Dodder bridge. 

Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and Ward he calls the firm. His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was. Waltzing in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the landlady's two hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage all night. Beginning to tell on him now: that backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing his back. Thinks he'll cure it with pills. All breadcrumbs they are. About six hundred per cent profit. 

-- He's in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I'Il make it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I `Il tickle his catastrophe, believe you me. 

He cried above the clatter of the wheels. 

-- I won't have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counter-jumper's son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Not likely. 

He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and beard, gravely shaking. Noisy selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window, watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up. She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. God, I'm dying for it. How life begins. 

Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her. I could have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent. Learn German too. 

-- Are we late? Mr Power asked. 

-- Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch 

Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she's a dear girl. Soon be a woman. Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too. Life. Life. 

The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying. 

-- Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said. 

-- He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn't that squint troubling him. Do you follow me? 

He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs. 

-- What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs? 

-- Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power said. 

All raised their thighs, eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless leather of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said: 

-- Unless I'm greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin? 

-- It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said. 

Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. 

Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly. 

-- After all, he said, it's the most natural thing in the world. 

-- Did Tom Kernan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked, twirling the peak of his beard gently. 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He's behind with Ned Lambert and Hynes. 

-- And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked. 

-- At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said. 

-- I met M'Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said he'd try to come. 

The carriage halted short. 

-- What's wrong? 

-- We're stopped. 

-- Where are we? 

Mr Bloom put his head out of the window. 

-- The grand canal, he said. 

Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly never got it. Poor children! Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions. Shame really. Got off lightly with illness compared. Only measles. Flaxseed tea. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don't miss this chance. Dogs' home over there. Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We obey them in the grave. A dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined away. Quiet brute. Old men's dogs usually are. 

A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of shower spray dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through a colander. I thought it would. My boots were creaking I remember now. 

-- The weather is changing, he said quietly. 

-- A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said. 

-- Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There's the sun again coming out. 

Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled a mute curse at the sky. 

-- It's as uncertain as a child's bottom, he said. 

-- We're off again. 

The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed gently. Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his beard. 

-- Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy Leonard taking him off to his face. 

-- O draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you hear him, Simon, on Ben Dollard's singing of The Croppy Boy. 

-- Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. His singing of that simple ballad, Martin, is the most trenchant rendering I ever heard in the whole course of my experience. 

-- Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He's dead nuts on that. And the retrospective arrangement. 

-- Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? Martin Cunningham asked. 

-- I did not then, Mr Dedalus said. Where is it? 

-- In the paper this morning. 

Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must change for her. 

-- No, no, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Later on, please. 

Mr Bloom's glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning the deaths. Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what Peake is that? is it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne's? no, Sexton, Urbright. Inked characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper. Thanks to the Little Flower. Sadly missed. To the inexpressible grief of his. Aged 88 after a long and tedious illness. Month's mind. Quinlan. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy. 

It is now a month since dear Henry fled 
To his home up above in the sky 
While his family weeps and mourns his loss 
Hoping some day to meet him on high.
I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it in the bath? He patted his waistcoat pocket. There all right. Dear Henry fled. Before my patience are exhausted. 
National school. Meade's yard. The hazard. Only two there now. Nodding. Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting round with a fare. An hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their hats. 

A pointsman's back straightened itself upright suddenly against a tramway standard by Mr Bloom's window. Couldn't they invent something automatic so that the wheel itself much handler? Well but that fellow would lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job making the new invention? 

Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law, perhaps. 

They went past the bleak pulpit of Saint Mark's, under the railway bridge, past the Queen's theatre: in silence. Hoardings. Eugene Stratton. Mrs Bandman Palmer. Could I go to see Leah tonight, I wonder. I said I. Or the Lily of Killarney? Elster Grimes Opera company. Big powerful change. Wet bright bills for next week. Fun on the Bristol. Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or two. As broad as it's long. 

He's coming in the afternoon. Her songs. 

Plasto's. Sir Philip Crampton's memorial fountain bust. Who was he? 

-- How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to his brow in salute. 

-- He doesn't see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do? 

-- Who? Mr Dedalus asked. 

-- Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his quiff. 

Just that moment I was thinking. 

Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the white disc of a straw hat flashed reply: passed. 

Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees? Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes feel what a person Is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just looking at them: well pared. And after: thinking alone. Body getting a bit softy. I would notice that from remembering. What causes that I suppose the skin can't contract quickly enough when the flesh falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing. Shift stuck between the cheeks behind. 

He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance over their faces. 

Mr Power asked: 

-- How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom? 

-- O very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It's a good idea, you see . 

-- Are you going yourself? 

-- Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to the county Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the chief towns. What you lose on one you can make up on the other. 

-- Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there now. 

-- Have you good artists? 

-- Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we'll have all topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The best, in fact. 

-- And Madame, Mr Power said, smiling. Last but not least. 

Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and clasped them. Smith O'Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there. Woman. Must be his deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage wheeling by Farrell's statue united noiselessly their unresisting knees. 

Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his mouth opening: oot. 

-- Four bootlaces for a penny. 

Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume street. Same house as Molly's namesake. Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford. Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning too. Terrible comedown, poor wretch! kicked about like snuff at a wake. O'Callaghan on his last legs. 

And Madame. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean. Doing her hair, humming: voglio e non vorrei. No: vorrei e non. Looking at the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. Mi trema un poco il. Beautiful on that tre her voice is: weeping tone. A thrust. A throstle. There is a word throstle that expressed that. 

His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power's goodlooking face. Greyish over the ears. Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile does a long way. Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played out pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in Jury's. Or the Moira, was it? 

They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator's form. 

Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power. 

-- Of the tribe of Reuben, he said. 

A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner of Elvery's elephant house showed them a curved hand open on his spine. 

-- In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said. 

Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly: 

-- The devil break the hasp of your back! 

Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as the carriage passed Gray's statue. 

-- We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly. 

His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. He caressed his beard, adding: 

-- Well, nearly all of us. 

Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions' faces. -- That's an awfully good one that's going the rounds about Reuben J. and the son. 

-- About the boatman? Mr Power asked. 

-- Yes. Isn't it awfully good? 

-- What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn't hear it. 

-- There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined to send him to the isle of Man out of harm's way but when they were both... 

-- What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it? 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried to drown... 

-- Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did! 

Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils. 

-- No, Mr Bloom said the son himself... 

Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely. 

-- Reuben J. and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on their way to the isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got loose and over the wall with him into the Liffey. 

-- For God's sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead? 

-- Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and fished him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the father on the quay. More dead than alive. Half the town was there. 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is... 

-- And Reuben J., Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a florin for saving his son's life. 

A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power's hand. 

-- O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin. 

-- Isn't it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly. 

-- One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily. Mr Power's choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage. Nelson's pillar. 

-- Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny! 

-- We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said. 

Mr Dedalus sighed. 

-- And then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a laugh. Many a good one he told himself. 

-- The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet eyes with his fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last and he was in his usual health that I'd be driving after him like this. He's gone from us. 

-- As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He went very suddenly. 

-- Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart. 

He tapped his chest sadly. 

Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose. Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent colouring it. 

Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension. 

-- He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said. 

-- The best death, Mr Bloom said. 

Their wide open eyes looked at him. 

-- No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep. 

No-one spoke. 

Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents, temperance hotel, Falconer's railway guide, civil service college, Gill's, catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or wind. At night too. Chummies and slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father Mathew. Foundation stone for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart. 

White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun. 

-- Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child. 

A dwarf's face mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it's healthy it's from the mother. If not the man. Better luck next time. 

-- Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It's well out of it. 

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns. 

-- In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said. 

-- But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life. 

Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back. 

-- The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added. 

-- Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We must take a charitable view of it. 

-- They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said. 

-- It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said. 

Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham's large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare's face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful drunkard of a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after time and then pawning the furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear the heart out of a stone, that. Monday morning start afresh. Shoulder to the wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that night, Dedalus told me he was in there. Drunk about the place and capering with Martin's umbrella: 

And they call me the jewel of Asia, 
Of Asia, 
The geisha.
He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones. 
That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the slats of the Venetian blinds. The coroner's ears, big and hairy. Boots giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold. 

No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns. 

The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones. 

-- We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham said. 

-- God grant he doesn't upset us on the road, Mr Power said. 

-- I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race tomorrow in Germany. The Gordon Bennett. 

-- Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith. 

As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead march from Saul. He's as bad as old Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette! The Mater Misericordiae. Eccles street. My house down there. Big place. Ward for incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady's Hospice for the dying. Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died. They look terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He's gone over to the lying-in hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other. 

The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped. 

-- What's wrong now? 

A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted bony croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear. 

-- Emigrants, Mr Power said. 

-- Huuuh! the drover's voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks. Huuuh! Out of that! 

Thursday of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold them about twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roast beef for old England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter is lost: all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a year. Dead meat trade. Byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap, margarine. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off the train at Clonsilla. 

The carriage moved on through the drove. 

-- I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be taken in trucks down to the boats. 

-- Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham said. Quite right. They ought to. 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought is to have municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all. Don't you see what I mean? 

-- O that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car and saloon diningroom. 

-- A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added. 

-- Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn't it be more decent than galloping two abreast? 

-- Well, there's something in that, Mr Dedalus granted. 

-- And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn't have scenes like that when the hearse capsized round Dunphy's and upset the coffin on to the road. 

-- That was terrible, Mr Power's shocked face said, and the corpse fell about the road. Terrible! 

-- First round Dunphy's, Mr Dedalus aid, nodding. Gordon Bennett cup. 

-- Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously. 

Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all. 

-- Dunphy's, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right. 

Dunphy's corner. Mourning coaches drawn up drowning their grief. A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we'll pull up here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life. 

But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in the knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It would be better to bury them in red: a dark red. 

In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse trotted by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved. 

Crossguns bridge: the royal canal. 

Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his dropping barge between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a slacktethered horse. Aboard of the Bugabu. 

Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mud-choked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady's. Developing waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will without writing. Come as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down, lock by lock to Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown strawhat, saluting Paddy Dignam. 

They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now. 

-- I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power said. 

-- Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said. 

-- How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping I suppose. 

-- Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear. 

The carriage steered left for Finglas road. 

The stonecutter's yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing. The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor. 

Passed. 

On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary the sexton's an old tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. After life's journey. 

Gloomy gardens then went by, one by one: gloomy houses. 

Mr Power pointed. 

-- That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house. 

-- So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off. Murdered his brother. Or so they said. 

-- The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said. 

-- Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham said. That's the maxim of the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person to be wrongfully condemned. 

They looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully condemned. Murder. The murderer's image in the eye of the murdered. They love reading about it. Man's head found in a garden. Her clothing consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used. Murderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed. Murder will out. 

Cramped in this carriage. She mightn't like me to come that way without letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen. 

The high railings of Prospects rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars, rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air. 

The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin Cunningham put out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door open with his knee. He stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus followed. 

Change that soap now. Mr Bloom's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief pocket. He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand still held. 

Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It's all the same. Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death. Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? Mourners coming out. 

He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert followed, Hynes walking after them. Corny Kelleher stood by the opened hearse and took out the two wreaths. He handed one to the boy. 

Where is that child's funeral disappeared to? 

A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread, dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted. 

Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it with his plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on a bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they cart out here every day? Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for the protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute. Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world. 

Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl's face stained with dirt and tears, holding the woman's arm looking up at her for a sign to cry. Fish's face, bloodless and livid. 

The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the stiff: then the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed with their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law. 

All walked after. 

Martin Cunningham whispered: 

-- I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom. 

-- What? Mr Power whispered. How so? 

-- His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the Queen's hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare. Anniversary. 

-- O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself! 

He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes followed towards the cardinal's mausoleum. Speaking. 

-- Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked. 

-- I believe so, Mr Kernan answered, but the policy was heavily mortgaged. Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artane. 

-- How many children did he leave? 

-- Five. Ned Lambert says he'll try to get one of the girls into Todd's. 

-- A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children. 

-- A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added. 

-- Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed. 

Has the laugh at him now. 

He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had outlived him, lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you'll soon follow him. For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who knows after? Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts. All for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance. Something new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting. It never comes. One must go first: alone under the ground: and lie no more in her warm bed. 

-- How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands. Haven't seen you for a month of Sundays. 

-- Never better. How are all in Cork's own town? 

-- I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned Lambert said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy. 

-- And how is Dick, the solid man? 

-- Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered. 

-- By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald? 

-- Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert said, pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the insurance is cleared up. 

-- Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front? 

-- Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife's brother. John Henry Menton is behind. He put down his name for a quid. 

-- I'll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy he ought to mind that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world. 

-- How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what? 

-- Many a good man's fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh. 

They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Bloom stood behind the boy with the wreath, looking down at his sleek combed hair and the slender furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he there when the father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment and recognise for the last time. All he might have done. I owe three shillings to O'Grady. Would he understand? The mutes bore the coffin into the chapel. Which end is his head. 

After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened light. The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow candles at its corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each fore corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and there in praying desks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, when all had knelt dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and knelt his right knee upon it. He fitted his black hat gently on his left knee and, holding its brim, bent over piously. 

A server, bearing a brass bucket with something in it, came out through a door. The whitesmocked priest came after him tidying his stole with one hand, balancing with the other a little book against his toad's belly. Who'll read the book? I, said the rook. 

They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book with a fluent croak. 

Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Dominenamine. Bully about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe betide anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him like a poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst sideways. 

-- Non intres in judicium cum servo tuo, Domine. 

Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist. Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too. What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of baa gas round the place. Butchers for instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Brown. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and you're a goner. 

My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That's better. 

The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy's bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and shook it again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you were before you rested. It's all written down: he has to do it. 

-- Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. 

The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that of course. 

Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded business men, consumptive girls with little sparrow's breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all ad shook water on top of them: sleep. On Dignam now. 

-- In paradisum. 

Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something. 

The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server. Corny Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the coffin again, carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Corny Kelleher gave one wreath to the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All followed them out of the sidedoors into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom came last, folding his paper again into his pocket. He gazed gravely at the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the left. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt boots followed the barrow along a lane of sepulchres. 

The ree the ra the Fee the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn't lilt here. 

-- The O'Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him. 

Mr Power's soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone. 

-- He's at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O'. But his heart is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here, Simon! 

-- Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I'Il soon be stretched beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes. 

Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little in his walk. Mr Power took his arm. 

-- She's better where she is, he said kindly. 

-- I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in heaven if there is a heaven. 

Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed the mourners to plod by. 

-- Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely. 

Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head. 

-- The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place. 

They covered their heads. 

-- The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don't you think? Mr Kernan said with reproof. 

Mr Bloom nodded gravely, looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret eyes, secret searching eyes. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We are the last. In the same boat. Hope he'll say something else. 

Mr Kernan added: 

-- The service of the Irish church, used in Mount Jerome, is simpler, more impressive, I must say. 

Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another thing. 

Mr Kernan said with solemnity: 

-- I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man's inmost heart. 

-- It does, Mr Bloom said. 

Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two with his toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections. Broken heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets bunged up and there you are. Lots of them lying around here: lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves. Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his traps. Find damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder in a skull. Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure. 

Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side. 

-- Everything went off A 1, he said. What? 

He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman's shoulders. With your tooraloom tooraloom. 

-- As it should be, Mr Kernan said. 

-- What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said. 

Mr Kernan assured him. 

-- Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I know his face. 

Ned Lambert glanced back. 

-- Bloom, he said, Madam Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the soprano. She's his wife. 

-- O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven't seen her for some time. She was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen seventeen golden years ago, at Mat Dillon's, in Roundtown. And a good armful she was. 

He looked behind through the others. 

-- What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn't he in the stationery line? I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls. 

Ned Lambert smiled. 

-- Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. A traveller for blottingpaper. 

-- In God's name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like that for? She had plenty of game in her then. 

-- Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads. 

John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead. 

The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among the grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps. 

-- John O'Connell, Mr Power said, pleased. He never forgets a friend. 

Mr O'Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said: 

-- I am come to pay you another visit. 

-- My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don't want your custom at all. 

Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at Martin Cunningham's side, puzzling two keys at his back. 

-- Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe? 

-- I did not, Martin Cunningham said. 

They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watch chain and spoke in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. 

-- They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for Mulcahy from the Coombe and were told where he was buried. After traipsing about in the fog they found the grave, sure enough. One of the drunks spelt out the name: Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking up at a statue of our Saviour the widow had got put up. 

The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He resumed: 

-- And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, Not a bloody bit like the man, says he. That's not Mulcahy, says he, whoever done it. 

Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher, accepting the dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as he walked. 

-- That's all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to Hynes. 

-- I know, Hynes said, I know that. 

-- To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It's pure goodheartedness: damn the thing else. 

Mr Bloom admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. All want to be on good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O'Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out, no passout checks. Habeat corpus. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it's not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That's the first sign when the hairs come out grey and temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder how he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting death... Shades of night hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O'Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o'the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still they'd kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead. Smell of frilled beefsteaks to the starving gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway. 

He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too, trim grass and edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well so it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens are just over there. It's the blood sinking in the earth gives new life. Same idea those jews they said killed the christian boy. Every man his price. Well preserved fat corpse gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds thirteen and six. With thanks. 

I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpse manure, bones, flesh, nails, charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink, decomposing. Rot quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, treacle oozing out of them. Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed on themselves. 

But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little seaside gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at life. Cracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one about the bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 A.M. this morning. 11 P.M. (closing time). Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves the men anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to know what's in fashion. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep out the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke about the dead for two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life. 

-- How many have you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked. 

-- Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven. 

The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose on the brink, looping the bands round it. 

Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March or June. He doesn't know who is here nor care. 

Now who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh? Now who is he I'd like to know? Now, I'd give a trifle to know who he is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it. 

O, poor Robinson Crusoe, 
How could you possibly do so?
Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding let it down that way. Ay but they might object to be buried out of another fellow's. They're so particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even in the earth. The Irishman's house is his coffin. Enbalming in catacombs, mummies, the same idea. 
Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen. Death's number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the chapel, that I'll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen. 

Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had one like that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he was once. Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of mine turned by Mesias. Hello. It's dyed. His wife I forgot he's not married or his landlady ought to have picked out those threads for him. 

The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty. 

Pause. 

If we were all suddenly somebody else. 

Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one, they say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away. 

Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper. The boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly in the black open space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly kindly caretaker. Well cut frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps to see which will go next. Well it is a long rest. Feel no more. It's the moment you feel. Must be damned unpleasant. Can't believe it at first. Mistake must be: someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I haven't yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering around you. Would you like to see a priest? Then rambling and wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life. The death struggle. His sleep is not natural. Press his lower eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his feet yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he's doomed. Devil in that picture of sinner's death showing him a woman. Dying to embrace her in his shirt. Last act of Lucia. Shall I nevermore behold thee? Bam! expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit: forget you. Don't forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers. Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole one after the other. 

We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire of purgatory. 

Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy's warning. Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma poor mamma, and little Rudy. 

The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned his face. And if he was alive all the time? Whew! By Jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course. Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there's no. 

The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind. 

The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had enough of it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering themselves without show. Mr Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly figure make its way deftly through the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his ground, he traversed the dismal fields. 

Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he knows them all. No: coming to me. 

-- I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What is your christian name? I'm not sure. 

-- L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M'Coy's name too. He asked me to. 

Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the Freeman once. 

So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne. Good idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they know. He died of a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few ads. Charley, you're my darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, does no harm. I saw to that, M'Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged. Leave him under an obligation: costs nothing. 

-- And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was over there in the. 

He looked around. 

-- Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now? 

-- M'Intosh, Hynes said, scribbling, I don't know who he is. Is that his name? 

He moved away, looking about him. 

-- No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes! 

Didn't hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of all the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good Lord, what became of him? 

A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle spade. 

-- O, excuse me! 

He stepped aside nimbly. 

Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over. A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath against a corner: the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then knocked the blades lightly on the turf: clean. One bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing. Silently at the gravehead another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord. The brother-in-law, turning away, placed something in his free hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir: trouble. Headshake. I know that. For yourselves just. 

The mourners moved away slowly, without aim, by devious paths, staying awhile to read a name on a tomb. 

-- Let us go round by the chief's grave, Hynes said. We have time. 

-- Let us, Mr Power said. 

They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr Power's blank voice spoke: 

-- Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled with stones. That one day he will come again. 

Hynes shook his head. 

-- Parnell will never come again, he said. He's there, all that was mortal of him. Peace to his ashes. 

Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. Then lump them together to save time. All souls' day. Twentyseventh I'll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He keeps it free of weeds. Old man himself. Bent down double with his shears clipping. Near death's door. Who passed away. Who departed this life. As if they did it of their own accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the bucket. More interesting if they told you what they were. So and so, wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino. I paid five shillings in the pound. Or a woman's with her saucepan. I cooked good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country churchyard it ought to be that poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas Campbell. Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren's. The great physician called him home. Well it's God's acre for them. Nice country residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke and read the Church Times. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for the money. Still, the flowers are more poetical. The other gets rather tiresome, never withering. Expresses nothing. Immortelles. 

A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hu! Not a budge out of him. Knows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even sadder. Silly-Milly burying the little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the grave. 

The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. 

Ought to be sideways and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was dedicated to it or whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this infliction? Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the basket of fruit but he said no because they ought to have been afraid of the boy. Apollo that was. 

How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed. As you are now so once were we. 

Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeragain hellohello amarawf kopthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn't remember the face after fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance some fellow that died when I was in Wisdom Hely's. 

Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop. 

He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait. There he goes. 

An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it. Good hidingplace for treasure. 

Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert Emmet was buried here by torchlight, wasn't he? Making his rounds. 

Tail gone now. 

One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese say a while man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime fever pits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down. Underground communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn't be surprised. Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he's well dead. Got wind of Dignam. They wouldn't care about the smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling mush of corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips. 

The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again. Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I was here was Mrs Sinico's funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills. And even scraping up the earth at night with a lantern like that case I read of to get at fresh buried females or even putrefied with running gravesores. Give you the creeps after a bit. I will appear to you after death. You will see my ghost after death. My ghost will haunt you after death. There is another world after death named hell. I do not like that other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in their maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings. Warm beds: warm fullblooded life. 

Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely. 

Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton. John Henry, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be In his office. Mat Dillon's long ago. Jolly Mat convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out that evening on the bowling green because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of mine: the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at first sight. Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the lilactree, laughing. Fellow always like that, mortified if women are by. 

Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably. 

-- Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them. 

They stopped. 

-- Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said, pointing. 

John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving. 

-- There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also. 

John Henry Menton took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care on his coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his head again. 

-- It's all right now, Martin Cunningham said. 

John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment. 

-- Thank you, he said shortly. 

They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew behind a few paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the law. Martin could wind a sappyhead like that round his little finger without his seeing it. 

Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him. Get the pull over him that way. 

Thank you. How grand we are this morning. 


马丁•坎宁翰首先把戴着丝质大礼帽的头伸进嘎嘎作响的马车，轻捷地进去落座了。鲍尔[1]先生小心翼翼地弯着修长的身躯，跟在他后面也上了车。

“来吧，西蒙。”

“您先上，”布卢姆先生说。

迪达勒斯先生匆匆戴上帽子，边上车边说：

“好的，好的。”

“人都齐了吗？”马丁•坎宁翰问：“上车吧，布卢姆。”

布卢姆先生上了车，在空位子上落座。他反手带上车门，咣噹了两下，直到把它撞严实了才撒手。他将一只胳膊套在拉手吊带里，神情严肃地从敞着的车窗里眺望马路旁那一扇扇拉得低低的百叶窗[2]。有一副帘子被拉到一边， 一个老妪正向外窥视。鼻子贴在玻璃窗上又白又扁。她在感谢命运这一遭儿总算饶过了自已。妇女们对尸体所表示的兴趣是异乎寻常的。我们来到世上时给了她们那么多麻烦，所以她们乐意看到我们走。她们好像适合于干这种活儿。在角落里鬼鬼祟祟的。趿拉着拖鞋，轻手轻脚地，生怕惊醒了他。然后给他装裹，以便入殓。摩莉和弗莱明大妈[3]在往棺材里面铺着什么。再往你那边拽拽呀。我们的包尸布。 你决不会知道自己死后谁会来摸你。洗身子啦，洗头啦。我相信她们还会给他剪指甲和头发，并且装在信封里保存一点儿。这之后，照样会长哩。这可是件脏活儿。

大家伫候着，谁也不吭一声儿。大概是在装花圈哪。我坐在硬邦邦的东西上面。唔，原来是我后裤兜儿里的那块香皂。最好把它挪一挪，等有机会再说。

大家全在伫候。过一会儿，前方传来了车轮的转动声，越来越挨近，接着就是马蹄声。车身颠簸了一下。他们的马车开始前进了，摇摇摆摆，吱嘎作响。后面也响起了另外一些马蹄的声音和车轱辘的吱吜声。马路旁的百叶窗向后移动;门环上蒙着黑纱的九号[4]那半掩着的大门，也以步行的速度过去了。

他们依然坐在那里一声不响，膝盖抖动着。直到车子拐了个弯，沿着电车轨道走去，这时才打破了沉寂。特里顿维尔路。速度加快了。车轮在卵石铺成的公路上咯噔咯噔地向前滚动，像是发了疯似的玻璃在车门框里咔嗒咔嗒地震颤着。

“他这是拉着咱们走哪条路啊？”鲍尔先生隔看车窗边东张西望，边问。

“爱尔兰区，”马丁•坎宁翰说，“这是林森德。布伦斯威克大街。”

迪达勒斯先生朝车窗外望着，点了点头。

“这是个古老的好风习[5]，”他说，“我很高兴如今还没有废除。”

大家隔看车窗望了望。行人纷纷脱便帽或礼帽，表示敬意呢。马车径过沃特利巷后就离开电车轨道，走上较为平坦的路。布卢姆先生定睛望望，只见有个身材细溜、穿着丧服、头戴宽檐帽的青年。

“迪达勒斯，你的一个熟人刚刚走过去了，”他说。

“谁呀？”

“你的公子和继承人。”

“他在哪儿？”迪达勒斯说着，斜探过身子来。

马车正沿着一排公寓房子驰去，房前的路面上挖出一条条明沟，沟旁是一溜儿土堆。在拐角处车身蓦地歪了歪，又折回到电车轨道上了，车轮喧闹地咯噔咯噔向前滚动。迪达勒斯先生往后靠了靠身子，说：

“穆利根那家伙跟他在一道吗？他的忠实的阿卡帖斯[6]!”

“没有，”布卢姆先生说，“就他一个人。”

“大概是看他的萨莉舅妈去啦，”迪达勒斯说，“古尔丁那一伙儿，喝得醉醺醺的小成本会计师，还有克莉西，爸爸的小屎橛子，知父莫如聪明的小妞儿。”

布卢姆先生望着林森德路凄然一笑。华莱士兄弟瓶厂：多德尔桥。

里奇•古尔丁和律师用的公文包。他管这事务所叫作古尔丁－科利斯－ 沃德[7]。他开的玩笑如今越来越没味儿了。从前他可是个大淘气包。一个星期天早晨，他用饰针把房东太太的两顶帽子别在头上，同伊格内修斯•加拉赫[8] 一道在斯塔默街上跳起华尔兹舞，通宵达旦地在外边疯闹。如今他可垮下来了，我看他的背痛，就是当年埋下的根子。老婆替他按摩背。他满以为服点药丸就能痊愈。其实那统统都只不过是面包渣子。利润高达百分之六百左右。

“他跟一帮下贱痞子鬼混，”迪达勒斯先生骂道，“大家都说，那个穆利根就是个坏透了的流氓，心肠狠毒，堕落到了极点。他的名字臭遍了整个都柏林城。在天主和圣母的佑助下，我迟早非写封信给他老娘、姑妈或是什么人不可。叫她看了，会把眼睛瞪得像门一样大。我要隔肢他屁股![9]我说话算数。”

他用大得足以压住车轮咯咯声的嗓门嚷着：

“我绝不能听任她那个杂种侄子毁掉我儿子。他爹是个站柜台的，在我表弟彼得•保罗•麦克斯威尼的店里卖棉线带。我决不让他得逞。”

他住了嘴。布卢姆先生把视线从他那愤怒的口髭，移到鲍尔先生那和蔼的面容，以及马丁•坎宁翰的眼睛和严肃地摇曳着的胡子上。好一个吵吵闹闹、固执己见的人。满脑子都是儿子。他说得对。总得有个继承人啊。倘若小鲁迪还在世的话，我就可以看看他长大。在家里能听到他的声音。他穿着一身伊顿[10]式的制服，和摩莉并肩而行。我的儿子。他眼中的我。那必然会是一番异样的感觉。我的子嗣。纯粹是出于偶然。准是那天早晨发生在雷蒙德高台街的事。她正从窗口眺望着两条狗在“停止作恶”[11]的墙边搞着。有个警官笑嘻嘻地仰望着。她穿的是那件奶油色长袍，已经绽了线，可她始终也没缝上。摸摸我，波尔迪。天哪，我想得要死。这就是生命的起源。

于是，她有了身孕。葛雷斯顿斯[12]音乐会的邀请也只好推掉。我的儿子在她肚子里。倘若他活着，我原是可以一直帮助他的。那是肯定的。让他能够自立，还学会德语。

“咱们来迟了吗？”鲍尔先生问。

“迟了十分钟，”马丁•坎宁翰边看看表边说。

摩莉。米莉。一个模子里刻出来的，就是单薄了一点。是个假小子，满嘴村话。呸，跳跳蹦蹦的朱庇特哪!你这天神和小鱼儿哪!可她毕竟是个招人疼的好姐儿，很快就要成为妇人啦。穆林加尔。最亲爱的爹爹。年轻学生。是啊，是啊，也是个妇人哩。人生啊，人生。

马车左摇右晃，他们四个人的身躯也跟着颠簸。

“科尼蛮可以给咱们套一辆更宽绰些的车嘛，”鲍尔先生说。

“他原是可以的，”迪达勒斯先生说，“要不是被那斜视症折腾的话。你懂我的意思吗？”

他阖上了左眼。马丁•坎宁翰开始把腿下的面包渣子撢掉。

“这是什么呀，”他说，“天哪，是面包渣儿吗？”

“想必新近有人在这儿举行过野餐哩，”鲍尔先生说。

大家都抬起腿来，厌恶地瞅着那散发着霉臭、扣子也脱落了的座位皮面。迪达勒斯先生抽着鼻子，蹙眉朝下望望说：

“除非是我完全误会了……你觉得怎么样，马丁？”

“我也这么认为，”马丁•坎宁翰说。

布卢姆先生把大腿放下来。亏得我洗了那个澡。脚上感到很清爽。可要是弗莱明大妈替我把这双短袜补得更细一点就好了。

迪达勒浙先生无可奈何地叹了口气。

“这毕竟是，”他说，“世界上最自然不过的事。”

“汤姆•克南露面了吗？”马丁•坎宁翰慢条斯理地捻着胡子梢儿，问道。

“来啦，”布卢姆先生回答说：“他跟内德•兰伯特[13]和海因斯[14]一道坐在后面哪。”

“还有科尼、凯莱赫本人呢？”鲍尔先生问。

“他到公墓去啦，”马丁•坎宁翰说。

“今天早晨我遇见了麦科伊，”布卢姆先生说，“他说他尽可能来。”

马车猛地停住了。

“怎么啦？”

“堵车了。”

“咱们这是在哪儿呢？”

布卢姆先生从车窗里探出头去。

“大运河，”他说。

煤气厂。听说这能治百日咳哩。亏得米莉从来没患上过。可怜的娃娃们! 痉挛得都蜷缩成一团了，脸上青一块紫一块的。真够受的。相形之下，她患的病倒比较轻，不过是麻疹而已。煎亚麻籽[15]。猩红热。流行性感冒。我这是在替死神兜揽广告哪。可别错过这个机会。狗收容所就在那边。可怜的老阿索斯[16]! 好好照料阿索斯，利奥波德，这是我最后的愿望。愿你的旨意实现[17]。对坟墓里的人们我们总是唯命是从。那是他弥留之际潦潦草草写下的。狗伤心得衰竭而死。那是一只温和驯顺的家畜。老人养的狗通常都是这样的。

吧嗒一声一滴雨点落在他的帽子上。他缩回脖子。接着，一阵骤雨嘀嘀嗒嗒地落在灰色的石板路上。奇怪，稀稀落落的，就像是漏勺滤下来的。我料到会下。想起来啦，我的靴子咯吱咯吱直响来着。

“变天啦，”他安详地说。

“可惜没一直晴下去，”马丁•坎宁翰说。

“乡下可盼着雨哪，”鲍尔先生说，“太阳又出来啦。”

迪达勒斯先生透过眼镜凝视着那遮着一层云彩的太阳，朝天空默默地发出诅咒。

“它就跟娃娃的屁股一样没准儿，”他说。

“咱们又走啦。”

马车又转动起那硬邦邦的轱辘了。他们的身子轻轻地晃悠着。马丁•坎宁翰加快了捻胡须梢儿的动作。

“昨天晚上汤姆•克南真了不起，”他说，“帕迪•伦纳德[18]当面学他那样儿取笑他。”

“噢，马丁，把他的话都引出来吧，”鲍尔先生起劲地说，“西蒙，你等着听克南对本•多拉德唱的《推平头的小伙子》[19]所做的评论吧。”

“了不起，”马丁•坎宁翰用夸张的口气说，“马丁啊，他把那支纯朴的民歌唱绝了，是我这辈子所听到的气势最为磅礴的演唱。”

“气势磅礴，”鲍尔先生笑着说，“他最喜欢用这个字眼，还爱说‘回顾性的编排’。”[20]

“你们读了丹•道森的演说吗？”马丁•坎宁翰问。

“我还没读呢，”迪达勒斯先生说，“登在哪儿啦？”

“今天早晨的报纸上。”

布卢姆先生从内兜里取出那张报。我得给她换那本书。

“别，别，”迪达勒斯先生连忙说，“回头再说吧。”

布卢姆先生的目光顺着报纸过往下扫视着讣闻栏：卡伦、科尔曼、 迪格纳穆、福西特、劳里、瑙曼、皮克。是哪个皮克[21]呢？是在克罗斯比——艾莱恩那儿工作的那家伙吗？不对，是厄布赖特教堂同事。报纸磨破了，上头的油墨字迹很快就模糊了。向“小花”[22]致以谢忱。深切的哀悼。遗族难以形容的悲恸。久患顽症，医治无效，终年八十八岁。为昆兰举行的周月追思弥撒。仁慈的耶稣，怜悯他的灵魂吧。

亲人亨利已遁去，

住进天室今月弥， 

遗族哀伤并悲泣，

翘盼苍穹重相聚。

我把那个信封撕掉了吗？撕掉啦。我在澡堂子里看完她那封信之后，放在哪儿啦？他拍了拍背心上的兜。在这儿放得安安妥妥的。亲人亨利已遁去。趁着我的耐心还没有耗尽。

国立小学。米德木材堆放场。出租马车停车场。如今只剩下两辆了。马在打磕睡，肚子鼓得像壁虱。马的头盖上，骨头太多了。另一辆载着客人转悠哪。一个钟头以前，我曾打这儿经过。马车夫们举了举帽子。

在布卢姆先生这扇车窗旁边，一个弯着腰的扳道员忽然背着电车的电杆直起了身子。难道他们不能发明一种自动装置吗？那样，车轮转动得就更便当了。不过，那样一来就会砸掉此人饭碗了吧？但是另一个人都会捞到制造这种新发明的工作吧？

安蒂恩特音乐堂。眼下什么节目也没上演。有个身穿一套淡黄色衣服的男子，臂上佩带着黑纱。他服的是轻丧，不像是怎么悲伤的样子。兴许是个姻亲吧。

他们默默地经过铁道陆桥下圣马可教堂那光秃秃的讲道坊， 又经过女王剧院。海报牌上是尤金•斯特拉顿[23]和班德曼•帕默夫人。也不晓得我今天晚上能不能去看《丽亚》。我原说是要去的。要么就去看《基拉尼的百合》[24]吧？由埃尔斯特•格莱姆斯歌剧团演出。做了大胆的革新。刚刚刷上去、色彩鲜艳的下周节目预告：《布里斯托尔号的愉快航行》[25]。马丁•坎宁翰总能替我弄到一张欢乐剧院的免费券吧。得请他喝上一两杯，反正是一个样。

下午他[26]就来了。她的歌儿。

普拉斯托帽店。纪念菲利普•克兰普顿爵士[27]的喷泉雕像。这是谁[28]呀？

“你好!”马丁•坎宁翰边说边把巴掌举到额头那儿行礼。

“他没瞧见咱们，”鲍尔先生说，“啊，他瞧见啦。你好!”

“是谁呀？”迪达勒斯先生问。

“是布莱泽斯•博伊兰，”鲍尔先生说，他正摘下帽子让他的鬈发透透风哪。

此刻我刚好想到了他。

迪达勒斯先生探过身去打招呼。红沙洲餐厅[29]的门口那儿，白色圆盘状的草帽闪了一下，作为回礼。潇洒的身影过去了。

布卢姆先生端详了一下自已左手的指甲，接着又看右手的。是呀，指甲。除了魅力而外，妇女们，她，在他身上还能看得到旁的什么呢？魅力。他是都柏林最坏的家伙，却凭着这一点活得欢欢势势。妇女们有时能够感觉出对方是个什么样的人。这是一种本能。然而像他那种类型的人嘛。我的指甲。我正瞅着指甲呢。修剪得整整齐齐。然后，我就独自在想着。浑身的皮肉有点儿松软了。我能发觉这一点，因为我记得原先是什么样子。这是怎么造成的呢？估计是肉掉了，而皮肤收缩得却没那么快。但是身材总算保持下来了。依然保持了身材。肩膀。臀部。挺丰满的。舞会的晚上换装时，衬衣后摆竟夹在屁股缝儿里了。

他十指交叉，夹在双膝之间，感到心满意足，茫然地环视着他们的脸。

鲍尔先生问：

“巡回音乐会进行得怎样啦，布卢姆？”

“哦，好极啦，”布卢姆先生说，“我听说，颇受重视哩。你瞧，这可真是个好主意……”

“你本人也去吗？”

“哦，不，”布卢姆先生说，“说实在的，我得到克莱尔郡[30]去办点私事。你要知道，这个计划是把几座主要城镇都转上一圈。这儿闹了亏空，可以上那儿去弥补。”

“可不是嘛，”马丁•坎宁翰说，“玛丽•安德森[31]眼下在北边哪。你们有能手吗？”

“路易斯•沃纳[32]是我老婆的经纪人，”布卢姆先生说，“啊，对呀， 所有那些第一流的我们都能邀来。我希望J•C.多伊尔和约翰•麦科马克[33]也会来。确实是出类拔萃的。”

“还有夫人[34]哪，”鲍尔先生笑眯眯地说，“压轴儿的。”

布卢姆先生松开手指，打了个谦恭和蔼的手势，随即双手交叉起来。史密斯•奥布赖恩[35]。有人在那儿放了一束鲜花。女人。准是他的忌日喽。多福多寿。[36]马车从法雷尔[37]所塑造的那座雕像跟前拐了个弯。于是，他们就听任膝头毫无声息地碰在一起。

“靴子……”

一个衣着不起眼的老人站在路边，举着他要卖的东西，张着嘴，靴。

“靴子带儿，一便士四根。”

不晓得此人是怎么被除名的。本来他在休姆街开过自己的事务所。跟与摩莉同姓的那位沃德福德郡政府律师特威迪在同一座房屋里。打那时候起，就有了那顶大礼帽。住昔体面身份的遗迹。[38]他还服着丧哪。可怜的苦命人，潦倒不堪!像是守灵夜的鼻烟似的，被人踢来踢去。[39]奥卡拉汉已经落魄了[40]。

还有夫人[41]哪。十一点二十分了。起床啦。弗莱明大妈已经来打扫了。她一边哼唱，一边梳理头发。我要，又不愿意。[42]不，应该是，我愿意，又不愿意。[43]她在端详自己的头发梢儿分叉了没有。我的心跳得快了一点儿。[44]唱到tre这个音节时，她的嗓音多么圆润，声调有多么凄切。鸫鸟。画眉。画眉一词正是用来形容这种歌喉的。

他悄悄地扫视了一下鲍尔先生那张五官端正的脸。鬓角已花白了。他是笑眯眯地提到夫人的，我也报以微笑。微微笑，顶大用。也许只是出于礼貌吧。蛮好的一个人。人家说他有外遇，谁晓得是真是假？反正对他老婆来说，这可不是什么愉快的事。然而他们又说——是什么人告诉我的来着？并没有发生肉体关系。谁都会认为，那样很快就会吹台的。对啦，是克罗夫顿[45]。有个傍晚撞见他正给她带去一磅牛腿扒。她是干什么的来着？朱里饭店的酒吧女招待，要么就是莫伊拉饭店的吧？

他们从那位披着八斗篷的解放者[46]的铜像下面经过。

马丁•坎宁翰用臂肘轻轻地碰了碰鲍尔先生。

“吕便支族的后裔[47]，”他说。

一个留着黑胡须的高大身影，弯腰拄着拐棍，趔趔趄趄地绕过埃尔韦里的象记商店[48]拐角，只见一只张着的手巴掌弯过来放在脊梁上。

“保留了原始的全部英姿，”鲍尔先生说。

迪达勒斯先生目送着那抱着沉重脚步而去的背影，温和地说：

“就欠恶魔没弄断你那脊梁骨的大筋啦!”

鲍尔先生在窗边一手遮着脸，笑得弯了腰。这时马车正从格雷[49]的雕像前经过。

“咱们都到他那儿去过了，”马丁•坎宁翰直率地说。

他的目光同布卢姆先生的相遇。他捋捋胡子，补上一句：

“喏，差不多人人都去过啦。”

布卢姆先生望着那些同车人的脸，抽冷子热切地说了起来：

“关于吕便•杰和他儿子，有个非常精彩的传闻。”

“是船家那档子事吗？”鲍尔先生问。

“是啊。非常精彩吧？”

“什么事呀？”迪达勒斯先生问，“我没听说。”

“牵涉到一位姑娘，”布卢姆先生讲起来了，“于是为了安全起见，他打定主意把儿子送到曼岛[50]上去。可是爷儿俩正……”

“什么？就是那个声名狼藉的小伙子吗？”

“是啊，”布卢姆先生说，“爷儿俩正要去搭船，他却想跳下水去淹死……”

“淹死巴拉巴[51]!老天爷，我但愿他能淹死!”

鲍尔先生从那用手遮住的鼻孔里发出的笑声持续了好半晌。

“不是，”布卢姆先生说，“是儿子本人……”

马丁•坎宁翰粗暴地插嘴说，

“吕便•杰和他儿子沿着河边的码头往下走，正准备搭乘开往曼岛的船，那个小骗子忽然溜掉，翻过堤坝纵身跳进了利菲河。”

“天哪!”迪达勒斯先生惊吓得大吼一声，“他死了吗？”

“死!”马丁•坎宁翰大声说，“他可死不了!有个船夫弄来根竿子，钩住他的裤子，把他捞上岸，半死不活地拖到码头上他老子跟前。全城的人有一半都在那儿围观哪。”

“是啊，”布卢姆先生说，“最逗的是……”

“而吕便•杰呢，”马丁•坎宁翰说，“为了酬劳船夫救了他儿子一条命，给了他两个先令。”

从鲍尔先生手下传来一声低微的叹息。

“哦，可不是嘛，”马丁•坎宁翰斩钉截铁地说，“摆出大人物的架势，赏了他一枚两先令银币。”

“非常精彩，对吗？”布卢姆先生殷切地说。

“多付了一先令八便士，”迪达勒斯先生用冷漠的口吻说。

鲍尔先生忍俊不禁，马车里回荡着低笑声。

纳尔逊纪念柱[52]。

“八个李子一便士!八个才一便士!”

“咱们最好显得严肃一些，”马丁•坎宁翰说。

迪达勒斯先生叹了口气。

“不过，说实在的，”他说，“即便笑一笑，可怜的小帕狄也不会在意的。他自己就讲过不少非常逗趣儿的话。”

“天主宽恕我!”鲍尔先生用手指揩着盈眶的泪水说，“可怜的帕迪!一个星期前我最后一次见到他的时候，他还跟平素一样那么精神抖擞呢。我再也设想到会这么乘马车给他送葬。他撇下咱们走啦。”

“戴过帽子[53]的小个儿当中，难得找到这么正派的，”迪达勒斯先生说，“他走得着实突然。”

“衰竭，”马丁•坎宁翰说，“心脏。”

他悲痛地拍拍自己的胸口。

满脸通红，像团火焰。威士忌喝多了。红鼻头疗法。拼死拼活地灌，把鼻头喝成灰黄色的了。为了把鼻头变成那种颜色，他钱可没少花。

鲍尔先生定睛望着往后退去的那些房屋，黯然神伤。

“他死得真是突然，可怜的人，”他说。

“这样死再好不过啦，”布卢姆先生说。

大家对他膛目而视。

“一点儿也没受罪，”他说，“一眨眼就都完啦。就像在睡眠中死去了似的。”

没有人吭气。

街的这半边死气沉沉。就连白天，生意也是萧条的：土地经纪人，戒酒饭店[54]，福尔克纳铁路问讯处，文职人员培训所，吉尔书店，天主教俱乐部，盲人习艺所。这是怎么回事呢？反正有个原因。不是太阳就是风的缘故。晚上也还是这样。只有一些扫烟囱的和做粗活的女佣。在已故的马修神父[55]的庇护下。巴涅尔纪念碑的基石。衰竭。心脏。[56]

前额饰有白色羽毛的几匹白马，在街角的圆形建筑那儿拐了个弯儿，飞奔而来。一口小小的棺材一闪而过。赶看去下葬哩。一辆送葬马车。去世的是未婚者。已婚者用黑马。单身汉用花斑马。修女用棕色的。

“实在可惜，”马丁•坎宁翰先生说，“还是个娃娃哩。”

一张侏儒的脸，像小鲁迪的那样紫红色而布满皱纹。一副侏儒的身躯，油灰一般软塌塌的，陈放在衬了白布的松木匣子里。费用是丧葬互相会给出的。每周付一便士，就能保证一小块草地。咱们这个小乞丐。小不点儿。无所谓。这是大自然的失误。娃娃要是健康的话，只能归功于妈妈。否则就要怪爸爸[57]。但愿下次走点运。

“可怜的小家伙，”迪达勒斯先生说，“他总算没尝到人世间的辛酸。”

马车放慢速度，沿着拉特兰广场的坡路往上走。骨骼咯咯响，颠簸石路上。不过是个穷人，没入肯认领[58]。

“在生存中，”[58]马丁•坎宁翰说。

“然而最要不得的是，”鲍尔先生说，“自寻短见的人。”

马丁•坎宁翰匆匆地掏出怀表，咳嗽一声，又塞了回去。

“给一家人带来莫大的耻辱，”鲍尔先生又补上一句。

“当然是一时的精神错乱，”马丁•坎宁翰斩钉截铁地说，“咱们应该用更宽厚的眼光看这个问题。”

“人家都说干这种事儿的是懦夫，”迪达勒斯先生说。

“那就不是咱们凡人所能判断的了，”马丁•坎宁翰说。

布卢姆先生欲言又止。马丁•坎宁翰那双大眼睛，而今把视线从我身上移开了。他通情达理，富于恻隐之心，天资聪颖。长得像莎士比亚。开口总是与人为善。本地人对那种事儿和杀婴是毫不留情的。不许作为基督教徒来埋葬。早先竟往坟墓中的死者心脏里打进一根木桩[60]，惟恐他的心脏还没有破碎。其实，他们有时也会懊悔的，不过已经来不及了。在河床里发现他的时候，手里还死命地摸住芦苇呢。他[61]瞅我来着。还有他那娘儿们——一个不可救药的醉鬼。一次次地为她把家安顿好，然而几乎一到星期六她就把家具典当一空，让他去赎。他过着像是在地狱里一般的日子。即便是一颗石头做的心脏，也会消磨殆尽的。星期一早晨，他又用肩膀顶着轱辘重新打鼓另开张。老天爷，那天晚上她那副样子真有瞧头。迪达勒斯告诉过我，他刚好在场。她喝得醉醺醺的，抡着马丁的雨伞欢蹦乱跳。

他们称我作亚洲的珍宝，

亚洲的珍宝

日本的艺妓[62]。

他把视线从我身上移开了。他明白。骨骼咯咯响。

验尸的那个下午。桌上摆着个贴有红标签的瓶子。旅馆那个房间里挂着一幅幅狩猎图。令人窒息的气氛。阳光透过威尼新式软百叶帘射了进来。验尸官那双毛茸茸的大耳朵泍浴在阳光下。茶房作证。起先只当他还睡着呢。随后见到他脸上有些黄道道。已经滑落到床脚了。法医验明为：服药过量。意外事故致死。遗书：致吾儿利奥波德。

再也尝不到痛苦了。再也醒不过来了。无人肯认领。

马车沿着布莱辛顿街辘辘地疾驰着。颠簸石路上。

“我看咱们正飞跑着哪，”马丁•坎宁翰说。

“上天保佑，可别把咱们这车人翻在马路上，”鲍尔先生说。

“但愿不至于，”马丁•坎宁翰说，“明天在德国有一场大赛——戈登、贝纳特[63]。”

“唉呀，”迪达勒斯先生说，“那确实值得一看。”

当他们拐进伯克利街时，水库附近一架手摇风琴迎面送来一阵喧闹快活的游艺场音乐，走过去后，乐声依然尾随着。这儿可曾有人见过凯利？[64]凯歌的凯，利益的利。接着就是《扫罗》中的送葬曲[65]。他坏得像老安东尼奥，撇下了我孤苦伶仃![66]足尖立地旋转!仁慈圣母玛利亚医院[67j。这是埃克尔斯街，我家就在前边。[68]一座庞大的建筑，那里为绝症患者所设的病房。真令人感到鼓舞。专收垂死者的圣母济贫院。太平间就在下面，很便当。赖尔登老太太[69]就是在那儿去世的。那些女人的样子好吓人呀。用杯子喂她东西吃，调羹在嘴边儿蹭来蹭去。然后周围屏遮起她的床，等着她咽气。那个年轻的学生[70]多好啊，那一次蜜蜂蜇了我，还是他替我包扎的。他们告诉我，如今他转到产科医院去了。从一个极端到了另一个极端。

马车急转了个弯，蓦地停住了。

“又出了什么事？”

身上打了烙印的牛，分两路从马车的车窗外走过去，哞哞叫着，无精打采地挪动着带脚垫的蹄子，尾巴在瘦骨嶙嶙、巴着粪的屁股上徐徐地甩来甩去。打了猪红色印证的羊，吓得咩咩直叫，在牛群外侧或当中奔跑。

“简直像是移民一样，”鲍尔先生说。

“嘚儿!”，马车夫一路吆喝着，挥鞭啪啪地打着牲口的侧腹。

“嘚儿!躲开!”[71]

这是星期四嘛。明天该是屠宰日啦。怀仔的母牛。卡夫[72]把它们按每头约莫二十七镑的代价出售。兴许是运到利物浦去的。给老英格兰的烤牛肉[73]。他们把肥嫩的牛统统买走了。这下子连七零八碎儿都没有了，所有那些生料——皮啦，毛啦，角啦。一年算下来，蛮可观哩，单打一的牛肉生意。屠宰场的下脚料还可以送到鞣皮厂去或者制造肥皂和植物黄油。不晓得那架起重机如今是不是还在克朗西拉[74]从火车上卸下那些次等的肉。

马车又穿过牲畜群继续前进了。

“我不明白市政府为什么不从公园大门口铺一条直通码头的电车道？”布卢姆先生说，“这么一来，所有这些牲口就都可以用货车运上船了。”

“那样也就不至于堵塞道路啦，”马丁•坎宁翰说。“完全对，他们应该这么做。”

“是啊，”布卢姆先生说，“找还常常转另外一个念头：要像米兰市那样搞起市营的殡仪电车[75]，你们晓得吧。把路轨一直铺到公墓门口，设置专用电车——殡车、送葬车，全齐了。你们明白我的意思吧？”

“那可是个奇妙的主意，”迪达勒斯先生说，“再挂上一节软卧和高级餐车。”

“对科尼来说，前景可不美妙啊，”鲍尔先生补充了一句。

“怎么会呢？”布卢姆先生转向迪达勒斯先生问道，“不是比坐双驾马车奔去体面些吗？”

“嗯，说得有点儿道理，”迪达勒斯先生承认了。

“而且，”马丁•坎宁翰说，“有一次殡车在敦菲角[76]前面拐弯的时候翻啦，把棺材扣在马路上。像那样的事，也就不会发生了。”

“那回太可怕啦，”鲍尔先生面呈惧色地说，“尸首都滚到马路上去了。可怕啊!”

“敦菲领先，”迪达勒斯先生点着头说，“争夺戈登•贝纳特奖杯。”

“颂赞归于天主!”马丁•坎宁翰虔诚地说。

咕咚!车子翻了。一副棺材扑通一声跌到路上，崩开了。帕狄• 迪格纳穆身着过于肥大的褐色衣服，被抛出来，僵直地在尘埃中打滚。红脸膛如今已呈灰色。嘴巴咧开来，像是在问究竟出了啥事儿。完全应该替他把嘴阖上，张着的模样太吓人了。内脏也腐烂得快。把一切开口都堵上就好得多。对，那也堵起来。用蜡。括约肌松了，一古脑儿封上。

“敦菲酒馆到啦，”当马车向右拐的时候，鲍尔先生宣告说。

敦菲角。停看好几辆送葬回来的车。人们在借酒浇愁。可以在路过歇上一会儿。这是开酒店的上好地点。估计我们归途会在这儿停下来，喝上一杯，为他祝祝冥福，大家也聊以解忧。长生不老剂[77]。

然而假定现在发生了这样一档子事。倘若翻滚的当儿，他身子给钉子扎破了，他会不会流血呢？我猜想，也许流，也许不流。要看扎在什么部位了。血液循环已经停止了。然而碰着了动脉，就可能会渗出点儿血来。下葬时，装裹不如用红色的——深红色。

他们沿着菲布斯巴斯街默默前进。刚从公墓回来的一辆空殡车迎面擦过，马蹄嘚嘚嘚响着，一派轻松模样。

克罗斯冈斯桥；皇家运河。

河水咆哮着冲出闸门。一条驶向下游的驳船上，在一堆堆的泥炭当中，站着条汉子，船闸旁的纤路上，有一匹松松地系着缰绳的马。布加布出航[78]。

他们用眼睛盯着他。他乘了这条用一根纤绳拽着的木排，顺着涓涓流淌、杂草蔓生的河道，涉过苇塘，穿过烂泥，越过一只只堵满淤泥的细长瓶子，一具具腐烂的狗尸，从爱尔兰腹地漂向海岸。阿斯隆、穆林加尔、莫伊谷[79]，我可以沿着运河徒步旅行去看望米莉。要么就骑自行车前往。租一匹老马，倒也安全。雷恩[80]上次拍卖的时候倒是有过一辆，不过是女车。发展水路交通。詹姆斯•麦卡恩[81]以用摆渡船把我送过渡口为乐。这种走法要便宜一些。慢悠悠地航行。是带篷的船。“可以坐去野营。还有灵柩船，从水路去升天堂。也许我不写信就突然露面。径由莱克斯利普和克朗西拉，通过一道接一道船闸顺流而下，直抵都柏林。从中部的沼泽地带运来了泥炭。致敬——他举起褐色草帽，向帕狄•迪格纳穆致敬。

他们的马车从布赖恩•勃罗马酒家[82]前经过。墓地快到了。

“不晓得咱们的朋友弗格蒂[83]情况怎样了，”鲍尔先生说。

“不如去问问汤姆•克南•”迪达勒斯先生说。

“怎么回事？”马丁•坎宁翰说，“把他撇下，听任他去抹眼泪吧，是吗？”

“形影虽消失，”迪达勒斯先生说，“记忆诚可贵[84]”。

马车向左拐，走上芬格拉斯路[85]。

右侧是石匠作坊。最后一段工序。狭长的场地，密密匝匝地挤满默默无言的雕像。白色的，悲恸的。有的安详地伸出双手，有的忧伤地下跪，手指着什么地方。还有削下来的石像碎片。在一片白色沉默中哀诉着。为您提供最佳产品。纪念碑建造师及石像雕刻师托马斯•H•登纳尼。

走过去了。

教堂同事吉米•吉尔里的房屋前，一个老流浪汉坐在人行道的栏石上，一边嘟囔着，一边从他那双开了口、脏成褐色的大靴 子里倒着泥土和石子儿。他已走到人生旅途的尽头。

车子经过一座接一座荒芜不堪的花园[86]，一幢幢阴森森的房屋。

鲍尔先生用手指了指。

“那就是蔡尔兹被谋杀的地方，”他说，“最后那幢房子。”

“可不是嘛，”迪达勒斯先生说，“可怕的凶杀案。西摩•布希[87]让他免于诉讼。谋杀亲哥哥。或者据说是这样。”

“检查官没有掌握证据，”鲍尔先生说。

“只有旁证，”马丁•坎宁翰补充说，“司法界有这么一条准则，宁可让九十九个犯人逃脱法网，也不能错判一个无辜者有罪。[88]”

他们望了望。一座凶宅。它黑魆魆地向后退去。拉上了百叶窗，没有人住，花园里长满了杂草。这地方整个都完了。被冤枉地定了罪。凶杀。凶手的形象留在被害者的视网膜上。人们就喜欢读这类故事。在花园里发现了男人的脑袋啦。她的穿着打扮啦。她是怎样遇害的啦。新近发生的凶杀案。使用什么凶器。凶手依然逍遥法外。线索。一根鞋带。要掘墓验尸啦。谋杀的内情总会败露[89]。

这辆马车太挤了。她可能不愿意我事先不通知一声就这么忽然跑来。对女人总得谨慎一些。她们脱裤衩时，只要撞上一回，她们就永远也不会饶恕你。她已经十五岁了嘛。

前景公墓[90]的高栅栏像涟漪般地从他们的视野里淌过。幽暗的白杨树林，偶尔出现几座白色雕像。雕像越来越多起来，白色石像群集在树间，白色人像及其断片悄无声息地竖立着，在虚空中徒然保持着各种姿态。

车轮的钢圈嘎的一声蹭着人行道的栏石，停了下来。马丁•坎宁翰伸出胳膊，拧转把手，用膝盖顶开了车门。他下了马车，鲍尔先生和迪达勒斯先生跟着也下去了。

趁这会子把肥皂挪个窝儿吧。布卢姆先生的手麻利地解开裤子后兜上的钮扣，将巴在纸上的肥皂移到装手绢的内兜里。他边跨下马车，边把另一只手攥着的报纸放回兜里。

简陋的葬礼，一辆大马车，三辆小的。还不都是一样。抬棺人，金色缰绳，安魂弥撒，放吊炮。为死亡摆排场。殿后的马车对面站着个小贩，身旁的手推双轮车上放着糕点和水果。那是些西姆内尔糕饼[91]，整个儿粘在一起了。那是给死者上供用的糕点。狗饼干[92]。谁吃？正从墓地往外走的送葬者。

他跟随着同伴们。接着就是克南先生和内德•兰伯特。海因斯也走在他们后面。科尼•凯莱赫站在敞着门的灵车旁边，取出一对花圈，并将其中的一个递给了男孩子。

刚才那个娃娃的送葬行列不知消失到哪儿去了？

从芬格拉斯[93]那边来了一群马，吃力地迈着沉重的步子，拖着一辆载有庞大花岗石的大车，发出的嘎嘎响声打破了葬礼的沉寂，走了过去。在前边领路的车把式向他们点头致意。如今是灵柩了。尽管他已死去，却比我们先到了。[94]马扭过头来望着棺材，头上那根羽毛饰斜插向天空。它两眼无神：轭具勒紧了脖子，像是压迫着一根血管还是什么的。这些马晓不晓得自己每天拉车运些什么到这儿来？每天准有二三十档子葬事。新教徒另有杰罗姆山公墓。普天之下，每分钟都在举行着葬礼。要是成车地用铁锨铲进土星，就会快上好几倍。每小时埋上成千上万。世界上人太多了。

送葬者从大门里走了出来。一个妇女和一个小姑娘。妇女的相貌刁悍，尖下巴颏儿，看上去是个胡乱讨价还价的那号人，歪戴着一顶软帽。小姑娘满脸灰尘和泪痕，她挽着妇人的臂，仰望着，等待要她号哭的信号。鱼一般的脸，铁青而毫无血色。

殡殓工们把棺材扛在肩上，抬进大门。尸体沉得很。方才我从浴缸里迈出来，也觉得自己的体重增加了。死者领先，接着是死者的朋友。科尼•凯莱赫和那个男孩子拿着花圈跟在后面。挨着他们的是谁？啊，是死者的内弟。

大家都跟着走。

马丁•坎宁翰悄声说：

“当你在布卢姆面前谈起自杀的事来时，我心里感到万分痛苦。”

“为什么？”鲍尔先生小声说，“怎么回事？”

“他父亲就是服毒自杀的，”马丁•坎宁翰跟他交头接耳地说，“生前在恩尼斯[95]开过皇后饭店。你不是也听见他说要去克莱尔吗？那是忌辰。”

“啊，天啊!”鲍尔先生压低嗓门说，“我这是头一回听说。是服毒吗？”

他回过头去，朝那张有着一双沉思的乌黑眼睛的脸望去。那人边说话，边跟着他们走向枢机主教的陵墓[96]。

“上保险了吗？”

“我想一定上啦，”克南先生说，“然而保险单已经抵押出去，借了一大笔钱。马丁正想办法把那个男孩子送到阿尔坦[97]去。”

“他撇下了几个孩子？”

“五个。内德•兰伯特说过，他要想方设法把一个女孩子送进托德[98]去。”

“真够惨的，”布卢姆轻声说，“五个幼小的孩子。”

“对可怜的妻子来说，是个很大的打击，”克南先生又补上一句。

“说得是啊，”布卢姆先生随声附和道。

如今，她胜利地活过了他。

他低头望了望自己涂油擦得锃亮的靴子。她的寿数比他长。失去了丈夫。对她来说，这死亡比对我关系重大。总有一个比另一个长寿。明智的人说，世上的女人比男人多。[99]安慰她吧：你的损失太惨重了。我希望你很快就跟随他而去。只有对信奉印度教的寡妇才能这么说。[100]她会再婚的。嫁给他吗？不。 然而谁晓得以后会怎样呢？老女王去世后，就不兴守寡了。用炮车运送。维多利亚和阿尔伯特。在福洛格摩举行的追悼仪式。[101]可后来她还是在软帽上插了几朵紫罗兰。 在心灵深处[102]，她毕竟好虚荣的。这一切都是为了一个影子。女王的配偶而已， 连国王也不是。她儿子的位分才是实实在在的。那可以有新的指望[103];不像她想要唤回来而白白等待着的过去。过去是永远也不复返了。

总得有人先走。孤零零地入土，不再睡在她那温暖的床上了。

“你好吗，西蒙？”内德•兰伯特一边握手，一边柔声地说，“近一个月来，连星期天也一直没见着你啦。”

“从来没这么好过。科克这座城市[104]里，大家都好吗？”

“复活节的星期一，我去看科克公园的赛马[105]了，”内德•兰伯特说，“还是老一套，六先令八便士[106]。我是在狄克•蒂维家过的夜。”

“狄克这个实实在在的人，他好吗？”

“他的头皮和苍天之间己经毫无遮拦啦，”内德•兰伯特回答说。

“哎呀，我的圣保罗!”迪达勒斯先生抑制着心头的惊愕说，“狄克•蒂维歇顶了吗？”

“马丁正在为那些孩子们募集一笔捐款，”内德•兰伯特指着前边说，“每人几先令。让他们好歹维持到保险金结算为止。”

“对，对，”迪达勒斯先生迟迟疑疑地说，“最前面的那个是大 儿子吧？”

“是啊，”内德•兰伯特说，“挨着他舅舅。后面是约翰•亨利•

门顿[107]。他认捐了一镑。”

“我相信他会这么做的，”迪达勒斯先生说，“我经常对可怜的 帕狄说，他应该在自己那份工作上多下点儿心。约翰•亨利并不是世界上最坏的人。”

“他是怎么砸的饭碗？”内德•兰伯特问道，“酗酒，还是什么？”

“很多好人都犯这个毛病，”迪达勒斯先生叹了口气说。

他们在停尸所小教堂的门旁停下了。 布卢姆先生站在手执花圈的男孩儿后面，俯视着他那梳理得光光整整的头发和那系着崭新的硬领、有着凹沟的纤细脖颈。可怜的孩子!也不晓得当他爸爸咽气时，他在不在场？ 双方都不曾意识到死神即将来临。弥留之际才回光返照，最后一次认出人来。多少未遂的意愿。我欠了奥格雷狄三先令[108]。他能领会吗？殡殓工把棺材抬进了小教堂。他的头在哪一端？

过了一会儿，他跟在别人后头走进去，在透过帘子射进来的日光下眨巴着眼儿。棺材停放在圣坛前的柩架上，四个角各点燃一支高高的黄蜡烛。它总是在我们的前边。科尼•凯莱赫在四个角各放了只花圈，然后向那男孩子打了个手势，让他跪下。送葬者东一个西一个地纷纷跪在祈祷桌前。布卢姆先生站在后面，离圣水盂不远。等大家都跪下后，才从兜里掏出报纸摊开来，小心翼翼地铺在地上，屈起右膝跪在上面。他将黑帽子轻轻地扣在左膝上，手扶帽檐，虔诚地弯下身去。

一名助祭提着盛有什么的黄铜桶[109]，从一扇门后面走了进来， 白袍神父跟在后面。他一只手整理着祭带，另一只手扶着顶在他那癞哈蟆般的肚子上的一本小书。谁来读这本书？白嘴鸦说：我。[110]

他们在柩架前停下步子。神父嗄声流畅地读起他那本书来。

科菲神父。我晓得他的姓听上去像“棺材”[111]。哆咪内呐眯内[112]。他的嘴巴那儿显得盛气凌人。专横跋扈。健壮的基督教徒[113]。 任何人斜眼瞧他都要遭殃。因为他是神父嘛。你要称作彼得[114]。迪达勒斯曾说 ，他的肚子会横着撑破的，就像是尽情地吃了三叶草的羊似的。挺着那么个大肚子，活像一只被毒死的小狗。那个人找到了最有趣儿的说法。哼，横里撑破。

求你不要审问我，你的仆人。[115]

用拉下文为他们祷告，会使他们觉得自己的身价抬高了些。安魂弥撒。身穿绝妙的号丧者[116]。黑框信纸。你的名字已经列在祭坛名单[117]上。这地方凉飕飕的。可得吃点好的才行。在昏暗中一坐就是整个上午， 磕着脚后跟，恭候下一位。连眼睛都像是癞哈蟆的。是什么使他胀成这样呢？摩莉一吃包心菜就肚胀。兴许是此地的空气在作怪。看来弥漫着疠气。这一带必定充满了在地狱里般的疠气。就拿屠夫来说吧：他们变得像生牛排似的。是谁告诉我来着？是默文•布朗[118]。 圣沃伯格教堂有一架可爱的老风琴，已经历了一百五十个星霜。在教堂地下灵堂里，必须不时地在棺材上凿个窟窿，放出疠气，点燃烧掉。蓝色的，一个劲儿地往外冒。只要吸上一口，你就完蛋啦。

我的膝盖硌得疼了。唔。这样就好一些了。

神父从助祭提着的桶里取出一根顶端呈圆形的棍子，朝棺材上甩了甩。然后他走到另一头，又甩了甩。接着他踱了回来，将棍子放回桶里。你安息前怎样，如今还是怎样。一切都有明文规定，他照办就是了。

不要让我们受到诱惑。[119]

助祭尖声细气地应答着。[120]我常常觉得，家里不如雇个小男仆。最大不超过十五岁。再大了，自然就……

那想必是圣水。洒出来的是永眠。这份差事他准干腻了。成天朝送来的所有的尸首甩那牢什子。要是他能看到自己在往谁身上洒圣水，也不碍事嘛。每迎来一天，就有一批新的，中年汉子，老妪，娃娃，死于难产的孕妇，蓄胡子的男人，秃顶商人，胸脯小得像麻雀的结核病姑娘。他成年为他们作同样的祷告，并且朝他们洒圣水，安息吧。如今该轮到迪格纳穆了。

在天堂里。[121]

说是他即将升天堂或已升入天堂。对每个人都这么说。这是一份令人厌烦的差事。可是他总得说点儿什么。

神父阖上圣书走了，助祭跟在后面。科尼•凯莱赫打开侧门，掘墓工进来，重新抬起棺材，抬出去装在他们的手推车上。 科尼•凯莱赫把一只花圈递给男孩儿，另一只递给他舅舅。大家跟在他们后面， 走出侧门，来到外边柔和的灰色空气中。布卢姆先生殿后。他又把报纸折好，放回兜里，神情严肃地俯视着地面，直到运棺材的手推车向左拐去。金属轱辘磨在砂砾上，发出尖锐的嘎嘎声。一簇靴子跟在手推车后面踏出钝重的脚步声，沿着墓丛间的小径走去。

咯哩嗒啦咯哩嗒啦硲噜。主啊，我绝不可在这儿哼什么小曲儿。

“奥康内尔的圆塔[122]，”迪达勒斯先生四下里望了望说。

鲍尔先生用柔和的目光仰望着那高耸的圆锥形塔的顶端。

“老丹•奥[123]在他的人民当中安息哪，”他说，“然而他的心脏却埋在罗马[124]。这儿埋葬了多少颗破碎的心啊，西蒙!”

“她[125]的坟墓就在那儿，杰克，”迪达勒斯先生说，“我不久就会神腿儿躺在她身边了。任凭天主高兴，随时把我接走吧。”

他的精神崩溃了，开始暗自哭泣，稍打着趔趄。鲍尔先生挽住他的胳膊。

“她在那儿安息更好，”他体贴地说。

“那倒也是，”迪达勒斯先生微弱地喘了口气说，“假若有天堂的话，我猜想她淮是在那里。”

科尼•凯莱赫从行列里跨到路边，让送葬者抱着沉重的脚步从他身旁踱过去。

“真是个令人伤心的场合，”克南先生彬彬有礼地开口说。

布卢姆先生阖上眼，悲恸地点了两下头。

“别人都戴上帽子啦，”克南先生说，“我想，咱们也可以戴了吧。咱们在后尾儿。在公墓里可不能大意。”

他们戴上了帽子。

“你不觉得神父先生念祷文念得太快了些吗？”克南先生用嗔怪的口吻说。

布卢姆先生注视着他那双敏锐的、挂满血丝的眼睛，肃然点了点头。诡谲的眼睛，洞察着内心的秘密。我猜想他是共济会的，可也拿不准。又挨着他了。咱们在末尾。同舟共济[126]。巴不得他说点儿旁的。

克南先生又加上一句：

“我敢说杰罗姆山公墓举行的爱尔兰圣公会[127]的仪式更简朴，给人的印象也更深。”

布卢姆先生谨慎地表示了同意。当然，语言又当作别论。[128]

克南先生一本正经地说：

“我就是复活，就是生命。[129]这话触动人的内心深处。”

“是啊，”布卢姆先生说。

也许会触动你的心，然而对于如今脚尖冲着雏菊、停在六英尺见长、二英尺见宽的棺材里面的那个人来说，又有什么价值呢？触动不了他的心。寄托感情之所在。一颗破碎了的心。终归是个泵而已，每天抽送成千上万加仑的血液。直到有一天堵塞了，也就完事大吉。此地到处都撂着这类器官，肺、心、肝。生了锈的老泵，仅此而已。复活与生命。人一旦死了，就是死了。末日的概念。[130]去敲一座座坟墓，把他们都喊起来。“拉撒路，出来!”[131]然而他是第五个出来的，所以失业了。[132]起来吧!这是末日!于是，每个人都四下里摸索自己的肝啦，肺啦以及其他内脏。那个早晨要是能把自己凑个齐全，那就再好不过了。颅骨里只有一英钱粉末。每英钱合十二克。金衡制[133]。

科尼•凯莱赫和他们并排走起来。

“一切都进行得头等顺利，”他说，“怎么样？”

他用眼睛不慌不忙地打量着他们。警察般的肩膀。吐啦噜吐啦噜地哼着小调儿。

“正应该这样，”克南先生说。

“什么？呃？”科尼•凯莱赫说。

克南先生请他放心。

“后面那个跟汤姆•克南一道走着的汉子是谁？”约翰•亨利•门顿问，“看来挺面熟。”

内德•兰伯特回过头去瞥了一眼。

“布卢姆，”他说，“原先，不，我的意思是说现在，有个名叫玛莉恩•特威迪夫人的女高音歌手。她就是此人的老婆。”

“啊，可不是嘛，”约翰•亨利•门顿说，“我己经好久没见到她了。她长得蛮漂亮。我跟她跳过舞;哦，打那以后，已过了十五个——啊，十七个黄金年月啦。那是在圆镇的马特•狄龙[134]家。当年她可有搂头啦。”

他回头隔着人缝儿望去。

“他是什么人？”他问，“做什么的？他干过文具行当吧？一天晚上我跟他吵过架，记得是在滚木球场上。”

内德•兰伯特笑了笑。

“对，他干过那一行，”他说，“在威兹德姆•希利的店里，推销吸墨纸。”

“天哪，”约翰•亨利•门顿说，“她干吗要嫁给这么一个上不了台盘的家伙呢？当年她劲头可足啦。”

“如今也不含糊，”内德•兰伯特说，“他管拉些广告。”

约翰•亨利•门顿那双大眼睛直勾勾地盯着前面。

手推车转进一条侧径。一个身材魁梧的人在草丛里伫候，举举帽子来表示敬意。掘墓工们也用手碰了一下便帽。

“约翰•奥康内尔，”鲍尔先生欣然说，“他从来没忘记过朋友。”

奥康内尔先生默默地和每一个人握了手。迪达勒斯先生说，

“我又来拜望您啦。”

“我亲爱的西蒙，”公墓管理员悄声回答说，“我压根儿不希望您来光顾!”

他向内德•兰伯特和约翰•亨利•门顿致意后，就挨着马丁•坎宁翰继续往前走，还在背后摆弄着两把长钥匙。

“你们听说过关于库姆街的马尔卡希那档子事吗？”他问道。

“我没听说，”马丁•坎宁翰说。

他们不约而同地把戴着大礼帽的脑袋凑过去，海因斯侧耳静听。管理员的两个大拇指勾在打着弯儿的金表链上。他朝着他们那一张张茫然的笑脸，用谨慎的口吻讲开了。

“人们传说着这么个故事，”他说，“一个大雾弥漫的傍晚，一对醉鬼到这儿来寻找一个朋友的坟墓。他们打听库姆街的马尔卡希，人家便告诉他们那人埋在哪儿。他们在雾里摸索了好一阵子，果真找到了坟墓。一个醉鬼拼出了死者的姓名：特伦斯•马尔卡希。另一个醉鬼却朝死者遗孀托人竖起的那座救世主雕像直眨巴眼儿。”

管理员翻起眼睛，冲着他们正走边的一座坟墓瞅了一眼。接着说：

“他睁大了眼朝那座圣像望了好半晌之后说：‘一点儿也不像那个人。’又说：‘不管是谁雕的，反正这不是马尔卡希。’”

大家听了，报以微笑。接着他就迟到后面，去和科尼•凯莱赫攀谈，收下对方递过来的票据，边走边翻看看。

“全都是故意讲的，”马丁•坎宁翰向海因斯解释说。

“我晓得，”海因斯说，“我也注意到了。”

“为的是让大鼓起劲儿来，”马丁•坎宁翰说，“纯粹是出于好心，决没有旁的用意。”

布卢姆先生欣赏管理员那肥硕、魁梧的身躯。人人都乐意和他往来。约翰•奥康内尔为人正派，是个道地的好人。他身上挂的那两把钥匙就像是凯斯[135] 商店的广告似的。不必担心有人会溜出去。不需要通行证。得到人身保护。葬礼结束后，我得办理一下那份广告。那天我写信给玛莎的时候，她闯了进来。我用一个信封遮住了，上面写没写鲍尔斯桥[136]呢？但愿没有被丢进死信保管处。最好刮刮脸。长出灰胡子茬儿了，那是头发变灰的兆头。脾气也变坏了。灰发中央着银丝。[137]想想看，给这样的人做老婆!我纳闷他当年是怎么壮起胆子去向人家姑娘求婚的。来吧，跟我在坟场里过日子。用这来诱惑她。起初她也许还会很兴奋呢。向死神求爱。这里，夜幕笼罩下，四处躺着死尸。当坟地张大了口的时候，鬼魂从坟墓里出来。[138]我想，丹尼尔•奥康内尔准是其后裔。是谁来看， 常说丹尼尔是个奇怪的、生殖力旺盛的人[139]，同时仍不失为一位伟大的天主教徒， 像个顶天立地的巨人矗立在黑暗中。鬼火。坟墓里的疠气。必须把她的心思从这档子事排遣开才行。不然的话，休想让她受孕。妇女尤其敏感得厉害。在床上给她讲个鬼故事，哄她入睡。你见过鬼吗？喏，我见过。那是个漆黑的夜晚。时钟正敲着十二点。然而只消把情绪适当地调动起来，她们就准会来接吻的。在土耳其， 坟墓里照样有窑姐儿。只要年轻的时候就着手，凡事都能学到家。在这儿你兴许还能够勾搭上一位小寡妇呢。男人就好这个。在墓碑从中谈情说爱。罗密欧[140]。给快乐平添情趣。 在死亡中，我们与生存为伍。[141]两头都衔接上了。 那些可怜的死者眼睁睁望着，只好干着急呗。那就好比让饥肠辘辘者闻烤牛排的香味，馋得他们心焦火燎。欲望煎熬着人。摩莉很想在窗畔搞来着。反正管理员已有了八个孩子。

他此生已见过不少人入土，躺到周围一片片的茔地底下。神圣的茔地。倘若竖着埋，就必然可以省出些地方。坐着或跪着的姿势可就省不了。站着埋吗？[142]要是有朝一日大地往下陷，他的脑袋兴许会钻出地面，手还指着什么地方。地面底下一准统统成了蜂窝状，由一个个长方形的蜂房所构成。而且他把公墓收拾得非常整洁：又推草坪，又修剪边沿。甘布尔少校[143]管这座杰罗姆山叫作他自已的花园。可不是嘛。应该栽上睡眠花。马期天斯基[144]曾告诉我说，中国茔地上种着巨大的罂粟，能够采到优等鸦片。植物园就在前边。正是侵入到土壤里的血液给予了新生命。据说犹太人就是本着这个想法来杀害基督教徒的男孩儿的。[145]人们的价码各不相同。保养得好好的、肥肥胖胖的尸体，上流人士，美食家，对果园来说是无价之宝。今有新近逝世的威廉•威尔金森(审计员兼会计师)的尸体一具，廉价处理，三镑十三先令六便士。谨此致谢。

我敢说，有了这些尸肥，骨头、肉、指甲，这片土壤一定会肥沃极了。一座座存尸所。令人毛骨悚然。都腐烂了，变成绿色和粉红色。在湿土里，也腐烂得快。瘦削的老人不那么容易烂。然后变成像是牛脂一般的、干酪状的东西。接着就开始发黑，渗出糖浆似的黑液。最后干瘪了。骷髅蛾[146]。当然，细胞也罢， 旁的什么也罢，还会继续活下去。不断地变换着。实际上是物质不灭。没有养分的话，就从自己身上吸吮养分。

但是准会繁殖出大量的蛆。土壤里确实有成群的蛆蠕动着。简直让你“云”头转向。海滨那些漂亮的小姑娘。[147]他心满意足地望着这一切。 想到其他所有的人都比他先入土，给予他一种威力感。不晓得他是怎样看待人生的。嘴里还一个接一个地嘣出笑话，暖一暖心坎上的褶子。有这么个关于一张死亡公报的笑话：“斯珀吉昂今晨四时向天堂出发。现已届晚间十一时(关门时间)，尚未抵达。彼得。[148]”至于死者本人，男的横竖爱听个妙趣横生的笑话，女的想知道什么最时新。来个多汁的梨，或是女士们的潘趣酒[149]，又热和又浓烈又甜。可以搪潮气。你有时候也得笑笑，所以不如这么做。《哈姆莱特》中的掘基人[150]。 显示出对人类心灵的深邃理解。关于死者，起码两年之内不敢拿他们开玩笑。关于死者，除了过去，什么也别说。[151] 等出了丧期再说。难以想象他本人的葬礼将是怎样的。像是开个玩笑似的。他们说，要是念念自己的讣告，就能延年益寿。使你返老还童，又多活上一辈子。

“明天你有几档子？”管理员问。

“两档子，”科尼•凯莱赫说，“十点半和十一点。”

管理员将票据放进自己的兜里。手推车停了下来。送葬者分散开来，小心翼翼地绕过茔丛，踱到墓穴的两侧。掘墓人把棺材抬过来，棺材前端紧贴着墓穴边沿撂下，并且在棺材的周围拢上绳子。

要埋葬他了。我们是来埋葬愷撒的。他的三月中或六月中[152]。他不晓得都有谁在场，而且也不在乎。

咦，那边那个身穿胶布雨衣[153]、瘦瘦高高的蠢货是谁呀？我倒想知道一下。要是有人告诉我，我情愿送点薄礼。总会有个你再也想不到的人露面。一个人能够孤零零地度过一生。是呀，他能够。尽管他可以为自己挖好墓穴，但他死后还是得靠什么人为他盖土。我们都是这样。只有人类死后才要埋葬。不，蚂蚁也埋葬。任何人首先想到的就是这件事。埋葬遗体。据说鲁滨孙•克鲁索过的是顺从于大自然的生活。喏，可他还是由“星期五”埋葬的呢。[154]说起来，每个星期五都埋葬一个星期四哩。

哦，可怜的鲁滨孙•克鲁索!

你怎能这样做？[155]

可怜的迪格纳穆!这是他最后一遭儿了，躺在地面上，装在棺材匣子里。 想到所有那些死人，确实像是在糟踏木料。全都让虫子蛀穿了。他们蛮可以发明一种漂亮的尸架，装有滑板，尸体就那样哧溜下去。啊，他们也许不愿意用旁人使过的器具来入土。他们可挑剔得很哪。把我埋在故乡的土壤里。从圣地取来的一把土。[156]只有母亲和死胎才装在同一口棺材里下葬。我明白这是什么意思。 我明白。为的是即便入土之后，也尽可能多保护婴儿一些日子。爱尔兰人的家就是他的棺材[157]。在地下墓窟里使用防腐香料，跟木乃伊的想法一样。

布卢姆先生拿着帽子站在尽后边，数着那些脱了帽子的脑袋。十二个。我是第十三个。不，那个身穿胶布雨衣的家伙才是第十三个呢。不祥的数目。那家伙究竟是打哪儿突然冒出来的？我敢发誓，刚才他并没在小教堂里。关于十三的迷信[158]，那是瞎扯。

内德•兰伯特那套衣服是用柔软的细花呢做的，色调有点发紫。当我们住在伦巴德西街时，我也有过这样的一套。当年他曾经是个讲究穿戴的人，往往每天换上三套衣服。我那身灰衣服得叫梅西雅斯[159]给翻改一下。咦，他那套原来是染过的哩。他老婆——哦，我忘了他是个单身汉——兴许公寓老板娘应该替他把那些线头摘掉。[160]

棺材已经由叉开腿站在墓穴搭脚处的工人们徐徐地撂下去，看不到了。他们爬上来，走出墓穴。大家都摘了帽子。统共是二十人。

静默。

倘若我们忽然间统统变成了旁人呢。

远方有一头驴子在叫。要下雨了。驴并不那么笨。人家说，谁都没见过死驴。它们以死亡为耻，所以躲藏起来。我那可怜的爸爸也是在远处死的。

和煦的罄风围绕着脱帽的脑袋窃窃私语般地吹拂。人们唧唧喳喳起来。站在坟墓上首的男孩子双手捧着花圈，一声不响地定睛望着那黑魆魆、 还未封顶的墓穴。布卢姆先生跟在那位身材魁梧、为人厚道的管理员后面移动脚步。剪裁得体的长礼服。兴许正在估量着，看下一个该轮到谁了。喏，这是漫长的安息。再也没有感觉了。只有在咽气的那一刹那才有感觉。准是不愉快透了。开头儿简直难以置信。一定是搞错了，该死的是旁的什么人。到对门那家去问问看。且慢，我要。我还没有。然后，死亡的房间遮暗了。他们要光。[161]你周围有人窃窃私语。 你想见见神父吗？接着就漫无边际地胡言乱语起来。 隐埋了一辈子的事都在谵语中抖搂出来了。临终前的挣扎。他睡得不自然。按一按他的下限睑吧。瞧瞧他的鼻子是否耸了起来，下颚是否凹陷，脚心是否发黄。既然他是死定了， 就索性把枕头抽掉，让他在地上咽气吧。[162]在“罪人之死”那幅画里，魔鬼让他看一个女人。他只穿着一件衬衫，热切地盼望与她拥抱。《露西亚》[163]的最后一幕。我再也见不到你了吗？砰!他咽了气。终于一命呜呼。人们谈论你一阵子，然后就把你忘了。不要忘记为他祷告。祈祷的时候要惦记着他。甚至连巴涅尔也是如此，常春藤日[164] 渐渐被人遗忘了。然后，他们也接踵而去，一个接一个地坠入穴中。

眼下我们正为迪格纳穆灵魂的安息而祷告。愿你平平安安，没下地狱。换换环境也蛮好嘛。走出人生的煎锅，进入炼狱[165]的火焰。

他可曾想到过等待着他的那个墓穴？人们说，当你在阳光下打哆嗦时，就说明你想到了。有人在墓上踱步。传唤员来招呼你了：快轮到你啦。我在靠近芬格拉斯路那一带买下一块茔地，我的墓穴就在那里。妈妈，可怜的妈妈，还有小鲁迪也在那里永眠。

掘墓工们拿起铁鍬，将沉甸甸的土块儿甩到穴里的棺材上。布卢姆先生扭开他的脸。倘若他一直还活着呢？ 唷!哎呀，那太可怕啦!不，不，他已经死了，当然喽。他当然已经死啦。他是星期一咽气的。应该规定一条法律，把心脏扎穿，以便知道确已死亡;要么就在棺材里放一只电钟或一部电话，装个帆布做的通气孔也行。求救信号旗。以三天为限。夏天可搁不了这么久。一旦验明确实断了气，还是马上把棺材封闭起来的好。

土坷垃砸下去的声音越来越小了。已开始被淡忘了。眼不见，心也不想了。

管理员移动了几步，戴好帽子。真够了。送葬者们舒了口气，一个个悄悄地戴上帽子。布卢姆先生也把帽子戴好。他望到那个魁梧的身姿正灵巧地穿过墓丛的迷津拐来拐去。他静静地、把握十足地跨过这片悲伤的场地。

海因斯在笔记本上匆匆地记着什么。啊，记名字哪。然而所有的人他都认识啊。咦，朝我走过来了。

“我在记名字，”他压低嗓门说，“你的教名是什么来着？我没把握。”

“利，”布卢姆先生说，“利奥波德。你不妨把麦科伊的名字也写上。他托付过我。”

“查理，”海因斯边写边说，“我晓得。他曾经在《自由人报》工作过。”

是这样的。后来他才在收尸所找到了差事，当路易斯•伯恩[166]的帮手。 让大夫来验尸倒是个好主意。原来只是凭想象，这下子可以弄明真相了。他是星期二死的。[167]就那样溜了。收了几笔广告费，就携款逃之夭夭。查理， 你是我亲爱的人。[168]所以他才托付我的。啊，好的，不碍事的，我替你办就是了，麦科伊。劳驾啦，老伙计，衷心感谢。一点儿都没破费，还让他领了我的情。

“我想打听一下，”海因斯说，“你认识那个人吗？那边的那个穿，身穿……”

他东看看西望望。

“胶布雨衣。是的，我瞅见他了，”布卢姆先生说，“现在他在哪儿呢？”

“焦勃雨伊，”海因斯边草草记下边说，“我不知道他是谁。这是他的姓吧？”

他四下里望了望，走开了。

“不是，”布卢姆先生开口说。他转过身去，想拦住海因斯，“喂，海因斯!”

没听见。怎么回事？他到哪儿去啦？连个影儿都没有了。喏，可真是。这儿可曾有人见过？凯歌的凯，利益的利。[169]消失了踪影。天哪，他出了什么事？

第七个掘墓人来到布卢姆先生身旁，拿起一把闲着的铁鍬。

“啊，对不起!”

他敏捷地闪到一边去。

墓穴里开始露出潮湿的褐色泥土。逐渐隆起。快堆完了。湿土块垒成的坟头越来越高，又隆起一截。掘墓工们停下了挥鍬的手。大家再度脱帽片刻。男孩儿把他的花圈斜立在角落里，那位舅爷则将自己那一只放在一块士坷垃上。掘墓工们戴上便帽，提着沾满泥土的铁鍬，朝手推车走去。接着，在草皮上轻轻地磕打一下鍬刃，拾掇得干干净净。一个人弯下腰去摘缠在鍬把上的一缕长草。另一个离开伙伴们，把鍬当作武器般地扛着，缓步走去，铁刃闪出蓝光。还有一个在坟边一声不响地卷着拢棺材用的绳子。他的脐带。那位舅爷掉过身去要走时，往他那只空着的手里塞了点儿什么。默默地致谢。您费心啦，先生。辛苦啦。摇摇头。我明白。只不过向你们大家表表寸心。

送葬者们沿了弯弯曲曲的小径徐徐地走着，不时地停下来念念墓上的名字。

“咱们弯到首领[170]的坟墓那儿去看看吧，”海因斯说，“时间还很从容。”

“好的，”鲍尔先生说。 

他们向右拐，一路在缓慢思索着。鲍尔先生怀着敬畏的心情，用淡漠的声调说：

“有人说，他根本就不在那座坟里。棺材里装满着石头。说有一天他还会来的。”

海因斯摇了摇头。

“巴涅尔再也不会来啦，”他说，“他的整个儿肉体都在那里。愿他的遗骨享受安宁。”

布卢姆先生悄悄地沿着林荫小径向前踱去。两侧是悲恸的天使，十字架，断裂的圆柱[171]，家茔、仰望天空做祷告的希望的石像，还有古爱尔兰的心和手。 倒不如把钱花在为活人办点慈善事业上更明智一些哩。为灵魂的安息而祈祷。难道有人真心这么祷告吗？把他埋葬，一了百了。就像用斜槽卸煤一样。然后，为了节省时间，就把他们都凑在一堆儿。万灵节[172]。二十七日我要给父亲上坟。 给园丁十先令。他把茔地的杂草清除得一干二净。他自己也上了岁数，还得弯下腰去用大剪刀咯吱咯吱修剪。半截身子已经进了棺材。某人溘然长逝。某人辞世。[173 ]就好像是他们都出于自愿似的。他们统统是被推进去的。某人翘辫子。倘若再写明这些死者生前干的是哪一行，那就更有趣了。某某人，车轮匠。我兜售软木。 [174]我破了产，每镑偿还五先令了事。要么就是一位大娘和她的小平底锅：爱尔兰炖肉是我的拿手好菜。乡村墓园挽歌非那一首莫属，究竟是华兹华斯还是托马斯•坎贝尔作的呢？[175]照新教徒的说法就是进入安息。[176]老穆伦大夫常挂在嘴上的是：伟大的神医召唤他回府。喏，这是天主为他们预备的园地。[177] 一座舒适的乡间住宅。新近粉刷油漆过。对于静静地抽烟和阅读《教会时报》[178]来说， 是个理想的所在。他们从来不试图把结婚启事登得漂亮些。 挂在门把手上的生锈的花圈，花冠是用青铜箔做的。花同样的钱，可就更经久了。不过，还是鲜花更富诗意。金属的倒是永不凋谢，可渐渐地就令人生厌了。灰毛菊[179]，索然无味。

一只鸟儿驯顺地栖在白杨树枝上，宛如制成的标本似的。就像是市政委员胡珀[180]送给我们的结婚礼品。嘿!真是纹丝儿不动。它晓得这儿没有朝它射来的弹弓。死掉的动物更惨。傻米莉把小死鸟儿葬在厨房的火柴匣里，并在坟上供个雏菊花环，铺一些碎瓷片儿。

那是圣心[181]，裸露着的。掏出心来让人看。应该把它放得靠边一点，涂成鲜红色，像一颗真的心一般。爱尔兰就是奉献于它或是类似东西的。看来一点儿也不满意。为什么要受这样的折磨？难道鸟儿会来啄它吗？就像对拎着一篮水果的男孩那样？然而他说不会来啄，因为鸟儿理应是怕那个男孩的。那就是阿波罗[182]。

这许多![183]所有这些人，生前统统在都柏林转悠过。信仰坚定的死者们。我们曾经像你们现在这样。[184]

而且你又怎么能记得住所有的人呢？眼神，步态，嗓音。声音嘛，倒是有留声机。在每座坟墓里放一架留声机，或是保管在家里也行。星期天吃罢晚饭，放上可怜的老曾祖父的旧唱片。喀啦啦!喂喂喂 我高兴极啦 喀啦喀 高兴极啦能再见到 喂喂 高兴极啦 喀噗嘶嘘。会使你记起他的嗓音，犹如照片能使你忆起他的容貌一样。不然的话，相隔那么十五年，你就想不起他的长相了。譬如谁呢？譬如我在威兹德姆•希利的店里时死去的一个伙计。

吱嚕吱嚕!石头子儿碰撞的声音。且慢。停下来!

他定睛看看一座石砌墓穴。有个什么动物。哦。它在走动哪。

一只胖墩墩的灰鼠[185]趔趔趄趄地沿着墓穴的侧壁爬过去，一路勾动了石头子儿。它是个曾祖父，挺在行哩。懂得窍门。这只灰色的活物想扁起身子钻到石壁脚板下，硬是扭动着身子挤进去了。这可是藏匿珍宝的好场所。

谁住在这儿？罗伯特•埃默里的遗体安葬于此。罗伯特•埃米特是在火炬映照下被埋葬在这儿[186]的吧？老鼠在转悠哪。

如今，尾巴也消失了。

像这么个家伙，三下两下就能把一个人吃掉。不论那是谁的尸体，连骨头都给剔得干干净净。对它们来说，这就是一顿便饭。尸体嘛，左不过是变了质的肉。对，可奶酪又是怎样呢？是牛奶的尸体。我在那本《中国纪行》里读到：中国人说白种人身上有一股尸体的气味。最好火葬。神父们死命地反对。[187] 他们这叫吃里扒外。焚尸炉和荷兰铁皮烤肉箱的批发商。闹瘟疫的时期，把尸首扔进生石灰高温坑里去销毁。煤气屠杀室。本是尘埃，还原归于尘埃。[188]要么就海葬。 帕西人的沉默之塔在哪里？被鸟儿啄食。[189]土，火，水。 人家说，论舒服莫过于淹死。刹那间自己的一生就从眼前闪过去了。然而一旦被救活可就不妙了。不过，空葬是行不通的。从一架飞行器往下投。每逢丢下一具尸体时，不晓得消息会不会就传开了。地下通讯网。我们还是从它们那儿得到的消息呢。这也不足为奇。它们对于像这样一顿正餐已习以为常。人们还没真正咽气，苍蝇就跟踪而至了。迪格纳穆这次，它们也是闻风而来。它们才不介意那臭味呢。盐白色的尸首，软塌塌，即将溃烂，气味和味道都像是生的白萝卜。

大门在前面发着微光，还敞着哪。重返尘世。这地方已经呆够了。每来一次，都更挨近一步。上回我到这儿来，是给辛尼柯太太[190]送葬。 还有可怜的爸爸。致命的爱。我从书中得知，有人夜里提着灯去扒坟头，找新埋葬了的女尸，甚至那些已经腐烂而且流脓的墓疮。读罢使你真感到毛骨悚然。我死后将会在你面前出现。我死了，你会看到我的幽灵。我死后，将阴魂不散。死后有另一个叫作地狱的世界。她信里写道，我不喜欢那另一个世界[191]。我也不喜欢。 还有许许多多要看要听要感受的呢。感受到自己身边那热乎乎的生命。让他们在爬满了蛆的床上长眠去吧。他们休想拉我去参加这个回合。热乎乎的床铺，热乎乎的、充满活力的生活。

马丁•坎宁翰从旁边的一条小径里出现了，他正和什么人一本正经地谈着话。”

那想必是个律师，挺面熟。姓门顿，名叫约翰•亨利，是个律师，经管宣誓书和录口供的专员。迪格纳穆曾在他的事务所里工作过。好久以前了，在马特•狄龙家。快活的马特，欢乐的晚宴。冷冻禽肉，雪茄烟，坦塔罗斯酒柜[192]。 马特确实有着一颗金子般的心。对，是门顿。那天傍晚在滚木球的草地上，由于我的球滚进他的内线，他就大发雷霆。纯粹是出于偶然，滚了个偏心球。于是他把我恨之入骨。一见面就引起仇恨。摩莉和芙洛伊•狄龙在一棵丁香树下挽着胳膊笑。男人向来如此，只要有女人在场，就感到耻辱。

咦，他的帽子有一边瘪下去啦，是在马车里碰的吧。

“先生，对不起，”布卢姆先生在他们旁边说。

他们停下了脚步。

“你的帽子瘪下去一点儿，”布卢姆先生边指了指边说。

约翰•亨利•门顿纹丝儿不动，凝视了他片刻。

“那个地方，”马丁•坎宁翰帮着腔，也用手指了指。

约翰•亨利•门顿摘下礼帽，把瘪下去的部分弄鼓起来，细心地用上衣袖子把丝质帽面的绒毛捋了捋，然后又戴上了。

“现在好啦，”马丁•坎宁翰说。

约翰•亨利•门顿点了点头，表示领情。

“谢谢你，”他简短地说。

他们继续朝大门走去。布卢姆先生碰了个钉子，灰溜溜地挨后几步，免得听到他们的谈话。马丁一路指手划脚。他只消用一个小指头就能随心所欲地摆弄那样一个蠢货，而本人毫无察觉。

一双牡蛎般的眼睛。管它呢，以后他一旦明白过来，说不定就会懊悔的。只有这样才能摆布他。

谢谢。今天早晨咱们多么了不起啊!
Chapter 7 Aeolus
In the Heart of the Hibernian Metropolis
BEFORE NELSON'S PILLAR TRAILS SLOWED, SHUNTED, CHANGED TROLLEY, started for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure, Palmerston park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Harold's Cross. The hoarse Dublin United Tramway Company's timekeeper bawled them off: 
-- Rathgar and Terenure! 

-- Come on, Sandymount Green! 

Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a singledeck moved from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided parallel. 

-- Start, Palmerston park! 

The Wearer of the Crown
Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and polished. Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery. 
Gentlemen of the Press
Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores. 
-- There it is Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes. 

-- Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I'll take it round to the Telegraph office. 

The-door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Davy Stephens, minute in a large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a roll of papers under his cape, a king's courier. 

Red Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste. 

-- I'll go through the printing works, Mr Bloom said, taking the cut square. 

-- Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind his ear, we can do him one. 

-- Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I'll rub that in. We. 

William Brayden, Esquire, of Oaklands, Sandymount
Red Murray touched Mr Bloom's arm with the shears and whispered: 
-- Brayden. 

Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a stately figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly Freeman and National Press and the Freeman's Journal and National Press. Dullthudding Guinness's barrels. It passed stately up the staircase steered by an umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended each step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Simon Dedalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck. 

-- Don't you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered. 

The door of Ruttledge's office whispered: ee: cree. They always build one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out. 

Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk Mary, Martha. Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor. 

-- Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said. 

-- Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our Saviour. 

Jesus Mario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his heart. In Martha. 

Co-ome thou lost one, 
Co-ome thou dear one.
The Crozier and the Pen
-- His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely. 
They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck. 

A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and stepped off posthaste with a word. 

-- Freeman! 

Mr Bloom said slowly: 

-- Well, he is one of our saviours also. 

A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he passed in through the sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, along the now reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation? Thumping, thumping. 

He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards Nannetti's reading closet. 

With Unfeigned Regret it is we announce the of a most respected Dublin Burgess
Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping thump. This morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. Machines. Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in. 
How a Great Daily Organ is turned out
Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy crown. 
Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was worth. It's the ads ad side features sell a weekly not the stale news in the official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the year one thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of Tinnachinch. To all whom it may concern schedule pursuant to statute showing return of number of mules and jennets exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story. Uncle' Toby's page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note M.A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than the Irish. 

The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thurap. Now if he got paralysed there and no one knew how to stop them they'd clank on and on the same, print it over and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle the whole thing. Want a cool head. 

-- Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said. 

Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him they say. 

The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the dirty glass screen. 

-- Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off. 

Mr Bloom stood in his way. 

-- If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing backward with his thumb. 

-- Did you? Hynes asked. 

-- Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you'll catch him. 

-- Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I'll tap him too. 

He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman's Journal. 

Three bob I lent him in Meagher's. Three weeks. Third hint. 

We see the Canvasser at work
Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti's desk. 
-- Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember. 

Mr Nannetti considered the cutting a while and nodded. 

-- He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said. 

He doesn't hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves. 

The foreman moved his pencil towards it. 

-- But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants two keys at the top. 

Hell of a racket they make. Maybe he understands what I. 

The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket. 

-- Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top. 

Let him take that in first. 

Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the foreman's sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one things. 

Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew swiftly on the scarred-woodwork. 

House of Key(e)s
-- Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on. 
Better not teach him his own business. 

-- You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top in leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that's a good idea? 

The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched there quietly. 

-- The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor, the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the isle of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that? 

I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that voglio. But then if he didn't know only make it awkward for him. Better not. 

-- We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design? 

-- I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house there too. I'll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a little par calling attention. You know the usual. High class licensed premises. Longfelt want. So on. 

The foreman thought for an instant. 

-- We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months' renewal. 

A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent typesetters at their cases. 

Orthographical
Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry of a peeled pear under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn't it? Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry. 
I could have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to have said something about an old hat or something. No, I could have said. Looks as good as new now. See his phizthen. 

Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forwards its flyboard with slit the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too slit creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt. 

Noted Churchman an Occasional Contributor
The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying: 
-- Wait. Where's the archbishop's letter? It's to be repeated in the Telegraph. Where's what's his name? 

He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines. 

-- Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox. 

-- Ay. Where's Monks? 

-- Monks! 

Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out. 

-- Then I'll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you'll give it a good place I know. 

-- Monks! 

-- Yes, sir. 

Three months' renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try it anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge. Tourists over for the show. 

A Dayfather
He walked on through the caseroom, passing an old man, bowed, spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must have put through his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs' ads, speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now. Sober serious man with a bit in the savings-bank I'd say. Wife a good cook and washer. Daughter working the machine in the parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense. 
And it was the Feast of the Passover
He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type. Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD. kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage alleluia. Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that's the other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob's sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the water and the butcher and then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it well. Justice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's what life is after all. How quickly he does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers. 
Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to the landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch him out perhaps? Better phone him up first. Number? Same as Citron's house. Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four. 

Only once more that soap
He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over these walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy smell there always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom's next door when I was there. 
He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the soap I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief he took out the soap and stowed it away, buttoned into the hip pocket of his trousers. 

What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram: something I forgot. Just to see before dressing. No. Here. No. 

A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph office. Know who that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned Lambert it is. 

He entered softly. 

Erin, Green Gem of the Silver Sea
-- The ghost walks, professor Macllugh murmured softly, biscuitfully to the dusty windowpane. 
Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert's quizzing face, asked of it sourly: 

-- Agonising Christ, wouldn't it give you a heartburn on your arse? 

Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on: 

-- Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it babbles on its way, fanned by gentlest zephyrs tho' quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to the tumbling waters of Neptune's blue domain, mid mossy banks, played on by the glorious sunlight or 'neath the shadows cast o'er its pensive bosom by the overarching leafage of the giants of the forest. What about that, Simon? he asked over the fringe of his newspaper. How's that for high? 

-- Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said. 

Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, repeating: 

-- The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage. O boys! O boys! 

-- And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus said, looking again on the fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea. 

-- That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I don't want to hear any more of the stuff. 

He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and, hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand. 

High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off I see. Rather upsets a man's day a funeral does. He has influence they say. Old Chatterton, the vice-chancellor, is his granduncle or his greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death written this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first himself. Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on gale days. Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia. 

-- Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said. 

-- What is it? Mr Bloom asked. 

-- A recently discovered fragment of Cicero's, professor MacHugh answered with pomp of tone. Our lovely land. 

Short but to the Point
-- Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply. 
-- Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an accent on the whose. 

-- Dan Dawson's land, Mr Dedalus said. 

-- Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked. 

Ned Lambert nodded. 

-- But listen to this, he said. 

The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was pushed in. 

-- Excuse me, J.J. O'Molloy said, entering. 

Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside. 

-- I beg yours, he said. 

-- Good day, Jack. 

-- Come in. Come in. 

-- Good day. 

-- How are you, Dedalus? 

-- Well. And yourself? 

J.J. O'Molloy shook his head. 

Sad
Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline poor chap. That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What's in the wind, I wonder. Money worry. 
-- Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks. 

-- You're looking extra. 

-- Is the editor to be seen? J.J. O'Molloy asked, looking towards the inner door. 

-- Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard. He's in his sanctum with Lenehan. 

J.J. O'Molloy strolled Jo the sloping desk and began to turn back the pink pages of the file. 

Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show their grey matter. Brains on their sleeve like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the Express with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on the Independent. Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn't know which to believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. Hailfellow well met the next moment. 

-- Ah, listen to this for God's sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks... 

-- Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated windbag! 

-- Peaks, Ned Lambert went on, towering high on high, to bathe our souls, as it were... 

-- Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he taking anything for it? 

-- As 'twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland's portfolio, unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, for very beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our mild mysterious Irish twilight... 

His Native Doric
-- The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet. 
-- That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of the moon shines forth to irradiate her silver effulgence. 

-- O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan, shite and onions! That'll do, Ned. Life is too short. 

He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers. 

Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh's unshaven black-spectacled face. 

-- Doughy Daw! he cried. 

What Wetherup said
All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too wasn't he? Why they call him Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely. Entertainments open house. Big blow out. Wetherup always said that. Get a grip of them by the stomach. 
The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared about them and the harsh voice asked: 

-- What is it? 

-- And here comes the sham squire himself, professor MacHugh said grandly. 

-- Getououthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition. 

-- Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink after that. 

-- Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass. 

-- Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned. 

Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor's blue eyes roved towards Mr Bloom's face, shadowed by a smile. 

-- Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked. 

Memorable Battles Recalled
-- North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We won every time! North Cork and Spanish officers! 
-- Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective glance at his toecaps. 

-- In Ohio! the editor shouted. 

-- So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed. 

Passing out, he whispered to J.J. O'Molloy: 

-- Incipient jigs. Sad case. 

-- Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face. My Ohio! 

-- A Perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long. 

O, Harp Eolian
He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant unwashed teeth. 
-- Bingbang, bangbang. 

Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door. 

-- Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad. 

He went in. 

-- What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh asked, coming to the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder. 

-- That'll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret. Hello, Jack. That's all right. 

-- Good day, Myles. J.J. O'Molloy said, letting the pages he held slip limply back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today? 

The telephone whirred inside. 

-- Twenty eight... No, twenty... Double four . Yes. 

Spot the Winner
Lenehan came out of the inner office with Sports tissues. 
-- Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O. Madden up. 

He tossed the tissues on to the table. 

Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was flung open. 

-- Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops. 

Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the table came to earth. 

-- It wasn't me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir. 

-- Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There's a hurricane blowing. 

Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he stooped twice. 

-- Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat Farrel shoved me, sir. 

He pointed to two faces peering in round the door-frame. 

-- Him, sir. 

-- Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly. 

He hustled the boy out and banged the door to. 

J.J. O'Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking: 

-- Continued on page six, column four. 

-- Yes... Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from the inner office. Is the boss... ? Yes, Telegraph... To where?... Aha! Which auction rooms?... Aha! I see... Right. I'll catch him. 

A Collision ensues
The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and bumped against Lenehan who was struggling up with the second tissue. 
-- Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant and making a grimace. 

-- My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I'm in a hurry. 

-- Knee, Lenehan said. 

He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee. 

-- The accumulation of the anno Domini. 

-- Sorry, Mr Bloom said. 

He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J.J. O'Molloy slapped the heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps: 

We are the boys of Wexford 
Who fought with heart and hand.
Exit Bloom
-- I'm just running round to Bachelor's walk, Mr Bloom said, about this ad of Keyes's. Want to fix it up. They tell me he's round there in Dillon's. 
He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who, leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand suddenly stretched forth an arm amply. 

-- Begone! he said. The world is before you. 

-- Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out. 

J.J. O'Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan's hand and read them, blowing them apart gently, without comment. 

-- He'll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps after him. 

-- Show! Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window. 

A Street Cortege
Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr Bloom's wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a tail of white bowknots. 
-- Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan said, and you'll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk. Small nines. Steal upon larks. 

He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding feet past the fireplace to J.J. O'Molloy who placed the tissues in his receiving hands. 

-- What's that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two gone? 

-- Who? the professor said, turning. They're gone round to the Oval for a drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack Hall. Came over last night. 

-- Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where's my hat? 

He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his jacket, jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the air and against the wood as he locked his desk drawer. 

-- He's pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voIce. 

-- Seems to be, J.J. O'Molloy said, taking out a cigarette case in murmuring meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most matches? 

The Calumet of Peace
He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Lenehan promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J.J. O'Molloy opened his case again and offered it. 
-- Thanky vous, Lenehan said, helping himself. 

The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow. He declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh: 

'Twas rank and fame that tempted thee, 
'Twas empire charmed thy heart.
The professor grinned, locking his long lips. 
-- Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said. 

He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for him with quick grace, said: 

-- Silence for my brandnew riddle! 

-- Imperium romanum, J.J. O'Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler than British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire. 

Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling. 

-- That's it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire. We haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell. 

The Grandeur that was Rome
-- Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet claws. We mustn't be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome, imperial, imperious, imperative. 
He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing: 

-- What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloac&Aelig;: sewers. The Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: It is meet to be here. Let us build an altar to Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: It is meet to be here. Let us construct a watercloset. 

-- Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old ancient ancestors, as we read in the first chapter of Guinness's, were partial to the running stream. 

-- They were nature's gentlemen, J.J. O'Molloy murmured. But we have also Roman law. 

-- And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded. 

-- Do you know that story about chief Baron Palles? J.J. O'Molloy asked. It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly. 

-- First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready? 

Mr O'Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in from the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he entered. 

-- Entrez, mes enfants! Lenehan cried. 

-- I escort a suppliant, Mr O'Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by Experience visits Notoriety. 

-- How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your governor is just gone. 

? ? ?
Lenehan said to all: 
-- Silence! What opera resembles a railway line? Reflect, ponder, excogitate, reply. 

Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and signature. 

-- Who? the editor asked. 

Bit torn off. 

-- Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said: 

-- That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken. 

On swift sail flaming 
From storm and south 
He comes, pale vampire, 
Mouth to my mouth.
-- Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned... ? 
Bullockbefriending bard. 

Shindy in wellknown Restaurant
-- Good day, sir, Stephen answered, blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr Garrett Deasy asked me to... 
-- O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and knew his wife too. The bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter's face in the Star and Garter. Oho! 

A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. 

-- Is he a widower? Stephen asked. 

-- Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the typescript. Emperor's horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the ramparts of Vienna. Don't you forget! Maximilian Karl O'Donnell, graf von Tirconnel in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild geese. O yes, every time. Don't you forget that! 

-- The moot point is did he forget it? J.J. O'Molloy said quietly, turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job. 

Professor MacHugh turned on him. 

-- And if not? he said. 

-- I'll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. Hungarian it was one day... 

Lost Causes Noble Marquess mentioned
We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money. Material domination. Dominus! Lord! Where is the spirituality? Lord Jesus! Lord Salisbury. A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek! 
Kyrie Eleison!
A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long lips. 
-- The Greek! he said again. Kyrios! Shining word! The vowels the Semite and the Saxon know not. Kyrie! The radiance of the intellect. I ought to profess Greek, the language of the mind. Kyrie eleison! The closetmaker and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an imperium, that went under with the Athenian fleets at &Aelig;gospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a lost cause. 

He strode away from them towards the window. 

-- They went forth to battle, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but they always fell. 

-- Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in the latter half of the matinée. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus! 

He whispered then near Stephen's ear: 

Lenehan's Limerick
There's a ponderous pundit MacHugh 
Who wears goggles of ebony hue. 
As he mostly sees double 
To wear them why trouble? 
I can't see the Joe Miller. Can you?
In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead. 
Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket. 

-- That'll be all right, he said. I'll read the rest after. That'll be all right. 

Lenehan extended his hands in protest. 

-- But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railway line? 

-- Opera? Mr O'Madden Burke's sphinx face reriddled. 

Lenehan announced gladly: 

-- The Rose of Castille. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee! 

He poked Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp. 

-- Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness. 

Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling tissues. 

The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across Stephen's and Mr O'Madden Burke's loose ties. 

-- Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards. 

-- Like fellows who had blown up the bastille, J.J. O'Molloy said in quiet mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you? You look as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff. 

Omnium Gatherum
-- We were only thinking about it, Stephen said. 
-- All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics. 

-- The turf, Lenehan put in. 

-- Literature, the press. 

-- If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of advertisement. 

-- And Madam Bloom, Mr O'Madden Burke added. The vocal muse. Dublin's prime favourite. 

Lenehan gave a loud cough. 

-- Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a cold in the park. The gate was open. 

You can do it!
The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen's shoulder. 
-- I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite in it. You can do it. I see it in your face. In the lexicon of youth... 

See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer. 

-- Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public! Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father Son and Holy Ghost and fakes M'Carthy. 

-- We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O'Madden Burke said. 

Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare. 

-- He wants you for the pressgang, J.J. O'Molloy said. 

The Great Gallaher
-- You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis. Wait a minute. We'll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his mark? I'll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known. That was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you were born, I suppose. I'll show you. 
He pushed past them to the files. 

-- Look at here, he said, turning. The New York World cabled for a special. Remember that time? 

Professor MacHugh nodded. 

-- New York World, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw hat. Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean, Joe Brady and the rest of them. Where Skin-the-goat drove the car. Whole route, see? 

-- Skin-the-goat, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that cabman's shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me. You know Holohan? 

-- Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said. 

-- And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for the corporation. A night watchman. 

Stephen turned in surprise. 

-- Gumley? he said. You don't say so? A friend of my father's, is he? 

-- Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind the stones, see they don't run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius Gallaher do? I'll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have you Weekly Freeman of 17 March? Right. Have you got that? 

He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point. 

-- Take page four, advertisement for Bransome's coffee let us say. Have you got that? Right. 

The telephone whirred. 

A distant voice
-- I'll answer it, the professor said going. 
-- B is parkgate. Good. 

His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating. 

-- T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon gate. 

The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock's wattles. An illstarched dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat. 

-- Hello? Evening Telegraph here... Hello?... Who's there?... Yes... Yes... 

-- F to P is the route Skin-the-goat drove the car for an alibi. Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F. A. B. P. Got that? X is Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street. 

The professor came to the inner door. 

-- Bloom is at the telephone, he said. 

-- Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Burke's publichouse, see? 

Clever, Very
Clever, Lenehan said. Very. 
-- Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody history. 

Nightmare from which you will never awake. 

-- I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present, Dick Adams, the besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and myself. 

Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing: 

-- Madam, I'm Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba. 

-- History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince's street was there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star. Now he's got in with Blumenfeld. That's press. That's talent. Pyatt! He was all their daddies. 

-- The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the brother-in-law of Chris Callinan. 

-- Hello?... Are you there?... Yes, he's here still. Come across yourself. 

-- Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried. He flung the pages down. 

-- Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O'Madden Burke. 

-- Very smart, Mr O'Madden Burke said. 

Professor MacHugh came from the inner office. 

-- Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers were up before the recorder... 

-- O yes, J.J. O'Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone last year and thought she'd buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-goat. Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine! 

-- They're only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said. Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O'Hagan? Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense! Only in the halfpenny place! 

His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain. 

Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you write it then? 

Rhymes and Reasons
Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth? Must be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the same, looking the same, two by two. 
... la tua pace 
... che parlar ti piace 
... mentrechè il vento, come fa, si tace.
He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet, entwining, per l'aer perso in mauve, in purple, quella pacifica oriafiamma, in gold of oriflamme, di rimirar fe piu ardenti. But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb. 
-- Speak up for yourself, Mr O'Madden Burke said. 

Sufficient for the Day...
J.J. O'Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage. 
-- My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery gutter sheet not to mention Paddy Kelly's Budget, Pue's Occurrences and our watchful friend The Skibereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof. 

Links with Bygone Days of Yore
Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas. Who have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha! 
-- Well, J.J. O'Molloy said, Bushe K. C., for example. 

-- Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes. Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe. 

-- He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for... But no matter. 

J.J. O'Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly: 

-- One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him. 

And in the porches of mine ear did pour.
By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story, beast with two backs? 
-- What was that? the professor asked. 

Italia, Magistra Artium
-- He spoke on the law of evidence, J.J. O'Molloy said, of Roman justice as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis. And he cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the Vatican. 
-- Ha. 

-- A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence! 

Pause. J.J. O'Molloy took out his cigarette case. False lull. Something quite ordinary. 

Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar. 

I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives. 

A Polished Period
J.J. O'Molloy resumed, moulding his words: 
-- He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom and prophecy which if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in marble of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live. 

His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall. 

-- Fine! Myles Crawford said at once. 

-- The divine afflatus, Mr O'Madden Burke said. 

-- You like it? J.J. O'Molloy asked Stephen. 

Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed. He took a cigarette from the case. J.J. O'Molloy offered his case to Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying: 

-- Muchibus thankibus. 

A Man of High Morale
-- Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J.J. O'Molloy said to Stephen. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets: A. E. the master mystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.'s leg. He is a man of the very highest morale, Magennis. 
Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me? Don't ask. 

-- No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarette case aside. Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever heard was a speech made by John F. Taylor at the college historical society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the revival of the Irish tongue. 

He turned towards Myles Crawford and said: 

-- You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his discourse. 

-- He is sitting with Tim Healy, J.J. O'Molloy said, rumour has it, on the Trinity college estates commission. 

-- He is sitting with a sweet thing in a child's frock, Myles Crawford said. Go on. Well? 

-- It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction, I will not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the new movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore worthless. 

He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus. 

Impromptu
In ferial tone he addressed J.J. O'Molloy: 
-- Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sick bed. That he had prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy beard round it. He wore a loose neckcloth and altogether he looked (though he was not) a dying man. 

His gaze turned at once but slowly from J.J. O'Molloy's towards Stephen's face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair. Still seeking, he said: 

-- When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended John F. Taylor rose to reply. Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these. 

He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more. Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet. 

He began: 

-- Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my admiration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a country far away from this country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some highpriest of that land addressed to the youthful Moses. 

His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smoke ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself? 

-- And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I heard his words and their meaning was revealed to me. 

From the Fathers
It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That's saint Augustine. 
-- Why will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen; we are a mighty people. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity. 

Nile. 

Child, man, effigy. 

By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone. 

-- You pray to a local and obscure idol: our temples, majestic and mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children: Egypt is an host and terrible are her arms. Vagrants and daylabourers are you called: the world trembles at our name. 

A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it boldly: 

-- But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened to and accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have brought the chosen people out of their house of bondage nor followed the pillar of the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal amid lightnings on Sinai's mountaintop nor ever have come down with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the outlaw. 

He ceased and looked at them, enjoying silence. 

Ominous - for Him!
J.J. O'Molloy said not without regret: 
-- And yet he died without having entered the land of promise. 

-- A sudden - at - the - moment - though - from - lingering - illness - often - previously - expectorated - demise, Lenehan said. And with a great future behind him. 

The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and pattering up the staircase. 

-- That is oratory, the professor said, uncontradicted. 

Gone with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles of ears of porches. The tribune's words howled and scattered to the four winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more 

I have money. 

-- Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I suggest that the house do now adjourn? 

-- You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr O'Madden Burke asked. 'Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug, metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry. 

-- That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All who are in favour say ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which particular boosing shed?... My casting vote is: Mooney's! 

He led the way, admonishing: 

-- We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes, we will not. By no manner of means. 

Mr O'Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally's lunge of his umbrella: 

-- Lay on, Macduff! 

-- Chip of the old block! the editor cried, slapping Stephen on the shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys? 

He fumbled in his pocket, pulling out the crushed typesheets. 

-- Foot and mouth. I know. That'll be all right. That'll go 

in. Where are they? That's all right. 

He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office. 

Let Us Hope
J.J. O'Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen: 
-- I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment. 

He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him. 

-- Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn't it? It has the prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today. 

The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and rushed out into the street, yelling: 

-- Racing special! 

Dublin. I have much, much to learn. 

They turned to the left along Abbey street. 

-- I have a vision too, Stephen said. 

-- Yes, the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will follow. 

Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran: 

-- Racing special! 

Dear Dirty Dublin
Dubliners. 
-- Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty and fiftythree years in Fumbally's lane. 

-- Where is that? the professor asked. 

-- Off Blackpitts. 

Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face glistening tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records. Quicker, darlint! 

On now. Dare it. Let there be life. 

-- They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson's pillar. They save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They shake out the threepenny bits and a sixpence and coax out the pennies with the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver and one and seven in coppers. They put on their bonnets and best clothes and take their umbrellas for fear it may come on to rain. 

-- Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said. 

Life on the Raw
-- They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at the north city dining rooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins, proprietress... They purchase-our and twenty ripe plums from a girl at the foot of Nelson's pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They give two threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to waddle slowly up the winding staircase, grunting, encouraging each other, afraid of the dark, panting, one asking the other have you the brawn, praising God and the Blessed Virgin, threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory be to God. They had no idea it was that high. 
Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns has the lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water given her by a lady who got a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a crubeen and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday. 

-- Antithesis, the professor said, nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can see them. What's keeping our friend? 

He turned. 

A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scampering in all directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them Myles Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face, talking with J.J. O'Molloy. 

-- Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm. 

He set off again to walk by Stephen's side. 

Return of Bloom
-- Yes, he said. I see them. 
-- Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the offices of the Irish Catholic and Dublin Penny Journal, called: 

-- Mr Crawford! A moment! 

-- Telegraph! Racing special! 

-- What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace. A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom's face: 

-- Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows! 

Interview with the Editor
Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards the steps, puffing, and taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes just now. He'll give a renewal for two months, he says. After he'll see. But he wants a par to call attention in the Telegraph too, the Saturday pink. And he wants it if it's not too late I told councillor Nannetti from the Kilkenny People. I can have access to it in the national library. House of keys, don't you see? His name is Keyes. It's a play on the name. But he practically promised he'd give the renewal. But he wants just a little puff. What will I tell him, Mr Crawford? 
K. M. A.
Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said, throwing out his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable. 
A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm. Lenehan's yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown? 

-- Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I suppose it's worth a short par. He'd give the ad I think. I'll tell him... 

-- He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him. 

While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he strode on jerkily. 

Raising the Wind
-- Nulla bona, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I'm up to here. I've been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to back a bill for me no later than last week. You must take the will for the deed. Sorry, Jack. With a heart and a half if I could raise the wind anyhow. 
J. J. O'Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught up on the others and walked abreast. 

-- When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty fingers in the paper the beard was wrapped in, they go nearer to the railings. 

-- Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two old Dublin women on the top of Nelson's pillar. 

Some Column! - That's What Waddler One Said
-- That's new, Myles Crawford said. That's copy. Out for the waxies' Dargle. Two old trickies, what? 
-- But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see the roofs and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines' blue dome, Adam and Eve's, saint Laurence O'Toole's. But it makes them giddy to look so they pull up their skirts... 

Those Slightly Rambunctious Females
-- Easy all, Myles Crawford said, no poetic licence. We're in the archdiocese here. 
-- And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of the onehandled adulterer. 

-- Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I see the idea. I see what you mean. 

Dames Donate Dublin's Cits Speedpills Velocitous Aeroliths, Belief
-- It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are too tired to look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between them and eat the plums out of it one after another, wiping off with their handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and spitting the plumstones slowly out between the railings. 
He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr O'Madden Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards Mooney's. 

-- Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse. 

Sophist Wallops Haughty Helen Square on Proboscis. Spartans Gnash Molars. Ithacans Vow Pen is Champ
-- You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of Gorgias, the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were bitterer against others or against himself. He was the son of a noble and a bondwoman. And he wrote a book in which he took away the palm of beauty from Argive Helen and handed it to poor Penelope. 
Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich. 

They made ready to cross O'Connell street. 

Hello There, Central!
At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rathfarnham, Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Sandymount Green, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines, all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs, delivery waggons, mail-vans, private broughams, aerated mineral water floats with rattling crates of bottles, rattled, lolled, horsedrawn, rapidly. 
What? - and Likewise - Where?
-- But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the plums? 
Virgilian, Says Pedagogue. Sophomore Plumps for Old Man Moses
-- Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to reflect. Call it, let me see. Call it: deus nobis hc otia fecit. 
-- No, Stephen said, I call it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or the Parable of the Plums. 

-- I see, the professor said. 

He laughed richly. 

-- I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land. We gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O'Molloy. 

Horatio is Cynosure this Fair June Day
J. J. O'Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance cowards the statue and held his peace. 
-- I see, the professor said. 

He halted on sir John Gray's pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson through the meshes of his wry smile. 

Diminished Digits Prove Too Titillating for Frisky Frumps. Anne Wimbles, Flo Wangles - Yet Can You Blame Them?
-- Onehandled adulterer, he said grimly. That tickles me I must say. -- Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty's truth was known. 


在希勃尼亚[1]首都中心一辆辆电车在纳尔逊纪念柱前减慢了速度，转入岔轨，调换触轮， 重新发车，驶往黑岩、国王镇和多基、克朗斯基亚、拉思加尔和特勒努尔、帕默斯顿公园、上拉思曼斯、沙丘草地、拉思曼斯、林森德和沙丘塔以及哈罗德十字路口。都柏林市联合电车公司那个嗓音嘶哑的调度员咆哮着把电车撵走：

“开到拉思加尔和特勒努尔去!”

“下一辆开往沙丘草地!”

右边是双层电车，左边是辆单层电车。车身咣咣地晃悠着，铃铛丁零零地响着，一辆辆地分别从轨道终点发车，各自拐进下行线，并排驶去。

“开往帕默斯顿公园的，发车!

王冠佩带者

中央邮局的门廊下，擦皮鞋的边吆喝着边擦。亲王北街上是一溜儿朱红色王室邮车，车帮上标着今上御称的首字E•R•[2]。成袋成袋的挂号以及贴了邮票的函件、明信片、邮筒和邮包，都乒啷乓啷地被扔上了车，不是寄往本市或外埠，就是寄往英国本土或外国的。

新闻界人士

穿粗笨靴子的马车夫从亲王货栈[3]里推出酒桶，滚在地上发出钝重的响声，又哐噹哐噹码在啤酒厂的平台货车上。由穿粗笨靴子的马车夫从亲王货栈里推滚出来的酒桶，在啤酒厂的货车上发出一片钝重的咕咚咕咚声。

“在这儿哪，”红穆雷[4]说，“亚历山大•凯斯。”

“请你给剪下来，好吗?”布卢姆先生说，“我把它送到电讯报报馆去。”

拉特利奇的办公室的门嘎地又响了一声。小个子戴维•斯蒂芬斯[5]严严实实地披着一件大斗篷，鬈发上是一顶小毡帽，斗篷下抱着一卷报纸，摆出一副国王信使的架势踱了出去。

红穆雷利利索索地用长剪刀将广告从报纸上铰了下来。剪刀和浆糊。

“我到印刷车间去一趟，”布卢姆先生拿着铰下来的广告说。

“好哇，要是他需要一块补白的话，”红穆雷将钢笔往耳朵上一夹，热切地说，“我们想法安排一下吧。”

“好的，”布卢姆先生点点头说，“我去说说看。”

我们。

沙丘奥克兰兹的

威廉•布雷登[6]阁下

红穆雷用那把大剪刀碰了碰布卢姆先生的胳膊，悄悄地说：

“布雷登。”

布卢姆先生回过头去，看见穿着制服的司阍摘了摘他那顶印有字母的帽子。这当儿，一个仪表堂堂的人[7]从《自由人周刊•国民新闻》和《自由人报•国民新闻》的两排阅报栏之间走过来。发出钝重响声的吉尼斯啤酒[8]桶。他用雨伞开路，庄重地踏上楼梯，长满络腮胡子的脸上是一派严肃神色。他那穿着高级绒面呢上衣的脊背，一步步地往上升。脊背。西蒙•迪达勒斯说，他的脑子全都长在后颈里头了。他背后隆起一棱棱的肉。脖颈上，脂肪起着褶皱。脂肪，脖子，脂肪，脖子。

“你不觉得他长得像咱们的救世主吗?”红穆雷悄悄地说。

拉特利奇那间办公室的门吱吜吜地低声响着。为了通风起见，他们总是把两扇门安得对开着。一进一出。

咱们的救世主。周围镶着络腮胡子的鸭蛋脸，在暮色苍茫中说着话儿。玛丽和玛尔塔。男高音歌手马里奥[9]用剑一般的雨伞探路，来到脚光跟前。

“要么就像马里奥，”布卢姆先生说。

“对，”红穆雷表示同意，“然而人家说，马里奥活脱儿就像咱们的救世主哩。”

红脸蛋的耶稣•马里奥穿着紧身上衣，两条腿又细又长。他把一只手按在胸前，在歌剧《玛尔塔》[10]中演唱着：

回来吧，迷失的你，

回来吧，亲爱的你![11]

牧杖与钢笔

“主教大人今儿早晨来过两次电话，”[12]红穆雪板着面孔说。 他们望着那膝盖、小腿、靴子依次消失。脖子。

一个送电报的少年脚步轻盈地踅进来，往柜台上扔下一封电报，只打了声招呼就匆匆地走了，

“《自由人报》!”

布卢姆先生慢条斯理地说：

“喏，他也是咱们的救世主之一。”

他掀起柜台的活板，穿过一扇侧门，并沿着暖和而昏暗的楼梯和过道走去，还经过如今正回荡着噪音的一个个车间，一路脸上泛着柔和的微笑。然而，难道他挽救得了发行额下跌的局面吗?咣噹噹。咣噹噹。

他推开玻璃旋转门，走了进去，迈过散布在地上的包装纸，穿过一道轮转机铿锵作响的甬路，走向南尼蒂[13]的校对室。

海因斯也在这里，也许是来结讣告的账吧。咣噹噹。咣噹。

讣告

一位至为可敬的都柏林市民仙逝

谨由衷地表示哀悼

今天早晨，已故帕特里克•迪格纳穆先生的遗体。机器。倘若被卷了进去，就会碾成齑粉。如今支配着整个世界。他[14]这部机器也起劲地开动着。就像这些机器一样，控制不住了，一片混乱。一个劲儿地干着，沸腾着。又像那只拼命要钻进去的灰色老鼠。

一份伟大的日报是怎样编印出来的

布卢姆先生在工长瘦削的身子后面停下脚步来，欣赏着他那贼亮的秃脑瓢儿。

奇怪的是他从未见过真正的祖国。爱尔兰啊，我的祖国。学院草地的议员。他竭力以普通一工人的身份，使报纸兴旺起来。[15]周刊全靠广告和各种专栏来增加销数，并非靠官方公报[16]发布的那些陈旧新闻。诸如一千XX年政府发行的官报。安妮女王驾崩[17]等等。罗森纳利斯镇区的地产，廷纳欣奇男爵领地[18]。有关人士注意:根据官方统计从巴利纳出口的骡子与母驴的数目一览表[19]。园艺琐记[20]。漫画[21]。菲尔•布莱克在周刊上连载的《帕特和布尔》的故事。托比大叔为小娃娃开辟的专页。乡下佬问讯栏。亲爱的编辑先生，有没有治肚胀的灵丹妙剂?编这一栏倒不赖，一边教人，一边也学到很多东西。人间花絮。《人物》[22]。大多是照片[23]。黄金海岸上，丽人们穿着泳装婷婷玉立。世界上最大的氢气球。一对姐妹同时举行婚礼，双喜临门。两位新郎脸对着脸，开怀大笑。其中一个就是排字工人卡普拉尼[24]，比爱尔兰人还更富于爱尔兰气质。

机器以四分之三拍开动着。咣噹，咣噹，咣噹。倘若他在那儿突然中了风，谁都不晓得该怎样关机器，那它就会照样开动下去，一遍遍地反反复复印刷，整个儿弄得一塌糊涂。可真得要一副冷静的头脑。

“喏，请把这排在晚报的版面上，参议员先生，”海因斯说。

过不久就会称他作市长大人[25]啦。据说，高个儿约翰[26]是他的后台。

工长没有答话。他只在纸角上潦潦草草地写上“付排”二字，并对排字工人打了个手势。他一声不响地从肮脏的玻璃隔板上面把稿纸递过去。

“好，谢谢啦，”海因斯边说边走开。

布卢姆先生挡住了他的去路。

“假若你想领钱，出纳员可正要去吃午饭哪，”他说着，翘起大拇指朝后指了指。

“你领了吗?”海因斯问。

“唔，”布卢姆先生说，“赶快去，还来得及。”

“谢谢，老伙计，”海因斯说，“我也去领。”

他急切地朝《自由人报》编辑部奔去。

我曾在弥尔酒店里借给他三先令。已经过了三个星期。这是第三回提醒他了。

我们看见广告兜揽员在工作

布卢姆先生将剪报放在南尼蒂先生的写字台上。

“打扰您一下，参议员，”他说，“这条广告是凯斯的，您还记得吗?”

南尼蒂对着那则广告沉吟片刻，点了点头。

“他希望七月里登出来，”布卢姆先生说。

工长把铅笔朝剪报移动。

“等一等，”布卢姆先生说，“他想改动一下。您知道，凯斯，他想在上端再添两把钥匙。”

这噪音真讨厌。他听不见啊，南南。得有钢铁般的神经才行。兴许他能理解我的意思。

工长掉过身来，好耐着性子去倾听。他举起一只胳膊肘，开始慢慢地挠他身上那件羊驼呢夹克的腋窝底下。

“就像这个样子，”布卢姆先生在剪报上端交叉起两个食指比划着。

让他首先领会这一点。布卢姆先生从他用指头交叉成的十字上斜望过去，只见工长脸色灰黄，暗自思量他大概有点儿病。那边，恭顺的大卷筒在往轮转机里输送大卷大卷的印刷用纸。铿锵锵、铿锵锵地闹腾吧。那纸要是打开来，总得有好几英里长。印完之后呢?哦，包肉啦，打包裹啦，足能派上一千零一种用场。

每逢噪音间歇的当儿，他就乖巧地插上一言半语，并在遍体斑痕的木桌上，麻利地面起图样。

钥匙议院[27]

“您瞧，是这样的，这儿有两把十字交叉的钥匙[28]。再加上个圈儿，字号写在这儿：亚历山大•凯斯，茶叶、葡萄酒及烈酒商什么的。”

对他的业务，最好不要去多嘴多舌。

“参议员，您自己晓得他的要求。然后在上端，把钥匙议院这几个铅字排成个圆圈。您明白吧?您不觉得这是个好主意吗?”

工长把挠个不停的手移到下肋部，又悄悄地挠着那儿。

“这个主意，”布卢姆先生说，“是从钥匙议院得来的。您晓得，参议员，是曼克斯议会。这暗示着自治。从曼岛会引来游客的，您瞧，会引人注目的。您能办得到吗?”

也许我可以问问他“voglio”[29]这个字该怎样发音。可要是他不晓得，那只不过是把他弄得很尴尬而已。还是不要问为好。

“我们能办到，”工长说，“你有图案吗?”

“我可以弄来，”布卢姆先生说，“基尔肯尼的一家报纸上登过。他在那儿也开了一家店。我跑一趟去问问他就是了。喏，您可以那么办，再附上一小段，引起注意就成了。您知道通常的写法是：‘店内经特许供应高级酒类，以满足顾客多时的愿望’什么的。”

工长沉吟了片刻。

“我们能办到，”他说，“每隔三个月让他跟我们续订一次合同吧。”

这时，一个排字工人给他送来一份软塌塌的毛样。他一声不响地开始校对。布卢姆先生站在他身边，听着机器发出的震响，望着那些在活字分格盘旁一声不响地操作着的排字工人。

缀字校正

他自己非拼写得准确无讹不可。校对热。今天早晨马丁•坎宁翰忘记给我们出他那个拼写比赛的难题了。“看一个焦虑不安的行商在墓地的墙下，测量一只削了皮的梨有多么匀称所感到的无比困惑，是饶有趣味的。”[30]有些莫名其妙，对不?把“墓地”一词加进去，当然是为了“匀称”。[31]

当他戴上那顶大礼帽时，我本该说声谢谢。我应该扯一扯旧帽子什么的。可不，我本来可以这么说：“看上去还跟新的一样哩。”倒想看看他脸上会有什么反应。

吱。第一部印刷机那最下面的平台把拨纸器吱的一声推了出来，上面托着第一撂对折的报纸。它就这样吱的一声来引起注意，差不多像个活人了。它竭尽全力来说着话。连那扇门也吱吱响着，在招呼人把它关上。每样东西都用各自的方式说话。吱。

著名的神职人员

不定期的撰稿者

工长突如其来地把毛样递过来说：

“等一下。大主教的信在哪儿呢?还得在{电讯报}上重登一遍。那个叫什么名字来着的人在哪儿?”

他朝周围那一部部只顾轰鸣却毫无反响的机器望了望。

“先生，是蒙克斯吗?”铸宇间一个声音问道。

“嗯。蒙克斯在哪儿?”

“蒙克斯！”

布卢姆先生拿起他那份剪报。该走了。

“那么，我把图案弄来，南尼蒂先生，”他说，“我知道你准会给它安排个好位置。”

“蒙克斯！”[33]

“哦，先生。”

每隔三个月，续订一次合同。我先得去吸口新鲜空气。好歹试试看吧。八月见报吧。是个好主意：在巴尔斯布里奇举办马匹 展示会[32]的月份。旅游者会前来参加展示会的。

排字房的老领班

穿过排字房时，他从一个戴眼镜、系了围裙的驼背老人身边走过。那就是排字房的老领班蒙克斯。他这辈子想必亲手排了许多五花八门的消息：讣告、酒店广告、讲演、离婚诉讼、打捞到溺死者。如今，快要走到生命尽头了。我敢说，这是个处世稳重、一丝不苟的人，银行里多少总有些积蓄。老婆做得一手好菜，衣服洗得干净。闺女在客厅里踩着缝纫机。相貌平庸的简，从不惹是生非。

逾越节[34]到了

他停下脚步，望着一个排字工人利利索索地分字模。先得倒过来读。他读起来快得很。这功夫是练出来的。穆纳格迪•克里特怕。可怜的爸爸曾经拿着{哈加达}书[35]，用手指倒指着念给我听。逾越节[36]。明年在耶路撒冷。 唷，哎呀!经过漫长的岁月，吃尽了苦头。我们终于被领出埃及的士地，进入了为奴之家[37]。哈利路亚[38]。以色列人哪，你们要留心听!上主是我们的上帝。[39]不，那是另一档子事。还有那十二个弟兄，雅各的儿子们[40]再就是羔羊[41]、猫、狗、杖[42]、水[43]和屠夫。然后，死亡的天使杀了屠夫，屠夫杀了公牛，狗杀了猫[44]。乍一听好像有点儿莫名其妙，其实再探究一下就会明白，这意味着正义：大家都在相互你吃我，我吃你。这毕竟就是人生。这活儿他干得多快啊。熟能生巧。他像在用指头读着原稿似的。

布卢姆先生从那咣噹咣噹的噪音中踱出，穿过走廊，来到楼梯平台。现在我打算一路搭电车前往。也许能找到他吧。不如先给他挂个电话。号码呢?跟西特伦家的门牌号码一样：二八。二八四四。

只再挪一次，那块肥皂

他走下露天的楼梯。是哪个讨厌鬼用火柴在墙上乱涂一气?看上去仿佛是为了打赌而干的。这些厂房里总是弥漫着浓烈的油脂气味。当我呆在汤姆[45]隔壁的时候，就老是闻到这种温吞吞的鳔胶气味。

他掏出手绢来搌了搌鼻孔。香橼柠檬?啊，我还在那儿放了块肥皂呢。在那个兜儿里会弄丢的。他放回手绢时取出肥皂，然后把它塞进裤后兜，扣上钮扣。

你太太使用哪一种香水?我还来得及乘电车回家一趟。借口说忘了点儿东西。在她换衣服之前，瞧上一眼。不。这儿。不。

抽冷子从《电讯晚报》的编辑部里传出一阵刺耳的尖笑声。我知道那是谁。怎么啦?溜进去一会儿，打个电话吧。那是内德•兰伯特。

他踅了进去。

爱琳[46]，银海上的绿宝石

“幽灵走来了，”[47]麦克休教授嘴里塞满饼干，朝那积着尘埃的窗玻璃低声咕依。

迪达勒斯先生从空洞洞的壁炉旁朝内德•兰伯特那张泛着冷笑的脸望去，尖酸地问：

“真够呛，这会不会使你的屁股感到烟薰火燎呢?”

内德•兰伯特坐在桌子上，继续读下去：

“再则，请注意那打着漩涡蜿蜒曲折地哗哗淌去的泪泪溪流与拦住去路的岩石搏斗，在习习西风轻拂下，冲向海神所支配的波涛汹涌的蔚蓝领国;沿途，水面上荡漾着灿烂的阳光，两边的堤岸爬满青苔，森林中的巨树那架成拱形的繁叶[48]，将荫影投射于溪流那忧郁多思的胸脯上。怎么样，西蒙?”他从报纸的上端望着问，“挺出色吧?”

“他调着样儿喝酒，”迪达勒斯先生说。

内德•兰伯特边笑边用报纸拍着自己的膝盖，重复着：

“忧郁多思的胸脯和蒙在屁股上的繁叶。真够绝的了!”

“色诺芬[49]俯瞰马拉松[50]，”迪达勒斯先生说，他又瞧了瞧壁炉和窗户，“马拉松濒临大海。[51]”

“行啦，”麦克休教授从窗旁人声说，“我再也不想听那套啦。”

他把啃成月牙形的薄脆饼干吃掉，还觉得饿，正准备再去啃拿在另一只手里的饼干。

咬文嚼字的玩艺儿。吹牛皮，空空洞洞。依我看，内德•兰伯特准备请一天假。每逢举行葬礼，这一天就整个儿被打乱了。人家说，他有势力。大学副校长——老查特顿[52]是他的伯祖父或曾伯祖父。据说眼看就九旬了。也许报馆为这位副校长的噩耗所写的短评老早就准备好了。他简直就是为了刁难他们才活得这么长。说不定他自己倒会先死哩。约翰尼，替你伯父让路吧[53]。赫奇斯•艾尔•查特顿阁下。每逢该交租金的日子，老人就用他那颤巍巍的手给他签上一两张字迹古怪的支票。老人一旦踹了腿，他就可以发一笔横财。哈利路亚。

“又一阵发作吧，”内德•兰伯特说。

“什么呀?”布卢姆先生说。

“新近发现的西塞罗[54]断简残篇，”麦克休教授煞有介事地回答说，“《我们美丽的国土》。”

简单然而扼要

“谁的国土?”布卢姆先生简捷地问。

“问得再中肯不过了，”教授边咀嚼着边说，“并且在‘谁的’上加重了语气。”

“丹•道森[55]的国土，”迪达勒斯先生说。

“指的是他昨天晚上的演说吗?”布卢姆先生问。

内德•兰伯特点了点头。

“且听听这个，”他说。

这当儿，门被推开了，球形的门把手碰着了布卢姆先生的腰部。

“对不起，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊边走进来边说。

布卢姆先生敏捷地往旁边一闪。

“不客气，”他说。

“你好，杰克。”

“请进，请进。”

“你好。”

“你好吗，迪达勒斯?”

“蛮好。你呢?”

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊摇了摇头。

伤 心

在年轻一辈的律师中间他曾经是最精明强干的一位。如今患了肺病，可怜的伙计。从他脸上那病态的潮红看，这个人已经病入膏肓，随时都可能一命呜呼。究竟是怎么回事？为金钱发愁吧。

“或者，倘若我们攀登重岩叠嶂的峰巅。”

“你的气色异常地好。”

“能见见主编吗?”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊边往里屋瞅边问。

“当然可以，”麦克休教授说，“可以见他并且谈谈。他正在自己屋里跟利内翰[56]在一起。”

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊踱到办公室里那张斜面写字台前，从后往前翻看着用浅粉色纸印刷的报纸合订本。

本来或许可以有所成就的，可是业务荒疏了，灰心丧气，贪起赌来。弄得债台高筑。播下风，收割的是暴风。[57]过去，狄•与托•菲茨杰拉德[58]事务所常常付给他优厚的预约辩护费。他们是为了显示智力而戴假发的。就像是坐落于葛拉斯涅文的竖像似的，炫耀着自己的头脑。他想必是跟加布里埃尔•康罗伊一道为《快报》[59]撰写一些文章。此人博学。迈尔斯•克劳福德是以在《独立报》[60]上写文章起家的。那些报人只要一听说哪儿有空子可钻，马上就见风使舵，煞是可笑。风信鸡。嘴里一会儿吹热气，一会儿又吹冷风![61]不知道该相信哪个好了。听到第二个故事之前，觉得头一个也蛮好。在报上彼此猛烈地开笔仗，然后一切都被淡忘。一转眼就又握手言欢。

“喂，请你们务必听听吧，”内德•兰伯特央求说。“或者，倘若我们攀登重岩叠嶂的峰巅……”

“言过其实!”教授暴躁地插嘴说，“这种夸夸其谈的空话己经听够啦!”

内德•兰伯特继续读下去：

“峰巅，巍然耸立。我们的灵魂恍若沫浴于……”

“还不如沫浴一下他的嘴巴呢，”迪达勒斯先生说，“永恒的上帝，难道他还能从中得到些报酬吗?”

“沫浴于爱尔兰全景那无与伦比的风光中。论美，尽管在其他以秀丽见称的宝地也能找到被人广为称颂的典型，然而我们温柔、神秘的爱尔兰在黄昏中那无可比拟的半透明光辉，照耀着郁郁葱葱的森林，绵延起伏的田野，和煦芬芳的绿色牧场。所有这些，真是举世无双的……”

“月亮，”麦克休教授说，“他忘记了《哈姆莱特》[62]。”

他家乡的土话

黄昏辽远而广阔地笼罩着这片景色，直到月亮那皎洁的球体喷薄欲出，闪烁出它那银色的光辉……

“哦!”迪达勒斯先生绝望地呻吟着，大声说，“狗屁不值!足够啦，内德，人一生时光有限啊!”

他摘下大礼帽，不耐烦地吹着他那浓密的口髭，把手指扎煞开来，活像一把威尔士梳子[63]梳理着头发。

内德•兰伯特把报纸甩到一旁，高兴地暗自笑着。过了一会儿，麦克休教授那架着黑框眼镜、胡子拉碴的脸上，也漾起刺耳的哄笑。

“夹生面包•大傻瓜[64]!”他大声说。

韦瑟厄普[65]如是说

此文如今白纸黑字己经印了出来，自然尽可以挖苦它一通，可是这类货色就像刚出锅的热饼一样脍炙人口哩。他干过面包糕点这一行，对吧?所以大家才管他叫作“夹生面包•大傻瓜”。反正他也己经赚足了。闺女跟内地税务署的那个拥有小轿车的家伙订了婚。乖巧地让他上了钩，还大张宴席，应酬款待。韦瑟厄普一向说：用酒肉把他们置于掌心。

里屋的门猛地开了，一张有着鹰钩鼻子的红脸膛伸了进来，头上是一撮羽毛似的头发，活像个鸡冠。一双蓝色、盛气凌人的眼睛环视着他们，并且粗声粗气地问：

“什么事?”

“冒牌乡绅[66]亲自光临!”麦克休教授堂哉皇哉地说。

“去你的吧，你这该死的老教书匠!”主编说，算是跟他打了招呼。

“来，内德，”迪达勒浙先生边戴帽子边说，“这事完了之后[67]，我非得去喝上一盅不可啦。”

“喝酒!”主编大声说，“望完弥撒之前，什么也别想喝。”

“说得蛮对，”迪达勒斯先生说着就往外走，“来呀，内德。”

内德•兰伯特贴着桌边哧溜了下来。主编的一双蓝眼睛朝着布卢姆先生那张隐隐含着一丝笑意的脸上瞟去。

“你也跟我们一道来吗，迈尔斯?”内德•兰伯特问。

回顾难忘的战役

“北科克义勇军！”主编跨着大步走到壁炉台跟前，大声嚷着，“咱们连战连胜!北科克和西班牙军官们!”

“是在哪儿呀，迈尔斯?”内德•兰伯特若有所思地望着自己的鞋尖问。

“在俄亥俄!”主编吼道。

“可不是嘛，没错儿，”内德•兰伯特表示同意。 •

他一面往外走，一面跟杰•杰•奥莫洛伊打耳喳说：

“酒精中毒，真可悲。”

“俄亥俄!”主编仰起红脸膛儿，用尖锐的最高音嚷道，“我的俄亥俄[68]!”

“地地道道的扬抑扬音步!”教授说，“长，短，长。”

哦，风鸣琴[69]!

他从背心兜里掏出一卷清除牙缝的拉线[70]，扯下一截，灵巧地用它在那未刷过的两对牙齿之间奏出声来：

“乒乓，乒乓。"”

布卢姆先生看见时机正好，就走向里屋。

“借光，克劳福德先生，”他说，“为了一件广告的事，我想打个电话。”

他走了进去。

“今天晚上那篇社论怎么样?”麦克休教授问。他走到主编前，一只手牢牢地按在他的肩头。

“那样就行啦。”迈尔斯•克劳福德较为平静地说，“喂，杰克，不用着急。那样就可以啦。”

“你好，迈尔斯，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊说，他手一松，合订本的几页报纸就又软塌塌地滑回去了， “加拿大诈骗案[71]今出登来了吗?”

里屋电话铃在丁零零响着。

“二八……不，二0……四四……对。”

看准赢家

利内翰拿着《体育》[72]的毛样从里面的办公室走了出来。

“谁想知道哪匹马准能得金杯奖?”他问，“就是奥马登所骑的那匹“权杖”。”

他把毛样朝桌上一掼。

打赤脚沿着过道跑来的报童的尖叫声忽然挨近了，门猛地被推开。

“安静点儿，”利内翰说，“我听到脚步声啦。”

麦克休教授跨大步走过去，一把拽住那个战战兢兢的少年的脖领，旁的孩子们赶紧沿着过道往外逃，冲下楼梯。那些毛样被穿堂风刮得沙沙响，蓝色的潦草字迹在空中飘荡，然后落到桌子底下。

“不是我，先生。是我背后那个大个子猛推了我一下，先生。”

“把他赶出去，关上门，”主编说， “正在刮台风哪。”

利内翰开始从地板上抓起毛样，两次蹲下去时全嘟嘟嚷嚷的。

“我们在等赛马特辑哪，先生，”报童说，“帕特•法雷尔猛推了我一把，先生。”

他指了指从门框后面窥伺着的两张脸。

“就是他，先生。”

“快给我滚，”麦克休教授粗暴地说。

他把少年胡乱搡出去，砰的一声关上了门。

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊沙沙地翻着那合订本，边咕哝边查找：

“下接第六页第四栏。”

“对，这里是《电讯晚报》，”布卢姆先生在里间办公室里打着电话，“老板呢?……是的，《电讯》 ……到哪儿去啦?澳!哪家拍卖行?……啊!我明白啦。好的，我一定能找到他。”

接着是一次相撞

他刚挂上电话，那铃又丁零一声响了。他赶忙走进外屋，恰好跟又一次捡起毛样正在直起腰来的利内翰撞了个满怀。

“对不起，先生[73]，”利内翰说，他紧紧抓了布卢姆先生一把，做了个鬼脸。

“都怪我，”布卢姆先生说，他听任对方抓住自己。“没伤着你吗?都怪我太急啦。”

“我的膝盖，”利内翰说。

他做出一副滑稽相，边揉着膝盖边哼哼卿卿地说：

“年岁[74]不饶人啊。”

“对不起，”布卢姆先生说。

他走到门边，把门推开一半，又停下来了。杰•杰•奥莫洛伊还在翻看着那沉甸甸的纸页。两个蹲在大门外台阶上的报童发出的尖声喊叫和一只口琴吹奏出的音响，在空洞洞的过道里回荡着：

我们是韦克斯福德的男子汉，

凭着胆量和双臂酣战。[75]

布卢姆退场

“我要跑一趟巴切勒步道，”布卢姆先生说，“张罗一下凯斯这则广告。想把它定下来。听说他正在狄龙拍卖行那儿哪。”

他望着他们的脸，迟疑了片刻。主编一手支着头，倚着壁炉架，突然将一只臂往前一伸。

“走吧!”他说，“世界在你前面呢。”[76]

“一会儿就回来，”布卢姆边说边匆匆往外走。

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊从利内翰手里接过毛样来读。他轻轻地把它们一页页地吹开，不加评论。

“他准能拉到那宗广告，”他透过黑框眼镜，从半截儿窗帘上端眺望着说，“瞧，那帮小无赖跟在他后面呢。”

“在哪儿?让我瞧瞧。”利内翰边说，边朝窗口跑去。

街头行列

他们两个人面泛微笑，从半截儿窗帘上端眺望那些跳跳蹦蹦地尾随着布卢姆先生的报童们。最后一个少年在和风中放着一只尾巴由一串白色蝴蝶结组成的风筝，像是嘲弄一般在东倒西歪地摆来摆去。

“瞧，那群流浪儿跟在他后面大喊大叫，”利内翰说，“真逗!快把人笑死了。喔，肋骨都笑拧了!学他那扁平足的走法。耍着各种小把戏，乖巧得连云雀都逮得着。”

他以矫捷而滑稽的玛祖卡舞步从壁炉前滑过，来到杰•杰•奥莫洛伊跟前。奥莫洛伊把毛样递到他那摊开来的手里。

“怎么啦?”迈尔斯•克劳福德吃惊地说，“另外两位哪儿去啦?”

“谁?”教授转过身来说，“他们到椭圆酒家[77]喝点儿什么去了。帕迪•胡珀[78]和杰克•霍尔[79]也在那儿。是昨天晚上来的。”

“那就走吧，”迈尔斯•克劳福德说，“我的帽子呢?”

他趔趔趄趄地走进后面的办公室，撩起背心后面的衩口，玎玲噹啷地从后兜里掏出钥匙。钥匙又在半空中响了一下，当他锁书桌抽屉时，它们碰在木桌上又响了。

“他的病情不轻哪，”麦克休教授低声说。

“看来是这样，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊说。他掏出个香烟盒，若有所思地念叨着，“然而也未必如此。谁的火柴最多?”

和平的旱烟袋[80]

他敬一支烟给教授，自己也拿了一支。利内翰赶紧划了根火柴，依次为他们点燃了香烟。杰•杰•奥莫洛伊又打开烟盒来让。

“谢谢你[81]”利内翰说着，拿了一支。

主编从里面的办公室走了出来，草帽歪戴在额头上。他凛然地指着麦克休教授，背诵了两句歌词：

地位名声将你蛊惑，

使你醉心的是帝国[82]。

教授那长嘴唇抿得紧紧的，嘻笑着。

“呃?你这暴戾的老罗马帝国?”迈尔斯•克劳福德说。

他从开着盖儿的烟盒里取了一支香烟。利内翰立刻殷勤地为他点上，并且说：

“静一静，听听我这崭新的谜语!”

“罗马帝国[83]呗。”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊安详地说，“听上去要比不列颠的或布里克斯顿[84]文雅一些。这个词儿不知怎地使人想到火里的脂肪。”

迈尔斯•克劳福德噗的一声猛地朝天花板喷出第一口烟。

“对呀，”他说，“咱们是脂肪。你和我就是火星的脂肪。咱们的处境甚至还不如地狱里的雪球呢。”

罗马往昔的辉煌[85]

“且慢，”麦克休教授从从容容地举起瘦削得像爪子一样的两只手说，“咱们可不能被词藻，被词藻的音调牵着鼻子走。咱们心目中的罗马是帝国的，专制的，专横的[86]。”

稍顿了顿，他又以雄辩家的派头，摊开那双从又脏又破的衬衫袖口里伸出的胳膊：

“他们的文明是什么?我承认它是庞大的，然而是粗鄙的。厕所[87]。下水道。犹太人在荒野里以及山顶上说，‘这是个适当的地 方，我们为耶和华筑一座圣坛吧。’罗马人，正如跟他亦步亦趋的英格兰人一样，每当踏上新岸(他从未踏上过我们的岸边)，就一味地执着于修厕所。身穿宽大长袍的他，四下里打量了一下，然后说，‘这是个适当的地方，我们装个抽水马桶吧。’”

“他们这么说，也就这么做了，”利内翰说，“据《吉尼斯》第一章[88]咱们古老的祖先对流水曾有过偏爱。”

“他们生来就是绅士，”杰•杰、奥莫洛伊咕依道，然而，咱们也有•《罗马法》[89]。” 

“而庞修斯•彼拉多[90]那部法典的先知，”麦克休教授回答说。

“你晓得税务法庭庭长帕利斯[91]那档子事吗?”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊问；“ “那是在王家大学[92]的宴会上。一切都进行得顺顺当当

“先听我的谜语吧，”利内翰说， “你们准备好了吗?”

身着宽松的多尼格尔[93]灰色花呢衣服、个子高高的奥马登•伯克[94]先生从过道里走了进来。斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯跟在他后面，边进屋边摘下帽子。

“请进，小伙子们!”[95]利内翰大声说。

“我是前来护送一个求情者的，”奥马登•伯克先生悦耳的声调说，“这位青年在饱有经验者的引导下，来拜访一名声名狼藉者了。”

“你好吗?”主编说着，伸出一只手来， “请进。你家老爷子刚走。”

? ? ?

利内翰对大家说：

“静一静!哪一出歌剧跟铁路线相似?考虑，沉思，默想，解决了再回答我。”

斯蒂芬一面把打字信稿递过去，一面指着标题和署名。

“谁?”主编问。

撕掉了一个角儿。

“加勒特•迪希先生，”斯蒂芬说。

“又是那个矫情鬼，”主编说，“这是谁撕的?他忽然想解手了吗?”

扬起火焰般的帆，

从南方的风暴中乘快船，

他来了，苍白的吸血鬼，

跟我嘴对嘴地亲吻。[96]

“你好，斯蒂芬，”教授说，他凑过来，隔着他们的肩膀望去，“口蹄疫?你改行了吗?……”

阉牛之友派“大诗人”[97]呐。

在一家著名餐馆里闹起的纠纷

“您好，先生，”斯蒂芬涨红了脸回答说，“这封信不是我写的。加勒特•迪希先生托我……”

“哦，我认识他，”迈尔斯•克劳福德说，“我也认识他老婆。 是个举世无双的凶悍老泼妇。天哪，她淮是害上了口蹄疫!那天晚上，她在‘金星嘉德’饭店里，把一盆汤全泼到侍者脸上啦。哎呀!”

一个女人把罪恶带到人世间。为了墨涅拉俄斯那个跟人私奔了的妻子海伦，希腊人竟足足打了十年仗。布雷夫尼大公奥鲁尔克。[98]

“他是个鳏夫吗?”斯蒂芬问。

“啊，跟老婆分居着哪，”迈尔斯•克劳福德边浏览着打字信稿边说。“御用马群。哈布斯堡[99]。一个爱尔兰人在维也纳的城堡跟前救了皇帝一命。可不要忘记!爱尔兰的封蒂尔柯涅尔伯爵马克西米连•卡尔•奥唐奈。[100]为了封国王作奥地利陆军元帅，而今把他的嗣子派了来。[101]那儿迟早总有一天会出事。‘野鹅’[102]。啊，是的，每一次都是这样。可不要忘记这一点!”

“关键在于他忘没忘记，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊把马蹄形的镇纸翻了个过儿，安详地说，“拯救了王侯，也不过赢得一声道谢而已。”

麦克休教授朝他转过身来。

“不然的话呢?”他说。

“我把事情的来龙去脉说一说吧，”迈尔斯•克劳福德开口说，“有一天，一个匈牙利人[103]……”

失 败 者

被提名的高贵的侯爵

“我们一向忠于失败者[104]，”教授说，“对我们来说，成功乃是智慧与想象力的灭亡。我们从来不曾效忠于成功者。只不过侍奉他们就是了。我教的是刺耳的拉丁文。我讲的是这样一个民族的语言，他们的智力的顶点乃是‘一寸光阴一寸金’这么一条格言。物质占支配地位。主啊![105]主啊!这句话的灵性何在?主耶稣还是索尔兹伯里勋爵[106]？伦敦西区一家俱乐部里的沙发[107]。然而希腊文却不同!”

主啊，怜悯我们吧![108]

开朗的微笑使他那戴着黑框眼镜的两眼炯炯有神，长嘴唇咧得更长了。

“希腊文!”他又说，“主![109]辉煌的字眼!闪米特族和撒克逊族都不晓得的母音[110]。主啊[111]!智慧的光辉。我应该教希腊文——教这心灵的语言。主啊，怜悯我们吧![112]修厕所的和挖下水道的[113]永远不能成为我们精神上的主宰。我们是溃败于特拉法尔加[114]的欧洲天主教骑士精神的忠实仆从，又是在伊哥斯波塔米随着雅典舰队一道沉没了的精神帝国[115]——而不是统治权[116]——的忠实仆从。对，对，他们沉没了。皮勒斯被神谕所哄骗[117]，孤注一掷，试图挽回希腊的命运。这是对于失败者的效忠啊。”

他离开了他们，跨着大步走向窗口。

“他们开赴战场，”奥马登•伯克先生用阴郁的口吻说，“然而总吃败仗。”[118]

“呜呜!”利内翰低声哭泣着，“演出[119]快要结束的时候，竟被一片瓦击中。[120]可怜的、可怜的、可怜的皮勒斯!”

然后，他跟斯蒂芬打起耳喳来。

利内翰的五行打油诗

学究麦克休好气派，

黑框眼镜成天戴，

醉得瞧啥皆双影，

何必费事把它戴?

我看不出这有啥可笑[121]，你呢?

穆利根说，这是为了悼念萨卢斯特[122]。他母亲死得像头牲口[123]。

迈尔斯•克劳福德把那几张信稿塞进侧兜里。

“这样就可以啦，”他说，“回头我再读其余的部分。这样就可以啦。”

利内翰摊开双手表示抗议。

“还有我的谜语呢!”他说，“哪一出歌剧跟铁路线相似?”

“歌剧?”奥马登•伯克先生那张斯芬克斯般的脸把谜语重复了一遍。

利内翰欢欢喜喜地宣布说”

“《卡斯蒂利亚的玫瑰》。你懂得它俏皮在什么地方吗?谜底是，并排的铸铁。嘻嘻嘻。”[124]

他轻轻戳了一下奥马登•伯克先生的侧腹。奥马登•伯克先生假装连气儿都透不过来了，手拄阳伞，风度优雅地朝后一仰。

“帮我一把!”他叹了口气，“我虚弱得很。”

利内翰踮起脚尖，赶紧用毛样沙沙沙地扇了搧他的脸。

教授沿着合订本的架子往回走的时候，用手掠了一下斯蒂芬和奥莫洛伊先生那系得稀松的领带。

“过去和现在的巴黎，”他说，“你们活像是巴黎公社社员。”

“像是炸掉巴士底狱的家伙[125]，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊用安详的口吻挖苦说，“要不然，芬兰总督就是你们暗杀的吧?看上去你们仿佛干了这档子事——干掉了博布里科夫将军。[126]”

“我们仅仅有过这样的念头罢了，”斯蒂芬说。

万紫千红[127]

“这里人材济济，”迈尔斯•克劳福德先生说，“法律方面啦，古典方面啦……”

“赛马啦，”利内翰插嘴道。

“文学，新闻界。”

“要是布卢姆在场的话，”教授说，“还有广告这高雅的一行哩。”

“还有布卢姆夫人，”奥马登•伯克先生加上一句，“声乐女神。都柏林的首席歌星。”

利内翰大咳一声。

“啊嗨!”他用极其细柔的嗓音说，“哎，缺口新鲜空气!我在公园里感冒了，大门是敞着的。”

“你能胜任!”

主编将一只手神经质地搭在斯蒂芬的肩上。

“我想请你写点东西，”他说，“带点刺儿的。你准能胜任!一看你的脸就知道。青春的词汇里[128]……”

从你的脸上就看得出来。从你的眼神里也看得出来。你是个懒散、吊儿郎当的小调皮鬼。[129]

“口蹄疫!”主编用轻蔑口吻谩骂道，“民族主义党在勃里斯－因－奥索里召开大会[130]。真荒唐!威胁民众!得刺他们两下!把我们统统写进去，让灵魂见鬼去吧。圣父圣子和圣灵，还有茅坑杰克•麦卡锡[131]。”

“咱们都能提供精神食粮，”奥马登•伯克先生说。

斯蒂芬抬起两眼，目光与那大胆而鲁莽的视线相遇。

“他[132]要把你拉进记者帮呢!”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊说。

了不起的加拉赫[133]

“你能胜任，”迈尔斯•克劳福德为了加强语气，还擦起拳头，又说了一遍，“等着瞧吧，咱们会使欧洲大吃一惊。还是依格内修斯•加拉赫丢了差事之后，在克拉伦斯[134]当台球记分员时经常说的。加拉赫才算得上是个新闻记者呢。 那才叫作笔杆子。你晓得他是怎样一举成名的吗?我告诉你吧。 那可是报界有史以来最精采的一篇特讯哩。八一年[135]五月六日，‘常胜军’时期， 凤凰公园发生了暗杀事件[136]。你那时大概还没有出生[137]呢。我找给你看看。”

他推开人们，踱向报纸合订本。

“喂，瞧瞧，”他回过头来说，“《纽约世界报》[138]拍了封海底电报来约一篇特稿。你还记得当时的事吗?”

麦克休教授点了点头。

“《纽约世界报》哩，”主编兴奋地把草帽往后推了推说，“案件发生的地点。蒂姆•凯里，我的意思是说，还有卡瓦纳、乔•布雷迪[139]和其他那些人。‘剥山羊皮’[140]赶马车经过的路程。写明整个路程，明白吧?”

“‘剥山羊皮’，”奥马登•伯克先生说，“就是菲茨哈里斯。听说他在巴特桥那儿经营着一座马车夫棚[141]。是霍罗翰告诉我的。你认识霍罗翰吗?”

“那个一瘸一拐的吧?”迈尔斯•克劳福德说。

“他告诉我说，可怜的冈穆利也在那儿，替市政府照看石料，守夜的。”

斯蒂芬惊愕地回过头来。

“冈穆利?”他说。“真的吗?那不是家父的一个朋友吗?”

“不必管什么冈穆利了!”迈尔斯•克劳福德气愤地大声说，“就让冈穆利去守着他那石头吧，免得它们跑掉。瞧这个。依纳爵•加拉赫做了什么? 我告诉你。凭着天才和灵感，他马上就拍了海底电报。你有二月十七号的《自由人周刊》吗? 对，翻到了吗?”

他把合订本胡乱往回翻着，将手指戳在一个地方。

“掀到第四版，请看布朗梦想[142]的广告。找到了吗？对。”

电话铃响了。

远方的声音

“我去接，”教授边走向里屋，边说。

“B代表公园大门[143]。对。”

他的手指颤悠悠地跳跃着，从一个点戳到另一个点上。

“T代表总督府。 C是行凶地点。 K是诺克马龙大门[144l。”

他颈部那松弛的筋肉像公鸡的垂肉般颤悠着。没有浆好的衬衫假前脑一下子翘了起来，他猛地将它掖回背心里面。

“喂?是《电讯晚报》。喂?……哪一位?……是的……是的……是的。”

“F至P是‘剥山羊皮’为了证明他们当时不在犯罪现场而赶车走边的路线。英奇科尔、圆镇、风亭、帕默斯顿公园、拉尼拉。符号是F•A•B•P•。懂了吧?X是上利森街的戴维酒吧[145]。”

教授出现在里屋门口。

“是布卢姆打来的，”他说。

“叫他下地狱去吧，”主编立刻说，“X戴维酒吧，晓得了吧?”

伶俐极了

“伶俐……”利内翰说，“极了。”

“趁热给他们端上来，”迈尔斯•克劳福德说，“血淋淋地和盘托出。”

你永远不会从这场恶梦中苏醒过来。[146]

“我瞧见了，”主编自豪地说，“我刚好在场。迪克•亚当斯[147]是天主把生命的气吹进去[148]的科克人当中心地最他妈善良的一位。他和我本人都在场。”

利内翰朝空中的身影鞠了一躬，宣布说：

“太太，我是亚当。在见到夏娃之前曾经是亚伯。”[149]

“历史!”迈尔斯•克劳福德大声说，“亲王街的老太婆[150]打头阵。读了这篇特稿，哀哭并咬牙切齿。[151]特稿是插在广告里的。格雷戈尔•格雷[152]设计的图案。他从此就扶摇直上。后来帕迪•胡珀在托•鲍面前替他说项，托•鲍就把他拉进了《星报》[153]。如今他和布卢门菲尔德[154]打得火热。这才叫报业呢!这才叫天才呢!派亚特[155]!他简直就是大家的老爹!”

“黄色报纸的老爹，”利内翰加以证实说，“又是克里斯•卡利南[156]的姻亲。”

“喂?听得见吗?嗯，他还在这儿哪。你自已过来吧。”

“如今晚儿，你可到哪儿去找这样的新闻记者呀，呃?”主编大声说。

他呼啦一下把合订本合上了。

“很得鬼，”[157]利内翰对奥马登•伯克先生说。

“非常精明，”奥马登•伯克先生说。

麦克休教授从里面的办公室走了出来。

“说起‘常胜军’，”他说，“你们晓得吗，一些小贩被市记录法官[158]传了去……”

“可不是嘛，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊热切地说，“达德利夫人[159]为了瞧瞧被去年那场旋风[160]刮倒了的树，穿过公园走回家去。她打算买一张都柏林市一览图。原来那竟是纪念乔•布雷迪或是‘老大哥’[161]或是‘剥山羊皮’的明信片。而且就在总督府大门外出售

着哩，想想看!”

“如今晚儿这帮家伙净抓些鸡毛蒜皮，”迈尔斯•克劳福德说，“呸!报业和律师业都是这样!现在吃律师这碗饭的，哪里还有像怀持赛德[162]、 像伊萨克•巴特[163]、像口才流利的奥黑根[164那样的人呢?呃?哎，真是荒唐透顶!呸!只不过是撮堆儿真的货色!”

他没再说下去。嘴唇却一个劲儿地抽搐着，显示出神经质的嘲讽。 

难道会有人愿意跟那么个嘴唇接吻吗?你怎么知道呢?那么你为什么又把这写下来呢?

韵律与理性

冒斯，扫斯。冒斯和扫斯之间多少有些关联吧?要么，难道扫斯就是一种冒斯吗?准是有点儿什么。扫斯，泡特，奥特，少特，芝欧斯。[165]押：两个人身穿一样的衣服，长得一模一样，并立着。[166]

……给你太平日子，

……听你喜悦的话语，

趁现在风平浪静的一刻。[167]

但丁瞥见少女们三个三个地走了过来。着绿色、玫瑰色、枯叶色的衣服，相互搂着;穿过了这样幽暗的地方[168]，身着紫红色、紫色的衣服，打着那和平的金光旗[169]，使人更加恳切地注视[170]的金光灿烂的军旗，走了过来。可我瞧见的却是一些年迈的男人，在黯夜中，忏悔着自己的罪行，抱着铅一般沉重的脚步：冒斯、扫斯；拖姆、卧姆。[171]

“说说你的高见吧，”奥马登•伯克先生说。

一天应付一天的就够了……

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊那苍白的脸上泛着微笑，应战了。

“亲爱的迈尔斯，”他说，一边丢掉纸烟，“你曲解了我的话。就我目前掌握的情况而言，我并不认为第三种职业[172]这整个行当都是值得辩护的。 然而你的科克腿[173]被感情驱使着哪。为什么不把亨利•格拉顿[174]弗勒德[175]， 以及狄靡西尼[176]和埃德蒙•伯克[177]也抬出来呢?我们全都晓得伊格内修斯• 加拉赫，还有他那个老板，在查佩利佐德出版小报的哈姆斯沃思[178]； 再有就是他那个出版鲍厄里通俗报纸的美国堂弟[179]。《珀迪•凯利要闻汇编》、《皮尤纪事》以及我们那反映敏捷的朋友《斯基勃林之鹰》[180]，就更不用说了。 何必扯到怀特赛德这么个法庭辩论场上的雄辩家呢?编报纸，一天应付一天的就够了[181]。”

同往昔岁月的联系

“格拉顿和弗勒德都为这家报纸撰过稿，”主编朝着他嚷道，“爱尔兰义勇军[182]。你们如今都哪儿去啦?一七六三年创刊的。卢卡斯大夫。像约翰•菲尔波特•柯伦[183]这样的人，如今上哪儿去找呀?呸!”

“喏，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊说，“比方说，英国皇家法律顾问布什[184]。”

“布什?”主编说，“啊，对。布什，对。他有这方面的气质。肯德尔•布什[185]我指的是西摩•布什。”

“他老早就该升任法官了，”教授说，“要不是……唉，算啦。”

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊转向斯蒂芬，安详而慢腾腾地说：

“在我听到过的申辩演说中，最精采的正是出自西摩•布什之口。那是在审理杀兄事件一一蔡尔兹凶杀案。布什替他辩护来着。”

注入我的耳腔之内。[186]

顺便问一下，是怎样发觉的呢?他是正在睡着的时候死的呀。还有另外那个双背禽兽[187]的故事呢?

“演说的内容是什么?”教授问。

意大利，艺术的女王[188]

“他谈的是《罗马法》的证据法，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊说， “把它拿来跟古老的《摩西法典》一一也就是说，跟《同态复仇法》[189]一一相对照。于是，他就举出安置于罗马教廷的米开朗琪罗的雕塑《摩西》作例证。”

“嗬。”

“讲几句恰当的话，”利内翰作了开场白，“请肃静!”

静场，杰•杰•奥莫洛伊掏出他的香烟盒。

虚妄的肃静。其实不过是些老生常谈。

那位致开场白的取出他的火柴盒，若有所思地点上一支香烟。

从此，我[190]经常回顾那奇怪的辰光，并发现，划火柴本身固然是很小的一个动作，它却决定了我们两个人那以后的生涯。

干锤百炼的掉尾句

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊字斟句酌地说下去：

“他是这么说的：那座堪称为冻结的音乐[191]的石像， 那个长了犄角的可怕的半神半人的形象[192]，那智慧与预言的永恒象征。 倘若雕刻家凭着想象力和技艺，用大理石雕成的那些净化了的灵魂和正在净化着的灵魂的化身，作为艺术品有永垂不朽的价值的话，它是当之无愧的。”

他挥了挥细长的手，给词句的韵律和抑扬平添了一番优雅。

“很好!”迈尔斯•克劳福德立刻说。

“非凡的灵感，”奥马登•伯克说。

“你喜欢吗?”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊问斯蒂芬。

那些词藻和手势的优美使得斯蒂芬从血液里受到感染。他涨红了脸，从烟盒里取出一支香烟。杰•杰•奥莫洛伊把那烟盒伸向迈尔斯•克劳福德。利内翰像刚才那样为大家点燃香烟，自己也当作战利品似地拿了一支，并且说：

“多多谢谢嘞。”

高风亮节之士

“马吉尼斯教授[193]跟我谈到过你，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊对斯蒂芬说，“对于那些神秘主义者[194]，乳白色的、沉寂的[195]诗人们以及神秘主义大师A• E•[196]，你真正的看法是怎样的?这是那个姓勃拉瓦茨基[197]的女人搞起来的。她是个惯于耍花招的老婆子。A•E•曾跟前来采访的美国记者[198]说，你曾在凌晨去看他，向他打听过心理意识的层次。马吉尼斯认为你是在嘲弄A• E•。马吉尼斯可是一位高风亮节之士哩。”

谈到了我。他说了些什么?他说了些什么?他是怎样谈论我的?不要去问。

“不抽，谢谢，”麦克休教授边推开香烟盒边说，“且慢，我只说说一件事。我平生听到的最精采的一次演说，是约翰•弗•泰勤[199]学院的史学会上发表的[200]法官菲茨吉本[201]先生一一现任上诉法庭庭长一一刚刚讲完。所要讨论的论文(当时还是蛮新鲜的)是提倡复兴爱尔兰语[202]。”

他转过身来对迈尔斯•克劳福德说：

“你认识杰拉尔德•菲茨吉本。那么你就不难想象出他演说的格调了。”

“听说眼下他正跟蒂姆•希利[203]一道，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊说，“在三一学院担任财产管理委员会委员哪。”

“他正跟一个穿长罩衫的乖娃儿[204]在一起哪。”迈尔斯•克劳福德说，“讲下去吧，呃？”

“那篇讲演嘛，你们注意听着，”教授说，“是雄辩家完美的演说词。既彬彬有礼，又奔放豪迈，用语洗练而流畅。对于新兴的运动虽然还说不上是把惩戒的愤怒倾泄出来，[205]但总归是倾注了高傲者的侮辱。 当时那还是个崭新的运动呢。咱们是软弱的，因而是微不足道的。”

他那长长的薄嘴唇闭了一下。但他急于说下去，就将一只扎煞开来的手举到眼镜那儿，用颤巍巍的拇指和无名指轻轻扶了一下黑色镜框，使眼镜对准新的焦点。

即席演说

他恢复了平素的口吻，对杰•杰、奥莫洛伊说：

“你应该知道，泰勒是带病前往的。我不相信他预先准备过演说词，因为会场上连一个速记员都没有。他那黝黑瘦削的脸上，胡子拉碴，肮里肮脏的。松松地系着一条白绸领巾，整个来说，看上去像个行将就木之人(尽管并不是这样)。

此刻他的视线徐徐地从杰•杰•奥莫洛伊的脸上转向斯蒂芬，然后垂向地面，仿佛若有所寻。他那没有浆洗过的亚麻布领子从弯下去的脖颈后面露了出来，领子已被枯草般的头发蹭脏了。他继续搜寻着，并且说：

“菲茨吉本的演说结束后，约翰•弗•泰勒站起来反驳他。据我的回忆，大致是这么说的。”

他坚毅地抬起头。眼睛里又露出沉思的神色。迟钝的贝壳在厚实的镜片中游来游去，在寻找着出口。

他说：

“主席先生，诸位女士们，先生们：刚才听到我那位学识渊博的朋友对爱尔兰青年所发表的演说，佩服之至。我仿佛被送到离这个国家很远的一个国家，来到离本时代很远的一个时代;我仿佛站在古代埃及的大地上， 聆听着那里的某位祭司长对年轻的摩西训话。”

听众指间一动也不动地夹着香烟，聆听着。细微的轻烟徐徐上升，和演说一道绽开了花。让香烟袅袅上升[206]。这就要说出崇高的言词来了。 请注意。你自己想不想尝试一下呢?

“我好像听见那位埃及祭司长把声音提高了，带有自豪而傲慢的腔调。我听见了他的话语，并且领悟了他所启迪的含义。”

教父[207]们所示

我受到的启迪是：这些事物固然美好，却难免受到腐蚀；只有无比美好的事物，抑或并不美好的事物，才不可能被腐蚀。[208]啊，笨蛋!这是圣奥古期丁的话哩。

“你们这些犹太人为什么不接受我们的文化、我们的宗教和我们的语言?你们不过是一介牧民，我们却是强大的民族。你们没有城市，更没有财富。我们的都市里，人群熙攘;有着三至四层桨的大帆船[209]，满载着各式各样的商品，驶入全世界各个已知的海洋。你们刚刚脱离原始状态，而我们却拥有文学、僧侣、悠久的历史和政治组织[210]。”

尼罗河。

娃娃，大人，偶像。[211]

婴儿的奶妈们跪在尼罗河畔。[212]用宽叶香蒲编的摇篮。格斗起来矫健敏捷[213]的男子。长着一对石角[214]，一副石须，一颗石心。

“你们向本地那无名的偶像[215]祷告。我们的寺院却宏伟而神秘， 居住着伊希斯和俄赛里斯，何露斯和阿蒙一端。[216]你们信仰奴役、畏惧与谦卑;我们信仰雷和海洋。以色列人是孱弱的，子孙很少;埃及人口众多，武力令人生畏。 你们被称作流浪者和打零工的;世界听到我们的名字就吓得发抖。”

演说到此顿了一下，他悄悄地打了个饿嗝，接着又气势澎湃地扬起了嗓门：

“可是，各位女士，各位先生，倘若年轻的摩西聆听并接受这样的人生观；倘若他在如此妄自尊大的训诫面前俯首屈从，精神萎顿，那么他就永远也不会领着选民离开他们被奴役的地方了[217]，更不会白天跟着云柱走。[218]他决不会在雷电交加中在西奈山顶与永生的天主交谈。[219] 更永远不会脸上焕发着灵感之光走下山来，双手捧着十诫的法版，而那是用亡命徒的语言镌刻的。”

他住了口，望着他们，欣赏着这片寂静。

不祥之兆——对他而言!

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊不无遗憾地说：

“然而，他还没进入应许给他们的土地就去世啦。”[220]

“当时一来得一突然一不过一这病一拖延一已久一早就一频频一预期到会因吐血症一致死的，”[221]利内翰说，“他本来是会有锦绣前程的。”

传来了一群赤足者奔过走廊，并吧哒吧哒地上楼梯的声音。

“那才是雄辩之才呢，”教授说，“没有一个人反驳得了。”

随风飘去[222]。位于马勒麻斯特和塔拉那诸王的军队。连绵数英里的柱廊，侧耳聆听。保民官怒吼着，他的话语随风向四方飘去。 人们隐蔽在他的嗓音里。[223]业已消逝了的音波。阿卡沙秘录[224]——它记载着古往今来在任何地方发生过的一切。爱戴并称赞他。不要再提我。

我有钱。[225]

“先生们，”斯蒂芬说，“作为下一项议程，我可不可以提议议会立即休会?”

“你叫我吃了一惊。这该不会是法国式的恭维[226]吧？” 奥马登•伯克先生问道，“打个比喻吧，我认为现在正是古老客栈里的那只酒甕使人觉得无比枢意的时刻哩。”

“那么，就明确地加以表决。凡是同意的，请说‘是’，”利内翰宣布说，“不同意的，就说‘不’。一致通过。到哪家酒馆去呢?……我投穆尼[227]一票!”

他领头走着，并告诫说：

“咱们是不是要断然拒绝喝烈性酒呢?对，咱们不喝。无论如何也不。”

奥马登•伯克先生紧跟在他后面，用雨伞戳了他一下，以表示是同伙，并且说：

“来，麦克德夫!”[228]

“跟你老子长得一模一样!”主编入声说着，拍了拍斯蒂芬的肩膀。“咱们走吧。那串讨厌的钥匙哪儿去啦?”

他在兜里摸索着，拽出那儿页揉皱了的打字信稿。

“口蹄疫。我晓得。那能行吧。登得上的。钥匙哪儿去了呢?有啦。”

他把信稿塞回兜里，走进了里间办公室。

寄予希望

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊正要跟他往里走，却先悄悄地对斯蒂芬说：

“我希望你能活到它刊登出来的那一天。迈尔斯，等一下。”

他走进里间办公室，随手带上了门。

“来吧，斯蒂芬，”教授说，“挺好的，对吧?颇有预言家的远见。特洛伊不复存![229]对多风的特洛伊[230]大举掠夺。世上的万国。 地中海的主人们而今已沦落为农奴[231]。”

走在顶前面的那个报童紧跟在他们后面。吧哒吧哒地冲下楼梯，奔上街头，吆喝着：

“赛马号外!”

都柏林。我还有许许多多要学的。

他们沿着阿贝街向左拐去。

“我也有我的远见，”斯蒂芬说。

“呃?”教授说，为了赶上斯蒂芬的步伐，他双脚跳动着，“克劳福德会跟上来的。”

另一个报童一个箭步从他们身旁蹿了过去，边跑边吆喝着：

“赛马号外!”

亲爱而肮脏的都柏林[232]

都柏林人。

“两位都柏林的维斯太[233]，”斯蒂芬说，“曾经住在凡巴利小巷[234]里。一个是五十岁，另一个五十三。”

“在什么地方?”教授问。

“在黑坑[235]口外，”斯蒂芬说。

湿漉漉的夜晚，飘来生面团气味，引人发馋。倚着墙壁。她那粗斜纹布围巾下面，闪烁着一张苍白的脸。狂乱的心。阿卡沙秘录。快点儿呀，乖乖![236]

讲出来吧，果敢地。要有生命。[237]

“她们想从纳尔逊纪念柱顶上眺望都柏林的景色。她们在红锡做的信箱型攒钱罐里存起了三先令十便士。从罐里摇出几枚三便士和一枚六便士的小银币，又用刀刃拨出些铜币。两先令三便士是银币，一先令七便士是铜币。然后戴上软帽，穿上最好的衣服，还拿了雨伞，防备下雨。”

“聪明的处女们[238]，”麦克休教授说。

粗鄙的生活

“她们在马尔巴勒的北城食堂，从老板娘凯持•科林新手里头了一先令四便士的腌野猪肉和四片面包。在纳尔逊纪念柱脚下，又从一个姑娘手里头了二十四个熟李子，为了吃完咸肉好解渴。她们付给把守旋转栅门的人两枚三便士银币，然后打着趔趄，慢慢腾腾地沿着那螺旋梯攀登，一路咕依着，气喘吁吁，都害怕黑暗，相互鼓着劲儿。这个问那个带没带上咸肉，并赞颂着天主和童贞圣母玛利亚。忽而说什么干脆下去算了，忽而又隔着通气口往外瞧。荣耀归于天主。她们再也没想到纪念柱会有这么高。

“有一个叫安妮•基恩斯，另一个叫弗萝伦斯•麦凯布[239]。安妮•基恩斯患腰肌病，擦着一位太太分给她的路德圣水——一位受难会[240]神父送给那位太太一整瓶。弗萝伦斯•麦凯布每逢星期六晚饭时吃一只猪蹄子，干一瓶双X牌啤酒[241]。”

“正好相反，”教授点了两下头说，“维斯太贞女们。我仿佛能够看见她们。咱们的朋友在磨蹭什么哪?”

他回过头去。

一群报童连蹦带跳地冲下台阶，吆喝着朝四面八方散去，呼扇呼扇地挥着白色报纸。紧接着，迈尔斯•克劳福德出现在台阶上，帽子像一道光环，镶着他那张红脸。他正在跟杰、杰•奥莫洛伊谈着话。

“来吧，”教授挥臂大声嚷道。

他又和斯蒂芬并肩而行。

“是啊，”他说，“我仿佛看得见她们。”

布卢姆归来

在《爱尔兰天主教报》和《都柏林小报》[242]的公事房附近，布卢姆先生被卷进粗野的报童们的旋涡里，气儿都透不过来了。他招呼道：

“克劳福德先生!等一等!”

“《电讯报)》！赛马号外!”

“什么呀?”迈尔斯•克劳福德退后一步说。

一个报童冲着布卢姆的脸嚷道：

“鲁思迈因斯的大惨剧!风箱叼住了娃娃!”

会见主编

“就是这份广告的事儿，”布卢姆先生推开报童们，呼哧呼哧地挤向台阶，并从兜里掏出剪报说，“我刚刚跟凯斯先生谈过。他说，他要继续刊登两个月广告，以后再说。然而他还想在星期六的《电讯报》上登一则花边广告，好引人注目。要是来得及的话，他想把《基尔肯尼民众报》[243]的图案描摹下来。这，我己经告诉南尼蒂参议员了。我可以从国立图书馆弄到这图案。‘钥匙议院’，你明白吧。他姓凯斯。刚好谐音[244]。然而他实际上己经答应续登了。不过，他要求给弄得花哨一点。你有什么话要我捎给他吗，克劳福德先生?”

吻我的屁股[245]

“请你告诉他‘吻我的屁股’好吗?”迈尔斯•克劳福德边说边摊开胳膊，加强了语气，“马上去告诉他这是条直接来自马房的消息。”

怪心烦的。留神着点狂风。相互挽着胳膊，大家一道出去喝酒。头戴水手帽的利内翰也跟在后面，想捞上一盅。他像往常一样拍马屁。令人纳闷的是，竟然由小迪达勒斯带头。今天他穿了双好靴子。上次我见到他的时候，连脚后跟都露出来了。也不知道在什么地方膛过烂泥。这小子就是这么大大咧咧。他在爱尔兰区干什么来着?

“喏，”布卢姆先生把视线移回来说，“要是我能够把图案弄到手，我认为是值得为它写上一段的。他想必会刊登广告。我要对他说……”

吻我高贵的爱尔兰屁股[z46]

“他可以吻我高贵的爱尔兰屁股，”迈尔斯•克劳福德回过头来大声嚷道，“告诉他吧，随便什么时候来都行。”

正当布卢姆先生站在那儿琢磨着该怎样回答才好并正要泛出笑容的当儿，对方已跨着大步一颠一颠地走掉了。

筹 款

“囊空如洗，[247]杰克，”他把手举到下巴颏那儿说，“水已经淹到我这儿啦。我自己也是穷得一筹莫展。上礼拜找还在找个人出面在我的借据上签字担保呢! 对不起，杰克。我是心有余而力不足啊。请你务必体谅我这苦衷。要是好歹能够筹到钱，我一定乐意帮你忙。”

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊把脸一耷拉，默默地继续踱着步。他们追上前面的人，和他们并肩而行。

“当她们吃完腌肉和面包，用包面包的纸把二十个指头擦干净之后，就靠近了栅栏。”

“你听了会开心的，”教授向迈尔斯•克劳福德解释道，“两个都柏林老枢爬到纳尔逊纪念柱顶上去啦。”

了不起的圆柱!——一瞒珊走路者如是说

“这可是挺新鲜，”迈尔斯•克劳福德说，“够得上是条新闻素材。简直就像是到达格尔[248]去参加皮匠的野餐会。两个刁婆子，后来呢?” 

“可是她们都害怕柱子会倒下来，”斯蒂芬接下去说，“她们眺望着那些屋顶，议论着哪座教堂在哪儿，拉思曼斯的蓝色拱顶[249]，亚当与夏娃教堂[250]，圣劳伦斯•奥图尔教堂[251]瞧着瞧着，她们发晕了。于是，撩起了裙子……”

有点无法无天的妇女

“大家安静下来!”迈尔斯•克劳福德说，“谁作诗也不许破格。如今咱们是在大主教的辖区里哪。”

“她们垫着条纹衬裙坐了下去，仰望着独臂奸夫[252]的那座铜像。”

“独臂奸夫!”教授大声说， “我喜欢这种说法。我明白你的意思。我明白你指的是什么。”

据信，三位女士赠予都柏林市民

高速陨石及催长粒肥

“后来她们的脖子引起了痉挛，”斯蒂芬说，“累得既不能抬头，也不能低头或说话。她们把那袋李子放在中间，一枚接一枚地掏出来吃。用手绢擦掉从嘴里淌下的汁子，慢悠悠地将核儿吐到栅栏之间。”[253]

他猛地发出青春的朗笑声，把故事结束了。利内翰和奥马登•伯克先生闻声回过头来，招招手，带头向穆尼酒馆走去。

“完了吗?”迈尔斯•克劳福德说，“只要她们没干出更越轨的事就好。”

智者派[254]使傲慢的海伦丢丑

斯巴达人咬牙切齿

伊大嘉人断言潘奈洛佩[255]乃天下第一美人

“你使我联想到安提西尼[256]，”教授说，“智者派高尔吉亚[257]的门徒。据说，谁也弄不清他究竟是对旁人还是对自己更加怨恨。他是一位贵族同一个女奴所生之子。他写过一本书，其中从阿凯人[258]海伦那儿夺走了美的棕榈枝，将它交给了可怜的潘奈洛佩。”

贫穷的潘奈洛佩。潘奈洛佩•里奇。[259]

他们准备横穿过奥康内尔街。

喂，喂，总站!

八条轨道上，这儿那儿停着多辆电车，触轮一动也不动。有往外开的，也有开回来的。拉思曼斯、拉思法纳姆[260]、黑岩国王镇，以及多基、沙丘草地、林森德;还有沙丘塔、唐尼布鲁克[261]、帕默斯顿公园，以及上拉思曼斯，全都纹丝不动。由于电流短路的缘故，开不出去了。出租马车、街头揽座儿的马车、送货马车、邮件马车、私人的四轮轿式马车，以及一瓶瓶的矿泉汽水在板条箱里恍当恍当响的平台货车，全都由蹄子碍碍响的马儿拉着，咯哒咯哒地疾驰而去。

叫什么?——一还有——一在哪儿?

“然而，你管它叫什么?”迈尔斯•克劳福德问道，“她们是在哪儿买到李子的?”

老师说要维吉尔风格的，

大学生[262]为摩西老人投一票

“管它叫作一一且慢，”教授张大了他那长长的嘴唇，左思右想，。管它叫作一一让我想想。管它叫作：《神赐与我们安宁》[263]怎么样?”

“不，”斯蒂芬说，“我要管它叫《登比斯迦眺望巴勒斯坦[264]，要么就叫它《李子寓言[265]》。”

“我明白了，”教授说。

他朗声笑了。

“我明白啦，”他带着新的喜悦重复了一遍，“摩西和神许诺给他们的土地。”他对杰•杰•奥莫洛伊又补了一句:“这还是咱们启发他的呢。”

在这个明媚的六月日子里，

霍雷肖[266]在众目睽睽之下

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊疲惫地斜睨了铜像一眼，默不作声。

“我明白啦，”教授说。

他在竖有约翰•格雷爵士[267]的街心岛上停下脚步，布满皱纹的脸上泛着苦笑，仰望那高耸的纳尔逊。

对轻佻的老妪来说，缺指头简直太逗乐了。

安妮钻孔。 弗萝[268]遮遮掩掩

然而，你能责备她们吗？

“独臂奸夫，”他狞笑着说，“不能不说是挺逗乐的。”

“要是能让人们晓得全能的天主的真理的话，”迈尔斯•克劳福德说，“两位老太婆也觉得挺逗乐的。”
Chapter 8 Lestrygonians
PINEAPPLE ROCK, LEMON PLATT, BUTTER SCOTCH. A SUGARSTICKY GIRL shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne, sucking red jujubes white. 
A sombre Y.M.C.A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet fumes of Graham Lemon's, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr Bloom. 

Heart to heart talks. 

Bloo... Me? No. 

Blood of the Lamb. 

His slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? All are washed in the blood of the lamb. God wants blood victim. Birth, hymen, martyr, war, foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney burntoffering, druid's altars. Elijah is coming. Dr John Alexander Dowie, restorer of the church in Zion, is coming. 

Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!! 
All heartily welcome.
Paying game. Torry and Alexander last year. Polygamy. His wife will put the stopper on that. Where was that ad some Birmingham firm the luminous crucifix? Our Saviour. Wake up in the dead of night and see him on the wall, hanging. Pepper's ghost idea. Iron nails ran in. 
Phosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the pantry in the kitchen. Don't like all the smells in it waiting to rush out. What was it she wanted? The Malaga raisins. Thinking of Spain. Before Rudy was born. The phosphorescence, that bluey greeny. Very good for the brain. 

From Butler's monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor's walk. Dedalus' daughter there still outside Dillon's auctionrooms. Must be selling off some old furniture. Knew her eyes at once from the father. Lobbing about waiting for him. Home always breaks up when the mother goes. Fifteen children he had. Birth every year almost. That's in their theology or the priest won't give the poor woman the confession, the absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear such an idea? Eat you out of house and home. No families themselves to feed. Living on the fat of the land. Their butteries and larders. I'd like to see them do the black fast Yom Kippur. Crossbuns. One meal and a collation for fear he'd collapse on the altar. A housekeeper of one of those fellows If you could pick it out of her. Never pick it out of her. Like getting L. s. d. out of him. Does himself well. No guests. All for number one. Watching his water. Bring your own bread and butter. His reverence. Mum's the word. 

Good Lord, that poor child's dress is in flitters. Underfed she looks too. Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It's after they feel it. Proof of the pudding. Undermines the constitution. 

As he set foot on O'Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up from the parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England. Sea air sours it, I heard. Be interesting some day get a pass through Hancock to see the brewery. Regular world in itself. Vats of porter, wonderful. Rats get in too. Drink themselves bloated as big as a collie floating. Dead drunk on the porter. Drink till they puke again like christians. Imagine drinking that! Rats: vats. Well of course if we knew all the things. 

Looking down he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between the gaunt quay walls, gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself down? Reuben J's son must have swallowed a good bellyful of that sewage. One and eightpence too much. Hhhhm. It's the droll way he comes out with the things. Knows how to tell a story too. 

They wheeled lower. Looking for grub. Wait. 

He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo feet per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of swells, floated under by the bridge piers. Not such damn fools. Also the day I threw that stale cake out of the Erin's King picked it up in the wake fifty yards astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled, flapping. 

The hungry famished gull 
Flaps o'er the waters dull.
That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has no rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The thoughts. Solemn. 
Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit 
Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth.
-- Two apples a penny! Two for a penny! 
His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand. Australians they must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them up with a rag or a handkerchief. 

Wait. Those poor birds. 

He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently two, then all, from their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel. 

Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his hands. They never expected that. Manna. Live on fishy flesh they have to, all sea birds, gulls, seagoose. Swans from Anna Liffey swim down here sometimes to preen themselves. No accounting for tastes. Wonder what kind is swanmeat. Robinson Crusoe had to live on them. 

They wheeled, flapping weakly. I'm not going to throw any more. Penny quite enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They spread foot and mouth disease too. If you cram a turkey, say, on chestnut meal it tastes like that. Eat pig like pig. But then why is it that saltwater fish are not salty? How is that? 

His eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat rock at anchor on the treacly swells lazily its plastered board. 

Kino's 

11/- 

Trousers. 

Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How can you own water really? It's always flowing in a stream, never the same, which in the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream. All kind of places are good for ads. That quack doctor for the clap used to be stuck up in all the greenhouses. Never see it now. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks. Didn't cost him a red like Maginni the dancing master self advertisement. Got fellows to stick them up or stick them up himself for that matter on the q.t. running in to loosen a button. Fly by night. Just the place too. POST NO BILLS. POST 110 PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning him. 

If he... 

O! 

Eh? 

No... No. 

No, no. I don't believe it. He wouldn't surely? 

No, no. 

Mr Bloom moved forward raising his troubled eyes. Think no more about that. After one. Timeball on the ballast office is down. Dunsink time. Fascinating little book that is of sir Robert Ball's. Parallax. I never exactly understood. There's a priest. Could ask him. Par it's Greek: parallel, parallax. Met him pikehoses she called it till I told her about the transmigration. O rocks! 

Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballast office. She's right after all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound. She's not exactly witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was thinking. Still I don't know. She used to say Ben Dollard had a base barreltone voice. He has legs like barrels and you'd think he was singing into a barrel. Now, isn't that wit? They used to call him big Ben. Not half as witty as calling him base barreltone. Appetite like an albatross. Get outside of a baron of beef. Powerful man he was at storing away number one Bass. Barrel of Bass. See? it all works out. 

A procession of whitesmocked men marched slowly towards him along the gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like that priest they are this morning: we have sinned: we have suffered. He read the scarlet letters on their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S. Wisdom Hely's. Y lagging behind drew a chunk of bread from under his foreboard, crammed it into his mouth and munched as he walked. Our staple food. Three bob a day, walking along the gutters, street after street. Just keep skin and bone together, bread and skilly. They are not Boyl: no: M'Glade's men. Doesn't bring in any business either. I suggested to him about a transparent show cart with two smart girls sitting inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blotting paper. I bet that would have caught on. Smart girls writing something catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what she's writing. Get twenty of them round you if you stare at nothing. Have a finger in the pie. Women too. Curiosity. Pillar of salt, Wouldn't have it of course because he didn't think of it himself first. Or the inkbottle I suggested with a false stain of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like Plumtree's potted under the obituaries, cold meat department. You can't lick 'em. What? Our envelopes. Hello! Jones, where are you going? Can't stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser Kansell, sold by Hely's Ltd, 85 Dame Street. Well out of that ruck I am. Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes. Very hard to bargain with that sort of woman. I disturbed her at her devotions that morning. But glad to communicate with the outside world. Our great day, she said. Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name too: caramel. She knew, I think she knew by the way she. If she had married she would have changed. I suppose they really were short of money. Fried everything in the best butter all the same. No lard for them. My heart's broke eating dripping. They like buttering themselves in and out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker's daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed wire. 

He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by. Rover cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year Phil Gilligan died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait, was in Thom's. Got the job in Wisdom Hely's year we married. Six years. Ten years ago: ninetyfour he died, yes that's right, the big fire at Arnott's. Val Dillon was lord mayor. The Glencree dinner. Alderman Robert O'Reilly emptying the port into his soup before the flag fell, Bobbob lapping it for the inner alderman. Couldn't hear what the band played. For what we have already received may the Lord make us. Milly was a kiddy then. Molly had that elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs. Mantailored with self-covered buttons. She didn't like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old Goodwin's tall hat done up with some sticky stuff. Flies' picnic too. Never put a dress on her back like it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulder and hips. Just beginning to plump it out well. Rabbit pie we had that day. People looking after her. 

Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red wallpaper, Dockrell's, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly's tubbing night. American soap I bought: elderflower. Cosy smell of her bathwater. Funny she looked soaped all over. Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa's daguerreotype atelier he told me of. Hereditary taste. 

He walked along the curbstone. 

Stream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in Citron's saint Kevin's parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is getting. Pen... ? Of course it's years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well, if he couldn't remember the dayfather's name that he sees every day. 

Bartell d'Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home after practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache. Gave her that song Winds that blow from the south. 

Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting on about those lottery tickets after Goodwin's concert in the supper room or oakroom of the mansion house. He and I behind. Sheet of her music blew out of my hand against the high school railings. Lucky it didn't. Thing like that spoils the effect of a night for her. Professor Goodwin linking her in front. Shaky on his pins, poor old sot. His farewell concerts. Positively last appearance on any stage. May be for months and may be for never. Remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of Harcourt road remember that gust? Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She did get flushed in the wind. Remember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the mulled rum. Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the busk of her stays. White. 

Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always warm from her. Always liked to let herself out. Sitting there after till near two, taking out her hairpins. Milly tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy. That was the night. 

-- O, Mr Bloom, how do you do? 

-- Oh, how do you do, Mrs Breen? 

-- No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven't seen her for ages. 

-- In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily, Milly has a position down in Mullingar, you know. 

-- Go away! Isn't that grand for her? 

-- Yes, in a photographer's there. Getting on like a house on fire. How are all your charges? 

-- All on the baker's list, Mrs Breen said. 

How many has she? No other in sight. 

-- You're in black I see. You have no... 

-- No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral. 

Going to crop up all day, I foresee. Who's dead, when and what did he die of? Turn up like a bad penny. 

-- o dear me, Mrs Breen said, I hope it wasn't any near relation. 

May as well get her sympathy. 

-- Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He died quite suddenly, poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this morning. 

Your funeral's tomorrow 
While you're coming through the rye. 
Diddlediddle dumdum 
Diddlediddle...
-- Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen's womaneyes said melancholily. 
Now that's quite enough about that. Just quietly: husband. 

-- And your lord and master? 

Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn't lost them anyhow. 

-- O, don't be talking, she said. He's a caution to rattlesnakes. He's in there now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me heartscalded. Wait till I show you. 

Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly poured out from Harrison's. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr Bloom's gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar, or they'd taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork chained to the table. 

Opening her handbag, chipped leather, hatpin: ought to have a guard on those things. Stick it in a chap's eye in the tram. Rummaging. Open. Money. Please take one. Devils if they lose sixpence. Raise Cain. Husband barging. Where's the ten shillings I gave you on Monday? Are you feeding your little brother's family? Soiled handkerchief: medicinebottle. Pastile that was fell. What is she?... 

-- There must be a new moon out, she said. He's always bad then. Do you know what he did last night? 

Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him wide in alarm, yet smiling. 

-- What? Mr Bloom asked. 

Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me. 

-- Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare. 

Indiges. 

-- Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs. 

-- The ace of spades! Mr Bloom said. 

She took a folded postcard from her handbag. 

-- Read that, she said. He got it this morning. 

-- What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U.P.? 

-- U.P.: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It's a great shame for them whoever he is. 

-- Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said. 

She took back the card, sighing. 

-- And now he's going round to Mr Menton's office. He's going to take an action for ten thousand pounds, he says. 

She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch. 

Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. Seen its best days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that dowdy toque, three old grapes to take the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used to be a tasty dresser. Lines round her mouth. Only a year or so older than Molly. 

See the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair sex. 

He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent. Pungent mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I'm hungry too. Flakes of pastry on the gusset of her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her cheek. Rhubarb tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie Powell that was. In Luke Doyle's long ago, Dolphin's Barn, the charades. U.P.: up. 

Change the subject. 

-- Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy, Mr Bloom asked. 

-- Mina Purefoy? she said. 

Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers' club. Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act. 

-- Yes. 

-- I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She's in the lying-in hospital in Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. She's three days bad now. 

-- O, Mr Bloom said. I'm sorry to hear that. 

-- Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It's a very stiff birth, the nurse told me. 

-- O, Mr Bloom said. 

His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in compassion. Dth! Dth! 

-- I'm sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing! Three days! That's terrible for her. 

Mrs Breen nodded. 

-- She was taken bad on the Tuesday... 

Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her. 

-- Mind! Let this man pass. 

A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river, staring with a rapt gaze into the sunlight through a heavy stringed glass. Tight as a skullpiece a tiny hat gripped his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat, a stick and an umbrella dangled to his stride. 

-- Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside the lampposts. Watch! 

-- Who is he if it's a fair question, Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty? 

-- His name is Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, Mr Bloom said, smiling. Watch! 

-- He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that one of these days. 

She broke off suddenly. 

-- There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember me to Molly, won't you? 

-- I will, Mr Bloom said. 

He watched her dodge through passers towards the shop-fronts. Denis Breen in skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out of Harrison's hugging two heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the bay. Like old times. He suffered her to overtake him without surprise and thrust his dull grey beard towards her, his loose jaw wagging as he spoke earnestly. 

Meshuggah. Off his chump. 

Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight the tight skullpiece, the dangling stick, umbrella, dustcoat. Going the two days. Watch him! Out he goes again. One way of getting on in the world. And that other old mosey lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must have with him. 

U.P.: up. I'll take my oath that's Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding. Wrote it for a lark in the Scotch house, I bet anything. Round to Menton's office. His oyster eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the gods. 

He passed the Irish Times. There might be other answers lying there. Like to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. At their lunch now. Clerk with the glasses there doesn't know me. O, leave them there to simmer. Enough bother wading through forty-four of them. Wanted smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. I called you naughty darling because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the meaning. Please tell me what perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the world. The way they spring those questions on you. And the other one Lizzie Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet with the approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo Russell). No time to do her hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry. 

Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now. Cook and general, exc cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for spirit counter. Resp girl (R. C.) wishes to hear of post in fruit or pork shop. James Carlisle made that. Six and a half percent dividend. Made a big deal on Coates's shares. Ca'canny. Cunning old Scotch hunks. All the toady news. Our gracious and popular vicereine. Bought the Irish Field now. Lady Mountcashel has quite recovered after her confinement and rode out with the Ward union staghounds at the enlargement yesterday at Rathoath. Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. Weightcarrying huntress. No sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in at the death. Strong as a brood mare some of those horsey women. Swagger around livery stables. Toss off a glass of brandy neat while you'd say knife. That one at the Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car: wishwish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to it. Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite. Who is this she was like? O yes? Mrs Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish American. Didn't take a feather out of her my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the Express. Scavenging what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I poured on the plums thinking it was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a few weeks after. Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery work for her, thanks. 

Poor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness. Saffron bun and milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Eating with a stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. Still his muttonchop whiskers grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore's cousin in Dublin Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals he presents her with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers marching along bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one in a marketnet. The squallers. Poor thing! Then having to give the breast year after year all hours of the night. Selfish those t.t's are. Dog in the manger. Only one lump of sugar in my tea, if you please. 

He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval a sixpenny at Rowe's? Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in the Burton. Better. On my way. 

He walked on past Bolton's Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I forgot to tap Tom Kernan. 

Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out! Phew! Dreadful simply! Child's head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that would. Lucky Molly got over hers lightly. They ought to invent something to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilightsleep idea: queen Victoria was given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old woman that lived in a shoe she had so many children. Suppose he was consumptive. Time someone thought about it instead of gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom of the silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on. They could easily have big establishments. Whole thing quite painless out of all the taxes give every child born five quid at compound interest up to twentyone, five per cent is a hundred shillings and five tiresome pounds, multiply by twenty decimal system, encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and a bit twentyone years want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum, more than you think. 

Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for nothing. 

Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly and Mrs Moisel. Mothers' meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being, then returns. How flat they look after all of a sudden! Peaceful eyes. Weight off their minds. Old Mrs Thornton was a jolly old soul. All my babies, she said. The spoon of pap in her mouth before she fed them. O, that's nyumyum. Got her hand crushed by old Tom Wall's son. His first bow to the public. Head like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr Murren. People knocking them up at all hours. For God'sake doctor. Wife In her throes. Then keep them waiting months for their fee. To attendance on your wife. No gratitude in people. Humane doctors, most of them. 

Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I pick the fellow in black. Here goes. Here's good luck. Must be thrilling from the air. Apjohn, myself and Owen Goldberg up in the trees near Goose green playing the monkeys. Mackerel they called me. 

A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in Indian file. Goose step. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their truncheons. After their feed with a good load of fat soup under their belts. Policeman's lot is oft a happy one. They split up into groups and scattered, saluting towards their beats. Let out to graze. Best moment to attack one in pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A squad of others, marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings, making for the station. Bound for their troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare to receive soup. 

He crossed under Tommy Moore's roguish finger. They did right to put him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters. Ought to be places for women. Running into cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. There is not in this wide world a vallee. Great song of Julia Morkan's. Kept her voice up to the very last. Pupil of Michael Balfe's wasn't she? 

He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Jack Power could a tale unfold: father a G man. If a fellow gave them trouble being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the bridewell. Can't blame them after all with the job they have especially the young hornies. That horse policeman the day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree in Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he did! His horse's hoofs clattering after us down Abbey street. Luck I had the presence of mind to dive into Manning's or I was souped. He did come a wallop, by George. Must have cracked his skull on the cobblestones. I oughtn't to have got myself swept along with those medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their mortar-boards. Looking for trouble. Still I got to know that young Dixon who dressed that sting for me in the Mater and now he's in Holles street where Mrs Purefoy. Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still. All skedaddled. Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it began. 

-- Up the Boers! 

-- Three cheers for De Wet! 

-- We'll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree. 

Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill. The Butter exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and civil servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used to whether on the scaffold high. 

Never know who you're talking to. Corny Kelleher he has Harvey Duff in his eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the gaff on the invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths on to get in the know. All the time drawing secret service pay from the castle. drop him like a hot potato. Why those plain clothes men are always courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Square-pushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student fooling round her fat arms ironing. 

-- Are those yours, Mary? 

-- I don't wear such things... Stop or I'll tell the missus on you. Out half the night. 

-- There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see. 

-- Ah, get along with your great times coming. Barmaids too. Tobacco shopgirls. 

James Stephens' idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so that a fellow couldn't round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back out you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in, the firing squad. Turnkey's daughter got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the Buckingham Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi. 

You must have a certain fascination: Parnell, Arthur Griffith is a squareheaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Want to gas about our lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company's tearoom. Debating societies. That republicanism is the best form of government. That the language question should take precedence of the economic question. Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here's a good lump of thyme seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of goosegrease before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with the band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays best sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Shove us over those apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Home Rule sun rising up in the northwest. 

His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly, shadowing Trinity's surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing, outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same; day after day: squads of police marching out, back: trams in, out. Those two loonies mooching about. Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa. 

Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of pavements, piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that. Landlord never dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets his notice to quit. They buy the place up with gold and still they have all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions. Slaves. Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest rubble, sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt, Kerwan's mushroom houses, built of breeze. Shelter for the night. 

No one is anything. 

This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed. 

Provost's house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in there. Wouldn't live in it if they paid me. Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum. 

The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silver ware in Walter Sexton's window opposite by which John Howard Parnell passed, unseeing. 

There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that's a coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal's uniform since he got the job. Charley Boulger used to come out on his high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a pain. Great man's brother: his brother's brother. He'd look nice on the city charger. drop into the D. B. C. probably for his coffee, play chess there. His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to pass a remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That's the fascination: the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other sister Mrs Dickinson driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright like surgeon M'Ardle. Still David Sheehy beat him for south Meath. Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds and retire into public life. The patriot's banquet. Eating orangepeels in the park. Simon Dedalus said when they put him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the grave and lead him out of the House of Commons by the arm. 

Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a Scotch accent. The tentacles... 

They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard and bicycle. Young woman. 

And there he is too. Now that's really a coincidence: second-time. Coming events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent poet Mr Geo Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult: symbolism. Holding forth. She's taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid gentleman in literary work. 

His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only weggebobbles and fruit. Don't eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it's healthier. Wind and watery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the tap all night. 

Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless, Those literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic. Esthetes they are. I wouldn't be surprised if it was that kind of food you see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical. For example one of those policemen sweating Irish stew into their shirts; you couldn't squeeze a line of poetry out of him. Don't know what poetry is even. Must be in a certain mood. 

The dreamy cloudy gull 
Waves o'er the waters dull.
He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of Yeates and Son, pricing the field glasses. Or will I drop into old Harris's and have a chat with young Sinclair? Well-mannered fellow. Probably at his lunch. Must get those old glasses of mine set right. Grz lenses, six guineas. Germans making their way everywhere. Sell on easy terms to capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in the railway lost property office. Astonishing the things people leave behind them in trains and cloak rooms. What do they be thinking about? Women too. Incredible. Last year travelling to Ennis had to pick up that farmer's daughter's bag and hand it to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money too. There's a little watch up there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by. 
His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can't see it. If you imagine it's there you can almost see it. Can't see it. 

He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right hand at arm's length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes: completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun's disk. Must be the focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses. Interesting. There was a lot of talk about those sunspots when we were in Lombard street west. Terrific explosions they are. There will be a total eclipse this year: autumn some time. 

Now that I come to think of it, that ball falls at Greenwich time. It's the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there some first Saturday of the month. If I could get art introduction to professor Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do to: man always feels complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman proud to be descended from some king's mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out what you know you're not to: what's parallax? Show this gentleman the door. 

Ah. 

His hand fell again to his side. 

Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about, crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas, then solid, then world, then cold, then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon, she said. I believe there is. 

He went on by la Maison Claire. 

Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly there is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview moon. She was humming: The young May moon she's beaming, love. He other side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm's la-amp is gleaming, love. Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes. 

Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must. 

Mr Bloom, quick breathing, slowlier walking, passed Adam court. 

With a keep quiet relief, his eyes took note: this is street here middle of the day Bob Doran's bottle shoulders. On his annual bend, M'Coy said. They drink in order to say or do something or cherchez la femme. Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the rest of the year as sober as a judge. 

Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran the Queen's. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How time flies eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers, drinking, laughed spluttering, their drink against their breath. More power, Pat. Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke. Take off that white hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp that once did starve us all. 

I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twenty-eight I was. She twentythree when we left Lombard street west something changed. Could never like it again after Rudy. Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. Would you? Are you not happy in your home, you poor little naughty boy? Wants to sew on buttons for me. I must answer. Write it in the library. 

Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin prints, silk, dames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in the baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings. Hope the rain mucks them up on her. Country bred chawbacon. All the beef to the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly looks out of plumb. 

He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk mercers. Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its mouth a flood of bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that here. La causa è santa! Tara tara. Great chorus that. Tara. Must be washed in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom. 

Pincushions. I'm a long time threatening to buy one. Stick them all over the place. Needles in window curtains. 

He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps. Junejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three months off. Then she mightn't like it. Women won't pick up pins. Say it cuts lo. 

Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk stockings. 

Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all. 

High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman, home and houses, silk webs, silver, rich fruits, spicy from Jaffa. Agendath Netaim. Wealth of the world. 

A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore. 

Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then. 

He turned Combridge's corner, still pursued. Jingling hoofthuds. Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: In deep summer fields, tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas, creaking beds. 

-- Jack, love! 

-- Darling! 

-- Kiss me, Reggy! 

-- My boy! 

-- Love! 

His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slop of greens. See the animals feed. 

Men, men, men. 

Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow it all however. 

-- Roast beef and cabbage. 

-- One stew. 

Smells of men. His gorge rose. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarette smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of ferment. 

Couldn't eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork, to eat all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that. Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate, man! Get out of this. 

He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of his nose. 

-- Two stouts here. 

-- One corned and cabbage. 

That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life depended on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from his three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a silver knife in his mouth. That's witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost. 

An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up: it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, elbows on table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift across his stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him something with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith? 

Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said. 

-- Not here. Don't see him. 

Out. I hate dirty eaters. 

He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne's. Stopgap. Keep me going. Had a good breakfast. 

-- Roast and mashed here. 

-- Pint of stout. 

Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff. 

He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street. Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill! 

Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting down with porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the street. John Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every mother's son don't talk of your provosts and provost of Trinity women and children, cabmen, priests, parsons, fieldmarshals, archbishops. From Ailesbury road, Clyde road, artisans' dwellings, north Dublin union, lord ma in his gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair. My plate's empty. After you with our incorporated drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton's fountain. Rub off the microbes with your handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a new batch with his. Father O'Flynn would make hares of them all. Have rows all the same. All for number one. Children fighting for the scrapings of the pot. Want a soup pot as big as the Phoenix Park. Harpooning flitches and hindquarters out of it. Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel table d'h?te she called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose thoughts you're chewing. Then who'd wash up all the plates and forks? Might be all feeding on tabloids that time. Teeth getting worse and worse. 

After all there's a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from the earth garlic, of course, it stinks Italian organgrinders crisp of onions, mushrooms truffles. Pain to animal too. Pluck and draw fowl. Wretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble and squeak. Butchers' buckets wobble lights. Give us that brisket off the hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust. Top and lashers going out. Don't maul them pieces, young one. 

Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed. Insidious. Lick it up, smoking hot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts. 

Ah, I'm hungry. 

He entered Davy Byrne's. Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once. 

What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff? 

-- Hellow, Bloom! Nosey Flynn said from his nook. 

-- Hello, Flynn. 

-- How's things? 

-- Tiptop... Let me see. I'll take a glass of burgundy and... let me see. 

Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his descendants mustered and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree Dignam's potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect. There was a right royal old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of the reverend Mr MacTrigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of innocents. Eat, drink and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mighty cheese. 

-- Have you a cheese sandwich? 

-- Yes, sir. 

Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of burgundy; take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber. Tom Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the devil the cooks. Devilled crab. 

-- Wife well? 

-- Quite well, thanks... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you? 

-- Yes, sir. 

Nosey Flynn sipped his grog. 

-- Doing any singing those times? 

Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears to match. Music. Knows as much about it as my coachman. Still better tell him. Does no harm. Free ad. 

-- She's engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may have heard perhaps. 

-- No. O, that's the style. Who's getting it up? 

The curate served. 

-- How much is that? 

-- Seven d., sir... Thank you, sir. 

Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. Mr MacTrier. Easier than the dreamy creamy stuff. His five hundred wives. Had the time of their lives. 

-- Mustard, sir? 

-- Thank you. 

He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. Their lives. I have it. It grew bigger and bigger and bigger. 

-- Getting it up? he said. Well, it's like a company idea, you see. Part shares and part profits. 

-- Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket to scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn't Blazes Boylan mixed up in it? 

A warm shock of air heat of mustard hauched on Mr Bloom's heart. He raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock five minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet. 

His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more longly, longingly. 

Wine. 

He smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to speed it, set his wineglass delicately down. 

-- Yes, he said. He's the organiser in point of fact. 

No fear. No brains. 

Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square meal. 

-- He had a good slice of luck, Jack Mooney was telling me, over that boxing match Myler Keogh won again that soldier in the Portobello barracks. By God, he had the little kipper down in the county Carlow he was telling me... 

Hope that dewdrop doesn't come down into his glass. No, snuffled it up. 

-- For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God till further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God, Blazes is a hairy chap. 

Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched shirtsleeves, cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring's blush. Whose smile upon each feature plays with such and such replete. Too much fat on the parsnips. 

-- And here's himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn said. Can you give us a good one for the Gold cup? 

-- I'm off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put anything on a horse. 

-- You're right there, Nosey Flynn said. 

Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of disgust, pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his wine soothed his palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather with the chill off. 

Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed. Like the way it curves there. 

-- I wouldn't do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It ruined many a man the same horses. 

Vintners' sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose. 

-- True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you're in the know. There's no straight sport now. Lenehan gets some good ones. He's giving Sceptre today. Zinfandel's the favourite, lord Howard de Walden's, won at Epsom. Morny Cannon is riding him. I could have got seven to one against Saint Amant a fortnight before. 

-- That so? Davy Byrne said... 

He went towards the window and, taking up the petty cash book, scanned its pages. 

-- I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said snuffling. That was a rare bit of horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won in a thunderstorm, Rothschild's filly, with wadding in her ears. Blue jacket and yellow cap. Bad luck to big Ben Dollard and his John O'Gaunt. He put me off it. Ay. 

He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the flutes. 

-- Ay, he said, sighing. 

Mr Bloom, champing standing, looked upon his sigh. Nosey numskull. Will I tell him that horse Lenehan? He knows already. Better let him forget. Go and lose more. Fool and his money. Dewdrop coming down again. Cold nose he'd have kissing a woman. Still they might like. Prickly beards they like. Dog's cold noses. Old Mrs Riordan with the rumbling stomach's Skye terrier in the City Arms hotel. Molly fondling him in her lap. O the big doggy-bowwowsywowsy! 

Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I'm not thirsty. Bath of course does that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o'clock I can. Six, six. Time will be gone then. She... 

Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins, sardines, gaudy lobsters' claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you didn't know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about oysters? Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red bank this morning. Was he oyster old fish at table. Perhaps he young flesh in bed. No. June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like tainted game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was it? No. Yes, or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat the scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course, aristocrats. Then the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil and flour. Raw pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to keep up the price. Cheap. No one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in green glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The élite. Crème de la crème. They want special dishes to pretend they're. Hermit with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come eat with me. Royal sturgeon. High sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I saw down in the Master of the Rolls' kitchen area. Whitehatted chef like a rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage à la duchesse de Parme. Just as well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you've eaten too many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards' desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive: Do ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn't mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney I remember. Du, de la, French. Still it's the same fish, perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out of making money, hand over fist, finger in fishes' gills, can't write his name on a cheque, think he was painting the landscape with his mouth twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha Ha. Ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth fifty thousand pounds. 

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck. 

Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth. Below us bay sleeping sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs In the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky grumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her; eyes, her lips, her stretched neck, beating, woman s breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me. 

Me. And me now. 

Stuck, the flies buzzed. 

His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab. Beauty: it curves, curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires. Can see them library museum standing in the round hall, naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don't care what man looks. All to see. Never speaking, I mean to say to fellows like Flynn. Suppose she did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first? Mortal! Put you in your proper place. Quaffing nectar at mess with gods, golden dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch we have, boiled mutton, carrots and turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar, imagine it drinking electricity: gods' food. Lovely forms of woman sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely. And we stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine. They have no. Never looked. I'll look today. Keeper won't see. Bend down let something fall see if she. 

Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not to do there to do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees and walked, to men too they gave themselves, manly conscious, lay with men lovers, a youth enjoyed her, to the yard. 

When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his book: 

-- What is this he is? Isn't he in the insurance line? 

-- He's out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does canvassing for the Freeman. 

-- I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble? 

-- Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why? 

-- I noticed he was in mourning. 

-- Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how was all at home. You're right, by God. So he was. 

-- I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I see a gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their minds. 

-- It's not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John Wyse Nolan's wife has in Henry street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home to his better half. She's well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast. 

-- And is he doing for the Freeman? Davy Byrne said. 

Nosey Flynn pursed his lips. 

-- He doesn't buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make bacon of that. 

-- How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book. 

Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He winked. 

-- He's in the craft, he said. 

-- Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said. 

-- Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted order. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg up. I was told that by a, well, I won't say who. 

-- Is that a fact? 

-- O, it's a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when you're down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it, but they're as close as damn it. By God they did right to keep the women out of it. 

Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one: 

-- Iiiiiichaaaaaaach! 

-- There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to find out what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her out and swore her in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the Saint Legers of Doneraile. 

Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed eyes: 

-- And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in here and I never once saw him, you know, over the line. 

-- God Almighty couldn't make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly. Slips off when the fun gets too hot. Didn't you see him look at his watch? Ah, you weren't there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he does he outs with the watch to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he does. 

-- There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He's a safe man, I'd say. 

-- He's not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He has been known to put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O, Bloom has his good points. But there's one thing he'll never do. 

His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog. 

-- I know, Davy Byrne said. 

-- Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said. 

Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came In. Tom Rochford followed, a plaining hand on his claret waistcoat. 

-- Day, Mr Byrne. 

-- Day, gentlemen. 

They paused at the counter. 

-- Who's standing? Paddy Leonard asked. 

-- I'm sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered. 

-- Well, what'll it be? Paddy Leonard asked. 

-- I'll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said. 

-- How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God's sake? What's yours, Tom? 

-- How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping. 

For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and hiccupped. 

-- Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said. 

-- Certainly, sir. 

Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates. 

-- Lord love a duck, he said, look at what I'm standing drinks to! Cold water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg. He has some bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip. 

-- Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked. 

Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set before him. 

-- That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking. 

-- Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said. 

Tom Rochford nodded and drank. 

-- Is it Zinfandel? 

-- Say nothing, Bantam Lyons winked. I'm going to plunge five bob on my own. 

-- Tell us if you're worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy Leonard said. Who gave it to you? 

Mr Bloom on his way Out raised three fingers in greeting. 

-- So long, Nosey Flynn said. 

The others turned. 

-- That's the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons whispered. 

-- Prrwht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we'll take two of your small Jamesons after that and a... 

-- Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly. 

-- Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby. 

Mr Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his teeth smooth. Something green it would have to be: spinach say. Then with those R?ntgen rays searchlight you could. 

At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the cobble stones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks having fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom coasted warily. Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they move. Wonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of his. Wasting time explaining it to Flynn's mouth. Lean people long mouths. Ought to be a hall or a place where inventors could go in and invent free. Course then you'd have all the cranks pestering. 

He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo, the closes of the bars: 

Don Giovanni, a cenar teco 
M'invitasti.
Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first? Some chap in the blues. Dutch courage. That Kilkenny People in the national library now I must. 
Bare clean closestools, waiting, in the window of William Miller, plumber, turned back his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the way down, swallow a pin sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour round the body, changing biliary duct, spleen squirting liver, gastric juice coils of intestines like pipes. But the poor buffer would have to stand all the time with his insides entrails on show. Science. 

-- A cenar teco. 

What does that teco mean? Tonight perhaps. 

Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited 
To come to supper tonight, 
The rum the rumdum.
Doesn't go properly. 
Keyes: two months if I get Nannetti to. That'll be two pounds ten, about two pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven. Presscott's ad. Two fifteen. Five guineas about. On the pig's back. 

Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of her new garters. 

Today. Today. Not think. 

Tour the south then. What about English watering places? Brighton, Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against John Long's a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat anything. 

Mr Bloom turned at Gray's confectioner's window of unbought tarts and passed the reverend Thomas Connellan's bookstore. Why I left the church of Rome? Bird's Nest. Women run him. They say they used to give pauper children soup to change to protestants in the time of the potato blight. Society over the way papa went to for the conversion of poor jews. Same bait. Why we left the church of Rome? 

A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No tram in sight. Wants to cross. 

-- Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked. 

The blind stripling did not answer. His wall face frowned weakly. He moved his head uncertainly. 

-- You're in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. Molesworth street is opposite. Do you want to cross? There's nothing in the way. 

The cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Bloom's eye followed its line and saw again the dyeworks' van drawn up before Drago's. Where I saw his brilliantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping. Driver in John Long's. Slaking his drouth. 

-- There's a van there, Mr Bloom said, but it's not moving. I'll see you across. Do you want to go to Molesworth street? 

-- Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street. 

-- Come, Mr Bloom said. 

He touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing hand to guide it forward. 

Say something to him. Better not do the condescending. They mistrust what you tell them. Pass a common remark: 

-- The rain kept off. 

No answer. 

Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different for him. Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child's hand his hand. Like Milly's was. Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand. Wonder if he has a name, Van. Keep his cane clear of the horse's legs tired drudge get his doze. That's right. Clear. Behind a bull: in front of a horse. 

-- Thanks, sir. 

Knows I'm a man. Voice. 

-- Right now? First turn to the left. 

The blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his way, drawing his cane back, feeling again. 

Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone tweed. Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van was there? Must have felt it. See things in their foreheads perhaps. Kind of sense of volume. Weight. Would he feel it if something was removed? Feel a gap. Queer idea of Dublin he must have, tapping his way round by the stones. Could he walk in a beeline if he hadn't that cane? Bloodless pious face like a fellow going in to be a priest. 

Penrose! That was that chap's name. 

Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers. Tune pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a deformed person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might say. Of course the other senses are more. Embroider. Plait baskets. People ought to help. Work basket I could buy Molly's birthday. Hates sewing. Might take an objection. Dark men they call them. 

Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides bunched together. Each person too. Then the spring, the summer: smells. Tastes. They say you can't taste wines with your eyes shut or a cold in the head. Also smoke in the dark they say get no pleasure. 

And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That girl passing the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I have them all on. Must be strange not to see her. Kind of a form in his mind's eye. The voice temperature when he touches her with fingers must almost see the lines, the curves. His hands on her hair, for instance. Say it was black for instance. Good. We call it black. Then passing over her white skin. Different feel perhaps. Feeling of white. 

Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here too. Wait. Think over it. 

With a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is the smoothest. No-one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps to Levenston's dancing academy piano. Might be settling my braces. 

Walking by Doran's public house he slid his hand between waistcoat and trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his belly. But I know it's whiteyellow. Want to try in the dark to see. 

He withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to. 

Poor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would he have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way? All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York. Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life the reincarnation met him pike-hoses. Dear, dear, dear. Pity of course: but somehow you can't cotton on to them someway. 

Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons' hall. Solemn as Troy. After his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies cracking a magnum. Tales of the bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat school. I sentenced him to ten years. I suppose he'd turn up his nose at that stuff I drank. Vintage wine for them, the year marked on a dusty bottle. Has his own ideas of justice in the recorder's court. Wellmeaning old man. Police chargesheets crammed with cases get their percentage manufacturing crime. Sends them to the rightabout. The devil on moneylenders. Gave Reuben J. a great strawcalling. Now he's really what they call a dirty jew. Power those judges have. Crusty old topers in wigs. Bear with a sore paw. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul. 

Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His excellency the lord lieutenant. Sixteenth today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. The Messiah was first given for that. Yes Handel. What about going out there. Ballsbridge. drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone on the gate. 

Mr Bloom came to Kildare Street. First I must. Library. 

Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. It is. 

His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He swerved to the right. 

Is it? Almost certain. Won't look. Wine in my face. Why did I? Too heady. Yes, it is. The walk. Not see. Not see. Get on. 

Making for the museum gate with long windy strides he lifted his eyes. Handsome building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. Not following me? 

Didn't see me perhaps. Light in his eyes. 

The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold statues: quiet there. Safe in a minute. 

No, didn't see me. After two. Just at the gate. 

My heart! 

His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir Thomas Deane was the Greek architecture. 

Look for something I. 

His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded Agendath Netaim. Where did I? 

Busy looking for. 

He thrust back quickly Agendath. 

Afternoon she said. 

I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. Freeman. Where did I ? Ah, yes. Trousers. Purse. Potato. Where did I ? 

Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart. 

His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap lotion have to call tepid paper stuck, Ah, soap there! Yes. Gate. 

Safe! 


菠萝味硬糖果，蜜饯柠檬，黄油糖块。一个被糖弄得黏糊糊的姑娘正在为基督教兄弟会的在俗修士[1]一满杓一满杓地舀着奶油。学校里要举行什么集会吧。让学童享一次口福吧，可是对他们的肠胃并不好。国王陛下御用[2]菱形糖果及糖衣果仁制造厂。上帝拯救我们的……[3]坐在宝座上，把红色的枣味胶糖嘬到发白为止。

一个神色阴郁的基督教青年会[4]的小伙子，站在格雷厄姆•莱蒙的店铺溢出来的温馨、芳香的水蒸气里，留心观察着过往行人，把一张传单塞到布卢姆先生手里。

推心置腹的谈话。

布卢……指的是我吗?不是。

羔羊的血。[5]

他边读边迈着缓慢的步子朝河边走去。你得到拯救了吗?在羔羊的血里洗涤了一切罪愆。上主要求以血做牺牲。分娩，处女膜，殉教，战争，被活埋在房基下者，献身，肾脏的燔祭，德鲁伊特的祭台。[6]。以利亚来了。[7]锡安教会的复兴者约翰•亚历山大•道维博士[8]来了。

来了!来了!!来啦!!!

大家衷心欢迎。

这行当挺划算。去年，托里和亚历山大[9]来了。一夫多妻主义。他的妻子会阻拦的。我是在哪儿见到伯明翰某商行那个夜光十字架的广告来看?我们的救世主。半夜醒来，瞥见他悬挂在墙上。佩珀显灵的手法。[10]把铁钉扎了进去。[11]

那准是用磷做的。比方说，倘若你留下一段鳕鱼，就能看见上面泛起一片蓝糊糊的银光。那天夜里我下楼到厨房的食橱去。那里弥漫着各种气味，一打开橱门就冲过来，可不好闻。她想要吃什么来看?乌拉加葡萄干[12]。她在思念西班牙。那是鲁迪出生以前的事。那种蓝糊糊、发绿的玩艺儿就是磷光。对大脑非常有益。

他从巴特勒这座纪念碑房[13]的拐角处眺望巴切勒步道。迪达勒斯的闺女还呆在狄龙的拍卖行外面呢。准是出售什么旧家具来了。她那双眼睛跟她父亲的一模一样，所以一下子就认得出来。她闲荡着，等候父亲出来。母亲一死，一个家必然就不成其为家了。他有十五个孩子，几乎每年生一个。这就是他们的教义[14]，否则神父就不让那可怜的女人忏悔，更不给她赦罪。生养并繁殖吧[15]。你可曾听到过如此荒唐的想法?连家带产都吃个精光。神父本人反正用不着养家糊口。他们享受丰足的生活[16]。神父的酒窖和食品库。我倒是想看看他们在赎罪日[17]是否严格遵守绝食的规定。十字面包[18]。先吃上一顿饭，再着补一道茶点，免得晕倒在祭坛前。你可以去问问一位神父所雇用的管家婆。绝对打听不出来的。正如从她的主人那里讨不到英镑、先令或便士。他独自过得蛮富裕，从来不请客。对旁人一毛不拔。连家里的水都看得很严。你得自带黄油抹面包。[19]神父大人，闭上你的嘴。

天哪，那个可怜的小妞儿，衣服破破烂烂的。她看上去好像营养也不良。成天是土豆和人造黄油，人造黄油和土豆。[20]当他们感觉到的时候，就已来不及了。布丁好坏，一尝便知。这样，身体会垮的。

当他来到奥康内尔桥头时，一大团烟像羽毛般地从栏杆处袅袅升起。那是啤酒厂的一艘驳船，载有供出口的烈性黑啤酒，正驶向英国。我听说海风会使啤酒变酸的。哪一天我要是能通过汉考克弄到一张参观券就好啦，去看看那家啤酒公司[21]该多么有趣。它本身就是个井然有序的世界。排列着大桶大桶的黑啤酒，一派宏伟景象。老鼠也蹿了进来，把肚皮喝得胀鼓鼓的，大得宛若一条柯利狗[22]，漂在酒面上。啤酒喝得烂醉如泥。一直喝到像个基督徒那样[23]呕吐出来。想想看，让我们喝这玩艺儿!老鼠，大桶。喏，倘若我们晓得这一切，可就……

他朝下面望去，瞥见几只海鸥使劲拍着翅膀，在萧瑟的码头岸壁间兜着圈子。外面正闹着天气。倘若我纵身跳下去，又将会怎样?吕便•杰的儿子想必就曾灌进一肚子那样的污水。多给了一先令八便士[24]。嘻嘻嘻。西蒙•迪达勒斯的话说得就是这样俏皮。他也确实会讲故事。

海鸥兜着圈子，越飞越低，在寻找猎物。等一等。

他把揉成一团的纸[25]朝海鸥群中掷去。以利亚以每秒三十二英尺的速度前来。海鸥们根本不予理睬。受冷落的纸团落在汹涌浪涛的尾波上，沿着桥墩漂向下游。它们才不是什么大笨蛋呢。有一天我从爱琳王号[26]上也扔了块陈旧的点心，海鸥竟在船后五十码的尾流中把它叼住了。它们鼓翼兜着圈子飞翔，就这样凭着智慧生存下来。

海鸥啊饿得发慌，

飞翔在沉滞的水上。

诗人就这样合辙押韵。莎士比亚却不用韵体。他写的是无韵诗。语言流畅，思想宏伟。

哈姆莱特，我是你父亲的灵魂，

注定在地上游行相当一个时期。[27]

“两个苹果一便士!两个一便士!”

他的视线扫过排列在货摊上那些光溜溜的苹果。这个季节嘛，准是从澳大利亚运来的。果皮发亮，想必是用抹布或手绢擦的。

且慢。还有那些可怜的鸟儿哪。

他又停下脚步来，花一便士从卖苹果的老妪手里买了两块班伯里[28]点心，掰开那酥脆的糕饼，一块块地扔进利菲河。瞧见了吗?起初是两只，紧接着所有的海鸥都悄悄地从高处朝猎物猛扑过去，全吃光了。一丁点儿也没剩。他意识到它们的贪婪和诡诈，就将手上沾的点心渣儿掸下去。它们未曾指望会有这样的口福。吗哪[29]。所有的海鸟——海鸥也罢，海鹅也罢，都靠食鱼而生，连肉都带鱼腥味了。安娜•利菲[30]的白天鹅有时顺流而下，游到这里，就用嘴梳理自己的羽毛，炫耀一番。人各有所好。也不晓得天鹅的肉是什么滋味儿。鲁滨孙•克鲁索只得靠它们的肉为生呢。[31]

它们有气无力地拍翅兜着圈子。我再也不去给你们啦。一便士的就蛮够啦。你们本该好好地向我道声谢的，可是连“呱”的一声都没叫。而且它们还传染口蹄疫。倘若净用栗子粉来喂火鸡，肉也会变成栗子味的。吃猪就像猪。然而咸水鱼为什么不咸呢?究竟是怎么回事?

他扫视着河面，想寻求个答案。只见一般划艇停泊在形似糖浆的汹涌浪涛上，懒洋洋地摇晃着它那灰胶纸拍板。

吉诺批发店[32]

11

裤子

那倒是个好主意。也不晓得吉诺向市政府当局交租金不。你怎么可能真正拥有水呢?它不断地流，随时都变动着，我们在流逝的人生中追溯着它的轨迹。因为生命是流动的。任何场所统统适合登广告。每一应公用厕所都有治淋病的庸医的招贴。而今完全看不到了。严加保密。亨利•弗兰克斯大夫[33]。跟舞蹈师傅马金尼[34]的自我广告一样，一分钱也不用花。要么托人去贴，要么趁着深更半夜悄悄跑进去，借解钮扣的当儿，自己把它贴上。麻利得就像夜晚躲债的。这地方再合适不过了。“禁止张贴广告”、“邮寄一百零十粒药丸”。有人服下去，心里火烧火燎的。

倘若他……

哦! 

呃?

不……不。

不，不。我不相信。他该不至于吧?

不，不。

布卢姆先生抬起神情困惑的眼睛，向前踱去。不要再想这个了。一点钟过了。港务总局的报时球已经降下来了。邓辛克[35]标准时间。罗伯特•鲍尔爵士[36]的那本小书饶有趣味。视差。我始终也没弄清楚这个词的意思。那儿有个神父，可以去问问他。这词儿是希腊文：平行，视差。我告诉她什么叫作“轮回”之前，她管它叫“遇见了他尖头胶皮管”[37]。哦，别转文啦!

布卢姆先生想起“哦，别转文啦!”这句话，朝着港务总居的两扇窗户泛出微笑。她的话毕竟是对的。用夸张的字眼来表达平凡的事物，只不过是取其音调而已。她讲话并不俏皮，有时候还挺粗鲁。我只是心里想想的话，她却脱口捅了出来。但是倒也不尽然。她常说，本•多拉德有着一副下贱的桶音[38]。他那两条腿款跟桶一样，他仿佛在往桶里唱歌。喏，这话不是说得蛮俏皮吗!他们通常管他叫“大本钟”[39]。远不如称他作“下贱的桶音”来得俏皮。他们饭量大如信天翁。一头牛的脊肉，一顿就吃光。他喝上等巴斯啤酒的本事也不含糊。是只啤酒桶。怎么样?俏皮话说得都很贴切吧。

一排穿白罩褂、胸前背后挂着广告牌的人正沿着明沟慢慢地朝他走来。每个人都在广告牌上斜系着一条猩红的饰带。大甩卖。他们正像今天早晨那位神父一样：我们犯了罪。我们受了苦[40]。他读着分别写在他们那五顶白色高帽上的红字母:H•E•L•Y•’S。威兹德姆。希利商店。[41]帽子上写着Y的男子放慢脚步，从胸前的广告牌下面取出一大块面包塞到嘴里，边走边狼吞虎咽着。我们每天在主食上花三先令，沿着明沟，穿街走巷。靠面包和稀稀的麦片粥，勉强把皮和骨连在一起。他们不是博伊——不，而是默•格拉德[42]的伙计。反正招徕不了多少顾客。我曾向他建议，让两个美女坐在一辆透明的陈列车里写信，并摆上笔记本、信封和吸墨纸。我敢断定，那准会轰动。美女写字，马上就会引人注目。人人都渴望知道她在写什么。要是你站在那里望空发楞，就会有二十个人围上来。谁都想参与别人的事，女人也是如此。好奇心。盐柱[43]。希利不肯接受这个主意，因为这不是他首先想出来的。找还建议做个墨水瓶的广告，用黑色赛璐珞充当流出来的墨水渍。他在广告方面的想法就像在讣告栏底下刊登李树商标肉罐头，冷肉部。你不能小看它们。什么?敝店的信封。——喂，琼斯，你到哪儿去呀?——鲁滨孙，我不能耽误，得赶紧去买唯一靠得住的坎塞尔牌消字灵，戴姆街八十五号希利商店出售的。幸而我不再在那儿干了。去那些修道院收帐可真是件苦差事。特兰奎拉女修道院[44]。那儿有个漂亮的修女，一张脸长得可真俊。小小的头上包着尖头巾，非常合适。修女?修女?从她的眼神来看，我敢说她曾失过恋。跟那种女人是很难讨价还价的。那天早晨她正在祈祷的时候，我打扰了她。但是她好像蛮乐意跟外界接触。她说，这是我们的大日子。迦密山[45]的圣母节。名字也挺甜，像糖蜜[46]。她认识我，从她那副样子也看得出，她认识我。要是她结了婚，就不会这样了。我估计修女们确实缺钱。尽管如此，不论煎什么，她们仍旧用上等黄油。她们可不用猪油。吃大油吃得我直烧心。她们喜欢里里外外抹黄油。摩莉掀起头巾，在品尝黄油。修女?她叫帕特•克拉费伊，是当铺的女儿。人们说，铁蒺藜就是一位尼姑发明的[47]。

当那个帽子上写着带有撇号的S字[48]的人拖着深重的脚步走过去后，他才横穿过韦斯特莫兰街。罗弗自行车铺。今天举行赛车会[49]。那是多久以前的事儿来看?是菲尔•吉利根[50]去世的那一年。我们住在伦巴德西街。且慢，当时我正在汤姆[51]的店铺来着。我们结婚那一年，我在威兹德姆•希利的店里找到了工作。六年。他是十年前——九四年[52]死的。对，就是阿诺特公司着大火的那一年。维尔•狄龙正任市长[53]。格伦克里的午餐会[54]。市参议员罗伯特•奥赖利在比赛开始前，将葡萄酒全倒进汤里。吧唧吧唧替内在的参议员把它舔干净[55]。简直听不清乐队在演奏什么。主啊，所赐万惠，我等……[56]那时候，米莉还是个小娃娃哩。摩莉身穿那件钉着盘花饰扣的灰象皮色衣服。那是男裁缝的手艺，钉了包扣。她不喜欢这身衣服，因为她头一回穿它去参加合唱队在糖锥山[57]举行的野餐会那一天，我把脚脖子扭伤了。就好像该怪它似的。老古德温的大礼帽仿佛是用什么黏糊糊的东西修补过的。那也是给苍蝇开的野餐会哩。她从未穿过剪裁这么得体的衣服。不论肩膀还是臀部，都像戴手套一样，刚好合身。那阵子她的体态开始丰腴了。当天我们吃的是兔肉馅饼。大家都追着她看。

幸福啊。当时我们可比现在幸福。舒适的小房间，四周糊着红色墙纸。是在多克雷尔那家店[58]里买的，每打一先令九便士。给米莉洗澡的那个晚上，我买了一块美国香皂，接骨木花的。澡水散发出馨香的气味。她浑身涂满肥皂，真逗。身材也蛮好。如今她正干着照相这一行。我那可怜的爹告诉我，他曾搞过一间银板照相的暗室[59]。这也是一种祖传的兴趣吧。

他沿着人行道的边石走去。

生命的长河[60]。那个活像是神父的家伙姓什么来着?每逢路过的时候，他总是斜眼望着我们家。视力不佳，女人。曾在圣凯文步道的西特伦[61]家住过一阵子。姓彭什么的。是彭迪尼斯吗?近来我的记性简直。彭……?当然喽，那是多年以前的事啦。也许是电车的噪音闹的。哦，要是连每天见面的排字房老领班姓什么都记不起来的话[62]。

巴特尔•达西[63]是当时开始出名的男高音歌手。排练后，总送她回家。他是个自命不凡的家伙，用发蜡把胡子捻得挺拔。他教会了她《南方刮来的风》这首歌。

风刮得很猛的那个晚上，我去接她。古德温的演奏会刚在市长官邸的餐厅或橡木室里举行完毕。分会正在那里为彩票的事开着碰头会[64]。他和我跟在后面走。我手里拿着她的乐谱，其中一张被刮得贴在高中校舍的栏杆上。幸亏没刮跑。这种事会破坏她整个儿晚上的情绪。古德温教授跟她相互挽着臂走在前面。可怜的老酒鬼摇摇晃晃，脚步蹒跚。这是他的告别演奏会了，肯定是最后一次在任何舞台上露面。也许几个月，也许是永远地[65]。我还记得她冲着风畅笑，竖起挡风雪的领子。记得吧?在哈考特街角上，一阵狂风。呜呜呜!她的裙子整个儿被掀起，她那圆筒形皮毛围巾把老古德温勒得几乎窒息而死。她被风刮得涨红了脸。记得回家后，我把火捅旺，替她煎了几片羊腿肉当晚餐，并浇上她爱吃的酸辣酱。还有加了糖和香料、烫热了的甘蔗酒。从壁炉那儿可以瞥见她在卧室里正解开紧身褡的金属卡子。雪白的。

她的紧身褡嗖的一声轻飘飘地落在床上。总是带着她的体温。她一向喜欢松开一切束缚。她在那儿坐到将近两点钟，一根根地摘下发卡。米莉严严实实地裹在小床里。幸福啊，幸福，就在那个夜晚……

“哦，布卢姆先生，你好吗?”

“哦，你好吗，布林太太[66]?”

“抱怨也是白搭。摩莉近来怎么样?我好久没见着她啦。”

“精神抖擞，”布卢姆先生快活地说，“喏，知道吗，米莉在穆林加尔找到工作啦。”

“离开家啦?可真了不起!”

“可不是嘛，在一家照相馆里干活儿。像火场一样忙得团团转。您府上的孩子们好吗?”

“个个都有一张吃饭的嘴，”布林太太说。

她究竟有多少儿女呢?眼下倒不像是在身怀六甲。

“你戴着孝哪。难道是……?”

“没有，”布卢姆先生说，“我刚刚参加了一场丧礼。”

可以想象，今天一整天都会不断有人问起，谁死啦?什么时候怎么死的?反正躲也躲不掉。

“嗳呀妈呀!”布林太太说，“我希望总不是什么近亲。”

倒也不妨让她表表同情。

“姓迪格纳穆的，”布卢姆先生说，“是我的一位老朋友。他死得十分突然，可怜的人哪。我相信得的是心脏病。葬礼是今天早晨举行的。”

你的葬礼在明天，

当你穿过裸麦田[67]。

嗨唷嗬，咿呀嗨，

嗨唷嗬……

“老朋友死了真令人伤心，”布林太太说，她那女性的眼睛里露出悲怆的神色。

这个话题就说到这儿吧。还是适可而止。轻轻地问候一声她老公吧。

“你先生——当家的好吗?”

布林太太抬起她那双大眼睛。她的眼神倒还没失去往日的光泽。

“哦。可别提他啦!”她说，“他这个人哪，连响尾蛇都会被他吓倒的。眼下他在餐馆里拿着法律书正在查找着诽谤罪的条例哪。我这条命早晚会送在他手里。等一等，我给你看个东西。”

一股热腾腾的仿甲鱼汤蒸气同刚烤好的酥皮果酱馅饼和果酱布丁卷的热气从哈里森饭馆里直往外冒。浓郁的午餐气味刺激着布卢姆先生的胃口。为了做美味的油酥点心，就需要黄油、上等面粉和德梅拉拉沙糖[68]。要么就和滚烫的红茶一道吃。气味或许是这个妇女身上散发出来的吧?一个赤脚的流浪儿站在格子窗跟前，嗅着那一股股香味。借此来缓和一下饥饿的煎熬。这究竟是快乐还是痛苦呢?廉价午餐。刀叉都锁在桌上[69]。

她打开薄皮制成的手提包。帽子上的饰针：对这玩艺儿得当心点儿——在电车里可别戳着什么人的眼睛。乱找一气。敞着口儿。钱币。请自己拿一枚吧。她们要是丢了六便士，那可就麻烦啦。惊天动地。丈夫吵吵嚷嚷：“星期一我给你的十先令哪儿去啦?难道你在养活你弟弟一家人吗?脏手绢。药瓶。刚掉下去的是喉咙片。这个女人要干什么?……

“准是升起了新月，”她说，”一到这时候老毛病就犯啦。你猜他昨儿晚上干什么来着?”

她不再用手翻找了。她惊愕地睁大了一双眼睛盯着他，十分惊愕，可还露着笑意。

“怎么啦?”布卢姆先生问。

让她说吧。直勾勾地盯着她的眼睛。我相信你的话，相信我吧。

“夜里，他把我叫醒啦，”她说，“他做了个梦，一场噩梦。”

消化不良呗。

“他说，黑桃幺[70]走上楼梯来啦。”

“黑桃幺!”布卢姆先生说。

她从手提包里掏出一张折叠起来的明信片。

“念念看，”她说，“他今天早晨接到的。”

“这是什么?”布卢姆先生边接过明信片，边说，“万事休矣。”

“万事休矣：完蛋[71]，”她说，“有人在捉弄他。不论是谁干的，真是太缺德啦。”

“确实是这样，”布卢姆先生说。

她把明信片收回去，叹了口气。

“他这会子就要到门顿先生的事务所去。他说他要起诉，要求赔偿一万镑。”

她把明信片叠好，放回她那凌乱的手提包，啪的一声扣上金属卡口。

两年前她穿的也是这件蓝哔叽衣服，料子已经褪色了。从前它可风光过。耳朵上有一小绺蓬乱的头发。还有那顶式样俗气的无檐女帽上头还缀了三颗古色古香的葡萄珠，这才勉强戴得出去。一位寒酸的淑女。从前她可讲究穿戴啦。如今嘴边已经出现了皱纹。才比摩莉大上一两岁。

那个女人从她身旁走过去的时候，曾用怎样的眼神瞅她!残酷啊。不公正的女性[72]。

他依然盯着她，竭力不把心头的不悦形之于色。仿甲鱼汤、牛尾汤、咖哩鸡肉汤的气味冲鼻。我也饿了。她那衣服的贴边上还沾着点心屑呢，腮帮子上也巴着糖渣子。填满了各色果品馅儿的大黄酥皮饼[73]。那时候她叫乔西•鲍威尔。那是好久以前的事了，在海豚仓的卢克•多伊尔家玩过哑剧字谜[74]。万事休矣，完蛋。

换个话题吧。

“最近你见着博福伊太太了吗?”布卢姆先生问。

“米娜•普里福伊吗?”她说。

我脑子里想的是非利普•博福伊。戏迷俱乐部。马查姆经常想起那一妙举[75]。我拉没拉那链儿呢?[76]拉了，那是最后一个动作。

“是的。”

“我刚才顺路去探望了她一下，看看她是不是已分娩了。眼下她住进了霍利斯街的妇产医院。是霍恩大夫[72]让她住院的。她已足足折腾了三天。”

“哦，”布卢姆先生说，“我听了很难过。”

“可不是嘛，”布林太太说，“家里还有一大帮娃娃哪。护士告诉我，是不常见的难产。”

“哎呀，”布卢姆先生说。

他的目光表露着深切的怜悯，全神贯注地倾听她这个消息，同情地砸着舌头：“啧!啧!”

“我听了很难过，”他说，“怪可怜的!三天啦!够她受的!”

布林太太点了点头。

“从星期二起，阵痛就开始啦……”

布卢姆先生轻轻地碰了一下她的胳膊肘尖儿，提醒她说：

“当心!让这个人过去吧。”

一个瘦骨嶙峋的人从河边沿着人行道的边石大步流星地走了过来，隔着系有沉甸甸的带子的单片眼镜，茫然地凝视着阳光。一顶小帽像头巾一般紧紧地箍在他头上。迈一步，夹在腋下的那件折叠起来的风衣、拐杖和雨伞就晃荡一阵。

“瞧他，”布卢姆先生说，“总是在街灯外侧走路。瞧啊!”

“我可以问一下他是谁吗?”布林太太说，“他是个半疯儿吗?”

“他名叫卡什尔•博伊尔•奥康内尔•菲茨莫里斯•蒂斯代尔•法雷尔[78]，”布卢姆先生笑眯眯地说，“瞧啊!”

“这串儿够长的啦，”她说，“丹尼斯迟早也会变成这个样子。”

她突然闭上了嘴。

“他出来啦，”她说，“我得跟着他走。再见吧。请代我向摩莉问候一声，好吗?”

“好的，”布卢姆先生说。

他望着她一路躲闪着行人，走到店铺前面去。丹尼斯•布林身穿紧巴巴的长礼服，脚登蓝色帆布鞋，腋下紧紧地夹着两部沉甸甸的大书，从哈里森饭馆里抱着脚步走了出来。像往常一样，仿佛是一阵风把他从海湾刮来的似的。他听任她赶上自己，并没有感到意外，一路朝她掀起他那脏巴兮兮的灰胡子，摆动着皮肉松弛的下巴，热切地说着什么。

疯狂[79]。完全疯啦。

布卢姆先生继续轻松愉快地走去。瞥见前面阳光下那顶像头巾一般紧紧地箍在头上的小帽，还有那大摇大摆地晃荡着的拐杖、雨伞和风衣。瞧瞧他!又离开了人行道。这也是在世上鬼混的一种方式。还有另一个披头散发、衣衫槛褛的老疯子，到处闲荡。如果跟这种人一道过日子，必然够呛。

万事休矣，完蛋。那准是阿尔夫•柏根或里奇•古尔丁干的。毫无疑问，是在苏格兰屋[80]开着玩笑写的。他正前往门顿的事务所。一路用那双牡蛎般的眼睛瞪着明信片的那副样子，足以让众神人饱眼福。

他从爱尔兰时报[81]社前走过。那儿兴许还放着其他应征者的回信哩。我倒巴不得统统给答复了。这制度倒是替罪犯大开方便之门：暗码。现在正是吃午饭的时候。那边那个戴眼镜的职员并不认识我。啊，就把他们先撂在那儿，慢慢儿来吧。光是把那四十四封信测览一遍就够费事的了。招聘一名精干的女打字员，协助一位先生从事文字工作。找曾管你叫淘气鬼，因为我不喜欢那另一个世界。请告诉我它的含意。请告诉我，你太太使用哪一种香水[82]。告诉我世界是谁创造的。她们就像这样劈头盖脑地向你提出各种问题。另外一个叫莉齐•特威格[83]，说是，我的文学作品有幸受到著名诗人A•E•(乔•拉塞尔先生)的赞赏。她边呷着浑浊的茶，边翻看一本诗集，连梳理头发的工夫都没有。

这家报纸登小广告赛过任何一家。如今扩大到各郡。聘请厨师兼总管家，一级烹调，并有女仆打下手。征聘性格活泼的酒柜侍者。今有品行端正的女青年(罗马天主教徒)，愿在水果店或猪肉铺觅职。那份报纸是詹姆斯•卡莱尔[84]创办的，百分之六点五的股息。买科茨公司的股票大赚了一笔。一步一步地来。老奸巨滑的苏格兰守财奴。净写一些溜须拍马的报道。我们这位宽厚而深孚众望的总督夫人啦。如今，他连《爱尔兰狞猎报》[85]也给买下来了。蒙卡什尔夫人产后已完全康复，昨日率领医院俱乐部的一批猎犬骑马前往拉思奥斯参加放猎大会[86]。不能食用的狐狸[87]。也有专为果腹而狞猎的。恐怖感能使猎物的肉变得松软多汁。她的骑法就跟男子汉一样，叉开腿跨在马背上。这是一位能够拔山扛鼎的女狞猎家。侧鞍也罢，后鞍也罢，她一概不骑，乔可决不要[88]!集合时她首先赶了来。及至杀死猎物时，她也亲临现场。有些女骑手简直健壮得像母种马一样。她们在马房周围大摇大摆地转悠。一眨眼的工夫就把一杯不兑水的白兰地一饮而尽。今天早晨呆在格罗夫纳饭店前的那个女人嗖的一下就上了马车。嘘——嘘。她敢骑在马上跨过一道石墙或有着五根横木的障碍物[89]。那个瘪鼻子的电车司机想必是故意使的坏。[90]她究竟长得像谁呢?对啦!像是曾经在谢尔本饭店把自己的旧罩衫和黑色衬衣卖给我的那位米莉亚姆•丹德拉德太太[91]。离了婚的西班牙裔美国人。我摆弄它们时，她毫不理会。大概把我看成她的衣服架子了。我是在总督的宴会上遇到她的。公园护林人斯塔布新[92]把我和《快报》[93]的维兰带进去参加了。吃的是那些达官贵人的残羹剩汤。一顿有肉食的茶点。我把蛋黄酱当炸乳蛋羹，浇在李子布丁上了。打那以后，她一定耳鸣了好几个星期。我恨不得当她的公牛。她是个天生的花魁。谢天谢地，看孩子可别找她。

可怜的普里福伊太太!丈夫是个循道公会[94]教徒。他说的虽然是疯话，其中却包含着哲理[95]。中午吃教育奶场[96]所生产的番红花甜面包，喝牛奶和汽水。基督教青年会。边吃边看着记秒表，每分钟嚼三十二下，然而他那上细下圆的羊排状络腮胡子还是长得密密匝匝。据说他的后台挺硬。酉奥多的堂弟在都柏林堡[97]。家家都有个显赫的亲戚。每年他总给她一株茁壮的一年生植物[98]。有一次，我看见他光着头正领着一家人从“三个快乐的醉汉”酒馆前大踏步走边。大儿子还用买东西的网兜提着一个。娃娃们大哭大叫。可怜的女人!她得年复一年，整日整夜地喂奶。这些禁酒主义者是自私自利的。马槽里的狗[99]。劳驾，红茶里我只要一块糖就够了。

他在舰队街的十字路口停下来。该吃午饭的时候了。到罗依[100]吃上一客六便士的份饭吧?还得到国立图书馆去查阅那条广告呢。倒不如到伯顿[101]去吃那八便士一客的，刚好路过那里。

他从博尔顿的韦斯特莫兰店[102]前走边。茶。茶。茶。我忘了向汤姆•克南定购茶叶啦。

咂咂咂，嗞嗞嗞!想想看，她在床上哼了三天，额头上绑着一条泡了醋的手绢，挺着个大肚子。唉!简直太可怕了!胎儿的脑袋大大啦，得用钳子。在她肚子里弯曲着身子，摸索着出口，盲目地试图往外冲。要是我的话，准把命送啦。幸而摩莉十分顺产。他们应该发明点办法来避免这样。生命始于分娩的痛苦。昏睡分娩法。维多利亚女王就使用过这种办法。她生了九胎[103]。一只多产的母鸡。老婆婆以鞋为家，生下一大群娃娃[104]。倘若他患的是肺病呢。现在该是考虑这些的时候了，而别去写什么“忧郁多思的胸脯闪着银白色光辉”[105]这类的空话了。那是哄傻子的空话。他们完全不用伤筋动骨，三下两下就能盖起一座大医院。从各种税收中，按复利借给每一个出生的娃娃五镑。按五分利计算，到了二十一岁就积累成一百零五先令了。英镑挺麻烦的，得用十进法乘二十。要鼓励大家存钱。二十一年内可存上一百一十多先令[106]。想在纸上好好计算一下。数目相当可观哩，比你想像的要多。

死胎当然不算数。连户口都不给上嘛。那是徒劳。

两个大腹便便的孕妇呆在一起，煞是可笑。摩莉和莫依塞尔太太[107]。母亲们的聚会。肺结核暂且收敛，随后又回来了。分娩后，她们的肚皮一下子就扁平了!温和的眼神。卸下了个大包袱的感觉。产婆桑顿老大娘是个快活的人儿[108]。她说:这些都是我的娃娃。喂娃娃之前，她总先把奶面糊糊的肚子放在自己嘴里尝尝。哦，好吃，好吃。替老汤姆•沃尔的儿子接生的时候，她把手扭伤了。那是他头一次亮相。脑袋活像个获奖的老倭瓜。爱生气的穆伦大夫[109]。人们随时都来敲门喊醒他。“求求您啦，大夫。我内人开始阵痛啦。”至于谢礼呢，一连拖欠几个月。那是你老婆的出诊费呀。净是些忘恩负义的家伙。医生大多是好心肠的。

爱尔兰国会大厦[110]那老高老大的门前，一簇鸽子在飞来飞去。它们吃饱了在嬉戏。咱们撒到哪个人身上呢?我挑那个穿黑衣服的家伙。撒了。好运道。从空中往下撒，该是多么过瘾啊。有一回，阿普约翰、我本人和欧文•戈德堡[111]爬上古斯草地附近的树，学猴子玩。他们叫我青花鱼[112]。

一队警察排成纵队，迈着正步从学院路走了过来。一个个吃得脸上发热，汗水顺着钢盔往下淌，轻轻地拍打着警棍。饭后，皮带底下塞满了油汪汪的浓汤。警察的日子通常过得蛮快活[113]。他们分成几股散开来，边敬礼边回到各自的地段上去。放他们出去填饱肚子。最好是在吃布丁的时候去袭击，正进餐的当儿给他一拳头。另一队警察三三两两地分散开来，绕过三一学院的栅栏，走向派出所。饲料槽在等着他们。准备迎接骑兵队。准备迎接浓汤。

他从汤米•穆尔那捣鬼[114]的指头底下横穿过去。他们把他这座铜像竖在一座小便池上，倒是做对了。众水汇合[115]。应该给妇女也修几座厕所。她们总是跑进点心铺，佯说是：“整理一下我的帽子。”世界纵然辽阔，惟数此峡……这是朱莉娅•莫尔坎[116]演唱的拿手歌曲。直到最后的时刻，她的嗓音始终都保持得洪亮如初。她是迈克尔•巴尔夫[117]的女弟子吧?

他目送着最后一名警察那穿着宽宽的制服上衣的背影。干这行当，就得对付一批棘手的主顾。杰克•鲍尔可以告诉你一桩事[118]。他爹就是一名便衣刑警。要是一个家伙在被抓的时候给了他们麻烦，等那人进了拘留所，就狠狠地让他尝尝厉害。干的是那种差事嘛，倒也难怪他们。尤其是年轻警察。乔•张伯伦在三一学院被授予学位的那一天，那个骑警为他可费了大事[119]。这是千真万确!他的马蹄沿着阿贝街一路嘚嘚嘚地朝我们逼来。幸而我灵机一动，一个箭步蹿进曼宁酒吧去，不然我准会惹上麻烦。他真是飞奔而来，想必是栽在人行道的鹅卵石上撞破了脑壳。我悔不该被卷进那批医学院学生当中。还有三一学院那些戴学士帽的一年级学生。反正就是想闹事。不过，这下子我倒结识了小迪克森。我被蜜蜂蜇了的那回，就是他在仁慈圣母医院替我包扎的。如今他在霍利斯街，普里福伊太太就在那儿。轮中套轮。[120]警笛的响声至今还萦回在我耳际。大家仓惶逃走。他为什么单单盯上了我呢?他对我说，你被捕了。事情就是这样开始的。

“支持布尔人[121]!”

“为德威特[122]三欢呼!”

“把乔•张伯伦吊死在酸苹果树上![123]”

蠢才们。成群的野小子们声嘶力竭地喊叫。醋山岗[124]。奶油交易所的乐队[125]。不出几年，其中半数就必然将成为治安法官[126]和公务员。一打起仗来，就手忙脚乱地参军。就是这些人，过去经常说，哪怕上高高的断头台。[127]

你决不知道自己在跟什么人说话。科尼•凯莱赫的眼神活像是哈维•达夫[128]。活像是那个密告“常胜军”计划的彼得——不对，是丹尼斯——不对，是詹姆斯•凯里[129]，其实他是市政府的官员。他煽动莽撞的小伙子去刺探情报，暗地里地却不断从都柏林堡领取情报活动津贴。快别再跟他来往了吧，危险哩。这些穿便衣的家伙怎么老是缠住女佣啊?平素穿惯制服的人，一眼就认得出来。把女佣推得紧紧贴着后门，粗鲁地挑逗一番。接着就干起正事了。来的那位先生是谁呀?少爷说过什么没有?从钥匙孔里偷看的汤姆[130]。做囮子的野鸭。血气方刚的年轻大学生抚摩着正在熨衣服的她那丰腴的胳膊，同她起腻。

“这些是你的吗，玛丽?”

“我才不穿这样的呢，……住手，不然我就向太太告你的状。深更半夜还在外面游荡。”

“好日子快要到来了，玛丽。你等着瞧吧。[131]”

“喏，你同那快要到来的好日子一道给我滚吧。”

还有酒吧间的女招待。纸烟店的姑娘。

詹姆斯•斯蒂芬斯的主意再高明不过了。他了解对方。他们每十个人分作一组，所以一个成员就是告密也超不出本组范围[132]。新芬[133]。要是想开小差，就准会挨一刀。有只看不见的手。[134]留在党内呢，迟早会被刑警队枪杀。看守的闺女帮助他从里奇蒙越狱，乘船离开拉斯科[135]。他曾在警察的鼻子底下住进白金汉宫饭店[136]。加里波第[137]。

你得有点儿个人魅力才行，像巴涅尔那样。阿瑟•格里菲思是个奉公守法的人，然而不孚众望。要么就海阔天空地谈论“我们可爱的祖国”。腊肉烧菠菜[138]。都柏林面包公司的茶馆。那些讨论会[139]。说共和制乃是最好的政治制度，又说什么国语问题应该优先于经济问题。[140]还说你的女儿们可曾把他们勾引到你家来呢?肉啊酒的，让他们填饱肚子。米迦勒节的鹅[141]。为你准备了一大堆调好了味的麝香草，塞在鹅的肚皮里。趁热再吃一夸脱鹅油吧。半饥半饱的宗教狂们。揣上个一便士的面包卷[142]，就跟着乐队走它一遭儿。东道主忙于切肉，顾不得作感恩祷告啦。一想到另一个人会为你付钱，就吃得格外香。毫不客气。请把那些杏子——其实是桃子一一递过来。那个日子不太遥远了。爱尔兰自治的太阳正从西北方冉冉升起。

走着走着，他脸上的笑容消失了。乌云徐徐地遮住太阳，三一学院那阴郁的正面被暗影所笼罩。电车一辆接一辆地往返行驶，叮叮当当响着。说什么也是白搭。日复一日，事物毫无变化。一队警察开出去，又开回来。电车来来往往。那两个疯子到处徘徊。迪格纳穆被车载走了。麦娜•普里福伊挺着大肚皮躺在床上，呻吟着，等着娃娃从她肚子里被拽出来。每秒钟都有一个人在什么地方出生，每秒钟另外又有一个死去。自从我喂了那些鸟儿，已经过了五分钟。三百人翘了辫子，另外又有三百个呱呱落地，洗掉血迹。人人都在羔羊的血泊中被洗涤，[143]妈啊啊啊地叫着。

整整一座城市的人都死去了，又生下另一城人，然后也死去。另外又生了，也死去。房屋，一排排的房屋;街道，多少英里的人行道。堆积起来的砖，石料。易手。主人转换着。人们说，房产主是永远不会死的。此人接到搬出去的通知，另一个便来接替。他们用黄金买下了这个地方，而所有的黄金还都在他们手里。也不知道在哪个环节上诈骗的。日积月累发展成城市，又逐年消耗掉。沙中的金字塔。是啃着面包洋葱[144]盖起来的。奴隶们修筑的中国万里长城。巴比伦。而今只剩下巨石。圆塔。此外就是瓦砾，蔓延的郊区，偷工减料草草建成的屋舍。柯万用微风盖起来的那一应蘑菇般的房子[145]。只够睡上一夜的蔽身处。

大是毫无价值的。

这是一天当中最糟糕的时辰。活力。慵懒，忧郁。我就恨这个时辰。只觉得像是被谁吞下去又吐了出来似的。

学院院长的宅第。可敬的萨蒙博士。鲤鱼[146]罐头。严严实实地装在那个罐头里[147]。活像是小教堂的停尸所。即便给我钱，我也不愿意去住那样的地方。今天要是有肝和熏猪肉就好了。大自然讨厌真空状态。

太阳徐徐从云彩间钻出，使街道对面沃尔特•塞克斯顿店那橱窗里的银器熠熠发光。约翰•霍华德•巴涅尔连看也没看一眼就从橱窗前走过去了。

这是那一位的弟弟[148]，跟他长得一模一样。那张脸总是在我眼前晃。这是个巧合。当然，有时你也会想到某人数百次，可就是碰不见他。他那走路的样儿，活像个梦游者。没有人认识他。今天市政府准是在召开什么会议。据说自从他就职以来，连一次也没穿过市政典礼官的制服。他的前任查理•卡瓦纳总是戴着翘角帽，头发上撒了粉，刮了胡子，得意洋洋地骑着高头大马上街。然而，瞧瞧他走路时那副狼狈相，仿佛是个在事业上一败涂地的人。一对荷包蛋般的幽灵的眼睛。我好苦恼。啊，伟人的老弟。乃兄的胞弟。他要是跨上了市政典礼官的坐骑，那才神气呢。兴许还要到都柏林面包公司去喝杯咖啡，在那儿下下象棋。他哥哥曾把部下当作“卒”来使用。对他们一概见死不救。人们吓得不敢说他一句什么。他那眼神让人见了毛骨悚然。这就是他引人瞩目的地方。名气。整个家族都有点儿神经病。疯子范妮[149]，另外一个妹妹就是迪金森太太[150]，给马套上猩红色挽具，赶着车子到处跑。她昂首挺胸，活像是马德尔外科医生[151]。然而在南米斯郡，这位弟弟还是败在大卫•希伊[152]手下了。他曾申请补上奇尔特恩分区•的空缺[153]，然后引退成为官吏。爱国主义者的盛宴，在公园里剥桔皮吃[154]。西蒙•迪达勒斯曾经说过，他们要是把这个弟弟拉进议会，巴涅尔就会从坟墓里回来，抓住他的胳膊将他拖出下议院。

“说到这双头章鱼[155]，一个脑袋长在世界的尽头忘记来到的地方，而另一个脑袋则用苏格兰口音讲话。上面长的八腕……”

有两个人沿着便道的边石走，从背后赶到布卢姆先生前面去了。胡子[156]和自行车，还有一位年轻女人。

哎呀，他也在那儿。这可真是凑巧了。是第二回。未来的事情早有过预兆。[157]承蒙著名诗人乔•拉塞尔先生的赞赏。跟他走在一起的说不定就是莉齐•特威格哩。A•E•[158]究竟是什么意思呢?兴许是名姓的首字：艾伯特、爱德华[159]，阿瑟•埃德蒙[160]，阿方萨斯•埃比或埃德或埃利[161]或阁下[162]。他说什么来着?世界的两端用苏格兰口音讲话。八腕：章鱼。大概是什么玄妙的法术或象征含义吧。他在滔滔不绝地说着。她一声不响地聆听着。给一位从事文字工作的先生当个助手。

他目送着那位穿手织呢衣服[163]的高个子，以及他的胡子和那辆自行车，还有他身旁那仔细聆听着的女人。他们是从素饭馆[164]走出来的，只吃了些蔬菜和水果，不吃牛排。你要是吃了，那头母牛的双眼就会永远盯着你。他们说，素食更有益于健康。不过，老是放屁撒尿。我试过。成天净跑厕所了。跟患气胀病[165]一样糟糕。通宵达旦地做梦。他们为什么把给我吃的那玩艺儿叫作坚果排[166]呢?坚果主义者，果食主义者。让你觉得你吃的像是牛腿扒。真荒谬。而且咸得很。是用苏打水煮的[167]。害得你整晚守在自来水笼头旁边。

她那双长袜松垮垮地卷在脚脖子上。我最讨厌这个样子，太不雅观了。他们统统是搞文学、有灵气的人。梦幻般的，朦朦胧胧的，象征主义的。他们是唯美主义者。就算是你所看到的食物会造成那种富于诗意的脑波，我也毫不以为奇。就拿那些连衬衫都被爱尔兰土豆洋葱炖羊肉般的黏汗浸透了的警察来说吧，你从他们当中的任何一个也挤不出一行诗来。他甚至不晓得诗是什么。非得沉浸在某种情绪里才行。

梦幻一般朦胧的海鸥，

在沉滞的水土飞翔。[168]

他在纳索街角穿过马路，站在耶茨父子公司[169]的橱窗前，估计着双筒望远镜的价码。要么我到老哈里斯家去串门，跟小辛克莱[170]聊一聊吧?他是个文质彬彬的人。此刻多半正吃着午饭哪。得把我那架旧望远镜送去修理啦。戈埃兹棱镜片要六基尼。德国人到处钻。他们靠优惠条件来占领市场。削价抢生意。兴许能从铁路遗失物品管理处买上一架。人们忘掉在火车上和小件寄存处的物品之多，简直惊人。脑子里都在想些什么呢?女人也是这样。真是难以置信。去年到恩尼斯去旅行的时候，我只好替那个农场主的女儿捡起她的手提包，在利默里克[171]换车的当儿交给了她。还有无人认领的钱呢。银行屋顶上有一块小表[172]，是用来测试这些望远镜的。

他把眼睑一直耷拉到虹膜的底边。瞧不见。倘若你设想着表在那儿，你就好像能看见似的。然而还是瞧不见。

他掉转身去，站在两个布篷之间，朝太阳伸直了右臂，张开手。他已多次想这么尝试一下了。是啊，很完整。用小指头尖儿遮着太阳的圆盘[173]。淮是光线在这里聚焦的缘故。我要是有副墨镜就好了。那该多么有趣呀。我们住在伦巴德西街的时候，关于太阳的黑子，大家议论纷纷。那是可怕的爆炸形成的。今年将有日全蚀，秋季不定什么时候。

现在我才想起来。原来那个报时球是按照格林威治标准时间下降的。从邓辛克接上一根电线，用来操纵时钟。我一定得在某月的第一个星期六去看一趟。我要是能弄到一封给乔利教授[174]的介绍信，或是找到一些有关他的家谱的资料才好呢。叫他出其不意地受到恭维。这挺灵。他会感到怡然自得。贵族总以做国王情妇的后裔为荣。他的女祖先。反正竭力阿谀。脱帽鞠躬，必然畅通无阻。[175]可不能一进去就信口开河地说些明知道不该说的话:视差是什么?结果款是：把这位先生领出去。

哎呀。

他又把右手垂到身边了。

关于这些，完全不摸头脑。纯粹是浪费时间。一个个气体球儿旋转着。相互交错，然后消失。亘古及今，周而复始。起初是气体，接着就是固体，然后是世界。冷却了，死去的硬壳四处漂流，冻僵的岩石宛如菠萝糖块[176]。月亮。她说：淮是升起了新月。我也相信是这样。

他从克莱尔屋[177]前走过。

且慢。两周前的星期日我们在那儿时是满月，所以今天应该刚好是新月。我们沿着托尔卡河往下游走去。费尔维尤那里适宜观赏月色。[178]她低吟着：五月的新月喜洋洋，宝贝。那个男人走在她的另一侧。肘。胳膊。他。萤光灯一闪一闪的，宝贝。[179]互相触摸。指头。这个提出要求。那个回答：好的。

别想下去了，别想下去了。既然必须这样，那就只好这样坝。必须[180]。

布卢姆先生呼吸急促，放慢脚步穿过亚当小巷。

他的心情好容易才宁静下来，神态安详地放眼望去。大白天在这条街上走着的，正是肩膀颇像酒瓶的鲍勃•多兰[181]。麦科伊曾说，他一年一度痛饮一遭。他们纵酒是为了说点什么或者做点什么，要么就是为了追女人[182]。跟相公们和妓女们在库姆街鬼混一阵，一年里的其他日子就像法官那么清醒。

对，果然不出所料。他正溜进帝国酒馆。消失了。光喝苏打水有益于他的健康。在惠特布雷德经营女王剧院之前，这里原是帕特•金塞拉开哈普剧院[183]的地方。他仍保持着孩子气。按照戴恩•鲍西考尔待[184]的派头，在秋月般的脸上扣着一顶式样俗气的无檐圆帽。《三个俊俏姑娘放学了》。[185]日子过得真快啊。呃?他的裙子底下露出长长的红裤子。酒徒们喝啊，笑啊，忽而喷溅出酒沫子，忽而又给酒呛住了。再给我满上吧，帕特。刺眼的红色。醉鬼门寻欢作乐。哄堂大笑，喷烟吐雾。摘下那顶白帽子。[186]他那双喝得挂满了血红的眼睛。现在他到哪儿去啦?在什么地方当叫化子呢。那把竖琴害得我们大家挨过饿。[187]

那阵子我更幸福一些。可那时的我究竟是我吗?或许难道现在的我才是我吗?当时我二十八，她二十三。我们从伦巴德西街搬走之后[188]，起了点儿变化。鲁迪一死，再也不能像往常那样啦。没法叫时光倒流。那就像是想用手去攥住水似的。难道你想回到那个时期吗?刚开始的那个时期。真想吗?你在自己家里不幸福吗，你这可怜的小淘气鬼?她恨不得替我钉钮扣哩。我得写封回信。到图书馆去写吧。

格拉夫顿街上，花花哨哨地张挂着商店的遮阳篷，使他眼花•镣乱。平纹印花细布，穿绸衣的太太们和上了岁数的贵妇，还有发出一片叮当声的挽具，在灼热的街道[189]上低低地响着的马蹄声。那个穿白袜子的女人有着一双粗腿。但愿下场雨，把她弄得满脚烂泥。士里土气的乡巴佬。那些胖到脚后跟的统统都来啦。女人一发福，腿就那么臃肿。摩莉的腿看上去也不直溜。

他遛遛达达地从布朗•托马斯开的那爿绸缎铺的橱窗前走过。瀑布般的飘带。中国薄绢。从一只倾斜的雍口里垂下血红色的府绸。红艳艳的血。是胡格诺派教徒带进来的。事业是神圣的。嗒啦。嗒啦。那个合唱可精彩啦。嗒咧，嗒啦。得用雨水来洗。梅耶贝尔。咯啦。嘣嘣嘣。[190]

针插。我老早就催老婆去买一个了。她到处乱插。窗帘上也插了好儿根。

他挽了挽左袖:蜇的痕迹差不多看不见啦。今天就算了吧。得折回去取化妆水。也许等她过生日那天再去买吧。六、七、八，九月八日。差不多还有三个月呢。何况她未必喜欢。女人不肯捡起针来，说是那样就会把爱情断送掉。[191]

闪亮的绸缎，搭在纤细黄铜栏杆上一条条的衬裙，摆成辐射状的扁平长筒丝袜闪闪发光。

回忆过去是徒然的。该当怎样就怎样。把一切都向我讲了吧。

高嗓门。被太阳晒暖了的绸缎。马具叮当响。一切都是为了一个女人：家庭和房子，丝织品，银器，多汗的水果，来自雅法的香料。移民垦殖公司[192]。全世界的财富。

一个温馨、丰腴的肉体在他的头脑里安顿下来。他的脑子屈服了，拥抱的芳香从四面八方向他袭来。他的肉体隐然感到如饥似渴，默默地渴望着热烈的爱。

公爵街。终于到了。必须吃点儿什么。伯顿饭馆。那样就会舒坦一点。

他在剑桥[193]的犄角拐了弯，依然被那种感觉纠缠着。叮当声，马蹄声。馨香的肉体，温暖而丰满。吻遍了通身。默许了。在盛夏的田野里，在被压得缠在一起的篙草丛中，在公寓那嘀嘀嗒嗒漏着雨的门厅里，在沙发或咯吱咯吱响的床上。

“杰克，心肝儿!”

“宝贝!”

“吻我，雷吉!”

“我的乖!”

“宝宝!”

他心里坪坪跳着，推开了伯顿饭馆的门。一股臭气堵塞住他那颤巍巍的呼吸。冲鼻的肉汁，泥浆般的蔬菜。瞧瞧动物们那副狼吞虎咽的样子。

人啊，人啊，人啊。

他们有的端坐在酒柜旁的高凳上，把帽子往后脑勺一推，有的坐在桌前，喊着还要添免费面包。狂饮劣酒，往嘴里填着稀溜溜的什么，鼓起眼睛，揩拭沾湿了的口髭。一个面色苍白、有着一张板油般脸色的小伙子，正用餐巾擦他那玻璃酒杯、刀叉和调羹。又是一批新的细菌。有个男人胸前围着沾满酱油痕迹的小孩餐巾，喉咙里呼噜噜地响着，正往食道里灌着汤汁。另一个把嘴里的东西又吐回到盘子上。那是嚼了一半的软骨，嘴里只剩齿龈了，想嚼却没有了牙。放在铁丝格子上炙烤的厚厚的一大片肋肉，囫囵吞下去拉倒。酒鬼那双悲戚的眼睛。他咬下一大口内，又嚼不动了。我也像那副样子吗?用别人看我们的眼睛来瞧瞧自己。[194]肚子饿了的就怒气冲天。牙齿和下巴活动着。别嚼啦!哎呀!一块骨头!在教科书的一首诗里写着：爱尔兰最后一位异教徒国王科麦克就是在博因河[195]以南的期莱镇上噎死的。不晓得他吃的是什么。想必是美味无比的佳希吧。圣帕特里克后来使他扳依基督

“烤牛肉和包心菜。”

“来一盘焖肉。”

男人的气味。啐上了唾沫的锯屑，甜丝丝、温吞吞的纸烟气味，嚼烟的恶臭，洒掉的啤酒，啤酒般的人尿味，发霉的酵母气味。

他快要呕吐了。

在这里，连一口也咽不下去。那个汉子在磨刀叉哪，打算把他面前的东西吃个一干二净。那老家伙在剔牙。一阵轻微的痉挛，肚子填得饱饱的，正在反刍。饭前饭后。饭后的祝祷文。望望这一幅画像，再望望那幅[197]。用浸泡得烂糟糟的面包片蘸肉汁来吃。干脆把盘子都舔个干净算啦，人啊!不要再这样啦!

他紧蹙鼻翼，四下里打量那些坐在凳子上对桌进食的人们。

“给咱来两瓶黑啤酒。”

“来盘罐头腌牛肉配包心菜。”

那家伙挑起满满一刀子包心菜，往嘴里塞，像是靠这来活命似的。-口就吞了下去。我看着都吓一跳。还不如用三只手来吃[198]呢。把肢体一根根地撕裂。这是他的第二天性。他是嘴里叼着一把银刀子生下来的。我认为这话挺俏皮。啊，不。银子就意味着生在阔人家。叼着一把刀子生下来的。可那么一来，隐喻就消失了。

一个腰带系得松松的侍者在唏哩哗啦地收走黏糊糊的盘子。法警长罗克[l99]站在柜台那儿，把他那大杯上冒起的啤酒泡沫吹掉。冒起了一大堆，黄黄地溅在他的靴子周围。一个就餐者直直地竖起刀叉，双肘倚着桌面，正准备吃下一道菜。他隔着摊在面前的那张污迹斑斑的报纸，正朝着食物升降机那边凝望。另一个家伙嘴里塞得满满的，在跟他谈着什么。很谈得来的知音。饭桌上的谈话。“星吃[期]一，我在芒[曼]切[彻]斯特银行[200]鱼[遇]见了特[他]。”“咦，是吗，真的呀?”

布卢姆先生迟迟疑疑地把两个手指按在嘴唇上。眼神里表示：

“不在这儿吃啦。别去看他。”

走吧。我就恨这种吃相下作的人。

他朝门口退去。到戴维•伯恩那儿去吃点快餐吧。先填上肚皮，好能走动。早饭吃得挺饱。

“这儿要烤牛肉和土豆泥。”

“再来一品脱黑啤酒。”

大家都在全力以赴，埋头大吃。咕嘟咕嘟。吃下去。咕嘟咕嘟。往嘴里填。

他走出门外，吸到清新一些的空气，就朝格拉夫顿街折回去。要么吃，要么被吃掉。杀!杀!

假定几年以后成立起公共伙房，那会怎么样呢?大家都带上粥钵和饭盒，等人给盛，在街上就把自已那一份吞下去了。这里有约翰•霍华德•巴涅尔，比方说，还有三一学院院长，每一个母亲的儿子。[201]别提你们的院长们和三一学院院长。妇孺，马车夫，神父，牧师，元帅，大主教。来自艾尔斯伯里路，克莱德路，工匠住所，北都柏林联合救济院，市长乘着他那辆富丽堂皇、古色古香的马车，老女王坐着软轿。我的盘子空啦。请你排到我前面来。带上我们市政府的杯子，就跟菲利普•克兰普顿爵士的饮用喷泉一样。[202]用你的手绢擦掉细菌。下一个人又用他的来再擦上去一批。奥弗林神父会指出他们大家的愚昧无知。[203]尽管如此，还是会打架的。人人都争头一份儿。孩子们争夺着巴在锅底儿上的那点残渣。得用凤凰公园那样大[204]的一口汤锅才行。用鱼叉叉起腌猪里脊和后腿肉来吃。你会憎恨周围的一切人。她把这叫作市徽饭店的客饭[205]。浓汤、肘子和甜食。永远也无法知晓你咀嚼的究竟是谁的思想。那么，所有这些盘子啦，叉子啦，又由谁来洗呢?到那时候兴许全都靠药片来充饥吧。牙齿就越来越糟了。

素食主义毕竟也有些道理，大地栽培出来的东西总是清香的。当然，大蒜挺臭，像那些意大利摇手风琴师的身上散发出的新鲜葱头、蘑菇和块菌的气味。也给动物带来痛苦。拔掉家禽的羽毛，把下水掏净。牲畜市场上那些不幸的牲口等着屠夫用斧子把它们的头盖骨劈成两半。哞!可怜的、浑身发抖的小牛。咩!打着趔趄的牛惠子。[206]煎白菜牛肉卷。屠夫的桶里装满了颤动着的肺脏。替咱把那爿胸脯肉从钩子上卸下来。啪嗒!刚砍下来的头和鲜血淋漓的骨头[207]。剥了皮、眼睛酷似玻璃珠儿般的羊，钩子勾在腰腿部位，从那堵着血淋淋的纸的鼻子里往锯屑上淌浓鼻涕。鞭打陀螺，让它们旋转个不停。娃娃们，可干万不要把它们胡乱抽碎。

他们给痨病患者开的药方是鲜血。什么时候都需要血。不知不觉之间病情就厉害起来了。趁着它还冒着热气儿，把那浓得像糖一样的血舔个干净。饿鬼们。

啊，我饿了。

他走进戴维•伯恩的店。这是一爿规规矩矩的酒吧。老板不喜欢饶舌。偶尔请你白喝上一盅，但次数少得就像四年一度的闰年。有一回他替我兑现了一张支票。

我吃什么好呢?他掏出怀表。现在让我想想看。啤酒兑柠檬汽水?

“喂，布卢姆，”大鼻子弗林[208]从他惯常坐的角落里说。

“哦，弗林。”

“近来怎么样?”

“好得很……让我想想看。来杯勃良第红葡萄酒[209]和……我想想看。”

架子上摆着沙丁鱼。光是望一望就几乎吃出了味道似的。三明治?在火腿和用它做成的食品上涂点芥末，夹在面包当中。[210]肉罐头。倘若你家里没有李树商标肉罐头呢?那可就美中不足了。[211]、多么愚蠢的广告!他们把这则广告插在讣告下面。这么一来，死者就统统爬上了李子树[212]。迪格纳穆的肉罐头。嗜食人肉者会就着柠檬和大米饭来用餐了。白种人传教师味道太咸了，很像腌猪肉。酋长想必会吃那精华的部分。由于经常使用，肉一定会老吧。他的妻子们全都站成一排，等着看效果。从前有过一位正统、高贵的黑皮肤老国王。他把可敬的麦克特里格尔先生的什么物儿吃掉了还是怎么了。有它才算幸福窝。天晓得是怎么搭配的。把胎膜、发霉的肺脏以及气管剁碎，搅和在一起来冒充。费多大劲也找不到一丝肉。清真食品。不能把肉和牛奶放在一道吃。照现在的说法就是食品卫生。犹太教赎罪日的斋戒是内脏的一次春季大扫除。和平与战争取决于某人的消化力。各种宗教。圣诞节的火鸡和鹅。屠杀无辜。[213]吃啊，喝啊，快活一场。[214]然后济贫院的临时收容所遂告爆满。一个个头上缠着绷带。奶酪把本身以外的一切全消化掉。多螨的奶酪。[215]

“你们有奶酪三明治吗?”

“有的，先生。”

要是有的话，找还想来几颗橄榄。我更喜欢意大利产的。一杯高级勃良第葡萄酒会使我忘掉那档子事。那是润滑汕。一客美味的拌生菜，凉凉的，像是黄瓜。汤姆•克南善于烹调。做得有滋有味。纯的橄榄油。米莉替我在炸肉排旁添上一根嫩嫩的荷兰芹菜，端给我。要一颗西班牙葱头。天主创造了食物，魔鬼制造了厨子。[216]辣子镑蟹。[217]

“太太好吗?”

“蛮好，谢谢……那么，来一客奶酪三明治吧。你们有戈尔贡佐拉[218]奶酪吗?”

“有的，先生。”

大鼻子弗林饮着他那兑水烈酒。

“近来演唱了吗?”

瞧他那张嘴。简直能够往自己的耳朵里吹口哨了。再配上一双扇风耳。音乐。这方面他懂得的跟我的马车夫一般多。不过，还是告诉他的好。没什么害处，免费广告嘛。

“她已经订了合同，本月底就参加一次大规模的巡回演出。你也许己经听说了吧。”

“没听说。哦，挺时髦的。谁是经纪人?”

侍者端上了盘子。

“多少钱?”

“七便士，先生……谢谢您，先生。”

布卢姆先生把他的三明治切成细条。麦克特里格尔先生。比那梦幻般的、奶油状的玩艺儿要好切一些。他那五百个妻子。她们尽情地得到了满足。

“要芥末吗，先生?”

“谢谢。”

他把三明治一条条揭起，抹满黄色的斑斑点点。得到了满足。我想起来了：它变得越来越大，越来越大，越来越大。

“经纪人?”他说，“喏，那就像个公司，明白吧。资金大家摊，赚了钱大家分。”

“啊，现在我记起来了，”大鼻子弗林说，他把一只手伸进兜里去挠大腿窝的痒处，“是谁告诉我的来着?布莱泽斯•博伊兰也搀和进去了吧?”

芥末热辣辣地刺激着布卢姆先生的心脏。他抬起双眼，跟那座逼视着的挂钟打了个照面。两点钟。酒吧的钟快了五分钟。时间在流逝。指针在移动。两点钟。还不到。

这当儿他的小腹往上翻，随后又垂下去。越发热烈地渴望着，渴望着。

葡萄酒。

他闻着并啜着那醇和的汁液，硬逼着自己的喉咙一饮而尽。然后，小心翼翼地把酒杯撂下。

“是的，”他说，“实际上他是发起人。”

没什么可怕的：这家伙没有头脑。

大鼻子弗林吸溜着鼻涕，挠着痒。跳蚤也正在饱餐着哪。

“杰克•穆尼[219]告诉我，他走了红运。迈勒•基奥在那次拳击比赛中又击败了贝洛港营盘的士兵[220]，所以他赌赢了。真的，他还告诉我，他把那小子带到卡洛郡[221]去啦……”

但愿他那鼻涕别溜进他的玻璃杯里去。没有，他又把它吸回去了。

“听我说，比赛之前差不多一个月光景，就让他光嘬鸭蛋，天哪，听候底下的吩咐。用意是让他把酒戒掉，明白吗?哦，天哪，布莱泽斯可是个刁滑的家伙。”

戴维•伯恩从后面的柜台那儿走了过来。他的衬衫袖子打了裥，用餐巾抹着嘴唇，脸色红涨得像鲱鱼似的。微笑使他的鼻眼显得那么饱满。[222]活像是在欧洲防风根上抹了过多的大油。[223]

“他本人来啦，精神饱满，”大鼻子弗林说，“你能告诉我们哪匹马会赢得金杯吗？”

“我跟这不沾边儿，弗林先生，”戴维•伯恩回答说，“我绝不在马身上下赌注。”

“这你算做对啦，”大鼻子弗林说。

布卢姆先生把他那一条条的三明治吃掉。是新鲜干净的面包做的。呛鼻子的芥末和发出脚巴丫子味儿的绿奶酪，吃来既恶心可又过瘾。他嘬了几口红葡萄酒，觉得满爽口。里面并没搀洋苏木[224]染料。喝起来味道越发醇厚，而且能压压寒气。

精致安静的酒吧。柜台使用的木料也挺精致。刨得非常精致。我喜欢它那曲线美。

“我根本不想沾赛马的边儿，”戴维•伯恩说。“就是这些马，害得许许多多人破了产。”

酒商大发横财。他们获得了在店内供应啤酒、葡萄酒和烈性酒的特许证。正面我赢，反面你输。

“你说得有道理，”大鼻子弗林说。“除非你了解内情，不然的话，眼下没有不捣鬼的比赛。利内翰就得到了些内情。今天他把赌注压在‘权杖’上。霍华德•德•沃尔登爵士的坐骑‘馨芳葡萄酒’挺走红，它曾在埃普瑟姆[225]赢过。骑手是莫尔尼•卡农。两周以前，我要是把赌注下在‘圣阿曼’上，原是会以七博一获胜的。”

“是吗?”戴维•伯恩说。

他朝窗户走去，拿起小额收支帐簿翻看。

“这话一点儿不假，”大鼻子弗林吸溜着鼻涕说，“那可是一匹少见的名马。它老爹是‘圣弗鲁斯奎’。罗思柴尔德的这匹小母马曾在一场雷雨当中获胜，它耳朵里塞了棉花。骑师身穿蓝夹克，头戴淡黄色便帽。大个子本•多拉德和他那‘约翰•奥冈特’统统见鬼去吧!唉，是他拦住我，劝我别把赌注押在‘圣阿曼’上的。”

他无可奈何地喝着杯子里的酒，并且用手指顺着酒杯的槽花往下摸。

“唉，”他叹了口气说。

布卢姆先生站在那儿大吃大嚼，一面低头望着他叹气。笨脑瓜大鼻子。我要不要告诉他利内翰那匹马的事?他己经知道啦。不如让他忘掉。跑去会输掉更多钱的。傻瓜和他的钱。[226]鼻涕又往下人淌了。他吻女的时候，鼻子准是冰凉的。兴许她们还高兴呢。女人喜欢针刺般的胡子。狗的鼻子冰凉。市徽饭店里，赖尔登老太太[227]正带着她那条饥肠辘辘的斯凯更狗[228]。摩莉把它放在腿上抚摩着。啊，好大的狗，汪汪汪，汪，汪汪汪!

葡萄酒把嘴里那卷起来的面包心、芥末和令人一阵恶心的奶酪都浸软了。这可是好酒。我并不渴，所以味道就更醇香了。当然，一方面是由于刚洗完澡。喝上一两口就行了。然后，在六点钟左右我就可以……六点。六点。时光流逝得好快啊。她。

葡萄酒的奴火暖起他的血管。我太需要这杯酒了。近来觉得自己气色不佳。他那双不再饥饿了的眼睛打量着架子上那一排排的罐头：沙丁鱼、颜色鲜艳的龙虾大螯。人们专挑那古里古怪的东西吃。从贝壳和海螺里用针挑出肉来吃。还从树上捉。法国人吃地上的蜗牛。要不就在钩子上挂鱼饵，从海里钓。鱼可真傻，一千年也没学到乖。要是你不晓得随便往嘴里放东西有多么危险。有毒的浆果。犬蔷筏果。圆嘟嘟的，你会以为蛮安全。花哨刺目的颜色会引起你的警惕。大家传来传去就都知道了。先让狗吃吃看。会被那气味或模样吸引住。诱人的水果。圆锥形的冰淇淋。奶油。本能。就拿桔树林来说吧，也需要人工灌溉。布莱布特洛伊街[229]。是啊，然而牡蛎怎么样呢?难看得像一口痰，外壳儿也肮里肮脏。要费九牛二虎之力才撬得开。是谁发现的?它们就靠从丢弃的残羹剩饭和下水道的污物长肥的。就着红岸餐馆的牡蛎喝香摈酒。倒是能促进性欲。春药。今天早晨他还在红岸餐馆来着。[230]在饭桌上他活像一只老牡蛎，一到床上身子兴许就变年轻了。不，六月没有“r”字，所以不吃牡蛎。[231]可有些人就是喜欢吃发霉的食品。变了质的野味。用土锅炖的野兔肉。得失逮只野兔。中国人讲究吃贮放了五十年的鸭蛋，颜色先蓝后绿。一桌席上三十道菜。每一道菜都是好端端的，吃下去就搀在一起了。这倒是一篇投毒杀人案小说的好材料。是大公爵利奥波德[232]吗?不，嗯。要么就是哈布斯堡王室后裔的一个叫作奥托的人吧?[233]是谁净吃自己脖颈后面的头皮呀?那是全城最廉价的午饭啦。当然喽，是贵族们，接着，其他人也都跟着赶起时髦来。米莉也说石油加面粉好吃。我自己也喜欢生面团。据说，为了怕跌价，他们把捕到的一半牡蛎又丢回大海里去啦。一便宜就没有买主啦。鱼子酱。那可是美味。盛在绿玻璃杯里的莱茵白葡萄酒。豪华盛宴。某某夫人。敷了脂粉的胸脯上挂着珍珠。高贵仕女。上流社会的名流。[234]这帮人为了显示自己的身份，总点些特殊的菜肴。隐士则吃大盘大盘的豆食，这样好抑制肉欲的冲动。想了解我的话，就来同我一道就餐吧。王室御用的鲟鱼。[235]屠夫科菲从名誉郡长那里获得猎取森林中鹿类的权利。他将半头母牛孝敬了郡长。我曾瞥见摆在高等法院法官[236]府上厨房里的野味。戴白帽的大师傅[237]活像个犹太教教士。火烧鸭子[238]。帕穆公爵夫人式波纹形包心菜[239]。最好写在菜单上，好知道你吃了些什么。药味重了就会毁了肉汤。我有亲身体验。把它放在爱德华牌汤粉里做调料。为了他们，把鹅像傻瓜般地填喂[240]。将龙虾活活地扔进沸水里煮。请吃点雷鸟[241]。在高级饭店里当个侍者倒也不赖。接小费，穿礼服，净是些半裸的夫人们。杜比达特小姐[242]，我可以给您再添点儿拧檬汁板鱼片吗?好的，再来点儿，而且她真地吃了。我估计她必是胡格诺派教徒家的。我记得有位，杜比达特小姐曾在基利尼[243]住过。我记得法语du dela[244]。但也许这就是同一条鱼哩，穆尔街的老米基•汉隆为了挣钱，曾把手指伸进那条鱼的腮里，开了膛掏出内脏。他连在支票上签名都不会。咧着嘴，只当是在画一幅风景画呢。默哎迈克尔，哧哎汉。[245]像一大筐翻毛生皮鞋那样愚蠢[246，却偏偏称有五万英镑。

两只苍蝇巴在窗玻璃上，嗡嗡叫着，紧紧膘在一块儿[247]。

热烘烘的葡萄酒在口腔里打了个转儿就咽下去，余味仍盘桓不已。把勃艮第葡萄放在榨汁器里碾碎。晒在炎日下。好像悄悄地触摸一下，勾起桩桩往事。触到他那润湿了的感官，使他回忆起来了。他们曾躲藏在霍斯那片野生的羊齿丛里。海湾在我们脚下沉睡着。天空。一片沉寂。天空。在狮子岬，海湾里的水面发紫，到了德鲁姆列克一带就变成绿色了。靠近萨顿那边又呈黄绿色。海底的原野，浮在海藻上那淡褐色条纹。一应座被淹没的都市。她披散着头发，枕着我的上衣。被石南丛中的蠼螋蹭来蹭去。我的手托着她的后颈。尽情地摆弄我吧。哎呀，大好啦!她伸出除了油膏、冰凉柔软的手摸着，爱抚着我，一双眼睛直勾勾地凝望着我。我心荡神移地压在她身上，丰腴的嘴唇大张着，吻着她。真好吃。她把嘴里轻轻地咀嚼得热乎乎的香籽糕[248]递送到我的嘴里。先在她口中用牙根嚼得浸透唾沫、又甜又酸、黏糊糊的一团儿。欢乐。我把它吞下了：欢乐。富于青春的生命。她把递过那一团儿的嘴唇噘起来。柔软、热乎乎、黏咂咂、如胶似漆的嘴唇。她的两眼像花儿一样，要我吧，心甘情愿的眼睛。小石子儿掉下来了。她躺在那儿纹丝儿不动。一只山羊，一个人也没有。在霍斯那高高的山丘上面，一只母山羊缓步走在杜鹃花丛中，醋栗一路坠落着。在羊齿草的屏障下，她被暖暖和和地围裹起来，漾着微笑。我狂热地压在她身上，吻她。眼睛，嘴唇，她那舒展的脖颈。女人那对乳房在修女薄呢[249]短上衣里面挺得鼓鼓的，怦怦悸动。肥大的奶头高耸着。我用热热的舌头舔着她。她吻了我。我被吻了。她委身于我，爱抚着我的头发。亲嘴儿，她吻了我。

我。而我现在呢。

紧紧膘在一块儿的苍蝇嗡嗡叫着。

他那低垂的眼睛沿着栎木板那寂然无声的纹理扫视。美丽。它画着曲线。曲线是美的。婀娜多姿的女神们。维纳新，朱诺。举世赞美的曲线。只要到图书馆和博物馆去，就能看见裸体女神伫立在圆形大厅里。有助于消化。不论男人瞧哪个部位，她们全不介意。一览无余。从来不言不语。我的意思是说，从来不对弗林那样的家伙说什么。倘若她真像加拉蒂亚对皮格马利翁[250]那样开了腔，她首先会说什么呢?凡人啊！马上就叫你乖乖就范了。跟众神一道畅饮甘露神酒吧，金盘子里盛的统统是神馔。可不像我们通常吃的那种六便士一份的午餐：炖羊肉、胡萝卜、芜菁和一瓶奥尔索普[251]。神酒，可以设想那就跟喝电光一样。神馔。按照朱诺的形象雕刻的女人那优美的神态。不朽的丽质。然而我们是往一个孔里填塞食品，又从后面排泄。食物，乳糜，血液，粪便，土壤，食物[252]。得像往火车头里添煤似的填塞食品。女神们却没有[253]。从来没见过。今天我倒要瞧一瞧。管理员不会理会的。故意失手掉落一样东西，然后弯下身去拾，好瞧瞧她究竟有没有。

从他的膀恍里点点滴滴地透出无声的信息，去解吗?不去解啦，不，还是去解了吧。作为一个男子汉，他拿定了主意把杯中物一饮而尽，然后起身走到后院去。边走边想：她们觉得自己就像是男人[254]，但也曾委身于男人们，并且跟相恋的男人们睡觉。一个小伙子曾享用过她。

当他的皮靴声消失后，戴维•伯恩边看着帐簿边说：

“他是哪一行的?不是干保险这个行当的吗?”

“他早就不干那一行啦，”大鼻子弗林说，“他在给《自由人报》拉广告哪。”

“我跟他挺熟的，”戴维•伯恩说，“他是不是遭到什么不幸啦?”

“不幸?”大鼻子弗林说，“可没听说。怎么看出的?”

“我留意到他穿着丧服。”

“是吗?”大鼻子弗林说，“确实是这样。我问过他家里的人都好吗?你说得一点儿不错，他确实穿着丧服。”

“我要是看到一位先生在这方面遭到不幸，”戴维•伯恩用慈祥的口吻说，“我就绝不去碰这个话题。那只会又一次勾起他们的悲伤。”

“反正他也不是替老婆戴孝，”大鼻子弗林说，“前天我还碰见他正从约翰•怀思•诺兰的妻子在亨利大街上经营的那家爱尔兰牛奶坊里走出来，手里捧着一罐子奶油，带回去给心爱的太太。真的，她在吃上讲究极啦。胸脯丰满，可妖艳哩。”

“他在替《自由人报》做事情吗?”戴维•伯恩说。

大鼻子弗林噘起嘴来。

“他可不是靠拉广告的收入来买奶油的，一点儿没错。”

“那究竟是怎么回事呢?”戴维•伯恩放下他的帐簿，走过来说。

大鼻子弗林用手指变戏法般地望空比划了几下，眨了眨眼。

“他加入共济会啦。”

“真的吗?”戴维•伯恩说。 

“千真万确，”大鼻子弗林说，“古老、自由而众所公认的行会[255]。天主赐与光、生命和爱。他们帮了他一把。告诉我这话的是一位……喏，还是姑隐其名吧。”

“确有此事吗?”

“嗯，那可是个出色的组织，”大鼻子弗林说，“你有困难的时候，他们就助你一臂之力。我晓得有个人正在千方百计想参加，然而他们那门关得可紧啦。他们绝不让女人参加，这一点着实做得对。”

戴维•伯恩边微笑边打哈欠边点头。

“啊——哧!”

“一回，有个女人躲在一应巨大的时钟里，”大鼻子弗林说，“想看看他们究竟搞些什么名堂。可他妈的，给他们发觉了，就把她拖了出来，让她当场宣誓，当上一名师傅。听说她是唐奈顿尔的圣莱杰家族里的一名成员[256]。”

戴维•伯恩打完哈欠后又坐了下来，泪汪汪儿地说：

“这是真的吗?他可是位规规矩矩、不多言不多语的先生呢。他常常光顾这里，可我从来没看见他——喏，酒后失态过。”

“连全能的天主都不能把他灌醉，”大鼻子弗林斩钉截铁地说，“每逢闹腾得过了火，他就开溜啦。你没见到他在瞧自己的表吗?啊，当时你不在座。要是你邀他喝上一盅，他就会先掏出怀表，看看该喝点儿什么。我敢说他确实是这样。”

“有些人就是这样的，”戴维•伯恩说，“我看他是个牢靠的人。”

“他这个人不赖，”大鼻子弗林边吸溜着鼻涕边说，“还听说，他曾伸手去帮过一个伙伴的忙。平心而论，哦，布卢姆有种种长处。然而有一件事，他是绝对不干的。”

他把手指当作没有蘸墨水的钢笔，在那杯兑了水的烈性酒旁，作潦潦草草地签字的样子。

“我知道，”戴维•伯恩说。

“白纸黑字，他可绝对不肯，”大鼻子弗林说。

帕迪•伦纳德和班塔姆•莱昂斯走了进来。汤姆•罗赤福特[257]皱着眉头跟在后面，闷闷不乐地一只手按在紫红色背心上。

“你好，伯恩先生。”

“你们好，各位先生。”

他们在柜台那儿停下了脚步。

“谁来做东?”帕迪•伦纳德问道。

“反正我已经坐下啦，”[258]大鼻子弗林回答说。

“那么，喝什么好呢?”帕迪•伦纳德问。

“我要姜麦酒加冰块，”班塔姆•莱昂斯说。

“来多少?”帕迪•伦纳德大声说，“你到底是什么时候喜欢上这个的?你要什么，汤姆?”

“下水道的干管怎么样啦?”大鼻子弗林边呷酒边问。

汤姆•罗赤福特用手紧紧按住胸骨，打了个嗝作为答复。

“劳驾给我杯清水好吗，伯恩先生?”他说。

“好的，先生。”

帕迪•伦纳德朝着他的酒友们瞟了一眼。

“哎呀，好没出息!”他说，“我在请什么样的人喝啊，凉水和姜麦酒!分明是两个酒徒，连伤腿上的威士忌都会舔个干净的家伙。他好像掌握着一匹能得金杯的骏马。万无一失啦。”

“是‘馨芳葡萄酒’吧?”大鼻子弗林问。

汤姆•罗赤福特从纸卷里往摆到他跟前的杯中撒了点粉末。

“这消化不良症真讨厌，”他在喝下之前说。

“小苏打很有效哩，”戴维•伯恩说。

汤姆•罗赤福特点点头，喝了下去。

“是‘馨香葡萄酒’吗?”

“什么也不要说!”班塔姆•莱昂斯使了个眼色，“我准备自己在那马上投五先令。”

“妈的，你要是个好汉，就告诉我们吧，”帕迪•伦纳德说，“这究竟是谁透露给你的?”

布卢姆先生一面往外走，一面伸了伸三个指头来致意。

“再见吧!”大鼻子弗林说。

其他人都掉过头去。

“就是那个人透露给我的，[259]”班塔姆•莱昂斯悄悄地说。

“呸!”帕迪•伦纳德鄙夷地说，“伯恩先生，我们还要两小瓶詹姆森威士忌，还有……”

“冰块姜麦酒，”戴维•伯恩彬彬有礼地补充说。

“唉,”帕迪•伦纳德说，“给娃娃个奶瓶嘬嘬。”

布卢姆先生边朝道森大街走去，边用舌头把牙齿舔净。必须是绿色的东西才行：比方说，菠菜。这样，就能用伦琴射线[260]透视办法来追踪了。

在公爵巷，一只贪吃的狗正往鹅卵石路面上吐着一摊令人恶心的肘骨肉，然后又重新热切地舔着。饕餮。把吞下的充分消化后，又怀着谢意把它吐了出来。第一次是香甜的，第二次蛮有滋味。布卢姆先生小心翼翼地绕道而行。反刍动物们。这是第二道菜肴。它们用上颚嚼动着，我倒是想知道汤姆•罗赤福特怎样对待他那项发明[261]的。对着弗林那张嘴去解释，是白费蜡。瘦人嘴巴长。应该有个人厅或什么地方，发明家可以聚在那里，自由自在地搞发明。当然缕，那样一来，各种怪人就会都来找麻烦了。

他哼唱着，用庄严的回声拉长了各小节的尾音：

唐乔万尼，你邀请我

今晚赴宴[262]。

觉得舒坦些了。勃良第。能够提神。最早酿酒的是谁呢?什么地方的一个心情忧郁的汉子。酒后撤疯。现在我得到国立图书馆去查查(基尔肯尼民众报)了。

威廉•米勒卫生设备商店的橱窗里摆着一具具光秃秃、干干净净的抽水马桶，把他的思绪又拉回来了。能做到的。吞进一根针去，盯着它一直落下去。有时又在几年后从肋骨里冒出来了。在体内周游一道，经过不断起着变化的胆汁导管，把忧郁喷了出去的肝脏，胃液，像管子般弯弯曲曲的肠子。然而那被试验的可怜虫老得站在那儿展示自己的内脏。这就是科学。

A cenar teco.[263]

这里的“teco”是什么意思呢?也许是“今晚”吧。

唐乔万尼，你邀请我，

今天同你共进晚餐，

泽，朗姆，泽，朗达姆。

不对头。[264]

凯斯。只要南尼蒂那儿顺顺当当，我就能有两个月的进项。这样就有两镑十先令——两镑八先令左右了。海因斯欠了我三先令。两镑十一先令。普雷斯科特染坊的运货马车就在那儿。要是拉到比利•普雷斯科特[265]的广告，那就能挣两镑十五先令。加在一起是五基尼左右。打着如意算盘吧。

可以给摩莉买条真丝衬裙，颜色正好配她那副新袜带。

今天。今天。不去想了。

然后到南方逛逛去。英国的海滨浴场怎么样?布赖顿[266]，马盖特[267]。沐浴在月光下的码头。她的嗓音悠然飘荡。海滨那些俏丽的姑娘。一个睡意的流浪汉倚着约翰•朗酒吧的墙，边啃着结了一层厚痂指关节，边深深地陷入冥。巧手工匠，想找点活儿干。工钱低也行，给啥吃啥。

布卢姆先生在格雷糖果点心铺那摆着售不出去的果酱馅饼的橱窗跟前拐了弯，从可敬的托马斯•康内兰的书店前走过去。《我为什么脱离了罗马教会[268]》。“鸟窝会”[269]的女人们在支持他。据说，土豆歉收的年头，她们经常施汤给穷孩子们，好叫他们改信新教。以前，爸爸曾到过马路对面那个使穷犹太人皈依基督教的公会。[270]他们用的是同样的诱饵。我们为什么脱离了罗马教会。

一个年轻的盲人站在那儿用根细杖敲着人行道的边石。没有电车的影子。他想横过马路。

“你想到对面去吗?”布卢姆先生问。

年轻的盲人没有回答。他那张墙壁般的脸上稍微皱起眉头，茫然地晃动了一下头。

“你现在是在道森大街上，”布卢姆先生说，“莫尔斯沃思大街就在对面。你想横穿过去吗?眼下什么过路的也没有。”

他的手杖颤悠悠地朝左移动。布卢姆先生目送着，就又瞥见普雷斯科特染坊的那辆载货马车还停在德拉格理发馆门前。上午我在同一个地方瞥见他那除了润发油的头，当时我刚好……马耷拉着脑袋。车把式正在约翰•朗酒吧里润着喉咙呢。

“那儿有一辆载货马车，”布卢姆先生说，“可是它一动也没动。我送你过去吧。你想到莫尔斯沃思大街去吗?”

“是的，”年轻人回答说，“南弗雷德里克大街。”

“来吧，”布卢姆先生说。

他轻轻地碰了一下盲青年那瘦削的肘部，然后拉着那只柔弱敏感的手，替他引路。

跟他搭讪一下吧。可别采取居高临下的态度。他们会不相信你的话的。随便拉拉家常吧。

“雨不下啦。”

不吭声。

他的上衣污迹斑斑。他必是一边吃一边洒。对他来说，吃起东西来味道也完全不同。最初得用匙子一口一口地喂。他的手就像是娃娃的手。米莉的手也曾经是这样的。很敏感。他多半能凭着我的手估摸出我个头有多大。他总该有个名字吧?载货马车。可别让他的手杖碰着马腿。马累得正在打着盹儿。好啦，总算安安全全地过了马路。要从公牛后面，马的前面走。[271]

“谢谢您，先生。”

凭着嗓音，知道我是个男的了吧。

“现在行了吧?到了第一个路口就朝左拐。”

年轻的盲人敲敲边石，继续往前走。他把拐杖抽回来，又探一探。

布卢姆先生跟在盲人的脚后面走着。他穿着一套剪裁不得体的人字呢衣服。可怜的小伙子!他是怎么知道那辆载货马车就在那儿的呢?准是感觉到的。也许用额头来看东西。有一种体积感。一种比暗色更要黑一些的东西——重量或体积。要是把什么东西移开了，他能感觉得到吗?觉察出一种空隙。关于都柏林城，他想必有一种奇妙的概念，因为他总像那样敲黄石头走路。倘若没有那根手杖，他能够在两点之间笔直地走吗?一张毫无血色的、虔诚的脸，就像是许下愿要当神父似的。

彭罗斯[272]!那人就叫这个名字。

瞧，他们可以学会做多少事。用手指读书。为钢琴调音。只要他们稍微有点儿头脑，我们就会感到吃惊。一个残疾人或驼背的要是说出常人也会说的话，我们就会夸他聪明。当然，在其他方面他们的感官比我们灵敏。刺绣。编箩筐。大家应该帮帮他们。等摩莉过生日的时候，给她买一只针线筐吧。她就讨厌做针线活儿。也许会不高兴的。人们管他们叫瞎子。

他们的嗅觉也一定更敏锐。四面八方的气味都聚拢了来。每一条街各有不同的气味。每一个人也是这样。还有春天，夏天，各有不同的气味。种种味道呢？据说双目紧闭或者感冒头痛的时候，就品尝不出酒的味道。还说摸着黑抽烟，一点儿味道也没有。

比方说，对待女人也是如此。看不见就更不会害臊了。那个仰着头从斯图尔特医院[273]跟前走边的姑娘。瞧瞧我，穿戴得多么齐全。要是瞧不见她，该是多么奇怪啊。在他心灵的眼睛里，会映出一种形象。嗓音啦，体温啦。当他用手指摸她的时候，就几乎能瞥见线条，瞥见那些曲线了。比方说，他把手放在她头发上。假定那是黑色的。好的。我们就称它作黑色吧。然后移到她的白皮肤上。兴许感觉就有所不同。白色的感觉。

邮局。得写封回信。今天可真忙啦。用邮政汇票给她寄两先令去——不，半克朗吧。薄礼，尚乞哂纳。这儿刚巧有家文具店。且慢。考虑考虑再说。

他用一根手指非常缓慢地把头发朝耳后拢了拢。又摸了一遍。像是极为柔细的稻草。然后又用手指去抚摩一下右脸颊。这里也有茸毛，不够光滑。最光滑要算肚皮了。四下里没有人。那个青年正走进弗雷德里克大街。也许是到利文斯顿舞蹈学校去给钢琴调音哩。我不妨装出一副调整背带的样子。

他走边多兰酒吧，一边把手偷偷伸进背心和裤腰之间，轻轻拉开衬衫，摸了摸腹部那松弛的皱皮。然而我知道那颜色是黄中透白。还是找个暗处去试试吧。

他缩回了手。把衣服拽拢。

可怜的人哪!他还是个孩子呢。可怕啊。确实可怕。什么都看不见，那么他都做些什么梦呢?对他来说，人生就像是一场幻梦。生就那副样子，哪里还有什么公道可言?那些妇孺参加一年一度的游览活动，在纽约被烧死、淹死[274]。一场浩劫。他们说，“业”[275]就是为了赎你在前世所犯下的宿孽，而轮回转生——遇见了他尖头胶皮管子。[276]哎呀，哎呀，哎呀。当然值得同情。然而不知怎地，他们总有点儿难以接近。

弗雷德里克•福基纳爵士[277]正步入共济会会堂。庄严如特洛伊[278]。他刚在厄尔斯福特高台街美美地吃过一顿午餐。司法界的一群老朽们都聚在一道，起劲地喝着大瓶大瓶的葡萄酒，海阔天空地谈论着法院啦，巡回裁判啦，慈善学校年鉴啦。“我判了他十年徒刑。”他也许对我喝的那种玩艺儿嗤之以鼻。他们喝的是瓶子上沾满尘埃、标着酿造年份的陈年老酒。关于记录官法庭该怎样主持公道，他自有看法。这是位用心良好的老人。警察的刑事诉讼卷宗里塞满了种种案件——他们为了提高破案率而捏造罪名。他要求他们纠正。对那些放债者毫不姑息。曾把吕便•杰狠狠地收拾了一顿。说起来他可不折不扣是个人们所说的可鄙的犹太人。这些法官权力很大。都是些戴假发、脾气暴躁的老酒鬼。就像爪子疼痛发炎的熊一样。愿天主可怜你的灵魂。[279]

哦，招贴画。麦拉斯义卖会。总督阁下。十六日，那就是今天啊。[280]为默塞尔医院募款。《弥赛亚》的首演[281]也是为了这个。对。亨德尔。到那儿去看看怎样?鲍尔斯桥。顺便到凯斯商店走一遭。像水蛭似的巴在他身上也没用。呆长了会讨嫌。在门口总会碰上熟人的。

布卢姆先生来到了基尔戴尔大街。首先得去图书馆。

在阳光底下戴着草帽。棕黄色皮鞋。卷边长裤。对，就是他[282]。

他的心轻轻地悸跳着，向右拐吧。博物馆。女神们。他向右拐了个弯。

是他吗?多半是。别看他了。酒上了我的脸。我为什么要……?太叫人发晕。对，就是他。走路的那个姿势。别看他啦。别看他啦。往前走吧。

他边大步流星地走向博物馆的大门，边抬起眼睛。漂亮的建筑。是托马斯•迪恩爵士[283]设计的。他没跟在我后边吧?

也许他没瞧见我。阳光正晃着他的眼睛。

他气喘吁吁，发出一声声短促的叹息。快点儿。冰冷的雕像群。那里挺僻静，不出一分钟我就安全了。

是啊，他没瞧见我。两点多啦。就在大门口那儿。

我的心脏!

他的眼睛直跳，直勾勾地望着奶油色石头的曲线。托马斯•迪恩爵士，希腊式建筑。

我要找样东西。

他那只焦躁的手急忙伸进一个兜里，掏出来一看，是读后没叠好的移民垦殖公司的广告。可放在哪儿了呢?

匆匆忙忙地找。

他赶快又将公司的广告塞了回去。

她说是下午。

我找的是那个。对，那个。所有的兜都翻遍了。手绢。《自由人报》。放在哪儿了呢?对啦。裤子。皮夹子。土豆。我放在哪儿了呢?

快点口。放轻脚步。马上就到啦。我的心脏。

他一边用手摸索着那不知放到哪儿去了的东西，一边念叨着还得去取化妆水。在裤兜里找到了肥皂，上面粘着温吞吞的纸。啊，肥皂在这儿哪。对，来到大门口了。
Chapter 9 Scylla and Charybdis
URBANE, TO COMFORT THEM, THE QUAKER LIBRARIAN PURRED: 
-- And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm Meister? A great poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating soul taking arms against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as one sees in real life. 

He came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step backward a sinkapace on the solemn floor. 

A noiseless attendant, setting open the door but slightly, made him a noiseless beck. 

-- Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always feels that Goethe's judgments are so true. True in the larger analysis. 

Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the door he gave his large ear all to the attendant's words: heard them: and was gone. 

Two left. 

-- Monsieur de la Palisse, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes before his death. 

-- Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton asked with elder's gall, to write Paradise Lost at your dictation? The Sorrows of Satan he calls it. 

Smile. Smile Cranly's smile. 

First he tickled her 
Then he patted her 
Then he passed the female catheter. 
For he was a medical 
jolly old medi.
-- I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is dear to the mystic mind. The shining seven W. B. calls them. 
Glittereyed, his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought the face, bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed low: a sizar's laugh of Trinity: unanswered. 

Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood 
Tears such as angels weep. 
Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
He holds my follies hostage. 
Cranly's eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house. And one more to hail him: ave, rabbi. The Tinahely twelve. In the shadow of the glen he cooees for them. My soul's youth I gave him, night by night. Godspeed. Good hunting. 

Mulligan has my telegram. 

Folly. Persist. 

-- Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create a figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though I admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry. 

-- All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex. Clergymen's discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys. 

A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike me! 

-- The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely. Aristotle was once Plato's schoolboy. 

-- And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately said. One can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm. 

He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face. 

Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the heavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who suffers in us at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon the altar. I am the sacrificial butter. 

Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A. E., Arval, the Name Ineffable, in heaven hight, K. H., their master, whose identity is no secret to adepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to see if they can help. The Christ with the bridesister, moisture of light, born of an ensouled virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is not for ordinary person. O. P. must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper Oakley once glimpsed our very illustrious sister H. P. B's elemental. 

O, fie! Out on't! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn't to look, missus, so you naughtn't when a lady's ashowing of her elemental. 

Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with grace a notebook, new, large, clean, bright. 

-- That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet's musings about the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato's. 

John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth: 

-- Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle with Plato. 

-- Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his commonwealth? 

Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl after Blake's buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past. 

Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague. 

-- Haines is gone, he said. 

-- Is he? 

-- I was showing him Jubainville's book. He's quite enthusiastic, don't you know, about Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn't bring him in to hear the discussion. He's gone to Gill's to buy it. 

Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick 
To greet the callous public. 
Writ, I ween, 'twas not my wish 
In lean unlovely English.
The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined. 
We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea. 

-- People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song, France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarmé but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Ph&Aelig;acians. 

From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen. 

-- Mallarmé, don't you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about Hamlet. He says: il se promène, lisant au livre de lui-même, don't you know, reading the book of himself. He describes Hamlet given in a French town, don't you know, a provincial town. They advertised it. 

His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air. 

HAMLET 
ou 
LE DISTRAIT 
Pièce de Shakespeare
He repeated to John Eglinton's newgathered frown: 
-- Piéce de Shakespeare, don't you know. It's so French, the French point of view. Hamlet ou... 

-- The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended. 

John Eglinton laughed. 

-- Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but distressingly shortsighted in some matters. 

Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder. 

-- A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said. Not for nothing was he a butcher's son wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his palm. Nine lives are taken off for his father's one, Our Father who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. The bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne. 

Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar. 

Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none 
But we had spared...
Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea. 
-- He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for Mr Best's behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh creep. 

List! List! O List!
My flesh hears him: creeping, hears. 
If thou didst ever...
-- What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to the world that has forgotten him? Who is king Hamlet? 
John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge: 

Lifted. 

-- It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside. The bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden. Canvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings. 

Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices. 

-- Shakespeare has left the huguenot's house in Silver street and walks by the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thoughts. 

Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me! 

-- The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied Hamlet all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name: 

Hamlet, I am thy father's spirit
bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever. 
-- Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words to his own son's name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been prince Hamlet's twin) is it possible, I want to know, or probable that he did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those premises: you are the dispossessed son: I am the murdered father: your mother is the guilty queen. Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway? 

-- But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell began impatiently. 

Art thou there, truepenny? 

-- Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean when we read the poetry of King Lear what is it to us how the poet lived? As for living, our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking, the poet's debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal. 

Mr Best's face appealed to, agreed. 

Flow over them with your waves and with your waters, 
Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir...
How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry? 
Marry, I wanted it. 

Take thou this noble. 

Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter. Agenbite of inwit. 

Do you intend to pay it back? 

O, yes. 

When? Now? 

Well... no. 

When, then? 

I paid my way. I paid my way. 

Steady on. He's from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe it. 

Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound. 

Buzz. Buzz. 

But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms. 

I that sinned and prayed and fasted. 

A child Conmee saved from pandies. 

I, I and I. I. 

A.E.I.O.U. 

-- Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries? John Eglinton's carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born. 

-- She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he lay on his deathbed. 

Mother's deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. Liliata rutilantium. 

I wept alone. 

John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp. 

-- The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out of it as quickly and as best he could. 

-- Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. 

Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous. 

-- A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn from Xanthippe? 

-- Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (absit nomen!) Socratididion's Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever know. But neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlectures saved him from the archons of Sinn Fein and their noggin of hemlock. 

-- But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best's quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her. 

His look went from brooder's beard to carper's skull, to remind, to chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though maligned. 

-- He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory. He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling The girl I left behind me. If the earthquake did not time it we should know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the studded bridle and her blue windows. That memory, Venus and Adonis, lay in the bedchamber of every light-of-love in London. Is Katharine the shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do you think the writer of Antony and Cleopatra, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie withal? Good: he left her and gained the world of men. But his boywomen are the women of a boy. Their life, thought, speech are lent them by males. He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the comether on him, sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself. 

And my turn? When? 

Come! 

-- Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly brightly. 

He murmured then with blonde delight for all: 

Between the acres of the rye 
These pretty countryfolk would lie.
Paris: the wellpleased pleaser. 
A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its cooperative watch. 

-- I am afraid I am due at the Homestead. 

Whither away? Exploitable ground. 

-- Are you going, John Eglinton's active eyebrows asked. Shall we see you at Moore's tonight? Piper is coming. 

-- Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back? 

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper. 

-- I don't know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get away in time. 

Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their Pali book we tried to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail. 

In quintessential triviality 
For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.
-- They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said, friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering together a sheaf of our younger poets' verses. We are all looking forward anxiously. 
Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted, shone. 

See this. Remember. 

Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with two index fingers. Aristotle's experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise. Argai, one hat is one hat. 

Listen. 

Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commercial part. Longworth will give it a good puff in the Express. O, will he? I liked Colum's Drover. Yes, I think he has that queer thing, genius. Do you think he has genius really? Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian vase. Did he? I hope you'll be able to come tonight. Malachi Mulligan is coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. Did you hear Miss Mitchell's joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn's wild oats? Awfully clever, isn't it? They remind one of don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a saffron kilt? O'Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue. And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are becoming important, it seems. 

Cordelia. Cordoglio. Lir's loneliest daughter. 

Nookshotten. Now your best French polish. 

-- Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you will be so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman... 

-- O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much correspondence. 

-- I understand, Stephen said. Thanks. 

Good ild you. The pigs' paper. Bullockbefriending. 

-- Synge has promised me an article for Dana too. Are we going to be read? I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you will come round tonight. Bring Starkey. 

Stephen sat down. 

The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing his mask said: 

-- Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating. 

He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low: 

-- Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet? 

Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward light? 

-- Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have been first a sundering. 

-- Yes. 

Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women he won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters' wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow grave and unforgiven. 

-- Yes. So you think. 

The door closed behind the outgoer. 

Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and brooding air. 

A vestal's lamp. 

Here he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would have lived to do had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of the possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when he lived among women. 

Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks. 

They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will. 

-- Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most enigmatic. We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so much. Others abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest. 

-- But Hamlet is so personal, isn't it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a kind of private paper, don't you know, of his private life. I mean I don't care a button, don't you know, who is killed or who is guilty... 

He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his defiance. His private papers in the original. Ta an bad ar an tir. Taim imo shagart. Put beurla on it, littlejohn. 

Quoth littlejohn Eglinton: 

-- I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told us but I may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a stern task before you. 

Bear with me. 

Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes, glinting stern under wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l'uomo l'attosca. Messer Brunetto, I thank thee for the word. 

-- As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be. 

Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile. 

-- Yes, Mr Best said youngly, I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from the son. 

Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son. 

-- That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing. 

John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow. 

-- If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug in the market. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan admired so much breathe another spirit. 

-- The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed. 

-- There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been a sundering. 

Said that. 

-- If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over the hell of time of King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, look to see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a man, Shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles, prince of Tyre? 

Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded. 

-- A child, a girl placed in his arms, Marina. 

-- The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary but they lead to the town. 

Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats. Cypherjugglers going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town good masters? Mummed in names: A. E., eon: Magee, John Eglinton. East of the sun, west of the moon: Tir na n-og. Booted the twain and staved. 

How many miles to Dublin? 
Three score and ten, sir. 
Will we be there by candlelight?
-- Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing period. 
-- Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus, as some aver his name is, say of it? 

-- Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita, that which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his daughter's child. My dearest wife, Pericles says, was like this maid. Will any man love the daughter it he has not loved the mother? 

-- The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L'art d'être grand... 

-- His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The images of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or repeat himself. 

The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope. 

-- I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment of the public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr George Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on Shakespeare in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the sonnets. The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own that if the poet must be rejected, such a rejection would seem more in harmony with - what shall I say? - our notions of what ought not to have been. 

Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk's egg, prize of their fray. 

He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love, Miriam? Dost love thy man? 

-- That may be too, Stephen said. There is a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because you will get it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is a buonaroba, a bay where all men ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a lordling to woo for him? He was himself a lord of language and had made himself a coistrel gentleman and had written Romeo and Juliet. Why? Belief in himself has been untimely killed. He was overborne in a cornfield first (ryefield, I should say) and he will never be a victor in his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game of laugh and lie down. Assumed dongiovannism will not save him. No later undoing will undo the first undoing. The tusk of the boar has wounded him there-where love lies ableeding. If the shrew is worsted yet there remains to her woman's invisible weapon. There is, I feel in the words, some goad of the flesh driving him into a new passion, a darker shadow of the first, darkening even his own understanding of himself. A life fate awaits him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool. 

They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour. 

-- The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the porch of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot know the manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls with that knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast with two backs that urged it king Hamlet's ghost could not know of were he not endowed with knowledge by his creator. That is why the speech (his lean unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and ravished, what he would but would not, go with him from Lucrece's bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen's breast, bare, with its mole cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinore's rocks or what you will, the sea's voice, a voice heard only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow, the son consubstantial with the father. 

-- Amen! responded from the doorway. 

Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? 

Entr'acte. 

A ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Buck Mulligan came forwards then blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram. 

-- You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he asked of Stephen. 

Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a bauble. 

They make him welcome. Was Din verlachst wirst Du noch dienen. 

Brodd of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most. 

He Who Himself begot, middler the Holy Ghost, and Himself sent himself, Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead when all the quick shall be dead already. 

He lifts hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells aquiring.
-- Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion, Mr Mulligan, I'll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of Shakespeare. All sides of life should be represented. 
He smiled on all sides equally. 

Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled: 

-- Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name. 

A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features. 

-- To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like Synge. 

Mr Best turned to him: 

-- Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He'll see you after at the D. B. C. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's Lovesongs of Connacht. 

-- I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was he here? 

-- The bard's fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather tired perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress played Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining held that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be an Irishman? Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by saint Patrick. 

-- The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde's, Mr Best said, lifting his brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr W. H. where he proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all hues. 

-- For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked. 

Or Hughie Wills. Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I? 

-- I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his gloss easily. Of course it's all paradox, don't you know, Hughes and hews and hues the colour, but it's so typical the way he works it out. It's the very essence of Wilde, don't you know. The light touch. 

His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame essence of Wilde. 

You're darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Deasy's ducats. 

How much did I spend? O, a few shillings. 

For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry. 

Wit. You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks in. Lineaments of gratified desire. 

There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime send them. Yea, turtledove her. 

Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in's kiss. 

-- Do you think it is only a paradox, the quaker librarian was asking. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious. 

They talked seriously of mocker's seriousness. 

Buck Mulligan's again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his head wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile lips read, smiling with new delight. 

-- Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull! 

He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully: 

-- The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did you launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram! Malachi Mulligan, the Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified kinchite! 

Joyfully he thrust the message and envelope into a pocket but keened in querulous brogue: 

-- It's what I'm telling you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were, Haines and myself, the time himself brought it in. 'Twas murmur we did for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and he limp with leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece. 

He wailed! 

-- And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful. 

Stephen laughed. Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down: 

-- The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He's out in pampooties to murder you. 

-- Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature. 

Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping ceiling. 

-- Murder you! he laughed. 

Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in rue Saint-André-des-Arts. In words of words for words, palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle, C'est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i' the forest. 

-- Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar. 

-- ... in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his Diary of Master William Silence has found the hunting terms... Yes? What is it? 

-- There's a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants to see the files of the Kilkenny People for last year. 

-- Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman?... 

He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down, unglanced, looked, asked, creaked, asked: 

-- Is he?... O there! 

Brisk in a galliard he was off and out. In the daylit corridor he talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest broadbrim. 

-- This gentleman? Freeman's Journal? Kilkenny People? To be sure. Good day, sir. Kilkenny... We have certainly... 

A patient silhouette waited, listening. 

-- All the leading provincial... Northern Whig, Cork Examiner Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903... Will you please?... Evans, conduct this gentleman... If you just follow the atten... Or please allow me... This way... Please, sir... 

Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing dark figure following his hasty heels. 

The door closed. 

-- The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried. 

He jumped up and snatched the card. 

-- What's his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom. 

He rattled on. 

-- Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the museum when I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her. Life of life, thy lips enkindle. 

Suddenly he turned to Stephen: 

-- He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove. Venus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! The god pursuing the maiden hid. 

We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best's approval. We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome. 

-- Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm of beauty from Kyrios Menelaus' brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His art, more than the art of feudalism, as Walt Whitman called it, is the art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a million francs on his back including a pair of fancy stays. The gombeen woman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugal love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You know Manningham's story of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after she had seen him in Richard III and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the capon's blankets: William the conqueror came before Richard III. And the gay lakin, Mistress Fitten, mount and cry O, and his dainty birdsnies, Lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and the punks of the bankside, a penny a time. 

Cours-la-Reine. Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites cochonneries. Minette? Tu veux? 

-- The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of Oxford's mother with her cup of canary for every cockcanary. 

Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed: 

-- Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock! 

-- And Harry of six wives' daughter and other lady friends from neighbour seats, as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing behind the diamond panes? 

Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter Lane of Gerard, herbalist, he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno's eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness. 

Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton's desk sharply. 

-- Whom do you suspect? he challenged. 

-- Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove. 

Love that dare not speak its name. 

-- As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he loved a lord. 

Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them. 

-- It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for all other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two deeds are rank in that ghost's mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband's brother. Sweet Ann I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer twice a wooer. 

Stephen turned boldly in his chair. 

-- The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said, frowning. If you deny that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has branded her with infamy, tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years between the day she married him and the day she buried him. All those women saw their men down and under: Mary, her goodman John, Ann, her poor 

dear Willun, when he went and died on her, raging that he was the first to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy's words, wed her second, having killed her first. 

O yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her father's shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he has commended her to posterity. 

He faced their silence. 

To whom thus Eglinton: 

You mean the will. 
That has been explained, I believe, by jurists. 
She was entitled to her widow's dower 
At common law. His legal knowledge was great 
Our judges tell us. 
Him Satan fleers, 
Mocker: 

And therefore he left out her name 
From the first draft but he did not leave out 
The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters, 
For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford 
And in London. And therefore when he was urged, 
As I believe, to name her 
He left her his Secondbest 
Bed. 

Punkt 

Leftherhis 
Secondbest 
Bestabed 
Secabest 
Leftabed.

Woa! 
-- Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed, as they have still if our peasant plays are true to type. 

-- He was a rich countrygentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of arms and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a capitalist shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not leave her his best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her nights in peace? 

-- It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr Secondbest Best said finely. 

-- Separatio a mensa et a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan and was smiled on. 

-- Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered, bedsmiling. Let me think. 

-- Antiquity mentions that Stagyrite schoolurchin and bald heathen sage, Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his slaves, pays tribute to his elders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones of his dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don't forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis) and let her live in his villa. 

-- Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked with slight concern. I mean... 

-- He died dead drunk, Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a dish for a king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said! 

-- What? asked Besteglinton. 

William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people's William. For terms apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house... 

-- Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what he thought of the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He lifted his hands and said: All we can say is that life ran very high in those days. Lovely! 

Catamite. 

-- The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadness Best to ugling Eglinton. 

Steadfast John replied severe: 

-- The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You can not eat your cake and have it. 

Sayest thou so? Will they wrest from us, from me the palm of beauty? 

-- And the sense of property, Stephen said. He drew Shylock out of his own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he was himself a cornjobber and moneylender with ten tods of corn hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers of worship mentioned by Chettle Falstaff who reported his uprightness of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How else could Aubrey's ostler and callboy get rich quick? All events brought grist to his mill. Shylock chimes with the jewbaiting that followed the hanging and quartering of the queen's leech Lopez, his jew's heart being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet alive: Hamlet and Macbeth with the coming to the throne of a Scotch philosophaster with a turn for witchroasting. The lost armada is his jeer in Love's Labour Lost. His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellied on a tide of Mafeking enthusiasm. Warwickshire jesuits are tried and we have a porter's theory of equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from Bermudas and the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban, our American cousin. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney's. As for fay Elizabeth, otherwise carroty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired The Merry Wives of Windsor, let some meinherr from Almany grope his life long for deephid meanings in the depth of the buckbasket. 

I think you're getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of theolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere. 

-- Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared, expectantly. Your dean of studies holds he was a holy Roman. 

Sufflaminandus sum. 

-- He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion French polisher of Italian scandals. 

-- A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him myriadminded. 

Amplius. In societate humana hoc est maxime necessarium ut sit amicitia inter multos. 

-- Saint Thomas, Stephen began... 

-- Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair. 

There he keened a wailing rune. 

-- Pogue mahone! Asushla machree! It's destroyed we are from this day! It's destroyed we are surely! 

All smiled their smiles. 

-- Saint Thomas, Stephen, smiling, said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races the most given to inter-marriage. Accusations are made in anger. The christian laws which built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm was shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass. 

-- Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned. 

-- Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently. 

-- Which Will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting mixed. 

-- The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will's widow, is the will to die. 

-- Requiescat! Stephen prayed. 

What of all the will to do? 
It has vanished long ago...
-- She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a motor car is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes. In old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed at New Place and drank a quart of sack the town paid for but in which bed he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan, she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches and The most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Venus had twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god. 
-- History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus Chronolologos. The ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man's worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that Russell is right. What do we care for his wife and father? I should say that only family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation. 

Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy supping with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him. Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there's a gentleman to see you. Me? Says he's your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand. 

Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower. 

Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me. 

-- A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father's death. If you hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters, with thirtyfive years of life, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with fifty of experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his son. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the first and last man who felt himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro- and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he any son? 

What the hell are you driving at? 

I know. Shut up. Blast you! I have reasons. 

Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea. 

Are you condemned to do this? 

-- They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly record its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters, loves that dare not speak their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The sun unborn mars beauty: born, he brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a male: his growth is his father's decline, his youth his father's envy, his friend his father's enemy. 

In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it. 

-- What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut. Am I father? If I were? 

Shrunken uncertain hand. 

-- Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of Aquin, with whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the father who has not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson who, by the same token, never was born for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection. 

Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine. 

Flatter. Rarely. But Flatter. 

-- Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The play's the thing! Let me parturiate! 

He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands. 

-- As for his family, Stephen said, his mother's name lives in the forest of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in Coriolanus. His boyson's death is the deathscene of young Arthur in King John. Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in The Tempest, in Pericles, in Winter's Tale are we know. Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. But there is another member of his family who is recorded. 

-- The plot thickens, John Eglinton said. 

The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with haste, quake, quack. 

Door closed. Cell. Day. 

They list. Three. They. 

I you he they. 

Come, mess. 

STEPHEN He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on's back. The playhouse sausage filled Gilbert's soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a Richard are recorded in the works of sweet William. 
MAGEEGLINJOHN Names! What's in a name? 

BEST That is my name, Richard, don't you know. I hope you are going to say a good word for Richard, don't you know, for my sake. 

(Laughter.)
BUCK MULLIGAN (Piano, diminuendo.) 

Then outspoke medical Dick 
To his comrade medical Davy...
STEPHEN In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago, Richard Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles' names. Nay, that last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund lay dying in Southwark. 
BEST I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don't want Richard, my name. 

(Laughter.)
QUAKERLYSTER (A tempo.) But he that filches from me my good name... 

STEPHEN (Stringendo.) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is Will in overplus. Like John O'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat of arms he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars. His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight, returning from Shottery and from her arms.

Both satisfied. I too. 
Don't tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched. 

And from her arms. 

Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you? 

Read the skies. Autontimerumenos. Bonus Stephanoumenos. Where's your configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D.: sua donna. Già: di lui. Gelindo risolve di non amar. S. D. 

-- What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a celestial phenomenon? 

-- A star by night, Stephen said, a pillar of the cloud by day. 

What more's to speak? 

Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots. 

Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too. 

-- You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your own name is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour. 

Me, Magee and Mulligan. 

Fabulous artificer, the hawklike man. You flew. Whereto? Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus. Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing he. 

Mr Best's eagerquietly lifted his book to say: 

-- That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know, we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don't you know, the fairytales. The third brother that marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize. 

Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best. 

The quaker librarian springhalted near. 

-- I should like to know, he said, which brother you... I understand you to suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers... But perhaps I am anticipating? 

He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained. 

An attendant from the doorway called: 

-- Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants... 

-- O! Father Dineen! Directly. 

Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone. 

John Eglinton touched the foil. 

-- Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn't you? 

-- In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Richie and nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella. 

Lapwing. 

Where is your brother? Apothecaries' hall. My whetstone. Him, then Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They mock to try you. Act. Be acted on. 

Lapwing. 

I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink. 

On. 

-- You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others? Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed Ann (what's in a name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow. Richard the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered. The other four acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his kings Richard is the only king unshielded by Shakespeare's reverence, the angel of the world. Why is the underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures lifted out of Sidney's Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older than history? 

-- That was Will's way, John Eglinton defended. We should not now combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by George Meredith. Que voulez-vous? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and makes Ulysses quote Aristotle. 

-- Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare, what the poor is not, always with him. The note of banishment, banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of my lords bishops of Maynooth: an original sin and, like original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under which her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it. Beauty and peace have not done it away. It is in infinite variety everywhere in the world he has created, in Much Ado about Nothing, twice in As you like It, in The Tempest, in Hamlet, in Measure for Measure, and in all the other plays which I have not read. 

He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage. Judge Eglinton summed up. 

-- The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He is all in all. 

-- He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five. All in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He acts and is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like José he kills the real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing that the moor in him shall suffer. 

-- Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word of fear! 

Dark dome received, reverbed. 

-- And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton exclaimed. When all is said Dumas fils (or is it Dumas père?) is right. After God Shakespeare has created most. 

-- Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. He returns after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of life ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet pére and Hamlet fils. A king and a prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain. He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible. Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he will find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself. 

-- Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka! 

Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride John Eglinton's desk. 

-- May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi. 

He began to scribble on a slip of paper. 

Take some slips from the counter going out. 

-- Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. 

He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor. 

Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of The Taming of the Shrew. 

-- You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You have brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your own theory? 

-- No, Stephen said promptly. 

-- Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a dialogue, don't you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote. 

John Eclecticon doubly smiled. 

-- Well, in that case, he said, I don't see why you should expect payment for it since you don't believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is some mystery in Hamlet but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper met in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the secret is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to visit the present duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor wrote the plays. It will come as a surprise to his grace. But he believes his theory. 

I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other chap. 

-- You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces of silver. Then I don't know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an article on economics. 

Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics. 

-- For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview. 

Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then gravely said, honeying malice: 

-- I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa contra Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the coalquay whore. 

He broke away. 

-- Come, Kinch. Come, wandering &Aelig;ngus of the birds. 

Come, Kinch, you have eaten all we left. Ay, I will serve you your orts and offals. 

Stephen rose. 

Life is many days. This will end. 

-- We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore says Malachi Mulligan must be there. 

Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama. 

-- Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of Ireland. I'll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk straight? 

Laughing he... 

Swill till eleven. Irish nights' entertainment. 

Lubber... 

Stephen followed a lubber... 

One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After his lub back I followed. I gall his kibe. 

Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a wellkempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering daylight of no thoughts. 

What have I learned? Of them? Of me? 

Walk like Haines now. 

The constant readers' room. In the readers' book Cashe Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was Hamlet mad? The quaker's pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk. 

-- O please do, sir... I shall be most pleased... 

Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself, selfnodding: 

-- A pleased bottom. 

The turnstile. 

Is that?... Blueribboned hat... Idly writing... What? Looked?... 

The curving balustrade; smoothsliding Mincius. 

Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling: 

John Eglinton, my jo, John. 
Why won't you wed a wife?
He sputtered to the air: 
O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers' hall. Our players are creating a new art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey theatre! I smell the public sweat of monks. 

He spat blank. 

Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him. And left the femme de trente ans. And why no other children born? And his first child a girl? 

Afterwit. Go back. 

The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling, minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair. 

Eh... I just eh... wanted... I forgot... he... 

-- Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson were there... 

I hardly hear the purlieu cry 
Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by 
Before my thoughts begin to run 
On F. M'Curdy Atkinson, 
The same that had the wooden leg 
And that filibustering fillibeg 
That never dared to slake his drouth, 
Magee that had the chinless mouth. 
Being afraid to marry on earth 
They masturbated for all they were worth.
Jest on. Know thyself. 
Halted below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt. 

-- Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black. 

A laugh tripped over his lips. 

-- Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jew jesuit! She gets you a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn't you do the Yeats touch? 

He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms: 

-- The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time. One thinks of Homer. 

He stopped at the stairfoot. 

-- I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly. 

The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices. 

In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet: 

Everyman His own Wife 
or 
A Honeymoon in the Hand 
(a national immorality in three orgasms) 
by 
Ballocky Mulligan
He turned a happy patch's smirk to Stephen, saying: 
-- The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen. 

He read, marcato: 

-- Characters: 

TOBY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole) 
CRAB (a bushranger) 
MEDICAL DICK 
and (two birds with one stone) 
MEDICAL DAVY 
MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier) 
FRESH NELLY 
and 
ROSALIE (the coalquay whore)
He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Stephen: and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men: 
-- O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit! 

-- The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever lifted them. 

About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside. 

Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today, if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must come to, ineluctably. 

My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between. 

A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting. 

-- Good day again, Buck Mulligan said. 

The portico. 

Here I watched the birds for augury. &Aelig;ngus of the birds. They go, they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wandered. Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see. 

-- The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown's awe. Did you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad. 

Manner of Oxenford. 

Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge. 

A dark back went before them. Step of a pard, down, out by the gateway, under portcullis barbs. 

They followed. 

Offend me still. Speak on. 

Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness softly were blown. 

Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline, hierophantic: from wide earth an altar. 

Laud we the gods 
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils 
From our bless'd altars.


为了缓和大家的情绪，公谊会教徒[1]－图书馆长文质彬彬地轻声说道：“球门不是还有《威廉•迈斯特》那珍贵的篇章吗?一位伟大的诗人对另一位弟兄般的大诗人加以论述。[2]一具犹豫不决的灵魂，被相互矛盾的疑惑所撕扯，挺身反抗人世无边的苦难[3]，就像我们在现实生活中所看到的那样。”

他踏着橐橐作响的牛皮鞋[4]，跳着五步舞[5]前进一步，又跳着五步舞[6]，在肃穆的地板上后退一步。

一名工役悄悄地把门开了个缝儿，默默地朝他做了个手势。

“马上就来，”他说，踏着橐橐作响的鞋正要走开，却又踟蹰不前。“充满绮丽幻想而又不实际的梦想家，面临严峻的现实，就只有一败涂地。[7]我们读到这里，总觉得歌德的论断真是对极了。他的宏观分析是正确的。”

像是听了倍加响亮的分析，他踩着“科兰多”舞步[8]走开了。歇顶的他，在门旁耸起那双大耳朵，倾听着工役的每一句话，然后就走了。

只剩下两个人。

“德•拉帕利斯先生，”斯蒂芬冷笑着说，“直到死前一刻钟还活着。[9]”

“你找到那六个勇敢的医科学生了吗?”约翰•埃格林顿[10]以长者的刻薄口气问道，“好叫他们把《失乐园》[11]笔录下来。他管这叫作《魔鬼之烦恼》。[12]”

微笑吧。露出克兰利[13]微笑吧。

起初他为她搔痒，

接着就抚摩她，

并捅进一根女用导尿管。

因为他是个医科学生，

爽朗快活的老医……

“倘若是写《哈姆莱特》的话，我觉得你还需要再添上一个人物。对神秘主义者来说，七是个可贵的数字。威•巴把它叫作灿烂的七。[14]”

他目光炯炯，将长着赤褐色头发的脑袋挨近绿灯罩的台灯，在暗绿的阴影下，寻觅着胡子拉碴的脸——长着圣者的眼睛的奥拉夫般的脸。[15]他低声笑了。这是三一学院工读生[16]的笑。没有人理睬他。

管弦乐队的魔鬼痛哭，

淌下了天使般的眼泪。[17]

然而他以自己的屁股代替了号筒。[18]

他抓住我的愚行当作了把柄。

克兰利手下那十一名土生土长的威克洛[19]男子有志于解放祖国。豁牙子凯思林，她那四片美丽的绿野，她家里的陌生人。[20]还有一个向他致意的：“你好，拉比。[21]蒂那依利市[22]的十二个人。在狭谷的阴影下，他吹口哨吆唤他们。一个又一个夜晚，我把灵魂的青春献给了他。祝你一路平安。好猎手。[23]

穆利根收到了我的电报。[24]

愚行。一不做，二不休。

“咱们爱尔兰的年轻诗人们，”约翰•埃格林顿告诫说，“还得塑造出一位将被世人誉为能与萨克逊佬莎士比亚的哈姆莱特相媲美的人物。尽管我和老本[25]一样佩服他，并且对他崇拜得五体投地。”

“这些纯粹属于学术问题，”拉塞尔从阴影里发表宏论。“我指的是哈姆莱特究竟是莎士比亚还是詹姆斯一世[26]，抑或是艾塞克斯伯爵[27]这样的问题，就像是由教士们来讨论耶稣在历史上的真实性一样。艺术必须向我们昭示某种观念——无形的精神真髓[28]。关于一部艺术作品首要的问题是：它究竟是从怎样深邃的生命中涌现出来的。古斯塔夫•莫罗[29]的绘画表达了意念。雪莱最精深的诗句，哈姆莱特的话语，都能够使我们的心灵接触到永恒的智慧，接触到柏拉图的观念世界。其他左不过是学生们之间的空想而已。”

A•E•曾对前来采访的美国记者这么说过。[30]唉，该死的!

“学者也得先当学生呀，”斯蒂芬极其客气地说，“亚理斯多德就曾经是柏拉图的学生。”

“而且他始终是那样，像我们所希望的，”约翰•埃格林顿安详地说，“我们仿佛总可以看到他那副腋下夹着文凭的模范生的样子。”

他又朝着现在正泛着微笑的那张胡子拉碴的脸，笑了笑。

无形的精神上的。父，道，圣息。万灵之父，天人[31]。希稣斯•克利斯托斯[32]，美的魔术师，不断地在我们内心里受苦受难的逻备斯[33]。这确实就是那个。我是祭坛上的火。我是供牺牲的黄油。[34]

邓洛普[35]，贾奇[36]，在他们那样人当中最高贵的罗马人[37]，A•E•阿尔瓦尔[38]，高高在天上的那个应当避讳的名字：库•胡•[39]——那是他们的大师，消息灵通人士都晓得其真实面目。大白屋支部[40]的成员们总是观察着，留意他们能否出一臂之力。基督携带着新娘子修女[41]，润湿的光，受胎于圣灵的处女，忏悔的神之智慧[42]，死后进入佛陀的境界。秘教的生活不适宜一般人。芸芸众生必须先赎清宿孽。库珀•奥克利夫人[43]有一次瞥见了我们那位大名鼎鼎的姊妹海•佩•勃的原始状态。

哼!哼!呸!呸！[44]可耻，冒失鬼！[45]你不应该看，太太。当一个女人露出原始状态的时候，那是不许看的。

贝斯特[46]先生进来了。个子高高的，年轻，温和，举止安详。他手里文雅地拿着一本又新又大、洁净而颜色鲜艳的笔记本。

“那个模范学生会认为，”斯蒂芬说，“哈姆莱特王子针对自己灵魂的来世所作的冥想，那难以置信、毫不足取、平淡无奇的独白，简直跟柏拉图一样浅薄。”[47]

约翰•埃格林顿皱起眉头，怒气冲冲地说：

“说实在的，一听见有人把亚理斯多德跟柏拉图相比较，我就气炸了肺。”

“想把我赶出理想国的，”斯蒂芬问，“是他们两个当中的哪一个呢?”[48]

亮出你那匕首般的定义吧。马性者，一切马匹之本质也。他们崇敬升降流和伊涌[49]。神：街上的喊叫。逍遥学派[50]味道十足。空间：那是你非看不可的东西。穿过比人血中的红血球还小的空间，追在布莱克的臀部后面，他们慢慢爬行到永恒。这个植物世界仅只是它的影子。[51]紧紧地把握住此时此地，未来的一切都将经由这里涌入过去。[52]

贝斯特先生和蔼可亲地走向他的同僚。

“海恩斯走掉啦，”他说。

“是吗?”

“我给他看朱班维尔[53]的书来着。要知道，他完全热衷于海德的《康诺特情歌》。我没能把他拉到这儿来听听大家的议论，他到吉尔书店买这本书去了。”

我的小册子，快快前去，

向麻木的公众致意，

写作用贫乏寒伦的英语，

决不是我的原意。[54]

“泥炭烟上了他的大脑，”约翰•埃格林顿议论道。

我们英国人觉得……[55]悔悟的窃贼。[56]走掉啦。我吸了他的纸烟。一颗璀璨的绿色宝石。镶嵌在海洋这指环上的绿宝石。[57]

“人们不晓得情歌有多么危险，”金蛋[58]拉塞尔用诡谲的口吻警告说，“在世界上引起的革命运动，原是在山麓间，在一个庄稼汉的梦境和幻象中产生的。 对他们来说，大地不是可供开拓的土壤，而是位活生生的母亲。 学院和街心广场那稀薄的空气会产生六先令一本的小说和沸艺场的小调。法国通过乌拉梅[59]创造了最精致的颓废之花，然而惟有灵性贫乏者[60]，才能获得理想生活的启迪。比方说荷马笔下的腓依基人的生活。”

听罢这番话，贝斯特先生将那张不冲撞人的脸转向斯蒂芬。

“要知道，乌拉梅写下的那些精彩的散文诗，”他说，“在巴黎的时候，斯蒂芥•麦克纳[61]常朗读给我听。有一首是关于《哈姆莱特》的。[62]他说： 他边读一本写他自己的书，边漫步。[63]要知道：边读一本写他自己的书。他描述了一个法国镇子上演《哈姆莱特》的情景。要知道，是内地的一个镇子。他们还登了广告。”

他用那只空着的手优雅地比比画画，在虚空中写下小小的字：

哈姆莱特

或者

心神恍惚的男子

莎士比亚的剧作[64]

他对约翰•埃格林顿那再一次皱起来的眉头重复了一遍：

“要知道，莎士比亚的戏剧[65]哩。法国味十足。法国人的观点。哈姆莱特或者……[66]”

“心神恍惚的乞丐[67]，”斯蒂芥替他把话结束了。

约翰•埃格林顿笑了。

“对，依我看就是这样，”他说，“毫无疑问，那是个优秀的民族，可在某些事物上，目光又短浅得令人厌烦。”[68]

豪华而情节呆板、内容夸张的凶杀剧。[69]

“罗伯特•格林曾称他作‘灵魂的刽子手’[70]，”斯蒂芬说，“他真不愧为屠夫的儿子，[71]在手心上啐口唾沫，就抡起磨得锃亮的杀牛斧。[72]为了他父亲这一条命，葬送掉了九条[73]。我们在炼狱中的父亲。[74]身着土黄色军服的哈姆莱特们毫不迟疑地开枪。[75]第五幕那浴血的惨剧[76]乃是斯温伯恩先生在诗中歌颂过的集中营的前奏[77]。”

克兰利，我是他的一名沉默寡言的传令兵，离得远远地观望着战斗。

对凶恶敌人之妇孺，

只有我们予以宽恕……

夹在萨克逊人的微笑与美国佬的饶舌之间。魔鬼与深渊之间。

“他想把《哈姆莱特》说成是个鬼怪故事，”约翰•埃格林顿替贝斯特先生解释说，“像《匹克威克》里的胖小子似的，他想把我们吓得毛骨悚然。[78]

听着，听着，啊，听着！[79]

我的肉身倾听着他的话，胆战心惊地听着。

要是你曾经……[80]

“什么是鬼魂?”斯蒂芬精神抖擞地说，“那不外乎就是一个人由于死亡，由于不在，由于形态的变化而消失到虚无飘渺中去。伊丽莎白女王时代的伦敦与斯特拉特福[81]相距之远，一如今天堕落的巴黎之于纯洁的都柏林。谁是那个离开了幽禁祖先的所在[82]而返回到己把他遗忘了的世界上来的鬼魂呢?谁是哈姆莱特王呢?”

约翰•埃格林顿挪动了一下他那瘦小的身躯，向后靠了靠，在做出判断。

情绪激昂了。

“那是六月中旬的一天，就在这个时辰，”斯蒂芬迅疾地扫视了大家一眼，好让人们注意倾听他的话，“河滨的剧场升起了旗子。旁边的巴黎园里，萨克逊大熊在栏中吼叫着。跟德雷克一道航过海的老水手们，混在池座的观众当中，嚼着香肠。[83]”

地方色彩。把自己晓得的统统揉进去。让他们做同谋者。

“莎士比亚离开了西尔弗街那所胡格诺派教徒的房子，沿着排列在河岸上的天鹅槛定去。然而他并不停下脚步来喂那赶着成群小天鹅朝灯心草丛中走去的母天鹅。埃文河的天鹅[84]别有心思。”

场子的构图。[85]依纳爵•罗耀拉啊，赶快来帮助我吧!

“戏开台了。一个演员从暗处[86]踱了过来。他身披宫廷里哪位花花公子穿剩的铠甲，体格魁悟，有着一副男低音的嗓子。这就是鬼魂，是国王，又不是国王，[87]演员乃是莎士比亚。[88]他毕生的岁月不曾虚度，都倾注在研究《哈姆莱特》上了，以便扮演幽灵这个角色。他隔着绷了一层蜡布[89]的架子，呼唤着站在自己对面的年轻演员伯比奇[90]的名字：

哈姆莱特。啊，我是你父亲的阴魂……[91]

并吩咐他听着。他是对儿子，自己的灵魂之子——王子，年轻的哈姆莱恃——说话;也对内身之子哈姆奈特[92]•莎士比亚说话——他死在斯特拉特福，以便让他的同名者获得永生。”

身为演员的莎士比亚，由于外出而做了鬼魂，身穿死后做了鬼魂的墓中的丹麦先王的服装[93]，他可不可能就是在对亲生儿子的名字(倘若哈姆奈特•莎士比亚不曾夭折，他就成为哈姆莱特王子的双生兄弟了)，说着自己的台词呢?我倒是想知道，他可不可能，有没有理由相信：他并不曾从这些前提中得出或并不曾预见到符合逻辑的结论：你是被废黜的儿子，我是被杀害的父亲，你母亲就是那有罪的王后，[94]娘家姓哈撒韦的安•莎士比亚?

“但是像这样来窥探一个伟大人物的家庭生活，那可……”拉塞尔不耐烦地开了腔。

你在那儿吗，老实人?[95]

“只有教区执事才对这有兴趣。我的意思是说，我们有剧本在手。也就是说，当我们读《李尔王》的诗篇时，该诗作者究竟是怎样生活过来的，干我们什么事?维利耶•德利尔曾说，我们的仆人们可以替我们活下去。[96]窥视并刺探演员当天在休息室里的飞短流长：诗人怎么酗酒啦，诗人如何负债啦。我们有《李尔王》，而那是不朽的。”

这话是说给贝斯特先生听的，他露出赞同的神色。

用你的波浪，你的海洋淹没他们吧，

马南南啊，马南南•麦克李尔……[97]

喂，老兄，你饿肚子的时候他借给你的那一镑钱哪儿去啦?[98]

哎唷，我需要那笔钱来着。

把这枚诺布尔[99]拿去吧。

去你的吧!你把大部分钱都花在牧师的女儿乔冶娜•约翰逊[100]的床上啦。内心的呵责。

你打算偿还吗?

嗯，当然。

什么时候?现在吗?

喏……不。

那么，什么时候?

我没欠过债。我没欠过债。

要镇定。他是从博伊恩河彼岸来的。在东北角上。[101]你欠了他钱。

且慢。已经过了五个月。分子统统起了变化。现在的我已换了个人。钱是另外那个我欠下的。

早过时啦![102]

然而我，生命原理，形态的形态，由于形态是不断变化的，在记忆之中，我恢然是我。[103]

我，曾经犯过罪，祈祷过，也守过斋戒。

康米从体罚中拯救过的一个孩子。[104]

我，我和我，我。

A•E•I•O•U•

“难道你想违反已经延续了三个世纪的传统吗?”约翰•埃格林顿用吹毛求疵的腔调问道，“至少她的亡灵已永远安息了。至少就文学来说，她还没出生之前就已去世。”

“她是在出生六十七年之后去世的，”斯蒂芥反驳说，“她看到他出世，以及离开人间。[105]她接受了他第一次的拥抱。她生下了他的娃娃们。在他弥留之际，她曾把几枚便士放在他眼睑上，好让他瞑目。”

母亲临终卧在床上。蜡烛。用布单罩起来的镜子。把我生到这世上的人躺在那里，眼睑上放着青铜币，在寥寥几朵廉价的花儿下。饰以百合的光明……[106]

我独自哭泣。

约翰•埃格林顿瞧着他那盏火苗纠缠在一起发出萤光的灯。[107]

“世人相信莎士比亚做错了一件事，”他说，“并尽快她用最巧妙的办法脱了身。”[108]

“那是胡扯!”斯蒂芬鲁莽地说，“天才是不会做错事的。他是明知故犯，那是认识之门。”

认识之门打开了，公谊会教徒——图书馆长走了进来，脚下的鞋轻轻地吱吱响着。他已歇顶，竖起耳朵，兢兢业业。

“很难想像，”约翰•埃格林顿卓有见识地说，“泼妇会是个有用的认识之门。苏格拉底从赞蒂贝[109]身上又认识到了什么呢?”

“辩证法[110]嘛，”斯蒂芬说，“还从他母亲那儿学会了怎样把思想带到人间。[111]他从另一个老婆默尔托[112](名字是无所谓的![113])——也就是说，‘好苏格拉底[114]的灵魂的分身[115]’——那儿学到了什么，任何男人或女人都永远不得而知。然而‘助产术’也罢，闺训[116]也罢，都末能从新芬党[117]的执政官与他们那杯毒芹下救他一命。[118]”

“可是安•哈澈韦呢?”贝斯特先生像是心不在焉似地以安详的口吻说，“是啊，我们好像忘记了她，正如莎士比亚本人也把她遗忘了。”

他的视线从冥思着的那个人的胡子扫到吹毛求疵者的脑壳，宛若在提醒他们，和颜悦色地责备他们，然后又转向那尽管无辜却受到迫害的罗拉德派[119]那粉红色的秃脑袋。

“他颇有点儿机智，”斯蒂芬说，“记忆力也不含糊。当他用口哨吹着《我撇下的姑娘》[120]，朝罗马维尔[121]吃力地走着的时候，他的行囊里就装有记忆。即便那场地震不曾记载下来[122]， 我们也应知道，该把蹲在窝里的可怜的小兔，猎犬的吠声，镂饰的缰绳，她那蓝色的窗户，[123]放在他一生的哪个时期。《维纳斯与阿都尼》中所描绘的那番记忆[124]， 存在于伦敦每个荡妇的寝室里。悍妇凯瑟丽娜[125]长得丑吗?霍坦西奥说她又年轻又漂亮。难道你以为《安东尼与克莉奥佩特拉》的作者，一个热情的香客[126]， 两眼竟长在脑后，单挑沃里克郡最丑的淫妇来跟自已睡觉吗?不错，他撇下了她，而获得了男人的世界[127]。然而由男童所扮演的女角儿们[128]是从一个男童 [129] 眼中看到的女人们。她们的生活、思想、语言，都是男人所赋予的。 难道他没选好吗?我觉得毋宁说他是被选的。[130]倘若其他女人能够从心所欲[131]，安自有她的办法。[132]的的确确，她该受责难。[133]是她这个二十六岁的甜姐儿[134]对他进行引诱的。好比是美妙的开场白[135]，灰眼女神[136]伏在少年阿都尼身上，屈就取胜。这就是厚脸皮的斯特拉特福荡妇，她曾把比自己年轻的情人[137]压翻在麦田里[138]。”

轮到我?什么时候?

来吧!

“裸麦地，”贝斯特先生欣喜快活地说，并且欣喜地、快活地高举着他那本新书。

然后，他喃喃地吟诵起来;那头金发使大家赏心悦目。

裸麦地的田垄间，

俊俏乡男村女眠。[139]

帕里斯，陶醉了的诱惑者。[140]

身穿毛茸茸的家织布衣的高个子[141]从阴影里站起来，掀开了他从合作社头来的怀表的盖子。

“看来我得到《家园报》去啦。”

去哪儿?到可开拓的土地上去。

“你要走了吗?”约翰•埃格林顿挑起眉毛问，“今儿晚上咱们在穆尔[142]家见面，好吗?派珀[143]要来哩。”

“派珀!”贝斯特先生尖声说，“派珀回来了吗?”

彼得•派珀噼噼啪啪地一点点挑选着啄食盐汁胡椒。[144]

“这就难说了。这是星期四嘛，我们还有会呢，要是我能及时脱身的话……”

道森套房里那间通神学家们的瑜伽魔室[145]。《揭去面纱的伊希斯》。[146]我们曾试图把他们这本巴利语[147]著作送进当铺。在暗褐色华盖的遮阴下，他盘腿坐在宝座上;在星界发挥机能的阿兹特克族的逻各斯[148]，他们的超灵[149]，大我[150]。已够入门资格的虔诚的秘义信徒们环绕着他，等待着启示。路易斯•H•维克托里[151]。T•考尔菲尔德•艾尔温[152]。莲花净土的少女们不断地注视着他们。[153]他们的松果体[154]熠熠发光。他内心里充满了神，登上宝座。芭蕉树下的佛陀。[155]吞入灵魂者，吞没者。[156]他的幽魂，她的幽魂，成群的幽魂。[157]他们呜呜哀号，被卷入漩涡，边旋转，边痛哭。[158]

万物精髓之琐事，

肉牢经年女魂栖。[159]

“他们说在文艺方面将有一桩惊人之举，”公谊会教徒一图书馆长友好而诚挚地说，“听说拉塞尔先生正在把我们年轻诗人的作品收成集子。[160]大家都在翘首企盼着哪。”

他借那圆锥形的灯光热切地扫视着。在灯光映照下，三张脸发着亮。

看吧，并且记在脑子里。

斯蒂芬俯视着横挂在他膝头的那根梣木手杖柄上的宽檐平顶帽。我的盔和剑。用两根食指轻轻地摸一下。亚理斯多德的试验。一个还是两个?必然性就在于此。人只能是自己，不可能是其他任何东西。[161]所以，一顶帽子就是一顶帽子。[162]

听着。[163]

年轻的科拉姆和斯塔基[164]。乔治•罗伯茨[165]负责商务方面。朗沃思[166]会在《快邮报》上把它大棒一通的。噢，他会吗?我喜欢科拉姆的《牲畜商》。对，我认为他具有那种古怪的东西——天才。你认为他真有天才吗?叶芝曾赞美过他这句诗:宛如一只埋在荒漠中的希腊瓶。[167]是吗?我希望今天晚上你能够来。玛拉基•穆利根也要来的。穆尔托他把海恩斯带来。你听到过米切尔小姐讲的关于穆尔和马丁的笑话吗?她说，穆尔是马丁的浪荡儿。[168]讲得真是巧妙，令人联想到堂吉诃德和桑丘•潘沙。西格尔逊博士[169]说，我们民族的史诗至今还没写出来。穆尔正是适当的人选。他是都柏林这里的一位愁容骑士[170]。奥尼尔•拉塞尔[171]穿一条桔黄色百褶短裙[172]吗?啊，对，他一定会讲庄重的古语。还有他那位杜尔西尼娅[173]呢?詹姆斯•斯蒂芬斯[174]正在写俏皮的小品文。看来我们变得越来越重要了。

考狄利娅。考德利奥。李尔那最孤独的女儿。[175]

偏僻荒蛮。现在该上你最拿手的法国磨光漆了。[176]

“非常感谢你，拉塞尔先生，”斯蒂芬边站起身来边说，“劳驾请把这封信交给诺曼先生……”

“啊，好的。假若他认为这重要，就会刊用的。我们的读者来稿踊跃极了。”

“我知道，”斯蒂芬说，“谢谢啦。”

天老爷犒劳你。[177]猪猡的报纸[178]。阉牛之友派。

辛格也曾答应我，要为《达娜》杂志[179]写篇稿子。我们的文章会有读者吗?我认为会有的。盖尔语联盟[180]要点用爱尔兰语写的东西。我希望今天晚上你肯来。把斯塔基也带来吧。

斯蒂芬坐了下来。

公谊会教徒－图书馆长向那些告辞的人们打完招呼之后，就走过来了。他泛红着假面具般的脸说：

“迪达勒斯先生，你的观点极有启发性。”

他踮起脚尖，脚步声橐橐地踱来踱去，鞋跟有多么厚，离天就靠近了多少[181]。然后在往外走的一片嘈杂声的掩盖下，他低声说：

“那么，你认为她对诗人不忠贞吗?”

那张神色惊愕的脸问我。他为什么走过来呢?是出于礼貌，还是得到了什么内心之光?[182]

“既然有和解，”斯蒂芬说，“当初想必就有过纷争。”

“可不是嘛。”

穿着鞣皮紧身裤的基督狐。一个亡命徒，藏到枯树杈里，躲避着喧嚣。他没同母狐狸打过交道。孑然一身，被追逐着。他赢得了女人们的心，都是些软心肠的人们：有个巴比伦娼妇，还有法官夫人们，以及胖墩墩的酒馆掌柜的娘儿们。[183]“狐入鹅群”[184]。在“新地”大宅[185]，有个慵懒的浪荡女人。想当初她曾经像肉桂那么鲜艳、娇嫩、可人，而今全部枝叶都已凋落，一丝不挂，对窄小的墓穴心怀畏惧，并且未得到宽恕。

“可不是嘛。那么，你认为……”

门在走出去的人们背后关上了。

一片静寂突然笼罩了这间幽深的拱顶斗室。是温暖和沉滞的空气带来的静寂。

维斯太[186]的一盏灯。

在这里，他冥想着一些莫须有的事，倘若恺撒相信预言家的警告而活下来的话，[187]那么他究竟会做些什么事呢?有可能发生的事。可能发生的、可能的情况的种种可能性。[188]不可知的事情。当阿戏留生活在女辈中间时，他用的是什么名字呢?[189]

我周围是封闭起来的思想，装在木乃伊匣里，填上语言香料保存起来。透特[190]，图书馆的神，头戴月冠的鸟神。我听见那位埃及祭司长的声音[191]：在那一间间堆满泥板书的彩屋里。

这些思维是沉寂的。它们在人的头脑里却曾经十分活跃。沉寂，但是它们内部却怀着对死亡的渴望，在我耳际讲个感伤的故事，敦促我表露他们的愿望。

“毫无疑问，”约翰•埃格林顿沉吟一下说，“在所有的伟人中间，他是最难以理解的。除了他曾生活过并且苦恼过而外，我们对他一无所知。不，连这一点也不清楚。旁人经受我们的置疑[192]。其余的都遮在阴影之下[193]。”

“然而《哈姆莱特》这个作品多么富于个人色彩啊，对吗?”贝斯特先生申辩说，“要知道，我是说，这是有关他的私生活的一种个人手记——我是说，他的生平。至于谁被杀或是谁是凶手，我倒丝毫也不在意……”

他把清白无辜的笔记本放在桌边上，面上泛着挑战似的微笑。用盖尔语所撰写的他的个人记录。船在陆上。我是个僧侣。[194]把它译成英文[195]吧，小个子约翰。[196]

小个子约翰•埃格林顿说：

“根据我听玛拉基•穆利根所谈起过的，对于这些奇谈怪论我是有准备的。不过我不妨忠告你，倘若你想动摇我对于莎士比亚就是哈姆莱特这一信念，那可不是轻而易举的。”

原谅我。[197]

斯蒂芬忍受着在皱起的眉毛下，严厉地闪着邪光的那双眼睛的剧毒。小王[198]。而一经它盯视，人就被蛊惑致死。[199]布鲁涅托[200]先生，我要为这句话而感谢你。

“正像我们，或母亲达娜[201]，一天天地编织再拆散我们的身子，[202]”斯蒂芬说，“肉体的分子来来回回穿梭;一位艺术家也这样把自己的人物形象编织起来再拆散。尽管我的肉身反复用新的物质编织起来，我右胸上那颗胎里带来的痣[203]还在原先的地方。同样地，没有生存在世上的儿子的形象，通过得不到安息的父亲的亡灵，在向前望着。想象力迸发的那一瞬间，用雪莱的话来说，当精神化为燃烧殆尽的煤[204]那一瞬间，过去的我成为现在的我，还可能是未来的我。因此，在未来(它是过去的姊妹)中，我可以看到当前坐在这里的自己，但反映的却是未来的我。”

霍索恩登的德拉蒙德[205]帮助你度过了难关。

“是啊，”贝斯特先生兴致勃勃地说，“我觉得哈姆莱特十分年轻。[206]他对世事那股子激愤可能来自他父亲，可是跟奥菲利娅的那些段落肯定来自他本人。”

这可就大错特错啦。他在我的父亲之中，我在他的儿子之中。

“那颗疮是无从消失的，[207]”斯蒂芬笑着说。

约翰•埃格林顿绷着脸皱起眉头。

“倘若那是天才的胎记，”他说，“天才就成了市场上的滞销货啦。勒南[208]所称赞不已的莎士比亚晚年的戏剧，呈现出的可是另一种精神。”

“和解的精神，”公谊会教徒一图书馆长低声说。

“和解又从何谈起，”斯蒂芬说，“除非先有过纷争。”

话就说到这里。

“倘若你想知道，《李尔王》、《奥瑟罗》、《哈姆莱特》和《特洛伊罗斯与克瑞西达》的可怕时刻，究竟被哪些事件罩上了阴影，你就得先留意这个阴影是什么时候和怎样消失的。在一场场可怕的风暴中，泰尔亲王配力克里斯的船翻了，他像另一个尤利西斯那样受尽磨难。[209]是什么给他的心带来慰藉呢?”

头戴红尖帽，受尽折磨，被泪水遮住了视线。[210]

“一个娃娃——放在他怀里的女孩儿玛丽娜[211]。”

“智者派容易误入外典[212]这一歧途的倾向是一条永恒不变的规律，”约翰•埃格林顿一语道破，“大道[213]固然冷清，然而它通向城市。”

好样儿的培根[214]。已经发了霉。莎士比亚即培根这一牵强附会的说法。[215]用密码来变戏法的[216]走在大道上。从事宏伟的探索的人们。到哪座城市去呀，各位好老爷?隐姓埋名:A•E•，永恒。马吉是约翰•埃格林顿[217]。太阳之东，月亮之西，[218]长生不老国[219]。两个人都脚蹬长靴，拄着拐杖。[220]

离都柏林[211]还有多远?

先生，还得走七十英里。

掌灯时分能到吗? 

“布兰代斯认定，”斯蒂芬说，“它是晚期的头一部剧本。[222]”

“是吗?关于这一点，西德尼•李[223]先生——或照某些人的说法，原名叫西蒙•拉扎勒斯的——又怎么说呢?”

“玛丽娜是风暴的孩子[224]，米兰达是奇迹[225]，潘狄塔是失去了[226]。丢失了的，又还给他了;他女儿的娃娃。[227]配力克里斯曾说：‘我的最亲爱的妻子正像这个女郎一样。’[228]任何一个男人，倘若没有爱过母亲，他会爱女儿吗?[229]”

“做爷爷的艺术，”贝斯特先生开始咕哝道，“变得伟大的艺术……[230]”

[“他会不会参照自己年轻时代的记忆，在她身上看到另一个形象的新生呢?”

你知道自己在说些什么吗?爱——是的。大家都晓得的字眼。[231]爱乃由于给予对方之欲望，使之幸福。要某物，则属对自己愿望之满足。][232]

“对于一个具有那种叫作天才的古怪东西的人来说，他的形象就是一切经验的基准，不论是物质还是精神方面的。这样的共鸣会触动他的心弦。跟他同一血统的其他男子的形象，会引起他的反感。他会从中看到大自然预示或重复他自己的那种不伦不类的尝试。”

公谊会教徒－图书馆长那宽厚的前额被希望点燃了，泛着玫瑰色。

“为了启发大家，我希望迪达勒斯先生会完成他的这一学说。我们还必须提到另一位爱尔兰注释者乔治•萧伯纳[233]先生。我们也不可忘记弗兰克•哈里斯[234]先生。他在《星期六评论》上所发表的关于莎士比亚的论文着实精彩。说也奇怪，他也为我们描述了《十四行诗》[235]的作者和‘黑夫人’之间不幸的关系。受到这位女人青睐的情敌是彭布罗克伯爵－威廉•赫伯特[236]。我认为，倘若诗人非遭到拒绝不可，那么这样的拒绝——怎么说好呢?——似乎是和我们对于本来不应有的情况所抱观点毋宁是一致的。”[237]

他说完这番措词恰当的话之后，就在众人当中昂起温顺的头——一枚海雀蛋[238]，大家争夺的猎物。

他使用丈夫那种老式辞句——就像浑家啦，内助啦。卿爱否，米莉亚姆?[239]爱汝夫否?[240]

“这也可能吧，”斯蒂芬说，“马吉喜欢引用歌德的一句话：“当心你年轻时所抱的愿望，因为到了中年就会变为现实。[241]他为什么派一个小贵族[242] 去向一个花姑娘[243]求婚呢?她是人人行驶的海湾[244]，少女时代声名狼藉[245]的宫女。他本人是个语言贵族[246]，成为一位卑微的绅士，他还写了《罗密欧与朱丽叶》。为什么?他的自信心过早地被扼杀了。首先，他曾被压翻在麦田(可以说是裸麦地)里。打那以后，他在自己眼中再也不是赢者了，更不能在笑而躺下的游戏[247] 中取胜。不论怎样以唐磺[248]自居，也无济于事。后来再怎么弥补，也无法挽回最初的失败。他被野猪的獠牙咬伤了[249]，悍妇即使输了， 她手中也还有那看不见的女性武器。我感觉，他的言词中有着刺激肉身使其陷入新的激情的东西。 这是比最初的激情还要晦暗的影子，甚至使他对自己的认识都模糊起来。 同样的命运在等待着他，两种狂乱汇成一股漩涡。

他们在倾听。我往他们的耳腔内注入。

“灵魂已经受到了致命的一击，睡觉的时候，毒草汁被注入耳腔。[250]然而在睡眠中遇害的人不可能了解自己是怎样被害的，除非造物主赋予他们的灵魂以洞察来世的本事。倘若造物主不曾让他晓得，哈姆莱特王的鬼魂不可能知道毒杀以及促使这一行动的双背禽兽[251]的事。正因为如此，他的言辞(贫乏而且寒伧的英语[252])总是转到旁的方面，转到后面。既是凌辱者又是被凌辱者，既愿意又不愿意[253]，从鲁克丽丝那蓝纹纵横的象牙球般的双乳[254]，到伊摩琴袒露着的胸脯上那颗梅花形的痣[255]，一直紧紧缠绕着他。为了逃避自己，他积累起一大堆创作。如今对这些都已厌倦了，就像一只舔着旧时伤口的老狗似的折回去了。然而，由于失对他来说就是得，他就带着丝毫不曾减弱的人性步入永恒。他所写下的智慧也罢，他所阐明的法则也罢，都没有使他受到教益。他的脸甲掀起来了。[256]如今他成为亡灵，成为阴影;他成为从艾尔西诺的峰岩间刮过去的风;或是各遂所愿[257]，成了海洋的声音——只有作为影子的实体的那个人，与父同体的儿子，才听得见的声音。”

“啊们!”有个声音在门口回答说。

我的冤家呀，你找到我了吗？[258]

幕间休息[259]。

这时，形容猥琐、神态像副主教那样阴沉的勃克•穆利根身穿色彩斑斓的小丑服装，愉快地向笑脸相迎的人们走来。我的电报。[260]

“假若我没听错的话，你在谈论设有实质的脊椎动物[261]吧?”他问斯蒂芬。

他穿着淡黄色背心，把他摘下的巴拿马草帽当作丑角的帽子似的抡着，快活地致意。

大家向他表示欢迎。你尽管嘲弄他，也还是得侍奉他[262]。

一样嘲弄者，佛提乌，冒牌的小先知，[263]约翰•莫斯特[264]。

他，自我诞生之神，以圣灵为媒介，自己委派自己为赎罪者，来到自己和旁人之间，他受仇敌欺骗，被剥光衣服，遭到鞭笞，被钉在十字架上饿死，宛若蝙蝠钉于谷仓门上，听任自己被埋葬，重新站起，征服了地狱，[265]升入天堂。一千九百年来，坐于自己的实体之右。当生者全部死亡之日，将从彼而来，审判生死者。[266]

天 主 受 享 荣 福 于——天。[267]

他举起双手。圣器的帷幕垂下来了。啊，成簇的花儿!一座又一座又一座钟，响成一片。

“是呀，确实是，”公谊会教徒－图书馆长说，“那是一场最令人受教益的讨论。穆利根先生想必对莎士比亚的戏剧也自有他的高见。应该把人生的各个方面都谈一谈。”

他一视同仁地朝四面八方微笑着。

勃克•穆利根困惑地左思右想。

“莎士比亚?”他说，“我好像听说过这个名字。”

他那皮肉松弛的脸上闪过一丝开朗的微笑。

“没错儿，”他恍然大悟了，“就是写得像辛格[268]的那位老兄。”

贝斯特先生转向他。

“海恩斯找你哪，”他说，“你碰上他了吗?回头他要在都柏林面包公司跟你见面。他到吉尔书店买海德的《康纳特情歌》去了。”

“我是从博物馆穿过来的，”勃克•穆利根说，“他来过这儿吗?”

“‘大诗人’的同胞们也许对咱们这精彩的议论颇感厌烦了，”约翰•埃格林顿回答说，“我听说昨天晚上在都柏林，一位女演员[269]第四百零人次演出 《哈姆莱特》。维宁[270]提出，这位王子是个女的。有没有人发现他是个爱尔兰人呢?我相信审判官巴顿[271]正在查找什么线索。他(指王子殿下，而不是审判官大人) 曾凭着圣帕特里克的名义起过誓[272]。”

“最妙的是王水德的故事《威•休先生的肖像》，”贝斯特先生举起他那出色的笔记本说，“他在其中证明《十四行诗》是一个名叫威利•休斯的八面玲珑的人写的。”[273]

“那不是献给威利•休斯的吗?”公谊会教徒－图书馆长问。

要不就是休依•威尔斯?威廉先生本人。[274]W•H。我是谁?

“我认为是为威利•休斯而写的，”贝斯特先生顺口纠正自己的谬误说，“当然喽，这全是些似是而非的话。要知道，就像休斯和砍伐和色彩，[275]他的写法独特。要知道，这才是王尔德的精髓呢。落笔轻松。”

他泛着微笑，轻轻地扫视大家一眼。白肤金发碧眼的年轻小伙子。王尔德那柔顺的精髓。[276]

你着实鬼得很。用堂迪希的钱[277]喝了三杯威士忌。

我花了多少？哦，不过几个先令。

为了让一样新闻记者喝上一通。讲那些干净的和不干净的笑话。机智。为了把他打扮自己的那身青春的华服弄到手，你不惜舍弃你的五种机智。[278] 欲望得到满足的面貌。[279]

机会是很多的。交情的时候，把她让给你吧。天神啊，让他们过一个凉快的交尾期吧。[280]对，把她当作斑鸠那样地疼爱吧。

夏娃在赤裸的小麦色肚皮下面犯的罪孽。一条蛇盘绕着她，龇着毒牙跟她接吻。[281]

“你认为这不过是谬论吗?”公谊会教徒－图书馆长在问，“当嘲弄者最认真的时候，却从未被认真对待过。”

他们严肃地讨论起嘲弄者的真诚。

勃克•穆利根又把脸一耷拉，朝斯蒂芬瞅了几眼。然后摇头晃脑地凑过来，从兜里掏出一封折叠着的电报。他那灵活的嘴唇读时露出微笑，带着新的喜悦。

“电报!”他说，“了不起的灵感!电报!罗马教皇的训渝!”

他坐在桌子灯光照不到的一角，兴高采烈地大声读着：

“伤感主义者乃只顾享受而对所做之事不深觉歉疚之火。[282]署名：迪达勒斯。你是打哪儿打的电报?窑子吗?不。学院公园？你把四镑钱都喝掉了吧?姑妈说是要去拜访你那位非同体的父亲。电报!玛拉基•穆利根。下阿贝街‘船记’酒馆。噢，你这个举世无双的滑稽演员!哦，你这个以教士自居的混蛋金赤!”

他乐呵呵地将电报和封套塞到兜里，却又用爱尔兰土腔气冲冲地说：

“是这么回事。好兄弟，当海恩斯亲自把电报拿进来的时候，他和我都正觉得苦恼烦闷来着。我们曾嘟囔说，要足足地喝上它一杯，让行乞的修士都会起魔障。我正转着这个念头，他呢，跟姑娘们黏糊起来了。我们就乖乖儿地坐在康纳里[283]那儿，一个钟头，两个钟头，三个钟头地等下去，指望着每人喝上五六杯呢。”

他唉声叹气地说：

“我们就呆在那儿，乖乖[284]，把舌头耷拉得一码长，活像那想酒想得发昏的干嗓子教士。你呢，也不知道躲到哪儿去了，居然还给我们送来了这么个玩艺儿。”

斯蒂芬笑了。

勃克•穆利根像是要提出警告似地弯下腰去。

“流浪汉辛格[285]正在找你哪，”他说，“好把你宰了。他听说你曾往他那坐落在格拉斯特赫尔的房子的正门上撒尿。他趿拉着一双破鞋到处走， 说是要把你宰了。”

“我!”斯蒂芬喊道，“那可是你对文学做出的一桩贡献呀。”

勃克•穆利根开心地向后仰着，朝那黑咕隆咚偷听着的天花板大笑。

“宰了你!”他笑道。

在圣安德烈艺术街上，我一边吃着下水杂烩，一边望着那些严厉的怪兽形面孔。[286]用那对语言报以语言的语言，讲一通话。[287]莪相和帕特里克。[288]他在克拉玛尔森林遇见了抡着酒瓶的牧羊神。[289]那是圣星期五!杀人凶手爱尔兰人。他遇见了自己游荡着的形象。我遇见了我的。我在林中遇见一个傻子。[290]

“利斯特[291]先生，”一个工役从半掩着的门外招呼说。

“……每个人都能在其中找到自己的形象。审判官先生马登在他的《威廉•赛伦斯少爷日记》中找到了狞猎术语……[292]啊，什么事?”

“老爷，来了一位先生，”工役走过来，边递上名片边说，“是《自由人报》社的。他是想看看去年的《基尔肯尼民众报》[293]合订本。”

“好的，好的，好的。这位先生在……?”

他接过那张殷勤地递过来的名片，带看不看地瞥了一眼，放下来，并没有读，只是瞟着，边问边把鞋踩得橐橐作响。又问：

“他在……?哦，在那儿哪!”

他快步跳着五步舞[294]出去了。在浴满阳光的走廊上，他不辞劳苦，热情地、口若悬河地谈着，极其公正、极其和蔼地尽着本分，不愧为一名最忠诚的“宽边帽”[295]。

“是这位先生吗?《自由人报》?《基尔肯尼民众报》?对。您好，先生。《基尔肯尼……》……我们当然有喽……”

一个男子的侧影耐心地等待着，耹听着。

“主要的地方报纸全都有……《北方辉格》、《科克观察报》、《恩尼斯科尔西卫报》[296]。去年。一九0三……请您……埃文斯，给这位先生领路……您只要跟着这个工役……要么，还是我自己……这边……先生，请您……”

口若悬河，尽着本分，他领先到放着所有地方报纸的所在。一个鞠着躬的黑影儿尾随着他那匆忙的脚后跟。

门关上了。

“犹太佬!”勃克•穆利根大声说。

他一跃而起，一把抓住名片。

“他叫什么名字?艾克依•摩西[297]吗?布卢姆。”

他喋喋不休地讲下去：

“包皮的搜集者[298]耶和华已经不在了。刚才我在博物馆里遇见过他。我到那儿是去向海泡里诞生的阿佛洛狄忒致意的。这位希腊女神从来没有歪起嘴来祷告过。咱们每天都得向她致敬。生命的生命，你的嘴唇点燃起火焰。[299]”

他突然转向斯蒂芬：

“他认识你。他认识你的老头子。哦，我怕他，他比希腊人还要希腊化。他那双淡色的加利利[300]眼睛总盯着女神中央那道沟沟。美臀维纳斯。[301]啊，她有着怎样一副腰肢啊!天神追逐，女郎躲藏。[302]”

“我们还想再听听，”约翰•埃格林顿征得贝斯特先生的赞同后说，“我们开始对莎[303]太太感兴趣了。在这之前，即便我们想到过她， 也不过把她看作是一位有耐心的克雨雪达[304]，留守家中的潘奈洛佩[305]。”

“戈尔吉亚的弟子安提西尼[306]，”斯蒂芬说，“从曼涅劳王的妻子、阿凯人海伦手里把美的标志棕榈枝拿过来，交给了可怜的潘奈洛佩。二十位英雄在特洛伊那匹母木马[307]里睡过觉。他[308]在伦敦住了二十年， 其间有个时期领的薪水跟爱尔兰总督一样多。他的生活是丰裕的。他的艺术超越了沃尔特•惠特曼所说的封建主义艺术，[309]乃是饱满的艺术。热腾腾的鲜鱼馅饼、 绿杯里斟得满满的白葡萄酒、蜂蜜酱、蜜饯玫瑰、杏仁糖、醋栗填鸽、刺芹糖块。沃尔特•雷利爵士[310]被捕的时候，身上穿着值五十万法郎的衣服，包括一件精致的胸衣。放高利贷的伊丽莎•都铎[311]的内衣之多，赛得过示巴女王。[312]足足有二十年之久， 他徘徊在夫妻那纯洁缠绵的恩爱与娼妇淫荡的欢乐之间。你们可晓得曼宁汉姆那个关于一个市民老婆的故事吧，她看了迪克[313]•伯比奇在《理查三位》中的演出，就邀请他上自己的床。莎士比亚无意中听到了，没费多大力气[314]就制服了母牛。当伯比奇前来敲门的时候，他从阉鸡[315]的毯子下面回答说：‘征服者威廉已比理查三世捷足先登啦。’[316]快活的小夫人、情妇菲顿[317]噢的一声就骑了上去。[318]还有他那娇滴滴的婆娘潘奈洛佩•里奇。[319]这位端庄的上流夫人适合做个演员;而河堤上的娼妇，一回只要一便士。”

王后大道。再出二十苏吧。给你搞点小花样儿。玩小猫味?你愿意吗?[320]

“上流社会的精华。还有牛津的威廉•戴夫南特爵士[321]的母亲，只要是长得像金丝雀那样俊秀的男人，她就请他喝杯加那利酒[322]。”

勃克•穆利根虔诚地抬起两眼祷告道：

“圣女玛格丽特•玛丽•安尼科克[323]!”

“还有换过六个老婆的哈利的女儿。[324]再就是草地• 丁尼生、绅士诗人所唱的：附近邸舍的高贵女友。[325]这漫长的二十年间，你们猜猜，斯特拉持福的潘奈洛佩[326]在菱形窗玻璃后面都干什么来着?”

干吧，干吧，[327]干出成绩。他在药用植物学家杰勒德那座位于费特小巷的玫瑰花圃[328]里散步，赤褐色的头发已灰白了。像她的脉管一样蓝的风信子。[329]朱诺的艰睑，紫罗兰。[330]他散步。人生只有一次，肉体只有一具。干吧。专心致志地干。近处，在淫荡和污浊的臭气中，一双手放在白净的肉身上。

勃克•穆利根使劲敲着约翰•埃格林顿的桌子。

“你猜疑谁呢?”[331]他盘问。

“假定他是《十四行诗》里那位被舍弃的情人吧。被舍弃一回，就有第二回。然而宫廷里的那个水性扬花的女子是为了一个贵族——他的好友——而舍弃他的。[332]”

不敢说出口的爱。[333]

“你的意思是说，”刚毅的约翰•埃格林顿插进嘴去，“作为一个英国人，他爱上了一位贵族。”

蜥蜴们沿着古老的墙壁一闪而过。我在查伦顿[334]仔细观察过它们。

“好像是的，”斯蒂芬说，“为了这位贵族，并为所有其他特定的、未被耕耘过的处女的胎，[335]他想尽尽马夫对种马所尽的那种神圣职责。也许跟苏格拉底一样，不仅妻子是个悍妇，母亲也是个产婆呢。然而她，那个喜欢痴笑的水性扬花的女子，并不曾撕毁床头盟。[336]鬼魂[337]满脑子都是那两档子事：誓盟被破坏了，她移情于那个迟钝的乡巴佬——亡夫的兄弟身上。我相信可爱的安是情欲旺盛的。她向男人求过一次爱，就会求第二次。”

斯蒂芬在椅子上果敢地转了个身。

“证明这一点的责任在你们而不在我，”他皱着眉头说，“倘若你们否认他在《哈姆莱特》第五场里就给她打上了不贞的烙印，那么告诉我，为什么在他们结婚三十四年间，从迎娶那天直到她给他送殡，她始终只字没被提到过。这些女人统统为男人送了葬，玛丽送走了她的当家人约翰[338]，安送走了她那可怜的、亲爱的威伦[339];尽管对于比她先走感到愤懑，他还是死在她前头了。琼送走了她的四个弟弟。[340]朱迪斯[341]送走了她丈夫和所有的儿子。苏珊也送走了她丈夫。[342]苏珊的女儿伊丽莎白呢，用爷爷的话说：先把头一个丈夫杀了，再嫁给第二个。[343]哦，对啦。有人提到过。当他在京都伦敦过着豪华的生活时，她不得不向她父亲的牧羊人借四十先令来还债。[344]你们解释好了。还解释一下‘天鹅之歌’[345]，作者在诗中向后世颂扬了她。”

他面对着大家的沉默。

埃格林顿对他这么说：

你指的是遗嘱。

然而我相信法律家已做了诠释。

按照不成文法，她作为遗孀，

有权利继承遗产。法官们告诉我们，

他具有丰富的法律知识。

恶魔嘲弄他。

嘲弄者：

因此，他把她的名字

从最初的草稿中勾销了;然而他并未勾销对外孙女

和女儿们的赠予，

赠予他妹妹以及他在斯特拉特福和伦敦的挚友们的

礼物。因此，据我所知， 

当他被提醒说，不要漏掉她的名儿

他才留给她

次好的

床。[346]

要点。[347]

留给她他那

次好的床

留给她他那

顶刮刮的床

次好的床

留给一张床。

喔啊!

“当时连俊俏的乡男村女[348]都几乎没什么家当，”约翰•埃格林顿说，“倘若我们的农民戏[349]反映得真实的话，他们至今也还是没有多少。”

“他是个富有的乡绅，”斯蒂芬说，“有着盾形纹章，还在斯特拉福德拥有一座庄园，在爱尔兰庭园有一栋房屋。他是个资本家和股东，证券发起人，还是个交纳什一税的农场主。倘若他希望她能在鼾声中平安地度过余生的话，为什么不把自己最好的床留给她呢?”

“他显然有两张床，一张最好的，另一张是次好的，”次好的贝斯特先生[350]乖巧地说。

“向饭桌和寝室告别，[351]”勃克•穆利根说得更透彻些，博得了大家一笑。

“关于一张张有名的床，古人说过不少话，”其次的埃格林顿噘起嘴来，像在床上那样地笑着，“让找想想看。”

“古人记载着那个斯塔基莱特的顽童和秃头的异教贤人的事，”斯蒂芬说，“他在流亡中弥留时，释放了他的奴隶们，留给他们资财，颂扬祖先， 在遗嘱中要求把自已合葬在亡妻的遗骨旁边，并托付友人好生照顾他生前的情妇(不要忘记内尔•格温•赫尔派利斯)，让她住在他的别墅里。[352]”

“你认为他是这么死的吗?”贝斯特先生略表关切地问道，“我是说……”

“他是喝得烂醉而死的，”勃克•穆利根劈头就说，“一夸脱浓啤酒，就连国王也喜爱。[353]哦，我得告诉你们多顿[354]说了些什么!”

“说了什么?”最好的埃格林顿[355]问。

威廉、莎士比亚股份有限公司。[356]人民的威廉。详情可询：爱•多顿，海菲尔德寓所……[357]

“真可爱!”勃克•穆利根情意绵绵地叹息说，“我问他， 关于人们指责那位大诗人有鸡奸行为，他做何感想。他举起双手说，我们所能说的仅仅是，当时的生活中充满了欣喜欢乐。[358]真可爱!

娈童。

“对美的意识使我们误人歧途，”沉浸在哀愁美中的贝斯特对正在变丑的埃格林顿说。

坚定的约翰严峻地回答道：

“博士可以告诉咱们那话是什么意思。你不能既吃了点心又还拿在手里。”[359]

你这么说吗?难道他们要从我们——从我这里夺去美的标志——棕搁枝[360]吗?

“还有对财产的意识，”斯蒂芬说，“他把夏洛克从他自己的长口袋[361]里拽了出来。作为啤酒批发商和放高利贷者的儿子，他本人也是个小麦批发商和放高利贷的。当由于闹饥荒而引发那场暴动时，他手里存有十托德[362]小麦。毫无疑问，向他借钱的那帮人是切特尔•福斯塔夫所说的信仰各种教派的人。他们都说，他公平交易。为了讨回几袋麦芽的款，他和同一个剧团的演员打官司，作为贷款的利息，索取对方的一磅肉。不然的话，奥布里[363]所说的那个马夫兼剧场听差怎么能这么快地就发迹了呢?为了赚钱，他什么都干得出。女王的侍医、犹太佬洛佩斯[364]那颗犹太心脏被活生生地剜出来，在上绞刑架之后，大解八块，紧接着就是一场对犹太人的迫害。这和夏洛克事件不谋而合。《哈姆莱特》和《麦克白》与有着焚烧女巫的嗜好的伪哲学家的即位赶在同一个时期。[365]在《爱的徒劳》中，被击败的无敌舰队[366]成了他嘲笑的对象。他的露天演出——也就是历史剧，在马弗京的一片狂热[367]中，粉墨登场了。当沃里克郡的耶稣会士受审判后，我们就听到过一个门房关于暧昧不清的说法。[368]‘海洋冒险号’从百慕大驶回国时，[369]勒南所称赞过的以我们的美国堂弟帕齐•凯列班[370]为主人公的那出戏写成了。继锡德尼之后，他也写了罄美的十四行诗组诗。[371]关于仙女伊丽莎白(又名红发贝斯)，那位胖处女授意而写成的《温莎的风流娘儿们》，就让哪位德国绅士耗用毕生心血去从洗衣筐的尽底儿上搜集吧，以便探明它的深邃含义。[372]”

我觉得自己颇有领会。那么，把神学论理学语言学什么学掺合在一起再看看。撒着尿，撒了尿，撒着尿的，撒尿。[373]

“证明他是个犹太人吧，”约翰•埃格林顿有所期待地将了一军，“你们学院的院长说他是个罗马天主教徒。”[374]

“我应该受到抑制。”[375]

“他是德国制造的[376]——”斯蒂芬回答说，“是一位用法国磨光漆[377]来涂饰意大利丑闻的高手。”

“一位拥有万众之心的人，”贝斯特先生提醒道，“柯尔律治[378]说他是一位拥有万众之心的人。”

泛言之，人类社会中，让众人之间存在友情，乃是至关重要的。[379]

“圣托马斯，”斯蒂芬开始说……

“为我等祈[380]，”僧侣穆利根边瘫坐在椅子上，边呻吟道。

从那儿，他凄凉地吟起北欧古哀诗来：

“吻我屁股!我心脏的搏动![381]从今天起，咱们毁灭啦!咱们确实毁灭啦!”[382]

大家各自泛出微笑。

“圣托马斯……”斯蒂芬笑眯眯地说，“那部卷帙繁多的书，我是从原文披阅并赞赏的。他是站在不同于马吉先生所提到的新维也纳学派[383]的立场上，来谈乱伦的问题的。他以他持有的睿智而奇待的方法，把乱伦比作在情感方面的贪得无厌。他指出，血统相近者之间滋生的这种爱情，对于那些可能渴望它的陌生人，却贪婪地被抑制住了。基督教徒谴责犹太人贪婪，而犹太人是所有的民族中最倾向于近亲通婚的。这一谴责是愤怒地发出的。基督教戒律使犹太人成为巨富(对他们来说，正如对罗拉德派一样，风暴为他们提供了避难所)，也用钢圈箍在他们的感情上。[384]这些戒律究竟是罪恶还是美德，神老爹[385]会在世界末日告诉我们的。然而一个人如此执着于债权，也同样会执着于所谓夫权。任何笑眯眯的邻居[386]也不可去贪图他的母牛、他的妻子、他的碑文或公驴。[387]

“或是他的母驴，”勃克•穆利根接着说道。

“温和的威尔[388]遭到了粗暴的对待，”温和的贝斯特先生温和地说。

“哪个威尔呀?”勃克•穆利根亲切地打了句诨，“简直都掺混不清了。”

“活下去的意志，”约翰•埃格林顿用哲理解释道，“对威尔的遗孀——可怜的安来说，就是为了迎接死亡的遗嘱。”[389]

“安息吧![390]”斯蒂芬祷告说。

当年雄心壮志何在?

早已烟消云散。[391]

“尽管你们证明当时的床就像今天的汽车那样珍贵，而床上的雕饰也令七个教区感到惊异;却不能改变她——那蒙面皇后[392]穿着青衣僵硬地挺在那次好的床上这一事实。在晚年，她跟那些传福音的打得火热——其中的一个跟她一道住在‘新地’大宅，共饮那由镇议会付款的一夸脱白葡萄酒。然而，他究竟睡在哪张床上，就不得而知了。她听说自己有个灵魂。她读(或者请旁人读给她听)他那些沿街叫卖的廉价小册子。她喜欢它们更甚于《温莎的风流娘儿们》。她每天晚上跨在尿盆上撒尿，[393]驰想着《信徒长裤上的钩子和扣眼》以及《使最虔诚的信徒打喷嚏的最神圣的鼻烟盒》。[394]维纳斯歪起嘴唇祷告着。内心的呵责。悔恨之心。这是一个精疲力竭的淫妇衰老后在寻觅着神的时代。”

“历史表示这是真实的，”编年学家埃格林顿引证说，[395]“时代不断地更迭。然而一个人最大的仇敌乃是他自己家里的人和家族[396]，这话是有可靠根据的。我觉得拉塞尔是对的。我们何必去管他的老婆或者父亲的事呢?依我说，只有家庭诗人才过家庭生活。福斯塔夫并不是个守在家里的人。我觉得这个胖骑士才是他所创造的绝妙的人物。”

瘦骨嶙嶙的他往椅背上靠了靠。出于羞涩，否定你的同族吧，[397]你这个自命清高的人。[398]他羞涩地跟那些不信神的人一道吃饭，还偷酒杯。[399]这是住在阿尔斯特省安特里姆[400]的一位先生这样嘱咐他的。每年四季结帐时就来找他。马吉先生，有位先生要来见您。我?他说他是您的父亲，先生。请把我的华兹华斯[401]领进来。大马吉•马修[402]进来了。这是个满脸皱纹、粗鲁、蓬头乱发的庄稼汉[403]，穿着胯间有个前兜的紧身短裤，[404]布袜子[405]上沾了十座树林的泥污，[406]手里拿着野生苹果木杖。[407]

你自己的呢?他认得你那老头子[408]——一个鳏夫。

我从繁华的巴黎朝临终前的她那肮脏的床头赶去。在码头上摸了摸他的手。他说着话儿，嗓音里含着新的温情。鲍勃•肯尼大夫[409]在护理她。那双眼睛向我祝福，然而并不了解我。

“一个父亲，”斯蒂芬说，“在抑制着绝望情绪，这是无可避免的苦难。他是在父亲去世数月之后写的那出戏。[410]这位头发开始花白、有着两个已届婚龄的女儿[411]的年方三十五岁的男子，正当人生的中途，[412]却已有了五十岁的人的阅历。倘若你认为他就是威登堡那个没长胡子的大学生，[413]那么你就必须把他那位七十岁的老母看作淫荡的王后。不，约翰•莎士比亚的尸体并不在夜晚到处徘徊。[414]它一小时一小时地腐烂下去。[415]他把那份神秘的遗产[416]留给儿子之后，就摆脱了为父的职责，开始安息了。卜伽丘的卡拉特林[417]是空前绝后的一个自己认为有了身孕的男人。从有意识地生育这个意义上来说，男人是缺乏父性这一概念的。那是从唯一的父到唯一的子之间的神秘等级，是使徒所继承下来的。教会不是建立在乖巧的意大利智慧所抛给欧洲芸芸众生的那座圣母像上，而是建立在这种神秘上——牢固地建立在这上面。因为正如世界，正如大宇宙和小宇宙，它是建立在虚空之上，建立在无常和不定之上的。主生格和宾生格的母爱[418]也许是人生中唯一真实的东西。[419]父性可能是法律上的假定。谁是那位受儿子的爱戴，或是疼爱儿子的为人之父呢?”

你究竟要扯些什么呢?

我晓得。闭嘴。该死的。我自有道理。

越发。更加。再者。其后[420]。

你注定要这么做吗?

“难以自拔的肉体上的耻辱使父子之间产生隔阂。世上的犯罪年鉴虽被所有其他乱伦与兽奸的记录所玷污，却几乎还没记载过这类越轨行为。子与母、父与女、姐妹之间的同性恋，难以说出口的爱，侄子与祖母，囚犯与钥匙孔，皇后与良种公牛。[421]儿子未出世前便损害了美。出世之后，带来痛苦，分散爱情，增舔操劳。他是个新的男性：他的成长乃是他父亲的衰老;他的青春乃是他父亲的妒嫉;他的朋友乃是他父亲的仇敌。”

在王子街[422]上，我想过此事。

“在自然界，是什么把这二者结合起来的呢?是盲目发情的那一瞬间。”

我是个父亲吗?倘若我是的话?

皱缩了的、没有把握的手。

“非洲的撒伯里乌[423]，野生动物中最狡猾的异教的开祖，坚持说，圣父乃是他自己的圣子。没有不能驾御的语言的斗犬阿奎那[424]驳斥了他。那么，倘若没有儿子的父亲就不成其为父亲，那么没有父亲的儿子能成真为儿子吗？当拉特兰•培根•南安普敦•莎士比亚[425]或错误的喜剧里的另一个同名[426]诗人撰写《哈姆莱特》的时候，他不仅是自己的儿子之父，而且还由于他不再是儿子了，他就成为、自己也感到成为整个家庭之父——他自己的祖父之父，他那末出世的孙儿之父。顺便提一下，那个孙儿从未诞生过，因为照马吉先生的理解，大自然是讨厌完美无缺的。[427]”

埃格林顿两眼洋溢着喜悦，羞怯而恍然似有所悟地抬头望着。这个愉快的清教徒隔着盘绕在一起的野蔷薇，[428]乐呵呵地望着。

恭维一番。极偶然地。然而恭维一番吧。

“他本人就是他自己的父亲，[429]”儿子穆利根喃喃自语。 “且慢。我怀孕了。我脑中有个尚未出世的娃娃。明智女神雅典娜[430]!一出戏!关键在于这出戏![431]让我分娩吧!”

他用那双接生的手抱住自已突出的前额。

“至于他的家庭，”斯蒂芬说，“他母亲的名字还活在亚登森林里。[432]她的死促使他在《科利奥兰纳斯》中写出伏伦妮姬的场景。[433]《约翰王》中少年亚瑟咽气的场面就描述了他的幼子之死。身着丧服的哈姆莱特王子是哈姆奈特•莎士比亚。我们晓得《暴风雨》、《配力克里斯》、《冬天的故事》中的少女们都是谁。埃及的肉锅克莉奥佩特拉[434]和克瑞西达[435]以及维纳斯都是谁，我们也猜得出。 然而他的眷属中还有一个被记载下来的人。”

“情节变得复杂啦，”约翰•埃格林顿说。

公谊会教徒－图书馆长震颤着，悄悄地走了进来。颤着他那张没有表情的脸，很快地颤着，颤着，颤着。[436]

门关上了。斗室。白昼。

他们倾听着。三个。他们。 

我、你、他、他们。

来吧，开饭啦。

斯蒂芬

他有三个弟兄，吉尔伯持、埃德蒙、理查[437]。吉尔伯特进入老年后，对几个绅士说，有一次他去望弥撒，教堂收献金的送了他一张免票。于是他就去了，瞅见他哥哥——剧作家伍尔在伦敦上演一出打斗戏，背上还骑着个男人。[438]戏园子里的香肠[439]吉尔伯特吃得可开心啦。哪儿也见不到他。然而可爱的威廉却在作品里记下了一个埃德蒙和一个理查。

马吉•埃格林、约翰

姓名!姓名有什么意义?[440]

贝斯特

理查就是我的名字，你晓得吗？我希望你替理查说句好话。要知道，是为了我的缘故。

(笑声)

勃克•穆利根

(轻柔地，渐弱)[441]

于是，医科学生迪克

对他的医科同学戴维说了……[442]

斯蒂芬

他笔下的黑心肠的三位一体——那帮恶棍扒手：伊阿古、罗锅儿理查和《李尔王》中的爱德蒙，其中两个的名字都跟他们那坏蛋叔叔一样。何况当他写成或者正在撰写这最后一部戏的时候，他的胞弟爱德蒙正奄奄一息地躺在萨瑟克[443]。

贝斯特

我巴不得爱德蒙遭殃，我不要理查这个名字……

(笑声)

公谊会教徒利斯特

(恢复原速)可是他偷去了我的好名声……[444]

斯蒂芬

(渐快)他把自己的名字——威廉这个美好的名字，隐藏在戏里。这出戏里是配角，那出戏里又是丑角。就像从前的意大利画家在画布的昏暗角落里画上了自己的肖像似的，他在满是“威尔”字样的《十四行诗》[445]里， 表明了这一点。就像冈特•欧•约翰[446]一样，对他来说姓名是宝贵的， 就像他拼命巴结到手的纹章——黑地右斜线[447]上绘有象征荣誉的[448]矛或银刃的纹章——那样宝贵。比当上本国最伟大的剧作家这一荣誉还更要宝贵。姓名有什么意义?[449]那正是当我们幼时被告知自己的姓名，并把它写下来之际，所问过自己的。他诞生的时候，出现了一颗星[450]，一颗晨星，一条喷火龙[451]。白天，它在太空中独自闪烁着，比夜间的金星还要明亮。夜里，它照耀在标志着他的首字W[452]、横卧于群星中的仙后座那三角形上。午夜，当他离开安•哈撒韦的怀抱，从肖特利[453]回去时， 他一边走在困倦的夏天田野上， 一边放眼望着那低低地躺在大熊座东边的地平线上的这颗星。

两个人都感到满意，我也满意。 

不要告诉他们，当那颗星消失的时候，他年方九岁[454]。

而且从她的怀抱当中。 

等待着被求爱并占有。[455]哎，你这个懦夫，[456]谁会向你求爱呢?

读一读天空吧。虐己者。[457]斯蒂芬的公牛精神。[458]你的星座在哪里?斯蒂芬，斯蒂芬，面包要切匀。S•D•他的情妇。不错——他的。杰林多打定主意不去恋慕S•D•[459]

“迪达勒斯先生，那是什么呀?”公谊会教徒——图书馆长问道，“是天体现象吗?”

“夜间有星宿，”斯蒂芬说，“白天有云柱。”[460]

此外还有什么可说的呢?

斯蒂芬瞅了瞅自己的帽子、手杖和靴子。

斯蒂法诺斯[461]，我的王冠。我的剑。他的靴子使我的脚变了形。买一双吧。我的短袜净是窟窿。手绢也一样。

“你善于在名字上做文章，”约翰•埃格林顿承认道，“你自己的名字也够别致的了。我看这就正好说明你这个喜欢幻想的性格。”

我、马吉和穆利根。

神话中的工匠。[462]长得像鹰的人。你飞走了。飞向哪里?从纽黑文到迪耶普[463]，统舱客。往返巴黎。风头麦鸡。[464]伊卡洛斯。[465]父亲啊，帮助我吧。[466]被海水溅湿，一头栽下去，翻滚着。你是一只风头麦鸡，变成一只风头麦鸡。

贝斯特先生热切地、安详地举起他的笔记本来说：

“那非常有趣儿。因为，要知道，在爱尔兰传说中，我们也能找到弟兄这一主题。跟你讲的一模一样。莎士比亚哥儿仨。格林[467]里也有。要知道，那些童话里，三弟总是跟睡美人结婚，并获得头奖。”

贝斯特弟兄们当中最好[468]的。好，更好，最好。

公谊会教徒－图书馆长来到旁边，像弹簧松了似的突然站住了。

“我想打听一下，”他说，“是你的哪一位弟兄……假若我没理解错的话，你曾暗示说，你们弟兄当中有一个行为不轨……然而，也许我理解得过了头?”

他察觉到自己失言了，四下里望望大家，把底下的话咽了下

去。

一个工役站在门口嚷道：

“利斯特先生!迪宁神父[469]要见……”

“澳，迪宁神父!马上就来。”

他立刻把皮鞋踩得囊囊响，随即径直走了出去。

约翰•埃格林顿提出了挑战。

“喂，”他说，“咱们听听足下关于理查和爱德蒙有何高见。你不是把他们留到最后吗?”

“我曾请你们记住那两位高贵的亲族[470]——里奇叔叔和爱德蒙叔叔，”斯蒂芬回答说，“我觉得我也许要求得过多了。弟兄正像一把伞一样，很容易就被人忘记。”

风头麦鸡。 

你的弟弟在哪儿?在药剂师的店里。[471]砥砥我者，他，还有克兰利，穆利根。[472]现在是这帮人。夸夸其谈。然而要采取行动。把言语付诸实践。他们嘲弄你是为了考验你。采取行动吧。让他们在你身上采取行动。 

风头麦鸡。 

我对自己的声音感到厌烦了，对以扫的声音感到厌烦了。[473]愿用我的王位换一杯酒。[474]

继续说下去吧。

“你会说，这些名字早就写在被他当作戏剧素材的纪年记里了。他为什么不采用旁的，而偏偏采用这些呢?理查，一个娘子养的畸形的罗锅儿，向寡妇安(姓名有什么意义?)求婚并赢得了她——一个婊子养的风流寡妇。三弟——征服者理查，继被征服者威廉之后而来。这个剧本的其他四幕，松松散散地接在第一幕后面。在莎士比亚笔下所有的国王中，理查是世界上的天使[475]中他唯一不曾怀着崇敬心情加以庇护的。《李尔王》中爱德蒙登场的插话取自锡德尼的《阿卡迪亚》，为什么要把它填补到比历史还古老的凯尔特传说中去呢?”[476]

“那是威尔惯用的手法，”约翰•埃格林顿辩护说，“我们现在就不可能把北欧神话和乔治•梅瑞狄斯的长篇小说的摘录连结在一起。穆尔就会说：‘这有什么办法呢?’[477]他把波希米亚搬到海边，[478]让尤利西斯引用亚理斯多德。”[479]

“为什么呢?”斯蒂芬自问自答，“因为对莎士比亚来说，撒谎的弟兄、篡位的弟兄、通奸的弟兄，或者三者兼而有之的弟兄，是总也离不开的题材，而穷人却不常跟他在一起。[480]从心里被放逐，从家园被放逐，自《维洛那二绅士》起，这个放逐的旋律一直不间断地响下去，直到普洛斯彼罗折断他那根杖，将它埋在地下数噚深处，并把他的书抛到海里。[481]他进入中年后，这个旋律的音量加强了一倍，反映到另一个人生，照序幕、展开部、最高潮部、结局[482]来复奏一遍。当他行将就木时，这个旋律又重奏一遍。有其母必有其女。那时，他那个已出嫁的女儿苏珊娜被指控以通奸罪。[483]然而使他的头脑变得糊涂、削弱他的意志、促使他强烈地倾向于邪恶的，乃是原罪。照梅努斯的主教大人们说来，原罪者，正因为是原罪，尽管系旁人所犯，其中也自有他的一份罪愆。[484]在他的临终遗言里，透露了这一点。这话铭刻在他的墓石上。她的遗骨不得葬在下面。[485]岁月不曾使它磨灭。美与和平也不曾使它消失。在他所创造的世界各个角落，都变幻无穷地存在着。[486]在《爱的徒劳》中，两次在《皆大欢喜》中，在《暴风雨》中，《哈姆莱特》中，《一报还一报》中——以及其他所有我还没读过的剧作中。”

为了把心灵从精神的羁绊中解放出来，他笑了。

审判官埃格林顿对此加以概括。

“真理在两者之间，”他斩钉截铁地说，“他是圣灵，又是王子。他什么都是。”[487]

“可不是嘛，”斯蒂芬说，“第一幕里的少年就是第五幕中的那个成熟的男人。他什么都是。在《辛白林》，在《奥瑟罗》中，他是老鸨[488]，给戴上了绿头巾，他采取行动，也让别人在他身上采取行动。他抱有理想，或趋向堕落，就像荷西那样杀死那活生生的嘉尔曼。[489]他那冷酷严峻的理性就有如狂怒的依阿古，不断地巴望自己内心的摩尔人[490]会受折磨。”

“咕咕!咕咕!”穆利根用淫猥的声调啼叫着，“啊，可怕的声音!”[491]

黑暗的拱形顶棚接受了这声音，发出回响。[492]

“伊阿古是怎样的一个人物啊!”无所畏惧的约翰•埃格林顿喊叫着说，“归根结底，小仲马(也许是大仲马[493]吧?”说得对：天主之外，莎士比亚创造的最多。”

“男人不能使他感到喜悦;不，女人也不能使他感到喜悦，[494]”斯蒂芬说，“离开一辈子后，他又回到自己出生的那片土地上。从小到大[495]，他始终是那个地方的一名沉默的目击者。在那里，他走完了人生的旅途。他在地里栽下自己的那棵桑树，[496]然后溘然长逝。呼吸停止了。[497]掘墓者埋葬了大哈姆莱特和小哈姆莱特。[498]国王和王子在音乐伴奏下终于死去了。遭到谋杀也罢，被陷害也罢，又有何干?因为不论他是丹麦人还是都柏林人，所有那些柔软心肠的人们都会为之哀泣，悼念死者的这份悲伤乃是她们不肯与之离婚的唯一的丈夫。倘若你喜欢尾声，那么就仔细端详一下吧。幸福的普洛斯彼罗[499]是得到好报的善人、丽齐[500]是外公的宝贝疙瘩;里奇叔叔这个歹徒按照因果报应的原则被送进坏黑人注定去的地方了。[501]结局圆满，幕终。他发现，内在世界有可能实现的，外在世界就己经成为现实了。梅特林克说：‘倘若苏格拉底今天离家，他会发现贤人就坐在他门口的台阶上。倘若犹大今晚外出，他的脚会把他引到犹大那儿去。’[502]每一个人的一生都是许多时日，一天接一天。我们从自我内部穿行[503]，遇见强盗，鬼魂，巨人，老者，小伙子，妻子，遗蠕，恋爱中的弟兄们，然而，我们遇见的总是我们自己。编写世界这部大书而且写得很蹩脚的那位剧作家(他先给了我们光，隔了两天才给太阳[504])，也就是被天主教徒当中罗马味最足的家伙称之为煞神[505]——绞刑吏之神的万物之主宰;毫无疑问，他什么都是，[506]存在于我们一切人当中：既是马夫，又是屠夫，也是老鸨，并被戴上了绿头巾。然而倘若在天堂实行节约，像哈姆莱特所预言的那样，那么就再也不要什么婚娶；或者有什么光彩的人，半阴半阳的天使，将成为自己的妻子。”[507]

“我发现啦!”[508]勃克•穆利根大声说，“我发现啦？”

他突然高兴了，跳起来，一个箭步窜到约翰•埃格林顿的书桌跟前。

“可以吗?”弛说，“玛拉基接受了神谕。[509]”

他在一片纸上胡乱涂写起来。

往外走的时候，从柜台上拿几张纸条儿吧。

“已经结婚的，”安详的使者贝斯特先生说，“除了一个人，都将活下去。没有结婚的，不准再结婚。”[510]

他这个未婚者对独身的文学士埃格林顿•约翰尼斯笑了笑。

他们没有家室，没有幻想，存着戒心，每天晚上边摸索各自那部有诸家注释的《驯悍记》，边在沉思。

“你这是谬论，”约翰•埃格林顿率直地对斯蒂芬说，“你带着我们兜了半天圈子，不过是让我们看到一个法国式的三角关系。你相信自己的见解吗?”

“不，”斯蒂芬马上说。

“你打算把它写下来吗?”贝斯特先生问，“你应该写成问答体。知道吧，就像王尔德所写的柏拉图式的对话录。”

约翰•埃克列克提康[511]露出暖昧的笑容。

“喏，倘若是那样，”他说，“既然连你自己都不相信，我就不明白你怎么还能指望得到报酬呢。多顿[512]相信《哈姆莱特》中有些神秘之处，然而他只说到这里为止。派珀在柏林遇见的勃莱布楚先生正在研究关于拉特兰[513]的学说，他相信个中秘密隐藏在斯特拉特福的纪念碑里。派珀说，他即将去拜访当前这位公爵，并向公爵证明，是他的祖先写下了那些戏剧。这会出乎公爵大人的意料，然而勃莱布楚相信自己的见解。

“我信，噢，主啊，但是我的信心不足，求您帮助我”[514]就是说，帮助我去信，或者帮助我不去信。谁来帮助我去信?我自己。[515]谁来帮助我不去信呢?另一个家伙。

“在给《达娜》[516]撰稿的人当中，你是唯一要求付酬的。像这样的话，下一期如何就难说了。弗雷德•瑞安[517]还要保留些篇幅来刊登一篇有关经济学的文章呢。”

弗莱德琳。他借给过我两枚银币。好歹应付一下吧。经济学。

“要是付一基尼，”斯蒂芬说，“你就可以发表这篇访问记了。”

面带笑容正在潦潦草草写着什么的勃克•穆利根，这时边笑边站起来，然后笑里藏刀，一本正经地说：

“我到‘大诗人’金赤在上梅克伦堡街的夏季别墅那里去拜访过他，发现他正和两个生梅毒的女人——新手内莉和煤炭码头上的婊子罗莎莉[518]——一道埋头研究《反异教大全》[519]呢。”

他把话顿了一顿。

“来吧，金赤，来吧，飘忽不定的飞鸟之神安古斯[520]。”

出来吧，金赤，你把我们剩的都吃光了。[521]嗯，我把残羹剩饭和下水赏给你吃。

斯蒂芬站起来了。

人生不外乎一天接一天。今天即将结束了。

“今天晚上见，”约翰•埃格林顿说，“我们的朋友[522]穆尔说，务必请勃克•穆利根来。”

勃克•穆利根挥着那纸片和巴拿马帽。

“穆尔先生，[523]”他说，“爱尔兰青年的法国文学讲师。我去。来吧，金赤，‘大诗人’们非喝酒不可。你不用扶能走吗?”

他边笑着，边……

痛饮到十一点，爱尔兰的夜宴。

傻大个儿……

斯蒂芬跟在一个傻大个儿后面……

有一天，我们在国立图书馆讨论过一次。莎士。[524]然后，我跟在傻乎乎的他背后走。我和他的脚后跟挨得那么近，简直可以蹭破那上面的冻疮了。[525]

斯蒂芬向大家致意，然后垂头丧气地[526]跟着那个新理过发、头梳得整整齐齐、爱说笑话的傻大个儿，从拱顶斗室走入没有思想的灿烂骄阳中去。

我学到了什么?关于他们?关于我自己?

眼下就像海恩斯那样走吧。

长期读者阅览室。在阅览者签名簿上，卡什尔•博伊尔•奥康纳•菲茨莫里斯•菲斯德尔•法雷尔用龙飞凤舞的字体写下了他那多音节的名字。研究项目：哈姆莱特发疯了吗?歇顶的公谊会教徒正在跟一个小教士虔诚地谈论着书本。

“啊，请您务必……那我真是太高兴啦……”

勃克•穆利根觉得有趣，自己点点头，愉快地咕哝道：

“心满意足的波顿。[527]”

旋转栅门。

难道是……?饰有蓝绸带的帽子……?胡乱涂写着……?什么?……看见了吗？

弧形扶栏。明契乌斯河缓缓流着，一平如镜。[528]

迫克[529]•穆利根，头戴巴拿马盔，一边走着，一边忽高忽低地唱着：

约翰•埃格林顿，我的乖，约翰，[530]

你为啥不娶个老婆?

他朝半空中啐了一口，唾沫飞溅。

“噢，没下巴的中国佬!靳张艾林唐[531]。我们曾到过他们那戏棚子，海恩斯和我，在管子工会的会馆。我们的演员们正在像希腊人或梅特林克先生那样，为欧洲创造一种新艺术。阿贝剧院!我闻见了僧侣们阴部的汗臭味。”[532]

他漠然地啐了口唾沫。

一古脑儿全抛在脑后了，就像忘记了可恶的路希那顿鞭子一样。[533]也忘记了撇下那个三十岁的女人[534]的事。为什么没再生个娃娃呢?而且，为什么头胎是个女孩儿呢?

事后聪明。从头来一遍。

倔强的隐士依然在那儿呢(他把点心拿在乎里[535])，还有那个文静的小伙子，小乖乖[536]，菲多那囝囝般的金发。[537]

呃……我只是呃……曾经想要……我忘记了……呃……

“朗沃思和麦考迪•阿特金森也在那儿[538]……”

迫克•穆利根合辙押韵，颤声吟着：

每逢喊声传邻里，

或听街头大兵语，

我就忽然间想起，

弗•麦考迪•阿特金森，

一条木腿是假的，

穿着短裤不讲道理，

渴了不敢把酒饮，

嘴缺下巴的马吉，

活了一世怕娶妻，

二人成天搞手淫。[539]

继续嘲弄吧。认识自己。[540] 

一个嘲弄者在我下面停下脚步，望着我。我站住了。

“愁眉苦脸的戏子，”勃克•穆利根慨叹道，“辛格为了活得更自然，不再穿丧服了。只有老鸨、教士和英国煤炭才是黑色的。”[541]

他唇边掠过一丝微笑。

“自从你写了那篇关于狗鳕婆子格雷戈里的文章，”他说，“朗沃思就感到非常烦闷。哦，你这个好窥人隐私、成天酗酒的犹太耶稣会士!她在报馆里替你谋一份差事，你却骂她是蹩脚演员，写了那些蠢话。你难道不能学点叶芝的笔法吗?[542]”

他歪鼻子斜眼地走下楼梯，优雅地抡着胳膊吟诵着：

“我国当代一部最美的书。它令人想到荷马。”

他在楼梯下止住了步子。

“我为哑剧演员们构思了一出戏，”他认真地说。

有着圆柱的摩尔式大厅，阴影交错。九个头戴有标志的帽子的男人跳的摩利斯舞[543]结束了。

勃克•穆利根用他那甜润、抑扬顿挫的嗓音读着那个法

版：[544]

人人是各自的妻

或

到手的蜜月

(由三次情欲亢进构成的、国民不道德剧)

作者

巴洛基•穆利根[545]

他朝斯蒂芬装出一脸快乐的傻笑，说：

“就怕伪装得不够巧妙。可是且听下去。”

他读道，清晰地：[546] 

登场人物

托比•托斯托夫(破了产的波兰人)

克雷布(土匪)[547]

医科学生迪克

和一石二鸟

医科学生戴维

老枢葛罗甘(送水者)

新手内莉

以及

罗莎莉(煤炭码头上的婊子)

他摇头晃脑地笑了，继续往前走，斯蒂芬跟在后面。他对着影子——对着人们的灵魂快快乐乐地说着话儿：

“啊，坎姆顿会堂[548]的那个夜晚啊！——你躺在桑椹色的、五彩续纷的大量呕吐物当中。为了从你身上迈过去，爱琳[549]的女儿们得撩起她们的裙子!”

“她们为之撩起裙子的，”斯蒂芬说，“是爱琳最天真无邪的儿子。”

正要走出门口的当儿，他觉出背后有人，便往旁边一闪。

走吧。现在正是时机。那么，去哪儿呢?倘若苏格拉底今天离开家，倘若犹大今晚外出。为什么?它横在我迟早会无可避免地要到达的空间。

我的意志。与我遥遥相对的是他的意志。中间隔着汪洋大海。

一个男人边鞠躬边致意，从他们之间穿过。

“又碰见了，”勃克•穆利根说。

有圆柱的门廊。

为了占卜凶吉，我曾在这里眺望过鸟群。[550]飞鸟之神安古斯。它们飞去又飞来。昨天晚上我飞了。飞得自由自在。人们感到惊异。随后就是娼妓街。他捧着一只淡黄色蜜瓜朝我递过来。进来吧。随你挑[551]。

“一个流浪的犹太人，[552]”勃克、穆利根战战兢兢地装出一副小丑的样子悄悄地说，“你瞅见他的眼神了吗?他色迷迷地盯着你哩。我怕你，老水手。[553]哦，金赤。你的处境危险呀。去买条结实的裤衩吧。”

牛津派头。

白昼。拱形桥的上空，悬着状似独轮手车的太阳。

黑色的脊背方着豹一般的步伐，走在他们前面，从吊门的[554]倒刺下边钻了出去。

他们跟在后面。

继续对我大放厥词吧，说下去。

柔和的空气使基尔戴尔街的房屋外角轮廓鲜明。没有鸟儿。两缕轻烟从房顶袅袅上升，形成羽毛状，被一阵和风柔和地刮走。

别再厮斗了。辛白林的德鲁伊特祭司们的安宁，阐释秘义：在辽阔的大地上筑起一应祭坛。

让我们赞美神明;

让袅袅香烟从我们神圣的祭坛
Chapter 10 Wandering Rocks
THE SUPERIOR, THE VERY REVEREND JOHN CONMEE S. J, RESET HIS smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was that boy's name again? Dignam, yes. Vere dignum et justum est. Brother Swan was the person to see. Mr Cunningham's letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible. Good practical catholic: useful at mission time. 
A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for aims towards the very reverend John Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his purse held, he knew, one silver crown. 

Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for long, of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs, ending their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey's words: If I had served my God as I have served my king He would not have abandoned me in my old days. He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking leaves and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P. 

-- Very well, indeed, father. And you father? 

Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton probably for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that. And Mr Sheehy himself? Still in London. The house was still sitting, to be sure it was. Beautiful weather it was, delightful indeed. Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would come again to preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonderful man really. 

Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P. looking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M. P. Yes, he would certainly call. 

-- Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy. 

Father Conmee doffed his silk hat, as he took leave, at the jet beads of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again in going. He had cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste. 

Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father Bernard Vaughan's droll eyes and cockney voice. 

-- Pilate! Wy don't you old back that owlin mob? 

A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in his way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish. Of good family too would one think it? Welsh, were they not? 

O, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial. 

Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of Mountjoy square. Yes: they were from Belvedere. The little house: Aha. And were they good boys at school? O. That was very good now. And what was his name? Jack Sohan. And his name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other little man? His name was Brunny Lynam. O, that was a very nice name to have. 

Father Conmee gave a letter from his breast to master Brunny Lynam and pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon street. 

-- But mind you don't post yourself into the box, little man, he said. 

The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed. 

-- O, sir. 

-- Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee said. 

Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father Conmee's letter to father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox, Father Conmee smiled and nodded and smiled and walked along Mountjoy square east. 

Mr Denis J. Maginni, professor of dancing, &c., in silk hat, slate frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender trousers, canary gloves and pointed patent boots, walking with grave deportment most respectfully took the curbstone as he passed lady Maxwell at the corner of Dignam's court. 

Was that not Mrs M'Guinness? 

Mrs M'Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father Conmee from the farther footpath along which she smiled. And Father Conmee smiled and saluted. How did she do? 

A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. And to think that she was a pawnbroker. Well, now! Such a... what should he say?... such a queenly mien. 

Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the shutup free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Green B. A. will (D. V.) speak. The incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent on him to say a few words. But one should be charitable. Invincible ignorance. They acted according to their lights. 

Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North Circular road. It was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such an important thoroughfare. Surely, there ought to be. 

A band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All raised untidy caps. Father Conmee greeted them more than once benignly. Christian brother boys. 

Father Conmee smelled incense on his right hand as he walked. Saint Joseph's church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females. Father Conmee raised his hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous: but occasionally they were also badtempered. 

Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift nobleman. And now it was an office or something. 

Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was saluted by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop. Father Conmee saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came from baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He passed Grogan's the tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York. In America those things were continually happening. Unfortunate people to die like that, unprepared. Still, an act of perfect contrition. 

Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin's publichouse against the window of which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted. 

Father Conmee passed H. J. O'Neill's funeral establishment where Corny Kelleher totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of hay. A constable on his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted the constable. In Youkstetter's, the pork-butcher's, Father Conmee observed pig's puddings, white and black and red, lying neatly curled in tubes. 

Moored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee saw a turf barge, a towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty straw seated amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above him. It was idyllic: and Father Conmee reflected on the providence of the Creator who had made turf to be in bogs where men might dig it out and bring it to town and hamlet to make fires in the houses of poor people. 

On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee S. J. of saint Francis Xavier's church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an outward bound tram. 

Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley C. C. of saint Agatha's church, north William street, on to Newcomen bridge. 

At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound tram for he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island. 

Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked with care in the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a sixpence and five pennies chuted from his other plump glovepalm into his purse. Passing the ivy church he reflected that the ticket inspector usually made his visit when one had carelessly thrown away the ticket. The solemnity of the occupants of the car seemed to Father Conmee excessive for a journey so short and cheap. Father Conmee liked cheerful decorum. 

It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite Father Conmee had finished explaining and looked down. His wife, Father Conmee supposed. A tiny yawn opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman with the glasses. She raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so gently, tiptapping her small gloved fist on her opening mouth and smiled tinily, sweetly. 

Father Conmee perceived her perfume in the car. He perceived also that the awkward man at the other side of her was sitting on the edge of the seat. 

Father Conmee at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty in the mouth of the awkward old man who had the shaky head. 

At Annesley bridge the tram halted and, when it was about to go, an old woman rose suddenly from her place to alight. The conductor pulled the bellstrap to stay the car for her. She passed out with her basket and a market net: and Father Conmee saw the conductor help her and net and basket down: and Father Conmee thought that, as she had nearly passed the end of the penny fare, she was one of those good souls who had always to be told twice bless you, my child, that they have been absolved, pray for me. But they had so many worries in life, so many cares, poor creatures. 

From the hoardings Mr Eugene Stratton grinned with thick niggerlips at Father Conmee. 

Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow men and of his sermon of saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African mission and of the propagation of the faith and of the millions of black and brown and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour came like a thief in the night. That book by the Belgian jesuit, Le Nombre des élus, seemed to Father Conmee a reasonable plea. Those were millions of human souls created by God in His Own likeness to whom the faith had not (D. V.) been brought. But they were God's souls created by God. It seemed to Father Conmee a pity that they should all be lost, a waste, if one might say. 

At the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by the conductor and saluted in his turn. 

The Malahide road was quiet. It pleased Father Conmee, road and name. The joybells were ringing in gay Malahide. Lord Talbot de Malahide, immediate hereditary lord admiral of Malahide and the seas adjoining. Then came the call to arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day. Those were oldworldish days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old times in the barony. 

Father Conmee, walking, thought of his little book Old Times in the Barony and of the book that might be written about jesuit houses and of Mary Rochfort, daughter of lord Molesworth, first countess of Belvedere. 

A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel, Mary, first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening, not startled when an otter plunged. Who could know the truth? Not the jealous lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had not committed adultery fully, eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris, with her husband's brother? She would half confess if she had not all sinned as women did. Only God knew and she and he, her husband's brother. 

Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed however for men's race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways. 

Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was humane and honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at smiling noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit clusters. And the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble, were impalmed by don John Conmee. 

It was a charming day. 

The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages, curtseying to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a flock of small white clouds going slowly down the wind. Moutonner, the French said. A homely and just word. 

Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of muttoning clouds over Rathcoffey. His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble of Clongowes field. He walked there, reading in the evening, and heard the cries of the boys' lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening. He was their rector: his reign was mild. 

Father Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged breviary out. An ivory bookmark told him the page. 

Nones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady Maxwell had come. 

Father Conmee read in secret Pater and Ave and crossed his breast. Deus in adiutorium. 

He wamked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and reading till he came to Res in Beati immaculati: Principium verborum tuotum veritas: in eternum omnia iudicia iustitu tu&Aelig;. 

A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. The young man raised his cap abruptly: the young woman abruptly bent and with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging twig. 

Father Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thin page of his breviary. Sin: Principes persecuti sunt me gratis: et a verbis tuis formidavit cor meum. 

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Corny Kelleher closed his long daybook and glanced with his drooping eye at a pine coffinlid sentried in a corner. He pulled himself erect, went to it and, spinning it on its axle, viewed its shape and brass furnishings. Chewing his blade of hay he laid the coffinlid by and came to the doorway. There he tilted his hatbrim to give shade to his eyes and leaned against the doorcase, looking idly out. 

Father John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on Newcomen bridge. 

Corny Kelleher locked his largefooted boots and gazed, his hat downtilted, chewing his blade of hay. 

Constable 57C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day. 

-- That's a fine day, Mr Kelleher. 

-- Ay, Corny Kelleher said. 

-- It's very close, the constable said. 

Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin. 

-- What's the best news? he asked. 

-- I seen that particular party last evening, the constable said with bated breath. 

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A onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell's corner, skirting Rabaiotti's icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street. Towards Larry O'Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled unamiably 

-- For England... 

He swung himself violently forward past Katey and Boody Dedalus, halted and growled: 

-- home and beauty. 

J.J. O'Molloy's white careworn face was told that Mr Lambert was in the warehouse with a visitor. 

A stout lady stopped, took a copper coin from her purse and dropped it into the cap held out to her. The sailor grumbled thanks and glanced sourly at the unheeding windows, sank his head and swung himself forward four strides. 

He halted and growled angrily: 

-- For England... 

Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted near him, gaping at his stump with their yellow-slobbered mouths. 

He swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted his head towards a window and bayed deeply: 

-- home and beauty. 

The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two, ceased. The blind of the window was drawn aside. A card Unfurnished Apartments slipped from the sash and fell. 

A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen, held forth from a white petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps. A woman's hand flung forth a coin over the area railings. It fell on the path. 

One of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it into the minstrel's cap, saying: 

-- There, sir. 

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Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the closesteaming kitchen. 

-- Did you put in the books? Boody asked. 

Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath bubbling suds twice with her potstick and wiped her brow. 

-- They wouldn't give anything on them, she said. 

Father Conmee walked through Clongowes fields, his thinsocked ankles tickled by stubble. 

-- Where did you try? Boody asked. 

-- M'Guinness's. 

Body stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table. 

-- Bad cess to her big face! she cried. 

Katey went to the range and peered with squinting eyes. 

-- What's in the pot? she asked. 

-- Shirts, Maggy said. 

Boody cried angrily: 

-- Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat? 

Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked: 

-- And what's in this? 

A heavy fume gushed in answer. 

-- Peasoup, Maggy said. 

-- Where did you get it? Katey asked. 

-- Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said. 

The lacquey rang his bell. 

-- Barang! 

Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily: 

-- Give us it here! 

Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl. Katey, sitting opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to her mouth random crumbs. 

-- A good job we have that much. Where's Dilly? 

-- Gone to meet father, Maggy said. 

Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added: 

-- Our father who art not in heaven. 

Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey's bowl, exclaimed: 

-- Boody! For shame! 

A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the Customhouse old dock and George's quay. 

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The blonde girl in Thornton's bedded the wicker basket with rustling fibre. Blazes Boylan handed her the bottle swathed in pink tissue paper and a small jar. 

-- Put these in first, will you? he said. 

-- Yes, sir, the blond girl said, and the fruit on top. 

-- That'll do, game ball, Blazes Boylan said. 

She bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among them ripe shamefaced peaches. 

Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about the fruitsmelling shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red tomatoes, sniffing smells. 

H. E. L. Y.'S. filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier lane, plodding towards their goal. 

He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch from his fob and held it at its chain's length. 

-- Can you send them by tram? Now? 

A darkbacked figure under Merchants' arch scanned books on the hawker's car. 

-- Certainly, sir. Is it in the city? 

-- O, yes, Blazes Boylan said. Ten minutes. 

The blond girl handed him a docket and pencil. 

-- Will you write the address, sir? 

Blazes Boylan at the counter wrote and pushed the docket to her. 

-- Send it at once, will you? he said. It's for an invalid. 

-- Yes, sir. I will, sir. 

Blazes Boylan rattled merry money in his trousers' pocket. 

-- What's the damage? he asked. 

The blond girl's slim fingers reckoned the fruits. 

Blazes Boylan looked into the cut of her blouse. A young pullet. He took a red carnation from the tall stemglass. 

-- This for me? he asked gallantly. 

The blond girl glanced sideways at him, got up regardless, with his tie a bit crooked, blushing. 

-- Yes, sir, she said. 

Bending archly she reckoned again fat pears and blushing peaches. 

Blazes Boylan looked in her blouse with more favour, the stalk of the red flower between his smiling teeth. 

-- May I say a word to your telephone, missy? he asked roguishly. 

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-- Ma! Almidano Artifoni said. 

He gazed over Stephen's shoulder at Goldsmith's knobby poll. 

Two carfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting fore, gripping frankly the handrests. Pale faces. Men's arms frankly round their stunted forms. They looked from Trinity to the blind columned porch of the bank of Ireland where pigeons roocoocooed. 

-- Anch'io ho avuto di queste idee, Almidano Artifoni said, quand' ero giovine come Lei. Eppoi mi sono convinto che il mondo è una bestia. è peccato. Perche la sua voce... sarebbe un cespite di rendita, via. Invece, Lei si sacrifica. 

-- Sacrifizio incruento, Stephen said smiling, swaying his ashplant in slow swingswong from its midpoint, lightly. 

-- Speriamo, the round mustachioed face said pleasantly. Ma, dia retta a me. Ci rifletta. 

By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore tram unloaded straggling Highland soldiers of a band. 

-- Ci riflettò, Stephen said, glancing down the solid trouser-leg. 

-- Ma, sul serio, eh? Almidano Artifoni said. 

His heavy hand took Stephen's firmly. Human eyes. They gazed curiously an instant and turned quickly towards a Dalkey tram. 

-- Eccolo, Almidano Artifoni said in friendly haste. Venga a trovarmi e ci pensi. Addio, caro. 

-- Arrivederla, maestro, Stephen said, raising his hat when his hand was freed. E grazie. 

-- Di che? Almidano Artifoni said. Scusi, eh? Tante belle cose! 

Almidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as a signal, trotted on stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In vain he trotted, signalling in vain among the rout of bare-kneed gillies smuggling implements of music through Trinity gates. 

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Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of The Woman in White far back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper into her typewriter. 

Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one, Marion? Change it and get another by Mary Cecil Haye. 

The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled them: six. 

Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard: 

-- 16 June 1904. 

Five tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny's corner and the slab where Wolfe Tone's statue was not, eeled themselves turning H. E. L. Y.'S and plodded back as they had come. 

Then she stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, and, listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens and capital esses. Mustard hair and dauby cheeks. She's not nicelooking, is she? The way she is holding up her bit of a skirt. Wonder will that fellow be at the band tonight. If I could get that dressmaker to make a concertina skirt like Susy Nagle's. They kick out grand. Shannon and all the boatclub swells never took his eyes off her. Hope to goodness he won't keep me here till seven. 

The telephone rang rudely by her ear. 

-- Hello. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. I'll ring them up after five. Only those two, sir, for Belfast and Liverpool. All right, sir. Then I can go after six if you're not back. A quarter after. Yes, sir. Twentyseven and six. I'll tell him. Yes: one, seven, six. 

She scribbled three figures on an envelope. 

-- Mr Boylan l Hello! That gentleman from Sport was in looking for you. Mr Lenehan, yes. He said he'll be in the Ormond at four. No, sir. Yes, sir. I'll ring them up after five. 

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Two pink faces turned in the flare of the tiny torch. 

-- Who's that? Ned Lambert asked. Is that Crotty? 

-- Ringabella and Crosshaven, a voice replied, groping for foothold. 

-- Hello, Jack, is that yourself? Ned Lambert said, raising in salute his pliant lath among the flickering arches. Come on. Mind your steps there. 

The vesta in the clergyman's uplifted hand consumed itself In a long soft flame and was let fall. At their feet its red speck died: and mouldy air closed round them. 

-- How interesting! a refined accent said in the gloom. 

-- Yes, sir, Ned Lambert said heartily. We are standing in the historic council chamber of saint Mary's abbey where silken Thomas proclaimed himself a rebel in 1534. This is the most historic spot in all Dublin. O'Madden Burke is going to write something about it one of these days. The old bank of Ireland was over the way till the time of the union and the original jews' temple was here too before they built their synagogue over in Adelaide road. You were never here before, Jack, were you? 

-- No, Ned. 

-- He rode down through Dame walk, the refined accent said, if my memory serves me. The mansion of the Kildares was in Thomas court. 

-- That's right, Ned Lambert said. That's quite right, sir. 

-- If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next time to allow me perhaps . 

-- Certainly, Ned Lambert said. Bring the camera whenever you like. I'll get those bags cleared away from the windows. You can take it from here or from here. 

In the still faint light he moved about, tapping with his lath the piled seedbags and points of vantage on the floor. 

From a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard. 

-- I'm deeply obliged, Mr Lambert, the clergyman said. I won't trespass on your valuable time... 

-- You're welcome, sir, Ned Lambert said. drop in whenever you like. Next week, say. Can you see? 

-- Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Lambert. Very pleased to have met you. 

-- Pleasure is mine, sir, Ned Lambert answered. 

He followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his lath away among the pillars. With J.J. O'Molloy he came forth slowly into Mary's abbey where draymen were loading floats with sacks of carob and palmnut meal, O'Connor, Wexford. 

He stood to read the card in his hand. 

-- The reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address: Saint Michael's, Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He's writing a book about the Fitzgeralds he told me. He's well up in history, faith. 

The young woman with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging twig. 

-- I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J.J. O'Molloy said. 

Ned Lambert cracked his fingers in the air. 

-- God, he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I'm bloody sorry I did it, says he, but I declare to God I thought the archbishop was inside. He mightn't like it, though. What? God, I'll tell him anyhow. That was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of them, the Geraldines. 

The horses he passed started nervously under their slack harness. He slapped a piebald haunch quivering near him and cried: 

-- Woa, sonny! 

He turned to J.J. O'Molloy and asked: 

-- Well, Jack. What is it? What's the trouble? Wait a while. Holdhard. 

With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an instant, sneezed loudly. 

-- Chow! he said. Blast you! 

-- The dust from those sacks, J.J. O'Molloy said politely. 

-- No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a... cold night before ... blast your soul... night before last... and there was a hell of a lot of draught... 

He held his handkerchief ready for the coming... 

-- I was... this morning... poor little... what do you call him... Chow!... Mother of Moses! 

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Tom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped against his claret waistcoat. 

-- See? he said. Say it's turn six. In here, see. Turn Now On. 

He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased, ogling them: six. 

Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from the consolidated taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie Goulding carrying the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward and heard rustling from the admiralty division of King's bench to the court of appeal an elderly female with false teeth smiling incredulously and a black silk skirt of great amplitude. 

-- See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here. Turns Over. The impact. Leverage, see? 

He showed them the rising column of disks on the right. 

-- Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming in late can see what turn is on and what turns are over. 

-- See? Tom Rochford said. 

He slid in a disk for himself: and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle, stop: four. Turn Now On. 

-- I'll see him now in the Ormond, Lenehan said, and sound him. One good turn deserves another. 

-- Do, Tom Rochford said. Tell him I'm Boylan with impatience. 

-- Goodnight, M'Coy said abruptly, when you two begin. 

Nosey Flynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it. 

-- But how does it work here, Tommy? he asked. 

-- Tooraloo, Lenehan said, see you later. 

He followed M'Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton court. 

-- He's a hero, he said simply. 

-- I know, M'Coy said. The drain, you mean. 

-- Drain? Lenehan said. It was down a manhole. 

They passed Dan Lowry's musichall where Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, smiled on them from a poster a dauby smile. 

Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire musichall Lenehan showed M'Coy how the whole thing was. One of those manholes like a bloody gaspipe and there was the poor devil stuck down in it half choked with sewer gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky's vest and all, with the rope round him. And be damned but he got the rope round the poor devil and the two were hauled up. 

-- The act of a hero, he said. 

At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop past them for Jervis street. 

-- This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop into Lynam's to see Sceptre's starting price. What's the time by your gold watch and chain? 

M'Coy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses' sombre office, then at O'Neill's clock. 

-- After three, he said. Who's riding her? 

-- O. Madden, Lenehan said. And a game filly she is. 

While he waited in Temple bar M'Coy dodged a banana peel with gentle pushes of his toe from the path to the gutter. Fellow might damn easy get a nasty fall there coming along tight in the dark. 

The gates of the drive opened wide to give egress to the vice-regal cavalcade. 

-- Even money, Lenehan said returning. I knocked against Bantam Lyons in there going to back a bloody horse someone gave him that hasn't an earthly. Through here. 

They went up the steps and under Merchants' arch. A dark-backed figure scanned books on the hawker's cart. 

-- There he is, Lenehan said. 

-- Wonder what he is buying, M'Coy said, glancing behind. 

-- Leopoldo or the Bloom is on the Rye, Lenehan said. 

-- He's dead nuts on sales, M'Coy said. I was with him one day and he bought a book from an old one in Liffey street for two bob. There were fine plates in it worth double the money, the stars and the moon and comets with long tails. Astronomy it was about. 

Lenehan laughed. 

-- I'll tell you a damn good one about comets' tails, he said. Come over in the sun. 

They crossed to the metal bridge and went along Wellington quay by the river wall. 

Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam came out of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's, carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks. 

-- There was a big spread out at Glencree reformatory, Lenehan said eagerly. The annual dinner you know. Boiled shirt affair. The lord mayor was there, Val Dillon it was, and sir Charles Cameron and Dan Dawson spoke and there was music. Bartell D'Arcy sang and Benjamin Dollard. 

-- I know, M'Coy broke in. My missus sang there once. 

-- Did she? Lenehan said. 

A card Unfurnished Apartments reappeared on the windowsash of number 7 Eccles street. 

He checked his tale a moment but broke out in a wheezy laugh. 

-- But wait till I tell you, he said. Delahunt of Camden street had the catering and yours truly was chief bottlewasher. Bloom and the wife were there. Lashings of stuff we put up: port wine and sherry and cura?ao to which we did ample justice. Fast and furious it was. After liquids came solids. Cold joints galore and mince pies. 

-- I know, M'Coy said. The year the missus was there... 

Lenehan linked his arm warmly. 

-- But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o'clock the morning after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter's night on the Featherbed Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one side of the car and I was with the wife on the other. We started singing glees and duets: Lo, the early beam of morning. She was well primed with a good load of Delahunt's port under her bellyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping up against me. Hell's delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her. Like that. 

He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning: 

-- I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time. Know what I mean? 

His hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips. 

-- The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She's a gamey mare and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out all the stars and the comets in the heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey: the great bear and Hercules and the dragon and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I was lost, so to speak, in the milky way. He knows them all, faith. At last she spotted a weeny weeshy one miles away. And what star is that, Poldy? says she. By God, she had Bloom cornered. That one, is it? says Chris Callinan, sure that's only what you might call a pinprick. By God, he wasn't far wide of the mark. 

Lenehan stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with soft laughter. 

-- I'm weak, he gasped. 

M'Coy's white face smiled about it at instants and grew grave. Lenehan walked on again. He lifted his yachtingcap and scratched his hindhead rapidly. He glanced sideways in the sunlight at M'Coy. 

-- He's a cultured allroundman, Bloom is, he said seriously. He's not one of your common or garden... you know... There's a touch of the artist about old Bloom. 

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Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, then of Aristotle's Masterpiece. Crooked botched print. Plates: infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this moment all over the world. All butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy. 

He laid both books aside and glanced at the third: Tales of the Ghetto by Leopold von Sacher Masoch. 

-- That I had, he said, pushing it by. 

The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter. 

-- Them are two good ones, he said. 

Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth. He bent to make a bundle of the other books, hugged them against his unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain. 

On O'Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment and gay apparel of Mr Denis J. Maginni, professor of dancing &c. 

Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. Fair Tyrants by James Lovebirch. Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes. 

He opened it. Thought so. 

A woman's voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen: The man. 

No: she wouldn't like that much. Got her it once. 

He read the other title: Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let us see. 

He read where his finger opened. 

-- All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on wondrous gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For Raoul! 

Yes. This. Here. Try. 

-- Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands felt for the opulent curves inside her déshabillé. 

Yes. Take this. The end. 

-- You are late, he spoke hoarsely, eyeing her with a suspicious glare. The beautiful woman threw off her sabletrimmed wrap, displaying her queenly shoulders and heaving embonpoint. An imperceptible smile played round her perfect lips as she turned to him calmly. 

Mr Bloom read again: The beautiful woman. 

Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amid rumpled clothes. Whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves for prey. Melting breast ointments (For him! For Raoul!). Armpits' oniony sweat. Fishgluey slime (her heaving embonpoint!). Feel! Press! Crushed! Sulphur dung of lions! 

Young! Young! 

An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of chancery, king's bench, exchequer and common pleas, having heard in the lord chancellor's court the case in lunacy of Potterton, in the admiralty division the summons, exparte motion, of the owners of the Lady Cairns versus the owners of the barque Mona, in the court of appeal reservation of judgment in the case of Harvey versus the Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation. 

Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy curtains. The shopman's uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven reddened face, coughing. He raked his throat rudely, spat phlegm on the floor. He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it and bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired. 

Mr Bloom beheld it. 

Mastering his troubled breath, he said: 

-- I'll take this one. 

The shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum. 

-- Sweets of Sin, he said, tapping on it. That's a good one. 

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The lacquey by the door of Dillon's auctionrooms shook his handbell twice again and viewed himself in the chalked mirror of the cabinet. 

Dilly Dedalus, listening by the curbstone, heard the beats of the bell, the cries of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. Those lovely curtains. Five shillings. Cosy curtains. Selling new at two guineas. Any advance on five shillings? Going for five shillings. 

The lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it: 

-- Barang! 

Bang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to their sprint. J. A. Jackson, W. E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T. Gahan, their stretched necks wagging, negotiated the curve by the College Library. 

Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams's row. He halted near his daughter. 

-- It's time for you, she said. 

-- Stand up straight for the love of the Lord Jesus, Mr Dedalus said. Are you trying to imitate your uncle John the cornetplayer, head upon shoulders? Melancholy God! 

Dilly shrugged her shoulders. Mr Dedalus placed his hands on them and held them back. 

-- Stand up straight, girl, he said. You'll get curvature of the spine. Do you know what you look like? 

He let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching his shoulders and dropping his underjaw. 

-- Give it up, father, Dilly said. All the people are looking at you. 

Mr Dedalus drew himself upright and tugged again at his moustache. 

-- Did you get any money? Dilly asked. 

-- Where would I get money? Mr Dedalus said. There is no-one in Dublin would lend me fourpence. 

-- You got some, Dilly said, looking in his eyes. 

-- How do you know that? Mr Dedalus asked, his tongue in his cheek. 

Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked boldly along James's street. 

-- I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch house now? 

-- I was not then, Mr Dedalus said, smiling. Was it the little nuns taught you to be so saucy? Here. 

He handed her a shilling. 

-- See if you can do anything with that, he said. 

-- I suppose you got five, Dilly said. Give me more than that. 

-- Wait awhile, Mr Dedalus said threateningly. You're like the rest of them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor mother died. But wait awhile. You'll all get a short shrift and a long day from me. Low blackguardism! I'm going to get rid of you. Wouldn't care if I was stretched out stiff. He's dead. The man upstairs is dead. 

He left her and walked on. Dilly followed quickly and pulled his coat. 

-- Well, what is it? he said, stopping. 

The lacquey rang his bell behind their backs. 

-- Barang! 

-- Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Dedalus cried, turning on him. 

The lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper of his bell but feebly: 

-- Bang! 

Mr Dedalus stared at him. 

-- Watch him, he said. It's instructive. I wonder will he allow us to talk. 

-- You got more than that, father, Dilly said. 

-- I'm going to show you a little trick, Mr Dedalus said. I'll leave you all where Jesus left the jews. Look, that's all I have. I got two shillings from Jack Power and I spent twopence for a shave for the funeral. 

He drew forth a handful of copper coins nervously. 

-- Can't you look for some money somewhere? Dilly said. 

Mr Dedalus thought and nodded. 

-- I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in O'Connell street. I'll try this one now. 

-- You're very funny, Dilly said, grinning. 

-- Here, Mr Dedalus said, handing her two pennies. Get a glass of milk for yourself and a bun or a something. I'll be home shortly. 

He put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on. 

The viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted by obsequious policemen, out of Parkgate. 

-- I'm sure you have another shilling, Dilly said. 

The lacquey banged loudly. 

Mr Dedalus amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself with a pursing mincing mouth: 

-- The little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn't do anything! O, sure they wouldn't really! Is it little sister Monica! 

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From the sundial towards James's Gate walked Mr Kernan pleased with the order he had booked for Pulbrook Robertson boldly along James's street, past Shackleton's offices. Got round him all right. How do you do, Mr Crimmins? First rate, sir. I was afraid you might be up in your other establishment in Pimlico. How are things going? Just keeping alive. Lovely weather we are having. Yes, indeed. Good for the country. Those farmers are always grumbling. I'll just take a thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion: most scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst. What I can't understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a boat like that... Now you are talking straight, Mr Crimmins. You know why? Palmoil. Is that a fact? Without a doubt. Well now, look at that. And America they say is the land of the free. I thought we were bad here. 

I smiled at him. America, I said, quietly, just like that. What is it? The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn't that true? That's a fact. 

Graft, my dear sir. Well, of course, where there's money going there's always someone to pick it up. 

Saw him looking at my frockcoat. Dress does it. Nothing like a dressy appearance. Bowls them over. 

-- Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things? 

-- Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered stopping. 

Mr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping mirror of Peter Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of Dawson street. Well worth the half sovereign I gave Neary for it. Never built under three guineas. Fits me down to the ground. Some Kildare street club toff had it probably. John Mulligan, the manager of the Hibernian bank, gave me a very sharp eye yesterday on Carlisle bridge as if he remembered me. 

Aham! Must dress the character for those fellows. Knight of the road. Gentleman. And now, Mr Crimmins, may we have the honour of your custom again, sir. The cup that cheers but not inebriates, as the old saying has it. 

North wall and sir John Rogerson's quay, with hulls and anchorchains, sailing westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled throwaway, rocked on the ferry-wash, Elijah is coming. 

Mr Kernan glanced in farewell at his image. High colour, of course. Grizzled moustache. Returned Indian officer. Bravely he bore his stumpy body forward on spatted feet, squaring his shoulders. Is that Lambert's brother over the way, Sam? What? Yes. He's as like it as damn it. No. The windscreen of that motorcar in the sun there. Just a flash like that. Damn like him. 

Aham! Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his breath. Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to his fat strut. 

Down there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. Greasy black rope. Dogs licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant's wife drove by in her noddy. 

Let me see. Is he buried in saint Michan's? Or no, there was a midnight burial in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in through a secret door in the wall. Dignam is there now. Went out in a puff. Well, well. Better turn down here. Make a detour. 

Mr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of Watling street by the corner of Guinness's visitors' waitingroom. Outside the Dublin Distillers Company's stores an outside car without fare or jarvey stood, the reins knotted to the wheel. Damn dangerous thing. Some Tipperary bosthoon endangering the lives of the citizens. Runaway horse. 

Denis Breen with his tomes, weary of having waited an hour in John Henry Menton's office, led his wife over O'Connell bridge, bound for the office of Messrs Collis and Ward. 

Mr Kernan approached Island street. 

Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all now in a kind of retrospective arrangement. Gaming at Daly's. No cardsharping then. One of those fellows got his hand nailed to the table by a dagger. Somewhere here Lord Edward Fitzgerald escaped from major Sirr. Stables behind Moira house. 

Damn good gin that was. 

Fine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That ruffian, that sham squire, with his violet gloves, gave him away. Course they were on the wrong side. They rose in dark and evil days. Fine poem that is: Ingram. They were gentlemen. Ben Dollard does sing that ballad touchingly. Masterly rendition. 

At the siege of Ross did my father fall. 

A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades. 

Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily. 

His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it! What a pity! 

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Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the lapidary's fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and winedark stones. 

Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil lights shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest them. 

She dances in a foul gloom where gum burns with garlic. A sailorman, rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and seafed silent rut. She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her hips, on her gross belly flapping a ruby egg. 

Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem, turned it and held it at the point of his Moses' beard. Grandfather ape gloating on a stolen hoard. 

And you who wrest old images from the burial earth! The brainsick words of sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat standing from everlasting to everlasting. 

Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a sanded umbrella, one with a midwife's bag in which eleven cockles rolled. 

The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who can. Bawd and butcher, were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A look around. 

Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You say right, sir. A Monday morning, 'twas so, indeed. 

Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against his shoulderblade. In Clohissey's window a faded 1860 print of Heenan boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in light loincloths proposed gently each to other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing: heroes' hearts. 

He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart. 

-- Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence. 

Tattered pages. The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the Curé of Ars. Pocket Guide to Killarney. 

I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. Stephano Dedalo, alumno optimo, palmam ferenti. 

Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the hamlet of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers. 

Binding too good probably, what is this? Eighth and ninth book of Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this. Say the following talisman three times with hands folded: 

-- Se et yilo nebrakada femininum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen. 

Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot's charms, as mumbling Joachim's. Down, baldynoddle, or we'll wool your wool. 

-- What are you doing here, Stephen. 

Dilly's high shoulders and shabby dress. 

Shut the book quick. Don't let see. 

-- What are you doing? Stephen said. 

A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her of Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck bracelet, Dan Kelly's token. Nebrakada femininum. 

-- What have you there? Stephen asked. 

-- I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing nervously. Is it any good? 

My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and daring. Shadow of my mind. 

He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal's French primer. 

-- What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French? 

She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips. 

Show no surprise. Quite natural. 

-- Here, Stephen said. It's all right. Mind Maggy doesn't pawn it on you. I suppose all my books are gone. 

-- Some, Dilly said. We had to. 

She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death. 

We. 

Agenbite of inwit. Inwit's agenbite. 

Misery! Misery! 

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-- Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things? 

-- Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping. 

They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter's. Father Cowley brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand. 

-- What's the best news? Mr Dedalus said. 

-- Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I'm barricaded up, Simon, with two men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance. 

-- Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it? 

-- O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance. 

-- With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked. 

-- The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I'm just waiting for Ben Dollard. He's going to say a word to Long John to get him to take those two men off. All I want is a little time. 

He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple bulging in his neck. 

-- I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He's always doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard! 

He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant. 

-- There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets. 

Ben Dollard's loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards them at an amble, scratching actively behind his coattails. 

As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted: 

-- Hold that fellow with the bad trousers. 

-- Hold him now, Ben Dollard said. 

Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben Dollard's figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he muttered sneeringly: 

-- That's a pretty garment, isn't it, for a summer's day? 

-- Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw. 

He stood beside them beaming on them first and on his roomy clothes from points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying: 

-- They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow. 

-- Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be to God he's not paid yet. 

-- And how is that basso profondo, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked. 

Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring, glasseyed, strode past the Kildare street club. 

Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter's mouth, gave forth a deep note. 

-- Aw! he said. 

-- That's the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone. 

-- What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What? He turned to both. 

-- That'll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also. 

The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old Chapterhouse of saint Mary's abbey past James and Charles Kennedy's, rectifiers, attended by Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the Ford of Hurdles. 

Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward, his joyful fingers in the air. 

-- Come along with me to the subsheriff's office, he said. I want to show you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He's a cross between Lobengula and Lynchehaun. He's well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw John Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall if I don't... wait awhile... We're on the right lay, Bob, believe you me. 

-- For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously. 

Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling button of his coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away the heavy shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright. 

-- What few days? he boomed. Hasn't your landlord distrained for rent? 

-- He has, Father Cowley said. 

-- Then our friend's writ is not worth the paper it's printed on, Ben Dollard said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the particulars. 29 Windsor avenue. Love is the name? 

-- That's right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He's a minister in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that? 

-- You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put that writ where Jacko put the nuts. 

He led Father Cowley boldly forward linked to his bulk. 

-- Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his glasses on his coatfront, following them. 

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-- The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as they passed out of the Castleyard gate. 

The policeman touched his forehead. 

-- God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily. 

He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on towards Lord Edward street. 

Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head, appeared above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel. 

Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father Conmee and laid the whole case before him. 

-- You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward. 

-- Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not. 

John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them quickly down Cork hill. 

On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannetti, descending, hailed Alderman Cowley and Councillor Abraham Lyon ascending. 

The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street. 

-- Look here Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at the Mail office. I see Bloom put his name down for five shillings. 

-- Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. And put down the five shillings too. 

-- Without a second word either, Mr Power said. 

-- Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added. 

John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes. 

-- I'll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted elegantly. 

They went down Parliament street. 

-- There's Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for Kavanagh's. 

-- Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes. 

Outside la Maison Claire Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack Mooney's brother-in-law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties. 

John Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin Cunningham took the elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit who walked uncertainly with hasty steps past Micky Anderson's watches. 

-- The assistant town clerk's corns are giving him some trouble, John Wyse Nolan told Mr Power. 

They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh's winerooms. The empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate. Martin Cunningham, speaking always, showed often the list at which Jimmy Henry did not glance. 

-- And Long John Fanning is here too, John Wyse Nolan said, as large as life. 

The tall form of Long John Fanning filled the doorway where he stood. 

-- Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Martin Cunningham said, as all halted and greeted. 

Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large Henry Clay decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all their faces. 

-- Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? he said, with rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk. 

Hell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Henry said pettishly, about their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal, he wanted to know, to keep order in the council chamber. And old Barlow the macebearer laid up with asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order, no quorum even and Hutchinson, the lord mayor, in Llandudno and little Lorcan Sherlock doing locum tenens for him. Damned Irish language, of our forefathers. 

Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips. 

Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard, to the assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while John Wyse Nolan held his peace. 

-- What Dignam was that? Long John Fanning asked. 

Jimmy Henry made a grimace and lifted his left foot. 

-- O, my corns! he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness' sake till I sit down somewhere. Uff! Ooo! Mind! 

Testily he made room for himself beside Long John Fanning's flank and passed in and up the stairs. 

-- Come on up, Martin Cunningham said to the subsheriff. I don't think you knew him or perhaps you did, though. 

With John Wyse Nolan Mr Power followed them in. 

-- Decent little soul he was, Mr Power said to the stalwart back of Long John Fanning ascending towards Long John Fanning in the mirror. 

-- Rather lowsized, Dignam of Menton's office that was, Martin Cunningham said. 

Long John Fanning could not remember him. 

Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air. 

-- What's that? Martin Cunningham said. 

All turned where they stood; John Wyse Nolan came down again. From the cool shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament street, harness and glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they went past before his cool unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the leaders, leaping leaders, rode outriders. 

-- What was it? Martin Cunningham asked, as they went on up the staircase. 

-- The lord lieutenant general and general governor of Ireland, John Wyse Nolan answered from the stairfoot. 

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As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered behind his panama to Haines. 

-- Parnell's brother. There in the corner. 

They chose a small table near the window opposite a long-faced man whose beard and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard. 

-- Is that he? Haines asked, twisting round in his seat. 

-- Yes, Mulligan said. That's John Howard, his brother, our city marshal. 

John Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and his grey claw went up again to his forehead whereat it rested. 

An instant after, under its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more upon a working corner. 

-- I'll take a mélange, Haines said to the waitress. 

-- Two mélanges, Buck Mulligan said. And bring us some scones and butter and some cakes as well. 

When she had gone he said, laughing: 

-- We call it D. B. C. because they have damn bad cakes. O, but you missed Dedalus on Hamlet. 

Haines opened his newbought book. 

-- I'm sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds that have lost their balance. 

The onelegged sailor growled at the area of 14 Nelson street: 

-- England expects... 

Buck Mulligan's primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter. 

-- You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance. Wandering &Aelig;ngus I call him. 

-- I am sure he has an idée fixe, Haines said, pinching his chin thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. Now I am speculating what it would be likely to be. Such persons always have. 

Buck Mulligan bent across the table gravely. 

-- They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. He will never capture the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, of all poets, the white death and the ruddy birth. That is his tragedy. He can never be a poet. The joy of creation. 

-- Eternal punishment, Haines said, nodding curtly. I see. I tackled him this morning on belief. There was something on his mind, I saw. It's rather interesting because Professor Pokorny of Vienna makes an interesting point out of that. 

Buck Mulligan's watchful eyes saw the waitress come. He helped her to unload her tray. 

-- He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines said, amid the cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of retribution. Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea. Does he write anything for your movement? 

He sank two lumps of sugar deftly longwise through the whipped cream. Buck Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter over its smoking pith. He bit off a soft piece hungrily. 

-- Ten years, he said, chewing and laughing. He is going to write something in ten years. 

-- Seems a long way off, Haines said, thoughtfully lifting his spoon. Still, I shouldn't wonder if he did after all. 

He tasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup. 

-- This is real Irish cream I take it, he said with forbearance. I don't want to be imposed on. 

Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of ships and trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping street past Benson's ferry, and by the three-masted schooner Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell's yard. Behind him Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell with stickumbrelladustcoat dangling, shunned the lamp before Mr Law Smith's house and, crossing, walked along Merrion square. Distantly behind him a blind stripling tapped his way by the wall of College Park. 

Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far as Mr Lewis Werner's cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along Merrion square, his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling. 

At the corner of Wilde's he halted, frowned at Elijah's name announced on the Metropolitan Hall, frowned at the distant pleasance of duke's lawn. His eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With ratsteeth bared he muttered: 

-- Coactus volui. 

He strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word. 

As he strode past Mr Bloom's dental windows the sway of his dustcoat brushed rudely from its angle a slender tapping cane and swept onwards, having buffeted a thewless body. The blind stripling turned his sickly face after the striding form. 

-- God's curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you are! You're blinder nor I am, you bitch's bastard! 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Opposite Ruggy O'Donohoe's Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, pawing the pound and half of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's, porksteaks he had been sent for, went along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too blooming dull sitting in the parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and Mrs MacDowell and the blind down and they all at their sniffles and sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle Barney brought from Tunney's. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruit cake jawing the whole blooming time and sighing. 

After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, court dress milliner, stopped him. He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to their pelts and putting up their props. From the sidemirrors two mourning Masters Dignam gaped silently. Myler Keogh, Dublin's pet lamb, will meet sergeant-major Bennett, the Portobello bruiser, for a purse of fifty sovereigns, God, that'd be a good pucking match to see. Myler Keogh, that's the chap sparring out to him with the green sash. Two bar entrance, soldiers half price. I could easy do a bunk on ma. Master Dignam on his left turned as he turned. That's me in mourning. When is it? May the twenty-second. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He turned to the right and on his right Master Dignam turned, his cap awry, his collar sticking up. Buttoning it down, his chin lifted, he saw the image of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, beside the two puckers. One of them mots that do be in the packets of fags Stoer smokes that his old fellow welted hell out of him for one time he found out. 

Master Dignam got his collar down and dawdled on. The best pucker going for strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind from that fellow would knock you into the middle of next week, man. But the best pucker for science was Jem Corbet before Fitzsimons knocked the stuffings out of him, dodging and all. 

In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff's mouth and a swell pair of kicks on him and he listening to what the drunk was telling him and grinning all the time. 

No Sandymount tram. 

Master Dignam walked along Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks to his other hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down. The blooming stud was too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end to it. He met schoolboys with satchels. I'm not going tomorrow either, stay away till Monday. He met other schoolboys. Do they notice I'm in mourning? Uncle Barney said he'd get it into the paper tonight. Then they'll all see it in the paper and read my name printed and pa's name. 

His face got all grey instead of being red like it was and there was a fly walking over it up to his eye. The scrunch that was when they were screwing the screws into the coffin: and the bumps when they were bringing it downstairs. 

Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney telling the men how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was, and high and heavylooking. How was that? The last night pa was boosed he was standing on the landing there bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney's for to boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt. Never see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. He told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn't hear the other things he said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying to say it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope he is in purgatory now because he went to confession to father Conroy on Saturday night. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

William Humble, earl of Dudley, and Lady Dudley, accompanied by lieutenantcolonel Hesseltine, drove out after luncheon from the viceregal lodge. In the following carriage were the honourable Mrs Paget, Miss de Courcy and the honourable Gerald Ward, A. D. C. in attendance. 

The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix Park saluted by obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kingsbridge along the northern quays. The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way through the metropolis. At Bloody bridge Mr Thomas Kernan beyond the river greeted him vainly from afar. Between Queen's and Whitworth bridges Lord Dudley's viceregal carriages passed and were unsaluted by Mr Dudley White, B. L., M. A., who stood on Arran Quay outside Mrs M. E. White's, the pawnbroker's, at the corner of Arran street west stroking his nose with his forefinger, undecided whether he should arrive at Phibsborough more quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on foot through Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus. In the porch of Four Courts Richie Goulding with the costsbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward saw him with surprise. Past Richmond bridge at the doorstep of the office of Reuben J. Dodd, solicitor, agent for the Patriotic Insurance Company, an elderly female about to enter changed her plan and retracing her steps by King's windows smiled credulously on the representative of His Majesty. From its sluice in Wood quay wall under Tom Devan's office Poddle river hung out in fealty a tongue of liquid sewage. Above the crossblind of the Ormond Hotel, gold by bronze, Miss Kennedy's head by Miss Douce's head watched and admired. On Ormond quay Mr Simon Dedalus, steering his way from the greenhouse for the subsheriff's office, stood still in midstreet and brought his hat low. His Excellency graciously returned Mr Dedalus' greeting. From Cahill's corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, M. A., made obeisance unperceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands benignant had held of yore rich advowsons. On Grattan bridge Lenehan and M'Coy, taking leave of each other, watched the carriages go by. Passing by Roger Greene's office and Dollard's big red printing house Gerty MacDowell, carrying the Catesby's cork lino letters for her father who was laid up, knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant but she couldn't see what Her Excellency had on because the tram and Spring's big yellow furniture van had to stop in front of her on account of its being the lord lieutenant. Beyond Lundy Foot's from the shaded door of Kavanagh's winerooms John Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness towards the lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland. The Right Honourable William Humble, earl of Dudley, G. C. V. O., passed Micky Anderson's all times ticking watches and Henry and James's wax smartsuited freshcheeked models, the gentleman Henry, dernier cri James. Over against Dame gate Tom Rochford and Nosey Flynn watched the approach of the cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing the eyes of lady Dudley on him, took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of his claret waistcoat and doffed his cap to her. A charming soubrette, great Marie Kendall, with dauby cheeks and lifted skirt, smiled daubily from her poster upon William Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon lieutenantcolonel H. G. Hesseltine and also upon the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the D. B. C. Buck Mulligan gaily, and Haines gravely, gazed down on the viceregal equipage over the shoulders of eager guests, whose mass of forms darkened the chessboard whereon John Howard Parnell looked intently. In Fownes's street, Dilly Dedalus, straining her sight upward from Chardenal's first French primer, saw sunshades spanned and wheelspokes spinning in the glare John Henry Menton, filling the doorway of Commercial Buildings, stared from winebig oyster eyes, holding a fat gold hunter watch not looked at in his fat left hand not feeling it. Where the foreleg of King Billy's horse pawed the air Mrs Breen plucked her hastening husband back from under the hoofs of the outriders. She shouted in his ear the tidings. Understanding, he shifted his tomes to his left breast and saluted the second carriage. The honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C., agreeably surprised, made haste to reply. At Ponsonby's corner a jaded white flagon H. halted and four tallhatted white flagons halted behind him, E. L. Y.'S., while outriders pranced past and carriages. Opposite Pigott's music warerooms Mr Denis J. Maginni professor of dancing &c, gaily apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a viceroy and unobserved. By the provost's wall came jauntily Blazes Boylan, stepping in tan shoes and socks with skyblue clocks to the refrain of My girl's a Yorkshire girl. 

Blazes Boylan presented to the leaders' skyblue frontlets and high action a skyblue tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a rakish angle and a suit of indigo serge. His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute but he offered to the three ladies the bold admiration of his eyes and the red flower between his lips. As they drove along Nassau street His Excellency drew the attention of his bowing consort to the programme of music which was being discoursed in College park. Unseen brazen highland laddies blared and drumthumped after the cortége: 

But though she's a factory lass 
And wears no fancy clothes. 
Baraabum. 
Yet I've a sort of a 
Yorkshire relish for 
My little Yorkshire rose. 
Baraabum.
Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. C. Green, H. Thrift, T. M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. Morphy, F. Stevenson, C. Adderly, and W. C. Huggard started in pursuit. Striding past Finn's hotel, Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a fierce eyeglass across the carriages at the head of Mr E. M. Solomons in the window of the Austro-Hungarian viceconsulate. Deep in Leinster street, by Trinity's postern, a loyal king's man, Horn-blower, touched his tallyho cap. As the glossy horses pranced by Merrion square Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, waiting, saw salutes being given to the gent with the topper and raised also his new black cap with fingers greased by porksteak paper. His collar too sprang up. The viceroy, on his way to inaugurate the Mirus bazaar in aid of funds for Mercer's hospital, drove with his following towards Lower Mount street. He passed a blind stripling Opposite Broadbent's. In Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a brown macintosh, eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy's path. At the Royal Canal bridge, from his hoarding, Mr Eugene Stratton, his blub lips agrin, bade all comers welcome to Pembroke township. At Haddington road corner two sanded women halted themselves, an umbrella and a bag in which eleven cockles rolled to view with wonder the lord mayor and lady mayoress without his golden chain. On Northumberland and Landsdowne roads His Excellency acknowledged punctually salutes from rare male walkers, the salute of two small schoolboys at the garden gate of the house said to have been admired by the late queen when visiting the Irish capital with her husband, the prince consort, in 1849, and the salute of Almidano Artifoni's sturdy trousers swallowed by a closing door. 


耶稣会会长，十分可敬的约翰•康米[1]边迈下神父住宅的台阶，边把光滑的怀表揣回内兜。差五分三点。还来得及，正好走到阿坦[2]。那个男孩儿姓什么来着?迪格纳穆。对。着实恰当而正确[3]。应该去见见斯旺修士[4]。还有一封坎宁翰[5]先生的来信呢。是啊，尽可能满足他的要求吧。这是位善良而能干的天主教徒。布教的时候能派上用场。

一个独腿水手，架着双拐，无精打采地一步一挪地往前悠荡，嘴里哼唱着什么曲调。他悠荡到仁爱会修女院前面，蓦地停了下来，朝着耶稣会这位十分可敬的约翰•康米伸过一顶鸭舌帽，求他施舍。康米神父在阳光下祝福了他，因为神父知道自己的钱包里只有一克朗银币。

康米神父横过马路，跨过蒙乔伊广场。他想了一下被炮弹炸断了腿的士兵和水手怎样在贫民救济所里结束余生的事，又想起红衣主教沃尔西的话：“如果我用为国王效劳的热诚来侍奉天主，他也不会在我垂老之年抛弃我。”[6]他沿着树荫，走在闪烁着阳光的树叶底下；议会议员戴维•希伊先生的太太[7]迎面而来。

“我很好，真的，神父。您呢，神父?”

康米神父确实非常健康。他也许会到巴克斯顿[8]去洗洗矿泉澡。她的公子们在贝尔维迪尔[9]念得蛮好吧?是吗?康米神父听到这情况，的确很高兴。希伊先生本人呢?还在伦敦。议会仍在开会，可不是嘛。多好的天气啊，真让人心旷神怡。是啊，伯纳德•沃恩[10]神父极可能会再来讲一次道。啊，可不，了不起的成功。的确是位奇才。

康米神父看到议会议员戴维•希伊先生的太太显得那么健康，高兴极了，他恳请她代为向议会议员戴维•希伊先生致意。是的，他准登门去拜访。

“那么，再见吧，希伊太太。”

康米神父脱下大礼帽告别，朝着她面纱上那些在阳光下闪着墨光的乌珠芜尔一笑。一边走开一边又漾出微笑。他晓得自己曾用槟榔果膏把牙刷得干干净净。

康米神父踱着，边走边泛出微笑，因为他记起伯纳德•沃恩神父那逗乐儿的眼神和带伦敦土腔的口音。

“彼拉多!你咋不赶走那些起哄的家伙？”[11]

不管怎么说，他是个热心肠的人。这一点不假。以他独特的方式，确实做过不少好事。这是毫无疑问的。他说他热爱爱尔兰，也热爱爱尔兰人。谁能相信他还出身于世家呢?是威尔士人吧?

哦，可别忘了。那封给管辖教区的神父的信。

在蒙乔伊广场的角落里，康米神父拦住三个小学童。对，他们是贝尔维迪尔的学生。呃，班次很低。他们在学校里都是好学生吗?哦，那就好极啦。那么，他叫什么名字呢?杰克•索恩。他叫什么?杰尔[12]•加拉赫。另一个小不点儿呢?他的名字叫布鲁尼•莱纳姆。哦，起了个多么好的名字。

康米神父从前胸掏出一封信来，递给少年布鲁尼•莱纳姆，并指了指菲茨吉本街拐角处的红色邮筒。

“可是留点儿神，别把你自个儿也投进邮筒里去，小不点儿，”他说。

孩子们的六只眼睛盯着康米神父，大声笑了起来:

“哦，您哪。”

“喏，让我瞧瞧你会不会投邮，”康米神父说。

少年布鲁尼•莱纳姆跑到了马路对面，将康米神父那封写给管辖教区神父的信塞进红艳艳的邮筒口里。康米神父泛着微笑，点了点头。然后又笑了笑，就沿着蒙乔伊广场向东踱去。

舞蹈等课程的教师丹尼斯•杰•马金尼[13]先生头戴丝质大礼帽，身穿滚着绸边的暗蓝灰色长礼服，系着雪白的蝴蝶结，下面是淡紫色紧腿裤;戴着鲜黄色手套，脚登尖头漆皮靴。他举止端庄地走着，来到迪格纳穆庭院的角上。这时，马克斯韦尔夫人擦身而过，他赶紧毕恭毕敬地闪到边石上去。

那不是麦吉尼斯太太[14]吗?

满头银发、仪表堂堂的麦吉尼斯太太在对面的人行道上款款而行。她朝康米神父点头致意。康米神父含笑施礼。她近来可好?

夫人风度忧雅，颇有点儿像苏格兰女王玛丽[15]。想想看，她竟然是个当铺老板娘!哟，真是的!这么一派……该怎么说呢?……这么一派女王风度。

康米神父沿着大查尔斯街前行，朝左侧那紧闭着门的自由教会[16]瞟了一眼。可敬的文学士T•R•格林将(按照神的旨意)[17]布道。他们称他作教区牧师。他呢，认为讲上几句儿乃是义不容辞的[18]。然而，得对他们宽大为怀。不可克服的愚昧。他们毕竟也是根据自己的见解行事的啊。

康米神父拐了弯，沿着北环路踱去。奇怪，这样一条重要的通衢大道，竟然没铺设电车路。肯定应该铺设。

一样背着书包的学童从里奇蒙大街那边跨过马路而来。个个扬起肮里肮脏的便帽。康米神父一次又一次慈祥地朝他们还礼。这都是些公教弟兄会[19]的孩子们。

康米神父一路走着，闻到右侧飘来一股烟香。波特兰横街的圣约瑟教堂。那是给贞节的老妪们开设的。[20]神父冲着圣体[21]摘下帽子。她们固然操守高尚，只是，有时脾气挺坏。

来到奥尔德勃勒邸第附近，康米神父想起那位挥金如土的贵族。而今，这里改成了公事房还是什么的。[22]

康米神父开始开始顺着北滩路走去，站在自己那爿商号门口的威廉•加拉赫先生朝他施礼。康米神父向威廉•加拉赫先生还礼，并嗅到了成条的腌猪肋骨肉和桶里装得满满的冰镇黄油的气味。他走边葛洛根烟草铺，店前斜靠着一块块张贴新闻的告示板，报道发生在纽约的一桩惨案[23]。在美国，这类事件层出不穷。倒楣的人们毫无准备地就那么送了命。不过，彻底悔罪也能获得赦免[24]。

康米神父走边丹尼尔•伯金的酒馆儿。两个没找到活儿干的男人在闲倚着窗口消磨时光。他们向他行礼，他也还了礼。

康米神父走过H•J•奥尼尔殡仪馆。科尼•凯莱赫正一边嚼着一片枯草，一边在流水帐簿上划算着。一个巡逻的警察向康米神父致敬，康米神父也回敬了一下。走边尤克斯泰特猪肉店，康米神父瞧见里面整整齐齐地摆着黑白红色的猪肉香肠，像是弯曲的管子。在查尔维尔林荫道的树底下，康米神父瞅见一艘泥炭船，一匹拉纤的马低垂着脑袋，头戴脏草帽的船老大坐在船中央，抽着烟，目不转睛地望着头顶上一根白杨树枝。真是一派田园诗意。康米神父琢磨着造物主的旨意：让沼泽里产生泥炭，供人们来挖掘，运到城市和村庄。于是，穷人家里就生得起火了。

来到纽科门桥上，上加德纳街圣方济各•沙勿略教堂的这位十分可敬的耶稣会会长约翰•康米跨上一辆驶往郊外的电车。

一辆驶往市内的电车在纽科门桥这一站停住了。圣阿加莎教堂的本堂神父、至尊的尼古拉斯•达德利下了车。

康米神父是由于讨厌徒步跋涉泥岛[25]那段脏路，才在纽科门桥搭乘这趟驶往郊外的电车的。

康米神父在电车的一角落座。他仔细地把一张蓝色车票掖在肥大的小山羊皮手套的扣眼间;而四先令和一枚六便士以及五枚一便士[26]则从他的另一只戴了小山羊皮手套的巴掌上，斜着滑进他的钱包。当电车从爬满常春藤的教堂前驰过的时候，他想道：通常总是刚一粗心大意地扔掉车票，查票的就来了。康米神父觉得，就如此短暂而便宜的旅途而言，车上的乘客未免过于一本正经了。康米神父喜欢过得既愉快而又事事得体。

这是个宁静的日子。坐在康米神父对面那位戴眼镜的绅士解释完了什么，朝下望去。康米神父猜想，那准是他的妻子。

一个小哈欠使那位戴眼镜的绅士的妻子启开了口。她举起戴着手套的小拳头，十分文雅地打了个哈欠，用戴了手套的小拳头轻轻碰了碰启开的嘴，甜甜地泛出一丝微笑。

康米神父觉察出车厢里散发着她那香水的芬芳。他还发觉，挨着她另一边的一个男子局促不安地坐在座位的边沿上。[27]

康米神父曾经在祭坛栏杆边上吃力地把圣体送进一个动作拙笨的老人嘴里。那人患有摇头症。

电车在安斯利桥停了下来。正要开动时，一个老妪抽冷子从她的座位上站了起来。她要下车。售票员拽了一下铃绳，叫刹车，好让她下去。她挎着篮子，提了网兜，踱出车厢。康米神父望见售票员将她连篮子带网兜扶下车去。康米神父思忖，她那一便士车钱都差点儿坐过了头。从这一点来看，她是那种善良人中间的一个，你得一再告诉她们说，己经被赦免了：“祝福你，我的孩子，为我祈祷吧。”[28]然而她们在生活中有那么多忧虑，那么多操心的事儿，可怜的人们。

广告牌上的尤金•斯特拉顿[29]先生咧着黑人的厚嘴唇，朝康米神父作出一副怪相。

康米神父想到黑、棕、黄色人种的灵魂啦，他所做的有关耶稣会的圣彼得•克莱佛尔[30]和非洲传教事业的宣讲啦，传播信仰啦，还有那数百万黑、棕、黄色的灵魂。当大限像夜里的小偷那样忽然来到[31]时，他们却尚未接受洗礼。康米神父认为，那位比利时耶稣会会士所著《选民之人数》[32]一书中的主张，还是入情入理的。那数百万人的灵魂是天主照自己的形象创造[33]的。然而他们不曾(按照神的旨意[34])获得信仰。但他们毕竟是天主的生灵，是天主所创造的。依康米神父看来，让他们统统沉沦未免太可惜了，而且也可以说是一种浪费。

康米神父在豪斯路那一站下了车。售票员向他致敬，他也还了礼。

马拉海德路一片寂静。这条路和它的名字很合康米神父的心意。马拉海德喜洋洋，庆祝钟声响啊响。[35]马拉海德的塔尔伯特勋爵，马拉海德和毗邻海域世袭海军司令的直系继承者。紧接着，征召令下来了。在同一天，她从处女一变而为妻子和遗孀[36]。那是世风古朴的半月，乡区里一片欢快，是效忠爵爷领地的古老时代。

康米神父边走边思索着自己所著的那本小书《爵爷领地的古老时代》[37]以及另一本值得一写的书，关于耶稣会修道院以及莫尔斯沃思勋爵之女——第一代贝尔弗迪尔伯爵夫人玛丽•罗奇福特[38]。

一个青春已逝、神色倦怠的夫人，沿着艾乃水湖[39]畔踽踽独行。第一代贝尔弗迪尔伯爵夫人神色倦怠地在苍茫暮色中仿徨。当一只水獭跃进水里时，她也木然无所动。谁晓得实情呢?正在吃醋的贝尔弗迪尔爵爷不可能，听她忏悔的神父也不可能知道她曾否与小叔子完全通奸，曾否被他往自己那女性天然器官内射精[40]吧?按照妇女的常情，倘若她没有完全犯罪，她只须不痛不痒地忏悔一番。知道实情的，只有天主、她本人以及他——她那位小叔子。

康米神父想到了那种暴虐的纵欲，不管怎么说，为了人类在地球上繁衍生息，那是不可或缺的。也想到了我们的所作所为迥乎不同于天主。

唐约翰[4]•康米边走路迫在往昔的岁月里徘徊。在那儿，他以慈悲为怀，备受尊重。他把人们所忏悔的桩桩隐秘都铭记在心头;在一间天花板上吊着累累果实、用蜜蜡打磨的客厅里，他以笑脸迎迓贵人们一张张笑容可掬的脸。新郎和新娘的手，贵族和贵族，都通过唐约翰•康米，将掌心叠放在一起了。

这是令人心旷神怡的日子。

隔着教堂墓地的停柩门，康米神父望到一畦畦的卷心菜，它们摊开宽绰的下叶向他行着屈膝礼。天空，一小簇白云彩映入眼帘，正徐徐随风飘下。法国人管这叫毛茸茸的[42]。这个词儿恰当而又朴实。

康米神父边诵读日课[43]，边眺望拉思科非[44]上空那簇羊毛般的云彩。他那穿着薄短袜的脚脖子被克朗戈伍斯田野里的残梗乱茬刺得痒痒的。他一面诵着晚课，一面倾听分班排游戏的学童们的喊叫声——稚嫩的嗓音划破傍晚的静谧。当年他曾经当过他们的校长。他管理得很宽厚。[45]

康米神父脱掉手套，掏出红边的《圣教日课》。一片象牙书签标示着该读哪一页。

九时课[46]。按说应该在午饭前诵读的。可是马克斯韦尔夫人来了。

康米神父悄悄地诵毕《天主经》和《圣母经》[47]，在胸前面个十字:天主啊，求你快快拯救我![48]

他安详地踱步，默诵着九时课，边走边诵，一直诵到心地纯洁的人有福了[49]的第Res[50]节：

你法律的中心乃是真理;

你一切公正的诫律永远长存![51]

一个涨红了脸的小伙子[52]从篱笆缝隙间钻了出来。 跟着又钻出一个年轻姑娘，手里握着一束摇曳不停的野雏菊。小伙子突然举帽行了个礼，年轻姑娘赶忙弯下腰去，缓慢仔细地将巴在她那轻飘飘的裙子上的一截小树枝摘掉。

康米神父庄重地祝福了他们俩，然后翻开薄薄的一页《圣教日课》：Sin[53]。

有权势的人无故逼迫我，但我尊重你的法律。[54]

* * *

科尼•凯莱赫合上他那本长方形的流水帐簿，用疲惫的目光扫了扫那宛如哨兵般立在角落里的松木棺材盖儿一眼。他挺直了身子，走到棺材盖儿跟前，以它的一角为轴心，旋转了一下，端详着它的形状和铜饰。他边嚼着那片干草，边放回棺材盖儿，来到门口。他在那儿把帽檐往下一拉，好让眼睛有个遮荫，然后倚着门框懒洋洋地朝外面望着。

约翰•康米神父在纽科门桥上了驶往多利山的电车。

科尼•凯莱赫交叉着那双穿了大皮靴子的大脚，帽檐拉得低低的，定睛望着，嘴里还咀嚼着那片干草。

正在巡逻的丙五十七号警察停下脚步，跟他寒喧。

“今儿个天气不错，凯莱赫先生。”

“可不是嘛，”科尼•凯莱赫说。

“闷热得厉害，”警察说。

科尼•凯莱赫一声不响地从嘴里啐出一口干草汁，它以弧形线飞了出去。就在这当儿，一只白晳的胳膊从埃克尔斯街上的一扇窗户里慷慨地丢出一枚硬币。[55]

“有什么最好的消息?”他问。

“昨儿晚上我看到了那个特别的聚会，”警察压低嗓门说。

* * *

一个独腿水手架着丁字拐，在麦康内尔药房跟前拐了个弯，绕过拉白奥蒂的冰淇淋车，一颠一颠地进了埃克尔斯街。拉里•奥罗克[56]只穿了件衬衫站在门口，水手就朝着他毫不友善地吼叫：

为了英国……

他猛地往前悠荡了儿步，从凯蒂和布棣•迪达勒斯身边走过，并站住，吼了一声：

为了家园和丽人。[57]

从杰•杰•奥莫洛伊那张苍白愁苦的脸可以知道，兰伯特先生正在库房里接见来客。

一位胖太太停下来，从手提包里掏出一枚铜币，丢在伸到她跟前的便帽里。水手喃喃地表示谢意，愠怒地朝那些对他置之不理的窗户狠狠地盯了一眼，把脑袋一耷拉，又向前悠荡了四步。

他停下来，怒冲冲地咆哮着：

为了英国……

两个打赤脚的顽童嚼着长长的甘草根，在他身旁站下来，嘴里淌着黄糊糊的涎水，呆呆望着他那残肢。

他使劲朝前悠荡了几步，停下来，冲着一扇窗户扬起头，用拖长的深沉嗓音吼道：

为了家园和丽人。

窗内发出小鸟鸣啭般的圆润快活的口哨声，持续了一两节才止住。窗帘拉开了。一张写着“房间出租，自备家具”字样的牌子打窗框上滑落下去。窗口露出一只丰腴赤裸、乐善好施的胳膊，是从连着衬裙的白色乳搭那绷得紧紧的吊带间伸出的。一只女人[58]的手隔着地下室前的栏杆掷出一枚硬币。它落在人行道上了。

一个顽童朝这枚硬币跑去，拾了起来，把它投进这位歌手的便帽时，嘴里说着：

“喏，大叔。”

* * *

凯蒂和布棣•迪达勒斯推开门，走进那狭窄、蒸气弥漫的厨房。

“你把书当出去了吗?”布棣问。

玛吉站在铁灶[59]跟前，两次用搅锅的棍儿把一团发灰的什么许进冒泡的肥皂水里，然后擦了擦前额。

“他们一个便士也不给，”她说。

康米神父走边克朗戈伍斯田野，他那双穿着薄短袜的脚脖子被残茬扎得痒痒的。

“你到哪家去试的?”布棣问。

“麦吉尼斯当铺。”

布棣跺了跺脚，把书包往桌上一惯。

“别自以为了不起，叫她遭殃去吧!”她嚷道。

凯蒂走到铁灶跟前，眯起眼睛凝视着。

“锅里是什么呀?”她问。

“衬衫，”玛吉说。

布棣气恼地嚷道：

“天哪!难道咱们什么吃的也没有了吗?”

凯蒂用自己的脏裙子垫着手，掀开汤锅的盖儿问：

“这里面是什么?”

锅里喷出的一股热气就回答她了。

“豌豆汤，”玛吉说。

“你打哪儿弄来的?”凯蒂问。

“玛丽•帕特里克修女那儿，”玛吉说。

打杂的摇了一下铃。

叮啷啷!

布棣在桌前落座，饿着肚子说：“端到这儿来!”

玛吉把稠糊糊的汤从锅里倒进了碗。坐在布棣对面的凯蒂边用指尖将面包渣塞进嘴里，边安详地说：

“咱们有这么多吃的就蛮好了。迪丽哪儿去啦?”

“接父亲去了，”玛吉说。

布棣边把面包大块儿大块儿地掰到黄汤里，边饶上一句：

“我们不在天上的父亲……”[60]

玛吉过往凯蒂的碗里倒黄汤，边嚷道：

“布棣!不许这么胡说八道!”

一叶小舟——揉成一团丢掉的“以利亚来了”[61]，浮在利菲河上，顺流而下。穿过环道桥[62]，冲出桥墩周围翻滚的激流，绕过船身和锚链，从海关旧船坞与乔冶码头之间向东漂去。

* * *

桑顿鲜花水果店的金发姑娘正往柳条筐里铺着窸窣作响的纤丝。布莱泽斯•博伊兰递给她一只裹在粉红色薄绉纸里的瓶子以及一个小罐子。

“把这些先放进去，好吗?”他说。

“好的，先生，”金发姑娘说，“上面放水果。”

“行，这样挺好，”布莱泽斯•博伊兰说。

她把圆滚滚的梨头尾交错地码得整整齐齐，还在夹缝儿里撂上羞红了脸的熟桃。

布莱泽斯•博伊兰脚上登着棕黄色新皮鞋，在果香扑鼻的店堂里踱来踱去，拿起那鲜嫩、多汁、带褶纹的水果，又拿起肥大、红艳艳的西红柿，嗅了嗅。

头戴白色高帽的H•E•L•Y'S[63]从他面前列队而行;穿过坦吉尔巷，朝着目的地吃力地走去。

他从托在薄木片上的一簇草莓跟前蓦地掉过房来，由表兜里拽出一块金怀表，将表链抻直。

“你们可以搭电车送去吗?马上?”

在商贾拱廊内，一个黑糊糊的背影正在翻看着小贩车上的书。[64]

“先生，管保给你送到。是在城里吗?”

“可不，”布莱泽斯•博伊兰说，“十分钟。”

金发姑娘递给他标签和铅笔。

“先生，劳您驾写下地址好吗?”

布莱泽斯•博伊兰在柜台上写好标签，朝她推过去。

“马上送去，可以吗?”他说，“是给一位病人的。”

“好的，先生。马上就送，先生。”

布莱泽斯•博伊兰在裤兜里摆弄着钱，发出一片快乐的声响。

“要多少钱?”他问。

金发姑娘用纤指数着水果。

布莱泽斯•博伊兰朝她衬衫的敞口处望了一眼，小雏儿。他从高脚杯里拈起一朵红艳艳的麝香石竹。

“这是给我的吧?”他调情地问。

金发姑娘斜瞟了他一眼，见他不惜花费地打扮，领带稍微歪斜的那副样子，不觉飞红了脸。

“是的，先生，”她说。

她灵巧地弯下腰去，数了数圆滚滚的梨和羞红的桃子。

布莱泽斯•博伊兰越发心荡神驰地瞅着她那衬衫敞口处，用牙齿叼着红花的茎，嘻笑着。

“可以用你的电话说句话儿吗?”他流里流气地问。

* * *

“不过![65]”阿尔米达诺•阿尔蒂弗尼[66]说。

他隔着斯蒂芬的肩膀，凝视着哥尔德斯密斯[67]那疙疙瘩瘩的脑袋。

两辆满载游客的马车徐徐经过，妇女们紧攥着扶手坐在前面。一张张苍白的脸。[68]男子的胳膊坦然地搂着女人矮小的身子。一行人把视线从三一学院移到爱尔兰银行那耸立着圆柱、大门紧闭的门厅。那里，鸽群正咕咕咕地叫着。

“像你这样年轻的时候，”[69]阿尔米达诺•阿尔蒂弗尼说，“我也曾这么想过。当时我确信这个世界简直像个猪圈。太糟糕啦。因为你这副嗓子……可以成为你的财源，明白吗?然而你在做着自我牺牲。”[70]

“不流血的牺牲，”[71]斯蒂芬笑眯眯地说。他攥着梣木手杖的中腰，缓慢地轻轻地来回摆动着。

“但愿如此，”[72]蓄着口髭的圆脸蛋儿愉快地说，“可是，我的话你也听听才好。考虑考虑吧。”[73]

从印契科驰来的一辆电车，服从了格拉顿用严厉的石手[74]发出的停车信号。一群隶属于军乐队的苏格兰高原士兵从车上七零八落地下来了。

“我仔细想一想，”[75]斯蒂芬说，低头瞥了一眼笔挺的裤腿。

“你这话是当真的吧，呃?”[76]阿尔米达诺•阿尔蒂弗尼说。

他用那厚实的手紧紧握住斯蒂芬的手。一双富于人情味的眼睛朝他好奇地凝视了一下，接着就转向一辆驰往多基的电车。

“来啦，”匆忙中，阿尔米达诺•阿尔蒂弗尼友善地说，“到我那儿去坐坐，再想想吧。再见，老弟。”[77]

“再见，大师，”斯蒂芬说，他腾出手来掀了掀帽子说，“谢谢您啦!”[78]

“客气什么?”阿尔米达诺•阿尔蒂弗尼说，“原谅我，呃?祝你健康!”[79]

阿尔米达诺•阿尔蒂弗尼把乐谱卷成指挥棒形，打了打招呼，迈开结实耐穿的裤腿去赶搭那趟驶往多基的电车。他被卷进那群身着短裤、裸着膝盖的高原士兵——他们偷偷携带着乐器，正在乱哄哄地拥进三一学院的大门[80]——所以他白跑了一趟，招呼也白打了。

* * *

邓恩小姐[81]把那本从卡佩尔大街图书馆借来的《白衣女》[82]藏在抽屉尽里边，将一张花哨的信纸卷进打字机。

里面故弄玄虚的地方大多了。他爱上了那位玛莉恩没有呢?换

上一本玛丽•塞西尔•海依[83]的吧。

圆盘[84]顺着槽溜下去。晃了一阵才停住，朝他们飞上一眼：六。

邓恩小姐把打字机键盘敲得咯嗒咯嗒地响着：

“一九0四年六月十六日。”

五个头戴白色高帽的广告人来到莫尼彭尼商店的街角和还不曾竖立沃尔夫•托恩[85]雕像的石板之间，他们那H•E•L•Y’S的蜿蜒队形就掉转过来， 拖着沉重的脚步沿着原路走回去。

随后，她定睛望着专门扮演轻佻风骚角色的漂亮女演员玛丽•肯德尔[86]的大幅海报，慵懒地倚在桌上，在杂记本上胡乱涂写几个十六和大写的字母S。 芥末色的头发。抹得花里胡哨的脸颊。她并不俊俏，对吗?瞧她捏着裙角那副样子!我倒想知道，那个人今晚到不到乐队去[87]。我要是能叫裁缝给我做一条苏西•内格尔那样的百褶裙该有多好。走起来多有气派。香农和划船俱乐部[88]里所有那些时髦人物眼睛简直都离不开她了。真希望他今天不要把我一直留到七点。

电话铃在她耳边猛地响了起来。

“喂!对，先生。没有，先生。是的，先生。五点以后我给他们打电话。 只有那两封——一封寄到贝尔法斯特[89]，一封寄到利物浦。好的，先生。那么，如果您不回来，过六点我就可以走了吧。六点一刻。好，先生。二十七先令六。我会告诉他的。对，一镑七先令六。”

她在一个信封上潦草地写下三个数字。

“博伊兰先生!喂!《体育报》那位先生来找过您。对，是利内翰先生。他说，四点钟他要到奥蒙德饭店去。没有，先生。是的，先生。过五点我给他们打电话。”

* * *

两张粉红色的脸借着小小火把的光亮出现了。[90]

“谁呀?”内德•兰伯特问，“是克罗蒂吗?”

“林加贝拉和克罗斯黑文，”正在用脚探着路的一个声音说。

“嘿，杰克，是你吗?”内德•兰伯特说着，在摇曳的火光所映照的拱顶下，扬了扬软木条打着招呼。“过来吧，当心脚底下。”

教士高举着的手里所攥的涂蜡火柴映出一道长长的柔和火焰燃尽了，掉了下去。红色斑点在他们脚跟前熄灭，周围弥漫着发霉的空气。

“多有趣!”昏暗中一个文雅的口音说。

“是啊，神父，”内德•兰伯特热切地说，“如今咱们正站在圣玛丽修道院的会议厅里。这是一个有历史意义的遗迹。一五三四年，绢骑士托马斯[91]就是在这里宣布造反的。这是整个都柏林最富于历史意义的地方了。关于这事，总有一天奥马登•勃克会写点什么的。合并[92]以前，老爱尔兰银行就在马路对面。犹太人的圣殿原先也设在这儿。后来他们在阿德莱德路盖起了自己的会堂。杰克，你从来没到这儿来过吧?”

“没有过，内德。”

“他[93]是骑马沿着戴姆人行道来的，”那个文雅的口音说，“倘若我没记错的话，基尔代尔一家人的宅第就在托马斯大院里。”

“可不是嘛，”内德•兰伯特说，“一点儿也不错，神父。”

“承蒙您的好意，”教士说，“下次可不可以允许我……”

“当然可以，”内德•兰伯特说，“什么时候您高兴，就尽管带着照相机来吧。我会叫人把窗口那些口袋清除掉。您可以从这儿，要么从这儿照。”

他在宁静的微光中踱来踱去，用手中的木条敲敲那一袋装堆得高高的种籽，并指点着地板上取景的好去处。

一张长脸蛋上的胡子和视线，部落在一方棋盘上。[94]

“深深感谢，兰伯特先生，”教士说，“您的时间宝贵，我不打扰了……”

“欢迎您光临，神父，”内德•兰伯特说，“您愿意什么时候光临都行。比方说，下周吧。瞧得见吗?”

“瞧得见，瞧得见。那么我就告辞了，兰伯特先生。见到您，我十分高兴。”

“我才高兴呢，神父，”内德•兰伯特回答。

他把来客送到出口，随手把木条旋转着掷到圆柱之间。他和杰•杰•奥莫洛伊一道慢悠悠地走进玛丽修道院街。那里，车夫们正往一辆辆平板车上装着一麻袋一麻袋角豆面和椰子粉，韦克斯福德的奥康内尔。[95]

他停下脚步来读手里的名片。

“休•C•洛失神父，拉思柯非。[96]现住：萨林斯[97]的圣迈克尔教堂。一个蛮好的年轻人。他告诉我，他正在写一本关于菲茨杰拉德家族[98]的书。他对历史了如指掌，的的确确。”

那个年轻姑娘仔细缓慢地将巴在她那轻飘飘的裙子上的一载小树枝摘掉。[99]

“我还只当你在策划另一次火药阴谋[100]呢，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊说。

内德•兰伯特用手指在空中打了个响榧子。

“唉呀！”他失声叫道，“我忘记告诉他基尔代尔伯爵[101]放火烧掉卡舍尔大教堂后所说的那番话了。你晓得他说了什么吗?‘我干了这档子事实在觉得过意不去，’他说，‘然而天主在上，我确实以为大主教正在里面呢。’不过，他也许并不爱听。什么?天哪，不管怎样，我也得告诉他。这就是伟大的伯爵，大[102]菲茨杰拉德。他们统统是火暴性子，杰拉德家族这些人。”

当他走过去时，挽具松了的那些马受了惊，一副紧张的样子。他拍了拍挨着他的那匹花斑马的颤抖的腰腿，喊了声：

“吁!好小子!”

他掉过脸来问杰•杰•奥莫洛伊：

“呃，杰克。什么事呀?遇到什么麻烦啦?等一会儿。站住。”

他张大了嘴，脑袋使劲朝后仰着，凝然不动地站住，旋即大声打了个喷嚏。

“哈哧!”他说，“该死!”

“都怪这些麻袋上的灰尘，”杰•杰•奥莫洛伊彬彬有礼地说。

“不是，”内德•兰伯特气喘吁吁地说，“我着了……凉，前天……该死……前天晚上……而且，那地方的贼风真厉害……”

他拿好手绢，准备着打下一个……

“今天早晨……我到……葛拉斯涅文去了……可怜的小……他叫什么来着……哈哧!……摩西他娘啊!

* * *

穿深红色背心的汤姆•罗赤福特手托一摞圆盘，顶在胸前，另一只手拿起最上面的那个。

“瞧，”他说，“比方说，这是第六个节目。从这儿进去，瞧。眼下节目正在进行。”

他把圆盘塞进左边的口子给他们看。它顺着槽溜下去，晃了一阵才停住，朝他们飞上一眼：六。[103]

当年的律师[104]趾高气扬，慷慨陈词。他们看见里奇•古尔丁携带着古尔丁－科利斯－沃德律师事务所的帐目公文包，从统一审计办公室一路走到民事诉讼法庭。然后听到一位上了岁数的妇女身穿宽大的丝质黑裙，窸窸窣窣地走出高等法院[105]海事法庭，进了上诉法庭，她面上泛着半信半疑的微笑，露出假牙。

“瞧，”他说，“瞧，我最后放进去的那个已经到这儿来了：节目结束。冲击力。杠杆作用。明白了吗?”

他让他们看右边那越摞越高的圆盘。

“高明的主意，”大鼻子弗林抽着鼻孔说，“那么来晚了的人就能知道哪个节目正在进行，哪些己经结束了。”

“瞧明白了吧?”汤姆•罗赤福特说。

他自己塞进了一个圆盘，望着它溜下去，晃动，飞上一眼，停住：四。正在进行的节目。

“我这就到奥蒙德饭店去跟他见面，”利内翰说，“探探口气。好心总会有好报。”

“去吧，”汤姆•罗赤福特说，“告诉他，我等博伊兰都等急啦。”

“晚安，”麦科伊抽冷子说，“当你们两个人着手干起来的时候…”

大鼻子弗林朝那杠杆弯下身去，嗅着。

“可是这地方是怎么活动的呢，汤米?”他问道。

“吐啦噜[106]，”利内翰说，“回头见。”

他跟着麦科伊走了出去，穿过克兰普顿大院的小方场。

“他是个英雄，”他毫不迟疑地说。

“我晓得，”麦科伊说，“你指的是排水沟吧。”

“排水沟?”利内翰说，“是阴沟的检修口。”

他们走过丹•劳里游艺场，专演风骚角色的妖媚女演员玛丽•肯德尔从海报上朝他们投以画得很蹩脚的微笑。

他们来到锡卡莫街，沿着帝国游艺场旁的人行道走着，利内翰把事情的来龙去脉讲给麦科伊听。有个阴沟口，就像那讨厌的煤气管一样，卡住了一个可怜的家伙。阴沟里的臭气已把他熏个半死。汤姆•罗赤福特连那件经纪人背心也来不及脱，身上系了根绳子，就不顾一切地下去了。还真行，他用绳子套住那可怜的家伙，两个人就都给拽了上来[107]。

“真是英雄的壮举，”他说。

奔杰维斯街。

“这边走，”他一面朝右边走一面说，“我要到莱纳姆那儿去瞧瞧‘权杖’[108]的起价。你那块带金链儿的金表几点啦?”

麦科伊窥伺了一下马库斯•特蒂乌斯•摩西那幽暗的办事处，接着又瞧了瞧奥尼尔茶叶店的挂钟。

“三点多啦，”他说，“谁骑‘权杖’?”

“奥马登”，利内翰说，“那是匹精神十足的小母马。”

在圣殿酒吧前等候的时候，麦科伊躲开一条香蕉皮，然后用脚夹把它轻轻挑到人行道的阴沟里去。谁要是喝得烂醉黑咕隆咚地走到这儿，会很容易就摔个跟头。

为了让总督出行的车马经过，车道[109]前的大门敞开了。

“一博一，”利内翰回来说，“我在那儿碰见了班塔穆•莱昂斯。他打算押一匹别人教给他的破马，它压根儿就没有过赢的希望。打这儿穿过去。”

他们拾级而上。在商贾拱廊内，一个黑糊糊的背影正在翻阅着小贩车上的书。

“他在那儿呢，”利内翰说。

“不晓得他在买什么，”麦科伊说着，回头瞥了一眼。

“《利奥波德或稞麦花儿开》[110]，”利内翰说。

“他是买减价书的能手，”麦科伊说，“有一天我和他在一起，他在利菲街花两先令从一个老头那儿买了一本书。里面有精采的图片，足足值一倍钱。星星啦，月亮啦，带长尾巴的慧星啦。是一部关于天文学的书。”

利内翰笑了。

“我讲给你听一个关于慧星尾巴的极有趣儿的故事，”他说，“站到太阳地儿来。”

他们横过马路来到铁桥跟前，沿着河堤边的惠灵顿码头走去。

少年帕特里克•阿洛伊修斯•迪格纳穆[111]拿着一磅半猪排，从曼根的(原先是费伦巴克的)店里走了出来。

“那一次格伦克里的感化院举行了盛大的宴会[112]，”利内翰起劲地说，“要知道，那是一年一度的午餐会。得穿那种浆洗得笔挺的衬衫。市长大人出席了——当时是维尔•狄龙。查尔斯•卡梅伦爵士和丹•道森讲了话，还有音乐。巴特尔•达西演唱了，还有本杰明•多拉德……”

“我晓得，”麦科伊插了嘴，“我太太也在那儿唱过一次。”

“是吗?”利内翰说。

一张写有“房间出租，自备家具”字样的牌子，又出现在埃克尔斯街七号的窗框上[113]。

他把话打住片刻，接着又喝哧喝哧地喘着气笑开了。

“等等，容我来告诉你，”他说，“卡姆登街的德拉亨特包办酒菜，鄙人是勤杂司令。布卢姆夫妇也在场。我们供应的东西可海啦：红葡萄酒、雪利酒、陈皮酒，我们也十分对得起那酒，放开量畅饮一通。喝足了才吃，大块的冷冻肘子有的是，还有百果馅饼[114]……”

“我晓得，”麦科伊说，“那一年我太太也在场……”

利内翰兴奋地挽住他的胳膊。

“等一等，我来告诉你，”他说，“寻欢作乐够了，我们还吃了一顿夜宵。当我们走出来时，己经是第二天的凌晨几点[115]啦。回家的路上翻过羽床山， 好个出色的冬夜啊，布卢姆和克里斯•卡利南坐在马车的一边，我和他太太坐另一边。我们唱起来了，无伴奏的男声合唱，二重唱。看啊，清晨的微曦[116]。 她那肚带下面灌满了德拉亨特的红葡萄酒。那该死的车子每颠簸一次，她都撞在我身上。那真开心到家啦!她那一对儿可真棒，上主保佑她。像这样的。”

他凹起掌心，将双手伸到胸前一腕尺的地方，蹙着眉头说。

“我不停地为她把车毯往腿下掖，并且整一整她披的那条袭皮围巾。明白我的意思吗?”

他用两只手在半空比划出丰满曲线的造型。他快乐得双目紧闭，浑身倦缩着，嘴里吹出悦耳的小鸟啁啾声。

“反正那小子直挺挺地竖起来了，”他叹了口气说，“没错儿，那娘儿们是个浪母马。布卢姆把天上所有的星星和慧星都指给克里斯•卡利南和车把式看：什么大熊座啦，武仙座啦，天龙座啦，和其他繁星。可是，对上主发誓，我可以说是身心都沉浸在银河里了。说真格的，他全都认得出。她终于找到一颗很远很远一丁点儿大的小不点儿。‘那是什么星呀，波尔迪?’她说，上主啊，她可给布卢姆出了个难题。‘那一颗吗?’克里斯•卡利南说，‘没错儿，那说得上是个小针眼儿[117]。哎呀，他说的倒是八九不离十。”

利内翰停下脚步，身倚河堤，低声笑得上气不接下气。

“我实在支持不住啦，”他气喘吁吁地说。

麦科伊那张白脸不时地对此泛出一丝微笑，随即神情又变得严肃起来。利内翰又往前走着。他摘下游艇帽，匆匆地挠挠后脑勺。沐浴在阳光下，他斜睨了麦科伊一眼。

“他真是有教养有见识的人，布卢姆是这样的一位，”他一本正经地说，“他不是你们那种凡夫俗子……要知道……老布卢姆身上有那么一股艺术家气质。”

* * *

布卢姆先生漫不经心地翻着《玛丽亚•蒙克的骇人秘闻》[118]，然后又拿起亚理斯多德的《杰作》。印刷得歪七扭八，一塌糊涂。插图有：胎儿蜷缩在一个个血红的子宫里，恰似屠宰后的母牛的肝脏。如今，全世界到处都是。统统想用脑壳往外冲撞。每一分钟都会有娃娃在什么地方诞生。普里福伊太太[119]。

他把两本书都撂在一劳，视线移到第三本上：利奥波德•封•扎赫尔－马索赫所著《犹太人区的故事》[120]。

“这本我读过，”他说着，把它推开。

书摊老板另撂了两本在柜台上。

“这两本可好咧，”他说。

隔着柜台，一股葱头气味从他那牙齿残缺不全的嘴里袭来。他弯下腰去，将其余的书捆起来，顶着没系钮扣的背心摞了摞，然后就抱到肮里肮脏的帷幕后面去丁。

奥康内尔桥上，好多人在望着舞蹈等课程的教师丹尼斯•杰•马金尼先生。他一派端庄的仪态，却穿着花里胡哨的服装。

布卢姆独自在看着书名。詹姆斯•洛夫伯奇[121]的《美丽的暴君们》。晓得是哪一类的书。有过吧?有过。

他翻了翻。果不其然。

从肮里肮脏的帷幕后面传出来女人的嗓音。听：那个男人。

不行，这么厉害的不会中她的意。曾经给她弄到过一本。

他读着另一本的书名：《偷情的快乐》。这会更合她的胃口。拿来看看。

他随手翻到一页就读起来：

她丈夫给她的那一张张一元钞票，她都花在店铺里那些

华丽的长衫和昂贵无比的镶有褶边的裙子上了。为了他!为

了拉乌尔[122]!

对。就这一本。怎么样?试试看。

她的嘴紧紧嘬住地的嘴，淫亵放荡地狂吻着；他呢，这当

儿把双手伸进她的衫襟，去抚摩她那丰满的曲线。

对。就要这一本吧。它的结尾是：

“你来迟了，”他嗓音嗄哑地说，用炯炯的怀疑目光瞪着

她。

那位美女把她那镶边的貉皮大氅脱下来甩在一边，裸露

出王后般的双肩和一起一伏的丰腴魁力。她安详地朝他掉转

过来，无比可爱的唇边泛着一丝若隐若现的微笑。

布卢姆先生又读了一遍，那位美女……

一股暖流悄悄地浸透他全身，镇慑着他的肉体。在揉皱了的衣服里面，肉体彻头彻尾地屈服了。眼白神魂颠倒般地往上一翻。 他的鼻孔像是在寻觅猎物一般拱了起来。涂在乳房上的油膏(为了他!为了拉乌尔!)融化了。腋窝下的汗水发出葱头般的气味。鱼胶般的黏液(她那一起一伏的丰腴魅力!)摸摸看!按一按!粉碎啦!两头狮子那硫磺气味的粪!

青春!青春!

一位上了岁数、不再年轻的妇女正从大法院、高等法院、税务法庭和高级民事法院共用的大厦里踱了出来。她刚在大法官主持的法庭里旁听了波特顿神经错乱案;在海事法庭上聆听了“凯恩斯夫人号”船主们对“莫纳号”三桅帆船船主们一案的申诉以及当事者一方的辩解;在上诉法庭，倾听了法庭所做关于暂缓审判哈维与海洋事故保险公司一案的决定。

一阵含痰的咳嗽声在书摊的空气中回荡着， 把肮里肮脏的帷幕都震得鼓鼓的。摊主咳嗽着走出来了。他那灰白脑袋不曾梳理过，涨红了的脸也没刮过。他粗鲁地清着喉咙，往地板上吐了口黏痰。然后，伸出靴子来踩住自己吐出的，并且弯下腰去，用靴底蹭了蹭。这样，就露出他那剩下不几根毛的秃瓢。

布卢姆先生望到了。

他抑制着恶心的感觉，说：

“我要这一本。”

摊主抬起那双被积下的眼屎弄得视力模糊的眼睛。

“《偷情的快乐》，”他边敲着书边说，“这是本好书。”

* * *

站在狄龙拍卖行门旁的伙计又摇了两遍手铃，并且对着用粉笔做了记号的大衣柜镜子照了照自己这副尊容。

呆在人行道边石上的迪丽•迪达勒斯听到铃声和里面拍卖商的吆喝声。四先令九。那些可爱的帘子。五先令。使人感到舒适的帘子。新的值两基尼哪。五先令还有加的吗?五先令成交啦。

伙计举起手铃摇了摇：

“当啷!”

最后一圈的铃声响起时，这半英里自行车赛[123]的选手们冲刺起来。J•A•杰克逊、W•E•怀利、A•芒罗和H•T•加恩，都伸长了脖子，东摇西摆， 巧妙地驰过了学院图书馆旁的弯道。

迪达勒斯先生捋着长长的八字胡，从威廉斯横街拐了过来。他在女儿身边停下脚步。

“来得正是时候，”她说。

“求求你啦，站直了吧，”迪达勒斯先生说，“难道你想学你那吹短号的约翰舅舅[124]，把脑袋缩在肩膀上吗?瞧你这副样子!”

迪丽耸了耸肩。迪达勒斯先生双手按住她的肩膀往后扳。

“站得直直的，丫头，”他说，“不然你会害上脊椎弯曲病的。你晓得自已像个什么样儿吗?”

他蓦地垂下脑袋，往前一伸，并拱起肩，把下颚向下一耷拉。

“别这样，爹”，迪丽说，“大家都在望着你哪。”

迪达勒斯先生直起身子，又去捋他那八字胡。

“你弄到点钱了吗?”迪丽问。

“我上哪儿弄钱去?”迪达勒斯先生说，“在都柏林，没人肯借给我四便士。”

“你准弄到了点儿，”迪丽盯着他的眼睛说。

“你怎么晓得?”迪达勒斯先生用舌头顶着腮帮子说。

克南[125]先生对自已揽到的这笔订货踌躇满志，正沿着詹姆斯大街高视阔步。

“我晓得你弄到啦，”迪丽回答说，“刚才你呆在苏格兰酒家里来着吧?”

“我没去呀，”、迪达勒斯先生笑吟吟地说，“是那些小尼姑把你教得这么调皮吧?拿去。”

他递给她一先令。

“看看这够你顶什么用的，”他说。

“我猜你准弄到了五先令，”迪丽说，“再给我点儿吧。”

“等一会儿，”迪达勒斯先生用恐吓的口吻说，“你跟那几个都是一路货，对吧?自从你们那可怜的妈咽气以后，你们就成了一帮不知天高地厚的小母狗啦。可是等着瞧吧。迟早我会把你们彻头彻尾摆脱掉的。满口下流的脏话!我会甩掉你们的。 哪怕我硬挺挺地抻丁腿儿，你们也无动于衷。说什么：‘他死啦，楼上那家伙咽气拉。’”

他撇下她，往前走去。迪丽赶忙跟上去，拽住他的上衣。

“喂，干吗呀?”他停下脚步来说。

伙计在他们背后摇铃。

“当啷啷!”

“叫你这吵吵闹闹的混帐家伙挨天罚!”迪达勒斯先生掉过身去冲他嚷着。

伙计意识到这话是朝他来的，就很轻很轻地摇着那耷拉下来的铃舌。

“当!”

迪达勒斯先生狠狠地盯了他一眼。

“瞧瞧这个人，”他说，“真有点儿意思。我倒想知道他还让不让咱们说话啦。” 

“爹，你弄到的钱不止这么些，”迪丽说。

“我要玩个小花招儿给你们看，”迪达勒斯先生说，“我要撇下你们这一帮，就像当年耶稣撇下犹太人那样。[126]瞧，我统共只有这么多。 我从杰克•鲍尔那儿弄到了两先令，为了参加葬礼，还花两便士刮了一下脸。”

他局促不安地掏出一把铜币。

“难道你不能从什么地方寻摸俩钱儿来吗?”迪丽说。

迪达勒斯先生沉吟了一阵，点了点头。

“好吧，”他认认真真地说，“我是沿着奥康内尔大街的明沟一路寻摸过来的。这会子我再去这条街试试看。”

“你滑稽透了，”迪丽说，她笑得露出了牙齿。

“喏，”说着，迪达勒斯先生递给她两便士，“去弄杯牛奶喝，再买个小圆甜面包什么的。我马上就回家。”

他把其他硬币揣回兜里，继续往前走。

总督的车马队在警察卑躬屈膝的敬礼下，穿过公园大门。

“你准还有一先令，”迪丽说。

伙计把铃摇得山响。

迪达勒斯先生在一片喧嚣中走开了。他噘起嘴来轻声喃喃自语着，

“小尼姑们!有趣的小妞儿们!噢，她们准不会帮忙的!噢，她们确实不会帮的!是小莫妮卡修女[127]吧!”

* * *

克南先生从日晷台走向詹姆斯门，异常得意自己从普尔布鲁克•罗伯逊那儿揽到的订货，沿着詹姆斯大街高视阔步地走过莎克尔顿面粉公司营业处。 总算把他说服了。您好吗，克里敏斯[128]先生?好极啦，先生。我还担心您到平利科那另一家公司去了呢。生意怎么样?对付着糊口罢咧。这天气多好哇。可不是嘛。 对农村是再好不过嘞。那些庄稼汉总是发牢骚。给我来一点点您上好的杜松子酒吧， 克里敏斯先生。一小杯杜松子酒吗，先生?是的，先生。“斯洛克姆将军”号爆炸事件[129]太可怕啦。可怕呀，可怕呀!死伤一千人。一派惨绝人寰的景象。一些汉子把妇女和娃娃都踩在脚底下。简直是禽兽。关于肇事原因，他们是怎么说来着?说是自动爆炸。暴露出来的情况真令人震惊。水上竟然没有一只救生艇，水龙带统统破裂了。我简直不明白，那些检验员怎么竟允许像那样一艘船……喏，您说得有道理，克里敏斯先生。您晓得个中底细吗?行了贿呗。是真的吗?毫无疑问。嗯，瞧瞧吧。还说美国是个自由的国度哩。我本来以为糟糕的只是咱们这里呢。

我[130]对他笑了笑。“美国嘛，”我像这样安详地说，“这又算得了什么?这是从包括敝国在内的各国扫出来的垃圾。不就是这么回事吗?”确实是这样的。

贪污，我亲爱的先生。喏，当然喽，只要金钱在周转，必定就会有人把它捞到手。

我发现他在打量我的大礼服。人就靠服装。再也没有比体面的衣着更起作用的了。能够镇住他们。

“你好，西蒙，”考利神父[131]说，“近来怎么样?”

“你好，鲍勃，老伙计，”迪达勒斯先生停下脚步，回答说。

克南先生站在理发师彼得•肯尼迪那面倾斜的镜子前梳妆打扮了一番。毫无疑问，这是件款式新颖的上衣。道森街的斯科特[132]。我付了尼亚利半镑钱， 蛮值得。要是订做一件的话，起码也得三基尼。穿上哪儿哪儿都可身。原先多半是基尔代尔街俱乐部[133]哪位花花公子的。昨天在卡莱尔桥上，爱尔兰银行经理约翰•穆利根用锐利的目光好盯了我两眼，他好像认出了我似的。

哎嘿!在这些人面前就得讲究穿戴。马路骑士[134]。绅士。就这么样，克里敏斯先生，希望以后继续光顾。俗话说得好，这是使人提神而又不醉的饮料[135]。

北堤和布满了一个个船体、一条条锚链的约翰•罗杰森[136]爵士码头;一叶小舟——揉成一团丢下去的传单，在摆渡驶过后的尾流中颠簸着，向西漂去了。 “以利亚未了。”[137]

克南先生临别对镜顾影自怜。脸色黑红，当然喽。花白胡髭。活像是曾在印度服役回国的军官。他端着膀子，迈着戴鞋罩的脚，雄赳赳地移动那矮粗身躯。马路对面那人是内德•兰伯特的弟弟萨姆吧?怎么?是的。可真像他哩。不对，是那边阳光底下那辆汽车的挡风玻璃，那么一闪。活脱儿像是他。

哎嘿!含杜松液的烈酒使他的内脏和呼出来的气都暖烘烘的。 那可是一杯好杜松子酒。肥肥胖胖的他，大摇大摆地走着，燕尾礼服随着他的步伐在骄阳下闪闪发光。

埃米特[138]就是在前面那个地方被绞死的，掏出五脏六腑之后还肢解。油腻腻、黑魁魁的绳子。当总督夫人乘双轮马车经过的时候，几只狗正在街上舔着鲜血哩。[139]

那可是邪恶横行的时代。算啦，算啦。过去了，总算结束啦。又都是大酒鬼。个个能喝上四瓶。

我想想看。他是葬在圣迈肯教堂的吗?啊不，葛拉斯涅文倒是在午夜里埋过一次。尸体是从墙上的一道暗门弄进去的。如今迪格纳穆就在那儿哩。像是被一阵风卷走的。哎呀呀。不如在这儿拐个弯。绕点儿路吧。

克南先生掉转了方向。从古尼斯啤酒公司接待室的拐角，沿着华特灵大道的下坡路走去。都柏林制酒公司的栈房外面停着一辆游览车[140]，既没有乘客，也没有车把式，缰绳系在车轱辘上。这么做，好险呀。准是从蒂珀雷里[141]来的哪个笨蛋在拿市民的命开玩笑。倘若马脱了缰呢?

丹尼斯•布林夹着他那两部大书，在约翰•亨利•门顿的事务所等了一个小时。然后腻烦了，就带着妻子踱过奥康内尔桥，直奔考立斯－沃德法律事务所。

克南先生来到岛街附近了。那是多事之秋。得向内德•兰伯特借借乔纳•巴林顿[142]爵士回忆录。回首往事，回忆录读来就把过去的一切都井井有条地排列起来。在达利俱乐部赌博来着。当时还不兴玩牌时作弊。其中一个家伙被人用匕首把手钉在牌桌上了。爱德华•菲茨杰拉德勋爵[143]就是在这左近甩掉塞尔少校，逃之夭夭的。莫伊拉邸第后面的马厩[144]。

那杜松子可真是好酒。

那是个英姿潇洒的贵公子。当然是出自名门喽。那个恶棍，那戴紫罗兰色手套的冒牌乡绅，把他出卖了。当然他们站到错误的一边。他们是在黑暗邪恶的日子里挺身而出的。那是一首好诗，英格拉姆[145]作的。他们是君子。那首歌谣本•多拉德唱起来确实感人。天衣无缝的表演。

罗斯包围战，我爹勇捐躯。[146]

一队车马从从容容地走边彭布罗克码头[147]，骑在马上簇拥着车辆的侍卫们，在鞍上颠簸着，颠簸着。大礼服。嫩黄色的旱伞。

克南先生匆匆朝前赶去，一路气喘吁吁。

总督阁下!糟糕透啦!刚好失之交臂。真该死！太可惜啦!

* * *

斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯隔着罩了铁丝网的窗户，注视着宝石匠[148]的手指在检验一条被岁月磨乌了的链子。尘土像丝网般密布在窗户和陈列盘上。指甲酷似鹰爪的勤劳的手指，也给尘土弄得发暗了。一盘盘颜色晦暗的青铜丝和银丝，菱形的朱砂、红玉以及那些带鳞状斑纹的和绛色的宝石上，都蒙着厚厚的积尘。

这些统统产于黑暗而蠕动着蚯蚓的土壤。火焰的冰冷颗粒，不祥之物，在黑暗中发光。沉沦的大天使把他们额上的星星丢在这儿了。满是泥泞的猪鼻子啊，手啊，又是拱，又是掘，把它们紧紧攥住，吃力地弄到手里。

这里，橡胶与大蒜一道燃着。在一片昏暗中，她翩翩起舞。一个留着赤褐色胡子的水手，边呷着大酒杯里的甘蔗酒，边盯着她。长期的航海生涯不知不觉地使他淫欲旺盛起来。她跳啊蹦啊，扭动着她那母猪般的腰腿和臀部。卵状红玉在肥大的肚皮上摆动着。

老拉塞尔又用一块污迹斑斑的麂皮揩拭出宝石的光泽，把它旋转一下，举到摩西式长胡子梢那儿去端详。猴爷爷贪婪地盯着偷来的珍藏。[149]

而你这个从墓地刨出古老形象的人，又当如何?诡辩家的狂言谵语：安提西尼。推销不出去的学识。光辉夺目、长生不朽的小麦，从亘古到永远。[150]

两个老妪[151]刚被含有潮水气味的风吹拂了一阵。她们拖着沉重的脚步沿着伦敦桥路穿过爱尔兰区，一个握着巴满沙子的破旧雨伞，另一个提着产婆用的手提包，里面滚动着十一只蛤蜊。

电力站发出的皮带旋转的噼噼啪啪声以及发电机的隆隆声催促着斯蒂芬赶路。无生命的生命。等一等!外界那无休止的搏动和内部这无休止的搏动。[152]你咏唱的是你那颗心。我介于它们之间?在哪儿?就在两个喧哗、回旋的世界之间——我。砸烂它们算了，两个都砸烂。可是一拳下去，把我也打昏过去吧。谁有力气，尽管把我砸烂了吧。说来既是老鸨，又是屠夫。[153]且慢!一时还定不下来。四下里望望再说。

对，真是这样。大极了，好得很，非常准时。[154]先生，你说得不错。在星期一早晨。正是正是。[155]

斯蒂芬边顺着贝德福德横街走去，边用梣木手杖的柄磕打着肩胛骨。克罗希赛书店橱窗里一幅一八六0年晒印的褪了色的版画吸引了他的目光。 那是希南对塞耶斯的拳击比赛[156]。头戴大礼帽的助威者瞪大了眼睛站在圈了绳子的拳击场周围。两个重量级拳击手穿着紧身小裤衩，彼此把球茎状的拳头柔和地伸向对方。然而它们——英雄们的心脏——正在怦怦直跳。

他掉过身去，在斜立着的书车跟前站了下来。

“两便士一本，”摊主说，“六便士四本。”

净是些破破烂烂的。《爱尔兰养蜂人》[157]、《阿尔斯教士传记及奇迹》[158]、《基拉尼导游手册》。

兴许能在这儿找到一本我在学校获得后又典当了的奖品。年级奖：奖给优等生斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯。[159]

康米神父已诵读完了九时课，他边喃喃地作着晚祷，边穿过唐尼卡尼小村。

装帧好像太讲究了，这是什么书啊?《摩西经书》第八、第九卷。[160]大卫王的御玺[161]。书页上还沾着拇指痕迹，准是一遍又一遍地被读过的。 在我之前是谁打这儿经过的?怎样能使皲裂的手变得柔软。用白葡萄酒酿造醋的秘方。 怎样赢得女性的爱情。这对我合适。双手合十，将下列咒语念诵三遍：

受天主保佑的女性的小天堂!请只爱我一人!

神圣的!啊们![162]

这是谁写的?最圣洁的修道院院长彼得•萨兰卡[163]的咒语和祷文，公诸于所有信男信女。赛得过任何一位修道院院长的咒语，譬如说话含糊不清的约阿基姆。下来吧，秃瓢儿，不然就薅光你的毛。[164]

“你在这儿干什么哪，斯蒂芬?”

迪丽那高耸的双肩和槛褛的衣衫。

快合上书，别让她瞧见。

“你干什么哪?”斯蒂芬说。

最显赫的查理般的斯图尔特[165]脸庞，长长的直发披到肩上。当她蹲下去，把破靴子塞到火里当燃料的时候，两颊被映红了。我对她讲巴黎的事。她喜欢躺在床上睡懒觉，把几件旧大衣当被子盖，抚弄着丹•凯利送的纪念品———只金色黄铜手镯。天主保佑的女性。

“你拿着什么？”斯蒂芬问。

“我花一便士从另外那辆车上买的，”迪丽怯生生地笑着说，“值得一看吗？”

人家都说她这双眼睛活脱儿像我。在别人眼里，我是这样的吗？敏捷，神情恍惚，果敢。我心灵的影子。

他从她手里拿过那本掉了封皮的书。夏登纳尔的《法语初级读本》。

“你干吗要买它？”他问，“想学法语吗？”

她点点头，飞红了脸，把嘴抿得紧紧的。

不要露出惊讶的样子。事情十分自然。

“给你，”斯蒂芬说，“这还行。留神别让玛吉给你当掉了。我的书大概统统光了。”

“一部分，”迪丽说，“我们也是不得已啊。”

她快淹死了。内心的苛责。救救她吧。内心的苛责。一切都跟我们作对。她会使我同她一道淹死的，连眼睛带头发。又长又柔软的海藻头发缠绕着我，我的心，我的灵魂。咸绿的死亡。

我们。

内心的苛责。内心受到苛责。

苦恼！苦恼！

＊ ＊ ＊

“你好，西蒙，”考利神父说，“近来怎么样？”

“你好，鲍勃，老伙计，”迪达勒斯先生停下脚步，回答说。

他们在雷迪父女古董店外面吵吵嚷嚷地握手。考利神父勾拢着手背频频朝下捋着八字胡。

“有什么最好的消息？”迪达勒斯先生问。

“没什么了不起的，”考利神父说，“我被围困住了，西蒙，有两个人在我家周围荡来荡去，拼命想闯进来。”

“真逗，”迪达勒斯先生说，“是谁指使的呀？”

“哦，”考利神父说，“是咱们认识的一个放高利货的。”

“那个罗锅儿吧，是吗？”迪达勒斯先生问。

“就是他，”考利神父回答说，“那个民族[166]的吕便。我正在等候本•多拉德。他这就去跟高个儿约翰[167]打声招呼，请他把那两个人打发掉。我只要求宽限一段时间。”

他抱着茫然的期待上上下下打量着码头，挺大的喉结在脖颈上凸了出来。

“我明白，”迪达勒斯先生点点头说，“本这个可怜的老罗圈腿！

他一向总替人作好事。紧紧抓住本吧！”

他戴上眼镜，朝铁桥瞥了一眼。

“他来了，”他说，“没错儿，连屁股带兜儿都来啦。”

穿着宽松的蓝色常礼服、头戴大礼帽、下面是肥大裤子的本•多拉德的身姿，迈着大步从铁桥那边穿过码头走了过来。他一面溜溜达达地朝他们踱来，一面在上衣后摆所遮住的部位起劲地挠着。

当他走近后，迪达勒斯先生招呼说：

“抓住这个穿不像样子的裤子的家伙。”

“现在就抓吧，”本•多拉德说。

迪达勒斯先生以冷峭的目光从头到脚审视本•多拉德一通，随后掉过身去朝考利神父点了点头，讥讽地咕哝道：

“夏天穿这么一身，倒蛮标致哩，对吧？”

“哼，但愿你的灵魂永遭天罚，”本•多拉德怒不可遏地吼道：

“我当年丢掉的衣服比你所曾见过的还多哩。”

他站在他们旁边，先朝他们，接着又朝自己那身松松垮垮的衣服眉飞色舞地望望。迪达勒斯先生一面从他的衣服上边东一处西一处地掸掉绒毛，一面说：

“无论如何，本，这身衣服是做给身强体健的汉子穿的。”

“让那个做衣服的犹太佬遭殃，”本•多拉德说，“谢天谢地，他还没拿到工钱哪。”

“本杰明，你那最低音[168]怎么样啦？”考利神父问。

卡什尔•傅伊尔•奥康内尔•菲茨莫里斯•蒂斯代尔•法雷尔戴着副眼镜，嘴里念念有词，大步流星地从基尔代尔街俱乐部前走过。

本•多拉德皱起眉头，突然以领唱者的口型，发出个深沉的音符。

“噢！”他说。

“就是这个腔调，”迪达勒斯先生说，点头对这声单调的低音表示赞许。

“怎么样？”本•多拉德说，“还不赖吧？怎么样？”

他掉过身去对着他们两个人。

“行啊，”考利神父也点了点头，说。

休•C。洛夫神父从圣玛利修道院那古老的教士会堂踱出来，在杰拉尔丁家族那些高大英俊的人们陪伴下，经过詹姆斯与查理•肯尼迪合成酒厂，穿过围栏渡口，朝索尔塞尔走去。[169] 

本•多拉德把沉甸甸的身子朝那排商店的门面倾斜着，手指在空中快乐地比比划划，领着他们前行。

“跟我一道到副行政长官的办事处去，”他说，“我要让你们开开眼，让你们看看罗克[177]新任命为法警的那个美男子。那家伙是罗本古拉和林奇豪恩[171]的混合物。你们听着，他值得一瞧。来吧。刚才我在博德加[172]偶然碰见了约翰•亨利•门顿。除非我……等一等……否则我会栽跟头的。咱们的路子走对了，鲍勃，你相信我好啦。”

“告诉他，只消宽限几天，”考利神父忧心忡忡他说。

本•多拉德站住了，两眼一瞪，张大了音量很大的嘴，为了听得真切一些，伸手去抠掉厚厚地巴在眼睛上的眼屎。这当儿，上衣的一颗钮扣露着锃亮的背面， 吊在仅剩的一根线上，晃啊晃的。

“什么几天？”他声音洪亮地问，“你的房东不是扣押了你的财物来抵偿房租吗？”

“可不是嘛，”考利神父说。

“那么，咱们那位朋友的传票就还不如印它的那张纸值钱呢，”本•多拉德说，“房东有优先权。我把细目统统告诉他了。温泽大街二十九号，姓洛夫吧？”

“对呀，”考利神父说，“洛夫神父。他在乡下某地传教。可是，你对这有把握吗？”

“你可以替我告诉巴拉巴[173]，”本•多拉德说，“说他最好把那张传票收起来，就好比猴子把坚果收藏起来一样。”

他勇敢地领着考利神父朝前走去，就像是把神父拴在自己那庞大的身躯上似的。

“我相信那是榛子，”迪达勒斯先生边说边让夹鼻眼镜耷拉在上衣胸前，跟随他们而去。

＊ ＊ ＊

“小家伙们总会得到妥善安置的，”当他们迈出城堡大院的大门时，马丁•坎宁翰说。

警察行了个举手礼。

“辛苦啦，”马丁•坎宁翰欣然说。

他向等候着的车夫打了个手势，车夫甩了甩缰绳，直奔爱德华勋爵街而去。

揭发挨着金发，肯尼迪小姐的头挨着杜丝小姐的头，双双出现在奥蒙德饭店的半截儿窗帘上端。[174] 

“是啊，”马丁•坎宁翰用手指捋着胡子说，“我给康米神父写了封信，向他和盘托出了。”

“你不妨找咱们的朋友试试看，”鲍尔先生怯生生地建议。

“博伊德[175] ？”马丁•坎宁翰干干脆脆他说，“算了吧。”

约翰•怀斯•诺兰落在后面看名单，然后沿着科克山的下坡路匆匆赶了上来。

在市政府门前的台阶上，正往下走着的市政委员南尼蒂同往上走的市参议员考利以及市政委员亚伯拉罕•莱昂打了招呼。

总督府的车空空荡荡地开进了交易所街。

“喂，马丁，”约翰•怀斯•诺兰在《邮报》报社门口赶上了他们，说，“我看到布卢姆马上认捐五先令哩。”

“正是这样！”马丁•坎宁翰接过名单来说，“还当场拍出这五先令。”

“而且二句话没说，”鲍尔先生说。

“真不可思议，然而的确如此，”马丁•坎宁翰补上一句。

约翰•怀斯惊奇地睁大了眼睛。

“我认为这个犹太人的心肠倒不坏呢，[176]” 他文雅地引用了这么一句话。

他们沿着议会街走去。

“看，吉米•亨利[177] 在那儿哪，”鲍尔先生说，“他正朝着卡瓦纳的酒吧走呢。”

“果不其然，”马丁•坎宁翰说，“快去！”

克莱尔屋外面，布莱泽斯•博伊兰截住杰克•穆尼的内弟[ 178] ——这个筋骨隆起的人正醉醺醺地走向自由区。

约翰•怀斯•诺兰和鲍尔先生落在后面，马丁•坎宁翰则挽住一位身穿带白斑点的深色衣服、整洁而短小精悍的人，那个人正迈着急促的脚步趔趔趄趄地从米基•安德森的钟表铺前走过。

“副秘书长[179] ）脚上长的鸡眼可给了他点儿苦头吃，”约翰•怀斯•诺兰告诉鲍尔先生。

他们跟在后头拐过街角，走向詹姆斯•卡瓦纳的酒馆。总督府那辆空车就在他们前方，停在埃塞克斯大门里。马丁•坎宁翰说个不停，频频打开那张名单，吉米•亨利却不屑一顾。

“高个儿约翰•范宁也在这里，”约翰•怀斯•诺兰说，“千真万确。”

高个儿约翰•范宁站在门口，他这个庞然大物把甬道整个给堵住了。

“您好，副长官先生，”当大家停下来打招呼时，马丁•坎宁翰说。

高个儿约翰•范宁并不为他们让路。他毅然取下叼在嘴里的那一大支亨利•克莱[180] ，他那双严峻的大眼睛机智地怒视着他们每个人的脸。

“立法议会议员们还在心平气和地继续协商着吧？”他用充满讥讽的口吻对副秘书长说。

吉米•亨利不耐烦他说，给他们那该死的爱尔兰语[181] 闹腾得地狱都为基督教徒裂开了口。[182] 他倒是想知道，市政典礼官究竟哪儿去啦，[183] 怎么不来维持一下市政委员会会场上的秩序。而执权杖的老巴洛因哮喘发作病倒了。 桌上没有权杖，秩序一片混乱，连法定人数都不足。哈钦森市长在兰迪德诺[184]呢， 由小个子洛坎•舍罗克作他的临时代理[185]。该死的爱尔兰语，咱们祖先的语言。

高个儿约翰•范宁从唇间喷出一口羽毛状的轻烟。

马丁•坎宁翰捻着胡子梢，轮流向副秘书长和副长官搭讪着，约翰•怀斯•诺兰则闷声不响。

“那个迪格纳穆叫什么名字来着？”高个儿约翰•范宁问。

吉米•亨利愁眉苦脸地抬起左脚。

“哎呀，我的鸡眼啊！”他哀求着说，“行行好，咱们上楼来谈吧，我好找个地方儿坐坐。唔！噢！当心点儿！”

他烦躁地从高个子约翰•范宁身旁挤过去，一径上了楼梯。

“上来吧，”马丁•坎宁翰对副长官说，“您大概跟他素不相识，不过，兴许您认识他。”

鲍尔先生跟约翰•怀斯•诺兰一道走了进去。

高个儿约翰•范宁正朝着映在镜中的高个儿约翰•范宁走上楼梯。鲍尔先生对那魁梧的背影说：“他曾经是个矮小的老好人。”

“个子相当矮小。门顿事务所的那个迪格纳穆，”马丁•坎宁翰说。

高个儿约翰•范宁记不得他了。

外面传来了嘚嘚的马蹄声。

“是什么呀？”马丁•坎宁翰说。

大家都就地回过头去。约翰•怀斯•诺兰又走了下来。他从门道的荫凉处瞧见马队正经过议会街，挽具和润泽光滑的马脚在太阳映照下闪闪发着光。它们快活地从他那冷漠而不友好的视线下徐徐走过。领头的那匹往前跳跳窜窜，鞍上骑着开路的侍从们。

“怎么回事呀？”

当大家重新走上楼梯的时候，马丁•坎宁翰问道。

“那是陆军中将——爱尔兰总督大人，”约翰•怀斯•诺兰从楼梯脚下回答说。

＊ ＊ ＊

当他们从厚实的地毯上走过的时候，勃克•穆利根在巴拿马帽的遮荫下小声对海恩斯说：

“瞧，巴涅儿的弟弟。在那儿，角落里。”

他们选择了靠窗的一张小桌子，面对着一个长脸蛋的人——他的胡须和视线都专注在棋盘上。

“就是那个人吗？”海恩斯在座位上扭过身去，问道。

“对，”穆利根说，“那就是他弟弟约翰•霍华德，咱们的市政典礼官”

约翰•霍华德•巴涅尔沉静地挪动了一只白主教，然后举起那灰不溜秋的爪子去托住脑门子。转瞬之间，在手掌的遮掩下，他两眼闪出妖光，朝自己的对手倏地瞥了一下，再度俯视那鏖战的一角。

“我要一客奶油什锦水果[186]， ”海恩斯对女侍说。

“两客奶油什锦水果[187] ，”勃克•穆利根说，“还给咱们来点烤饼、黄油和一些糕点。”

她走后，他笑着说：

“我们管这家叫作糟糕公司，因为他们供应糟透了的糕点[188] 。哎，可惜你没听到迪达勒斯的《哈姆莱特》论。”

海恩斯打开他那本新买来的书。

“真可惜，”他说，“对所有那些头脑失掉平衡的人[189] 来说，莎士比亚都是个最过瘾的猎场。”

独腿水手朝着纳尔逊街十四号[190] 地下室前那块空地嚷道：

英国期待着……

勃克•穆利根笑得连身上那件淡黄色背心都快活地直颤悠。

“真想让你看看，”他说，“他的身体失去平衡的那副样子。我管他叫作飘忽不定的安古斯[191] ）。”

“我相信他有个固定观念[192] ，”海恩斯用大拇指和食指沉思地掐着下巴说，“眼下我正在揣测着其中有什么内涵。这号人素来是这样的。”

勃克•穆利根一本正经地从桌子对面探过身去。

“关于地狱的幻影，”他说，“使他的思路紊乱了。他永远也捕捉不到古希腊的格调。所有那些诗人当中斯温伯恩的格调——苍白的死亡和殷红的诞[193]。 这是他的悲剧。他永远也当不成诗人。[194] 创造的欢乐……”

“无止无休的惩罚，”海恩斯马马虎虎地点了点头说，“我晓得了。今儿早晨我跟他争辩过信仰问题。我看出他有点心事。挺有趣儿的是，因为关于这个问题， 维也纳的波科尔尼[195] 教授提出了个饶有趣味的论点。”

勃克•穆利根那双机灵的眼睛注意到女侍来了。他帮助她取下托盘上的东西。

“他在古代爱尔兰神话中找不到地狱的痕迹，”海恩斯边快活地饮着酒边说，“好像缺乏道德观念、宿命感、因果报应意识。有点儿不可思议的是，他偏偏有这么个固定观念。他为你们的运动写些文章吗？”

他把两块方糖灵巧地侧着放进起着泡沫的奶油里。勃克•穆利根将一个冒着热气的烤饼掰成两半，往热气腾腾的饼心里涂满了黄油，狼吞虎咽地咬了一口松软的饼心。

“十年，”他边嚼边笑着说，“十年之内，他一定要写出点什么。”[196]

“好像挺遥远的，”海恩斯若有所思地举起羹匙说，“不过，我并不怀疑他终究会写得出来的。”

他舀了一匙子杯中那圆锥形的奶油，品尝了一下。

“我相信这是真正的爱尔兰奶油，”他以容忍的口吻说，“我可不愿意上当。”

以利亚这叶小舟，揉成一团丢掉的轻飘飘的传单，向东航行，沿着一艘艘海轮和拖网渔船的侧腹驶去。它从群岛般的软木浮子[197]当中穿行，将新瓦平街甩在后面[198]，经过本森渡口，并擦过从布里奇沃特运砖来的罗斯韦恩号三桅纵帆船。[199] 

＊ ＊ ＊

阿尔米达诺•阿蒂弗尼踱过霍利斯街，踱过休厄尔场院。跟在他后面的是卡什尔•博伊尔•奥康内尔•菲茨莫里斯•蒂斯代尔•法雷尔，夹在腑下的防尘罩衣、拐杖和雨伞晃荡着。他避开劳•史密斯先生家门前的路灯，穿过街道，沿着梅里恩方场走去。远远地在他后头，一个盲青年正贴着学院校园的围墙，轻敲着地面摸索前行。

卡什尔•博伊尔•奥康内尔•菲茨莫里斯•蒂斯代尔•法雷尔一直走到刘易斯•沃纳先生那快乐的窗下，随后掉转身，跨大步沿着梅里恩方场折回来。一路上晃荡着风衣、拐杖和雨伞。

他在王尔德商号拐角处站住了，朝着张贴在大都市会堂的以利亚[200]这个名字皱了皱眉，又朝远处公爵草坪上的游园地皱了皱眉。镜片在阳光的反射下，他又皱了皱眉。他龇出老鼠般的牙齿，嘟囔道：

“我是被迫首肯的。”[201]

他咬牙切齿地咀嚼着这句愤慨的话语，大步流星地向克莱尔街走去。

当他路过布卢姆[202] 先生的牙科诊所窗前时，他那晃晃荡荡的风衣粗暴地蹭着一根正斜敲着探路的细手杖，继续朝前冲去，撞上了一个赢弱的身躯。 盲青年将带着病容的脸掉向他那扬长而去的背影。

“天打雷劈的，”他愠怒他说，“不管你是谁，你总比我还瞎呢，你这婊子养的杂种！”[203]

＊ ＊ ＊

在拉基•奥多诺荷律师事务所对面，少年帕特里克•阿洛伊修斯•迪格纳穆手里摸着家里打发他从曼根的店（原先是费伦巴克的店）买来的一磅半猪排，在暖洋洋的威克洛街上不急不忙地溜达着。跟斯托尔太太、奎格利太太和麦克道尔太太一道坐在客厅里，太厌烦无聊了；百叶窗拉得严严实实的，她们全部抽着鼻子，一点点地啜饮着巴尼舅舅从膝尼[204] 的店里取来的黄褐色上等雪利酒。她们吃着乡村风味果仁糕饼的碎屑，靠磨嘴皮子来消磨讨厌的光阴，唉声叹气着。

走过威克洛巷后，来到多伊尔夫人朝服女帽头饰店的橱窗前。他停下了脚步，站在那儿，望着窗里两个裸体拳师向对方屈臂伸出拳头。两个身穿孝服的少年迪格纳穆，从两侧的镜子里，一声不响地张口呆看。都柏林的宠儿迈勒•基奥跟贝内特军士长——贝洛港的职业拳击家[205] 较量，奖金五十英镑。嘿，这场比赛好带劲儿，有瞧头！迈勒•基奥就是这个腰系绿色饰带迎面扑来的汉子。门票两先令，军人减半。我蛮可以把妈糊弄过去。当他转过身时，左边的少年迪格纳穆也跟着转。那就是穿孝服的我喽。什么时候？五月二十二号。当然，这讨厌的比赛总算全过去啦。他转向右边，右面的少年迪格纳穆也转了过来：歪戴行便帽，硬领翘了起来。他抬起下巴，把领口扣平，就瞅见两个拳师旁边还有玛丽•肯德尔（专演风骚角色的妩媚女演员）的肖像。斯托尔抽的纸烟盒子上就印着这号娘儿们。有一回他正抽着，给他老爹撞见了，狠狠地揍了他一顿

少年迪格纳穆把领口扣平贴了之后，又溜溜达达往前走。菲茨西蒙斯是天下最有力气的拳击手了。要是那家伙嗖地朝你的腰上来一拳，就得叫你躺到下星期，不含糊！可是论技巧，最棒的拳击手还要数詹姆•科贝特[206]。但是不论他怎样躲闪，终于还是被菲茨西蒙斯揍扁了。

在格拉夫顿街，少年迪格纳穆瞥见一条装束如时的男人嘴里叼着红花，还有他穿的那条漂亮的长裤。他正在倾听着一个酒鬼的唠叨，一个劲儿地咧嘴笑着。

没有驶往沙丘的电车。

少年迪格纳穆将猪排换到另一只手里，沿着纳索街前行。他的领子又翘了起来，他使劲往下掖了掖。这讨厌的钮扣比衬衫上的扣眼小得多，所以才这么别扭。他碰见一群背书包的学童们。连明天我都不上学，一直缺课到星期一。他又遇到了另外一些学童。他们可曾理会我戴着孝？巴尼舅舅说，今儿晚上他就要登在报上。那么他们就统统可以在报上看到了。讣告上将印着我的名字，还有爹的。

他的脸整个儿变成灰色的了，不像往日那样红润。一只苍蝇在上面爬，一直爬到眼睛上。在往棺材里拧螺丝的时候，只听到嘎吱嘎吱的响声。把棺材抬下楼梯的当儿，又发出咕咚咕咚的声音。

爹躺在里面，而妈呢，在客厅里哭哪。巴尼舅舅正在关照抬棺的人怎样拐弯。老大一口棺材，高而且沉重。怎么搞的呢？最后那个晚上爹喝得醉醺醺的。他站在楼梯平台那儿，喊人给他拿靴子；他要到滕尼的店里去再灌上几杯。他只穿了件衬衫，看上去又矬又矮，像一只酒桶。可那以后就再也看不见他了。死亡就是这样的。爹死啦。我父亲死了。他嘱咐我要当妈的乖儿子。他还说了些旁的话，我没听清，可我看得出他的舌头和牙在试着把话说得清楚一些。可怜的爹。那就是迪格纳穆先生，我的父亲。但愿眼下他在炼狱里哪，因为星期六晚上他找康罗伊神父做过忏悔。

＊ ＊ ＊

达德利伯爵威廉•亨勃尔[207]和达德利夫人用完午膳，就在赫塞尔廷中校伴随下，从总督府乘车外出。跟随在后面的那辆马车里坐着尊贵的佩吉特太太、德库西小组和侍从副官尊贵的杰拉尔德•沃德。

这支车队从凤凰公园南大门出来，一路受到卑恭屈膝的警察的敬礼。跨过国王桥[208] ，沿着北岸码头走去。总督经过这座大都会时，到处都受到极其热烈的欢迎。在血泊桥[209] 畔，托马斯•克南先生从河对岸徒劳地遥遥向他致敬。达德利爵爷的总督府车队打王后桥与惠特沃思桥[210] 之间穿行时，从法学学士、文学硕士达特利•怀特先生身边走过。此公却没向他致敬，只是伫立在阿伦街西角M. E. 怀特太太那爿当铺外面的阿伦码头上，用食指抚摩着鼻子。为了及早抵达菲布斯巴勒街，他拿不定主意究竟是该换三次电车呢，还是雇一辆马车；要么就步行，穿过史密斯菲尔德、宪法山和布洛德斯通终点站。在高等法院的门廊里，里奇•古尔丁正夹着古尔丁一科利斯一沃德律师事务所的帐目公文包，见到他有些吃惊。跨过里奇蒙桥之后，在爱国保险公司代理人吕便•杰•多德律师事务所门口台阶上，一位上了年纪的妇女正要走进去，却又改变了主意。她沿着王记商号的橱窗折回来，对国王陛下的代表投以轻信的微笑。伍德码头堤岸的水闸就在汤姆•德万事务所的下边，波德尔河从这里耷拉着一条效忠的污水舌头。在奥蒙德饭店的半截儿窗帘上端，褐色挨着金色；肯尼迪小姐的头挨着杜丝小姐的头，正一道儿在注视井欣赏着。在奥蒙德码头上，刚好从公共厕所走向副长官办事处的西蒙•迪达勒斯先生，就在街心止步，脱帽深打一躬。总督阁下谦和地向迪达勒斯先生还了礼。文学硕士休•C。洛夫神父从卡希尔印刷厂的拐角处施了一礼，总督却不曾理会。洛夫念念不忘的是：有俸圣职推举权从前都掌握在宽厚的代理国王的诸侯手中。在格拉但桥上，利内翰和麦科伊正在一边相互告别，一边望着马车经过。格蒂•麦克道维尔[211] 替她那缠绵病榻的父亲取来凯茨比公司关于软木亚麻油毡的函件，正走过罗杰•格林律师事务所和多拉德印刷厂的大红厂房。从那气派，她晓得那就是总督夫妇了，却看不到夫人究竟怎样打扮，因为一辆电车和斯普林家具店的一辆大型黄色家具搬运车给总督大人让道，刚好停在她跟前。伦迪•福特烟草店再过去，从卡瓦纳酒吧那被遮住的门口，约翰•怀斯•诺兰朝着国王陛下的代表、爱尔兰总督阁下淡然一笑，但是无人目睹到其神情之冷漠。维多利亚大十字勋章佩带者、达德利伯爵威廉•亨勃尔大人一路走过米基•安德森店里那众多嘀嘀嗒嗒响个不停的钟表，以及亨利- 詹姆斯那些衣着时髦、脸蛋儿鲜艳的蜡制模特儿——绅士亨利与最潇洒的詹姆斯。[212] 汤姆•罗赤福特和大鼻子弗林面对着戴姆大门，观看车队渐渐走近。汤姆•罗赤福特发现达德利夫人两眼盯着他，就连忙把插在紫红色背心兜里的两个大拇指伸出来，摘下便帽给她深打一躬。专演风骚角色的妩媚女演员——杰出的玛丽•肯德尔，脸颊上浓妆艳抹，撩起裙子，从海报上朝着达德利伯爵威廉•亨勃尔，也朝着H•G•赫塞尔廷中校，还朝着侍从副官、尊贵的杰拉尔德•沃德嫣然笑着。神色愉快的勃克•穆利根和表情严肃的海恩斯，隔着那些全神贯注的顾客们的肩膀，从都柏林面包公司的窗口定睛俯视着。簇拥在窗口的形影遮住了约翰•霍华德•巴涅尔的视线。而他正专心致志地注视着棋盘。在弗恩斯街上，迪丽•迪达勒斯从她那本夏登纳尔的《法语初级读本》抬起眼睛使劲往四下里望，一把把撑开来的遮阳伞以及在眩目的阳光下一些旋转着的车轱辘辐条映入眼帘。约翰•亨利•门侧堵在商业大厦门口，瞪着一双用酒浸大了般的牡蛎眼睛，肥肥的左手搽着一块厚实的双盖金表[213]，他并不看表，对它也无所察觉，在比利王的坐骑[214] 抬起前蹄抓挠虚空的地方，布林太太一把拽回她丈夫——他差点儿匆匆地冲到骑马侍从的马蹄底下。她对着他的耳朵大声把这消息嚷给他听。他明白了，于是就把那两本大书挪到左胸前，向第二辆马车致敬。这出乎侍从副官尊贵的杰拉尔德•沃德的意外，就赶忙欣然还礼。在庞森比书店的拐角处，精疲力竭的白色大肚酒瓶H站住了，四个戴高帽子的白色大肚酒瓶——E. L. Y’S[215] ，也在他身后停下脚步。骑在马上的侍从们拥着车辆，神气十足地打他们跟前奔驰而去。在皮戈特公司乐器栈房对面，舞蹈等课程的教师丹尼斯•杰•马金尼先生被总督赶在前头。后者却不曾理会他那花里胡哨的服装和端庄的步履。沿着学院院长住宅的围墙，布莱泽斯•博伊兰洋洋得意地踩着乐曲《我的意中人是位约克郡姑娘》[216]迭句的节拍走来。——他脚登棕黄色皮鞋，短袜跟上还绣着天蓝色的花纹。先导马缀着天蓝色额饰，一副趾高气扬的样子；布莱泽斯•博伊兰则向它们夸示自己这条天蓝色领带、这顶放荡地歪戴着的宽檐草帽和身上穿的这套靛青色哔叽衣服。他双手揣在上衣兜里，忘记行礼了，却向三位淑女大胆献出赞美的目光和他唇间所衔的那朵红花。当车队驶经纳索街的时候，总督大人提醒他那位正在点头还礼的伴侣去留意学院校园中正在演奏着的音乐节目。不见形影的高原小伙子们正肆无忌惮地[217] 用嘟嘟嘟的铜号声和咚咚咚的鼓声为车队行列送行：

她虽是工厂姑娘，

并不穿花哨衣裳，

吧啦嘣。

我以约克郡口味，

对约克郡小玫瑰，

倒怀有一种偏爱，

吧啦嘣。

围墙里面，四分之一英里平路障碍赛[218] 的参加者M. C.格林、H. 施里夫特、T. M. 帕蒂、C. 斯凯夫J．B杰夫斯、G. N. 莫菲、F. 斯蒂文森、C. 阿德利和w. C. 哈葛德开始了角逐。正跨着大步从芬恩饭店前经过的卡什尔•傅伊尔•奥康内尔•菲茨莫里斯•蒂斯代尔•法雷尔隔着单片眼镜射出来的凶恶目光，越过那些马车，凝视着奥匈帝国副领事馆窗内M. E. 所罗门斯[ 219] 先生那颗脑袋。在莱因斯特街深处，三一学院的后门旁边，保王派霍恩布洛尔手扶嗬嗬帽[220] 。当那些皮毛光润的马从梅里恩广场上奔驰而过的时候，等在那儿的少年帕特里克•阿洛伊修斯•迪格纳穆瞧见人们都向那位头戴大礼帽的绅士致敬，就也用自己那只被猪排包装纸弄得满是油腻的手，举起黑色新便帽。他的领子也翘了起来。为默塞尔医院募款的迈勒斯义卖会[221] 快要开始了，总督率领着随从们驰向下蒙特街，前往主持开幕式。他在布洛德本特那家店铺对面，从一个年轻盲人身边走过。在下蒙特街，一个身穿棕色胶布雨衣的行人[222] ，边啃着没有抹黄油的面包，边从总督的车马前面迅速地穿过马路，没磕也没碰着。在皇家运河桥头，广告牌上的尤金•斯特拉顿先生咧着厚厚嘴唇，对一切前来彭布罗克区[223]的人都笑脸相迎。在哈丁顿路口，两个浑身是沙子的女人停下脚步，手执雨伞和里面滚动着十一只蛤蜊的提包；她们倒要瞧瞧没挂金链条的市长[224] 大人和市长夫人是个啥样。在诺森伯兰和兰斯多恩两条路上，总督大人郑重其事地对那些向他致敬的人们一一回礼；其中包括稀稀拉拉的男性行人，站在一栋房子的花园门前的两个小学童——据说一八四九年已故女工[225] 偕丈夫前来访问爱尔兰首府时，这座房子承蒙她深表赞赏。还有被一扇正在关闭着的门所吞没的、穿着厚实长裤的阿尔米达诺•阿尔蒂弗尼的敬礼。
Chapter 11 Sirens
BRONZE BY GOLD HEARD THE HOOFIRONS, STEELYRINING IMPERthnthn thnthnthn. 
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. Horrid! And gold flushed more. 

A husky fifenote blew. 

Blew. Blue bloom is on the 

Gold pinnacled hair. 

A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin, rose of Castille. 

Trilling, trilling: I dolores. 

Peep! Who's in the... peepofgold? 

Tink cried to bronze in pity. 

And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call. 

Decoy. Soft word. But look! The bright stars fade. O rose! Notes chirruping answer. Castille. The morn is breaking. 

Jingle jingle jaunted jingling. 

Coin rang. Clock clacked. 

Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye! 

Jingle. Bloo. 

Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum. 

A sail! A veil awave upon the waves. 

Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now. 

Horn. Hawhorn. 

When first he saw. Alas! 

Full tup. Full throb. 

Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring. 

Martha! Come! 

Clapclop. Clipclap. Clappyclap. 

Goodgod henev erheard inall. 

Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up. 

A moonlight nightcall: far: far. 

I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming. 

Listen! 

The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each and for other plash and silent roar. 

Pearls: when she. Liszt's rhapsodies. Hissss. 

You don't? 

Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra. 

Black. 

Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do. 

Wait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee. 

But wait! 

Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore. 

Naminedamine. All gone. All fallen. 

Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair. 

Amen! He gnashed in fury. 

Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding. 

Bronzelydia by Minagold. 

By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom. 

One rapped, one tapped with a carra, with a cock. 

Pray for him! Pray, good people! 

His gouty fingers nakkering. 

Big Benaben. Big Benben. 

Last rose Castille of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone. Pwee! Little wind piped wee. 

True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your tschink with tschunk. 

Fff! Oo! 

Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs? 

Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl. 

Then, not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt. 

Done. 

Begin! 

Bronze by gold, Miss Douce's head by Miss Kennedy's head, over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing steel. 

-- Is that her? asked Miss Kennedy. 

Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and eau de Nil. 

-- Exquisite contrast, Miss Kennedy said. 

When all agog Miss Douce said eagerly: 

-- Look at the fellow in the tall silk. 

-- Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly. 

-- In the second carriage, Miss Douce's wet lips said, laughing in the sun. He's looking. Mind till I see. 

She darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her face against the pane in a halo of hurried breath. 

Her wet lips tittered: 

-- He's killed looking back. 

She laughed: 

-- O wept! Aren't men frightful idiots? 

With sadness. 

Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear. 

-- It's them has the fine times, sadly then she said. 

A man. 

Bloowho went by by Moulang's pipes, bearing in his breast the sweets of sin, by Wine's antiques in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by Carroll's dusky battered plate, for Raoul. 

The boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. For them unheeding him he banged on the counter his tray of chattering china. And 

-- There's your teas, he said. 

Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an upturned lithia crate, safe from eyes, low. 

-- What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked. 

-- Find out, Miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint. 

-- Your beau, is it? 

A haughty bronze replied: 

-- I'll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of your impertinent insolence. 

-- I mperthnthn thnthnthn, bootsnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she threatened as he had come. 

Bloom. 

On her flower frowning Miss Douce said: 

-- Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn't conduct himself I'll wring his ear for him a yard long. 

Ladylike in exquisite contrast. 

-- Take no notice, Miss Kennedy rejoined. 

She poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned, waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to draw, and two and seven. 

Yes, bronze from anear, by gold from afar, heard steel from anear, hoofs ring from afar, and heard steelhoofs ringhoof ringsteel. 

-- Am I awfully sunburnt? 

Miss Bronze unbloused her neck. 

-- No, said Miss Kennedy. It gets brown after. Did you try the borax with the cherry laurel water? 

Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror gildedlettered where hock and claret glasses shimmered and in their midst a shell. 

-- And leave it to my hands, she said. 

-- Try it with the glycerine, Miss Kennedy advised. 

Bidding her neck and hands adieu Miss Douce 

-- Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I asked that old fogey in Boyd's for something for my skin. 

Miss Kennedy, pouring now fulldrawn tea, grimaced and prayed: 

-- O, don't remind me of him for mercy'sake! 

-- But wait till I tell you, Miss Douce entreated. 

Sweet tea Miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged both two ears with little fingers. 

-- No, don't, she cried. 

-- I won't listen, she cried. 

But Bloom? 

Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey's tone: 

-- For your what? says he. 

Miss Kennedy unplugged her ears to hear, to speak: but said, but prayed again: 

-- Don't let me think of him or I'll expire. The hideous old wretch! That night in the Antient Concert Rooms. 

She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped sweet tea. 

-- Here he was, Miss Douce said, cocking her bronze head three quarters, ruffling her nosewings. Hufa! Hufa! 

Shrill shriek of laughter sprang from Miss Kennedy's throat. Miss Douce huffed and snorted down her nostrils that quivered imperthnthn like a shout in quest. 

-- O! shrieking, Miss Kennedy cried. Will you ever forget bis goggle eye? 

Miss Douce chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting: 

-- And your other eye! 

Bloowhose dark eye read Aaron Figatner's name. Why do I always think Figather? Gathering figs I think. And Prosper Loré's huguenot name. By Bassi's blessed virgins Bloom's dark eyes went by. Bluerobed, white under, come to me. God they believe she is: or goddess. Those today. I could not see. That fellow spoke. A student. After with Dedalus' son. He might be Mulligan. All comely virgins. That brings those rakes of fellows in: her white. 

By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets. 

Of sin. 

In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Douce with Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, to let freefly their laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each Other, high piercing notes. 

Ah, panting, sighing. Sighing, ah, fordone their mirth died down. 

Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and giggle-giggled. Miss Douce, bending again over the teatray, ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with choking, crying: 

-- O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that, she cried. With his bit of beard! 

Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman, delight, joy, indignation. 

-- Married to the greasy nose! she yelled. 

Shrill, with deep laughter, after bronze in gold, they urged each other to peal after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold goldbronze, shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter: And then laughed more. Greasy I knows. Exhausted, breathless their shaken heads they laid, braided and pinnacled by glossycombed, against the counterledge. All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (O!), all breathless. 

Married to Bloom, to greaseaseabloom. 

-- O saints above! Miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose. I wished I hadn't laughed so much. I feel all wet. 

-- O, Miss Douce! Miss Kennedy protested. You horrid thing! 

And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly. 

By Cantwell's offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi's virgins, bright of their oils. Nannetti's father hawked those things about, wheedling at doors as I. Religion pays. Must see him about Keyes's par. Eat first. I want. Not yet. At four, she said. Time ever passing. Clockhands turning. On. Where eat? The Clarence, Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I net five guineas with those ads. The violet silk petticoats. Not yet. The sweets of sin. 

Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled. 

Into their bar strolled Mr Dedalus. Chips, picking chips off one of his rocky thumbnails. Chips. He strolled. 

-- O welcome back, Miss Douce. 

He held her hand. Enjoyed her holidays?. 

-- Tiptop. 

He hoped she had nice weather in Rostrevor. 

-- Gorgeous, she said. Look at the holy show I am. Lying out on the strand all day. 

Bronze whiteness. 

-- That was exceedingly naughty of you, Mr Dedalus told her and pressed her hand indulgently. Tempting poor simple males. 

Miss Douce of satin douced her arm away. 

-- O go away, she said. You're very simple, I don't think. 

He was. 

-- Well now, I am, he mused. I looked so simple in the cradle they christened me simple Simon. 

-- You must have been a doaty, Miss Douce made answer. And what did the doctor order today? 

-- Well now, he mused, whatever you say yourself. I think I'll trouble you for some fresh water and a half glass of whisky. 

Jingle. 

-- With the greatest alacrity, Miss Douce agreed. 

With grace of alacrity towards the mirror gilt Cantrell and Cochrane's she turned herself. With grace she tapped a measure of gold whisky from her crystal keg. Forth from the skirt of his coat Mr Dedalus brought pouch and pipe. Alacrity she served. He blew through the flue two husky fifenotes. 

-- By Jove, he mused. I often wanted to see the Mourne mountains. Must be a great tonic in the air down there. But a long threatening comes at last, they say. Yes, yes. 

Yes. He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's, into the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute. 

None not said nothing. Yes. 

Gaily Miss Douce polished a tumbler, trilling: 

-- O, Idolores, queen of the eastern seas! 

-- Was Mr Lidwell in today? 

In came Lenehan. Round him peered Lenehan. Mr Bloom reached Essex bridge. Yes, Mr Bloom crossed bridge of Yessex. To Martha I must write. Buy paper. Daly's. Girl there civil. Bloom. Old Bloom. Blue Bloom is on the rye. 

-- He was in at lunchtime, Miss Douce said. 

Lenehan came forward. 

-- Was Mr Boylan looking for me? 

He asked. She answered: 

-- Miss Kennedy, was Mr Boylan in while I was upstairs? 

She asked. Miss voice of Kennedy answered, a second teacup poised, her gaze upon a page. 

-- No. He was not. 

Miss gaze of Kennedy, heard not seen, read on. Lenehan round the sandwichbell wound his round body round. 

-- Peep! Who's in the corner? 

No glance of Kennedy rewarding him he yet made overtures. To mind her stops. To read only the black ones: round o and crooked ess. 

Jingle jaunty jingle. 

Girlgold she read and did not glance. Take no notice. She took no notice while he read by rote a solfa fable for her, plappering flatly: 

-- Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork: Will you put your bill down inn my troath and pull upp ah bone? 

He droned in vain. Miss Douce turned to her tea aside. 

He sighed, aside: 

-- Ah me! O my! 

He greeted Mr Dedalus and got a nod. 

-- Greetings from the famous son of a famous father. 

-- Who may he be? Mr Dedalus asked. 

Lenehan opened most genial arms. Who? 

-- Who may he be? he asked. Can you ask? Stephen, the youthful bard. 

Dry. 

Mr Dedalus, famous fighter, laid by his dry filled pipe. 

-- I see, he said. I didn't recognize him for the moment. I hear he is keeping very select company. Have you seen him lately? 

He had. 

-- I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said Lenehan. In Mooney's en ville and in Mooney's sur mer. He had received the rhino for the labour of his muse. 

He smiled at bronze's teabathed lips, at listening lips and eyes. 

-- The élite of Erin hung upon his lips. The ponderous pundit, Hugh MacHugh, Dublin's most brilliant scribe and editor, and that minstrel boy of the wild wet west who is known by the euphonious appellation of the O'Madden Burke. 

After an interval Mr Dedalus raised his grog and 

-- That must have been highly diverting, said he. I see. 

He see. He drank. With faraway mourning mountain eye. Set down his glass. 

He looked towards the saloon door. 

-- I see you have moved the piano. 

-- The tuner was in today, Miss Douce replied, tuning it for the smoking concert and I never heard such an exquisite player. 

-- Is that a fact? 

-- Didn't he, Miss Kennedy? The real classical, you know. And blind too, poor fellow. Not twenty I'm sure he was. 

-- Is that a fact? Mr Dedalus said. 

He drank and strayed away. 

-- So sad to look at his face, Miss Douce condoled. 

God's curse on bitch's bastard. 

Tink to her pity cried a diner's bell. To the door of the diningroom came bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came Pat, waiter of Ormond. Lager for diner. Lager without alacrity she served. 

With patience Lenehan waited for Boylan with impatience, for jingle jaunty blazes boy. 

Upholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the oblique triple (piano!) wires. He pressed (the same who pressed indulgently her hand), soft pedalling a triple of keys to see the thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear the muffled hammerfall in action. 

Two sheets cream vellum paper on reserve two envelopes when I was in Wisdom Hely's wise Bloom in Daly's Henry Flower bought. Are you not happy in your home? Flower to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is. Respectable girl meet after mass. Tanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: lovelorn. For some man. For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jauntingcar. It is. Third time. Coincidence. 

Jingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to Ormond quay. Follow. Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now. Out. 

-- Two pence, sir, the shopgirl dared to say. 

Aha... I was forgetting... Excuse... 

And four. 

At four she. Winsomely she on Bloohimwhom smiled. Bloo smi qui go. Ternoon. Think you're the only pebble on the beach? Does that to all. For men. 

In drowsy silence gold bent on her page. 

From the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuningfork the tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. Acall again. That he now poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, softly and softlier, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call. 

Pat paid for diner's popcorked bottle: and over tumbler tray and popcorked bottle ere he went he whispered, bald and bothered, with Miss Douce. 

-- The bright stars fade... 

A voiceless song sang from within, singing: 

-- ... the morn is breaking. 

A duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under sensitive hands. Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, all harpsichording, called to a voice to sing the strain of dewy morn, of youth, of love's leavetaking, life's, love's morn. 

-- The dewdrops pearl... 

Lenehan's lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy. 

-- But look this way, he said, rose of Castille. 

Jingle jaunted by the curb and stopped. 

She rose and closed her reading, rose of Castille. Fretted forlorn, dreamily rose. 

-- Did she fall or was she pushed? he asked her. 

She answered, slighting: 

-- Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies. 

Like lady, ladylike. 

Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he strode. Yes, gold from anear by bronze from afar. Lenehan heard and knew and hailed him: 

-- See the conquering hero comes. 

Between the car and window, warily walking, went Bloom, unconquered hero. See me he might. The seat he sat on: warm. Black wary hecat walked towards Richie Goulding's legal bag, lifted aloft saluting. 

-- And I from thee... 

-- I heard you were round, said Blazes Boylan. 

He touched to fair Miss Kennedy a rim of his slanted straw. She smiled on him. But sister bronze outsmiled her, preening for him her richer hair, a bosom and a rose. 

Boylan bespoke potions. 

-- What's your cry? Glass of bitter? Glass of bitter, please, and a sloegin for me. Wire in yet? 

Not yet. At four he. All said four. 

Cowley's red lugs and Adam's apple in the door of the sheriff's office. Avoid. Goulding a chance. What is he doing in the Ormond? Car waiting. Wait. 

Hello. Where off to? Something to eat? I too was just. In here. What, Ormond? Best value in Dublin. Is that so? Diningroom. Sit tight there. See, not be seen. I think I'll join you. Come on. Richie led on. Bloom followed bag. Dinner fit for a prince. 

Miss Douce reached high to take a flagon, stretching her satin arm, her bust, that all but burst, so high. 

-- O! O! jerked Lenehan, gasping at each stretch. O! 

But easily she seized her prey and led it low in triumph. 

-- Why don't you grow? asked Blazes Boylan. 

Shebronze, dealing from her jar thick syrupy liquor for his lips, looked as it flowed (flower in his coat: who gave him?), and syrupped with her voice: 

-- Fine goods in small parcels. 

That is to say she. Neatly she poured slowsyrupy sloe. 

-- Here's fortune, Blazes said. 

He pitched a broad coin down. Coin rang. 

-- Hold on, said Lenehan, till I... 

-- Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale. 

-- Sceptre will win in a canter, he said. 

-- I plunged a bit, said Boylan winking and drinking. Not on my own, you know. Fancy of a friend of mine. 

Lenehan still drank and grinned at his tilted ale and at Miss Douce's lips that all but hummed, not shut, the oceansong her lips had trilled. Idolores. The eastern seas. 

Clock whirred. Miss Kennedy passed their way (flower, wonder who gave), bearing away teatray. Clock clacked. 

Miss Douce took Boylan's coin, struck boldly the cashregister. It clanged. Clock clacked. Fair one of Egypt teased and sorted in the till and hummed and handed coins in change. Look to the west. A clack. For me. 

-- What time is that? asked Blazes Boylan. Four? 

O'clock. 

Lenehan, small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust ahumming, tugged Blazes Boylan's elbowsleeve. 

-- Let's hear the time, he said. 

The bag of Goulding, Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I couldn't do. Wait, wait. Pat, waiter, waited. 

Sparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure's skyblue bow and eyes. 

-- Go on, pressed Lenehan. There's no-one. He never heard. 

-- ... to Flora's lips did hie. 

High, a high note, pealed in the treble, clear. 

Bronzedouce, communing with her rose that sank and rose, sought Blazes Boylan's flower and eyes. 

-- Please, please. 

He pleaded over returning phrases of avowal. 

-- I could not leave thee... 

-- Afterwits, Miss Douce promised coyly. 

-- No, now, urged Lenehan. Sonnezlacloche! O do! There's no-one. 

She looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent. Two kindling faces watched her bend. 

Quavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, lost chord, and lost and found it faltering. 

-- Go on! Do! Sonnez! 

Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. Taunted them still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes. 

-- Sonnez! 

Smack. She let free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter smackwarm against her smackable woman's warmhosed thigh. 

-- La cloche! cried gleeful Lenehan. Trained by owner. No sawdust there. 

She smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren't men?), but, lightward gliding, mild she smiled on Boylan. 

-- You're the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said. 

Boyland, eyed, eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice, drankoff his tiny chalice, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. He spellbound eyes went after her gliding head as it went down the bar by mirrors, gilded arch for ginger ale, hock and claret glasses shimmering, a spiky shell, where it concerted, mirrored, bronze with sunnier bronze. 

Yes, bronze from anearby. 

-- ... Sweetheart, goodbye! 

-- I'm off, said Boylan with impatience. 

He slid his chalice brisk away, grasped his change. 

-- Wait a shake, begged Lenehan, drinking quickly. I wanted to tell you. Tom Rochford... 

-- Come on to blazes, said Blazes Boylan, going. 

Lenehan gulped to go. 

-- Got the horn or what? he said. Wait. I'm coming. 

He followed the hasty creaking shoes but stood by nimbly by the threshold, saluting forms, a bulky with a slender. 

-- How do you do Mr Dollard? 

-- Eh? How do? How do? Ben Dollard's vague bass answered, turning an instant from Father Cowley's woe. He won't give you any trouble, Bob. All Bergan will speak to the long fellow. We'll put a barleystraw in that Judas Iscariot's ear this time. 

Sighing, Mr Dedalus came through the saloon, a finger soothing an eyelid. 

-- Hoho, we will, Ben Dollard yodled jollily. Come on, Simon, give us a ditty. We heard the piano. 

Bald Pat, bothered waiter, waited for drink orders, Power for Richie. And Bloom? Let me see. Not make him walk twice. His corns. Four now. How warm this black is. Course nerves a bit. Refracts (is it?) heat. Let me see. Cider. Yes, bottle of cider. 

-- What's that? Mr Dedalus said. I was only vamping, man. 

-- Come on, come on, Ben Dollar called. Begone, dull care. Come, Bob. 

He ambled Dollard, bulky slops, before them (hold that fellow with the: hold him now) into the saloon. He plumped him Dollard on the stool. His gouty paws plumped chords. Plumped stopped abrupt. 

Bald Pat in the doorway met tealess gold returning. Bothered he wanted Power and cider. Bronze by the window watched, bronze from afar. 

Jingle a tinkle jaunted. 

Bloom heard a jing, a little sound. He's off. Light sob of breath Bloom sighed on the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. He's gone. Jingle. Hear. 

-- Love and war, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. God be with old times. 

Miss Douce's brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind, smitten by sunlight. Gone. Pensive (who knows?), smitten (the smiting light), she lowered the dropblind with a sliding cord. She drew down pensive (why did he go so quick when I?) about her bronze over the bar where bald stood by sister gold, inexquisite contrast, contrast inexquisite nonexquisite, slow cool dim seagreen sliding depth of shadow, eau de Nil. 

-- Poor old Goodwin was the pianist that night, Father Cowley reminded them. There was a slight difference of opinion between himself and the Collard grand. 

There was. 

-- A symposium all his own, Mr Dedalus said. The devil wouldn't stop him. He was a crotchety old fellow in the primary stage of drink. 

-- God, do you remember? Ben bulky Dollard said, turning from the punished keyboard. And by Japers I had no wedding garment. 

They laughed all three. He had no wed. All trio laughed. No wedding garment. 

-- Our friend Bloom turned in handy that night, Mr Dedalus said. Where's my pipe by the way? 

He wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald Pat carried two diners' drinks, Richie and Poldy. And Father Cowley laughed again. 

-- I saved the situation, Ben, I think. 

-- You did, averred Ben Dollard. I remember those tight trousers too. That was a brilliant idea, Bob. 

Father Cowley blushed to his brilliant purply lobes. He saved the situa. Tight trou. Brilliant ide. 

-- I knew he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing the piano in the coffee palace on Saturdays for a very trifling consideration and who was it gave me the wheeze she was doing the other business? Do you remember? We had to search all Holles street to find them till the chap in Keogh's gave us the number. Remember? 

Ben remembered, his broad visage wondering. 

-- By God she had some luxurious opera cloaks and things there. 

Mr Dedalus wandered back, pipe in hand. 

-- Merrion square style. Balldresses, by God, and court dresses. He wouldn't take any money either. What? Any God's quantity of cocked hats and boleros and trunkhose. What? 

-- Ay, ay, Mr Dedalus nodded. Mrs Marion Bloom has left off clothes of all descriptions. 

Jingle haunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on bounding tyres. 

Liver and bacon. Steak and kidney pie. Right, sir. Right, Pat. 

Mrs Marion met him pike hoses. Smell of burn of Paul de Kock. Nice name he. 

-- What's this her name was? A buxom lassy. Marion. 

-- Tweedy. 

-- Yes. Is she alive? 

-- And kicking. 

-- She was a daughter of... 

-- Daughter of the regiment. 

-- Yes, begad. I remember the old drummajor. 

Mr Dedalus struck, whizzed, lit, puffed savoury puff after. 

-- Irish? I don't know, faith. Is she, Simon? 

Puff after stiff, a puff, strong, savoury, crackling. 

-- Buccinator muscle is... What?... Bit rusty... O, she is... My Irish Molly, O. 

He puffed a pungent plumy blast. 

-- From the rock of Gibraltar... all the way. 

They pined in depth of ocean shadow, gold by the beerpull, bronze by maraschino, thoughtful all two, Mina Kennedy, 4 Lismore terrace, Drumcondra with Idolores, a queen, Dolores, silent. 

Pat served uncovered dishes. Leopold cut liverslices. As said before he ate with relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cods' roes while Richie Goulding, Collis, Ward ate steak and kidney, steak then kidney, bite by bite of pie he ate Bloom ate they ate. 

Bloom with Goulding, married in silence, ate. Dinners fit for princes. 

By Bachelor's walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, in sun, in heat, mare's glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding tyres: sprawled, warmseated, Boylan impatience, ardentbold. Horn. Have you the? Horn. Have you the? Haw haw horn. 

Over their voices Dollard bassooned attack, booming over bombarding chords: 

-- When love absorbs my ardent soul... 

Roll of Bensoulbenjamin rolled to the quivery loveshivery roof-panes. 

-- War! War! cried Father Cowley. You're the warrior. 

-- So I am, Ben Warrior laughed. I was thinking of your landlord. Love or money. 

He stopped. He wagged huge beard, huge face over his blunder huge. 

-- Sure, you'd burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Dedalus said through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours. 

In bearded abundant laughter Dollard shook upon the keyboard. He would. 

-- Not to mention another membrane, Father Cowley added. Half time, Ben. Amoroso ma non troppo. Let me there. 

Miss Kennedy served two gentlemen with tankards of cool stout. She passed a remark. It was indeed, first gentleman said, beautiful weather. They drank cool stout. Did she know where the lord lieutenant was going? And heard steelhoofs ringhoof ring. No, she couldn't say. But it would be in the paper. O, she needn't trouble. No trouble. She waved about her outspread Independent, searching, the lord lieutenant, her pinnacles of hair slowmoving, lord lieuten. Too much trouble, first gentleman said. O, not in the least. Way he looked that. Lord lieutenant. Gold by bronze heard iron steel. 

-- ... my ardent soul 

I care not foror the morrow. 

In liver gravy Bloom mashed mashed potatoes. Love and war someone is. Ben Dollard's famous. Night he ran round to us to borrow a dress suit for that concert. Trousers tight as a drum on him. Musical porkers. Molly did laugh when he went out. Threw herself back across the bed, screaming, kicking. With all his belongings on show. O, saints above, I'm drenched! O, the women in the front row! O, I never laughed so many! Well, of course, that's what gives him the base barreltone. For instance eunuchs. Wonder who's playing. Nice touch. Must be Cowley. Musical. Knows whatever note you play. Bad breath he has, poor chap. Stopped. 

Miss Douce, engaging, Lydia Douce, bowed to suave solicitor, George Lidwell, gentleman, entering. Good afternoon. She gave her moist, a lady's, hand to his firm clasp. Afternoon. Yes, she was back. To the old dingdong again. 

-- Your friends are inside, Mr Lidwell. 

George Lidwell, suave, solicited, held a lydiahand. 

Bloom ate liv as said before. Clean here at least. That chap in the Burton, gummy with gristle. No-one here: Goulding and I. Clean tables, flowers, mitres of napkins. Pat to and fro, bald Pat. Nothing to do. Best value in Dub. 

Piano again. Cowley it is. Way he sits in to it, like one together, mutual understanding. Tiresome shapers scraping fiddles, eye on the bowend, sawing the 'cello, remind you of toothache. Her high long snore. Night we were in the box. Trombone under blowing like a grampus, between the acts, other brass chap unscrewing, emptying spittle. Conductor's legs too, bagstrousers, jiggedy jiggedy. Do right to hide them. 

Jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty. 

Only the harp. Lovely gold glowering light. Girl touched it. Poop of a lovely. Gravy's rather good fit for a. Golden ship. Erin. The harp that once or twice. Cool hands. Ben Howth, the rhododendrons. We are their harps. I. He. Old. Young. 

-- Ah, I couldn't, man, Mr Dedalus said, shy, listless. 

Strongly. 

-- Go on, blast you, Ben Dollard growled. Get it out in bits 

-- M'appari, Simon, Father Cowley said. 

Down stage he strode some paces, grave, tall in affliction, his long arms outheld. Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly. Softly he sang to a dusty seascape there: A Last Farewell. A headland, a ship, a sail upon the billows. Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awave upon the wind upon the headland, wind around her. 

Cowley sang: 

-- M'appari tutt amor; 

Il mio sguardo l'incontr... 

She waved, unhearing Cowley, her veil to one departing, dear one, to wind, love, speeding sail, return. 

-- Go on, Simon. 

-- Ah, sure my dancing days are done, Ben... Well... 

Mr Dedalus laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, sitting, touched the obedient keys. 

-- No, Simon, Father Cowley turned. Play it in the original One flat. 

The keys, obedient, rose higher, told, faltered, confessed, confused. 

Up stage strode Father Cowley. 

-- Here, Simon. I'll accompany you, he said. Get up. 

By Graham Lemon's pineapple rock, by Elvery's elephant jingle jogged. Steak, kidney, liver, mashed at meat fit for princes sat princes Bloom and Goulding. Princes at meat they raised and drank Power and cider. 

Most beautiful tenor air ever written, Richie said: Sonnambula. He heard Joe Maas sing that one night. Ah, that M'Guckin! Yes. In his way. Choirboy style. Maas was the boy. Massboy. A lyrical tenor if you like. Never forget it. Never. 

Tenderly Bloom over liverless bacon saw the tightened features strain. Backache he. Bright's bright eye. Next item on the programme. Paying the piper. Pills, pounded bread, worth a guinea a box. Stave it off awhile. Sings too: Down among the dead men. Appropriate. Kidney pie. Sweets to the. Not-making much hand of it. Best value in. Characteristic of him. Power. Particular about his drink. Flaw in the glass, fresh Vartry water. Fecking matches from counters to save. Then squander a sovereign in dribs and drabs. And when he's wanted not a farthing. Screwed refusing to pay his fare. Curious types. 

Never would Richie forget that night. As long as he lived, never. In the gods of the old Royal with little Peake. And when the first note. 

Speech paused on Richie's lips. 

Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all. Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory. 

-- Which air is that? asked Leopold Bloom. 

-- All is lost now... 

Richie cocked his lips apout. A low incipient note sweet banshee murmured all. A thrush. A throstle. His breath, birdsweet, good teeth he's proud of, fluted with plaintive woe. Is lost. Rich sound. Two notes in one there. Blackbird I heard in the hawthorn valley. Taking my motives he twined and turned them. All most too new call is lost in all. Echo. How sweet the answer. How is that done? All lost now. Mournful he whistled. Fall, surrender, lost. 

Bloom bent leopold ear, turning a fringe of doyley down under the vase. Order. Yes, I remember. Lovely air. In sleep she went to him. Innocence in the moon. Still hold her back. Brave, don't know their danger. Call name. Touch water. Jingle jaunty. Too late. She longed to go. That's why. Woman. As easy stop the sea. Yes: all is lost. 

-- A beautiful air, said Bloom lost Leopold. I know it well. 

Never in all his life had Richie Goulding. 

He knows it well too. Or he feels. Still harping on his daughter. Wise child that knows her father, Dedalus said. Me? 

Bloom askance over liverless saw. Face of the all is lost. Rollicking Richie once. Jokes old stale now. Wagging his ear. Napkinring in his eye. Now begging letters he sends his son with. Crosseyed Walter sir I did sir. Wouldn't trouble only I was expecting some money. Apologise. 

Piano again. Sounds better than last time I heard. Tuned probably. Stopped again. 

Dollard and Cowley still urged the lingering singer out with it. 

-- With it, Simon. 

-- It, Simon. 

-- Ladies and gentlemen, I am most deeply obliged by your kind solicitations. 

-- It, Simon. 

-- I have no money but if you will lend me your attention I shall endeavour to sing to you of a heart bowed down. 

By the sandwichbell in screening shadow, Lydia her bronze and rose, a lady's grace, gave and withheld: as in cool glaucous eau de Nil Mina to tankards two her pinnacles of gold. 

The harping chords of prelude closed. A chord longdrawn, expectant drew a voice away. 

-- When first I saw that form endearing. 

Richie turned. 

-- Si Dedalus' voice, he said. 

Braintipped, cheek touched with flame, they listened feeling that flow endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine. Bloom signed to Pat, bald Pat is a waiter hard of hearing, to set ajar the door of the bar. The door of the bar. So. That will do. Pat, waiter, waited, waiting to hear, for he was hard of hear by the door. 

-- Sorrow from me seemed to depart. 

Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not leaves in murmur, like no voice of strings of reeds or what doyoucallthem dulcimers, touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their each his remembered lives. Good, good to hear: sorrow from them each seemed to from both depart when first they heard. When first they saw, lost Richie, Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person wouldn't expect it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word. 

Love that is singing: love's old sweet song. Bloom unwound slowly the elastic band of his packet. Love's old sweet sonnez la gold. Bloom wound a skein round four forkfingers, stretched it, relaxed, and wound it round his troubled double, fourfold, in octave, gyved them fast. 

-- Full of hope and all delighted... 

Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower at his feet when will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted. He can't sing for tall hats. Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for him. What perfume does your wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last look at mirror always before she answers the door. The hall. There? How do you? I do well. There? What? Or? Phila of cachous, kissing comfits, in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent. 

Alas! The voice rose, sighing, changed: loud, full, shining, proud. 

-- But alas, 'twas idle dreaming... 

Glorious tone he has still. Cork air softer also their brogue. Silly man! Could have made oceans of money. Singing wrong words. Wore out his wife: now sings. But hard to tell. Only the two themselves. If he doesn't break down. Keep a trot for the avenue. His hands and feet sing too. Drink. Nerves overstrung. Must be abstemious to sing. Jenny Lind soup: stock, sage, raw eggs, half pint of cream. For creamy dreamy. 

Tenderness it welled: slow, swelling. Full it throbbed. That's the chat. Ha, give! Take! Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect. 

Words? Music? No: it's what's behind. 

Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded. 

Bloom. Flood of warm jimjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music out, in desire, dark to lick flow, invading. Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o'er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrop. Now! Language of love. 

-- ... ray of hope... 

Beaming. Lydia for Lidwell squeak scarcely hear so ladylike the muse unsqueaked a ray of hope. 

Martha it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel's song. Lovely name you have. Can't write. Accept my little pres. Play on her heartstrings pursestrings too. She's a. I called you naughty boy. Still the name: Martha. How strange! Today. 

The voice of Lionel returned, weaker but unwearied. It sang again to Richie Poldy Lydia Lidwell also sang to Pat open mouth ear waiting, to wait. How first he saw that form endearing, how sorrow seemed to part, how look, form, word charmed him Gould Lidwell, won Pat Bloom's heart. 

Wish I could see his face, though. Explain better. Why the barber in Drago's always looked my face when I spoke his face in the glass. Still hear it better here than in the bar though farther. 

-- Each graceful look... 

First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon's in Terenure. Yellow, black lace she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. Fate. After her. Fate. Round and round slow. Quick round. We two. All looked. Halt. Down she sat. All ousted looked. Lips laughing. Yellow knees. 

-- Charmed my eye... 

Singing. Waiting she sang. I turned her music. Full voice of perfume of what perfume does your lilactrees. Bosom I saw, both full, throat warbling. First I saw. She thanked me. Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy eyes. Under a peartree alone patio this hour in old Madrid one side in shadow Dolores shedolores. At me. Luring. Ah, alluring. 

-- Martha! Ah, Martha! 

Quitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion dominant to love to return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony. In cry of lionel loneliness that she should know, must Martha feel. For only her he waited. Where? Here there try there here all try where. Somewhere. 

-- Co-me, thou lost one! 

Co-me thou dear one! 

Alone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Martha, chest note, return. 

-- Come! 

It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness... 

-- To me! 

Siopold! 

Consumed. 

Come. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To me, to him, to her, you too, me, us. 

-- Bravo! Clapclap. Goodman, Simon. Clappyclapclap. Encore! Clapclipclap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Simon! Clapclopclap. Encore, enclap, said, cried, clapped all, Ben Dollard, Lydia Douce, George Lidwell, Pat, Mina, two gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, first gent with tank and bronze Miss Douce and gold Miss Mina. 

Blazes Boylan's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor, said before. Jingle by monuments of sir John Gray, Horatio onehandled Nelson, reverend father Theobald Matthew, jaunted as said before just now. Atrot, in heat, heatseated. Cloche. Sonnez la. Cloche. Sonnez la. Slower the mare went up the hill by the Rotunda, Rutland square. Too slow for Boylan, blazes Boylan, impatience Boylan, joggled the mare. 

An afterclang of Cowley's chords closed, died on the air made richer. 

And Richie Goulding drank his Power and Leopold Bloom his cider drank, Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said they would partake of two tankards if she did not mind. Miss Kennedy smirked, disserving, coral lips, at first, at second. She did not mind. 

-- Seven days in jail, Ben Dollard said, on bread and water. Then you'd sing, Simon, like a garden thrush. 

Lionel Simon, singer, laughed. Father Bob Cowley played. Mina Kennedy served. Second gentleman paid. Tom Kernan strutted in; Lydia, admired, admired. But Bloom sang dumb. 

Admiring. 

Richie, admiring, descanted on that man's glorious voice. He remembered one night long ago. Never forget that night. Si sang 'Twas rank and fame: in Ned Lambert's 'twas. Good God he never heard in all his life a note like that he never did then false one we had better part so clear so God he never heard since love lives not a clinking voice ask Lambert he can tell you too. 

Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, face of the night, Si in Ned Lambert's, Dedalus' house, sang 'Twas rank and fame... 

He, Mr Bloom, listened while he, Richie Goulding, told him, Mr Bloom of the night he, Richie, heard him, Si Dedalus, sing 'Twas rank and fame in his, Ned Lambert's house. 

Brothers-in-law: relations. We never speak as we pass by. Rift in the lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more. The nights Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky cords. Wonderful, more than all the others. 

That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It's in the silence you feel you hear. Vibrations. Now silent air. 

Bloom ungyved his crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers plucked the slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. It buzzed, it twanged. While Goulding talked of Barraclough's voice production, while Tom Kernan, harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement, talked to listening Father Cowley who played a voluntary, who nodded as he played. While big Ben Dollard talked with Simon Dedalus lighting, who nodded as he smoked, who smoked. 

Thou lost one. All songs on that theme. Yet more Bloom stretched his string. Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of each other: lure them on. Then tear asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on the head. Outtohelloutofthat. Human life. Dignam. Ugh, that rat's tail wriggling! Five bob I gave. Corpus paradisum. Corncrake croaker: belly like a poisoned pup. Gone. They sing. Forgotten. I too. And one day she with. Leave her: get tired. Suffer then. Snivel. Big Spanishy eyes goggling at nothing. Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevy hair un comb: 'd. 

Yet too much happy bores. He stretched more, more. Are you not happy in your? Twang. It snapped. 

Jingle into Dorset street. 

Miss Douce withdrew her satiny arm, reproachful, pleased. 

-- Don't make half so free, said she, till we are better acquainted. 

George Lidwell told her really and truly: but she did not believe. 

First gentleman told Mina that was so. She asked him was that so. And second tankard told her so. That that was so. 

Miss Douce, Miss Lydia, did not believe: Miss Kennedy, Mina, did not believe: George Lidwell, no: Miss Dou did not: the first, the first: gent with the tank: believe, no, no: did not, Miss Kenn: Lidlydiawell: the tank. 

Better write it here. Quills in the postoffice chewed and twisted. 

Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad. He went. A pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat. 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom said, teasing the curling catgut fine. It certainly is. Few lines will do. My present. All that Italian florid music is. Who is this wrote? Know the name you know better. Take out sheet notepaper, envelope: unconcerned. It's so characteristic. 

-- Grandest number in the whole opera, Goulding said. 

-- It is, Bloom said. 

Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that, symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn't see my mourning. Callous: all for his own gut. Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the ethereal. But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on account of the sounds it is. 

Instance he's playing now. Improvising. Might be what you like till you hear the words. Want to listen sharp. Hard. Begin all right: then hear chords a bit off: feel lost a bit. In and out of sacks over barrels, through wirefences, obstacle race. Time makes the tune. Question of mood you're in. Still always nice to hear. Except scales up and down, girls learning. Two together nextdoor neighbours. Ought to invent dummy pianos for that. Blumenlied I bought for her. The name. Playing it slow, a girl, night I came home, the girl. Door of the stables near Cecilia street. Milly no taste. Queer because we both I mean. 

Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went. 

It was the only language Mr Dedalus said to Ben. He heard them as a boy in Ringabella, Crosshaven, Ringabella, singing their barcaroles. Queenstown harbour full of Italian ships. Walking, you know, Ben, in the moonlight with those earthquake hats. Blending their voices. God, such music, Ben. Heard as a boy. Cross Ringabella haven mooncarole. 

Sour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips that cooed a moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call from afar, replying. 

Down the edge of his Freeman baton ranged Bloom's your other eye, scanning for where did I see that. Callan, Coleman, Dignam Patrick. Heigho! Heigho! Fawcett. Aha! Just I was looking... 

Hope he's not looking, cute as a rat. He held unfurled his Freeman. Can't see now. Remember write Greek ees. Bloom dipped, Bloo mur: dear sir. Dear Henry wrote: dear Mady. Got your lett and flow. Hell did I put? Some pock or oth. It is utterl imposs. Underline imposs. To write today. 

Bore this. Bored Bloom tambourined gently with I am just reflecting fingers on flat pad Pat brought. 

On. Know what I mean. No, change that ee. Accept my poor little pres enclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Five Dig. Two about here. Penny the gulls. Elijah is com. Seven Davy Byrne's. Is eight about. Say half a crown. My poor little pres: p. o. two and six. Write me a long. Do you despise? Jingle, have you the? So excited. Why do you call me naught? You naughty too? O, Mairy lost the pin of her. Bye for today. Yes, yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that other. Other world she wrote. My patience are exhaust. To keep it up. You must believe. Believe. The tank. It. Is. True. 

Folly am I writing? Husbands don't. That's marriage does, their wives. Because I'm away from. Suppose. But how? She must. Keep young. If she found out. Card in my high grade ha. No, not tell all. Useless pain. If they don't see. Woman. Sauce for the gander. 

A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver Barton James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a fare, a young gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by George Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought of John Plasto of number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz' porkshop bright tubes of Agendath trotted a gallantbuttocked mare. 

-- Answering an ad? keen Richie's eyes asked Bloom. 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom said. Town traveller. Nothing doing, I expect. 

Bloom mur: best references. But Henry wrote: it will excite me. You know now. In haste. Henry. Greek ee. Better add postscript. What is he playing now? Improvising intermezzo. P. S. The rum tum tum. How will you pun? You punish me? Crooked skirt swinging, whack by. Tell me I want to. Know. O. Course if I didn't I wouldn't ask. La la la ree. Trails off there sad in minor. Why minor sad? Sign H. They like sad tail at end. P. P. S. La la la ree. I feel so sad today. La ree. So lonely. Dee. 

He blotted quick on pad of Pat. Envel. Address. Just copy out of paper. Murmured: Messrs Callan, Coleman and Co, limited. Henry wrote: 

Miss Martha Clifford 
c/o P. O. 
Dolphin's barn lane 
Dublin.
Blot over the other so he can't read. Right. Idea prize titbit. Something detective read off blottingpad. Payment at the rate of guinea per col. Matcham often thinks the laughing witch. Poor Mrs Purefoy. U. p.: up. 
Too poetical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms Shakespeare said. Quotations every day in the year. To be or not to be. Wisdom while you wait. 

In Gerard's rosery of Fetter lane he walks, greyed-auburn. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. 

Done anyhow. Postal order stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk now. Enough. Barney Kiernan's I promised to meet them. Dislike that job. House of mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn't hear. Deaf beetle he is. 

Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn't. Settling those napkins. Lot of ground he must cover in the day. Paint face behind on him then he'd be two. Wish they'd sing more. Keep my mind off. 

Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard of his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will wait while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait while you wait. 

Douce now. Douce Lydia. Bronze and rose. 

She had a gorgeous, simply gorgeous, time. And look at the lovely shell she brought. 

To the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked and winding seahorn that he, George Lidwell, solicitor, might hear. 

-- Listen! she bade him. 

Under Tom Kernan's ginhot words the accompanist wove music slow. Authentic fact. How Walter Bapty lost his voice. Well, sir, the husband took him by the throat. Scoundrel, said he. You'll sing no more lovesongs. He did, sir Tom. Bob Cowley wove. Tenors get wom. Cowley lay back. 

Ah, now he heard, she holding it to his ear. Hear! He heard. Wonderful. She held it to her own and through the sifted light pale gold in contrast glided. To hear. 

Tap. 

Bloom through the bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. He heard more faintly that that they heard, each for herself alone, then each for other, hearing the plash of waves, loudly, a silent roar. 

Bronze by a weary gold, anear, afar, they listened. 

Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside. Lovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream first make it brown. Buttered toast. O and that lotion mustn't forget. Fever near her mouth. Your head it simply. Hair braided over: shell with seaweed. Why do they hide their ears with seaweed hair? And Turks their mouth, why? Her eyes over the sheet, a yashmak. Find the way in. A cave. No admittance except on business. 

The sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood is it. Souse in the ear sometimes. Well, it's a sea. Corpuscle islands. 

Wonderful really. So distinct. Again. George Lidwell held its murmur, hearing: then laid it by, gently. 

-- What are the wild waves saying? he asked her, smiled. 

Charming, seasmiling and unanswering Lydia on Lidwell smiled. 

Tap. 

By Larry O'Rourke's, by Larry, bold Larry O', Boylan swayed and Boylan turned. 

From the forsaken shell Miss Mina glided to her tankard waiting. No, she was not so lonely archly Miss Douce's head let Mr Lidwell know. Walks in the moonlight by the sea. No, not alone. With whom? She nobly answered: with a gentleman friend. 

Bob Cowley's twinkling fingers in the treble played again. The landlord has the prior. A little time. Long John. Big Ben Lightly he played a light bright tinkling measure for tripping ladies, arch and smiling, and for their gallants, gentlemen friends. One: one, one, one: two, one, three, four. 

Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattle market, cocks, hens don't crow, snakes hissss. There's music everywhere. Ruttledge's door: ee creaking. No, that's noise. Minuet of Don Giovanni he's playing now. Court dresses of all descriptions in castle chambers dancing. Misery. Peasants outside. Green starving faces eating dockleaves. Nice that is. Look: look, look, look, look, look: you look at us. 

That's joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you are. Often thought she was in the dumps till she began to lilt. Then know. 

M'Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing eat. Like tearing silk. When she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage men's intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open. Molly in qui est homo: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman who can deliver the goods. 

Jog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Boy Ian socks skyblue clocks came light to earth. 

O, look we are so! Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on that. It is a kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that is. Tinkling. Empty vessels make most noise. Because the acoustics, the resonance changes according as the weight of the water is equal to the law of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of Liszt's, Hungarian, gipsyeyed. Pearls. Drops. Rain. Diddle iddle addle addle oodle oodle. Hiss. Now. Maybe now. Before. 

One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul de Kock, with a loud proud knocker, with a cock carracarracarra cock. Cockcock. 

Tap. 

-- Qui sdegno, Ben, said Father Cowley. 

-- No, Ben, Tom Kernan interfered, The Croppy Boy. Our native Doric. 

-- Ay do, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. Good men and true. 

-- Do, do, they begged in one. 

I'll go. Here, Pat, return. Come. He came, he came, he did not stay. To me. How much? 

-- What key? Six sharps? 

-- F sharp major, Ben Dollard said. 

Bob Cowley's outstretched talons gripped the black deep sounding chords. 

Must go prince Bloom told Richie prince. No, Richie said. Yes, must. Got money somewhere. He's on for a razzle backache spree. Much? He seehears lipspeech. One and nine. Penny for yourself. Here. Give him twopence tip. Deaf, bothered. But perhaps he has wife and family waiting, waiting Patty come home. Hee hee hee hee. Deaf wait while they wait. 

But wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a cave of the dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Lumpmusic. 

The voice of dark age, of unlove, earth's fatigue made grave approach, and painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, called on good men and true. The priest he sought, with him would he speak a word. 

Tap. 

Ben Dollard's voice barreltone. Doing his level best to say it. Croak of vast manless moonless womoonless marsh. Other comedown. Big ships' chandler's business he did once. Remember: rosiny ropes, ships' lanterns. Failed to the tune of ten thousand pounds. Now in the Iveagh home. Cubicle number so and so. Number one Bass did that for him. 

The priest's at home. A false priest's servant bade him welcome. Step in. The holy father. Curlycues of chords. 

Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die. 

The voice of warning, solemn warning, told them the youth had entered a lonely hall, told them how solemn fell his footstep there, told them the gloomy chamber, the vested priest sitting to shrive. 

Decent soul. Bit addled now. Thinks he'll win in Answers poets' picture puzzle. We hand you crisp five pound note. Bird sitting hatching in a nest. Lay of the last minstrel he thought it was. See blank tee what domestic animal? Tee dash ar most courageous mariner. Good voice he has still. No eunuch yet with all his belongings. 

Listen. Bloom listened. Richie Goulding listened. And by the door deaf Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened. 

The chords harped slower. 

The voice of penance and of grief came slow, embellished, tremulous. Ben's contrite beard confessed: in nomine Domini, in God's name. He knelt. He beat his hand upon his breast, confessing: mea culpa. 

Latin again. That holds them like birdlime. Priest with the communion corpus for those women. Chap in the mortuary, coffin or coffey, corpusnomine. Wonder where that rat is by now. Scrape. 

Tap. 

They listened: tankards and Miss Kennedy, George Lidwell eyelid well expressive, fullbusted satin, Kernan, Si. 

The sighing voice of sorrow sang. His sins. Since easter he had cursed three 'times. You bitch's bast. And once at masstime he had gone to play. Once by the churchyard he had passed and for his mother's rest he had not prayed. A boy. A croppy boy. 

Bronze, listening by the beerpull, gazed far away. Soulfully. Doesn't half know I'm. Molly great dab at seeing anyone looking. 

Bronze gazed far sideways. Mirror there. Is that best side of her face? They always know. Knock at the door. Last tip to titivate. 

Cockcarracarra. 

What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattlesnakes. Night Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning up. Shah of Persia liked that best. Remind him of home sweet home. Wiped his nose in curtain too. Custom his country perhaps. That's music too. Not as bad as it sounds. Tootling. Brasses braying asses through uptrunks. Doublebasses, helpless, gashes in their sides. Woodwinds mooing cows. Semigrand open crocodile music hath jaws. Woodwind like Goodwin's name. 

She looked fine. Her crocus dress she wore, lowcut, belongings on show. Clove her breath was always in theatre when she bent to ask a question. Told her what Spinoza says in that book of poor papa's. Hypnotised, listening. Eyes like that. She bent. Chap in dresscircle, staring down into her with his operaglass for all he was worth. Beauty of music you must hear twice. Nature woman half a look. God made the country man the tune. Met him pike hoses. Philosophy. O rocks! 

All gone. All fallen. At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorey all his brothers fell. To Wexford, we are the boys of Wexford, he would. Last of his name and race. 

I too, last my race. Milly young student. Well, my fault perhaps. No son. Rudy. Too late now. Or if not? If not? If still? 

He bore no hate. 

Hate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon I am old. 

Big Ben his voice unfolded. Great voice, Richie Goulding said, a flush struggling in his pale, to Bloom, soon old but when was young. 

Ireland comes now. My country above the King. She listens. Who fears to speak of nineteen four? Time to be shoving. Looked enough. 

-- Bless me, father, Dollard the croppy cried. Bless me and let me go. 

Tap. 

Bloom looked, unblessed to go. Got up to kill: on eighteen bob a week. Fellows shell out the dibs. Want to keep your weathereye open. Those girls, those lovely. By the sad sea waves. Chorusgirl's romance. Letters read out for breach of promise. From Chickabiddy's own Mumpsypum. Laughter in court. Henry. I never signed it. The lovely name you. 

Low sank the music, air and words. Then hastened. The false priest rustling soldier from his cassock. A yeoman captain. They know it all by heart. The thrill they itch for. Yeoman cap. 

Tap. Tap. 

Thrilled, she listened, bending in sympathy to hear. 

Blank face. Virgin should say: or fingered only. Write something on it: page. If not what becomes of them? Decline, despair. Keeps them young. Even admire themselves. See. Play on her. Lip blow. Body of white woman, a flute alive. Blow gentle. Loud. Three holes all women. Goddess I didn't see. They want it: not too much polite. That's why he gets them. Gold in your pocket, brass in your face. With look to look: songs without words. Molly that hurdygurdy boy. She knew he meant the monkey was sick. Or because so like the Spanish. Understand animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift of nature. 

Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What? 

Will? You? I. Want. You. To. 

With hoarse rude fury the yeoman cursed. Swelling in apoplectic bitch's bastard. A good thought, boy, to come. One hour's your time to live, your last. 

Tap. Tap. 

Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs. For all things dying, want to, dying to, die. For that all things born. Poor Mrs Purefoy. Hope she's over. Because their wombs. 

A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes, calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. On yonder river. At each slow satiny heaving bosom's wave (her heaving embon) red rose rose slowly, sank red rose. Heartbeats her breath: breath that is life. And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of maidenhair. 

But look. The bright stars fade. O rose! Castille. The morn. Ha. Lidwell. For him then not for. Infatuated. I like that? See her from here though. Popped corks, splashes of beerfroth, stacks of empties. 

On the smooth jutting beerpull laid Lydia hand lightly, plumply, leave it to my hands. All lost in pity for croppy. Fro, to: to, fro: over the polished knob (she knows his eyes, my eyes, her eyes) her thumb and finger passed in pity: passed, repassed and, gently touching, then slid so smoothly, slowly down, a cool firm white enamel baton protruding through their sliding ring. 

With a cock with a carra. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. 

I hold this house. Amen. He gnashed in fury. Traitors swing. 

The chords consented. Very sad thing. But had to be. 

Get out before the end. Thanks, that was heavenly. Where's my hat. Pass by her. Can leave that Freeman. Letter I have. Suppose she were the? No. Walk, walk, walk. Like Cashel Boylo Connoro Coylo Tisdall Maurice Tisntdall Farrell, Waaaaaaalk. 

Well, I must be. Are you off? Yrfmstbyes. Blmstup. O'er ryehigh blue. Bloom stood up. Ow. Soap feeling rather sticky behind. Must have sweated: music. That lotion, remember. Well, so long. High grade. Card inside, yes. 

By deaf Pat in the doorway, straining ear, Bloom passed. 

At Geneva barrack that young man died. At Passage was his body laid. Dolor! O, he dolores! The voice of the mournful chanter called to dolorous prayer. 

By rose, by satiny bosom, by the fondling hand, by slops, by empties, by popped corks, greeting in going, past eyes and maidenhair, bronze and faint gold in deepseashadow, went Bloom, soft Bloom, I feel so lonely Bloom. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. 

Pray for him, prayed the bass of Dollard. You who hear in peace. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear, good men, good people. He was the croppy boy. 

Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in the Ormond hallway heard growls and roars of bravo, fat back-slapping, their boots all treading, boots not the boots the boy. General chorus off for a swill to wash it down. Glad I avoided. 

-- Come on, Ben, Simon Dedalus said. By God, you're as good as ever you were. 

-- Better, said Tomgin Kernan. Most trenchant rendition of that ballad, upon my soul and honour it is. 

-- Lablache, said Father Cowley. 

Ben Dollard bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily praisefed and all big roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty fingers nakkering castagnettes in the air. 

Big Benaden Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benben. 

Rrr. 

And deepmoved all, Simon trumping compassion from foghorn nose, all laughing, they brought him forth, Ben Dollard, in right good cheer. 

-- You're looking rubicund, George Lidwell said. 

Miss Douce composed her rose to wait. 

-- Ben machree, said Mr Dedalus, clapping Ben's fat back shoulderblade. Fit as a fiddle, only he has a lot of adipose tissue concealed about his person. 

Rrrrrrsss. 

-- Fat of death, Simon, Ben Dollard growled. 

Richie rift in the lute alone sat: Goulding, Collis, Ward. Uncertainly he waited. Unpaid Pat too. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

Miss Mina Kennedy brought near her lips to ear of tankardone. 

-- Mr Dollard, they murmured low. 

-- Dollard, murmured tankard. 

Tank one believed: Miss Kenn when she: that doll he was: she doll: the tank. 

He murmured that he knew the name. The name was familiar to him, that is to say. That was to say he had heard the name of Dollard, was it? Dollard, yes. 

Yes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Dollard. He sang that song lovely, murmured Mina. And The last rose of summer was a lovely song. Mina loved that song. Tankard loved the song that Mina. 

'Tis the last rose of summer Dollard left Bloom felt wind wound round inside. 

Gassy thing that cider: binding too. Wait. Postoffice near Reuben J's one and eightpence too. Get shut of it. Dodge round by Greek street. Wish I hadn't promised to meet. Freer in air. Music. Gets on your nerves. Beerpull. Her hand that rocks the cradle rules the. Ben Howth. That rules the world. 

Far. Far. Far. Far. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

Up the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Henry with letter for Mady, with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met him pike hoses went Poldy on. 

Tap blind walked tapping by the tap the curbstone tapping, tap by tap. 

Cowley, he stunts himself with it; kind of drunkenness. Better give way only half way the way of a man with a maid. Instance enthusiasts. All ears. Not lose a demisemiquaver. Eyes shut. Head nodding in time. Dotty. You daren't budge. Thinking strictly prohibited. Always talking shop. Fiddlefaddle about notes. 

All a kind of attempt to talk. Unpleasant when it stops because you never know exac. Organ in Gardiner street. Old Glynn fifty quid a year. Queer up there in the cockloft alone with stops and locks and keys. Seated all day at the organ. Maunder on for hours, talking to himself or the other fellow blowing the bellows. Growl angry, then shriek cursing (want to have wadding or something in his no don't she cried), then all of a soft sudden wee little wee little pippy wind. 

Pwee! A wee little wind piped eeee. In Bloom's little wee. 

Was he? Mr Dedalus said, returning, with fetched pipe. I was with him this morning at poor little Paddy Dignam's... 

-- Ay, the Lord have mercy on him. 

-- By the by there's a tuningfork in there on the... 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

-- The wife has a fine voice. Or had. What? Lidwell asked. 

-- O, that must be the tuner, Lydia said to Simonlionel first I saw, forgot it when he was here. 

Blind he was she told George Lidwell second I saw. And played so exquisitely, treat to hear. Exquisite contrast: bronzelid minagold. 

-- Shout! Ben Dollard shouted, pouring. Sing out! 

-- 'lldo! cried Father Cowley. 

Rrrrrr. 

I feel I want... 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

-- Very, Mr Dedalus said, staring hard at a headless sardine. 

Under the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one lonely, last sardine of summer. Bloom alone. 

-- Very, he stared. The lower register, for choice. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

Bloom went by Barry's. Wish I could. Wait. That wonderworker if I had. Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. Litigation. Love one another. Piles of parchment. Messrs Pick and Pocket have power of attorney. Goulding, Collis, Ward. 

But for example the chap that wallops the big drum. His vocation: Micky Rooney's band. Wonder how it first struck him. Sitting at home after pig's cheek and cabbage nursing it in the armchair. Rehearsing his band part. Pom. Pompedy. Jolly for the wife. Asses' skins. Welt them through life, then wallop after death. Pom. Wallop. Seems to be what you call yashmak or I mean kismet. Fate. 

Tap. Tap. A stripling, blind, with a tapping cane, came taptaptapping by Daly's window where a mermaid, hair all streaming (but he couldn't see), blew whiffs of a mermaid (blind couldn't), mermaid coolest whiff of all. 

Instruments. A blade of grass, shell of her hands, then blow. Even comb and tissuepaper you can knock a tune out of. Molly in her shift in Lombard street west, hair down. I suppose each kind of trade made its own, don't you see? Hunter with a horn. Haw. Have you the? Cloche. Sonnez la! Shepherd his pipe. Policeman a whistle. Locks and keys! Sweep! Four o'clock's all's well! Sleep! All is lost now. Drum? Pompedy. Wait, I know. Towncrier, bumbailiff. Long John. Waken the dead. Pom. Dignam. Poor little nominedomine. Pom. It is music, I mean of course it's all pom pom pom very much what they call da capo. Still you can hear. As we march we march along, march along. Pom. 

I must really. Fff. Now if I did that at a banquet. Just a question of custom shah of Persia. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear. All the same he must have been a bit of a natural not to see it was a yeoman cap. Muffled up. Wonder who was that chap at the grave in the brown mackin. O, the whore of the lane! 

A frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came glazily in the day along the quay towards Mr Bloom. When first he saw that form endearing. Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane. Horn. Who had the? Heehaw. Shesaw. Off her beat here. What is she? Hope she. Psst! Any chance of your wash. Knew Molly. Had me decked. Stout lady does be with you in the brown costume. Put you off your stroke. That appointment we made. Knowing we'd never, well hardly ever. Too dear too near to home sweet home. Sees me, does she? Looks a fright in the day. Face like dip. Damn her! O, well, she has to live like the rest. Look in here. 

In Lionel Marks's antique saleshop window haughty Henry Lionel Leopold dear Henry Flower earnestly Mr Leopold Bloom envisaged candlestick melodeon oozing maggoty blowbags. Bargain: six bob. Might learn to play. Cheap. Let her pass. Course everything is dear if you don't want it. That's what good salesman is. Make you buy what he wants to sell. Chap sold me the Swedish razor he shaved me with. Wanted to charge me for the edge he gave it. She's passing now. Six bob. 

Must be the cider or perhaps the burgund. 

Near bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked their clinking glasses all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze Lydia's tempting last rose of summer, rose of Castille. First Lid, De, Cow, Ker, Doll, a fifth: Lidwell, Si Dedalus, Bob Cowley, Kernan and Big Ben Dollard. 

Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall. 

Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks's window. Robert Emmet's last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is. 

-- True men like you men. 

-- Ay, ay, Ben. 

-- Will lift your glass with us. 

They lifted. 

Tschink. Tschunk. 

Tip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not bronze. He saw not gold. Nor Ben nor Bob nor Tom nor Si nor George nor tanks nor Richie nor Pat. Hee hee hee hee. He did not see. 

Seabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. When my country takes her place among. 

Prrprr. 

Must be the bur. 

Fff. Oo. Rrpr. 

Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She's passed. Then and not till then. Tram. Kran, kran, kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm sure it's the burgund. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be. Karaaaaaaa. Written. I have. 

Pprrpffrrppfff. 

Done. 


褐色挨着金色[1]，听见了蹄铁声，钢铁零零响。

粗噜噜、噜噜噜[2]。

碎屑，从坚硬的大拇指甲上削下碎屑，碎屑。

讨厌鬼！金色越发涨红了脸。

横笛吹奏出的沙哑音调。

吹奏。花儿蓝。

挽成高髻的金发上。

裹在缎衫里的酥胸上，一朵起伏着的玫瑰，卡斯蒂利亚的玫瑰。

颤悠悠，颤悠悠：艾多洛勒斯[3]。

闷儿！谁在那个角落……瞥见了一抹金色?

与怀着怜悯的褐色相配合，丁零一声响了[4]。

清纯、悠长的颤音。好久才息的呼声。

诱惑。温柔的话语。可是，看啊！灿烂的星辰褪了色[5]。

啊，玫瑰！婉转奏出酬答的旋律。卡斯蒂利亚。即将破晓。

辚辚，轻快三轮马车辚辚。

硬币哐啷啷。时钟嗒嗒嗒。

表明心迹。敲响。我舍不得……袜带弹回来的响声……离开你。啪！那口钟[6]！在大腿上啪的一下。表明心迹。温存的。心上人，再见！

辚辚。布卢。 

嗡嗡响彻的和弦。爱得神魂颠倒的时候。战争！战争！耳膜。

帆船！面纱随着波涛起伏。

失去。画眉清脆地啭鸣。现在一切都失去啦[7]。

犄角。呜--号角。

当他初见。哎呀！

情欲亢奋。心里怦怦直跳。

颤音歌唱。啊，诱惑！令人陶醉的。

玛尔塔！归来吧！[8]

叽叽喳喳，叽叽咕咕，叽哩喳喇。

天哪，他平生从没听到过。

又耳聋又秃头的帕特送来吸墨纸，拿起刀子。

月夜的呼唤：遥远地，遥远地。

我感到那么悲伤。附言：那么无比地孤寂。

听啊！

冰凉的，尖而弯曲的海螺。你有没有?独个儿地，接着又相互之间，波浪的迸溅和沉默的海啸。

一颗颗珍珠。当她。奏起李斯特的狂想曲[9]。嘘嘘嘘。

你不至于吧?

不曾，不、不、相信。莉迪利德。[10]喀呵，咔啦。[11]

黑色的。

深逐的声音。唱吧，本，唱吧。

侍奉的时候就侍奉吧。嘻嘻。嘻嘻笑着侍奉吧。

可是，且慢！

深深地在地底下黑暗处。埋着的矿砂。

因主之名。[12]全都完啦，全都倒下啦。[13]

她的处女发[14]。那颤巍巍的纤叶。

啊们！他气得咬牙切齿。

比方。彼方，此方。一根冰冷的棍子伸了出来。

褐发莉迪亚挨着金发米娜。

挨着褐色，挨着金色，在海绿色荫影下。布卢姆。老布卢姆。

有人笃笃敲，有人砰砰拍，咔啦，喀呵。

为他祷告吧！祷告吧，善良的人们！

他那患痛风症的手指头发出击响板般的声音[15]。

大本钟本。大本本[16]。 夏日最后一朵卡斯蒂利亚的玫瑰撇下了布卢姆，我孤零零地感到悲哀[17]。

嘘！微风发出笛子般的声音：嘘！

地道的男子汉。利德•克•考•迪和多拉。哎，哎。

就像诸位那样。咱们一道举杯哧沁喀、哧冲喀吧[18]。

呋呋呋！噢！

褐色从近处到什么地方?金色从近处到什么地方?蹄在什么地方?

噜噗噜。喀啦啦。喀啦得儿。

直到那时，只有到了那时，方为我写下墓志铭。

完了[19]。

开始[20]！

褐色挨着金色，杜丝小姐的头挨着肯尼迪小姐的头。在奥蒙德酒吧的半截儿窗帘上端听见了总督车队奔驰而过，马蹄发出锒锒的钢铁声。

“那是她吗?”肯尼迪小姐问。

杜丝小姐说是啊，和大人并肩坐着，发灰的珍珠色和一片淡绿蓝色[21]。

“绝妙的对照，”肯尼迪小姐说。

这当儿，兴奋极了的杜丝小姐热切地说：

“瞧那个戴大礼帽的家伙[22]。”

“谁?哪儿呀?”金色更加热切地问。

“第二辆马车里，”杜丝小姐欣喜地沐浴着阳光，用湿润的嘴唇说，“他朝四下里望着哪。等一下，容我过去看看。”

她，褐色，一个箭步就蹿到最后边的角落去，急匆匆地哈上一圈儿气，将脸庞紧贴在窗玻璃上。

她那湿润的嘴唇嗤嗤地笑着说：

“他死命地往回瞧哩。”

她朗笑道：

“哎，天哪！男人都是些可怕的傻瓜，你说呢?”

怀着悲戚之情。

肯尼迪小姐悲戚地从明亮的光线底下慢慢腾腾地踱了回来，边捻着散在耳后的一缕乱发。她悲戚地边溜达边连捋带捻着那已不再在太阳下闪着金光的头发。她就这样一面溜达着一面悲戚地把金发捻到曲形的耳后。

“他们可开心啦，”于是她黯然神伤地说。

一个男人。

布卢某怀着偷情的快乐[23]，从牟兰那家店的烟斗旁走过;心中索绕着偷情时的甜言蜜语，走边瓦恩那家店的古董;又为了拉乌尔，从卡洛尔宝石店里那磨损并且发乌了的镀金器皿前面踱过。

擦鞋侍役[24]到她们--酒吧里的她们，酒吧女侍--这儿来了。她们不曾理睬他。于是，他便替她们把那一托盘咯嗒咯嗒响的瓷器嘭的一声撂在柜台上，并且说：

“这是给你们的茶。”

肯尼迪小姐扭扭捏捏地把茶盘低低地挪到人们看不见的低处

--放在一只底朝天的柳条筐上，那原是装成瓶的矿泉水用的。

“什么事?”大嗓门的擦鞋侍役粗鲁地问。

“你猜猜看，”杜丝小姐边离开她那侦察点，边回答说。

“是你的意中人，对吧?”

傲慢的褐色回答说：

“我要是再听到你这么粗鲁地侮辱人，我就向德•梅西太太告你的状。”

“粗鲁鲁、噜噜噜，”擦鞋侍役对她这番恐吓粗野地嗤之以鼻，然后沿着原路走回去。

开花[25]。

杜丝小姐朝自己的花皱了皱眉，说：

“那个小子太放肆啦。他要是不放规矩些，我就把他的耳朵扯到一码长。”

一副淑女派头，鲜明的对照。

“理他呢，”?肯尼迪小姐回答说。

她斟了一杯茶，又把茶倒回壶里。她们蜷缩在暗礁般的柜台后面，坐在底朝天的柳条筐上，等待茶泡出味道来。她们各自摆弄着身上的衬衫，那都是黑缎子做的：一件是两先令九便士一码，另一件是两先令七便士一码的。就这样等着茶泡出味儿来。

是啊，褐色从近处，金色从远处听见了。听见了近处钢铁的铿锵，远处的蹄得得。听见了蹄铁铿锵，嚓嚓嗒嗒。

“我晒得厉害吗?”

褐色小姐解开衬衫钮扣，露出脖颈。

“没有，”肯尼迪小姐说，“以后会变成褐色。你试没试过兑上硼砂的樱桃月桂水?”

杜丝小姐欠起身来，在酒吧间的镜子里斜眼照了照自己的皮肤;镜子里盛有白葡萄酒和红葡萄酒的玻璃杯闪闪发光，中间还摆着一只海螺壳。

“连我的手都晒黑了，”她说。

“擦点甘油试试看，”肯尼迪小姐出了个点子。

杜丝小姐同自己的脖子和手告了别，回答说：

“那些玩艺儿不过让人长疙瘩就是了，”她重新坐了下来，“我已经托博伊德那家店里的老古板去给我弄点擦皮肤的东西了。”

肯尼迪小姐边斟着这会子刚泡出味儿来的茶，边皱起眉头央告道：

“求求你啦，可别跟我提他啦。”

“可你听我说呀，”杜丝小姐恳求说。

肯尼迪小姐斟了甜茶，兑上牛奶，并用小指堵起双耳。

“不，别说啦，”她大声说。

“我不要听，”她大声说。

可是，布卢姆呢?

杜丝小姐学着老古板的鼻音瓮声瓮气地说：

“擦在你的什么部位?--他就是这么说的。”

肯尼迪小姐为了倾听和说话，不再堵起耳朵了。可是她又开口说，并且恳求道：

“不要再让我想起他了，不然我会断气儿的。卑鄙讨厌的老家伙！那天晚上在安蒂恩特音乐堂里。”

她吸了一口自己兑好的热茶，不大合她口味。她一点点地吸着甜甜的茶。

“瞧他那个德行！”杜丝小姐说，并且把她那褐发的头抬起四分之三，鼓着鼻翼，“呼哧！呼哧！”

肯尼迪小姐的喉咙里爆出尖锐刺耳的大笑声。杜丝小姐那鼓起的鼻孔喷着气，像正在寻觅猎物的猎犬那样颤动着，粗鲁地发出吭哧吭哧声。

“哎呀！”肯尼迪小姐尖声嚷道，“你怎么能忘掉他那双滴溜溜转的眼睛呢?”

杜丝小姐发出深沉的褐色笑声来帮腔，并嚷道：

“还有你的另一只眼睛[26]！”

布卢姆那黑黑的眼睛读到了艾伦•菲加特纳的名字。我为什么老以为是菲加泽尔呢?大概联想到了采集无花果[27]吧。普罗斯珀•洛尔[28]这个名字必然是个胡格诺派。布卢姆那双黑黑的眼睛从巴希[29]的几座圣母玛利亚像前掠过。白衬衣上罩了蓝袍[30]的人儿呀，到我这儿来吧。人们都相信她是神，或者是女神。今儿个那些女神们。我没能看到那个地方。那家伙谈话来着。是个学生。后来跟迪达勒斯的儿子搞到一块儿去了。他或许就是穆利根吧。这都是些俏丽的处女们。所以才把那些浪荡子弟们都招来了。她那白净的。

他的眼光掠过去了。偷情的快乐。快乐是甜蜜的。

偷情的。

焕发着青春的、金褐色的嗓门交织成一片响亮的痴笑，杜丝和肯尼迪，你那另一只眼睛。她们--褐发和哧哧笑的金发往后仰着年轻的头，开怀大笑，失声大叫，你那另一只，相互使了个眼色，发出尖锐刺耳的声调。

啊，喘着气儿，叹息，叹息。啊，筋疲力尽，她们的欢乐逐渐平息了。

肯尼迪小姐把嘴唇凑到杯边，举杯呷了一口，哧哧地笑着。杜丝小姐朝茶盘弯下腰去，又把鼻子一皱，滴溜溜地转着她那双眼皮厚实、带滑稽意味的眼睛。肯尼迪又哧哧哧地笑着，俯下她那挽成高髻的金发;一俯下去，就露出插在后颈上的一把鳖甲梳子来了。她嘴里喷溅出茶水，给茶水和笑声噎住了，噎得直咳嗽，就嚷着。

“噢，好油腻的眼睛！想想看，竟嫁给那么一个男人！”她嚷道，“还留着一撮小胡子！”

杜丝尽情地喊得很出色，这是个风华正茂的女子的洪亮喊声：喜悦，快乐，愤慨。

“竟嫁给那么个油腻腻的鼻子！”她嚷道。

尖嗓门儿，夹杂着深沉的笑声，金色的紧跟着褐色，你追我赶，一声接一声，变幻着腔调，褐金的，金褐的，尖锐深沉，笑声接连不停。她们又笑了一大阵子。真是油腻腻的哩。耗尽了精力，上气不接下气，她们将晃着的头--那是用有光泽的梳子梳理成辫子并挽成高髻的--倚在柜台边儿上。全都涨红了脸(噢！)，气喘吁吁，淌着汗(噢！)，都透不过气儿来了。

嫁给布卢姆，嫁给那油腻腻的布卢姆。

“哦，天上的圣徒们！”杜丝小姐说。她低头望了望在自己胸前颤动着的玫瑰，叹了口气：“我从来还没笑得这么厉害过呢。我浑身都湿透了。”

“啊，杜丝小姐！”肯尼迪小姐表示异议，“你个讨厌鬼！”

她越发涨红了脸(你个讨厌鬼！)，越发金光焕发。

油腻腻的布卢姆正在坎特维尔的营业处，在塞皮[31]的几座油光闪闪的圣母像旁游荡。南尼蒂的父亲就曾挨门挨户地叫卖过这类货品，像我这样用花言巧语骗人。宗教有赚头。为了凯斯那条广告的事儿，得跟他见一面。先填饱肚子再说。我想要。还不到时候哪。她说过，在四点钟。[32]光阴跑得真快。时针转个不停。向前走。在哪儿吃呀？克拉伦斯[33]。海豚[34]。向前走。为了拉乌尔。如果我能从那些广告上捞到五吉尼。紫罗兰色的丝绸衬裙。还不到时候。偷情的快乐。

脸上的红润消退了，越来越消退了，金黄色变得淡了。

迪达勒斯先生溜溜达达地走进了她们的酒吧。碎屑，从他那两个大拇指的灰指甲上削下碎屑。碎屑。他漫步走来。

“咦，欢迎你回来啦，杜丝小姐。”

他握着她的手，问她假日度得可开心吗？

“再开心不过啦。”

他希望她在罗斯特雷沃[35]赶上了好天气。

“天气好极了，”她说，“瞧瞧我都晒成什么样子啦！成天躺在沙滩上。”

褐中透白。

“那你可太淘气[36]啦，”迪达勒珀先生对她说，并放纵地紧握住她的手，“可怜的傻男人都给你迷住啦。”

身着缎子衬衫的杜丝小姐安详地将自己的胳膊抽了回去。

“哦，你给我走吧！我可不认为你是个非常傻的人。”

可他是傻里傻气的。

“喏，我就是傻，”他沉思了一下，“我在摇篮里就显得那么傻，他们就给我取名叫傻西蒙。[37]”

“那时候你准是挺逗人爱的，”杜丝小姐回答说，“今天大夫要你喝点什么呀？”

“唔，喏，”他沉吟了一忽儿，“凡事都听你的吧。我想麻烦你给我来点清水和半杯威士忌。”

丁零。

“马上就端来，”杜丝小姐答应道。

她风度翩翩地发挥了麻利快这一本事之后，立刻就转向镀有“坎特雷尔与科克伦”一行金字的镜子。她举止娴雅地拔开透明容器的塞子，倒出一份金色的威士忌。迪达勒斯先生从上衣下摆底下掏出烟草袋和烟斗。她敏捷地为他把酒端了来。他用烟斗两次吹出横笛的沙哑音响。

“可不是嘛，”他若有所思地说，“我一直想去看看莫恩山[38]。那儿的空气准有益于健康。但是俗话说得好，久而久之，前兆终究会应验。是啊。是啊。”

是啊。他把一小撮细丝，她的处女发，她的人鱼发[39]，塞进烟

斗里。碎屑。一小绺。沉思。缄默无言。

谁都不曾说片言只语。是啊。

杜丝小姐边快活地打磨着平底大酒杯，边颤悠悠地唱了起来：

噢，艾多洛勒斯，东海的女王！[40]

“利德维尔先生今天来过吗？”

利内翰走进来了。利内翰四下里打量着。布卢姆先生走到埃塞克珀桥跟前。是啊，布卢姆先生跨过那塞克斯桥[41]。我得给玛莎写封信。买点信纸。达利烟店。那里的女店员挺殷勤的。布卢姆，老布卢姆。稞麦地开蓝花[42]。

“吃午饭的时候他来过，”杜丝小姐说。

利内翰凑近了些。

“博伊兰先生找我来着吗？”

他问。她回答说：

“肯尼迪小姐，我在楼上的时候博伊兰先生来过吗？”

肯尼迪把第二杯茶端稳了，两眼盯着书页，用小姐式的腔调回答她这句问话：

“没有，他没来过。”

肯尼迪虽听见了，却连抬也不抬一下她那小姐派头的目光，继续读下去。利内翰那圆滚滚的身躯绕着放三明治的钟形玻璃罩走了一圈。

“闷儿！谁在那个角落里哪？”[43]

肯尼迪连睬都不曾睬他一眼，可他还是试着向她献殷勤，提醒她要注意句号。教她光读黑字：圆圆的0和弯曲的S。[44]

辚辚，轻快二轮马车辚辚。

金发女侍看着书，连睬都不睬。她不屑一顾。当他凭着记忆用没有抑扬的腔调呆板地背诵浅显的寓言[45]时，她还是不屑一顾：

“一只狐狸遇见了一只鹳。狐狸对鹳说：‘你把嘴伸进我的喉咙，替我拽出一根骨头好不好？，”[46]

他徒然地用单调低沉的声音讲了这么一段。杜丝小姐把脸掉向旁边那杯茶。

他叹了口气，自言自语他说：

“哎呀！啊唷！”

他向迪达勒斯先生致意，对方朝他点了点头。

“一位著名的儿子向他的著名的父亲问候。”

“你指的是谁呀？”迪达勒斯先生说。

利内翰极其和蔼地摊开了双臂。谁呀？

“能是谁呢？”他问，“你还用得着问吗？是斯蒂芬，青年‘大诗人’呀。”

干渴。

著名的父亲迪达勒斯先生将他那填满干烟叶的烟斗撂在一旁。

“原来如此，”他说，“我一时还没悟过来指的是谁呢。我听说他交的朋友都是精心挑选的。你新近见到过他吗？”

他见过。

“今天我还和他一道痛饮过美酒哩，”利内翰说，“城里的穆尼酒馆和海滨上的[47]穆尼酒馆。凭着在诗歌上的努力，他拿到了一笔钱。”

他朝着褐发女侍那被茶水润湿了的嘴唇--倾听着他说话的嘴唇和眼睛，露出了微笑：

“爱琳””的精英们都洗耳恭听。包括都柏林最有才华的新闻记者兼编辑、堂堂的饱学之士休•麦克休，和那位生在荒芜多雨的西部、以奥马登•伯克这一动听的称呼闻名的少年吟游诗人。[49]”

过了一会儿，迪达勒斯先生举起他那杯兑水威士忌。

“那一定挺逗趣儿的，”他说，“我明白了。”

他明白了。他饮着酒。眼睛里露出眺望远处哀伤之山[50]的神色。他将玻璃杯撂下了。

他朝大厅的门望去。

“看来你们把钢琴挪动了位置。”

“今天调音师来了，”杜丝小姐回答说，“是为了举办允许吸烟的音乐会而调的音。我从来没见过像他那样出色的钢琴演奏家。”

“真的吗？”

“他弹得好吧，肯尼迪小姐？要知道，真正的古典弹奏法。他还是个盲人呢，怪可怜的。我敢肯定他还不满二十岁。”

“真的吗？”迪达勒斯先生说。

他喝完了酒，缓步走开了。

“我一看他的脸就觉得难过，”杜丝小姐用同情的口吻说。

天打雷霹的，你这婊子养的杂种！[51]

与她表示的怜悯相配合，[52]餐厅的铃铛叮啷一声响了。秃头帕特到酒吧和餐厅的门口来了。聋子帕特来了，奥蒙德饭店的茶房帕特来了。给吃饭的客人预备的陈啤酒[53]。她不慌不忙地端上了陈啤酒。

利内翰耐心地等待着不耐烦的博伊兰，等待着辚辚地驾着轻快二轮马车而来的那个恶魔般的纨绔子[54]。

掀开盖子，他[55]（谁？）逼视着木框（棺材？）里那斜绷着的三重（钢琴！）钢丝。他（就是曾经放肆地紧握过她的手的那个人）踩着柔音踏板，按了按三个三和弦音键，试一下油毛毡厚度的变化，听一听用毡子裹住的琴槌敲击出的音响效果。

聪明的布卢姆（亨利•弗罗尔[56]）在达利商行买了两张奶油色的仿羔皮纸（一张是备用的），两个信封，边买边回想着自己在威兹德姆•希利的店里工作时的事。你在自己家里不幸福吗？[57]花是为了安慰我，把爱情断送掉的针。[58]花的语言[59]是有含义的。那是一朵雏菊吗？象征着天真无邪。望完弥撒后，跟品行端正的良家少女[60]见面。多谢多谢。聪明的布卢姆望着贴在门上的一张招贴画。一个吸着烟的美人鱼在绮丽的波浪当中扭动着腰肢。吸美人鱼牌香烟吧，吸那无比凉爽的烟吧。头发随波飘荡，害着相思病。为了某个男人。为了拉乌尔。他放眼望去，只见远远地在埃塞克斯桥上，远远地望到一顶花哨的帽子乘着二轮轻快马车。那就是[61]。又碰见了。这是第三回了。巧合。

马车那柔软的胶皮轱辘从桥上辚辚地驰向奥蒙德码头。跟上去。冒一下险。快点儿走。四点钟。如今快到了。走出去吧。

“两便士，先生，”女店员壮起胆子来说。

“啊……我忘记了……对不起……”

“外加四便士。”

四点钟，她。她朝着布卢姆嫣然一笑。布卢、微笑、快、走。[62]再见。难道你以为自己是沙滩上唯一的小石头子儿吗？她对所有的人都这样，只要是男人。

金发女侍昏昏欲睡，默默地朝着她正读着的书页俯下身去。

从大厅里传来一阵声音，拖得长长的，逐渐消失。这是调音师忘下的音叉，他[63]正拿着敲呢。又响了一声。他把它悬空拿着，这次它发出了颤音。你听见了吗？它发出了颤音，清纯，更加清纯；柔和，更加柔和。那营营声拖得长长的。呼唤声拖得越来越悠长，逐渐消失。

帕特替客人叫的那瓶现拔塞子的酒付了款。在离开之前，秃头而面带困惑表情的他，隔着大酒杯、托盘和现拔塞子的那瓶酒，跟杜丝小姐打起耳喳来。

灿烂的星辰褪了色。……[64]

从里面传来“无声歌”[65]的曲调：

……即将破晓。

一双敏感的手下，十二个半音像小鸟鸣啭一般做出快活的最高音区的回应。所有的音键都明亮地闪烁着，相互连结，统统像羽管键琴[66]般轰鸣着，呼吁歌喉去唱那被露水打湿了的早晨，唱青春，唱与情人的离别，唱生命和爱的清晨。

露水如珍珠……

利内翰的嘴唇隔着柜台低低地吹着诱人的口哨。

“可是朝这边望望吧，”他说，“你这朵卡斯蒂利亚的玫瑰[67]。”

轻快二轮马车辚辚地驰到人行道的边石那儿停住了。

她站起来，阖上书本。这朵卡斯蒂利亚的玫瑰烦恼而孤寂，睡眼惺松地站了起来。

“她””是自甘堕落呢，还是被迫的呢？”他问她。

她以轻蔑口吻回答：

“别问了，你也就听不到瞎话啦。”[68]

像个大家闺秀，摆出大家闺秀的架势。

布莱泽斯•博伊兰那双款式新颖的棕黄色皮鞋在他大踏步走着的酒吧间地板上橐橐响着。是啊，金发女侍从近处，褐发女侍从远处。利内翰听见了，晓得是他，并向他欢呼：

“瞧，英雄的征服者驾到。”[69]

布卢姆这位不可征服的英雄从马车与窗户之间小心翼翼地穿过去。说不定他还瞧见了我呢。他坐过的座位还有股热气儿呢。他像一只谨慎的黑色公猫似的朝着里奇•古尔丁那只举起来向他打招呼的公文包走去。

而我从卿卿……

“我听说你到这儿来啦，”布莱泽斯•博伊兰说。

他用手碰了一下歪戴着的草帽檐儿，向金发的肯尼迪小姐致意。她朝他笑了笑。可是跟她形同姐妹的那个褐发女侍笑得比她还甜，像是在向他夸耀着自己那更加浓密的头发和那插着玫瑰的酥胸。

[潇洒的][70]博伊兰叫了酒。

“你要点儿什么？苦啤酒？请给来一杯苦啤酒。给我野梅红杜松子酒。结果出来了吗？”[71]

还没有。四点钟，他。都说是四点钟。

考利神父那红润的耳朵垂儿和突出的喉结出现在行政司法长官公署的门口。躲开他吧。赶巧碰上了古尔丁。他在奥蒙德干什么哪？还让马车等着。且慢。

喂，你好。到哪儿去呀？要吃点儿什么吗？我也刚好要。就在这儿吧。哦，奥蒙德？在都柏林说得上是最实惠的。哦，是吗？餐厅。就一动不动地坐在那儿。能够看见他，却别让他看见自己。我陪你一道去。来吧。里奇在前面引路。布卢姆跟在他的公文包后边。这饭菜足可以招待王爷。[72]

杜丝小姐伸出她那裹在缎袖中的胳膊去够一只大肚酒瓶，她那胸脯挺得高高的，几乎快绷裂了。

“噢！噢！”她每往上一挺，利内翰就倒吸一口气，并急促地说，“噢！”

然而她顺顺当当地抓到了猎物，洋洋得意地把它撂在低处。

“你为什么不长高点儿呢？”布莱泽斯•博伊兰问。

这位褐发女侍从瓶子里为他的嘴唇倾倒出浓郁的甜酒，望着它哗哗地往外流（他上衣上那朵花儿，是谁送的呢？），然后用甜得像糖浆般的嗓音说：

“好货色总是小包装的。”

这指的是她本人喽。她灵巧地慢慢倾倒着那糖浆状野梅红杜松子酒。

“祝你走运，”布莱泽斯说。

他掷下一枚大硬币。硬币眶啷一响。

“等着吧，”利内翰说，“直到我……”

“交了好运，”他表示自己的愿望，并举起冒泡的淡色浓啤酒。

“‘权杖’[73]不费吹灰之力就能取胜，”他说。

“我下了点儿赌注，”博伊兰边眨眼边喝着酒说，“要知道，不是我本人出的钱。是我的一个朋友心血来潮。”

利内翰继续喝着酒，并且朝自己杯中这倾斜着的啤酒以及杜丝小姐那微启的嘴唇咧嘴笑了笑。她那嘴唇差点儿把刚才颤巍巍地唱过的海洋之歌哼出来。艾多洛勒斯。东海。

时钟在响着。肯尼迪小姐从他们旁边经过（花儿，我纳闷是谁送的？），端走了托盘。时钟喀嗒喀嗒地响着。

杜丝小姐拿起博伊兰的硬币，使劲用它敲了一下现金出纳机。它发出一片眶啷声。时钟喀嗒喀嗒地响着。埃及美女[74]在钱箱里又扒拉又挑拣，嘴里哼唱着，递给了他找头。朝西边望去[75]，喀嗒。为了我。

“几点钟啦？”布莱泽斯•博伊兰问，“四点？”

钟。

利内翰那双小眼睛贪婪地盯住正在哼唱着的她，盯住哼唱着的胸脯，并拽拽布莱泽斯•博伊兰的袖管。

“咱们听听那个拍子[76]吧，”他说。

古尔丁- 科利斯- 沃德法律事务所的那只公文包领着布卢姆，从那些裸麦地里开着花的桌子[77]之间穿行。他对自己的目的感到兴奋，在秃头帕特侍奉下，随随便便选了一张靠近门口的桌子。好挨得近一点儿。四点钟。难道他忘记了不成？兴许是玩花样。不来了：吊吊胃口。我可做不到。等啊，等啊。帕特，茶房，侍奉着。

褐发女侍那对闪亮的碧眼瞅着布莱泽斯那天蓝色的蝴蝶领结和一双天蓝色的眼睛。

“来吧，”利内翰苦苦相劝，“谁都不在嘛。他还从来没听过呢。”

……紧步凑向弗萝拉的嘴唇。[78]

高高的、高高的音调--最高音部，清晰地响彻着。

褐发女侍杜丝边跟自己那朵忽沉忽浮的玫瑰谈着心，边渴求布莱泽斯•博伊兰的鲜花和眼睛。

“劳驾啦，劳驾啦。”

为了让她说出表示同意的话，他一再央求着。

我离不开卿卿……[79]

“呆会儿再说，”杜丝小姐羞答答地答应道。

“不，马上就来，”利内翰催促着，“敲响那白钟！[88]啥，来吧！谁都不在嘛。”

她瞧了瞧。可得抓紧。从肯小姐[81]所在的地方是听不见的。猛地弯下身去。两张兴奋起来的面庞正凝视着她弯腰。

游离主调的和弦，失去的和弦[82]颤悠悠地重新找到了，接着又失去了，并又找到了震颤的主调。

“来吧！干吧！敲响！[8c]”

她弯下身，捏着裙子下摆一直撩到膝盖以上。磨磨蹭蹭地。弯着腰，迟迟疑疑，以胸有成竹的眼神继续挑逗着他们。

“敲响！[84]”

啪！她突然撤开捏着松紧袜带的手，让它啪的一声缓缓地碰回到她那包在暖和的长袜里、能够发出声响的女人大腿上。

“那口钟！[85]”利内翰极高兴地嚷哔，“老板训练有方。无可挑剔。”

她目空一切地堆出一脸做作的笑容（哭鼻子了！男人不就会这样么！），却朝亮处悄悄溜去，对博伊兰投以柔和的微笑。

“你这个人庸俗透顶，”她边滑也似地走去，边说。

博伊兰以目传神，以目传神。他把厚厚的嘴唇凑在倾着的杯子上，干了那一小杯，吸着杯中最后几滴糖浆般的紫罗兰色浓酒。当她的头从酒吧间里那镀了金字的拱形镜子旁边闪过时，他那双着了迷的眼睛紧紧追随着她；镜中可以望到的盛着姜麦酒、白葡萄酒和红葡萄酒的玻璃杯，以及一只又尖又长的海螺闪了过去，褐发女侍和更加明亮的褐发女侍一时交相辉映。

是啊，褐发女侍从近处走开了。

……情人啊，再见吧！（86）

“我走啦，”博伊兰不耐烦他说。

他精神抖擞地推开杯子，一把抓起找给他的零钱。

“等一会儿，”利内翰赶忙把酒喝了恳求说，“我有话告诉你。托姆•罗赤福特……”

“他就欠下地狱啦，”布莱泽斯•博伊兰边说边提起脚就走。

利内翰为了好跟着他走，把酒一饮而尽。

“难道你长犄角[87]了吗？”他说，“等一等。马上我就来。”

他跟在那双匆匆地橐橐响着的鞋后边走去，然而到了门口就麻利地在一胖一瘦两个互相寒暄着的身影旁边站住了。

“你好，本•多拉德先生。”

“呃？好吗？好吗？”正在听考利神父诉苦的本•多拉德，掉过脸去，用含含糊糊的男低音说，“他不会来找你什么麻烦了，鲍勃。阿尔夫•柏根会跟那高个子[88]谈一谈。这回咱们要往加略人犹大[89]的耳朵里塞根大麦秆。”

迪达勒斯先生叹着气穿过大厅走来了，他用一个指头揉着眼睑。

“嘿，嘿，咱们就是得给他塞，”本•多拉德就像是用约德尔[90]唱法似的兴高采烈他说，“来吧，西蒙。给咱唱个小调儿。我们听到你弹的钢琴喽。”

歇顶的帕特，耳聋的茶房正等着客人们叫饮料。里奇叫的是鲍尔威士忌[91]。布卢姆呢？让我想想看。省得让他跑两趟。他脚上长了鸡眼呢。此刻已经四点钟啦。这身黑衣服穿着多热呀。当然，神经也有些作怪。它折射着（是吗？）热能。让我想想看。苹果酒。对，一瓶苹果酒。

“那算什么呀？”迪达勒斯先生说，“伙计，我不过是凑凑热闹。”

“来吧，来吧，”本•多拉德嚷道，“把忧愁赶走！[92]来呀，鲍勃。”

他--多拉德，穿着那条肥大的裤子，领着他们（瞧那个衣着不整的家伙，现在就瞧）缓步走进大厅。他--多拉德，一屁股坐在琴凳上。他那双患痛风症的手咚的一声戳了一下琴键。咚的一声，又嘎然而止。

秃头帕特在门道里碰见手里没有了茶盘的金发女侍走了回来。他面带困惑神色请她端杯鲍尔威士忌和一瓶苹果酒来。褐发女侍在窗畔注视着。褐发女恃从远处。

轻快二轮马车辚辚地驰过。

布卢姆听见辚的一声，轻微的。他走啦。布卢姆对着沉默的蓝色花儿，像鸣咽一般轻轻地叹了口气。辚辚。他走啦。辚辚。听哪。

“《恋爱与战争》[93]，本，”迪达勒斯先生说，“天主祝福往昔的岁月。”

杜丝小姐那双大胆的眼睛无人理睬，她受不了阳光的刺激， 就把视线从半截帘子那儿移开了。走掉啦。郁郁不乐（有谁知道呢？）， 实在太扎眼（那刺目的阳光！）她拽了拽拉绳，撂下了窗帘。这当儿，褐发下面浮泛着郁郁不乐之色。（他为什么这么匆匆忙忙地就走了开，正当我要？）， 款款来到酒吧间。秃头正挨着金发姊妹站在那儿，形成了不协调的对比， 对比起来不协调，全然不协调的对比。徐缓、冰凉、朦胧地滑到阴影深处的海绿色，一片淡绿蓝色[94]。

“那天晚上弹钢琴的是可怜的古德温老爷爷，”考利神父提醒他们说，“他本人和那架科勒德牌三角钢琴[95]不大合得来。”

是这样的。

“光听他一个人说了，”迪达勒斯先生说，“连魔鬼都制止不了他。喝得半醉的时候，他就成了个怪脾气的老家伙。”

“哎唷，你还记得吗？”本，大块头多拉德从受他惩罚的琴键前掉转身来说，“而且他妈的我当时也没有婚礼服呢。”

他们三个人都笑了。他没有结婚。三个全笑了。没有婚礼穿

的礼服。

“那个晚上，咱们的朋友布卢姆可帮了大忙，”迪达勒斯先生说，“哦，我的烟斗哪儿去啦？”

他踱回到酒吧间去找那支失去的和弦烟斗[ 96] 。秃头帕特正给里奇和帕迪两位顾客送饮料。考利神父又笑了一通。

“看来是我给救了急，本。”

“可不就是你嘛，”本•多拉德斩钉截铁他说，“我还记得那条紧巴巴的长裤的事儿。那可是个高明的主意，鲍勃。”

考利神父的脸一直涨红到紫红色的耳垂儿。他打开了局面。紧巴巴的长裤。高明的主意。

“我晓得他手头紧。他老婆每星期六在咖啡宫[97]弹钢琴，挣不了几个钱。是谁来着，透露给我说，她在于着另一种行当。[98] 。为了寻找他们，我们不得不走遍整条霍利斯街，最后还是基奥那家店里的伙计告诉了我们门牌号码。记得吗？”

本记起来了，他那张宽脸盘儿露出诧异的神情。

“哎唷，她尽管住在那样的地方，却还有赴歌剧院的豪华大氅什么的。”

迪达勒斯先生手里拿着烟斗，溜溜达达地走回来了。

“梅里昂方场[99]的款式。好多件舞衣，哎唷，还有不少件宫廷服装。然而他从来不让老婆掏钱。对吧？她有一大堆两端尖的帽子、博莱罗[100]和灯笼裤。对吧？”

“唉，唉，”迪达勒斯先生点了点头，“玛莉恩•布卢姆太太有各式各样不再穿的衣服。[1 01]

轻快二轮马车辚辚地沿着码头奔驰而去。布莱泽斯在富于弹性的轮胎上伸开四肢，颠簸着。

“肝和熏猪肉。牛排配腰子饼。”“好的，先生，好的，”帕特说。

玛莉恩太太。遇见了他尖头胶皮管[1 02]。一股糊味儿，一本保罗•德•科克[103]的。他这个名字多好！

“她叫什么来着？倒是个活泼丰满的姑娘。玛莉恩……？”

“特威迪。”

“对。她还活着吗？”

“活得欢势着哪，”

“她是谁的闺女来着……”

“联队的闺女。”

“对，一点儿不假。我记起那个老鼓手长来了。”

迪达勒斯先生划了根火柴，嚓的一声点燃了，噗地喷出一口馨香的烟，又喷出一口。

“是爱尔兰人吗？我真不知道哩。她是吗，西蒙？”

然后猛吸进一口，强烈，馨香，发出一阵噼啪声。

“脸蛋儿上的肌肉……怎样？……有点儿褪了色……噢，她是……我的爱尔兰妞儿摩莉，噢。[ 104] ”

他吐出一股刺鼻的羽毛状的烟。

“从直布罗陀的岩石那儿……大老远地来的。”

她们在海洋的阴影深处苦苦地恋慕着[ 105] ，金发女侍守在啤酒泵柄旁，褐发女侍挨着野樱桃酒；两个人都陷入沉思。住在德拉姆康德拉[1 06]的利斯英尔高台街四号的米娜•肯尼迪以及艾多洛勒斯，一位女王，多洛勒斯[1 07]，都一声不响。

帕特上了菜，把罩子一一掀开。利奥波德切着肝。正如前文[118]所说的，他吃起下水、有嚼头的胗和炸雌鳕卵来真是津津有味。考立斯- 沃德律师事务所的里奇•古尔丁则吃着牛排配腰子饼。他先吃牛排，然后吃腰子。他一口口地吃饼。布卢姆吃着，他们吃着。

布卢姆和古尔丁默默地相互配合，吃了起来。那是一顿足以招待王爷的正餐。

单身汉[1 09]布莱泽斯•博伊兰顶着太阳在溽暑中乘着双轮轻便马车，母马那光滑的臀部被鞭子轻打着，倚靠那富于弹性的轮胎，沿着巴切勒[110] 便道辚辚前进。博伊兰摊开四肢焐暖着座席，心里急不可耐，热切而大胆。犄角。你长那个了吗？犄角。你长了吗？

呜--呜--号角[111]。

多拉德的嗓门像大管[112] 似的冲来，压过他们那炮轰般的和音：

当狂恋使我神魂颠倒之际……

本灵魂本杰明[ 113] 那雷鸣般的声音响震撼屋宇，震得天窗玻璃直颤抖着，爱情的颤抖。

“战争！战争！”考利神父大声在嚷，“你是勇士。”

“正是这样，”勇士本笑着说，“我正想着你的房东[114] 呢。恋爱也罢，金钱也罢。”

他住了口。为了自己犯的大错，他摇晃着大脸盘上的大胡子。

“就凭你这样的声量，”迪达勒斯先生在香烟缭绕中说，“你准会弄破她的膜[115] ，伙计。”

多拉德摇晃着胡子，在键盘上大笑了一通。他是做得到的。

“且别提另一个膜了，”考利神父补充说，“歇口气吧。含情但勿过甚[116]。我来弹吧。”

肯尼迪小姐给两位先生端来两大杯清凉烈性黑啤酒。她寒暄了一声。第一位先生说，这可真是好天气。他们喝着清凉烈性黑啤酒。她可晓得总督大人是到哪儿去吗？可曾听见蹄铁响，马蹄声。不，她说不准。不过，这会儿报的。噢，不用麻烦她啦。不麻烦。她摇晃着那份摊开的《独立报》，她寻找着总督大人。她那高高挽起的发髻慢慢移动着，寻找着总督大人。第一位先生说，太麻烦了。哪里，一点也不费事。喏，他就像那样盯着看。总督大人。金发挨着褐发，听见了蹄铁声，钢铁响。

……我神魂颠倒之际，

顾不得为明天而焦虑。[117] 

布卢姆在肝汁里搅拌着土豆泥。恋爱与战争--有人就是这样的。本•多拉德大名鼎鼎。有一天晚上，他跑来向我们借一套为了赴那次音乐会穿的夜礼服。裤子像鼓面那样紧紧地绷在他身上。一头音乐猪。他走出去之后，摩莉大笑了一阵。她仰面往床上一倒，又是尖叫，又是踢踢踹踹。这不是把他的物儿统统都展览出来了吗？啊，天上的圣人们，我真是一身大汗！啊，坐在前排的女客可怎么好！啊，我从来没笑得这么厉害过！喏，就是那样，他才能发得出那低沉的桶音[118] 。比方说，那些阉人。谁在弹琴呢？韵味儿不错。准是考利，有音乐素质。无论奏什么曲调，都能理解。可是他有口臭的毛病，可怜的人。琴声停止了。

富于魅力的杜丝小姐，莉迪亚•杜丝朝着正走进来的一位先生--和蔼可亲的初级律师乔治•利德维尔鞠着躬。您好。她伸出一只湿润的、上流小姐的手，他紧紧地握住。您好。是的，她已经回来啦。又忙忙碌碌地干起来了。

“您的朋友们在里面呢，利德维尔先生。”

乔治•利德维尔，和蔼可亲，像是受诱惑般地握住一只肉感的手。[119] 

正如前文说过的，布卢姆吃了肝。这里至少挺清洁。在伯顿饭馆，那家伙用齿龈对付软骨。这里什么人也没有。除了古尔丁和我。干净的桌布，花儿，状似主教冠的餐巾。帕特张罗来张罗去。秃头帕特。无所事事。在都柏林市，这里最物美价廉了。

又弹起钢琴来了。那是考利。当他面对钢琴而坐时，好像和它融为一体，相互理解。那些徒有其表、令人厌烦的乐师们在弦上乱拨一气。盯着琴弓的一头，就像拉锯般地拉起大提琴，使你想起牙疼时的情景。她高声打起长的呼噜。那晚上我们坐在包厢里，幕间休息的时候，长号在下面像海豚般地喘着气：另一个吹铜管乐器的汉子拧了一下螺丝，把积存的唾沫倒出来。指挥的两条腿在松松垮垮的长裤里跳着吉格舞[120]。把他们遮藏起来还是对的。

双轮轻快马车辚辚地疾驰而去。

只有竖琴。可爱灿烂的金光。少女拨弄着它。可爱的臀部，倒很适宜醮上点儿肉汁。黄金的船。爱琳。那竖琴也被摸过一两次。冰凉的手。[121]霍斯山，杜鹃花丛。我们是她们的竖琴。我。他。老的。年轻的。

“啊，我不行，老兄，”迪达勒斯先生畏畏缩缩、无精打采地说

得用强硬的口气。

“弹下去，妈的！”本•多拉德大声嚷道，“一小段一小段地来

“来一段《爱情如今》[122] ，西蒙，”考利神父说。

他朝舞台下首迈了几大步，神情严肃，无限悲伤地摊开了长长的胳膊。他的喉结嘶哑地发出轻微的嘎声。他对着那里的一幅罩满尘土的海景画《最后的诀别》[123] 柔声唱了起来。伸入大海中的岬角，一艘船，随着起伏的孤帆。再见吧。可爱的少女。她的面纱随风围着她刮，它在风中朝着岬角飘动。
考利唱道：

爱情如今造访，

攫住我的目光……

少女不去听考利的歌声。她对那离去的心上人，对风，对恋情，对疾驶的帆，对归去者，摇着她的轻纱。

“弹下去吧，西蒙。”

“哎，我的全盛时期确实已经过去了，[124] 本……喏……”

迪达勒斯先生将自己的烟斗撂在音叉旁边，坐下来，碰了碰那顺从的键盘。

“不，西蒙，”考利神父掉过身来说，“照原来的谱子来弹。一个降号。”[125] 

键盘乖乖地变得高昂了，诉说着，踌躇着，表白着，迷惘着。

考利神父朝舞台上首大踏步走去。

“喂，西蒙，我为你伴奏，”他说，“起来吧。”

那辆轻快双轮马车从格雷厄姆•莱蒙店里的菠萝味硬糖果和埃尔韦里的象记商店旁边，辚辚地驰过去。

布卢姆和古尔丁严然像王侯一般坐下来，牛排、腰子、肝、土豆泥，吃那顿适宜给王侯吃的饭。他们像进餐中的王侯似的举杯而饮鲍尔威士忌和苹果酒。

里奇说，这是迄今为男高音写的最优美的曲调：《梦游女》[126] 。一天晚上，他曾听见乔•马斯[127] 演唱过。啊，麦古金[128] 真了不起！对。有他独特的方式。少年唱诗班的味道。那少年名叫马斯。弥撒[129] 少年。可以说他是抒情性的男高音。听了之后永远不会忘记，永远不会。

布卢姆消灭了肝之后，就边吃剩下的牛排，边满怀同情地看着对面那张绷起来的脸上泛出的紧张神色。他背疼。布赖特氏病患者那种明亮的目光[130] 。节目单上下一个项目。付钱给吹笛手。[131]药片，像是用面包渣做成的玩艺儿，一吉尼一匣。拖欠一阵再说。也来唱唱：在死者当中[132] 。腰子饼。好花儿给。[133] 赚不了多少钱。东西倒是值。鲍尔威士忌，喝起酒来挺挑剔：什么玻璃杯有碴儿啦，要换一杯瓦尔特里[134] 水啦。为了省几个钱，就从柜台上捞几盒火柴。然后又去挥霍一金镑。等到该付钱的时候，却又一文也拿不出来了。喝醉了就连马车钱也赖着不给。好古怪的家伙。

里奇永远也不会忘记那个夜晚。只要他活着一天，就绝忘不掉的。在古老的皇家剧场的顶层楼座，还带着小皮克[ 135] 。刚一奏起第一个音符。

里奇把到嘴边儿的话咽回去了。

眼下撒开弥天大谎来了。不论说什么都狂热地夸张。还相信自己的瞎话。真的深信不疑。天字第一号撒谎家。可他缺的是一份好记性。[136]

“那是什么曲子呀？”利奥波德•布卢姆问。

“‘现在一切都失去啦’[137] 。”

里奇噘起嘴来。可爱的狺女[138] 喃喃地唱着音调低沉的序曲：一切。一只画眉。一只画眉鸟。他的呼吸像鸟鸣那样甜美，他引为自豪的一口好牙之间，以长笛般的声音唱出哀愁苦恼。失去了。嗓音圆润。这当儿两个音调融合在一起了。我在山楂谷[139] 听见了画眉的啭鸣。它接过我的基调，将其揉和，变了调。过于新颖的呼声，消失在万有之中。回声。多么婉转悠扬的回音啊！[144] 那是怎样形成的呢？现在一切都失去啦。[141]他哀渤地吹着口哨。垮台，降伏，消失。

布卢姆一面把花边桌垫的流苏塞到花瓶底下，一面竖起他那豹子[142]耳朵。秩序。是啊，我记得。可人的曲子。在梦游中她来到他跟前。一位沐浴在月光中的天真烂漫的少女。勇敢。不了解他们所面临的险境。然而还是把她留住吧。呼唤她的名字。摸摸水。[143] 轻快双轮马车辚辚。太迟啦[144] 她巴望着去。正因为如此。女人。拦截海水倒还容易一些。是的，一切都失去啦。

“一支优美的曲子，”布卢姆，忘乎所以的利奥波德说，“我对它很熟悉。”

里奇•古尔丁平生从来不曾……

他对这一点也一清二楚。或许已有所觉察。依然念念不忘地提他的女儿。[145] 迪达勒斯曾说：“只有聪明的女儿才会知道自己的父亲。”[146]我呢？

布卢姆隔着他那只肝儿已经吃光了的盘子，斜眼望去。失去了一切的人的面庞。这位里奇一度也曾沉缅于狂欢作乐。他玩的那些把戏而今都已过时了。什么扇耳朵啦，透过餐巾套环[147] 往外窥伺啦。现在他派儿子送出去几封告帮信。斗鸡眼的沃尔特[148]说，爹，我照办了，爹。我不想麻烦您，但我原是指望能收到一笔钱。替自己辩解。

又弹起钢琴来了。音色比我上次听到的要好些。大概调了音。

又停止了。

多拉德和考利还在催促那个迟迟疑疑的歌手唱起来。

“来吧，西蒙。”

“来，西蒙。”

“女士们，先生们，承蒙各位不弃，我深深表示感谢。”

“来，西蒙。”

“我不称钱，然而您们要是肯听的话，我就为大家唱一支沉痛的心灵之曲[149] 。”

在帘子的遮荫下，钟形三明治容器旁边，莉迪亚胸前插了朵玫瑰。一位褐发淑女的娴雅派头，忽隐忽现；而金发挽成高髻、沉浸在冰凉而银光闪闪的一片淡绿蓝色[150]中的米娜，在两位举着大酒杯的顾客面前也是这样。

前奏旋律结束了。拖得长长的、仿佛有所期待的和弦消失了。

当我初见那绰约身姿时[151]

里奇回过头去。

“西•迪达勒斯的声音，”他说。

他们脑子里充满了兴奋欣喜，涨红了双颊，边听边感受到一股恋慕之情流过肌肤、四肢、心脏、灵魂和脊背。布卢姆朝耳背头秃的帕特打了个手势，叫他把酒吧间的门半开着。酒吧间的门。就是这样。这样就行了。茶房帕特在那儿听候吩咐，因为站在门口听不清楚。

我的悲哀似乎将消失。

一个低沉的声音穿过静寂的空气传了过来。那不是雨，也不是沙沙作响的树叶；既不像是弦音或芦苇声，又不像那叫什么来着——杜西玛琴[152] ；用歌词触碰他们静静的耳朵，在他们各自宁静的心中，勾起往日生活的记忆，好哇，值得一听。他们刚刚一听，两个人的悲哀就好像分别消失了。当他们——里奇和波尔迪——初见美的女神而感到茫然时，他们从丝毫也不曾想到的人儿嘴里，第一次听到温柔眷恋、情意脉脉、无限缠绵的话语。

爱情在歌唱。古老甜蜜的情歌。[153]布卢姆缓缓地解开他那包包上的松紧带。敲响恋人那古老甜蜜的金发。[154]布卢姆将松紧带绕在四根叉开来的指头上，伸开来，松了松，又将它两道、四道、八道地绕在不安的指头上，勒得紧紧的。

胸中充满希望欣喜……

男高音歌手能够把好几十个女人弄到手。这样他们的嗓音就洪亮了。妇女们朝他脚下投鲜花。咱们什么时候能见面呢？[ 155] 简直让我晕头[156] 。辚辚地响着，欢天喜地。他不能专为戴大礼帽的演唱。简直让你晕头转向[157]为他而擦香水。你太太使用哪一种香水。我想知道。辚辚。停下来了。敲门。[158] 在开门之前，她总是先对着镜子照上最后一眼。门厅。啊，来了！你好吗？我很好。那儿吗？什么？要么就是？她的手提包里装着口香片，接吻时吃的糖果。要吗？双手去抚摩她那丰满的……[159] 

哎呀，歌声高昂了，叹息着，变了调。洪亮，饱满，辉煌，自豪。

幻梦破灭一场空虚……

他至今仍有着一副极美妙的歌喉。科克人的歌声就是柔和一些，就连土腔都是这样。傻瓜！本来能够挣到海钱的。净唱错歌词。把他老婆活活地累死了。现下他倒唱起来了。然而很难说。只有他们两个[160]在一起。只要他不垮下来。沿着林荫路还能跑出个样儿来。他的四肢也都在歌唱。喝酒吧。神经绷得太紧了。为了唱歌，饮食得有节制。詹妮•林德[161] 式的汤：原汁，洋苏叶，生鸡蛋，半品脱奶油。为了浓郁的、梦幻般的歌喉。

柔情蜜意涌了上来。缓缓地，膨胀着，悸动着。就是那话儿。哈，给啦！接呀！怦怦跳动着，傲然挺立着。

歌词？音乐？不，是那背后的东西。

布卢姆缠上又松开来，结了个活扣儿，又重新解开来。

布卢姆。温吞吞、乐融融、舔光这股秘密热流，化为音乐，化为情欲，任情淌流，为了舔那淌流的东西而侵入。推倒她抚摩她拍拍她压住她。公羊。毛孔膨胀扩大。公羊。那种欢乐，那种感触，那种亲呢，那种。公羊。冲过闸门滚滚而下的激流。洪水，激流，涨潮，欢乐的激流，公羊震动。啊！爱情的语言。

希望的一线曙光，

喜气洋溢。女神莉迪亚一副淑女派头，尖声尖气地对利德维尔说着话。听不见，是由于希望的曙光被尖声压住了。

是《玛尔塔》。巧合。[162]我正要写信呢。莱昂内尔的歌。你这名字挺可爱。不能写。请笑纳我这份小小礼物。拨弄她的心弦，也拨弄钱包的丝带。她是个。我曾称你作淘气鬼。[163] 然而这个名字：玛莎。多么奇怪呀！今天。

莱昂内尔的声音又回来了，比先前减弱了，但并不疲倦。它再一次对里奇、波尔迪、莉迪亚、利德维尔歌唱，也对那边张着嘴竖起耳朵、边等着伺候顾客的帕特歌唱。他是怎样初次瞥见那绰约的身姿，悲哀是怎样似乎消失的，她的眼神、丰韵和谈吐如何使古尔德[164]和利德维尔着迷，如何赢得了帕特。布卢姆的心。

不过，我要是能瞧见他[165]的脸就好了。意思就更清楚了。这下子我明白，当我在德雷格理发店对着镜中理发师的脸说话时，他何以总要望着我的脸了。尽管离得有点儿远，在这儿还是比在酒吧间听得真切一些。

遇见你那温雅明眸……

我在特列纽亚的马特•狄龙[166]家初次见到她的那个夜晚。她身穿黑网眼的嫩黄色衣衫。音乐椅。最后只剩下我们两个。命运。我追在她后面。命运。慢慢腾腾地兜圈子。快点转吧。我们两个人。大家都看着哪。停！她坐了下来。被淘汰的面面相觑。个个咧着嘴笑着。嫩黄色的膝盖。

我的眼睛被迷惑……

歌唱着。她唱的是《等候》[167]。我替她翻乐谱。音域广阔，香气袭人。你的丁香树，什么牌的香水。我看见了胸脯，两边那么丰腴，喉咙颤抖着。当我初见，她向我道谢。她为什么……我呢？缘分。西班牙风韵的眼睛。此时此刻，在古老的马德里……多洛勒斯…”——她，多洛勒斯，在中院儿梨树下的阴影下。望着我。引诱着。啊，诱惑着。

玛尔塔！啊，玛尔塔！

莱昂内尔摆脱了心头的一切郁闷，以愈益深邃而愈益高昂的和谐音调，饱含着强有力的激情，唱起悲歌，呼唤着恋人归来。莱昂内尔那；孤独的呼唤，她是应该能理解的；玛尔塔是应该察觉到的。因为他所等待的只有她一人。在那儿？这儿， 那儿； 试试那儿，这儿；哪儿都试试看。在哪儿。在某处。

回来吧，迷失的你！

回来吧，我亲爱的你！

孤零零的，唯一的爱。唯一的希望。我唯一的慰藉。玛尔塔，胸腔共鸣[170] ，回来吧！

回来吧！

声音飞翔着，一只鸟儿，不停地飞翔，迅疾、清越的叫声。蹁跹吧，银色的球体；它安详地跳跃，迅疾地，持续地来到了。气不要拖得太长，他的底气足，能长寿。高高地翱翔，在高处闪耀，燃烧，头戴王冠，高高地在象征性的光辉中，高高地在上苍的怀抱里，高高地在浩瀚、至高无上的光芒普照中，全都飞翔着，全都环绕着万有而旋转，绵绵无绝期，无绝期，无绝期……

回到我这里！[171] 

西奥波德！

耗尽了。

哦，唱得好。大家鼓掌。她应该来的。到我这儿，到他那儿，到她那儿，还有你，我，我们。

“妙哇！”啪啪啪。“真了不起，好得很，西蒙。”噼啪噼啪。“再来一个！”噼噼啪啪。很是嘹亮。“妙哇，西蒙！”噼哩啪啦。“再来一个！”再来鼓掌。本•多拉德、莉迪亚•杜丝、乔治•利德维尔、帕特、米娜[ 172] ，面前摆着两只大酒杯的绅士、考利、拥着大酒杯的第一位绅士还有褐发女侍杜丝小姐和金发女侍米娜小姐，个个不住他说啊，叫唤啊，拍手啊。

布莱泽斯•博伊兰那双款式新颖的棕黄色皮鞋橐橐地走在酒吧间地板上，这在前边已说过了。正如适才所说的，轻快双轮马车辚辚地从约翰•格雷爵士、霍雷肖•独臂纳尔逊和可敬的西奥博尔德•马修神父的雕像前驰过。马儿颠颠小跑着，热腾腾的，坐在那儿也热腾腾的。那口钟。敲响。那口钟。敲响。[173] 母马略减速度，沿着拉特兰广场圆堂旁的小丘徐徐前进。母马一颠一摇地向前踱着。对情绪亢奋的博伊兰，急不可待的博伊兰来说，真是太慢了。

考利的伴奏结束了，缭绕的余音消失在充满感兴的空气中。

里奇•古尔丁呢，就饮着他那鲍尔威士忌，利奥波德•布卢姆 呷着他的苹果酒，利德维则啜着他那吉尼斯啤酒。第二位绅士说，倘若她不介意的话，他们很想再喝上两大杯。肯尼迪小姐那珊瑚般的嘴唇对第一位和第二位绅士冷冰冰地露出装腔作势的笑容，说她并不介意。

“把你在牢里关上七天，”本•多拉德说，“光靠面包和水来过活。西蒙，那样你就会唱得像花园里的一只画眉。”

唱莱昂内尔的这个角色——西蒙笑了。鲍勃•考利神父弹琴。米娜•肯尼迪伺候着。第二位绅士会的钞。汤姆•克南大摇大摆地走了进来。莉迪亚既赞赏又博得赞赏。布卢姆唱的却是一支沉默之歌。

赞赏着。

里奇边赞赏边畅谈那个人的非凡的嗓子。他记得多年以前的一个夜晚。他永远也忘不了那个夜晚。那一次，西在内德•兰伯特家演唱《地位名声》[174]。天哪，他平生从没听到过那样的旋律。从来没听到过把“宁可分手，负心人”那句唱得那么美妙。天哪，唱“爱情既已不复存”时，歌喉是那样婉转清越。问冋兰伯特，他也会这么说。

古尔丁那张苍白的脸兴奋得泛红了。他告诉布卢姆先生说，那个夜晚西•迪达勒斯在内德•兰伯特家演唱《地位名声》。

内兄。亲戚。我们擦身而过，彼此从不过话。[175]我想，他们之间有着不和的前兆[176] 。他以轻蔑态度对待他。然而，他对他却越发仰慕。西演唱的那个夜晚。他用喉咙唱出的歌声宛如由两根纤细的丝弦奏出来的，比其他任何人都出色。

那是哀叹的声音。现在平稳一些了。只有在静寂中，你才能感受自己所听到的。震颤。而今是沉默之曲。

布卢姆把十指交叉的双手松开来，用皮肤松弛的指头拨响那细细的肠线[177] 。他将线拽长并拨响，发出嗡嗡声，然后又嘭的一声。这当儿，古尔丁谈起巴勒克拉夫[178] 的发声法。汤姆•克南按照回顾性的编排[179] ，有条不紊地向洗耳恭听着的考利神父谈着往事。神父正即兴弹奏着，边弹边点头。这当儿，身材魁梧的本•多拉德点上烟，和正抽着烟的西蒙•迪达勒斯聊了起来。他抽烟时，西蒙点着头。

失去了的你。[180]这是所有的歌的主题。布卢姆把松紧带拽得更长了。好像挺残酷的。让人们相互钟情，诱使他们越陷越深。然后再把他们拆散。死亡啦。爆炸啦。猛击头部啦。于是，就堕入地狱里去。人的生命。迪格纳穆。唔，老鼠尾巴在扭动着哪！我给了五先令。天堂里的尸体[181]。秧鸡般地咯咯叫着。肚子像是被灌了毒药的狗崽子。走掉了。他们唱歌。被遗忘了。我也如此。迟早有一天，她也。撇下她。腻烦了。她就该痛苦啦。抽抽噎噎地哭泣。那双西班牙式的大眼睛直勾勾地望空干瞪着。她那波- 浪- 状、沉- 甸- 甸的头发不曾梳理。[182] 

然而幸福过了头也令人腻烦。他一个劲儿地拽那根松紧带。你在自己家里不幸福吗？它啪的一声绷回去了。

车子辚辚地驶进多尔塞特街。

杜丝小姐抽回她那裹在缎袖里的胳膊，半嗔半喜。

“别这么没深没浅的，”她说，“咱们不过是刚刚相识。”

乔治•利德维尔告诉她，这是千真万确的，然而她不相信。

第一位绅士告诉米娜，确实是这样的。她问他，真是这样的吗？第二个握着大酒杯的人告诉她是这样的。那么就是这样的。

杜丝小姐，莉迪亚小姐，不曾相信。肯尼迪小姐，米娜，不曾相信。乔治•利德维尔，不，杜小姐不曾。第一个，第一个握着大酒杯的绅；相信，不，不；不曾，肯尼小姐，莉迪莉迪亚维尔，大酒杯。[183] 

还不如在这里写呢。邮政局里的鹅毛笔不是给嚼瘪了，就是弄弯了。

秃头帕特在示意下凑了过来。要钢笔和墨水。他去了。要吸墨纸本[184]。他去了。吸墨水用的本子。他听见了，耳背的帕特。

“对，”布卢姆先生边摆弄那卷曲的肠线边说，“没错儿。写上几行就行啦。我的礼物。意大利的华丽音乐都是这样的。这是谁写的呀？要是知道那名字，就能理解得更透彻一些。（若无其事地掏出信纸信封）那富于特征。”

“那是整出歌剧中最壮丽的乐章[185] ，”古尔丁说。

“确实是这样，”布卢姆说。

都是数目[186] ！想想看，所有的音乐都是如此。二乘二除二分之一等于两个一。[187] 这些是和弦，产生振动。一加二加六等于七。[188]你可以随心所欲地用这些数字变换花样。总能发现这个等于那个。墓地墙下的匀称[189]。他没注意到我的丧服。没有心肝！只关心自己的胃[190] 。冥想数学[191] 。而你还认为自己在倾听天体音乐哪。然而，倘若你这么说：玛莎，七乘九减x 等于三万五千。这就平淡无奇了。那全凭的是音。

比方说，现在他正弹着。是即兴弹奏。听到歌词之前，你还以为正是你自己心爱的曲子呢。你很想留神[192] 聆听。用心听。开头蛮好。接着就有些走调了。觉得有点儿茫然了。钻进麻袋又钻出来，跨过一只只的桶，跨越铁蒺藜，进行一场障碍竞走。时间会谱成曲调。问题在于你的心境[193]如何。总之，听音乐总是愉快的。除了女孩子们的音阶练习而外。隔壁人家，两个女学生一道。应该为她们发明一种不出声的钢琴。米莉不会欣赏音乐。奇怪的是我们两个人都……我的意思是。我为她买过《花赞》[194]。这个谱名[195] 。有个姑娘慢慢地弹奏它，当我晚上回家来的时候，那个姑娘。塞西莉亚街附近那几座马厩的门。

秃头耳背的帕特送来十分扁平[196] 的吸墨纸本和墨水。帕特将十分扁平的吸墨纸本和墨水钢笔一道撂下。帕特拿起盘子刀叉。帕特走了。

“那是唯一的语言，”迪达勒珀先生对本说。他小时候在林加贝拉，克罗斯黑文，林加贝拉[197] 听到过人们唱船歌。王后镇[ 198] 港口挤满了意大利船。喏，本，他们在月光下，头戴地震帽：[199]走来走去。歌声汇在一起。天哪，那可是了不起的音乐。本，我小时听过。穿越林加贝拉港的月夜之歌[200]。

他撂开乏味的烟斗，一只手遮拢在唇边，咕呜呜地发出月光之夜的呼唤，近听清晰，远方有回声。

布卢姆用“另一只眼睛”[201]，将卷成指挥棒形的《自由人报）浏览到下端，想查明那是在儿见到的。卡伦、科尔曼、迪格纳穆•帕特里克。嗨嗬！嗨嗬！福西特。哎呀！我要找的就是这个。

但愿他[202]没望见，机敏得像耗子一般。他把《自由人报》打开，竖起，这下子就瞅不见了。记住要写希腊字母“E”[203]。布卢姆蘸了墨水。布卢姆嘟嚷道：“台端。”亲爱的亨利写道：“亲爱的玛迪[204]收到了你的信和花。”见鬼，我把它放在哪儿啦？哪个兜儿里哪。“今天完全不可能。”要在“不可能”下面画个杠杠。“写信。”

这可为难了。面有难色的布卢姆把帕特送来的扁平吸墨纸本当作手鼓似的轻敲着，刀。指头就表示“我正在考虑着”。

写下去。“懂事的意思吧。”不，把那个E换掉。“奉上薄礼，请哂纳。”另要求她写回信。等一下。给了迪格纳穆五先令。在这家店约莫要花上两先令。在海鸥身上花了一便士。以利亚来啦。在戴维。伯恩的酒吧开销了七便士。总计八先令左右。给半克朗吧。“奉上薄礼：价值两先令六便士的邮政汇票。”请给我写一封长信……你不屑于吗？辚辚，难道你长了那个吗？真是兴奋呀。你为什么叫我淘气鬼？你不也是个淘气鬼吗？哦，玛丽亚丢了带子。[206]今天就写到这里为止，再见。是的，是的，会告诉你的。想要。才能不让它脱落。请告诉我那另一个[207]。她写道：那另一个世界。我的耐心耗尽。才能不让它脱落。你一定要相信。相信。大酒杯。那- 是- 真的。

我写的是些蠢话吗？丈夫们不会这么写的。结了婚，有了老婆，就得那样。因为我不在。倘若。可是，怎样能做到呢？她必须，保持青春。倘若她发现了夹在我那顶礼帽里的卡片。不，我才不一古脑儿告诉她呢。无益的痛苦。只要她们没撞上。女人们。半斤八两[208]。

家住多尼布鲁克一哈莫尼大街一号的车夫詹姆斯．巴顿所赶的第三百二十四号出租马车上，坐着一位乘客——一位年轻绅士。他那套款式新颖的靛蓝色哔叽衣服是住在伊登码头区五号的缝纫兼剪裁师乔治•罗伯特•梅西雅斯[209] 做的；头上戴的那顶极其时髦漂亮的草帽子是从大布伦斯维克街一号的帽商约翰•普拉斯托那儿买的。呃？这就是那辆轻轻颠摇着辚辚前进的轻快二轮马车。母马扭动着壮实的屁股，从德鲁加茨猪肉店和阿根达珀公司那锃亮的金属管子旁边驰过。

“是为广告的事写回信吗？”里奇目光锐利地问布卢姆。

“是的，”布卢姆先生说，“是给市内的旅行推销员，我估计搞不出什么名堂来。”

布卢姆嘟哝着：“提供的线索倒都是最好的。[210]”然而亨利却写道：“这会使我兴奋。你晓得个中情况。匆致。亨利。”写希腊字母“E”。最好加个附言。他在弹什么哪？即兴的间奏曲。附言：啷当当。你要怎样来惩罚我？你要惩罚我？[211] 歪歪拧拧的裙子在摇来摆去，嘭嘭。[212] 告诉我，……我想知道。[213]噢，当然喽，假若我不想知道的话，也就不会问了。“拉、拉、拉、来。”进入小调就悲怆地消失了。小调为什么就悲怆呢？签上“H”。女人们都喜欢来个悲怆的结尾。再加个附言：“拉、拉、拉、来。今天我感到那么悲伤。拉、来。那么孤寂。亲[214] 。”

他赶紧用帕特的吸墨纸吸了一下。信封。地址。从报纸上抄一个就是了。他嘴里念念有词：“卡伦- 科尔曼股份有限公司台启。”亨利却写道：

都柏林市

海豚仓巷邮政局收转

玛莎•克利弗德小姐

用已经印有字迹的部分来吸，这样他[215]就认不出了。就这样。蛮好。这可以做《珍闻》悬赏小说的主题。某位侦探从吸墨纸上读到了什么。稿费每栏一基尼。马查姆经常想起……大笑着的魔女[216] 可怜的普里福伊太太。万事休矣。完蛋。[217]

用“悲怆”一词；未免太富有诗意了。这是音乐使然。莎士比亚说过：音乐有一种魔力。[218] 一年到头每天都在引用的名句。生存还是毁灭，这是一个值得考虑的问题。[219] 智慧出自等待。

他在杰勒德那座位于费特小巷的玫瑰花圃里散步，赤褐色的头发已灰白了。人生只有一次，肉体只有一具。干吧。专心致志地干。[220] 

反正已经干完啦。邮政汇票，邮票。邮政局还在前面哪。这次走去吧。时间还来得及。我答应在巴尼•基尔南的酒店跟他们见面的；这可不是什么愉快的差事。办丧事的家[221] 。走呀。帕特！听不见。这家伙是个耳聋的笨蛋。

马车快到那儿了。聊聊吧。聊聊吧。“帕特！”听不见。在折叠那些餐巾哪。他每天准得走一大片地。要是在他的后脑勺上画张脸，他就成两个人了。但愿他们再唱些歌儿，我也好排遣一下。

面有难色的秃头帕特将一条条餐巾都折叠成主教冠的形状。帕特是个耳背的茶房。当你等候着时，帕特这位茶房服侍你。嘻嘻嘻嘻。你等候时，他服侍。嘻嘻。他是个茶房。嘻嘻嘻嘻。他服侍，而你在等候。当你等候时，倘若你等候着，他就服侍，在你等候的当儿。嘻嘻嘻嘻。嗬。你等候时，他服侍。[222] 

这会子，杜丝。杜丝•莉迪亚。褐发与玫瑰。

她的假日过得好极啦，简直好极啦。瞧瞧她带回来的这枚可爱的贝壳。

她轻悄悄地将那尖而弯曲的海螺拿到酒吧间另一头，好让他——律师乔治•利德维尔，能够听见。

“听啊！”她怂恿他。

随着汤姆•克南那被杜松子酒醺热了的词句，伴奏者缓慢地编织着音乐。确凿的事实。沃尔特•巴普蒂[223] 的嗓子是怎样失灵的。喏，先生，那个做丈夫的一把卡住了他的喉咙。“恶棍，”他说，“再也不让你唱情歌啦。”果不其然，汤姆先生。鲍勃•考利编织着。男高音歌手把女人弄到手。考利把身子往后一仰；

啊，现在他听见了，她捧起海螺对准他的耳朵。听哪！他倾听着。真精彩。她又把它对着自己的耳朵。借着那透过来的光线，淡金色的头发一晃而过，形成对照。听一听。

笃，笃。

布卢姆隔着酒吧间的门，瞥见她们将一枚海螺对准自己的耳朵。他微微听到：她们先是各自、接着又替对方听见了波浪的迸溅，喧噪，以及深沉的海啸。

褐发女侍挨着金发女侍，从近处，从远处，她们聆听着。

她的耳朵也是一枚贝壳，有着耳垂。曾经去过一趟海滨。海滨那些俏丽的姑娘。[224] 皮肤被太阳晒得辣辣作痛。应该先擦点冷霜晒成棕色就好了。涂了奶油的烤面包片。哦，可别忘了那化妆水。她嘴角上长了疱疹。简直让你晕头转向。[225] 头发梳成辫子。贝壳上缠着海藻。她们为什么要用海藻般的头发遮住耳朵呢？而土耳其妇女甚至还遮住嘴。为什么？她那双眼睛露在布巾上面。面纱。找入口。那是个洞穴。闲人免进。

她们自以为能听到海的声音。歌唱着。咆哮。这是血液的声音。有时淌进耳腔。喏，那是海洋。血球群岛。

真了不起。那么清晰。又冲过来了。乔治•利德维尔边听边捕捉着它那低诉，随听随将它轻轻地撂开。

“你说那惊涛骇浪在说着什么？[226]”他笑吟吟地问她。。

娇媚，面上泛着海洋般的微笑，莉迪亚却不回答。她只对利德维尔微笑着。

笃，笃

从拉里•奥罗克那爿酒店旁边，从拉里，果敢的拉里•奥旁边，博伊兰颠簸着走过，博伊兰拐了个弯。

米娜从那被抛弃的海螺旁边翩然来到正等待着她的那大酒杯跟前。不，她并不怎么寂寞，杜丝小姐的头昂然地告诉利德维尔先生。月光下在海滨散步。不，不是一个人。跟谁一道呀？她气势轩昂地回答说：跟一位绅士朋友。

鲍勃•考利那疾迅动着的手指又在高音部弹奏起来了。“房东有优先权。”“只消宽限几天。”[227] 高个子约翰。“大本钟”[228]。他轻轻地弹奏一支轻松明快清脆的调子，为了脚步轻快、调皮而笑容可掬的淑女们，也为了他们的情郎——绅士朋友们。一。一、一、一、一、一、二、一、三、四。

海，风，树叶，雷、河水、哞哞叫的母牛，牲畜市场，公鸡，母鸡不打鸣儿，蛇发出嘶嘶声。世上处处都有音乐。拉特利奇的门吱吱响。不，那只是噪音。他现在正弹着《唐璜》的小步舞曲。在城堡那一间间大厅里翩翩起舞的宫廷那五颜六色的服饰，外面却是悲惨的庄稼人，他们饥肠辘辘，面带菜色，吃的是酸模叶子。多好看。瞧，瞧，瞧，瞧，瞧，瞧。你们朝我们瞧。

我能感觉到那是欢乐的。从来不曾把它写成个曲子。为什么呢？我的欢乐是另一种欢乐。不过，两种都是欢乐。是啊，那无疑是欢乐。单从音乐这一事实来考虑，也能明白这一点。我常常以为她[229]情绪低落，可她又欢唱起来了。这下子我才恍然大悟。

麦科伊的手提箱。我太太和你大太[230]。喵喵叫的猫声。如裂帛。她说起话来舌头就像风箱的响板似的。她们无法掌握男人的音程[ 231] 。她们自己的声音也有漏气的时候。把我填满了吧。我是热乎乎、黑洞洞而且敞着口的。摩莉唱着《什么人……》[232] 梅尔卡丹特[233]。我把耳朵贴在墙上听。要的是一位能孚众望的女性。

马儿缓步前进，颠簸，轻摇，停住。花花公子博伊兰那棕黄色的鞋、短袜、跟部绣着天蓝色花纹，轻盈地踏在地面上。

噢，瞧咱们这副打扮！室内音乐。可以编个双关的俏皮话。当她那个的时候，我常想起这种音乐。那是声学。丁零零。空的容器发出的响声最大。因为从声学上来说，共鸣就像水压相等于液体下降的法则那样起变化的。正如李斯特所作的那些狂想曲。匈牙利味儿，吉卜赛女人的眼睛。珍珠。水滴。雨。快快摇啊，混作一团，一大堆啊，嘘嘘嘘嘘。现在。多半是现在。要么就更早一些。[234]

有人笃笃敲门，有人砰砰拍。他，保罗•德•科克[235] 拍了。用响亮、高傲的门环，喀呵、咔啦咔啦咔啦、喀呵。喀呵喀呵。[236] 

敲。笃，笃。

“唱‘这里，愤怒’[237] 吧。”考利神父说。

“不，本，”汤姆•克南插嘴说，“来《推平头的小伙子》，用咱们爱尔兰土腔。”

“啊，本，还是唱吧，”迪达勒斯先生说，“地道的好男儿。[238]”

“唱吧，唱吧，”他们齐声央求着。

我该走啦。喂，帕特，再过来一次。来呀。他来了，他来了。他走过去了。到我这儿来。多少钱？

“什么调？是六个升号吗？

“升F大调，”本•多拉德说。

鲍勃•考利那双摊开来的利爪抓住了低音的黑键。

布卢姆对里奇说，他该走了。不，里奇说。不，非走不可。不知打哪儿弄到了一笔钱。打算纵酒取乐，一直闹到脊背都疼了。多少钱？他听人说话，总是靠观察嘴唇的动作。一先令九便士。其中一便士是给你的。放在这儿啦。给他两便士小费。耳聋，面带困惑神情。然而他的老婆和一家人也许在等候，等候[239]帕特回家来。嘿嘿嘿嘿。一家人等候的当儿，聋子伺候着。

然而等一下。然而听哪。阴暗的和弦。阴- 郁- 的。低低的。在地底下黑暗的洞穴里。埋着的矿砂。大量的音乐。

黑暗时代的声音，无情的声音，大地的疲惫，使得坟墓接近，带来痛苦。那声音来自远方，来自苍白的群山，呼唤善良、地道的人们。

他要找神父。要跟神父说一句话。[240] 

笃笃。

本•多拉德的嗓门。低沉的桶音。[241] 使出他浑身的解数来唱。 男人、月亮和女人都没有的辽阔沼泽地，一片蛙叫声。 另一个失落者。 他一度做过海船的船具零售商。还记得那些涂了树脂的绳索和船上的提灯吧。亏空了一万镑。如今住在艾弗救济院[ 242] 里。一间斗室，多少多少号。都怪巴斯厂生产的头号啤酒，把他害到这地步。

神父在家里。一个冒牌神父的仆役把他迎了进去。请进。圣洁的神父。奸细仆役深打一躬。[243] 和弦那缭绕的尾音。

毁了他们。使他们倾家荡产。然后给他们盖点子斗室，让他们在那里了此一生。睡吧，乖乖。唱支摇篮曲。死吧，狗儿。小狗崽，死吧。

警告声，严峻的警告声告诉他们：那个小伙子已走进那间阒然无人的大厅，告诉他们他的脚步声如何庄重地在那儿响着，向他们描述那间昏暗的屋子和那位身着长袍、坐在那里听取忏悔的神父。[244] 

正派人。[245] 眼下有几分醉意。他自以为能在诗人画谜活动的《答案》[246]中获奖。我们奉送你一张崭新的五镑纸币。“抱窝的鸟儿。”他认为答案是《最末一个游吟诗人之歌》[247]。“C空白T”，打一只家畜[248]。“T波折号R”是最勇敢的水手。[249] 他依然有副好嗓

子。既然拥有这一切，正说明他还不是个阉人。

听哪。布卢姆在听。里奇•古尔丁在听。而门口，耳聋的帕特，秃头的帕特，拿到了小费的帕特也在听着。

和弦变得缓慢一些了。

忏悔与悲伤的声音徐徐传来，这是被美化了的、发颤的声音。本那副悔悟的胡子做着告解。因天主之名，因天主之名。他跪了下来。用手捶胸，忏悔着：“我的罪过。”[250]

又是拉丁文。那就像粘鸟胶一样鳔住人们。神父手里拿着赐给妇女们的圣体。停尸所里的那个家伙。棺材或者科菲[251] ，因尸体之名。[252] 那只老鼠如今在哪儿哪？嘎吱嘎吱。

笃笃。

他们倾听着。“大酒杯”们和肯尼迪小姐。眼睑富于表情的乔治•利德维尔。乳房丰满的缎子[253] 。克南。西[254] 。

哀伤的声音叹息着唱了起来。罪过。复活节以来他曾诅咒过三次。[ 255] 你这婊子养的杂种！[256] 有一次举行弥撤的时候，他却游荡去了。有一次他路过坟地，却不曾为亡母的安息而祈求冥福。一个小伙子。一个推平头的小伙子。

正在啤酒泵旁边倾听的褐发女侍定睛望着远方。全神贯注地。她一点也料不到我正在瞧着她呢。摩莉最有本事发觉瞅自己的人了。

金发女侍斜睨着远处。那儿有一面镜子。那是她最俊俏的半边脸蛋儿吗？她们总是知道的。有人敲门。最后再找补一下。

喀呵咔啦咔啦。

听音乐的时候，她们都想些什么呢？捕追响尾蛇的方法。那天晚上，迈克尔•冈恩[257]让我们坐在包厢里。乐队开始对音。波斯王[258] 最喜欢这支曲子了。 使他联想到《家，可爱的家》[259] 。他还曾用帷幕揩鼻涕。也许是他那个民族的习惯。那也是一种音乐。并不像说得那样糟糕。呜——呜——。铜管乐器朝上的管子发出驴叫般的声音。低音提琴的侧面有着深长的切口[260] ，奄奄一息。木管乐器[261] 像母牛似的哞哞叫。掀起盖子的小三角钢琴有如张着上下颚的鳄鱼，音乐就从那里发出。木管乐器这个名字像是古德温[ 262] 这个姓。

她看上去蛮漂亮。桔黄色的上衣，领子开得低低的，袒露着胸部。当她在剧场里弯下身去问什么的时候，总是发散出一股丁香气味。我把可怜的爸爸那本书里所引的斯宾诺莎[263]那段话，讲给她听了。她仔细听着，就像被催眠了似的。 就是那样的眼神。弯着身子。二楼包厢一个家伙拼命用小望远镜盯着她。音乐的美你得听两次才能领略到。对大自然和女人，只消瞥上半眼。天主创造了田园。人类创造了曲调。[264] 遇见了他尖头胶皮管。[265] 哲学。哦，别转文啦！[266] 

全都完啦。全都倒下啦。他的父亲死在罗斯包围战[267] 中，他的哥哥们都是在戈雷倒下的。到韦克斯福德去。我们是韦克斯福德的小伙子，他非去不可。他是这个姓氏和家族中最后的一个。

我也一样，是我这个家族的最后一个。米莉，年轻学生。喏，也许怪我。没有儿子。鲁迪。如今已太迟了。哦，要是不太迟呢？要是不呢？要是还成呢？

他没有怨恨。[268] 

恨。爱。那些不过是名词而已。鲁迪。我快要老了。

“大本钟”放开了嗓门。里奇•古尔丁那苍白的脸上好不容易泛出了一片红晕，对快要老了的布卢姆说：了不起的嗓子。然而，什么时候又年轻过呢？

爱尔兰的时代到来了。我的国家在国王之上[269] 。她倾听着。谁害怕谈到一九0四年?[270]该开溜啦。看够了。

“祝福我，爸爸，”推平头的小伙子多拉德大声嚷道，“祝福我，让我去吧。”[271] 

笃笃。

布卢姆窥伺着不等祝福就溜掉的机会，着意打扮起来，好把人迷住。周薪十八先令。掏腰包的一向是男人们。你时刻可得留神着。那些姑娘， 那些俏丽的[271] 。挨着令人伤感的海浪[273] 。歌剧合唱队女队员的风流韵事。为了证实毁约而在法庭上宣读信件。鸡宝宝的意中人。法庭上哄堂大笑。亨利。我从来没有在那上面签过名。你这个名字有多么可爱。[274] 

音乐的曲调和唱词都变得低沉了，随后又转快。冒牌神父窸窸窣窣地脱掉长袍，露出戎装。义勇骑兵队队长。他们全都背下来了。他们所渴望的那阵狂喜。义勇骑兵队队长。

笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。

她激动地倾听着，探出身子去听，起着共鸣。

脸上毫无表情。该是个处女吧。要么就只是用手指摸过。在上面写点什么：页数。不然的话，她们会怎样呢？衰弱。绝望。让她们青春常在。甚至自我赞赏。瞧吧。在她身上弹奏。用嘴唇来吹。白皙的女人身子，一支活生生的笛子。轻轻地吹。大声地吹。所有的女人都有三个眼儿。那位女神怎样，我没瞧见。 她们要的就是这个。不宜对她们太客气。也正因为这样，他[275] 才能把她们搞到手。 兜里揣着金子，脸皮[276] 要厚。说点儿什么。让她听着。眉来眼去。无词歌[277] 。摩莉和那个年轻的轮擦提琴[278] 手。当他说猴子病了，她晓得他指的是什么。 或许由于那和西班牙语很接近。照这样，对动物也能有所理解。所罗门就理解[279] 。这是天赋的能力。

用腹语术讲话。我的嘴唇是闭着的。在肚子里思考。想些什么呢？

怎么样？你呢？我。要。你。去。

队长粗暴、嘎声愤怒地咒骂着：你这长了肿瘤、中了风、婊子养的杂种。小伙子，你来得好。你还有一个钟头好活，你最后的。[280] 

笃笃。笃笃。

此刻心里怦怦地跳着。她们觉得可怜。要揩拭那渴望为死去的殉难者而流下的一滴眼泪。为所有即将死去者，为所有出生者。可怜的普里福伊太太。但愿她已分娩。因为她们的子宫。

用女人那子宫的液体润湿了的眼球，在睫毛的篱笆下安详地注视着， 聆听着。当她不说话的时候，眼睛才显出真正的美。在那边的河上。[281] 每逢裹在缎衣里的酥胸波浪般缓缓地起伏（她那一起一伏的丰腴魅力[282] ），红玫瑰也徐徐升起，红玫瑰又徐徐落下。随着呼吸，她的心脏悸动着。呼吸就是生命。 处女发[283] 所有那些细小、细小的纤叶都颤动着。

可是，瞧！灿烂的星辰褪了色。哦。玫瑰！卡斯蒂莉亚。破晓。[284] 

哈。利德维尔。那么，为的是他呀，不是为……[285] 迷上了。我是那个样儿吗？不过，从这儿望望她吧。砰的一声拔掉的瓶塞，迸溅出来的啤酒泡沫儿， 堆积如山的空瓶子。

莉迪亚那丰满的手轻轻地搭在啤酒泵突出来的光滑挺棍上。交给我吧。她完全沉浸在对推平头的那个少年的怜悯中。后，前；前，后。在打磨得锃亮的球形捏手（她晓得他的眼睛、我的眼睛、她的眼睛）上，怀着怜悯搬动着她的大拇指和食指。搬动一下又停下来，文雅地摸了摸，然后极其柔和地顺着那冰冷、坚硬的白色珐琅

质挺棍慢慢滑下去。挺棍从两根手指形成的光滑的环里突了出来。

喀呵的一声，咔啦的一声。

笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。

我保有这座房子。啊们。他气得咬牙切齿。叛徒们将被绞死。[286] 

和弦随声附和了。非常悲戚。然而无可奈何。

别等完就走吧。谢谢，真是不同凡响啊。我的帽子在哪儿？ 从她身边走过去。可以把那张《自由人报》撂下。信我带着哪。倘若她对我……[287]？ 不会的。步行，步行，步行。像卡什尔•博伊罗•康诺罗•科伊罗•蒂斯代尔•莫里斯•蒂逊代尔•法雷尔。[288] 步——行。

喏，我得走了。你要走了吗？嗯，得告辞啦。布卢姆站了起来。裸麦上空高且蓝[289] 。噢。布卢姆站了起来。屁股后边那块肥皂怪黏糊糊的。准是出汗了。音乐。可别忘记那化妆水。那么，再见。高级帽子。里面夹着卡片。对。

布卢姆从站在门口紧张地竖起耳朵的聋子帕特身边走过去。

小伙子在日内瓦兵营丧命。他的遗体葬在帕塞吉[290] 。悲伤！哦，他感到悲伤！[291] 哀恸的领唱人的声音向哀伤的祷告者呼唤。

从玫瑰花、裹在缎衣里的酥胸、爱抚的手、溢出的酒、以及砰的一声崩掉的塞子旁边，布卢姆一面致意一面走过去，经过一双双眼睛， 经过海绿色荫影下的褐色和淡金色的处女发。温柔的布卢姆，我感到很孤寂的布卢姆。

笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。

多拉德用男低音祷告道：为他祈祷吧。你们这些在平安中聆听的人们。低声祈祷，抹一滴泪，善良的男人，善良的人们。他生前是个推平头的小伙子。[292] 

布卢姆把正在那儿偷听的擦鞋侍役——推平头的擦鞋小伙子吓了一跳。他在奥蒙德的门厅里听见叫嚷和喝采的声音和用胖嘟嘟的手拍着脊背的响声以及用靴子跺地板的声音——是靴子，而不是擦鞋侍役。大家异口同声地喊着要狂饮一通。亏得我逃脱了。

“喂，本，来吧，”西蒙•迪达勒斯大声说，“千真万确，你唱得跟过去一样好。”

“更好哩，”正喝着杜松子酒的汤姆•克南说，“我敢担保，再也没有人能把这民歌唱得如此淋漓尽致的了。”

“拉布拉凯”[293]，”考利神父说。

本•多拉德像是跳卡丘查舞[294]似的迈着沉重的步子，将他那庞大身躯移向酒吧。盛赞之下，他喜气洋洋，患痛风症的手指仿佛击响板[295]一般，望空摆动着，打出种种节奏。

大本钟本•多拉德。大本本。大本本。[296]

噜噜噜。[297]

大家深为感动。西蒙从他那宛如雾中警号筒的鼻子里哼出表示共鸣的声音，人们朗笑着，把情绪极高的本•多拉德簇拥过来。

“你看上去红光满面，”乔治•利德维尔说。

杜丝小姐先整了整玫瑰花，再来服侍他们。

“我心中的山峰，[298]”迪达勒斯先生拍了拍本那肥厚的后肩胛骨说，“很结实，[299]不过身上藏的脂肪太多了点儿。”

噜噜噜噜噜——嘶——。

“致命的脂肪啊，西蒙，”本•多拉德瓮声瓮气他说。

里奇独自坐在不和的前兆[300]中。古尔丁一科利斯一沃德。他犹豫不决地等在那儿。没有拿到钱的帕特也在等着。

笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。

米娜•肯尼迪小姐将嘴唇凑到一号“大酒杯”的耳边。

“多拉德先生，”那嘴唇小声咕卿着。

“多拉德，”“大酒杯”咕卿着。

当肯尼迪小姐说那是多拉的时候，一号“大酒杯”相信了。她、多拉。“大酒杯”。

他喃喃地说，他晓得这个名字。那就是说，他对这个名字很熟悉。也即是说，他听说过这个名字。是多拉德吗？多拉德，对。

是的，她的嘴唇说得大声一些：多拉德先生。米娜喃喃他说，那首歌，他——多拉德先生唱得很可爱。而《夏日最后的玫瑰》是一支可爱的歌。米娜爱这支歌。“大酒杯”爱米娜所爱的歌。

那是多拉德撇下的夏日最后的玫瑰。布卢姆感到肠气在腹中回旋。

苹果酒净是气体，还会引起便秘。等一等。吕便•杰家附近的那家邮局。交一先令八便士。把这档子事解决了吧。为了避人耳目，沿着希腊街绕过去。我要是没跟他约会就好了。在户外更自由自在。音乐。刺激你的神经。啤酒泵。她那只推摇篮的手支配着。霍斯山。支配着世界。[301]

遥远。遥远。遥远。遥远。

笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。

莱昂内尔•利奥波德[302]沿着码头朝上游走去，淘气的亨利揣着写给玛迪的信。波尔迪往前走去，拿着《偷情的快乐》，其中提到为了拉乌尔的那条镶有榴边的裙子[303]，还想着“遇见了他尖头胶皮管[304]。

笃笃的盲人，笃笃地敲着走，笃笃地一路敲着边石，笃笃又笃笃。

考利给弄得发晕了。像是喝醉了。男人摆弄姑娘[305]，不如适可而止。比方说，那些狂热的听众。全身都是耳朵。连三十二分音符都不肯听漏。双目紧闭。随着节拍不时点着头。神魂颠倒了。你一动也不敢动。切不可思考。三句话不离本行。扯来扯去是关于音调的无聊话。

全都是在试着找个话题。一中断就会引起不快，因为你很难说。加德纳大街上的那架风琴。老格林每年有五十英镑的进项[306]。他好古怪，独自住在那小阁楼里，又是音栓，又是制音器，又是琴键。成天坐在管风琴跟前。[307]一连唠叨[308]上几个钟头，不是自言自语，就是跟那个替他拉风箱[309]的人说话。忽而低声怒吼，忽而尖声咒骂（他要塞进点儿什么，她大声说：不行[310]）。接着，突然轻轻地释放出很小很小的噼的一股气。 

噼！很小的噼咿咿的一股气。在布卢姆的小不点儿里。 

“是他吗？”迪达勒斯先生取回烟斗说，“今天早晨我跟他在一起来着，在可怜的小帕狄•迪格纳穆的……”

“哎，愿天主降仁慈于他。”

“顺便提一下，那上头有个音叉……”

笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。

“他的老婆有副金嗓子。也许应该说是曾经有过。对吧？”利德维尔问。

“哦，那准是调音师忘掉的，”莉迪亚对头一个看到[311] 音叉的西蒙•莱昂纳尔说，“他刚才到这儿来过。”

她告诉第二个看到音叉的乔治•利德维尔说，那是个盲人。弹得非常精彩，听来很有味道。灿烂的对照：褐发女莉迪亚，米娜金发女。

“大声喊啊！”本•多拉德嚷道，“唱出声来！”

“我来！”考利神父大声说。

噜噜噜噜噜噜。

我觉得我想要……

笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。

“非常想要，”迪达勒斯先生直勾勾地盯着一只没有头的沙丁鱼说。

在钟形三明治容器下面，在面包搭成的尸架上，停放着夏日最后的一条沙丁鱼，最后的，孤零零的。布卢姆孤零零地[312] 。

“好得很，”他盯着，“尤其是低音区。”

笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。笃笃。

布卢姆贴着巴里服装公司踱去。但愿我能够。等一等。我要是能把那个创造奇迹的人搞到手。这所房子里有二十四个律师。我点过数。诉讼。你们要彼此相爱。[313] 一摞摞的羊皮纸文件。皮克一波克特[314] 法律事务所拥有代理权。古尔丁一科利斯一沃德法律事务所。

然而，就拿那个击大鼓的汉子来说吧。他的职业是：米基•鲁尼乐队。奇怪，起初他是怎么想到干这一行的呢？坐在家里，吃罢猪头肉和包心菜，就坐在扶手椅上，抱着那只鼓，排练起他本人在乐队里演奏的那部分。嘭。嘭噼嘀。老婆听了倒挺开心。驴皮。驴子一辈子挨鞭子抽，死了之后继续挨猛打[315] 。嘭。猛打。这好像是那希麦克[316] ，不，我的意思是基斯麦特[317] 。命运。

笃笃。笃笃。一个双目失明的青年用手杖笃笃地跺路，笃笃、笃笃、笃笃地经过达利的橱窗。那儿有个人鱼，头发整个儿飘动着（不过他瞧不见），噗噗地抽着人鱼的烟（瞎了，瞧不见），沁凉无比的人鱼的烟。

乐器。一片草叶，她双手合十作贝壳状，然后就吹奏。甚至用一把梳子和一张薄绉纸，也能吹出个曲调来。住在西伦巴德街的时候，摩莉穿着衬裙[318] ，披散着头发。我想，各行各业都有自身独特的音乐，你明白吧？猎户有号角。豁！你有角吗？敲响那口钟！[319] 牧羊人有他的笛子。噼，小小的，一丁点儿。警察有哨子。“修理锁和钥匙哇！”“扫烟囱咧！”“四点钟，一切正常，睡觉吧！”现在一切都失去啦。[320] 大鼓吗？嘭噼嘀。等一等。我晓得。还有发布员[321] 。小官吏。高个儿约翰。把死者唤醒。嘭。迪格纳穆。可怜小小的因主之名[322] 。嘭。那是音乐。当然，我的意思是这一切都是嘭嘭嘭，很像所谓从头[323] 。你依然可以听到。当我们行进时，我们一路走去，一路走去。嘭。

实在憋不住了。呋呋呋。可是如果在宴会上放了呢？这纯粹是个风俗习惯问题，例如波斯王[324] 。念一声祷文，抹一滴眼泪[355] 。然而，他想必是生来有点傻[326] ，竟没有看出那是个义勇骑兵队队长。整个儿遮起来了。坟地上那个身穿棕色胶布雨衣的到底是什么人呢？哎呀，小巷里的妓女来啦！

一个歪戴着黑色水手草帽、邋里邋遢的妓女，大白天就两眼无神地沿着码头朝布卢姆先生踱了过来。当他初见那绰约的身姿时[327] 。对，可不就是她嘛。我真是感到孤寂。雨夜在小巷子里。角。谁有呢？他有，她瞧见了。这里不是她的地盘。她是什么人？她多半是。您哪，有没有衣服让我洗呢？她认识摩莉。把我甩掉了。一位身穿棕色衣衫、富富态态的女人跟你在一起。弄得你张皇失措。我们约会了，尽管晓得那是永远也不可能，简直是不可能的。[328] 代价太高，离家，可爱的家又太近。她瞧着我吗？白天看上去是个丑八怪。脸像是在水里泡过。讨厌死啦。喔，可是，她也得像旁人那样活下去呀。瞧瞧这儿吧。

在莱昂内尔•马克古董店橱窗里，是高傲的亨利•莱昂内尔•利奥波德，亲爱的亨利•弗罗尔。 利奥波德•布卢姆先生认真地审视着残旧的烛台和那一个个鼓着状似蛆虫般的吹奏袋的谐音手风琴。大贱卖：六先令。不妨买下来学着拉拉。 倒不贵。让她走过去吧。当然喽， 凡是用不着的东西，你都会觉得贵。高明的售货员正好一显身手。他想卖什么， 就让你去买什么。有个家伙用瑞典制造的刀片替我刮了脸，然后我就买下了。他甚至向我讨刮脸费。现在她走过去了。六先令。

想必是苹果酒的关系，要么兴许是那杯勃艮第。

从近处，在褐发女旁；从远处，在金发女旁；在褐发女侍莉迪亚那朵诱人的夏日最后的玫瑰，卡斯蒂利亚的玫瑰跟前，他们一个个目光灼灼，大献殷勤，丁零当啷地碰着杯。首先是利德，随后是迪、考、克，第五个是多拉。利德维尔、西•迪达勒斯、鲍勃•考利、克南和大个儿本•多拉德。

笃笃。一个青年走进了阒无一人的奥蒙德的门厅。[329] 

布卢姆端详着挂在莱昂内尔•马克橱窗里的那幅豪迈的英雄肖像。罗伯特•埃米特最后的话。最后七句话。引自迈那贝尔的作品。[330] 

“诸位地道的男子汉。”

“好哇，好哇，本。”

“咱们一道举杯吧。”、

他们举起杯来。

哧吣喀、哧冲喀。[331] 

笃笃。一个双目失明的青年站在门口。他没瞧褐发女，也没瞧金发女，更没瞧本、鲍勃、汤姆、西、乔治、“大酒杯”、里奇、帕特。嘻嘻嘻嘻。他都没有瞧。

腻腻的布卢姆，油腻腻的布卢姆悄悄地读着那最后几句话。当我的祖国在世界各国之间。

噗。

准是那杯勃艮第在作怪。

呋！噢。噜噜。

占有了一席之地。背后一个人也没有。她已经走过去了。直到那时。只有到了那时。电车喀啷喀啷喀啷。好机会。来了。喀啷得喀啷喀啷。我敢说是那杯勃艮第。是的。一、二。方为我写下。喀啦啊啊啊啊啊啊。墓志铭。我的话。

噗噜噜噜噜呋。

完了。 [332] 
Chapter 12 Cyclops
I WAS JUST PASSING THE TIME OF DAY WITH OLD TROY O THE D.M.P. at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye. I turned around to let him have the weight of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony Batter only Joe Hynes. 
-- Lo, Joe, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see that bloody chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his brush? 

-- Soot's luck, says Joe. Who's the old ballocks you were talking to? 

-- Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I'm on two minds not to give that fellow in charge for obstructing the thoroughfare with his brooms and ladders. 

-- What are you doing round those parts? says Joe. 

-- Devil a much, says I. There is a bloody big foxy thief beyond by the garrison church at the corner of Chicken Lane - old Troy was just giving me a wrinkle about him - lifted any God's quantity of tea and sugar to pay three bob a week said he had a farm in the county Down off a hop of my thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there near Heytesbury street. 

-- Circumcised! says Joe. 

-- Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named Geraghty. I'm hanging on to his taw now for the past fortnight and I can't get a penny out of him. 

-- That the lay you're on now? says Joe. 

-- Ay, says I . How are the mighty fallen! Collector of bad and doubtful debts. But that's the most notorious bloody robber you'd meet in a day's walk and the face on him all pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. Tell him, says he, I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him to send you round here again or if he does, says he, I'll have him summonsed up before the court, so will I, for trading without a licence. And he after stuffing himself till he's fit to burst! Jesus, I had to laugh at the little jewy getting his shirt out. He drink me my teas. He eat me my sugars. Because he no pay me my moneys? 

For nonperishable goods bought of Moses Herzog, of 13 Saint Kevin's parade, Wood quay ward, merchant, hereinafter called the vendor, and sold and delivered to Michael E. Geraghty, Esquire, of 29 Arbour Hill in the city of Dublin, Arran quay ward, gentleman, hereinafter called the purchaser, videlicet, five pounds avoirdupois of first choice tea at three shillings per pound avoirdupois and three stone avoirdupois of sugar, crushed crystal, at three pence per pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor to the said vendor of one pound five shillings and six pence sterling for value received which amount shall be paid by said purchaser to said vendor in weekly instalments every seven calendar days of three shillings and no pence sterling: and the said nonperishable goods shall not be pawned or pledged or sold or otherwise alienated by the said purchaser but shall be and remain and be held to be the sole and exclusive property of the said vendor to be disposed of at his good will and pleasure until the said amount shall have been duly paid by the said purchaser to the said vendor in the manner herein set forth as this day hereby agreed between the said vendor his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the one part and the said purchaser, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the other part. 

-- Are you a strict t. t.? says Joe. 

-- Not taking anything between drinks, says I. 

-- What about paying our respects to our friend? says foe. 

-- Who? says I. Sure, he's in John of God's off his head, poor man. 

-- Drinking his own stuff? says Joe. 

-- Ay, says I. Whisky and water on the brain. 

-- Come around to Barney Kiernan's, says Joe. I want to see the citizen. 

-- Barney mavourneen's be it, says I. Anything strange or wonderful, Joe? 

-- Not a word, says Joe. I was up at that meeting in the City Arms. 

-- What was that, Joe? says I. 

-- Cattle traders, says Joe, about the foot and mouth disease. I want to give the citizen the hard word about it. 

So we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the back of the courthouse talking of one thing or another. Decent fellow Joe when he has it but sure like that he never has it. Jesus, I couldn't get over that bloody foxy Geraghty, the daylight robber. For trading without a licence, says he. 

In Inisfail the fair there lies a land, the land of holy Michan. There rises a watchtower beheld of men afar. There sleep the mighty dead as in life they slept, warriors and princes of high renown. A pleasant land it is in sooth of murmuring waters, fishful streams where sport the gunnard, the plaice, the roach, the halibut, the gibbed haddock, the grilse, the dab, the brill, the flounder, the mixed coarse fish generally and other denizens of the aqueous kingdom too numerous to be enumerated. In the mild breezes of the west and of the east the lofty trees wave in different directions their first class foliage, the wafty sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus and other ornaments of the arboreal world with which that region is thoroughly well supplied. Lovely maidens sit in close proximity to the roots of the lovely trees singing the most lovely songs while they play with all kinds of lovely objects as for example golden ingots, silvery fishes, crans of herrings, drafts of eels, codlings, creels of fingerlings, purple seagems and playful insects. And heroes voyage from afar to woo them, from Elbana to Slievemargy, the peerless princes of unfettered Munster and of Connacht the just and of smooth sleek Leinster and of Cruachan's land and of Armagh the splendid and of the noble district of Boyle, princes, the sons of kings. 

And there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering roof is seen by mariners who traverse the extensive sea in barks built expressly for that purpose and thither come all herds and fatlings and first fruits of that land for O'Connell Fitzsimon takes toll of them, a chieftain descended from chieftains. Thither the extremely large wains bring foison of the fields, flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of spinach, pineapple chunks, Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes, drums of figs, drills of Swedes, spherical potatoes and tallies of iridescent kale, York and Savoy, and trays of onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets of mushrooms and custard marrows and fat vetches and bere and rape and red green yellow brown russet sweet big bitter ripe pomellated apples and chips of strawberries and sieves of gooseberries, pulpy and pelurious, and strawberries fit for princes and raspberries from their canes. 

-- I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him. Come out here, Geraghty, you notorious bloody hill and dale robber! 

And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and medium steers and roaring mares and polled calves and longwools and storesheep and Cuffe's prime springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the various different varieties of highly distinguished swine and Angus heifers and polly bullocks of immaculate pedigree together with prime premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is ever heard a trampling, cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling, grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lush and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of Thomond, from M'Gillicuddy's reeks the inaccessible and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer's firkins and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs, in great hundreds, various in size, the agate with the dun. 

So we turned into Barney Kiernan's and there sure enough was the citizen up in the corner having a great confab with himself and that bloody mangy mongrel, Garryowen, and he waiting for what the sky would drop in the way of drink. 

There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his cruiskeen lawn and his load of papers, working for the cause. 

The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would give you the creeps. Be a corporal work of mercy if someone would take the life of that bloody dog. I'm told for a fact he ate a good part of the breeches off a constabulary man in Santry that came round one time with a blue paper about a licence. 

-- Stand and deliver, says he. 

-- That's all right, citizen, says Joe. Friends here. 

-- Pass, friends, says he. 

Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he: 

-- What's your opinion of the times? 

Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob, Joe was equal to the occasion. 

-- I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his hand down his fork. 

So begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he says: 

-- Foreign wars is the cause of it. 

And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket: 

-- It's the Russians wish to tyrannise. 

-- Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I, I've a thirst on me I wouldn't sell for half a crown. 

-- Give it a name, citizen, says Joe. 

-- Wine of the country, says he. 

-- What's yours? says Joe. 

-- Ditto MacAnaspey, says I... 

-- Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how's the old heart, citizen? says he. 

-- Never better, a chara, says he. What Garry? Are we going to win? Eh? 

And with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck and, by Jesus, he near throttled him. 

The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freely freckled shaggybearded wide-mouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse (Ulex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the field-lark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble. 

He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide reaching to the knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about his middle by a girdle of plaited straw and rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of deerskin, roughly stitched with gut. His nether extremities were encased in high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet being shod with brogues of salted cowhide laced with the windpipe of the same beast. From his girdle hung a row of seastones which dangled at every movement of his portentous frame and on these were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the Ardri Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane O'Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O'Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M'Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal Mac-Mahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castille, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo, Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W. Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Croker, Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare. A couched spear of acuminated granite rested by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which his master repressed from time to time by tranquillising blows of a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone. 

So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and begob the sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid. O, as true as I'm telling you. A goodlooking sovereign. 

-- And there's more where that came from, says he. 

-- Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I. 

-- Sweat of my brow, says Joe. 'Twas the prudent member gave me the wheeze. 

-- I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill lane and Greek street with his cod's eye counting up all the guts of the fish. 

Who comes through Michan's land, bedight in sable armour? O'Bloom, the son of Rory: it is he. Impervious to fear is Rory's son: he of the prudent soul. 

-- For the old woman of Prince's street, says the citizen, the subsidised organ. The pledgebound party on the floor of the house. And look at this blasted rag, says he. Look at this, says he. The Irish Independent, if you please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman's friend. Listen to the births and deaths in the Irish all for Ireland Independent and I'll thank you and the marriages. 

And he starts reading them out: 

-- Gordon, Barnfield Crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of Iffley, Saint Anne's on Sea, the wife of William T. Redmayne, of a son. How's that, eh? Wright and Flint, Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa and the late George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham Road, Stockwell, Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude's Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, Dean of Worcester, eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow. 

-- I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience. 

-- Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of Davie Dimsey, late of the admiralty: Miller, Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh, June 12, at 35 Canning Street, Liverpool, Isabella Helen. How's that for a national press, eh, my brown son? How's that for Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber? 

-- Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks be to God they had the start of us. Drink that, citizen. 

-- I will, says he, honourable person. 

-- Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form. 

Ah! Owl! Don't be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click. 

And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth, and behind him there passed an elder of noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred scrolls of law, and with him his lady wife, a dame of peerless lineage, fairest of her race. 

Little Alf Bergan popped in round the door and hid behind Barney's snug, squeezed up with the laughing, and who was sitting up there in the corner that I hadn't seen snoring drunk, blind to the world, only Bob Doran. I didn't know what was up and Alf kept making signs out of the door. And begob what was it only that bloody old pantaloon Denis Breen in his bath slippers with two bloody big books tucked under his oxter and the wife hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched woman trotting like a poodle. I thought Alf would split. 

-- Look at him, says he. Breen. He's traipsing all round Dublin with a postcard someone sent him with u. p.: up on it to take a li... 

And he doubled up. 

-- Take a what? says I. 

-- Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds. 

-- O hell! says I. 

The bloody mongrel began to growl that'd put the fear of God in you seeing something was up but the citizen gave him a kick in the ribs. 

-- Bi i dho husht, says he. 

-- Who? says Joe. 

-- Breen, says Alf. He was in John Henry Menton's and then he went round to Collis and Ward's and then Tom Rochford met him and sent him round to the subsheriff's for a lark. O God, I've a pain laughing. U. p.: up. The long fellow gave him an eye as good as a process and now the bloody old lunatic is gone round to Green Street to look for a G. man. 

-- When is long John going to hang that fellow in Mountjoy? says Joe. 

Bergan, says Bob Doran, waking up. Is that Alf Bergan? 

-- Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here, Terry, give us a pony. That bloody old fool! Ten thousand pounds. You should have seen long John's eye. U. p... 

And he started laughing. 

-- Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. Is that Bergan? 

-- Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf. 

Terence O'Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal cup full of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat. 

Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the manner born, that nectarous beverage and you offered the crystal cup to him that thirsted, the soul of chivalry, in beauty akin to the immortals. 

But he, the young chief of the O'Bergan's, could ill brook to be outdone in generous deeds but gave therefor with gracious gesture a testoon of costliest bronze. Thereon embossed in excellent smithwork was seen the image of a queen of regal port, scion of the house of Brunswick, Victoria her name, Her Most Excellent Majesty, by grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions beyond the sea, queen, defender of the faith, Empress of India, even she, who bore rule, a victress over many peoples, the well-beloved, for they knew and loved her from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, the pale, the dark, the ruddy and the ethiop. 

-- What's that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen, prowling up and down outside? 

-- What's that? says Joe. 

-- Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino. Talking about hanging. I'll show you something you never saw. Hangmen's letters. Look at here. 

So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes out of his pocket. 

-- Are you codding? says I. 

-- Honest injun, says Alf. Read them. 

So Joe took up the letters. 

-- Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. 

So I saw there was going to be bit of a dust. Bob's a queer chap when the porter's up in him so says I just to make talk: 

-- How's Willy Murray those times, Alf? 

-- I don't know, says Alf. I saw him just now in Capel Street with Paddy Dignam. Only I was running after that. 

-- You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With who? 

-- With Dignam, says Alf. 

-- Is it Paddy? says Joe. 

-- Yes, says Alf. Why? 

-- Don't you know he's dead? says Joe. 

-- Paddy Dignam dead? says Alf. 

-- Ay, says Joe. 

-- Sure I'm after seeing him not five minutes ago, says Alf, as plain as a pikestaff. 

-- Who's dead? says Bob Doran. 

-- You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us and harm. 

-- What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five... What?... and Willie Murray with him, the two of them there near what-doyoucallhim's... What? Dignam dead? 

-- What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who's talking about... ? 

-- Dead! says Alf. He is no more dead than you are. 

-- Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this morning anyhow. 

-- Paddy? says Alf. 

-- Ay, says Joe. He paid the debt of nature, God be merciful to him. 

-- Good Christ! says Alf. 

Begob he was what you might call flabbergasted. 

In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of the etheric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of jivic rays from the crown of the head and face. Communication was effected through the pituitary body and also by means of the orangefiery and scarlet rays emanating from the sacral region and solar plexus. Questioned by his earthname as to his whereabouts in the heaven-world he stated that he was now on the path of pralaya or return but was still submitted to trial at the hands of certain bloodthirsty entities on the lower astral levels. In reply to a question as to his first sensations in the great divide beyond he stated that previously he had seen as in a glass darkly but that those who had passed over had summit possibilities of atmic development opened up to them. Interrogated as to whether life there resembled our experience in the flesh he stated that he had heard from more favoured beings now in the spirit that their abodes were equipped with every modern home comfort such as talafana, alavatar, hatakalda, wataklasat and that the highest adepts were steeped in waves of volupcy of the very purest nature. Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was brought and evidently afforded relief. Asked if he had any message for the living he exhorted all who were still at the wrong side of Maya to acknowledge the true path for it was reported in devanic circles that Mars and Jupiter were out for mischief on the eastern angle where the ram has power. It was then queried whether there were any special desires on the part of the defunct and the reply was: We greet you, friends of earth, who are still in the body. Mind C.K. doesn't pile it on. It was ascertained that the reference was to Mr Cornelius Kelleher, manager of Messrs H.J. O'Neill's popular funeral establishment, a personal friend of the defunct, who had been responsible for the carrying out of the interment arrangements. Before departing he requested that it should be told to his dear son Patsy that the other boot which he had been looking for was at present under the commode in the return room and that the pair should be sent to Cullen's to be soled only as the heels were still good. He stated that this had greatly perturbed his peace of mind in the other region and earnestly requested that his desire should be made known. 

Assurances were given that the matter would be attended to and it was intimated that this had given satisfaction. 

He is gone from mortal haunts: O'Dignam, sun of our morning. Fleet was his foot on the bracken: Patrick of the beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with your wind: and wail, O ocean, with your whirlwind. 

-- There he is again, says the citizen, staring out. 

-- Who? says I. 

-- Bloom, says he. He's on point duty up and down there for the last ten minutes. 

And, begob, I saw his physog do a peep in and then slidder off again. 

Little Alf was knocked bawways. Faith, he was. 

-- Good Christ! says he. I could have sworn it was him. 

And says Bob Doran, with the hat on the back of his poll, lowest blackguard in Dublin when he's under the influence: 

-- Who said Christ is good? 

-- I beg your parsnips, says Alf. 

-- Is that a good Christ, says Bob Doran, to take away poor little Willy Dignam? 

-- Ah, well, says Alf, trying to pass it off. He's over all his troubles. 

But Bob Doran shouts out of him. 

-- He's a bloody ruffian I say, to take away poor little Willy Dignam. 

Terry came down and tipped him the wink to keep quiet, that they didn't want that kind of talk in a respectable licensed premises. And Bob Doran starts doing the weeps about Paddy Dignam, true as you're there. 

-- The finest man, says he, snivelling, the finest purest character. 

The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his bloody hat. Fitter for him to go home to the little sleepwalking bitch he married, Mooney, the bumbailiff's daughter. Mother kept a kip in Hardwicke street that used to be stravaging about the landings Bantam Lyons told me that was stopping there at two in the morning without a stitch on her, exposing her person, open to all comers, fair field and no favour. 

-- The noblest, the truest, says he. And he's gone, poor little Willy, poor little Paddy Dignam. 

And mournful and with a heavy heart he bewept the extinction of that beam of heaven. 

Old Garryowen started growling again at Bloom that was skeezing round the door. 

-- Come in, come on, he won't eat you, says the citizen. 

So Bloom slopes in with his cod's eye on the dog and he asks Terry was Martin Cunningham there. 

-- O, Christ M'Keown, says Joe, reading one of the letters. Listen to this, will you? 

And he starts reading out one. 

7, Hunter Street, Liverpool. 
To the High Sheriff of Dublin, Dublin. 
Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the above-mentioned painful case i hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of February 1900 and i hanged... 
-- Show us, Joe, says I. 

-- ... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in Pentonville prison and i was assistant when... 

-- Jesus, says I. 

-- ... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith... 

The citizen made a grab at the letter. 

-- Hold hard, says Joe, i have a special nack of putting the noose once in he can't get out hoping to be favoured i remain, honoured sir' my teas is five ginnese. 

H. Rumbold, 

Master Barber.

-- And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen. 
-- And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here, says he, take them to hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Bloom, says he, what will you have? 

So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying he wouldn't and couldn't and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he said well he'd just take a cigar. Gob, he's a prudent member and no mistake. 

-- Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe. 

And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourning card with a black border round it. 

-- They're all barbers, says he, from the black country that would hang their own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses. 

And he was telling us there's two fellows waiting below to pull his heels down when he gets the drop and choke him properly and then they chop up the rope after and sell the bits for a few bob a skull. 

In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor. Their deadly coil they grasp: yea, and therein they lead to Erebus whatsoever wight hath done a deed of blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so saith the Lord. 

So they started talking about capital punishment and of course Bloom comes out with the why and the wherefore and all the codology of the business and the old dog smelling him all the time I'm told those Jewies does have a sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about I don't know what all deterrent effect and so forth and so on. 

-- There's one thing it hasn't a deterrent effect on, says Alf. 

-- What's that? says Joe. 

-- The poor bugger's tool that's being hanged, says Alf. 

-- That so? says Joe. 

-- God's truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that was in Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible. He told me when they cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces like a poker. 

-- Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone said. 

-- That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It's only a natural phenomenon, don't you see, because on account of the... 

And then he starts with his jawbreakers about phenomenon and science and this phenomenon and the other phenomenon. 

The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved traditions of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres, causing the pores of the cobra cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has been dominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis. 

So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the word and he starts gassing out of him about the invincibles and the old guard and the men of sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with him about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported for the cause by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this, that and the other. Talking about new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so he ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffling and sneezing all round the place and scratching his scabs and round he goes to Bob Doran that was standing Alf a half one sucking up for what he could get. So of course Bob Doran starts doing the bloody fool with him: 

-- Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy. Give us the paw here! Give us the paw! 

Arrah! bloody end to the paw he'd paw and Alf trying to keep him from tumbling off the bloody stool atop of the bloody old dog and he talking all kinds of drivel about training by kindness and thoroughbred dog and intelligent dog: give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a few bits of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacob's tin he told Terry to bring. Gob, he golloped it down like old boots and his tongue hanging out of him a yard long for more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry bloody mongrel. 

And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the point, the brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour Hill and Robert Emmet and die for your country, the Tommy Moore touch about Sara Curran and she's far from the land. And Bloom, of course, with his knockmedown cigar putting on swank with his lardy face. Phenomenon! The fat heap he married is a nice old phenomenon with a back on her like a ballalley. Time they were stopping up in the City Arms Pisser Burke told me there was an old one there with a cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and Bloom trying to get the soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing bézique to come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not eating meat of a Friday because the old one was always thumping her craw and taking the lout out for a walk. And one time he led him the rounds of Dublin and, by the holy farmer, he never cried crack till he brought him home as drunk as a boiled owl and he said he did it to teach him the evils of alcohol and by herrings if the three women didn't near roast him it's a queer story, the old one, Bloom's wife and Mrs O'Dowd that kept the hotel. Jesus, I had to laugh at Pisser Burke taking them off chewing the fat and Bloom with his but don't you see? and but on the other hand. And sure, more be token, the lout I'm told was in Power's after, the blender's, round in Cope street going home footless in a cab five times in the week after drinking his way through all the samples in the bloody establishment. Phenomenon! 

-- The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and glaring at Bloom. 

-- Ay, ay, says Joe. 

-- You don't grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean is... 

-- Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn fein amhain! The friends we love are by our side and the foes we hate before us. 

The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries far and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain poured down from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared heads of the assembled multitude which numbered at the lowest computation five hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in the vast throng for whom the York Street brass and reed band whiled away the intervening time by admirably rendering on their black draped instruments the matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by Speranza's plaintive muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our country cousins of whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The Night before Larry was stretched in their usual mirth-provoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned pennies. The children of the Male and Female Foundling Hospital who thronged the windows overlooking the scene were delighted with this unexpected addition to the day's entertainment and a word of praise is due to the Little Sisters of the Poor for their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless and motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The viceregal houseparty which included many wellknown ladies was chaperoned by Their Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the grand stand while the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the Emerald Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite. The delegation, present in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the semi-paralysed doyen of the party who had to be assisted to his seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitépatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Virdga Kisászony Putrápesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos Karamelopulos. Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum Effendi, Se?or Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, Herr Hurhausdirektorprasident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanato riumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentgeneralhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without exception expressed themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to witness. An animated altercation (in which all took part) ensued among F.O.T.E.I. as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March was the correct date of the birth of Ireland's patron saint. In the course of the argument cannonballs, scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers, umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig iron were resorted to and blows were freely exchanged. The baby policeman, Constable MacFadden, summoned by special courier from Booterstown, quickly restored order and with lightning promptitude proposed the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally honourable for both contending parties. The readywitted ninefooter's suggestion at once appealed to all and was unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was heartily congratulated by all the F.O.T.E.I., several of whom were bleeding profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having been extricated from underneath the presidential armchair, It was explained by his legal adviser Avvocato Pagamimi that the various articles secreted in his thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by him during the affray from the pockets of his Junior colleagues in the hope of bringing them to their senses. The objects (which included several hundred ladies' and gentlemen's gold and silver watches) were promptly restored to their rightful owners and general harmony reigned supreme. 

Quietly, unassumingly, Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless morning dress and wearing his favourite flower the Gladiolus Cruentus. He announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so many have tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate - short, painstaking yet withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the world-renowned headsman was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of the delegate of the land of song (a high double F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o'clock. The signal for prayer was then promptly given by megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared, the commendatore's patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the possession of his family since the revolution of Rienzi, being removed by his medical adviser in attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate who administered the last comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr when about to pay the death penalty knelt in a most christian spirit in a pool of rainwater, his cassock above his hoary head, and offered up to the throne of grace fervent prayers of supplication. Hard by the block stood the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which his eyes glowered furiously. As he awaited the fatal signal he tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing it upon his brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a flock of sheep which had been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary office. On a handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged the quartering knife, the various finely tempered disembowelling appliances (specially supplied by the worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round and Sons, Sheffield), a terracotta saucepan for the reception of the duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc when successfully extracted and two commodious milkjugs destined to receive the most precious blood of the most precious victim. The housesteward of the amalgamated cats' and dogs' home was in attendance to convey these vessels when replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an excellent repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and onions, done to a nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had been considerately provided by the authorities for the consumption of the central figure of the tragedy who was in capital spirits when prepared for death and evinced the keenest interest in the proceedings from beginning to end but he, with an abnegation rare in these our times, rose nobly to the occasion and expressed the dying wish (immediately acceded to) that the meal should be divided in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and indigent roomkeeper's association as a token of his regard and esteem. The nec and non plus ultra of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into eternity for her sake. The hero folded her willowy form in a loving embrace murmuring fondly Sheila, my own. Encouraged by this use of her christian name she kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of his person which the decencies of prison garb permitted her ardour to reach. She swore to him as they mingled the salt streams of their tears that she would cherish his memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who went to his death with a song on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling match in Clonturk park. She brought back to his recollection the happy days of blissful childhood together on the banks of Anna Liffey when they had indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young and, oblivious of the dreadful present, they both laughed heartily, all the spectators, including the venerable pastor, joining in the general merriment. That monster audience simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome with grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh torrent of tears burst from their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse of people, touched to the inmost core, broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being the aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of the peace and genial giants of the royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye in that record assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a handsome young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, presenting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree, solicited the hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name the day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion in the shape of a skull and crossbones brooch, a timely and generous act which evoked a fresh outburst of emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the bearer, by the way, of one of the most timehonoured names in Albion's history) placed on the finger of his blushing fiancée an expensive engagement ring with emeralds set in the form of a fourleaved shamrock excitement knew no bounds. Nay, even the stern provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel Tomkin-Maxwell ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, who presided on the sad occasion, he who had blown a considerable number of sepoys from the cannonmouth without flinching, could not now restrain his natural emotion. With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was overheard by those privileged burghers who happened to be in his immediate entourage to murmur to himself in a faltering undertone: 

-- God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause I thinks of my old mashtub what's waiting for me down Limehouse way. 

So then the citizens begin talking about the Irish language and the corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can't speak their own language and Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that he cadged off Joe and talking about the Gaelic league and the antitreating league and drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he'd let you pour all manner of drink down his throat till the Lord would call him before you'd ever see the froth of his pint. And one night I went in with a fellow into one of their musical evenings, song and dance about she could get up on a truss of hay she could my Maureen Lay, and there was a fellow with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out of him in Irish and a lot of colleen bawns going about with temperance beverages and selling medals and oranges and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh entertainment, don't be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland free. And then an old fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and all the gougers shuffling their feet to the tune the old cow died of. And one or two sky pilots having an eye around that there was no goings on with the females, hitting below the belt. 

So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin was empty starts mousing around by Joe and me. I'd train him by kindness, so I would, if he was my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now and again where it wouldn't blind him. 

-- Afraid he'll bite you? says the citizen, sneering. 

-- No, says 1. But he might take my leg for a lampost. 

So he calls the old dog over. 

-- What's on you, Garry? says he. 

Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him in Irish and the old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera. Such growling you never heard as they let off between them. Someone that has nothing better to do ought to write a letter pm bono publico to the papers about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that. Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it and the hydrophobia dropping out of his jaws. 

All those who are interested in the spread of human culture among the lower animals (and their name is legion) should make a point of not missing the really marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the famous old Irish red wolfdog setter formerly known by the sobriquet of Garryowen and recently rechristened by his large circle of friends and acquaintances Owen Garry. The exhibition, which is the result of years of training by kindness and a carefully thoughtout dietary system, comprises, among other achievements, the recitation of verse. Our greatest living phonetic expert (wild horses shall not drag it from us!) has left no stone unturned in his efforts to delucidate and compare the verse recited and has found it bears a striking resemblance (the italics are ours) to the ranns of ancient Celtic bards. We are not speaking so much of those delightful lovesongs with which the writer who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving world but rather (as a contributor D. O. C. points out in an interesting communication published by an evening contemporary) of the harsher and more personal note which is found in the satirical effusions of the famous Raftery and of Donald MacConsidine to say nothing of a more modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a specimen which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe our readers will find the topical allusion rather more than an indication. The metrical system of the canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe our readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught. Perhaps it should be added that the effect is greatly increased if Owen's verse be spoken somewhat slowly and indistinctly in a tone suggestive of suppressed rancour. 

The curse of my curses 
Seven days every day 
And seven dry Thursdays 
On you, Barney Kiernan, 
Has no sup of water 
To cool my courage, 
And my guts red roaring 
After Lowry's lights.
So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and, gob, you could hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Joe asked him would he have another. 
-- I will, says he, a chara, to show there's no ill feeling. 

Gob, he's not as green as he's cabbagelooking. Arsing around from one pub to another, leaving it to your own honour, with old Giltrap's dog and getting fed up by the ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for man and beast. And says Joe: 

-- Could you make a hole in another pint? 

-- Could a swim duck? says I. 

-- Same again, Terry, says Joe. Are you sure you won't have anything in the way of liquid refreshment? says he. 

-- Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just wanted to meet Martin Cunningham, don't you see, about this insurance of poor Dignam's. Martin asked me to go to the house. You see, he, Dignam, I mean, didn't serve any notice of the assignment on the company at the time and nominally under the act the mortgagee can't recover on the policy. 

-- Holy Wars, says Joe laughing, that's a good one if old Shylock is landed. So the wife comes out top dog, what? 

-- Well, that's a point, says Bloom, for the wife's admirers. 

-- Whose admirers? says Joe. 

-- The wife's advisers, I mean, says Bloom. 

Then he starts all confused mucking it up about the mortgagor under the act like the lord chancellor giving it out on the bench and for the benefit of the wife and that a trust is created but on the other hand that Dignam owed Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow contested the mortgagee's right till he near had the head of me addled with his mortgagor under the act. He was bloody safe he wasn't run in himself under the act that time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a friend in court. Selling bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal Hungarian privileged lottery. True as you re there. O, commend me to an israelite! Royal and privileged Hungarian robbery. 

So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs Dignam he was sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the funeral and to tell her that he said and everyone who knew him said that there was never a truer, a finer than poor little Willy that's dead to tell her. Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom's hand doing the tragic to tell her that. Shake hands, brother. You're a rogue and I'm another. 

-- Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which, however slight it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, as I hope and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem, as to request of you this favour. But, should I have overstepped the limits of reserve let the sincerity of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness. 

-- No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which actuate your conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust to me consoled by the reflection that, though the errand be one of sorrow, this proof of your confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness of the cup. 

-- Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your heart, I feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose poignancy, were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of speech. 

And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five o'clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the bobby, 14 A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing time, fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the catholic religion and he serving mass in Adam and Eve's when he was young with his eyes shut who wrote the new testament and the old testament and hugging and snugging. And the two shawls killed with the laughing, picking his pockets the bloody fool and he spilling the porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing at one another. How is your testament? Have you got an old testament? Only Paddy was passing there, I tell you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his little concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel, with her patent boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady. Jack Mooney's sister. And the old prostitute of a mother procuring rooms to street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told him if he didn't patch up the pot, Jesus, he'd kick the shite out of him. 

So Terry brought the three pints. 

-- Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen. 

-- Slan leat, says he. 

-- Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen. 

Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler already. Want a small fortune to keep him in drinks. 

-- Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? says Joe. 

-- Friend of yours, says Alf. 

-- Nannan? says Joe. The mimber? 

-- I won't mention any names, says Alf. 

-- I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting now with William Field, M. P., the cattle traders. -- Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling of all countries and the idol of his own. 

So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease and the cattle traders and taking action in the matter and the citizen sending them all to the rightabout and Bloom coming out with his sheepdip for the scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the guaranteed remedy for timber tongue. Because he was up one time in a knacker's yard. Walking about with his book and pencil here's my head and my heels are coming till Joe Cuffe gave him the order of the boot for giving lip to a grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your grandmother how to milk ducks. Pisser Burke was telling me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears sometimes with Mrs O'Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of fat all over her. Couldn't loosen her farting strings but old cod's eye was waltzing around her showing her how to do it. What's your programme today? Ay. Humane methods. Because the poor animals suffer and experts say and the best known remedy that doesn't cause pain to the animal and on the sore spot administer gently. Gob, he'd have a soft hand under a hen. 

Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays eggs for us. When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Then comes good uncle Leo. He puts his hand under black Liz and takes her fresh egg. Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. 

-- Anyhow, says Joe. Field and Nannetti are going over tonight to London to ask about it on the floor of the House of Commons. 

-- Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I wanted to see him, as it happens. 

-- Well, he's going off by the mailboat, says Joe, tonight. 

-- That's too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly. Perhaps only Mr Field is going. I couldn't phone. No. You're sure? 

-- Nannan's going too, says Joe. The league told him to ask a question tomorrow about the commissioner of police forbidding Irish games in the park. What do you think of that, citizen? The Sluagh na h-Eireann. 

Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat): Arising out of the question of my honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask the right honourable gentleman whether the Government has issued orders that these animals shall be slaughtered though no medical evidence is forthcoming as to their pathological condition? 

Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con): Honourable members are already in possession of the evidence produced before a committee of the whole house. I feel I cannot usefully add anything to that. The answer to the honourable member's question is in the affirmative. 

Mr Orelli (Montenotte. Nat): Have similar orders been issued for the slaughter of human animals who dare to play Irish games in the Phnix park? 

Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative. 

Mr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable gentleman's famous Mitchelstown telegram inspired the policy of gentlemen on the treasury bench? (O! O!) 

Mr Allfours: I must have notice of that question. 

Mr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don't hesitate to shoot. 

(Ironical opposition cheers.) 

The speaker: Order! Order! 

(The house rises. Cheers.) 

-- There's the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There he is sitting there. The man that got away James Stephens. The champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best throw, citizen? 

-- Na bacleis, says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a time I was as good as the next fellow anyhow. 

-- Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better. 

-- Is that really a fact? says Alf. 

-- Yes, says Bloom. That's well known. Do you not know that? 

So off they started about Irish sport and shoneen games the like of the lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all of that. And of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That's a straw. Declare to my aunt he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady. 

A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of Brian O'Ciarnain's in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under the auspices of Sluagh na h-Eireann, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race. The venerable president of this noble order was in the chair and the attendance was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the revivability of the ancient games and sports of our ancient panceltic forefathers. The wellknown and highly respected worker in the cause o! our old tongue, Mr Joseph M'Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for the resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, practised morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the best traditions of manly strength and power handed down to us from ancient ages. L. Bloom, who met with a mixed reception of applause and hisses, having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman brought the discussion to a close, in response to repeated requests and hearty plaudits from all parts of a bumper house, by a remarkably noteworthy rendering of the immortal Thomas Osborne Davis' evergreen verses (happily too familiar to need recalling here) A nation once again in the execution of which the veteran patriot champion may be said without fear of contradiction to have fairly excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-Garibaldi was in superlative form and his stentorian notes were heard to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured anthem sung as only our citizen can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism, which by its superquality greatly enchanced his already international reputation, was vociferously applauded by the large audience amongst which were to be noticed many prominent members of the clergy as well as representatives of the press and the bar and the other learned professions. The proceedings then terminated. 

Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William Delany, S. J., L. L. D.; the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D.; the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, C. S. Sp.; the rev. T. Waters, C. C.; the rev. John M. Ivers, P. P.; the rev. P. J. Cleary, O. S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev. Fr. Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B. Gorman. O. D. C.; the rev. T. Maher, S. J.; the very rev. James Murphy, S. J.; the rev. John Lavery, V. F.; the very rev. William Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan, O. M.; the rev. T. Brangan, O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev. M. A. Hackett, C. C.; the rev. W. Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr M'Manus, V. G.; the rev. B. R. Slattery, O. M. I.; the very rev. M. D. Scally, P. P.; the rev. F. T. Purcell, O. P.; the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J. Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke, etc., etc. 

-- Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at that Keogh-Bennett match? 

-- No, says Joe. 

-- I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it, says Alf. 

-- Who? Blazes? says Joe. 

And says Bloom: 

-- What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training of the eye. 

-- Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run the odds and he swatting all the time. 

-- We know him, says the citizen. The traitor's son. We know what put English gold in his pocket. 

-- True for you, says Joe. 

And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of the blood, asking Alf: 

-- Now don't you think, Bergan? 

-- Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan and Sayers was only a bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See the little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he gave him one last puck in the wind. Queensberry rules and all, made him puke what he never ate. 

It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns. Handicapped as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin's pet lamb made up for it by superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a gruelling for both champions. The welterweight sergeantmajor had tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which Keogh had been receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting in some neat work on the pet's nose, and Myler came on looking groggy. The soldier got to business leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett's jaw. The redcoat ducked but the Dubliner lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one. The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got his man under, the bout ending with the bulkier man on the ropes, Myler punishing him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and, when the bell went, came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to a finish and the best man for it. The two fought like tigers and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was tricky and his footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk exchange of courtesies during which a smart upper cut of the military man brought blood freely from his opponent's mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and landed a terrific left to Battling Bennett's stomach, flooring him flat. It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted out when Bennett's second Ole Pfotts Wettstein threw in the towel and the Santry boy was declared victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight. 

-- He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he's running a concert tour now up in the north. 

-- He is, says Joe. Isn't he? 

-- Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That's quite true. Yes, a kind of summer tour, you see. Just a holiday. 

-- Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn't she? says Joe. 

-- My wife? says Bloom. She's singing, yes. I think it will be a success too. He's an excellent man to organise. Excellent. 

Hoho begob, says I to myself, says I. That explains the milk in the cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal's chest. Blazes doing the tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger's son off Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government to fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate, Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That's the bucko that'll organise her, take my tip. 'Twixt me and you Caddereesh. 

Pride of Calpe's rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy. There grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air. The gardens of Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed. The chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful bosoms. 

And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O'Molloys, a comely hero of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty's counsel learned in the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of Lambert. 

-- Hello, Ned. 

-- Hello, Alf. 

-- Hello, Jack. 

-- Hello, Joe. 

-- God save you, says the citizen. 

-- Save you kindly, says J. J. What'll it be, Ned? 

-- Half one, says Ned. 

So J. J. ordered the drinks. 

-- Were you round at the court? says Joe. 

-- Yes, says J. J. He'll square that, Ned, says he. 

-- Hope so, says Ned. 

Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs's. Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, drinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders. Pawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street where no-one would know him in the private office when I was there with Pisser releasing his boots out of the pop. What's your name, sir? Dunne, says he. Ay, and done, says I. Gob, ye'll come home by weeping cross one of these days, I'm thinking. 

-- Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there, says Alf. U. p. up. 

-- Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective. 

-- Ay, says Ned, and he wanted right go wrong to address the court only Corny Kelleher got round him telling him to get the handwriting examined first. 

-- Ten thousand pounds, says Alf laughing. God I'd give anything to hear him before a judge and jury. 

-- Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy Johnson. 

-- Me? says Alf. Don't cast your nasturtiums on my character. 

-- Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in evidence against you. 

-- Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not compos mentis. U. p. up. 

-- Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he's balmy? Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on with a shoehorn? 

-- Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law. 

-- Ha, ha, Alf, says Joe. 

-- Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife. 

-- Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half and half. 

-- How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he. 

-- Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that's neither fish nor flesh. 

-- Nor good red herring, says Joe. 

-- That what's I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what that is. 

Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explained he meant, on account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping him, bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of his old fellow's was pew opener to the pope. Picture of him on the wall with his smashall sweeney's moustaches. The signor Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to the world. 

-- And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my opinion an action might lie. 

Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our pints in peace. Gob, we won't be let even do that much itself. 

-- Well, good health, Jack, says Ned. 

-- Good health, Ned, says J. J. 

-- There he is again, says Joe. 

-- Where? says Alf. 

And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin. 

-- How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe. 

-- Remanded, says J. J. 

One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid. 

-- Who tried the case? says Joe. 

-- Recorder, says Ned. 

-- Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes. 

-- Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he'll dissolve in tears on the bench. 

-- Ay, says Alf. Reuben J. was bloody lucky he didn't clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that's minding stones for the corporation there near Butt bridge. 

And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry: 

-- A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children? Ten, did you say? 

-- Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid! 

-- And a wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court immediately, sir. No, sir, I'll make no order for payment. How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case. 

And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews sitting without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claims of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and final testamentary disposition in re the real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there about the hour of five o'clock to administer the law of the brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try and true delivrance make in the issue joined between their sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and kiss the books. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and they swore by the name of Him who is from everlasting that they would do His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him for he was a malefactor. 

-- Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland filling the country with bugs. 

So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe telling him he needn't trouble about that little matter till the first but if he would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy by this and by that he'd do the devil and all. 

-- Because you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have repetition. That's the whole secret. 

-- Rely on me, says Joe. 

-- Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We want no more strangers in our house. 

-- O I'm sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It's just that Keyes you see. 

-- Consider that done, says Joe. 

-- Very kind of you, says Bloom. 

-- The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We brought them. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers here. 

-- Decree nisi, says J. J. 

And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a spider's web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling after him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite and when. 

-- A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that's what's the cause of all our misfortunes. 

-- And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the Police Gazette with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint. -- Give us a squint at her, says I. 

And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts. Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself and her fancy man feeling for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with officer Taylor. 

-- O Jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is! 

-- There's hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off of that one, what? 

So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a face on him as long as a late breakfast. 

-- Well, says the citizen, what's the latest from the scene of action? What did those tinkers in the cityhall at their caucus meeting decide about the Irish language? 

O'Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of that which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient city, second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once more into honour among mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael. 

-- It's on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal Sassenachs and their patois. 

So J. J. puts in a word doing the toff about one story was good till you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy putting your blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration and their colonies and their civilisation. 

-- Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whores' gets! No music and no art and no literature worthy of the name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of bastards' ghosts. 

-- The European family, says J. J... 

-- They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin Egan of Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language anywhere in Europe except in a cabinet d'aisance. 

And says John Wyse: 

-- Full many a flower is born to blush unseen. 

And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo: 

-- Conspuez les Anglais! Perde Albion! 

He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan Lamh Dearg Abu, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the deathless gods. 

-- What's up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner. 

-- Gold cup, says he. 

-- Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry. 

-- Throwaway, says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest nowhere. 

-- And Bass's mare? says Terry. 

-- Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid on my tip Sceptre for himself and a lady friend. 

-- I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on Zinfandel that Mr Flynn gave me. Lord Howard de Walden's. 

-- Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. Throwaway, says he. Takes the biscuit and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is Sceptre. 

So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his luck with his mangy snout up. Old mother Hubbard went to the cupboard. 

-- Not there, my child, says he. 

-- Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She'd have won the money only for the other dog. 

And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom sticking in an odd word. -- Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others' eyes but they can't see the beam in their own. 

-- Raimeis, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow that won't see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world! Where are the Greek merchants that came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our far-famed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths? And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon they won't deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog to make us all die of consumption. 

-- As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land. Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I was reading a report of lord Castletown's... 

-- Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O. 

-- Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan. 

The fashionable international world attended en masse this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O. Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride who was given away by her father, the M'Conifer of the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe, the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty motif of plume rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and, in addition to the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and striking arrangement of Woodman, spare that tree at the conclusion of the service. On leaving the church of Saint Fiacre in Horto after the papal blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest. 

-- And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway. 

-- And will again, says Joe. 

-- And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the citizen, clapping his thigh. Our harbours that are empty will be full again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with a fleet of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan O'Reillys and the O'Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of Desmond could make a treaty with the emperor Charles the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own flag to the fore, none of your Henry Tudor's harps, no, the oldest flag afloat, the flag of the province of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue field, the three sons of Milesius. 

And he took the last swig out of the pint, Moya. All wind and piss like a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody life is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled multitude in Shanagolden where he daren't show his nose with the Molly Maguires looking for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the holding of an evicted tenant. 

-- Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have? 

-- An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion. 

-- Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you asleep? 

-- Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir. 

Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead of attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying to crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down like a bull at a gate. And another one: Black Beast Burned in Omaha, Ga. A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a sambo strung up on a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to make sure of their job. 

-- But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes at bay? 

-- I'Il tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is. Read the revelations that's going on in the papers about flogging on the training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself Disgusted One. 

So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the parson with his protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad brought out, howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a gun. 

-- A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir John Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on the breech. 

And says John Wyse: 

-- 'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance. 

Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad till he yells meila murder. 

-- That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the earth. The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber on the face of God's earth and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball barons. That's the great empire they boast about of drudges and whipped serfs. 

-- On which the sun never rises, says Joe. 

-- And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The unfortunate yahoos believe it. 

They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast, born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his beamend till further orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid. 

But, says Bloom, isn't discipline the same everywhere? I mean wouldn't it be the same here if you put force against force? 

Didn't I tell you? As true as I'm drinking this porter if he was at his last gasp he'd try to downface you that dying was living. 

-- We'll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the black 47. Their mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid low by the batteringram and the Times rubbed its hands and told the whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as redskins in America. Even the grand Turk sent us his piastres. But the Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while the land was full of crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember the land of bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan. 

-- Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was... 

-- We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since the poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at Killala. 

-- Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us against the Williamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick and the broken treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild geese. Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O'Donnell, duke of Tetuan in Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria Teresa. But what did we ever get for it? 

-- The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters! Do you know what it is? They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland. Aren't they trying to make an Entente cordiale now at Tay Pay's dinnerparty with perfidious Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were? 

-- Conspuez les Fran?ais, says Lenehan, nobbling his beer. 

-- And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Joe, haven't we had enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from George the elector down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch that's dead? 

Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old one with the winkers on her blind drunk in her royal palace every night of God, old Vic, with her jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting her up body and bones to roll into bed and she pulling him by the whiskers and singing him old bits of songs about Ehren on the Rhine and come where the boose is cheaper. 

-- Well! says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker now. 

-- Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There's a bloody sight more pox than pax about that boyo. Edward Guelph-Wettin! 

-- And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys, the priests and bishops of Ireland doing up his room in Maynooth in his Satanic Majesty's racing colours and sticking up pictures of all the horses his jockeys rode. The earl of Dublin, no less. 

-- They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says little Alf. 

And says J. J.: 

-- Considerations of space influenced their lordship's decision. 

-- Will you try another, citizen? says Joe. 

-- Yes, sir, says he, I will. 

-- You? says Joe. 

-- Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow never grow less. 

-- Repeat that dose, says Joe. 

Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about. 

-- Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it. Perpetuating national hatred among nations. 

-- But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse. 

-- Yes, says Bloom. 

-- What is it? says John Wyse. 

-- A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same place. 

-- By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm living in the same place for the past five years. 

So of course everyone had a laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to muck out of it: 

-- Or also living in different places. 

-- That covers my case, says Joe. 

-- What is your nation if I may ask, says the citizen. 

-- Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland. 

The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner. 

-- After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handkerchief to swab himself dry. 

-- Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your right hand and repeat after me the following words. 

The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol a bogoak sceptre, 8 North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh's banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun's hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury's Hotel, S. Patrick's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal's Cave - all these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time. -- Shove us over the drink, says I. Which is which? 

-- That's mine, says Joe, as the devil laid to the dead policeman. 

-- And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very instant. 

Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar. 

-- Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what belongs to us by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold by auction off in Morocco like slaves or cattles. 

-- Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen. 

-- I'm talking about injustice, says Bloom. 

-- Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with force like men. 

That's an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he'd adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse's apron on him. And then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a wet rag. 

-- But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life. 

-- What? says Alf. 

-- Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says he to John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Martin is there. If he comes just say I'll be back in a second. Just a moment. 

Who's hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning. 

-- A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love. 

-- Well, says John Wyse, isn't that what we're told? Love your neighbours. 

-- That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love, Moya! He's a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet. Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair genteman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but 

God loves everybody. 

-- Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song. More power, citizen. 

-- Hurrah, there, says Joe. 

-- The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you, says the citizen. 

And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle. 

-- We know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket. What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God is love pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit in the United Irishman today about that Zulu chief that's visiting England? 

-- What's that? says Joe. 

So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and he starts reading out: 

-- A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was presented yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting, Lord Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in his dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion of which the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy speech, freely translated by the British chaplain, the reverend Ananias Praisegod Barebones, tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial relations existing between Abeakuta and the British Empire, stating that he treasured as one of his dearest possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the word of God and the secret of England's greatness, graciously presented to him by the white chief woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a lovingcup of firstshot usquebaugh to the toast Black and White from the skull of his immediate predecessor in the dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts, after which he visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis and signed his mark in the visitors' book, subsequently executing an old Abeakutic wardance, in the course of which he swallowed several knives and forks, amid hilarious applause from the girl hands. 

-- Widow woman, says Ned, I wouldn't doubt her. Wonder did he put that bible to the same use as I would. 

-- Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that fruitful land the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly. 

-- Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse. 

-- No, says the citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only initialled: P. 

-- And a very good initial too, says Joe. 

-- That's how it's worked, says the citizen. Trade follows the flag. 

-- Well, says J. J., if they're any worse than those Belgians in the Congo Free State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a man what's this his name is? 

-- Casement, says the citizen. He's an Irishman. 

-- Yes, that's the man, says J. J. Raping the women and girls and flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they can out of them. 

-- I know where he's gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers. 

-- Who? says I. 

-- Bloom, says he, the courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on Throwaway and he's gone to gather in the shekels. 

-- Is it that whiteyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a horse in anger in his life. 

-- That's where he's gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam Lyons going to back that horse only I put him off it and he told me Bloom gave him the tip. Bet you what you like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He's the only man in Dublin has it. A dark horse. -- He's a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe. 

-- Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out. 

-- There you are, says Terry. 

Goodbye Ireland I'm going to Gort. So I just went round to the back of the yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five) while I was letting off my (Throwaway twenty to) letting off my load gob says I to myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe and one in Slattery's off) in his mind to get off the mark to (hundred shillings is five quid) and when they were in the (dark horse) Pisser Burke was telling me card party and letting on the child was sick (gob, must have done about a gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube she's better or she's (ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the pool if he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading without a licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says he (hoik! phthook!) never be up to those bloody (there's the last of it) Jerusalem (ah!) cuckoos. 

So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wyse saying it was Bloom gave the idea for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off of the Government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show. Give us a bloody chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his argol bargol. And his old fellow before him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping the country with his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms. Any amount of money advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No security. Gob he's like Lanty MacHale's goat that'd go a piece of the road with everyone. 

-- Well, it's a fact, says John Wyse. And there's the man now that'll tell you about it, Martin Cunningham. 

Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and Jack Power with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner out of the collector general's, an orangeman Blackburn does have on the registration and he drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the country at the king's expense. 

Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their palfreys. 

-- Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the party. Saucy knave! To us! 

So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice. 

Mine host came forth at the summons girding him with his tabard. 

-- Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow. 

-- Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look to our steeds. And for ourselves give us of your best for faith we need it. 

-- Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a bare larder. I know not what to offer your lordships. 

-- How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant countenance, so servest thou the king's messengers, Master Taptun? 

An instantaneous change overspread the landlord's visage. 

-- Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king's messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you shall not want for aught. The king's friends (God bless His Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my house I warrant me. 

-- Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us? 

Mine host bowed again as he made answer: 

-- What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog's bacon, a boar's head with pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of old Rhenish? 

-- Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios! 

-- Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a bare larder, quotha! 'Tis a merry rogue. 

So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom. 

-- Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and orphans. 

-- Isn't that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling the citizen about Bloom and the Sinn Fein? 

-- That's so, says Martin. Or so they allege. 

-- Who made those allegations? says Alf. 

-- I, says Joe. I'm the alligator. 

-- And after all, says John Wyse, why can't a jew love his country like the next fellow? 

-- Why not? says J. J., when he's quite sure which country it is. 

-- Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what the hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton. 

-- We don't want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian. 

-- Who is Junius? says J. J. 

-- He's a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary and it was he drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system. We know that in the castle. 

-- Isn't he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack Power. 

-- Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name was Virag. The father's name that poisoned himself. He changed it by deed poll, the father did. 

-- That's the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen. Island of saints and sages! 

-- Well, they're still waiting for their redeemer, says Martin. For that matter so are we. 

-- Yes, says J. J., and every male that's born they think it may be their Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe, till he knows if he's a father or a mother. 

-- Expecting every moment will be his next, says Lenehan. 

-- O, by God, says Ned, you should have seen Bloom before that son of his that died was born. I met him one day in the south city markets buying a tin of Neave's food six weeks before the wife was delivered. 

-- En ventre sa mere, says J. J. 

-- Do you call that a man? says the citizen. 

-- I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe. 

-- Well, there were two children born anyhow, says Jack Power. 

-- And who does he suspect? says the citizen. 

Gob, there's many a true word spoken in jest. One of those mixed middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser was telling me once a month with headache like a totty with her courses. Do you know what I'm telling you? It'd be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow the like of that and throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide, so it would. Then sloping off with his five quid without putting up a pint of stuff like a man. Give us your blessing. Not as much as would blind your eye. 

-- Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is he? We can't wait. 

-- A wolf in sheep's clothing, says the citizen. That's what he 

is. Virag from Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him. Cursed by God. 

-- Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned. 

-- Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and S. 

-- You Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry. 

-- Saint Patrick would want to land again at Ballykinlar and convert us, says the citizen, after allowing things like that to contaminate our shores. 

-- Well, says Martin, rapping for his glass. God bless all here is my prayer. 

-- Amen, says the citizen. 

-- And I'm sure he will, says Joe. 

And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a crucifer with acolytes, thurifers, boatbearers, readers, ostiarii, deacons and subdeacons, the blessed company drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors and guardians and monks and friars: the monks of Benedict of Spoleto, Carthusians and Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans, Oratorians and Vallombrosans, and the friars of Augustine, Brigittines, Premonstratesians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the children of Peter Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel mount the children of Elijah prophet led by Albert bishop and by Teresa of Avila, calced and other: and friars brown and grey, sons of poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers, minimes and observants and the daughters of Clara: and the sons of Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of Vincent: and the monks of S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his children: and the confraternity of the christian brothers led by the reverend brother Edmund Ignatius Rice. And after came all saints and martyrs, virgins and confessors: S. Cyr and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas of Sinope and S. Julian Hospitator and S. Felix de Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites and S. Stephen Protomartyr and S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S. Leugarde and S. Theodotus and S. Vulmar and S. Richard and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Martin of Todi and S. Martin of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. Denis and S. Cornelius and S. Leopold and S. Bernard and S. Terence and S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and S. Anonymous and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous and S. Synonymous and S. Laurence O'Toole and S. James of Dingle and Compostella and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S. Celestine and S. Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and S. Frigidian and S. Senan and S. Fachtna and S. Columbanus and S. Gall and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and S. Fiacre and S. John Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Ives of Brittany and S. Michan and S. Herman-Joseph and the three patrons of holy youth S. Aloysius Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus Kostka and S. John Berchmans and the saints Gervasius, Servasius and Bonifacius and S. Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canice of Kilkenny and S. Jarlath of Tuam and S. Finbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun and Brother Aloysius Pacificus and Brother Louis Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and S. Martha of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy and S. Brigid and S. Attracta and S. Dympna and S. Ita and S. Marion Calpensis and the Blessed Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica and S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. And all came with nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies, buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, stags' horns, watertight boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills, unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson's Pillar, Henry Street, Mary Street, Capel Street, Little Britain Street, chanting the introit in Epiphania Domini which beginneth Surge, illuminare and thereafter most sweetly the gradual Omnes which saith de Saba venient they did divers wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to life, multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind, discovering various articles which had been mislaid, interpreting and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and prophesying. And last, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold came the reverend Father O'Flynn attended by Malachi and Patrick. And when the good fathers had reached the appointed place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, 8,9 and 10 little Britain street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises, the celebrant blessed the house and censed the mullioned windows and the groynes and the vaults and the arrises and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices and the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed that God might bless that house as he had blessed the house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the angels of His light to inhabit therein. And entering he blessed the viands and the beverages and the company of all the blessed answered his prayers. 

-- Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini. 

-- Que fecit clum et terram. 

-- Dominus vobiscum. 

-- Et cum spiritu tuo. 

And he laid his hands upon the blessed and gave thanks and he prayed and they all with him prayed: 

-- Deus, cuius vet sanctificantur omnia, benedictionem tuam effunde super creaturas istas: et pasta ut quisquis eis secundum legem et voluntatem Tuam cum gratiarum actione usus fuerit per invocationem sanctissimi nominis Tui corporis sanitatem et anima tutelam Te auctore percipiat per Christum Dominum nostrum. 

-- And so say all of us, says Jack. 

-- Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or Crawford. 

-- Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And butter for fish. 

I was just looking round to see who the happy thought would strike when be damned but in he comes again letting on to be in a hell of a hurry. 

-- I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for you. I hope I'm not... 

-- No, says Martin, we're ready. 

Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver. Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. Devil a sweet fear! There's a jew for you! All for number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to five. 

-- Don't tell anyone, says the citizen. 

-- Beg your pardon, says he. 

-- Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking blue. Come along now. 

-- Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out of him. It's a secret. 

And-he bloody dog woke up and let a growl. 

-- Bye bye all, says Martin. 

And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power and Crofton or whatever you call him and him in the middle of them letting on to be all at sea up with them on the bloody jaunting car. 

Off with you, says Martin to the jarvey. 

The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden poop, the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood off forward with all sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he binds them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they ride to a hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a circle of their foam: and the bark clave the waves. 

But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I saw the citizen getting up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the dropsy and he cursing the curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle in Irish, spitting and spatting out of him and Joe and little Alf round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him. 

-- Let me alone, says he. 

And begob he got as far as the door and they holding him and he bawls out of him: 

-- Three cheers for Israel! 

Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse for Christ' sake and don't be making a public exhibition of yourself. Jesus, there's always some bloody clown or other kicking up a bloody murder about bloody nothing. Gob, it'd turn the porter sour in your guts, so it would. 

And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door and Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the citizen bawling and Alf and Joe at him to whisht and he on his high horse about the jews and the loafers calling for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a patch over his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a jew, jew, jew and a slut shouts out of her: 

-- Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister! 

And says he: 

-- Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God. 

-- He had no father, says Martin. That'll do now. Drive ahead. 

-- Whose God? says the citizen. 

-- Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me. 

Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop. 

-- By Jesus, says he, I'Il brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name. By Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here. 

-- Stop! Stop! says Joe. 

A-large and appreciative gathering of friends and acquaintances from the metropolis and greater Dublin assembled in their thousands to bid farewell to Nagyaságos uram Lipóti Virag, late of Messrs Alexander Thom's, printers to His Majesty, on the occasion of his departure for the distant clime of Százharminczbrojúgulyás-Dugulás (Meadow of Murmuring Waters). The ceremony which went off with great éclat was characterised by the most affecting cordiality. An illuminated scroll of ancient Irish vellum, the work of Irish artists, was presented to the distinguished phenomenologist on behalf of a large section of the community and was accompanied by the gift of a silver casket, tastefully executed in the style of ancient Celtic ornament, a work which reflects every credit on the makers, Messrs Jacob agus Jacob. The departing guest was the recipient of a hearty ovation, many of those who were present being visibly moved when the select orchestra of Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of Come back to Erin, followed immediately by Rakoczy's March. Tarbarrels and bonfires were lighted along the coastline of the four seas on the summits of the Hill of Howth, Three Rock Mountain, Sugar-loaf, Bray Head, the mountains of Mourne, the Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and Sperrin peaks, the Nagles and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills, the reeks of M'Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh and Slieve Bloom. Amid cheers that rent the welkin, responded to by answering cheers from a big muster of henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills, the mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted by a final floral tribute from the representatives of the fair sex who were present in large numbers while, as it proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla of barges, the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical power station at the Pigeon-house. Visszontlátlására, kedvés baráton! Visszontlátásra! Gone but not forgotten. 

Gob, the devil wouldn't stop him till he got hold of the bloody tin anyhow and out with him and little Alf hanging on to his elbow and he shouting like a stuck pig, as good as any bloody play in the Queen's royal theatre. 

-- Where is he till I murder him? 

And Ned and J. G. paralysed with the laughing. 

-- Bloody wars, says I, I'll be in for the last gospel. 

But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag's head round the other way and off with him. 

-- Hold one citizen, says Joe. Stop. Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he'd have left him for dead. Gob, he near sent it into the county Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old mongrel after the car like bloody hell and all the populace shouting and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along the street. 

The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli's scale, and there is no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our island since the earthquake of 1534, the year of the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn's Quay ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone acres, two roods and one square pole or perch. All the lordly Tesidences in the vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished and that noble edifice itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins beneath which it is to be feared all the occupants have been buried alive. From the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved initials, coat of arms and house number of the erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered by search parties in remote parts of the island, respectively, the former on the third basaltic ridge of the giant's causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that they-observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed south west by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are being hourly received from all parts of the different continents and the sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a special missa pro defunctis shall be celebrated simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every cathedral church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly called away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal of debris human remains etc has been entrusted to Messrs Michael Meade and Son, 159, Great Brunswick Street and Messrs T. C. Martin, 77, 78, 79 and 80, North Wall, assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of Cornwall's light infantry under the general supervision of H. R. H., rear admiral the right honourable sir Hercules Hannibal Habeas Corpus Anderson K.G., K.P., H.T., P.C., K.C.B., M.P., J.P., M.B., D.S.O., S.O.D., M.F.H., M.R.I.A., B.L., Mus. Doc., P.L.G., F.T.C.D., F.R.U.I., F.R.C.P.I. and F.R.C.S.I. 

You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob, if he got that lottery ticket on the side of his poll he'd remember the gold cup, he would so, but begob the citizen would have been lagged for assault and battery and Joe for aiding and abetting. The jarvey saved his life by furious driving as sure as God made Moses. What? O, Jesus, he did. And he let a volley of oaths after him. 

-- Did I kill him, says he, or what? 

And he shouting to the bloody dog: 

-- After him, Garry! After him, boy! 

And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner and old sheepface on it gesticulating and the bloody mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb. Hundred to five! Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise you. 

When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And he answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe's in Little Green Street like a shot off a shovel. 


正当我跟首都警察署的老特洛伊在阿伯山[1] 拐角处闲聊的时候，真该死，一个扫烟囱的混蛋走了过来，差点儿把他那家什捅进我的眼睛里。我转过身去， 刚要狠狠地骂他一顿，只见沿着斯托尼•巴特尔街蹒跚踱来的，不是别人， 正是乔•海因斯。

“喂，乔，”我说，“你混得怎么样？你瞧见了吗，那个扫烟囱的混蛋差点儿用他的刷子把我的眼珠子捅出来？”

“煤烟可是个吉祥的东西，”乔说，“你跟他说话的那个老笨蛋是谁呀？”

“老特洛伊呗，”我说，“在军队里呆过。刚才那家伙用扫帚啦、梯子什么的妨碍了交通，我还没拿定主意要不要控告他哩。”

“你在这一带干什么哪？”乔说。

“干不出啥名堂，”我说，“守备队教堂再过去，雏鸡小巷拐角处，有个狡猾透顶的混帐贼--老特洛伊刚才透露给我关于他的一些底细。 他自称在唐郡有座农场，于是就从住在海特斯勃利大街附近一个名叫摩西•赫佐格的侏儒那儿，勒索来大量的茶叶和砂糖。决定要他每星期付三先令。”

“是行过割礼的家伙[2]吧？”乔说。

“对，”我说，“割下一点尖儿。[3]是个老管子工，姓杰拉蒂。两个星期来我一直跟他泡，可是他一个便士也不肯掏。”

“这就是你目前干的行当吗？”乔说。

“唉，”我说，“英雄们竟倒下了！[4]就靠收呆帐和荒帐为业。但是走上一整天也轻易碰不到像他那样声名狼藉的混帐强盗。 他那一脸麻子足盛得下一场阵雨。‘告诉他，’他说：‘我才不怕他呢，’他说，‘他就是再一次派你来，我也一点儿都不怕。要是他派的话，’他说，‘我就让法庭去传讯他。我一定要控告他无执照营业。’然后他吃得肚子都快撑破了。天哪，小个儿犹太佬大发脾气，我忍不住笑起来了。‘他喝的是俺的茶。他吃的是俺的糖。因为他不把欠俺的钱还给俺！对不？”

从都柏林市伍德码头区圣凯文步道十三号的商人摩西•赫佐格（以下称作卖方）那里购入、并出售提交给都柏林市阿伦码头区阿伯斜坡二十九号的绅士迈克尔•E•杰拉蒂[5]（以下称作买方）的耐久商品，计有常衡每磅三先令整的特级茶叶常衡五磅，常衡每磅三便士的结晶粒状砂糖常衡三斯通[6]。作为代价，上述买方应付给上述卖方一镑五先令六便士的货款。此款应按周分期付款，每七天支付三先令整。 经上述卖方及其法定继承人、业务后继者、受托人和受让人为一方， 买方及其法定继承人、业务后继者、受托人和受让人为另一方；在上述买方按照经双方同意， 本日所议定的支付方法将款项准时付清卖方之前， 上述买方不得将上述耐久商品予以典当、抵押、出售或用其他方式转让。上述卖方对这些商品仍然享有独占权， 只能凭借他的信誉和意志来处置。

“你是个严格的戒酒主义者吗？”乔问。

“在两次饮酒之间，一滴也不入。”我说。

“向咱们的朋友表示一下敬意怎么样？”乔说。

“谁呀？”我说，“他疯了，住进了‘天主的约翰’[7] ），可怜的人。”

“喝的是他自己的那种酒吧？”乔说。

“可不是嘛，”我说，“威士忌兑脑水肿[8]。”

“到巴尼•基尔南酒吧去吧，”乔说，“我想去见见‘市民’[9]。”

“就在老相识[10]巴尼那儿吧，”我说，“有什么新奇的或者了不起的事吗，乔？”

“一点儿也没有，”乔说，“我刚刚开完市徽饭店的那个会。”

“什么会呀？”我说。

“牲畜商的聚会[11]，”乔说，“谈的是口蹄疫问题。关于这，我要向‘市民’透露点内幕消息。”

于是我们东拉西扯地闲聊着，沿着亚麻厅营房[12]）和法院后身走去。乔这个人哪，有钱的时候挺大方，可是像他这副样子，确实从来也没有过钱。天哪， 我可不能原谅那个大白天抢劫的强盗，混帐狡猾的杰拉蒂。 他竟然说什么要控告人家无执照营业。

在美丽的伊尼斯费尔[13]有片土地，神圣的迈昌[14]土地。那儿高高耸立着一座望楼[15]，人们从远处就可以望到它。 里面躺着卓绝的死者--将士和煊赫一世的王侯们。他们睡得就像还活着似的。 [16] 那真是一片欢乐的土地，淙淙的溪水，河流里满是嘻戏的鱼：绿鳍鱼、鲽鱼、 石斑鱼、庸蝶、雄黑线鳍[17]、幼鲑、比目鱼、滑菱鲆、鲽形目鱼、绿鳕， 下等杂鱼以及水界的其他不胜枚举的鱼类。在微微的西风和东风中，高耸的树朝四面八方摇摆着它们那优美的茂叶， 飘香的埃及榕、黎巴嫩杉、冲天的法国梧桐、 良种按树以及郁郁葱葱遍布这一地区的其他乔木界瑰宝。可爱的姑娘们紧紧倚着可爱的树木根部，唱着最可爱的歌， 用各种可爱的东西作游戏，诸如金锭、银鱼、成斗的鲱鱼、 一网网的鳝鱼和幼鳕、一篓篓的仔鲑、海里的紫色珍宝以及顽皮的昆虫们。从埃布拉纳至斯利夫马吉[18]， 各地的英雄们远远地飘洋过海来向她们求爱。盖世无双的亲王们来自自由的芒斯特、 正义的康诺特、光滑整洁的伦斯特、克鲁亚昌的领地、辉煌的阿马、博伊尔的崇高地区[19]。 他们是王子，即国王的子嗣[20]。

那里还矗立着一座灿烂的宫殿[21]。它那闪闪发光的水晶屋顶，映人了水手们的眼帘。他们乘着特制的三桅帆船，穿越浩淼的海洋， 把当地所有的牲畜、肥禽和初摘的水果，统统运来。由奥康内尔•菲茨蒙[ 22] 向他们收税。他是一位族长--也是族长的后裔。用一辆辆巨大的敞篷马车载来的是田里丰饶的收获：装在浅筐中的花椰菜、成车的菠菜，大块头的菠萝，仰光豆[23]，多少斯揣克[24]西红柿，盛在一只只圆桶里的无花果，条播的瑞典芜菁，球形土豆，好几捆约克种以及萨沃伊种彩虹色羽衣甘兰，还有盛在一只只浅箱里的大地之珍珠[ 25] --葱头；此外就是一扁篮一扁篮的蘑菇、乳黄色食用葫芦、饱满的大巢莱、大麦和苔苔，红绿黄褐朽叶色的又甜又大又苦又熟又有斑点的苹果，装在一只只薄木匣里的杨梅，一粗筐一粗筐的醋栗。多汁而皮上毛茸茸的，再就是可供王侯吃的草莓和刚摘下的木莓。

我才不怕他呢，那家伙说，一点儿都不怕。滚出来，杰拉蒂，你这臭名远扬的混帐山贼，溪谷里的强盗！

这样，无数牲畜成群地沿着这条路走去。有系了铃铛的阉羊、亢奋的母羊、没有阉过的剪了毛的公羊、羊羔、胡茬鹅[26]、半大不小的食用阉牛、患了喘鸣症的母马、锯了角的牛犊子、长毛羊、为了出售而养肥的羊、卡夫[27]那即将产仔的上好母牛、不够标准的牛羊、割去卵巢的母猪、做熏肉用的阉过的公猪、各类不同品种的优良猪、安格斯小母羊、无斑点的纯种去角阉牛，以及正当年的头等乳牛和肉牛；从拉斯克、拉什和卡里克梅恩斯那一片片牧场，从托蒙德那流水潺潺的山谷，从麦吉利卡迪那难以攀登的山岭和气派十足、深不可测的香农河，[28]从隶属于凯亚[29]族的缓坡地带，不停地传来成群的羊、猪和拖着沉重蹄子的母牛那践踏声，咯咯、吼叫、哞哞、咩洋、喘气、哼哼、磨牙、咀嚼的声音。一只只的乳房几乎涨破了，那过剩的乳汁，一桶桶黄油，一副副内膜[30]中的奶酪，一只只农家小木桶[31]里装满了一块块羊羔颈胸肉，多少克拉诺克[32]的小麦，以及大小不一，或玛瑙色，或焦茶色，成百上千的椭圆形鸡蛋，就这样源源不断地运来。

于是，我们转身走进了巴尼•基尔南酒吧。果不其然，“市民”那家伙正坐在角落里，一会儿喃喃自语，一会儿又跟那只长满癞疮的杂种狗加里欧文[33]大耍贫嘴，等候着天上滴下什么酒来。

“他在那儿呢，”我说，“在他的光荣洞里，跟满满的小坛子[34]和一大堆报纸在一起，正在为主义而工作着。”

那只混帐杂种狗嗷嗷叫的声音使人起鸡皮疙瘩。要是哪位肯把它宰了， 那可是桩肉体上的善行[35]哩。听说当桑特里[36]的宪警去送蓝色文件[37]时，它竟把他的裤子咬掉了一大块，这话千真万确

“站住，交出来，[38]”他说。

“可以啦，‘市民’，”乔说，“这里都是自己人。”

“过去吧，自己人，”他说。

然后他用手揉揉一只眼睛，说：

“你们对时局怎么看？”

他以强人[39]和山中的罗里[40]自居。可是，乔这家伙确实应付得了。

“我认为行情在看涨，”他说着，将一只手滑到胯股那儿。

于是，“市民”这家伙用巴掌拍了拍膝头说：

“这都是外国的战争[41]造成的。”

乔把大拇指戳进兜里，说：

“想称霸的是俄国人哩。”

“荒唐[ 42] ！别胡说八道啦，乔，”我说，“我的喉咙干得厉害，就是喝上它半克朗的酒，也解不了渴。”

“你点吧，‘市民’，”乔说。

“国酒[43]呗，”他说。

“你要点儿什么？”乔说。

“跟马卡纳斯贝一样[44]，”我说。

“来上三品脱，特里，”乔说。“老宝贝儿，好吗，‘市民’？”他说。

“再好不过啦，我的朋友[45]，”他说，“怎么，加利？咱们能得手吗，呃？”

他随说着，随抓住那只讨厌的大狗的颈背。天哪，差点儿把它勒死。

坐在圆形炮塔脚下大圆石上的那个人生得肩宽胸厚，四肢健壮，眼神坦率，红头发，满脸雀斑，胡子拉碴，阔嘴大鼻，长长的头，嗓音深沉，光着膝盖，膂力过人，腿上多毛，面色红润，胳膊发达，一副英雄气概。两肩之间宽达数埃尔[46]。他那如磐石、若山岳的双膝，就像身上其他裸露着的部分一样，全结结实实地长满了黄褐色扎扎乎乎的毛。不论颜色还是那韧劲儿，都像是山荆豆（学名乌列克斯•尤列庇欧斯[47]）。鼻翼宽阔的鼻孔里扎煞着同样是黄褐色的硬毛，容积大如洞穴，可供草地鹨在那幽暗处宽宽绰绰地筑巢。

泪水与微笑不断地争夺主次的那双眼睛[48]，足有一大棵花椰菜那么大。从他那口腔的深窝里，每隔一定时间就吐出一股强烈温暖的气息； 而他那颗坚强的心脏总在响亮、有力而健壮地跳动着，产生有节奏的共鸣， 像雷一般轰隆轰隆的，使大地、高耸的塔顶，以及更高的洞穴的内壁都为之震颤。

他身穿用新近剥下来的公牛皮做的坎肩，长及膝盖，下摆是宽松的苏格兰式百褶短裙。腰间系着用麦秆和灯心草编织的带子。里面穿的是用肠线潦潦草草缝就的鹿皮紧身裤。胫部裹着染成苔紫色的高地巴尔布里艮[49]皮绑腿，脚蹬低跟镂花皮鞋，是用盐腌过的母牛皮制成的，并系着同一牲畜的气管做的鞋带。他的腰带上垂挂着一串海卵石。每当他那可怕的身躯一摆动，就丁当乱响。在这些卵石上，以粗犷而高超的技艺刻着许许多多古代爱尔兰部族的男女英雄的形象：库楚林、百战之康恩、做过九次人质的奈尔[ 50] 、金克拉的布赖恩[51]、玛拉基大王、阿尔特•麦克默拉、沙恩•奥尼尔[52]、约翰•墨菲神父、欧文•罗[ 53] 、帕特里克•萨斯菲尔德[54]、红发休•奥唐奈、红发吉姆•麦克德莫特[55]、索加斯•尤格翰•奥格罗尼[56]、迈克尔•德怀尔、弗朗西斯•希金斯[ 57] 、亨利•乔伊•莫克拉肯[58]、歌利亚[59]、霍勒斯•惠特利[60]、托马斯•康内夫、佩格•沃芬顿[61]、乡村铁匠[62]、穆恩莱特上尉[63]、杯葛上尉[64]、但丁•阿利吉耶里、克里斯托弗•哥伦布、圣弗尔萨[65]、圣布伦丹[66]、麦克马洪[67]元帅、查理曼[68]、西奥博尔德•沃尔夫•托恩[69]、马加比弟兄之母[70]、最后的莫希干人[ 71] 、卡斯蒂利亚的玫瑰[72]、攻克戈尔韦的人[73]、使蒙特卡洛的赌场主破产了的人[74]、把关者[75]、没做的女人[76]、本杰明•富兰克林、拿破仑•波拿巴、约翰•劳•沙利文[77]、克莉奥佩特拉、我忠实的宝贝儿[ 78] 、尤利乌斯•恺撒、帕拉切尔苏斯[79]、托马斯•利普顿爵士[ 80] 、威廉•退尔[81]、 米开朗琪罗•海斯[82]、穆罕默德、拉默穆尔的新娘[83]、隐修士彼得[84]、打包商彼得[85]、黑发罗莎琳[86]、帕特里克•威•莎士比亚[87]、布赖恩•孔子[88]、穆尔塔赫•谷登堡[89]、帕特里西奥•委拉斯开兹[90]、内莫船长[91]、特里斯丹和绮瑟[92]、第一任威尔士亲王[93]、托马斯•库克父子[94]、勇敢的少年兵[95]、 爱吻者[96]、迪克•特平[97]、路德维希•贝多芬、金发少女[98]、摇摆的希利[99]、神仆团团员安格斯[100] 、多利丘、西德尼步道、霍斯山[101] 、 瓦伦丁•格雷特雷克斯[102] 、亚当与夏娃[103] ，阿瑟•韦尔斯利[104] 、领袖克罗克[105]、希罗多德[106] 、杀掉巨人的杰克[107] 、乔答摩•佛陀[108] 、 戈黛娃夫人[109] 、基拉尼的百合[110]、恶毒眼巴洛尔[111] 、示巴女王[112] 、阿基•内格尔[113] 、乔•内格尔[114] 、亚历山德罗•伏打[115] 、 杰里迈亚•奥多诺万•罗萨[116]、堂菲利普•奥沙利文•比尔[117] 。他身旁横着一杆用磨尖了的花岗石做成的矛，他脚下卧着一条属于犬类的野兽。它像打呼噜般地喘着气，表明它已沉入了不安宁的睡眠中。这从它嘶哑的嗥叫和痉挛性的动作得到证实。主人不时地抡起用旧石器时代的石头粗糙地做成的大棍子来敲打，以便镇住并抑制它。

于是，特里总算把乔请客的三品脱端来了。好家伙，当我瞧见他拍出一枚金镑的时候，我这双眼睛差点儿瞎了。啊，真格的，多么玲珑的一镑金币。

“还有的是哪，”他说。

“你是从慈善箱里抢来的吧，乔，”我说。

“这是从我的脑门子淌下来的汗水，”乔说，“是那个谨慎的家伙把信息透露给我的。”[118]

“遇到你之前，我看见他啦，”我说，“正沿着皮尔小巷和希腊街闲荡哪。他那大鳕鱼眼连每根鱼肠子都不放过。”

是谁通身披挂着黑色铠甲，穿过迈昌的土地[119] 前来？是罗里[122] 的儿子奥布卢姆。正是他。罗里的儿子是无所畏惧的。他是个谨慎的人。

“为亲王街的老太婆[121] 工作着吧，”“市民”说，“为那份领着津贴的机关报。因在议会里宣过誓而受到拘束。瞧瞧这该死的破报，”他说，“瞧瞧这个”， 他说，“《爱尔兰独立日报》，你们看多奇怪，竟然是‘巴涅尔所创办，工人之友’ 哩。不妨听听这份一切为了爱尔兰的《爱尔兰独立日报》上所登的出生通知和讣告吧，我得谢谢你们。还有结婚启事呢。”

他就开始朗读起来：

“‘埃克塞特市”[122]巴恩菲尔德•新月街的戈登； 住在滨海圣安妮之艾弗利的雷德梅因，威廉•T。雷德梅因之妻生一子。’这怎么样呢？ ‘赖特和弗林特； 文森特和吉勒特，罗萨与已故乔治•艾尔弗雷德•吉勒特之女罗莎•玛莉恩， 斯托克维尔[123] 克列帕姆路一七九号，普莱伍德和里兹代尔，在肯辛顿的圣朱德教堂举行婚礼，主婚人为武斯特副主教、十分可敬的弗雷斯特博士。’呃？讣告： ‘住在伦敦白厅小巷的布里斯托；住在斯托克•纽因顿[124] 的卡尔，因患胃炎与心脏病；住在切普斯托[125] 莫特馆的科克伯恩……’”

“我晓得那家伙，”乔说，“吃过他的苦头。”

“‘科克伯恩•迪穆赛，已故海军大将大卫•迪穆赛的妻子；住在托特纳姆的米勒，享年八十五；住在利物浦坎宁街三十五号的伊莎贝拉•海伦•威尔士于六月十二日去世。’一份民族的报纸怎么会刊登这佯的玩艺儿呢，呃， 我的褐色小子[126] ？班特里这个假公济私的马丁•墨菲[127] ，搞的是什么名堂呢？”

“啊，喔，”乔说着把酒递过来，“感谢天主，他们赶在咱们头里啦[128] 。喝吧，‘市民’。”

“好的，”他说，“大老爷。”

“祝你健康，乔，”我说，“也祝大家的健康。”

啊！哦！别聊啦！我就想着喝上一品脱，想得发了霉，我敢对上主发誓，我能听见酒在我的胃囊上嘀嗒。

瞧，当他们快活地将那酒一饮而尽时，天神般的使者转眼到来。这是个英俊少年，灿烂如太阳，跟在他后面踱进来的是位雍容高雅的长者。他手执法典圣卷，伴随而来的是他那位门第无比高贵的夫人，女性中的佼佼者。

小个子阿尔夫•柏根踅进门来，藏在巴尼的小单间里，拼命地笑。喝得烂醉如泥，坐在我没看见的角落一个劲儿地打鼾的，不是别人，正是鲍勃•多兰。我并不晓得在发生什么事。阿尔夫一个劲儿地朝门外指指划划。好家伙，原来是那个该死的老丑角丹尼斯•布林。他趿拉着洗澡穿的拖鞋，腋下夹着两部该死的大书。他老婆--一个倒楣可怜的女人--像鬈毛狗那样迈着碎步，紧赶慢赶地跟在后面。我真怕阿尔夫会笑破肚皮。

“瞧他，”他说，“布林。有人给他寄来了一张写着‘万事休矣’的明信片。于是他就在都柏林走街串巷，一门心思去起……”

接着他笑得弯了腰。

“起什么？”我说。

“起诉，控告他诽谤罪，”他说，“要求赔偿一万镑。”

“胡闹！”我说。

那只该死的杂种狗发现出了什么事，嗥叫得令人毛骨悚然，然而“市民”只朝着它的肋骨踹了一脚。

“不许出声！”[129] 他说。

“是谁呀？”乔说。

“布林，”阿尔夫说，“他起先在约翰•亨利•门顿那里，接着又绕到考立斯-沃德事务所去。后来汤姆•罗赤福特碰见了他， 就开玩笑地支使他到副行政司法长官那儿去。噢，天哪，把我肚子都笑疼了。万事休矣：完蛋。那高个儿像是要传讯他似的盯了他一眼，如今那个老疯子到格林街去找警察啦。”

“高个儿约翰究竟什么时候绞死关在蒙乔伊的那个家伙？”[130]乔说。

“柏根，”鲍勃•多兰醒过来说，“那是阿尔夫•柏根吗？”

“是啊，”阿尔夫说，“绞死吗？等着瞧吧。特里，给咱来一小杯。那个该死的老傻瓜！一万镑。你该看看高个儿约翰那双眼睛。万事休矣……”

于是他笑起来了。

“你在笑谁哪？”鲍勃•多兰说，“是柏根吗？”

“快点儿，特里[131] 伙计，”阿尔夫说。

特伦斯•奥赖恩听见这话，立刻端来一只透明的杯子，里面满是冒泡的乌道浓啤酒。这是那对高贵的双胞胎邦吉维和邦加耿朗[132] 在他们那神圣的大桶里酿造的。他们像永生的勒达［133]所生的两个儿子一样精明，贮藏大量的蛇麻子[134] 那多汁的浆果，经过堆积，精选，研碎，酿制，再掺上酸汁，把刚兑好的汁液放在圣火上。这对精明的弟兄称得起是大酒桶之王，夜以继日地操劳着。

那么你，豪侠的特伦斯，便按照熟习的风俗[135] ，用透明的杯子盛上甘美的饮料，端给侠肠义胆、美如神明的口渴的他。

然而他，奥伯甘的年轻族长，论慷慨大度决不甘拜他人之下风，遂宽厚大方地付了一枚铸有头像的最贵重的青铜市[136]。上面， 用精巧的冶金工艺浮雕出仪表堂堂的女王像，她是布伦维克家族[137] 的后裔，名叫维多利亚。承蒙上主的恩宠，至高无上的女工陛下君临大不列颠和爱尔兰联合王国以及海外英国领土。 她是女王，信仰的捍卫者，印度的女皇。就是她，战胜了众邦，受到万人的崇敬， 从日出到日落之地[138] ，苍白、浅黑、微红到黝黑皮肤的人们，都晓得并爱戴她。

“那个该死的共济会会员在干什么哪，”“市民”说，“在外面鬼鬼祟祟地荡来荡去？”

“怎么回事儿？”乔说。

“喏，”阿尔夫边把钱丢过去边说，“谈到绞刑，我要让你们瞧一件你们从来没见过的东西：刽子手亲笔写的信。瞧。”

于是他从兜里掏出一叠装在信封里的信。

“你在作弄我吗？”我说。

“地地道道的真货，”阿尔夫说，“读吧。”

于是，乔拿起了那些信。

“你在笑谁哪？”鲍勃•多兰说。

我看出有点儿闹纠纷的苗头。鲍勃这家伙一喝酒就失态。于是，我就找个话碴儿说：

“威利•默雷[139] 近来怎么样，阿尔夫？”

“不知道，”阿尔夫说，“刚才我在卡佩尔街上瞧见他跟帕狄•迪格纳穆呆在一起。可当时我正在追赶着那个……”

“你什么？”乔丢下那些信说，“跟谁在一起？”

“跟迪格纳穆，”阿尔夫说。

“你指的是帕狄吗？”乔说。

“是呀，”阿尔夫说，“怎么啦？”

“你不晓得他死了吗？”乔说。

“帕狄•迪格纳穆死啦！”阿尔夫说。

“可不，”乔说。

“不到五分钟之前，我确实还曾看见了他，”阿尔夫说，“跟枪柄一样千真万确。”[140]

“谁死啦？”鲍勃•多兰说。

“那么，你瞧见的是他的幽灵呗，”乔说，“天主啊，保佑我们别遭到不幸。”

“怎么？”阿尔夫说，“真是不过五……哦？……而且还有威利•默雷跟他在一起，他们两个人在那个叫什么店号来着……怎么？迪格纳穆死了吗？”

“迪格纳穆怎么啦？”鲍勃•多兰说，“你们在扯些什么呀……？”

“死啦！”阿尔夫说，“他跟你一样，活得欢势着哪。”

“也许是的，”乔说，“横竖今儿早晨他们已经擅自把他埋掉了。”[141] 帕狄吗？”阿尔夫说。

“是啊，”乔说，“他寿终正寝啦，愿天主怜悯他。”

“慈悲的基督啊！”阿尔夫说。

他的确是所谓吓破了胆。

在黑暗中，使人感到幽灵的手在晃动。当按照密宗经咒[142] 作的祷告送至应达处时，一抹微弱然而愈益明亮起来的红宝石光泽逐渐映入眼帘。 从头顶和脸上散发出来的吉瓦光，使得虚灵体格外逼真。[143] 信息交流是脑下垂体以及骶骨部和太阳神经丛所释放出的橙色与鲜红色光线促成的。 问起他生前的名字和现在天界何方，他答以如今正在劫末[144] 或回归途中，但仍在星界低域，某些嗜血者手中经受着磨难。被问以当他越过那浩渺的境界后最初的感想如何， 他回答说：原先他所看见的好比是映在镜子里的模糊不清的影像[145] ，然而已经越境者面前随即揭示出发展“我”[146] 这一至高无上的可能性。及至问起来世的生活是否与有着肉身的我们在现世中的经验相仿佛时，他回答说，那些已进入灵界的受宠者曾告诉他说，在他们的住处，现代化家庭用品一应俱全，诸如塔拉梵那、 阿拉瓦塔尔、哈特阿克尔达、沃特克拉撒特[147] 。无比资深的能手沉浸在最纯粹的逸乐的波浪里。他想要一夸脱脱脂牛奶，立刻就给他端来，他显然解了渴。 问他有没有什么口信捎给生者，他告诫所有那些依然处于摩耶[148] 中的人们：要悟正道，因为天界盛传，马尔斯[149] 和朱庇特[150] 已下降到东方的角落来捣乱，而那是白羊宫[151]的势力范围。这时又问，故人这方面有没有特别的愿望， 回答是：“至今犹活在肉身中的尘世间之凡朋俗友们，吾曹向汝等致意。勿容科•凯牟取暴利。”据悉，这里指的是科尼利厄斯[152] •凯莱赫。他是死者的私人朋友， 也是有名气的H、J．奥尼尔殡仪馆经理，丧事就是他经办的。 告辞之前他要求转告他的爱子帕齐，说帕齐所要找的那只靴子目前在侧屋[153] 的五斗柜底下。这双靴子的后跟还挺结实，只消送到卡伦鞋店去补一下靴底就成了。他说，在来世，他一直记挂着这件事， 心绪极为不宁。务必请代为转告。

大家向他担保一定照办，他明白表示感到满意。

他离开了尘寰。噢，迪格纳穆，我们的旭日。他踩在欧洲蕨上的脚步是那样迅疾。额头闪闪发光的帕特里克啊。邦芭[154] ，随着你的风悲叹吧。海洋啊，随着你的旋风悲叹吧。

“他又到那儿去了，”“市民”盯着外面说。

“谁？”我说。

“布卢姆”，他说，“他就像是值勤的警察似的在那儿溜达十分钟啦。”

没错儿，我瞧见他伸进脸蛋儿窥伺了一下，随后又偷偷溜掉了。

小个儿阿尔夫吓得腰都直不起来了，一点儿不假。

“大慈大悲的基督啊！我敢发誓，那就是他。”

鲍勃•多兰- 喝醉了，就堕落成整个都柏林最下流的歹徒。他把帽于歪戴在后脑勺上，说：

“谁说基督是大慈大悲的？”

“请你原谅，”阿尔夫说。

“什么大慈大悲的基督！不是他把可怜的小威利•迪格纳穆给带走的吗？”

“啊，喏，”阿尔夫试图搪塞过去，他说，“这下子他再也用不着操劳啦。”

然而鲍勃•多兰咆哮道：

“我说他是个残忍的恶棍，居然把可怜的小威利•迪格纳穆给带走啦。”

特里走过来，向他使了个眼色，让他安静下来，说这可是一家特准卖酒的体面的店哩，请不要谈这类话。于是，鲍勃•多兰就为帕狄•迪格纳穆号起丧来了，哭得真真切切。

“再也没有那么好样儿的人啦，”他抽抽嗒嗒地说，“最好样儿的、最纯真的人。”

“该死的泪水快流到眼边。[155]他说着那该死的大话。还不如回家去找他娶的那个梦游症患者小个子浪女人呢。就是一名小执行吏的闺女穆尼。 [156]她娘在哈德威克街开了个娼家，经常在楼梯平台上转悠。在她那儿住过的班塔姆•莱昂斯告诉我，都凌晨两点了她还一丝不挂、整个儿光着身子呆在那儿，来者不拒，一视同仁。

“这个最正派、最地道的却走了，”他说，“可怜的小威利，可怜的小帕狄•迪格纳穆！”

于是，他满腔悲痛，心情沉重地为那一道天光之熄灭而哭泣。

老狗加里欧文又朝着在门口窥伺的布卢姆狂吠起来。

“进来吧，进来吧，”“市民”说，“它不会把你吃掉的。”

布卢姆就边用那双鳕鱼眼盯着狗，边侧身踅了进来，并且问特里，马丁•坎宁翰在不在那儿。

“噢，天哪，麦基奥[157] ，”乔说，他正在读着那些信中的一封，“听听好不好？”

他就读起一封信来。

亨特街七号

利物浦市

都柏林市都柏林行政司法长官台鉴：

敬启者，敝人曾志愿为执行上述极刑服务。一九00

年二月十二日，敝人曾在布特尔监狱绞死乔•甘恩[158] 。

敝人还绞死过……

“给咱看看，乔，”我说。

……杀害杰西•蒂尔希特的凶手、士兵阿瑟•蔡斯。他是

在彭顿维尔监狱被处绞刑的。敝人还曾任助手……

“天哪。”我说。

……那一次，比林顿[159] 将凶恶的杀人犯托德•史密

斯[160] 处以绞刑……

“市民”想把那封信夺过来。

“等一等，”乔说。

敝人有一窍门：一旦套上绞索，他就休想挣脱开。如

蒙可敬的阁下录用，不胜荣幸。敝人索酬五基尼。

霍•郎博尔德[161] 顿首

高级理发师

“他还是个凶猛、残暴的野蛮人[162] 呢，”“市民”说。

“而且，这混蛋还写一手狗爬字，”乔说，“喏，”他说，“阿尔夫，快把它拿开，我不要看。喂，布卢姆，”他说，“你喝点儿什么？”

于是他们争论起这一点来。布卢姆说他不想喝，也不会喝，请原谅，不要见怪。接着又说，那么就讨一支雪茄烟抽吧。哼，他是个谨慎的会员，这可一点儿也不含糊。

“特里，给咱一支你们店里味道最浓的，”乔说。

这时阿尔夫告诉我们，有个家伙给了一张服丧时用的加黑框的名片。

“那些家伙都是理发师，”他说，“是从黑乡[ 163] 来的。只要给他们五镑钱，并且管旅费，哪怕自己的亲爹他们也肯下手绞死。”

他还告诉我们，把犯人悬空吊起后，等在下面的两个人就拽他的脚后跟， 好让他彻底咽气。然后他们把绞索切成一截一截的，每副头盖骨按多少先令卖掉。[164] 

这些恶狠狠的、操利刃的骑士们都住在黑乡。他们紧握着那致命的绳索。 对，不论是谁，凡是杀过人的必然统统给套住，打发到厄瑞勃斯[165] 去。因为上主曾说，我无论如何不能饶恕此等罪行。

于是，大家聊起死刑的事儿来了。布卢姆自然也闲扯起死刑的来龙去脉以及种种无稽之谈。那条老狗不停地嗅着他。 我听说这些犹太佬身上总发散着一股奇怪的气味，能够吸引周围的狗，还能治服什么。

“可是有一样物件它是治服不了的，”阿尔夫说。

“什么物件？”乔说。

“就是被绞死的可怜虫的阳物，”阿尔夫说。

“是吗？”乔说。

“千真万确，”阿尔夫说，“我是听基尔门哈姆监狱的看守长说的。他们绞死‘常胜军’的乔•布雷迪[166] 之后，就发生了这种情形。他告诉我，当他们割断绞索把吊死鬼儿撂下来时，那阳物就像一根拨火棍儿似的戳到他们面前。”

“占主导地位的感情到死还是强烈的，”乔说，“正像某人[167] 说过的那样。”

“这可以用科学来解释，”布卢姆说，“不过是个自然现象，不是吗， 因为由于……”

于是他咬文嚼字地大谈其现象与科学啦，这一现象那一现象什么的。

杰出的科学家卢伊特波尔德•布卢门达夫特[168] 教授先生曾提出下述医学根据加以阐明：按照医学上公认的传统学说，颈椎骨的碎折以及伴随而来的脊髓截断，不可避免地会给予人身神经中枢以强烈刺激，从而引起海绵体的弹性细孔急速膨胀，促使血液瞬时注入在人体解剖学上称为阴茎即男性生殖器的这一部位。其结果是：在颈骨断袭导致死亡的那一瞬间[169] ，诱发出专家称之为“生殖器病态地向前上方多产性勃起”这一现象。[170] 

“市民”当然急不可耐地等着插嘴的机会。 接着就高谈阔论起“常胜军”啦，激进分子[171] 啦，六七年那帮人[172] 啦，还有那些怕谈到九八年[173]的人什么的。乔也跟他扯起那些为了事业经临时军事法庭审判而被绞死、开膛或流放的人们，以及新爱尔兰，新这个，新那个什么的。说起新爱尔兰，这家伙倒应该去物色一条新狗，可不是嘛。眼下这条畜生浑身长满癞疮，饥肠辘辘，到处嗅来嗅去，打喷嚏，又搔它那疮痂。接着，这狗就转悠到正请阿尔夫喝半品脱酒的鲍勃•多兰跟前，向他讨点儿什么吃的。于是，鲍勃•多兰当然就干起缺德的傻事儿来了。

“伸爪子！伸爪子，狗儿！乖乖老狗儿！伸过爪子来！伸爪子让咱捏捏！”

荒唐！[ 174] 也甭去捏该死的什么爪子了，他差点儿从该死的凳子上倒栽葱跌到该死的老狗脑袋上。阿尔夫试图扶住他。他嘴里还喋喋不休他说着种种蠢话，什么训练得靠慈爱之心啦，纯种狗啦，聪明的狗啦。该死的真使你感到厌恶。然后他又从叫特里拿来的印着雅各布商标的罐头底儿上掏出几块陈旧碎饼干。狗把它当作旧靴子那样嘎吱嘎吱吞了下去，舌头耷拉出一码长，还想吃。这条饥饿的该死的杂种狗，几乎连罐头都吞下去嘞。

且说“市民”和布卢姆正围绕刚才那个问题争论着呢：被处死于阿伯山的希尔斯弟兄[175] 和沃尔夫•托恩[176] 啦。罗伯特•埃米特[177]为国捐躯啦，汤米•穆尔关于萨拉•柯伦的笔触--她远离故土[178] 啦。满脸脂肪的布卢姆当然装腔作势地叼着一支浓烈得使人昏迷的雪茄。现象！他娶的那位胖墩儿才是个稀奇透顶的老现象哩：她的后背足有滚木球的球道那么宽。精明鬼伯克告诉我，有一阵子这对夫妻住在市徽饭店，里面有位老太婆[179]，带着个疯疯傻傻、令人丢脸[180] 的侄子。布卢姆指望她在遗嘱里赠给自己点儿什么，就试图使她的心肠软下来。于是，就对她百般奉承，和颜悦色地陪她玩比齐克[181]牌戏。 老太婆总是做出一副虔诚的样子，每逢星期五，布卢姆也跟着不吃肉，还带那个蠢才去散步。有一回他领着这个侄子满都柏林转悠。凭着神圣的乡巴佬发誓，布卢姆连一句也没唠叨，直到那家伙醉得像一只炖熟的猫头鹰，这才把他带回来。他说他这么做是为了教给那个侄子酗酒的害处。那个老太婆、布卢姆的老婆和旅店老板娘奥多德太太这三位妇人居然没差点儿把他整个儿烤了，也够不寻常的了。天哪，精明鬼勃克学他们争辩的样儿给我看，我不得不笑。布卢姆说着他那些口头禅，什么“你们不明白吗？要么就是“然而，另一方面”。不瞒您说，我刚刚谈到的那个蠢才从此就成了科普街鲍尔鸡尾酒店的常客：每星期五次，必把那家该死的店里的每一种酒都喝个遍，腰腿瘫软得动弹不了，只好雇马车回去。真是个现象！

“为了纪念死者[182] ，”“市民”举起他那一品脱装的玻璃杯，瞪着布卢姆说。

“好的，好的，”乔说。

“你没抓住我话中的要点，”布卢姆说，“我的意思是……”

“我们自己！”[183]“市民”说，“我们自己就够了！[184] 我们所爱的朋友站在我们这边，我们所憎恨的仇敌在我们对面。[ 185]”

最后的诀别[186]令人感动之至。丧钟从远远近近的钟楼里不停地响着，教堂幽暗的院子周围，一百面声音闷哑的大鼓发出不祥的警告，不时地被大炮那瓮声瓮气的轰鸣所打断。震耳欲聋的雷鸣和映出骇人景象的耀眼闪电，证明天公的炮火给这本来就已令人毛骨悚然的景色，平添了超自然的威势。瀑布般的大雨从愤怒的苍穹的水门倾泻到聚集在那里的据估计起码也不下五十万大众那未戴帽子的光头上。都柏林市警察署武装队在警察署长的亲自指挥下，在庞大的人群中维持着治安。约克街的铜管乐队和簧管乐队用缠了黑纱的乐器出色地演奏出我们从摇篮里就爱上的那支由于斯佩兰扎的哀戚歌词[187]而最为动人的曲调。这样，使群众得以消磨一下大会开始前的这段时间。为了供临时浩浩荡荡赶来参加的那些乡亲们舒适地享用，还准备了特快游览列车和敞篷软座公共马车。都柏林的街头红歌手利×翰和穆×根[188]，像往常那样用诙谐逗乐的腔调唱《拉里被处绞刑的前夕》[189] 。我们这两位无与伦比的小丑在热爱喜剧要素的观众当中兜售刊有歌词的大幅印张，销路极佳。凡是在心灵深处懂得欣赏毫不粗俗的爱尔兰幽默的人，绝不会在乎把自己辛辛苦苦地挣来的几便士掏给他们。男女弃儿医院的娃娃们也挤满一个个窗口俯瞰这一情景，对于出乎意料地添加到今天的游艺中的这一余兴感到欢快。济贫小姊妹会的修女们想出个高明主意：让这些没爹没妈的可怜的娃娃们享受到一次真正富于教育意义的娱乐，值得称赞。来自总督府家宴的宾客包括许多社交界知名淑女，她们在总督伉俪的陪同下，在正面看台的特等席上落座。坐在对面看台上的是衣着鲜艳的外国代表团。通称作绿宝石岛[190]之友。 全体出席的代表团包括骑士团司令官巴奇巴奇•贝尼诺贝诺内[ 191] （这位代表团团长[192] 因半身不遂，只得借助于蒸汽起重机坐下来），皮埃尔保罗•佩蒂特埃珀坦先生[193] ，杰出的滑稽家乌拉基米尔•波克特汉克切夫[194] ，大滑稽家莱奥波尔德•鲁道尔夫•封•施万岑巴德- 赫登塔勒[195] ，玛尔哈•维拉佳•吉萨斯左尼•普特拉佩斯蒂[196]伯爵夫人、海勒姆•Y。邦布斯特、阿塔纳托斯•卡拉梅勒洛斯伯爵[197] 、 阿里巴巴•贝克西西•拉哈特•洛库姆•埃芬迪[198] ，伊达尔戈•卡瓦列罗•堂•佩卡迪洛•伊•帕拉布拉斯•伊•帕特诺斯特•德•拉•马洛拉•德•拉•马拉利亚先生[199] ，赫克波克•哈拉基利[200] ，席鸿章[ 201] 、奥拉夫•克贝尔克德尔森[202] ，特里克•范•特龙普斯先生，[203]，潘•波尔阿克斯•帕迪利斯基[204] ，古斯庞德•普鲁库鲁斯托尔•克拉特奇纳布利奇兹伊奇[205] ， 勃鲁斯•胡平柯夫[206] ，赫尔豪斯迪莱克托尔普莱西登特•汉斯•丘赤里- 斯托伊尔里先生[207] ，国立体育馆博物馆疗养所及悬肌普通无薪俸讲师通史专家教授博士、里格弗里德•于贝尔阿尔杰曼[208] 。所有的代表对他们被请来目睹的难以名状的野蛮行径，都毫无例外地竭力使用最强烈的各自迥异的言词发表了意见。 于是，关于爱尔兰的主保圣人[209] 的诞辰究竟是三月八号还是九号，绿宝石岛之友们开展了热烈的争辩（大家全都参加了）。在争辩的过程中，使用了炮弹、单刃短弯刀、往返飞镖[210]、老式大口径短程霰弹枪、便器、绞肉机、雨伞、弹弓、指关节保护套[ 211] 、沙袋、铣铁块等武器，尽情地相互大打出手。还派信使专程从布特尔斯唐[212]把娃娃警察麦克法登巡警召了来。他很快就恢复了秩序，并火速提出，生日乃是同月十七号[213] 。这一解答使争辩双方都保住了面子。人人欢迎九尺汉子[214] 这个随机应变的建议，全场一致通过。绿宝石岛之友个个都向麦克法登巡警衷心表示谢忱， 而其中几个正大量淌着血。 骑士团司令官贝尼诺贝诺内被人从大会主席的扶手椅底下解救出来，然后他的法律顾问帕格米米律师[ 215] 解释说，藏在他那三十二个兜[216] 里的形形色色的物品，都是他乘乱从资历较浅的同僚兜里掏出来的，以促使他们恢复理智。这些物品（包括几百位淑女绅士的金表和银表）被立即归还给合法的原主。和谐融洽的气氛笼罩全场。

朗博尔德身穿笔挺的常礼服，佩带着一朵他心爱的血迹斑斑的剑兰花[217] ，安详、谦逊地走上断头台。他凭着轻轻的一声朗博尔德派头的咳嗽通知了自己的到来。这种咳嗽多少人想模仿（却学不来）：短促，吃力而富有特色。这位闻名全世界的刽子手到来后，大批围观者报以暴风雨般的欢呼。总督府的贵妇们兴奋得挥着手帕。比她们更容易兴奋的外国使节杂七杂八地喝采着，霍赫、邦在、艾尔珍、吉维奥、钦钦、波拉•克罗尼亚、希普希普、维沃、安拉的叫声混成一片。其中可以清楚地听到歌之国代表那响亮的哎夫维瓦[218] 声（高出两个八度的F音， 令人回忆起阉歌手卡塔拉尼[219] 当年曾经怎样用那尖锐优美的歌声使得我们的高祖母们为之倾倒）。这时已十七点整。扩音器里传出了祈祷的信号。全体与会者立即脱帽，骑士团司令官那顶标志着族长身分的高顶阔边帽（自林齐[220] 那场革命以来，这就归他这一家人所有了），由他身边的侍医皮普[221] 博士摘掉了。当英勇的烈士即将被处死刑之际，一位学识渊博的教长在主持圣教赐与最后慰藉的仪式。本着最崇高的基督教精神，跪在一泓雨水中，将教袍撩到白发苍苍的头上，向慈悲的宝座发出热切恳求的祷告。断头台旁立着绞刑吏那阴森恐怖的身影，脸上罩着一顶可容十加仑的高帽子[222] ，上面钻了两个圆洞，一双眼睛从中炯炯地发出怒火。在等待那致命的信号的当儿，他把凶器的利刃放在筋骨隆隆的手臂上磨砺，要么就迅疾地挨个儿砍掉一群绵羊的头。这是他的仰慕者们为了让他执行这项虽残忍却非完成不可的任务而准备的。他身边的一张漂亮的红木桌上，整整齐齐地排列着肢解用刀、各式各样精工锻成的摘取内脏用的器具（都是举世闻名的、谢菲尔德市约翰•朗德父子公司[223] 刀具制造厂特制的）。还有一只赤土陶制平底锅，成功地把十二指肠、结肠、盲肠、阑尾等摘除后，就装在里面。另外有两个容量可观的牛奶罐：是盛最宝贵的牺牲者那最宝贵的血液用的。猫狗联合收容所[224] 的膳务员也在场。这些容器装满后，就由他运到那家慈善机构去。当局还用意周到地为这场悲剧的中心人物提供了一份丰盛的膳食，包括火腿煎鸡蛋，炸得很好的洋葱配牛排，早餐用热气腾腾的美味面包卷儿，以及提神的茶。他精神抖擞，视死如归，自始至终极其关心这档子事的种种细节。他以当代罕见的克制，不失时机站起来，慷慨激昂地表明了自己临终的一个愿望（并立即得到首肯）：要求将这份膳食平均分配给贫病寄宿者协会的会员们，以表示他对他们的关怀和敬重。当那位被遴选出来的新娘涨红了脸，拨开围观者密集的行列冲过来，投进为了她的缘故而即将被送入永恒世界的那个人壮健的胸脯时，大家的情绪高涨到极点[225] 。英雄深情地搂抱着她那苗条的身子，亲昵地低声说：“希拉，我心爱的。”听到这样称她的教名、她深受鼓舞。于是她就以不至于损害他那身囚衣的体面为度，热情地吻着他身上所有那些适当的部位。当他们二人的眼泪汇成一股咸流时，她向他发誓说，她会永远珍视关于他的记忆，决不会忘怀他

这个英勇的小伙子是怎样嘴里哼着歌儿，就像是到克隆土耳克公园[226] 去打爱尔兰曲棍球那样地走向死亡。她使他回忆起幸福的儿童时代那快乐日子。那时他们一道在安娜•利菲河岸上尽情地做着天真烂漫的幼儿游戏。他们忘却了当前这可怕的现实，一道畅怀大笑。所有在场的人，包括可敬的教士，也参加到弥漫全场的欢快气氛中。怪物般万头攒动的观众简直笑得前仰后合。然而不久他们两个人就又被悲哀所压倒，最后一次紧紧地握了手。从他们的泪腺里再一次滔滔地涌出泪水。众多的围观者打心坎里感动了，悲痛欲绝地哽咽起来，连年迈的受俸教士本人也同样哀伤。膀大腰粗的彪形大汉，在场维持治安的官员以及皇家爱尔兰警察部队那些和蔼的巨人都毫无忌惮地用手绢擦拭着。可以蛮有把握地说，在这规模空前的大集会上，没有一双眼睛不曾被泪水润湿。这时一桩最富于浪漫主义色彩的事情发生了：一个以敬重妇女著称的年轻英俊的牛津大学毕业生[227] 走上前去，递上自己的名片、银行存折和家谱，并向那位不幸的少女求婚，恳请她定下日期。她当场就首肯了。在场的每位太大小姐都接受了一件大方雅致的纪念品：一枚骷髅枯骨图案[228] 的饰针。这一既合时宜慷慨的举动重新激发了众人的情绪。于是，这位善于向妇女献殷勤的年轻的牛津大学毕业生（顺便提一下，他拥有阿尔比安[229] 有史以来最享盛名的姓氏）将一枚用几颗绿宝石镶成四叶白花酢浆草状的名贵的订婚戒指，套在他那忸怩得涨红了脸的未婚妻手指上时，人们感到无比兴奋。甚至连主持这一悲惨场面的面容严峻的宪兵司令，那位陆军中校汤姆金- 马克斯韦尔•弗伦奇马伦•汤姆林森，尽管他曾经毫不犹豫地用炮弹把众多印度兵炸得血肉横飞[230] ，当前也抑制不住感情的自然流露了。他伸出有着锁子甲的防护长手套，悄然抹掉一滴泪。[231] 那些有幸站在他身边的随行人员听见他低声喃喃自语着：

“该死，那个娘儿们可是尤物哩，那个令人心如刀绞的丫头。该死，我一看见她就感到心如刀绞，快要哭出来了。老实说，就是这样。因为她使我想起在利姆豪斯路等待着我的旧酿酒桶。”[232] 

于是，“市民”就谈起爱尔兰语啦，市政府会议啦，以及所有那些不会讲本国语言、态度傲慢的自封的绅士啦。乔是由于今天从什么人手里捞到了一镑金币，也来插嘴。布卢姆叼着向乔讨来的值两便士的烟头，探过他那黏乎乎的老脑袋瓜儿，大谈起盖尔语协会啦，反对飨宴联盟[233] 啦，以及爱尔兰的祸害--酗酒。由他来提反对飨宴，倒蛮合适哩。哼，他会让你往他的喉咙里灌各种酒，一直灌到上主把他召走，你也见不到他请的那品脱酒的泡沫儿。有个晚上，我和一个伙伴儿去参加他们的音乐晚会。照例载歌载舞：她能爬上干草堆，她能，我的莫琳•蕾。[234]那儿有个家伙佩带着巴利胡利蓝缓带徽章[235] ，用爱尔兰语唱着绝妙的歌儿。还有好多金发少女[236] 带着不含酒精的饮料到处转悠，兜售纪念章、桔子和柠檬汽水以及一些陈旧发干的小圆面包。哦，丰富多彩的[237] 娱乐，就甭提啦，禁酒的爱尔兰乃是自由的爱尔兰。[238] 接着，一个老家伙吹起风笛来。那些骗子们就都随着老母牛听腻了的曲调[239] 在地上拖曳着脚步，一两个天国的向导四下里监视着，防止人们行为狠亵，对女人动手动脚。

不管怎样，正如我方才说过的，那条老狗瞧见罐头已经空了，就开始围着乔和我转来转去，觅着食。倘若这是我的狗，我就老老实实地教训它一顿，一定的。不时地朝着不会把它弄瞎的部位使劲踢上一脚，好让它打起精神来。

“你怕它咬你一口吗？”“市民”讥笑着问。

“哪儿的话，”我说，“可它兴许会把我的腿当成路灯柱子哩。”

于是，他把那只老狗喊了过去。

“加里，你怎么啦？”他说。

于是，他着手把它拖过来，捉弄了一通，还跟它讲爱尔兰话。老狗咆哮着作为应答，就像歌剧中的二重唱似的。像这样的相互咆哮简直是前所未闻。闲得没事的人应该给报纸写篇《为了公益[240] 》，提出对这样的狗应该下道封口令。这狗又是咆哮，又是呜呜号叫。它喉咙干枯，眼睛挂满了血丝，从口腔里嘀嘀嗒嗒地淌着狂犬症的涎水。

凡是关心对下等动物（它们数目众多[241] ）传播人类文化者，切不可漏掉这条著名的爱尔兰老塞特种红毛狼狗。先前它曾以“加里欧文”这一外号闻名，新近在它那范围很广的熟人朋友的圈子内，又被改名为欧文•加里[242] 了。诚然令人惊异的是此狗所显示的“人化”现象。基于多年慈祥的训练和精心安排的食谱，这次表演的众多成就中，还包括诗歌朗诵。当今我国最伟大的语音学专家（任何野马也不得把他从我们当中拖走！）不遗余力地对它所朗诵的诗加以阐释比较，查明此诗与古代凯尔特吟游诗人的作品有着显著的（重点系我们所加）相似之处。这里说的并非读书界所熟悉的那种悦耳的情歌，原作者真名不详，使用的是“可爱的小枝”[243] 一文雅的笔名；而是（正如署名D、O、C、的撰稿人在当代某晚报上发表的饶有兴味的通信中所指出的那种）更辛辣、更动人的调子。眼下颇孚众望的现代派色彩更浓的抒情诗人自不用说，就连在著名的拉夫特里[244] 和多纳尔•麦科康西丁[245] 的讽刺性漫笔中也可以找到。这里我们添加一首由一位卓越学者译成英文的诗作为范例。眼下我们不便将他的大名公诸于世。不过我们相信，读者准能从主题上得到暗示，而不必指名道姓。狗的这首原诗在韵律上使人联想到威尔士四行诗那错综的头韵法和等音节规律，只是要复杂多了。然而我们相信读者会同意，译文巧妙地捕捉了原诗的神髓。也许还应该补充一句：倘若用缓慢而含糊不清的声调来朗读欧文这首诗，那就更能暗示出被抑制的愤懑，效果会大为增加。

我发出最厉害的咒语，

一周中的每一日，

七个禁酒的星期四，

巴尼•基尔南，诅咒你，

从未让我啜过水一滴，

以平息我这腾腾怒气，

我的肠子火烧火燎地吼哩：

“要把劳里的肺脏吞下去！”[246]

于是，他叫特里给狗拿点水来。说真个的，相隔一英里，你都听得见狗舔水的声音。乔问他要不要再喝一杯。

“好的，”他说，“伙伴[247] ，以表示我对你没有敌意。”

说实在的，他长得虽然土头土脑，可一点儿也不傻。他从一家酒馆喝到另一家，酒帐嘛，一向叫别人付。他带的那条吉尔特拉普老爷爷[248] 的狗，也是靠纳税人和法人[249] 饲养的。人兽都得到款待。于是，乔说：

“你能再喝一品脱吗？”

“水能凫鸭子吗？”我说。

“照样再添一杯，特里，”乔说。“你真的什么饮料都不要吗？”他说。

“谢谢你，不要，”布卢姆说，“说实在的，我只是想见见马丁•坎宁翰。要知道，是为了可怜的迪格纳穆的人寿保险的事儿。马丁叫我到迪格纳穆家去。要知道，他--我指的是迪格纳穆，当初根本没有通知公司办理让与手续的事，所以根据法令，受押人就没有名义去从保险额中领取款项了。”

“好家伙，”乔笑着说，“要是老夏洛克[250] 陷入困境，那可就有趣儿啦。那么，老婆就占上风了吧？”

“那位老婆的仰慕者们所着眼的，”布卢姆说，“正是这一点。”

“谁的仰慕者？”乔说。

“我指的是给那位老婆出主意的人们，”布卢姆说。

接着，他就全都搞混了，胡乱扯起根据法令抵押人什么的，并用大法官在法庭上宣读判决的口吻，说是为了他妻子的利益，已成立信托啦；然而另一方面， 迪格纳穆确实欠了布里奇曼一笔款，倘若现在妻子或遗孀要否定受押人的权利啦， 最后他那根据法令抵押人什么的，几乎把我弄得头昏脑胀了。那回根据法令， 他差点儿就作为无赖或流浪汉被关进去，亏了他在法院有个朋友，这才得以幸免。 售义卖会的入场券，或是匈牙利皇家特许彩票[251] 。这都千真万确。哦，请代我向犹太人致意！匈牙利皇家特许的掠夺。

于是，鲍勃•多兰脚步蹒跚地走过来了。他请布卢姆转告迪格纳穆大太，对她遭到的不幸，他深感悲哀。他未能参加葬礼，也非常遗憾。还请告诉她，他本人以及每一个认识他的人都说，再也没有比已经故去的可怜的小威利更忠实、更正派的人了。他说着这些夸张的蠢话，声音都哽住了。边说请转告她，边以悲剧演员的神态跟布卢姆握手。咱们握手吧，兄弟。你是无赖，我也是一个。

“请您恕我莽撞，”他说，“咱们的交谊如果仅仅拿时间来衡量，好像很浅。尽管如此，我希望并且相信，它是建立在相互尊重的感情上的。所以我才胆敢恳求您帮这个忙。然而，倘若我的恳求不够含蓄，超过了限度，请您务必把我的冒昧看作是感情真挚的流露而加以原谅。”

“哪里的话”，对方回答说，“我充分了解促使你采取这一行动的动机，并会尽力完成您委托我办的事。尽管这是一桩悲哀的使命， 想到您是如此信任我这一事实，这杯苦酒在一定程度上会变甜的。”

“那么，请容许我握握您的手。”他说，“以您心地的善良，我确信您能道出比我这拙劣的言词更为恰当的话语。倘若要我来表达自己强烈的感情，我会连话都讲不出的。”

随后他就走出去了，吃力地想把步子迈得直一些。刚刚五点钟，就已经喝得醉醺醺的了。有一天晚上，他差点儿给抓起来，幸亏帕迪•伦纳德认得甲十四号警察。直到打烊之后，他还在布赖德街的一家非法出售偷税酒的店里，喝得昏天黑地。他让一个拉客的给放哨，一边跟两个“披肩”[252] 调情， 一边用茶杯大喝黑啤酒。他对那两个“披肩”说，自己是名叫约瑟夫•马努奥的法国佬， 并且大骂天主教。扬言自己年轻时在亚当与夏娃教堂当过弥撒的助祭，闭着眼睛也能说出《新约全书》是谁写的，《旧约全书》又是谁写的。于是，他跟她们搂搂抱抱，狎昵调戏。 两个“披肩”一边笑得死去活来，一边把他兜里的钱包摸走了。可这该死的傻瓜呢， 把黑啤酒洒得满床都是。两个“披肩”相互间尖声叫着，笑着。 说什么：“你的《圣经》怎么样啦？你的《旧约》还在吗？”要知道，就在这当儿， 帕迪刚好从那儿走过。每逢星期天，他就跟他那个小妾般的老婆出门。她脚蹬漆皮靴子， 胸前插着一束可爱的紫罗兰，扭着屁股穿过教堂的甬道，严然一副娇小贵夫人的派头。 那是杰克•穆尼的妹妹。母亲是个老婊子，给露水夫妻提供房间。 哼，杰克管束着那家伙。告诉他，如果不把锅锔上[253] ，他妈的就连屎都给他踢出来。

这当儿，特里端来了那三品脱酒。

“干杯，”乔作为东道主说，“干杯，‘市民’。”

“祝你健康，[254]” 他说。

“好运道，乔，”我说，“祝你健康，‘市民’。”

好家伙，他已灌下半杯啦。要想供他喝酒，可得一份家产哩。

“阿尔夫，那个高个子在市长竞选中帮谁跑哪？”乔说。

“你的一位朋友，”阿尔夫说。

“是南南[255] 吗？”乔说，“那个议员吗？”

“我不想说出名字，”阿尔夫说。

“我猜到了，”乔说，“我曾看见他跟下院议员威廉•菲尔德[256]一道去参加牲畜商的集会。”

“长发艾奥帕斯[257] ，”“市民”说，“那座喷火山，各国的宝贝儿，本国的偶像。”

于是，乔对“市民”讲起口蹄疫啦，牲畜商啦，对这些采取的措施啦。“市民”一味唱对台戏。布卢姆也聊起治疥癣用的洗羊液、供牛犊子止咳用的线虫灌服药水，以及牛舌炎的特效药。这是由于他一度曾在废牲畜屠宰场工作过嘛。他手执帐簿和铅笔踱来踱去，光动脑子，五体不勤。到头来由于顶撞了一位畜牧业者，被乔•卡夫解雇拉倒。这是个“万事通”先生，还想向自己的奶奶传授怎样挤鸭奶呢。精明鬼伯克告诉我，住在旅店里那阵子，那个老婆由于浑身长满了八英寸厚的脂肪，往往朝着奥多德太太几乎把眼睛都哭出来了，泪水流成了河。她解不开放屁带[258]，“老鳕鱼眼”却边围着她跳华尔兹舞，边教她该怎么解。 今天你有何方案？是啊，要用人道的方式。因为可怜的动物会感到痛苦的。专家们说，不使动物疼痛的最佳治疗方法就是轻轻地处理患部。哼， 大概把手伸到母鸡[259]的下腹去时也那么柔和吧。

嘎嘎嘎啦。喀噜呵，喀噜呵，喀噜呵。黑丽泽是咱们的母鸡。 她为咱们下蛋。下了蛋。她好快活啊。嘎啦。喀噜呵，喀噜呵，喀噜呵。随后好叔叔利奥来啦。他把手伸到黑丽泽下身，拿走那个刚下的蛋。嘎嘎嘎嘎，嘎啦。喀噜呵，喀噜呵，喀噜呵。

“横竖，”乔说，“菲尔德和南尼蒂今天晚上动身去伦敦，在下院议席上对此事提出质询。”

“你对市参议员要去的事有把握吗？”布卢姆说，“我刚好想见见他哩。”

“喏，他搭乘邮船去，”乔说，“今天晚上动身。”

“那可糟啦，”布卢姆说，“我特别想见见他。也许光是菲尔德先生一个人去吧？我又不能打电话。不能打。他一准去吗？”

“南南也去，”乔说， “关于警察署署长禁止在公园里举行爱尔兰国技比赛的事，协会[260] 要他明天提出质询。‘市民’，你对这有什么看法？爱尔兰军[261]。”

考维•科纳克勒先生（马尔提法纳姆。民。）：关于希利拉格[ 262] 选区的议员--尊敬的朋友提出的问题，请允许我向阁下质问一下：政府是否已下令，即便从医学上对这些动物的病理状态提不出任何证据，也要一律予以屠宰呢？

奥尔福斯先生（塔莫尚特。保。[263]）：尊敬的议员们已经掌握了提交给全院委员会的证据。我感到自己没有什么可补充的材料。对尊敬的议员所提出的问题，回答是肯定的。

奥尔利•奥赖利先生（蒙特诺特[264] 。民。）：是否下达了同样的命令，要把那些胆敢在凤凰公园举行爱尔兰国技比赛的人类这种动物也予以屠宰？

奥尔福斯先生：回答是否定的。

考维•科纳克勒先生：内阁大臣们的政策是否受到了阁下那封著名的米切尔斯镇电报[265] 的启发呢，（一片噢噢声。）

奥尔福斯先生：这个问题我预先没有得到通知。[266]

斯忒勒维特先生（邦库姆。独。[267]）：要毫不犹豫地射击。[ 268] （在野党讥讽地喝倒彩。）

会议主席：请安静！请安静！（散会。喝彩。）

“正是那个人，”乔说，“使盖尔族的体育复兴了。他就坐在那儿呢。是他把詹姆斯•斯蒂芬斯[269] 放跑了。他是掷十六磅铅球的全爱尔兰冠军。你掷铅球的最高纪录是多少，‘市民’？”

“不值得一提[270]，”“市民”故作谦虚地说，“当年我可比谁也不差。”

“可以这么说，‘市民’，”乔说，“你的表演更有瞧头哩。”

“真是这样吗？”阿尔夫说。

“是啊，”布卢姆说，“人人都知道。难道你不晓得吗？”

于是他们聊起爱尔兰体育运动来了，谈起绅士派的游戏--草地网球，爱尔兰曲棍球，投掷石头，谈到地地道道的本土风味以及重建国家[271] 等话题。 当然，布卢姆也搬一搬他那一套：说即便一个家伙有着赛船划手那样结实的心脏，激烈的运动也还是有害的。我凭着椅背套断言：倘若你从该死的地板上拾起一根稻草，对布卢姆说：“瞧啊，布卢姆。你看见这根稻草了吗？这是一根稻草哩。”我凭着姑妈敢说：他能就此谈上一个钟头，并且从从容容地继续谈下去。

在爱尔兰军[272]主持下，于小不列颠街[273]的布赖恩•奥西亚楠[274] 。座古色古香大厅里进行了一场极为有趣的讨论：谈到古代盖尔体育运动的复兴，谈到古希腊罗马以及古代爱尔兰的人们怎样懂得体育文化对振兴民族的重要性。这一高尚集会由可敬的主席主持，与会者来自各界。主席做了一番富于启发性的开场白--那是以雄辩有力的辞藻发表的一篇精采有力的演说。接着又以通常那种优良的高水平，针对着复兴我们古代泛凯尔特祖先那历史悠久的竞技和运动之可取性，进行了一场饶有兴趣而富有启发性的讨论。然后我们古代语运动的著名而备受尊敬的学者约瑟夫•麦卡锡•海因斯先生就复兴古代盖尔族的运动和游戏问题，做了雄辩的演说。这些竞技是当年芬恩•麦库尔[275]所朝朝暮暮操练的， 旨在复兴自古以来的无与伦比的尚武传统。利•布卢姆因为站在反对论调的一边，人们对他的发言毁誉参半。身为声乐家的主席，经会众一再要求，并在全场鼓掌声中，极其出色地唱了不朽的托马斯•奥斯本•戴维斯[276]那首永远清新的诗《重建国家》 （幸而它家喻户晓，用不着在此重复了），这样就结束了这场院讨论。说这位资深的爱国斗士演唱得完全超过他平素的水平，无人会有异言。 这位爱尔兰的卡鲁索-加哩波第[277]处于最佳状态。 当他用洪亮声腔高唱那首只有我们的公民才能演唱的久负盛名的国歌时，发挥得真是淋漓尽致。他那卓越高超的嗓音，以其不同凡响的音色大大提高了本来已饮誉全球的声望。会众报以热烈的掌声。听众当中可以看到许多杰出的神职人员和新闻界、律师界以及学术文化界人士。会议就这样结束了。与会的神职人员包括耶稣会法学博士威廉•德拉尼教长；神学博士杰拉尔德•莫洛伊主教；圣神修士团的帕•菲•卡瓦纳神父[278]；本堂神父T.沃特斯； 教区神父约翰•M•艾弗斯；圣方济各修道会的P.J．克利里神父[279]； 布道兄弟会的L.J．希基神父；圣方济各托钵修道会的尼古拉斯教长； 赤脚加尔默罗会的B.戈尔曼教长[280]；那稣会的T.马尔神父；那稣会的詹姆斯•墨菲教长；地方主教代理约翰•莱弗里神父[281]；神学博士威廉•多尔蒂教长；主母会的彼得•费根神父； 圣奥古斯丁隐修会的T.布兰甘神父[282]；本堂神父J．弗莱文； 本堂神父马•A•哈克特；本堂神父W.赫尔利[283]；至尊的主教总代理麦克马纳斯阁下； 无原罪圣母奉献会的B.R.斯莱特里神父；教区司 铎迈.D.斯卡利教长[284]；布道兄弟会的托•F•珀塞尔神父[285]；十分可敬的教区蒙席蒂莫西•戈尔曼；本堂神父约•弗拉纳根[286]。在俗人士P•费伊、托•奎克[267]等等。

“提起激烈的运动，”阿尔夫说，“基奥和贝内特之间的那场拳赛[288]，你们去看了吗？”

“没有，”乔说。

“我听说某某人在那场拳赛中，足足赚了一百金镑，”阿尔夫说。

“谁？布莱泽斯吗？”乔说。

于是布卢姆说：

“譬如说到网球，我指的就是动作要敏捷，眼力得有训练。”

“对，布莱泽斯，”阿尔夫说，“为了增加迈勒获胜的机会，他到处散布说，迈勒成天酗啤酒。其实迈勒总在埋头练着拳。”

“我们了解他，”“市民”说，“叛徒[289]的儿子。我们晓得他是怎样把英国金币捞到自己兜里去的。”

“你说得对，”乔说。

布卢姆又插嘴谈起草地网球和血液循环，并且问阿尔夫：

“喂，柏根，你不这么认为吗？”

“迈勒用对方的身子擦了地板，”阿尔夫说，“相形之下希南和塞耶斯的[290]拳赛不过瞎胡闹。简直像爹妈管教儿子那样把他揍个痛快。那小个子连对方的肚脐眼儿都够不着，大个子净扑空了。天哪，他终于朝着对方的心窝给了一拳。什么昆斯伯里规则[291]统统置诸不顾，弄得对方把从未吃进去的东西都吐出来了。”

迈勒和珀西[292]为了争夺五十金镑奖金所展开的是一场具有历史意义的戴手套的重量级拳击。都柏林的羔羊凭着他那杰出的技巧，弥补了体重的不足。最后的信号打响后，两个斗士都遭到重创。在上一次的厮斗中，次中量级军士长[293]狠狠地左右开弓，基奥只能当个接收大员。这位炮手[294]朝着宠儿的鼻子利利索索地饱以老拳，使他鼻孔出血。迈勒看上去已晕头转向了。军人[295]以挥起左拳猛击为开端，拿出看家本领来了。迎战的爱尔兰斗士作为回击，就对准贝内特的下巴颏尖儿猛地打过去。红衣兵[296]赶忙弯下腰去闪开了。然而那个都柏林人用左肘弯将对方的身子朝上一顶，这一着打得煞是漂亮。双方开始厮拼了。迈勒立即发动攻势，压倒了对方，这个回合以迈勒把那个彪形大汉逼到围栏索跟前惩罚一顿而告终。那个英国人的右眼几乎给揍瞎了。他回到自己那个角落，被浇以大量冷水。铃一响，他就又斗志昂扬、浑身是胆地上场了，充满了立即击倒那个埃布拉尼[297]拳手的信心。这是一场一决胜负的殊死战。两个人像老虎般猛烈拼搏，观众兴奋不已。裁判员两次警告调皮蛋珀西因搂人犯了规，然而这位宠儿非常灵巧，他那脚技真有看头。双方经过短短几个回合，军人来个猛烈的上手拳，致使对方的嘴巴鲜血淋漓。这时，羔羊抽冷子从正面进攻，一记凶狠的左拳落在好斗的贝内特腹部使他栽了个大马爬。这一击利落痛快地把对方彻底打垮了。在紧张的期待中，当迈勒的助手奥利•弗特斯•韦茨坦[298]把毛巾丢过去的时候，贝洛港的职业拳击家败局已定。桑特里[299]的小伙子被宣判为胜者。观众狂热地喝彩，冲过围栏索，欢喜若狂地将他团团围起。

“他[300]晓得面包的哪一面涂着黄油，”阿尔夫说，“我听说他正在组织一次去北方的巡回演出呢。”

“没错儿，”乔说，“对吧？”

“谁？”布卢姆说，“呃，对。一点儿不假。对，要知道，是一次消夏旅行。不过是去度假罢了。”

“布太太是一颗格外灿烂的明星[301] ，对不？”乔说。

“我内人吗？”布卢姆说，“对，她会去唱的，而且我估计会获得成功。他是一位很好的组织者。挺有本事。”

我对自己说，我说：[302]嗬，原来如此！ 这就明白了椰子壳里为啥有汁液，动物的胸脯上为啥没毛。布莱泽斯轻轻地吹奏笛子。[303]巡回演出。跟布尔人打仗[304]的时候，住在岛桥[305]那一边的骗子手、贪心鬼丹， 把同一群马卖给政府两次。布莱泽斯就是丹的儿子。那老爷子成天把“什么”挂在嘴上。我登门拜访，并且说：“博伊兰先生，我讨济贫费和水费来啦。”“你什么？”“水费，博伊兰先生。”“你什么，什么呀？”听我的劝告吧，那个花花公子早晚会把那个娘儿们组织到手的。这只是我你之间说的私话。怎么，又来了吗？[306]

卡尔普[307]岩山的骄做。特威迪这位头发像乌鸦般油黑的女儿。她在那弥漫着枇杷和杏子芬芳的土地上，出落成一位绝世美女。阿拉梅达诸园[308]熟悉她的脚步声。橄榄园认识她并向她弯腰鞠躬。她就是利奥波德的贞洁配偶，有着一对丰满乳房的玛莉恩。

看哪，奥莫洛伊家族的一名成员[309]走进来了，他面颊白里透红，是位容貌清秀的英雄。他精通法典，任国王陛下的顾问官。跟他一道来的是继承伦巴德家高贵门第的公子和后嗣。[310]

“你好，内德。”

“你好，阿尔夫。”

“你好，杰克。”
“你好，乔。”

“天主保佑你，”“市民”说。

“仁慈地保佑你，”杰•杰说，“喝多少，内德？”

“半下子，”内德说。

于是，杰•杰叫了酒。

“你到法院去过了吗？”乔说。

“去过啦，”杰•杰说，“那档子事他会妥善处理的，内德。”

“但愿如此，”内德说。

眼下这两个人究竟企图干些什么？杰•杰的名字从大陪审团的名单[311]上被勾掉了，另外一位想帮他一把。他的大名刊登在斯塔布斯[312]上。玩纸牌，跟那些戴着时髦的单片眼镜、华而不实的纨袴子弟一道开怀对酌，痛饮香槟酒。其实，传票和扣押令纷至沓来，几乎使他窒息。他赴弗朗西斯街的卡明斯当铺，把金表典当出去。进的是内部办公室，那儿谁都不认得他。当时正碰上我陪着精明鬼到那里去，赎他典当的一双长筒靴子。“先生，你叫什么名字？” “邓恩[313]”他说。“哎，而且这下子完啦[314]，”我说。我寻思，迟早有一天，他会弄得寸步难行。

“你在附近遇到那个该死的疯于布林了吗？”阿尔夫说，“万事休矣，完蛋啦。”

“遇见啦，”杰•杰说，“正在物色一名私人侦探。”

“是啊，”内德说，“他不顾一切地要立即告到法庭上去。不过科尼•凯莱赫说服了他，叫他先请人去鉴定一下笔迹。”

“一万镑，”阿尔夫笑着说，“我不惜一切代价也想听听他在法官和陪审团面前怎样说法。”

“是你干的吗，阿尔夫？”乔说，“请吉米•约翰逊帮助你，说实话，全部是实话，只有实话[315]”

“我？”阿尔夫说，“不要污蔑我的人格。”

“不论你怎样陈述，”乔说，“都会被作为对你不利的证言记录下来。”

“当然喽，这场诉讼是会被受理的，”杰•杰说，“这意味着他并非神经健全[316]）。万事休矣，完蛋啦。”

“你得有一双健全[317]的眼睛！”阿尔夫笑着说，“你不知道他低能吗？瞧瞧他的脑袋。你知道吗，有些早晨他得用鞋拔子才能把帽子戴上去。”

“我知道，”杰•杰说，“倘若你由于公布了某件事而被控以诽谤罪，即使那是确凿的，从法律观点看，还是无可开脱。”

“唔，唔，阿尔夫，”乔说。

“不过，”布卢姆说，“由于那个可怜的女人——我指的是那人的妻子。”

“她是怪可怜的，”“市民”说，“或是任何其他嫁给半调子的女人。”

“怎么个半调子法儿？”布卢姆说，“难道你的意思是说，他……”

“半调子指的是，”“市民”说，“一个非鱼非肉的家伙。”

“更不是一条好样的红鲱鱼，”乔说。

“我就是这个意思，”“市民”说，“邪魔附体，[318]这么说你就能明白了吧。”

我确实看出要惹麻烦来了。布卢姆还在解释说，他指的是由于做老婆的不得不追在那个口吃的老傻瓜后面跑跑颠颠，这太残酷了。 将该死的穷鬼布林撒到野外，几乎能被自己的胡子绊倒。老天爷看了都会哭上一场。 残酷得就跟虐待动物一样。嫁给他之后，她一度得意洋洋，鼻孔朝天，因为她公公的一个堂弟在罗马教廷担任教堂领座人。墙上挂着他的一幅肖像，留着斯马沙尔•斯威尼[ 319] 般的小胡子。这位萨默希尔[320] 出生的布利尼先生[ 321] ，意大利人，[322] 教皇手下的祖亚沃兵，[323] 从码头区搬到莫斯街[3 24]去了。告诉咱，他究竟是个什么人？一个无名小卒，住的是两层楼梯带廊子的后屋，房租每周七先令。然而他全身披挂，向世人进行挑战。

“况且，”杰•杰说，“寄了明信片，就等于把事情公布出去了。 萨德格罗夫对霍尔的判例中，明信片就被认为对怀有恶意[325] 这一点提供了充分的证据。依我看，诉讼是能够成立的。”

请付六先令八便士。[326] 谁也不要听你的意见。咱们消消停停地喝酒吧。妈的，连这一点都挺不容易的。

“喏，为你的健康干杯，杰克，”内德说。

“为健康干杯，”杰•杰说。

“他又出现啦，”乔说。

“在哪儿？”阿尔夫说。

果然，他腋下夹着书，同老婆并肩从门前走过。科尼。凯莱赫也和他们在一起，路过时还翻着白眼朝门里面窥伺，并且想卖给他一副二手货棺材。他说话时口吻严然像个老子。

“加拿大那档子诈骗案[327] 怎样啦？”乔说。

“收审啦，”杰•杰说。

一个叫作詹姆斯•沃特，又名萨菲洛，又名斯帕克与斯皮罗的酒糟鼻联谊会[328] 成员在报纸上登广告说，只消出二十先令，他就售给一张赴加拿大的船票。什么？你以为我容易受骗吗，当然，这是一场该死的骗局。哦？米斯郡的老妈子和乡巴佬[329]啦，跟他同一个联谊会的啦，统统上当了。杰•杰告诉我们， 有个叫扎列兹基还是什么名字的犹大老头儿，戴着帽子[330] 在证人席上哭哭啼啼，他以圣摩西的名字发誓说，自己被骗去两镑。

“这案子是谁审理的？”乔说。

“市记录法官，”内德说。

“可怜的老弗雷德里克爵士[331] ，”阿尔夫说，“你可以让他眼睁睁地受骗上当。”

“他的度量像狮子一般大，”阿尔夫说，“只要向他编一套悲惨的故事，什么拖欠了多少房租啦，老婆生病啦，一大帮孩子啦，管保他就在法官席上泪流满面。”

“可不，”阿尔夫说，“前些日子，当吕便•杰控告那个在巴特桥[332] 附近替公司看守石料的可怜的小个子冈姆利的时候， 他本人没给押到被告席上就算他妈的万幸啦。”

于是，他模仿起年迈的市记录法官的哭哭啼啼的腔调说：

“这简直是再可耻不过了！你是个勤勤恳恳干活的穷人嘛！有几个娃娃？你说的是十个吗？”

“是啊，大老爷。俺娘儿们还害着伤寒病哪。”

“老婆还害着伤寒病！可耻！请你马上退出法庭。不，先生，本法官决不下令要被告付款。先生，你怎么敢到我这里要我勒令他付款！这是个勤劳苦干的穷人呀！本法官拒绝受理。”

牛眼女神月[333] 的十六日，适值神圣不可分的三位一体节日[334] 后的第三周。这时，处女月——苍穹的女儿正当上弦，学识渊博的审判官们恰好来到司法大厅里。助理法官考特尼[335]坐在自己的办公室里发表意见。首席法官安德鲁斯[336] 在不设陪审团的情况下开庭，检验遗嘱。在该遗嘱中，被深切哀悼的已故葡萄酒商雅各布•哈利戴留给了神经不正常的未成年人利文斯通和另一个人各一份动产与不动产。关于[337] 第一债权人对这份呈交上来以供检验其合法性、并最终确定如何予以执行的遗嘱中记载的财产所提出的要求，他正在慎重衡量并深思熟虑。不久，驯鹰者弗雷德里克[338]爵士到格林街这座庄严的法庭上来了。他于五点钟左右人座，以便在都柏林市郡以及所属各地区实施布里恩法律[339]的职权。列席者为由爱阿尔的十二族组成最高评议会，每族限一名。帕特里克族、休族、欧文族、康恩族、奥斯卡族、弗格斯族、芬恩族、德莫特族、科麦克族、凯文族、卡奥尔特族、莪相族[340] ——共计十二名正直而善良的人。他以死在十字架上的上主之名，恳求他们说，要慎重而真实地进行审议，在至高无上的君主——国王陛下与站在法庭上的囚犯之间的诉讼中，做公允的评决，凭着证据，做出正确的判决。他祈求上主庇佑他们，并请他们吻《圣经》。他们这十二名爱阿尔，个个从席位上起立，并以从亘古就存在的上主[341]之名发誓说，他们将为主主持正义。于是，狱卒们立即把严正执法、行动敏捷的侦探们根据密告所逮捕并拘留在主楼里的犯人押出，给他上了手铐脚镣，不准许保释。他们就是要指控他，因为他是个犯罪分子。[342] 

“这些家伙倒也不赖，”“市民”说，“他们大批地涌进爱尔兰，弄得全国都是臭虫。”

布卢姆装作什么也没听见。他和乔攀谈起来，说小小不言的事儿，在下月一号之前不用放在心上。然而要是跟克劳福德先生讲一声就好了。于是，乔指着各路神袛发誓说，打下手的活儿他都包下了。

“因为，你要知道，”布卢姆说，“广告就靠反复登，再也没有旁的诀窍了。”

“交给我办吧，”乔说。

“受骗的是爱尔兰的庄稼汉，”“市民”说，“以及穷人。再也不要放陌生人进咱们家啦。[343]”

“噢，我敢说那样就成了，海因斯，”布卢姆说，“要知道，就是凯斯那档子事儿。”

“你就只当事情已经定下来了就是啦，”乔说。

“谢谢你的好意，”布卢姆说。

“陌生人嘛，”“市民”说，“都怪咱们自己。是咱们放他们进来的，咱们引他们进来的，奸妇和她的姘夫[344] 把萨克森强盗们带到这儿来了。”

“附有条件的离婚判决书[345] ，”杰•杰说。

于是，布卢姆做出一副对酒桶后的角落里那张蜘蛛网——一个毫不起眼的东西——极感兴趣的样子。“市民”从背后满面怒容地瞪着布卢姆，他脚下那只老狗仰头望着他，在打量该咬谁以及什么时候下口。

“一个不守贞操的老婆，”“市民”说，“这就是咱们一切不幸的根源。”

“她就在这儿哪，”正跟特里一道在柜台上对着一份《警察时报》[346] 咯咯笑着的阿尔夫说，“打扮得花里胡哨的。”

“让咱瞧一眼，”我说。

那不过是特里向科尼•凯莱赫借来的美国佬黄色照片中的一张。放大阴部的秘诀。社交界美女的丑闻。芝加哥的一位富有的承包人诺曼•W•塔珀， 发现自己那位漂亮然而不贞的妻子，坐在泰勒军官的腿上。那位穿着灯笼裤的美人儿可不正经，正让情夫抚摩她那痒处呢。诺曼•W•塔琅带着小口径枪蹦进去时，迟了一步， 她刚刚跟泰勒军官干完套环游戏[347]。

“哦，好的，天哪，”乔说，“你的衬衫多短呀！”

“瞧那头发[348] ，乔，”我说，“从那罐头咸牛肉上弄下一截怪味儿的老尾巴尖儿，对不？”

这时，约翰•怀思•诺兰和利内翰进来了，后者的脸耷拉得老长，活像一顿没完没了的早餐。

“喏，”“市民”说，“现场有什么最新消息？关于爱尔兰语，那些锯锅匠们在市政厅召开的秘密会议上都做了什么决定？”

穿戴锃亮铠甲的奥诺兰朝着全爱琳这个位高势大的首领深打一躬，禀明了事情的原委。这座无比忠顺的城市，国内第二大都会的神情肃穆的元老们聚集在索尔塞尔[349] ，照例对天界的神明们祷告一番后，关于该采取何等措施俾能让一衣带水的盖尔族[355]那崇高的语言得以光采地在世间复兴，严肃地进行了审议。

“正进展着哪，”“市民”说，“该死而野蛮的撒克逊佬[ 351] 和他们的土音[352] ，统统都下地狱去吧。”

于是，杰•杰就摆出嘣士派头插嘴说， 光听片面之词可弄不清楚事实的真相，那是照纳尔逊的做法，用瞎了的那只眼睛对着望远镜[353] ，并谈起制定褫夺公权法以弹劾国家[ 354] 。布卢姆尽力支持他，同时讲着做事不可过火， 以免招来麻烦，还说到他们的属地和文明等等。

“你说的是他们的梅毒文明[355] 喽！”“市民”说，“让那跟他们一道下地狱去吧！让那不中用的上帝发出的咒诅， 斜落在那些婊子养的厚耳朵混蛋崽子身上吧，活该！音乐，美术，文学全谈不上，简直没有值得一提的。 他们的任何文明都是从咱们这儿偷去的。鬼模鬼样的私生子那些短舌头的崽子们。”

“欧洲民族，”杰•杰说……

“他们才不是欧洲民族呢，”“市民”说，“我跟巴黎的凯文•伊根一道在欧洲呆过。欧洲虽广，除了在厕所[356] 里，你一点儿也看不到他们或他们的语言的痕迹。”

于是约翰•怀思说：

“多少朵花生得嫣红，怎奈无人知晓。[357] ”

懂得一点外语皮毛的利内翰说：

“打倒英国人！背信弃义的英国！[358] ”

说罢，他就用那双粗壮、结实、强有力的大手，举起一大木杯[359] 正在冒泡的烈性黑色浓啤酒，吆喝着本族口号“红手迎胜利[360] ”， 祈求敌族——那宛若永生的众神一般默然坐在雪花石膏宝座上的刚毅勇猛的英雄们，海洋上的霸主[361] ——彻底毁灭。

“你怎么啦？”我对利内翰说，“你这家伙就像是丢了一先令只找到了一枚六便士硬币似的。”

“金质奖杯，”他说。

“哪匹马赢啦，利内翰先生？”特里说。

“‘丢掉’[362] ，他说，“以二十博一。原是一匹冷门儿马。其余的全不在话下。”[363]

“巴斯那匹母马[364] 呢？”特里说。

“还跑着哪，”他说，“我们统统惨败啦。博伊兰那小子，在我透露消息给他的‘权杖’身上，为他自己和一位女友下了两镑赌注。”

“我也下了半克朗，”特里说，“根据弗林先生出的点子，把赌注下在‘馨香葡萄酒’身上了。那是霍华德•德沃尔登勋爵[365] 的马。”

“以二十博一，”利内翰说。“马房的生活就是如此。‘丢掉，做了让人失望的事[366] ，”他说，“还闲扯些什么拇趾囊肿胀。脆弱啊，你的名字就是‘权杖，[367]”

于是，他走到鲍勃•多兰留下的饼干罐那儿去，瞧瞧能不能捞到点儿什么。那只老杂种狗为了撞撞运气，抬起生满疥癣的大鼻子跟在后面。所谓“老嬷嬷哈伯德，走向食橱”[368]。

“这儿没有哩，我的乖，”他说。

“打起精神来，”乔说，“要是没有另外那匹劣马，它原是会赢的嘛。”

杰•杰和“市民”就法律和历史争论起来，布卢姆也不时地插进一些妙论。

“有些人，”布卢姆说，“只看见旁人眼中的木屑，却不管自己眼中的大梁。”[369]

“胡说，”，“市民”说，“再也没有比视而不见的人更盲目的了——也不知道你懂不懂得我的意思。咱们这里本来应该有两千万爱尔兰人，如今却只有四百万。咱们失去了的部族都哪儿去啦？[370]还有咱们那全世界最美的陶器和纺织品！ 还有尤维纳利斯[371]那个时代在罗马出售的咱们的羊毛， 咱们的亚麻布和那在安特里姆的织布机织出来的花锻，以及咱们的利默里克花边[372]呢？ 咱们的鞣皮厂和远处的巴利布[373]附近所生产的白色火石玻璃呢？ 打从里昂的雅克以来咱们就拥有的胡格诺府绸[374]，咱们的丝织品，咱们的福克斯福特花呢[375]， 新罗斯的加尔默罗隐修院所生产的举世无双的象牙针绣[376]呢？当年， 希腊商人从赫刺克勒斯的两根柱子[377]——也就是如今已被人类公敌霸占了的直布罗陀—— 之间穿行前来，以便在韦克斯福德的卡曼集市上出售他们带来的黄金和推罗紫[378]， 如今安在？读读塔西佗[379]、托勒密[380]，以至吉拉德斯•卡姆布伦希斯[381]吧。 葡萄酒、皮货、康尼马拉大理石[382]、蒂珀雷里所产上好银子[383]。咱们那至今远近驰名的骏马——爱尔兰小马。西班牙的菲利普， 为了取得在咱们领海上的捕渔权，还提出要付关税。[384]在咱们的贸易和家园毁于一旦这一点上， 那些卑鄙的英国佬们欠下了咱们多大的一笔债啊！他们不肯把巴罗河和香农河[385] 的河床挖深，以致好几百万英亩良田都成为沼泽和泥炭地，足以害得咱们大家全部死于肺病。”

“咱们这儿很快就会像葡萄牙那样，连棵树都没有啦，”约翰•怀思说，“或者像黑尔戈兰[386] 那样，只剩下一棵树，除非采取措施来重新植树造林。落叶松啦，冷杉啦，所有的针叶树正在迅速走向毁灭。我读卡斯尔顿勋爵的报告书[387] 来着……”

“救救这些树木吧，”“市民”说，“戈尔韦的巨梣[388] ，以及那棵树干有四十英尺、枝叶茂盛达一英亩的基尔代尔首领榆。啊，为了爱利那秀丽山丘[389] 上的未来的爱尔兰人，救救爱尔兰的树木吧。”

“整个欧洲都在盯着你哪，”利内翰说。

今天下午，众多[390] 国际社交界人士莅临参加爱尔兰国民林务员的高级林务主任琼•怀斯•德诺兰[391] 骑士与松谷的冷杉•针叶树[392]小姐的婚礼， 给爱尔兰增添了光采。贵宾有：西尔威斯特[393]•榆荫夫人、芭芭拉•爱桦太太、 波尔•梣[394] 太太、冬青•榛眼太太[395] 、瑞香•月桂树小姐、多萝西。竹丛小姐、克莱德•十二棵树太太、山揪•格林[396] 太太、海伦•藤蔓生[397] 太太、五叶地锦[ 398] 小姐、格拉迪斯•毕奇小姐[399] 、橄榄•花园小姐、白枫[400]小姐、莫德•红木小姐、迈拉•常春花小姐、 普丽西拉•接骨木花小姐、[401]蜜蜂•忍冬[402]小姐、格蕾丝•白杨小姐、哦•含羞草小姐[403]、蕾切尔•雪松叶[404]小姐、莉莲和薇奥拉•丁香花[405]小姐、羞怯•白杨奥尔[406]小姐、基蒂•杜威一莫斯[407]小姐、五月•山楂[408]小姐、格罗丽亚娜•帕默[409]太太、 莉亚娜•福雷斯特[410]太太、阿拉贝拉[411]•金合欢太太以及奥克霍姆•里吉斯的诺马•圣栎[412]。新娘由她父亲格兰的麦克针叶树[413]挽臂送到新郎跟前。她穿着款式新颖的绿丝光绸长衫，跟里面那件素淡的灰衬衣一样可身。腰系翠绿宽饰带，下摆上镶着颜色更浓郁的三道荷叶边。在这样的底色上，衬托以近似橡子的褐色吊带和臀饰。看上去无比姣好。两位伴娘落叶松•针叶树和云杉•针叶树是新娘的妹妹，穿戴着同一色调非常得体的服饰。 褶子上用极细的线条绣出图案[414]精巧的羽毛状玫瑰。翡翠色的无檐女帽上，也别出心裁地插着淡珊瑚色苍鹭羽毛，与之配衬。 恩里克•弗洛先生[415]以遐迩闻名的技艺奏起风琴：除了婚礼弥撤中所规定的一些乐章外， 仪式结束后还奏了一支动人心弦的新曲调《伐木者，莫砍那棵树》[416]。接受了教皇的祝福[417]，临离开庭园内的圣菲亚克[418]教堂时，人们开玩笑地将榛子、椈子、月桂叶、柳絮、繁茂的常春藤叶、冬青果、檞寄生小枝和花揪的嫩条像密集的炮火一般撒在这对幸福的新人身上。怀恩•针叶树•诺兰先生和夫人将到黑森林里去度幽静的蜜月。[419] 

“然而，咱们用眼睛盯着欧洲，”“市民”说，“那些杂种还没呱呱落地之前，咱们就跟西班牙人、法国人和佛兰芒人搞起贸易来了[420]。戈尔韦有了西班牙浓啤酒，葡萄紫的大海[421] 上泊满了运酒船。”

“还会那样的，”乔说。

“在天主圣母的帮助下，咱们会振作起来的，”“市民”拍着他的大腿说，“咱们那些空空荡荡的港口又会变得满满当当。王后镇，金塞尔，黑草地湾，凯里王国的文特里[422] 。还有基利贝格斯。那是广阔世界上第三大港[423] ， 当年德斯蒙德伯爵能够和查理五世皇帝本人直接签订条约[424] 的时候，从港内一眼可以望到戈尔韦的林奇家、卡文的奥赖利家以及都柏林的奥肯尼迪家[425] 那足有一个舰队那么多的桅杆。还会振作起来的，”他说，“到那时， 咱们将会看到第一艘爱尔兰军舰乘风破浪而来，舰头飘着咱们自己的旗子。才不是你亨利•都铎的竖琴[426] 呢。绝不是，那是在船上挂过的最古老的旗子，德斯蒙德和索门德省的旗子， 蓝地上三个王冠、米列修斯[ 427] 的三个儿子。”

于是，他把杯中剩下的一饮而尽。倒挺像那么回事儿的[428] 。 犹如制革厂的猫似的又是放屁又是撤尿[ 429 ] 。康诺特的母牛犄角长。[430] 尽管他势头这么冲，狗命要紧，他才不会到沙那戈尔登[ 431] 去向聚集的群众吹牛呢。由于他抢夺了退租的佃户的家当[432]，摩莉•马奎斯们[433] 正在寻找他，要在他身上戳个洞，弄得他简直不敢在那儿露面。

“听，听这套话，”约翰•怀思说，“你喝点儿啥？”

“来杯‘帝国义勇骑兵’[434] ，”利内翰说，“庆祝一番嘛。”

“半下子，特里，”约翰•怀思说，“再要一瓶‘举手’[ 435] 。特里！你睡着了吗？”

“好的，先生，”特里说，“小杯威士忌，还要一瓶奥尔索普。好的。先生。”

不去服侍公众，却寻求下流的刺激，跟阿尔夫一道读那该死的报纸来过瘾。一幅是顶头比赛，低下脑袋，就像公牛撞门似的相互撞去，要撞得使该死的对方开瓢儿。另一幅是《黑兽被焚烧于佐治亚奥马哈》[436]：一大群歪戴帽子的戴德伍德•迪克[437]朝吊在树上的黑鬼[438]开火。他伸出舌头，身子底下燃着篝火。让他坐完电椅并将他钉在十字架上之后，还应该把他丢到大海里。 这样才有把握置他于死地。

“关于善战的海军，你怎么看？”内德说，“它阻止了敌人前进[439]。”

“你听我说，”“市民”说，“那是座人间地狱。你去读读几家报纸关于朴次茅斯的练习舰上滥施苔刑所做的那些揭露吧。是个自称感到厌恶[440] 的人写的。”

于是，他开始对我们讲起体罚啦，舰上那些排成一列头戴三角帽的水手、军官、海军少将啦，以及那位手持新教《圣经》为这场刑罚作证的牧师啦。还谈到一个年轻小伙子被押上来，嚎叫着“妈！”他们把他捆绑在大炮的后座上。

“臀部着十二杖，”“市民”说，“这是老恶棍约翰•贝雷斯福德[441] 爵士的喊法。然而，现代化的上帝的英国人喊鞭打屁股。”

约翰•怀思说：

“这种习俗还不如把它破坏了，倒比遵守它还体面些。”[442]

然后他告诉我们，纠察长手里拿着一根长长的笞杖走了过来，抡起它，对准可怜的小伙子的后屁股就狠抽一通，直到他喊出一千声[443] “杀人啦！”

“这就是你们那称霸世界的光荣的英国海军，”“市民”说，“这些永远不做奴隶的人们[444] 有着天主的地球上唯一世袭的议院[445] ，国上掌握在一打赌徒和装腔作势的贵族手里。这就是他们所夸耀的那个苦役和被鞭打的农奴的伟大帝国。”

“在那上面，太阳是永远不升的，”[446]乔说。

“悲剧在于，”“市民”说，“他们相信这个。那些不幸的雅胡[447]们相信这个。”

他们相信笞杖：全能的惩罚者——人间地狱的创造者；亦信大炮之子水手；他因邪恶的夸耀降孕，生于好战的海军。其臀部着十二杖，供作牺牲，活剥皮，制成革，鬼哭狼嚎，犹如该死的地狱。第三日自床上爬起，驶进港口，坐于船梁末端，等待下一道命令，以便为糊口而做苦役，关一份饷。[448] 

“可是，”布卢姆说，“走遍天下，惩罚不都是一样的吗？我的意思是，要是你们以暴力对抗暴力，在这儿[449] 不也一样吗？”

我不是告诉你了吗？就像我此刻饮着道啤酒那样真确，即使在他弥留之际，他也会试图让你相信，死去就是活着。

“我们将以暴力对抗暴力，”“市民”说， “在大洋彼岸，我们有更大的爱尔兰[450] 。在黑色的四七年[451] ， 他们被赶出了家园。他们的土屋和路旁那些牧羊窝棚被大槌砸坍后， 《泰晤士报》搓着双手告诉那些胆小鬼萨克逊人说： 爱尔兰的爱尔兰人很快就会减到像美国的红皮肤人那么稀少。[452] 甚至连土耳其大公都送来他的比塞塔[453] 。然而撤克逊的混蛋们处心积虑地要把本国老百姓饿死。 当时遍地都是粮食，贪婪的英国人买下来，卖到里约热内卢去。[454] 哎， 他们把庄稼人成群地赶出去。两万名死在棺材船[455] 里。然而抵达自由国土[456] 的人们，对那片被奴役之地[457] 记忆犹新。他们会怀着报复之心回来的。他们不是胆小鬼，而是葛拉纽爱尔[458] 的儿子们，豁牙子凯思林[459] 的斗士们。”

“千真万确，”布卢姆说，“然而，我指的是……”

“我们盼望已久了，‘市民’，”内德说，“打从那个可怜的穷老太太告诉我们法国人在海上，并且在基拉拉上了岸的那一天起。”[460]

“哎，”约翰•怀思说，“我们为斯图尔特王室战斗过，他们却在威廉那一派面前变了节，背叛了我们。[461] 记住利默里克和那块记载着被撕毁了的条约的石头。[462] 我们那些‘野鹅，为法国和西班牙流尽了最宝贵的血。[463] 丰特努瓦[464] 怎么样？还有萨斯菲尔德[465] 和西班牙的得土安公爵奥唐奈，[466] 以及做过玛丽亚•特蕾莎的陆军元帅的、卡穆的尤利西斯•布朗[467] 。可我们究竟得到了什么？”

“法国人！”“市民”说，“不过是一帮教跳舞的！你晓得那是什么玩艺儿吗？对爱尔兰来说，他们从来连个屁也不值。眼下他们不是正试图在泰•佩[468] 的晚餐会上跟背信弃义的英国达成真诚的谅解[469] 吗？他们从来就是欧洲的纵火犯。”

“打倒法国人！”[470]利内翰边啜啤酒边说。

“还有普鲁士王室和汉诺威王室那帮家伙，”乔说，“从汉诺威选侯乔治到那个日耳曼小伙子以及那个已故自负的老婊子[471]， 难道坐到咱们王位上吃香肠的私生子还少了吗？”

天哪，听他描述那个戴遮眼罩的老家伙的事，我不禁笑出声来。老维克每晚在皇宫里大杯大杯地喝苏格兰威士忌酒，灌得烂醉。她的车夫[472] 把她整个儿抱起，往床上一滚。她一把抓住他的络腮胡子，为他唱起《莱茵河畔的埃伦》[473] 和《到酒更便宜的地方去》[474]中她所熟悉的片段。

“喏，”杰•杰说，“如今和平缔造者爱德华[475] 上了台。”

“那是讲给傻瓜听的，”“市民”说，“那位花花公子所缔造的该死的梅毒倒比和平来得多些。爱德华•圭尔夫- 韦亭！”[476]

“你们怎么看，”乔说，“教会里的那帮家伙——爱尔兰的神父主教们，竟然把他在梅努斯[477] 下榻的那间屋子涂成魔鬼陛下的骑装的颜色，还将他那些骑师们骑过的马匹的照片统统贴在那里。而且连都柏林伯爵[478] 的照片也在内。”

“他们还应该把他本人骑过的女人的照片统统贴上去，”小阿尔夫说。

于是，杰•杰说：

“考虑到地方不够，那些大人们拿不定主意。”

“想再来一杯吗，‘市民’？”乔说。

“好的，先生，”他说，“来吧。”

“你呢？”乔说。

“多谢啦，乔，”我说，“但愿你的影子永远不会淡下去。”[479]

“照原样儿再开一剂，”乔说。

布卢姆和约翰•怀思一个劲儿地聊，兴奋得脸上泛着暗灰褐泥色，一双熟透了的李子般的眼睛滴溜溜直转。

“那叫作迫害，”他说，“世界历史上充满了这种迫害，使各民族之间永远存在仇恨。”

“可你晓得什么叫作民族吗？”约翰•怀思说。

“晓得，”布卢姆说。

“它是什么？”约翰•怀思说。

“民族？”布卢姆说，“民族指的就是同一批人住在同一个地方。”

“天哪，那么，”内德笑道，“要是这样的话，我就是一个民族了。因为过去五年来，我一直住在同一个地方。”

这样，大家当然嘲笑了布卢姆一通。他试图摆脱困境，就说: 

“另外也指住在不同地方的人。”

“我的情况就属于这一种，”乔说。

“请问你是哪个民族的？”“市民”问。

“爱尔兰，”布卢姆说，“我是生在这儿的。爱尔兰。”

“市民”什么也没说，只从喉咙里清出一口痰；而且，好家伙，嗖的一下吐到屋角去的竟是一只红沙洲餐厅的牡蛎[480]。

“我随大溜儿，乔。”他说着掏出手绢，把嘴边揩干。

“喏，‘市民’，”乔说，“用右手拿着它，跟着我重复下面这段话。”

这时，极为珍贵、精心刺绣的古代爱尔兰面中被小心翼翼地取出来，使观者赞赏不已。据传它出自《巴利莫特书》[481] 的著者德罗马的所罗门和马努斯之手，是在托马尔塔赤•麦克多诺格家完成的。至于堪称艺术顶峰的四个角落的旷世之美，就毋庸赘述了。观者足以清清楚楚地辨认出，四部福音书的作者分别向四位大师[482] 赠送福音的象征：一根用泥炭栎木制成的权杖，一头北美洲狮（附带说一句， 它是比英国所产高贵得多的百兽之王），一头凯里小牛以及一只卡朗突奥山[483] 的金鹰。绣在排泄面上的图像，显示出我们的古代山寨、土寨、环列巨石柱群、 古堡的日光间[484]、寺院和咒石堆[485] 。古老的巴米塞德时代[486] 斯莱戈那些书册装饰家们奔放地发挥艺术幻想所描绘的景物还是那样奇妙绚丽，色彩也是那么柔和。二湖谷，基拉尼那些可爱的湖泊，克朗麦克诺伊斯[487] 的废墟，康大寺院，衣纳格峡谷和十二山丘，爱尔兰之眼[ 488] ，塔拉特的绿色丘陵， 克罗阿•帕特里克山[489] ，阿瑟•吉尼斯父子（股份有限）公司的酿酒厂，拉夫•尼格湖畔，奥沃卡峡谷[490] ，伊索德塔，玛帕斯方尖塔[491] ，圣帕特里克•邓恩爵士医院[492] ，克利尔岬角，阿赫尔罗峡谷[493] ，林奇城堡，苏格兰屋， 拉夫林斯顿的拉思唐联合贫民习艺所[494] ，图拉莫尔监狱，卡斯尔克尼尔瀑布，[495]市镇树林约翰之子教堂[496] ，莫纳斯特尔勃衣斯的十字架，朱里饭店，圣帕特里克的炼狱，[497] 鲑鱼飞跃，梅努斯学院饭厅，柯利洞穴，[ 498] 第一任威灵顿公爵的三个诞生地，卡舍尔岩石，[499] 艾伦沼泽，亨利街批发庄，芬戈尔洞[500]——所有这一切动人的[501]情景今天依然为我们而存在。历经忧伤之流的冲刷， 以及随着时光的推移逐渐形成的丰富积累，使它们越发绮丽多姿了。

“把酒递过来。”我说，“哪一杯是哪个的？”

“这是我的，”乔就像魔鬼跟一命呜呼的警察说话那样斩钉截铁他说。

“我还属于一个被仇视、受迫害的民族，”布卢姆说，“现在也是这样。就在此刻。这一瞬间。”

嘿，那陈旧的雪前烟蒂差点儿烧了他的手指。

“被盗劫，”他说，“被掠夺。受凌辱。被迫害。把根据正当权力属于我们的财产拿走。就在此刻，”他伸出拳头来说， “还在摩洛哥[502]当作奴隶或牲畜那么地被拍卖。”

“你谈的是新耶路撒冷[503]吗？”“市民”说。

“我谈的是不公正，”布卢姆说。

“知道了，”约翰•怀思说，“那么，有种的就站起来，用暴力来对抗好啦。”

就像是印在月份牌上的一幅图画似的。不啻是个软头子弹的活靶子。一张老迈、满是脂肪的脸蛋儿迎着那执行职务的枪口扬起来， 嘿，只要系上一条保姆的围裙，他最适宜配上一把扫帚了，然后他就会蓦地垮下来，转过身，把脊背掉向敌人，软瘫如一块湿抹布。

“然而这什么用也没有，”他说，“暴力，仇恨，历史，所有这一切。对男人和女人来说，侮辱和仇恨并不是生命。每一个人都晓得真正的生命同那是恰恰相反的。”

“那么是什么呢？”阿尔夫说。

“是爱，”布卢姆说。“我指的是恨的反面。现在我得走啦，”他对约翰•怀思说，“我要到法院去看看马丁在不在那儿。要是他来了，告诉他我马上就回来。只去一会儿。”

谁也没拦住你呀！他宛如注了油的闪电，一溜烟儿就跑掉了。

“来到异邦人当中的新使徒，”“市民”说，“普遍的爱。”

“喏，”约翰•怀思说，“还不就是咱们听过的吗：‘要爱你的邻居’。[504]”

“那家伙吗？”“市民”说，“他的座右铭是：‘抢光我的邻居。’[505]好个爱[506]！他倒是罗密欧与朱丽叶的好模子。”

爱情思恋着去爱慕爱情。[507]护士爱新来的药剂师。甲十四号警察爱玛丽•凯里。格蒂•麦克道维尔爱那个有辆自行车的男孩子。摩•布爱一位金发绅士。 礼记汉爱吻茶蒲州[508]。大象江勃爱大象艾丽思[509]。 耳朵上装了号筒[509]的弗斯科伊尔老先生爱长了一双斗鸡眼的弗斯科伊尔老太太。 身穿棕色胶布雨衣的人爱一位已故的夫人。[511]国王陛下爱女王陛下。 诺曼•w•塔珀大太爱泰勒军官。你爱某人，而这个人又爱另一个人。每个人都爱某一个人，但是天主爱所有的人。

“喏，乔，”我说，“为了你的健康和歌儿，再来杯鲍尔威士忌，‘市民’。”

“好哇，来吧，”乔说。

“天主、玛利亚和帕特里克祝福你，”“市民”说。

于是，他举起那一品脱酒，把胡子都沾湿了。

“我们晓得那些伪善者[512] ，”他说，“一面讲道，一面摸你的包。假虔诚的克伦威尔和他的‘铁甲军，怎么样呢？在德罗赫达他们一面残杀妇孺，[513] 一面又把《圣经》里的‘上帝是爱，这句话贴在炮口上。《圣经》！ 你读没读今天的《爱尔兰人联合报》上关于正在访问英国的祖鲁酋长那篇讽刺文章？”[ 514] 

“谈了些什么？”乔说。

于是，“市民”掏出一张他随身携带的报纸朗读起来：

“昨日曼彻斯特棉纱业巨头一行， 在金杖侍卫沃尔克普•翁•埃各斯”[515]的沃尔克普勋爵陪同下，前往谒见阿贝库塔的阿拉基[516]陛下， 并为在陛下之领土上对英国商贾所提供之便利，致以衷心谢悃。代表团与陛下共进午餐。 此皮肤微黑之君主于午宴即将结束时，发表愉快的演说，由英国牧师、 可敬的亚拿尼亚•普列斯夏德•贝尔本[517]流畅地译出。陛下对沃尔克普先生[518]深表谢忱。强调阿贝库塔与大英帝国之间的友好关系，并谓承蒙白人女酋长、 伟大而具男子气概之维多利亚女王馈赠插图本《圣经》，彼将珍藏，视为至宝。 书中载有神之宝训以及英国伟大的奥秘，并亲手题以献辞。[519] 随后， 阿拉基高举爱杯（系用卡卡察卡察克王朝先王、绰号四十瘊子之头盖骨做成），痛饮浓烈之‘黑与白’威士忌。[ 520] 然后前往棉都[521] 各主要工厂访问，并在来宾留言簿上签名。最后， 以贵宾表演婀娜多姿之古代阿贝库塔出征舞收尾，其间，舞者当众吞下刀叉数把， 博得少女之狂热喝彩。”

“孀居女人，”内德说，“她干得出来。我倒想知道她会不会给它派上跟我一样的用场[ 522] 。”

“岂止一样，用的次数还更多哩，”利内翰说，“自那以后，在那片丰饶的土地上，宽叶芒果一直长得非常茂盛。”

“这是格里菲思写的吗？”约翰，怀思说。

“不是，”“市民”说，“署名不是尚戛纳霍。只有P这么个首字。”[523]

“这个首字很好哩，”乔说。

“都是这么进行的，”“市民”说，“贸易总是跟在国旗后边。”

“喏，”杰•杰说，“只要他们比刚果自由邦的比利时人再坏一点儿，他们就准是坏人。你读过那个人的报告了吗，他叫什么来着？”

“凯斯门特[524]，”“市民”说，“是个爱尔兰人。”

“对，就是他，”杰•杰说，“强奸妇女和姑娘们，鞭打土著的肚皮，尽量从他们那里榨取红橡胶。”

“我知道他到哪儿去了，”利内翰用手指打着榧子说。

“谁？”我说。

“布卢姆，”他说，“法院不过是个遮掩。他在‘丢掉，身上下了几先令的赌注，这会子收他那几个钱去啦。”

“那个白眼卡菲尔吗[525] ？”“市民”说，“他可一辈子从来也没下狠心在马身上赌过。”

“他正是到那儿去啦，”利内翰说，“我碰见了正要往那匹马身上下赌注的班塔姆•莱昂斯。我就劝阻他，他告诉我说是布卢姆给他出的点子。下五先令赌注，管保他会赚上一百先令。全都柏林他是唯一这么做的人。一匹‘黑马，。”

“他自己就是一匹该死的‘黑马’，”乔说。

“喂，乔，”我说，“告诉咱出口在哪儿？”

“就在那儿，”特里说。

再见吧，爱尔兰，我要到戈尔特去。[ 526] 于是，我绕到后院去撒尿。 他妈的（五先令赢回了一百），一边排泄（“丢掉”，以二十博一），卸下重担， 一边对自己说：我晓得他心里（乔请的一品脱酒钱有了，在斯莱特里[527] 喝的一品脱也有了），他心里不安，想转移目标溜掉（一百先令就是五镑哩）。精明鬼伯克告诉我， 当他们在（“黑马”）家赌纸牌的时候，他也假装孩子生病啦（嘿，准足足撤了约莫一加仑）。那个屁股松垮的老婆从楼上通过管道传话说：“她好一点儿啦”或是：“她……”（噢！）其实，这都是花招：要是他赌赢了一大笔，就可以揣着赢头溜之乎也。（哎呀，憋了这么一大泡！）无执照营业。（噢！）他说什么爱尔兰是我的民族。（呜！哎呀！）千万别接近那些该死的（完啦）耶路撒冷（啊！）杜鹃们。[528] 

当我好歹回去时，他们正吵得不亦乐乎。约翰•怀思说，正是布卢姆给格里菲思出了个新芬党的主意，让他在自己那份报纸上出各种各样的褐子：什么任意改划选区以谋取私利啦，买通陪审团啦，偷税漏税啦，往世界各地派领事以便兜售爱尔兰工业品啦。反正是抢了彼得再给保罗。呸，要是那双又老又脏的眼睛有意拆我们的台，那就他妈的彻底告吹啦，他妈的给咱个机会吧。天主，把爱尔兰从那帮该死的耗子般的家伙手里拯救出来吧。喜欢抬杠的布卢姆先生，还有上一代那个老诈骗师，老玛土撒拉[ 529]•布卢姆，巧取豪夺的行商。他那些骗钱货和假钻石把全国都坑遍了，然后服上一剂氢氰酸[530] 自杀了事。凭邮贷款，条件优厚。亲笔借据，金额不限。遐迩不拘。无需抵押。嘿，他就像是兰蒂•麦克黑尔的山羊[ 531] ，乐意跟任何人结为旅伴。

“喏，反正是事实，”约翰•怀思说，“刚好来了一个能够告诉你们详细情况的人——马丁•坎宁翰。”

果然城堡的马车赶过来了，马丁和杰克•鲍尔坐在上面，还有个姓克罗夫特尔或克罗夫顿[532] 的橙带党人，他在关税局长那里领着津贴，又在布莱克本那儿登了记，也关着一份饷，还用国王的费用游遍全国。此人也许姓克劳福德。

我们的旅客们抵达了这座乡村客栈，纵身跳下坐骑。[ 533] 

“来呀，小崽子！”这一行人中一个首领模样的汉子大吼道，“鲁莽小厮！伺候！”

他边说边用刀柄大声敲打敞着的格子窗。

店家披上粗呢宽外衣，应声而出。

“各位老爷们，晚上好，”他低三下四地深打一躬说。

“别磨磨蹭蹭的，老头儿！”方才敲打的那人嚷道，“仔细照料我们的马匹。把店里好饭好菜赶紧给我们端来。因为大家饿得很哪。”

“大老爷们，这可如何是好！”店家说，“小店食品仓里空空的，也不知该给各位官人吃点啥好。”

“咋的，这厮？”来客中又一人嚷道。此人倒还和颜悦色，“塔普同掌柜，难道你就如此怠慢国王差来的御使吗？”

店家闻听此言，神色顿改。

“请各位老爷们宽恕，”他恭顺他说，“老爷们既是国王差来的御使（天主保佑国王陛下！）那就悉听吩咐。敢向御使诸公保证，（天主祝福国王陛下！）既蒙光临小店，就决不会让各位饿着肚子走。”

“那就赶快！”一位迄未做声而看来食欲颇旺的来客大声叫道，“有啥可给我们吃的？”

老板又深打一躬，回答说：

“现在开几样菜码，请老爷们酌定。油酥面雏鸽馅饼，薄鹿肉片，小牛里脊，配上酥脆熏猪肉的赤颈鬼，配上阿月浑子籽儿的公猪头肉；一盘令人赏心悦目的乳蛋糕，配上欧楂的艾菊，再来一壶陈莱茵白葡萄酒，不知老爷们意下如何？”

“嘿嘿！”最后开口的那人大声说，“能这么就满意了。来点阿月浑子籽儿还差不多。”

“啊哈！”那位神情愉快的人叫唤道，“还说什么小店食品仓里空空的哩！好个逗乐的骗子！”[534]

这时马丁走了进来，打听布卢姆到哪儿去了。

“他哪儿去啦？”利内翰说，“欺诈孤儿寡妇去啦。”

“关于布卢姆和新芬党，”约翰•怀思说，“我告诉‘市民’的那档子事儿不是真的吗？”

“是真的，”马丁说，“至少他们都斩钉截铁地这么说。”

“是谁这么断定的？”阿尔夫说。

“是我，”乔说，“我像鳄鱼一样一口咬定了。”

“无论怎么说，”约翰•怀思说，“犹太人为什么就不能像旁人那样爱自己的国家呢？”

“没什么不能爱的，”杰•杰说，“可得弄准了自己国家是哪一个。”

“他究竟是犹太人还是非犹太人呢？究竟是神圣罗马，还是襁褓儿[535]，或是什么玩艺儿呢？”内德说，“他究竟是谁呢？我无意惹你生气，克罗夫顿。”

“朱尼厄斯[536] 是何许人？”杰•杰说。

“我们才不要他呢，”橙带党人或长老会教友克罗夫特尔说。

“他是个脾气乖张的犹太人，”马丁说，“是从匈牙利什么地方来的。就是他，按照匈牙利制度拟定了所有那些计划。[537]我们城堡当局对此都一清二楚。”

“他不是牙医布卢姆的堂兄弟[538]吗？”杰克•鲍尔说。

“根本不是，”马丁说，“不过是同姓而已。他原来姓维拉格[ 539] ，是他那个服毒自杀的父亲的姓。他父亲凭着一纸单独盖章的证书就把姓改了。”

“这正是爱尔兰的新救世主！”“市民”说，“圣者和贤人的岛屿[540] ！”

“喏，他们至今还在等待着救世主，”马丁说，“就这一点而论，咱们何尝不是这样。”

“是呀，”杰•杰说，“每生一个男孩儿，他们就认为那可能是他们的弥赛亚[541] 。而且我相信，每一个犹太人都总是处于高度亢奋状态，直到他晓得那是个父亲还是母亲[ 542] 。”

“每一分钟都在企盼着，以为这一回该是了，”利内翰说。

“哦，天哪，”内德说，“真应该让你瞧瞧他那个夭折了的儿子出生之前布卢姆那副神态。早在他老婆分娩六星期之前的一天，我就在南边的公共市场碰见他在购买尼夫罐头食品[ 543] 了。”

“它已经在母亲的肚子里了，”[544]杰•杰说。

“你们还能管他叫作男人吗？”“市民”说。

“我怀疑他可曾把它搁进去过，”“市民”说。

“喏，反正已经养了两个娃娃啦，”杰克•鲍尔说。

“他猜疑谁呢？”[545] “市民”说。

嘿，笑话里包含着不少实话。他就是个两性掺在一起的中性人。精明鬼告诉过我，住在旅馆里的时候，每个月他都患一次头疼，就像女孩子来月经似的。你晓得我在跟你说什么吗？要是把这么个家伙抓住，丢到该死的大海里，倒不失为天主的作为呢！那将是正当的杀人。身上有五镑，然后却连一品脱的酒钱也不付就溜掉了，简直丢尽男子汉的脸。祝福我们吧。可也别让我们盲目起来。

“对邻居要宽厚，”马丁说，“可是他在哪儿？咱们不能再等下去啦。”

“披着羊皮的狼，”“市民”说，“这就是他。从匈牙利来的维拉格！我管他叫作亚哈随鲁[546] 。受到天主的咒诅。”

“你能抽空儿很快地喝上一杯吗，马丁？”内德说。

“只能喝一杯，”马丁说，“我们不能耽误。我要‘约•詹’[547] 和S。”

“杰克，你呢？克罗夫顿呢？要三杯半品脱的，特里。”

“在听任那帮家玷污了咱们的海岸之后，”“市民”说，“圣帕特里克恨不得再在巴利金拉尔[548] 登一次陆，好让咱们改邪归正。”

“喏，”马丁边敲打桌子催促他那杯酒边说，“天主祝福所有在场的人——这就是我的祷告。”

“啊们，”“市民”说。

“而且我相信上主会倾听你的祷告，”乔说。

随着圣餐铃的丁零声[549] ，由捧持十字架者领先，辅祭、提香炉的、捧香盒的、诵经的、司阍、执事、副执事以及被祝福的一行人走了过来。 这边是头戴主教冠的大修道院院长、小修道院院长、方济各会修道院院长、修士、托钵修士； 斯波莱托[550] 的本笃会修士、加尔都西会和卡马尔多利会的修士、[551] 西多会和奥利维坦会的修士、[ 552] 奥拉托利会和瓦隆布罗萨会的修士[553] ， 以及奥古斯丁会修士、布里吉特会修女[554] ；普雷蒙特雷修会、圣仆会[555] 和圣三一赎奴会修士，彼得•诺拉斯科的孩子们[556] ；还有先知以利亚的孩子们也在主教艾伯特和阿维拉的德肋撒的引导下从加尔默山下来了，穿鞋的和另一派[557] ；褐衣和灰衣托钵修士们，安贫方济各的儿子们[558] ；嘉布遣会[559] 修士们， 科德利埃会修士们，小兄弟会修士们和遵规派修士们[560] ；克拉蕾的女儿们[ 561] ， 还有多明我会的儿子们，托钵传教士们，以及遣使会[562] 的儿子们。 再就是圣沃尔斯坦[563] 的修士们，依纳爵的弟子们[564] ，以及可敬的在俗修士埃德蒙•依纳爵•赖斯率领下的圣教学校兄弟会会员们[565]。 随后来的是所有那些圣徒和殉教者们，童贞修女们和忏悔师们。包括圣西尔、圣伊西多勒•阿拉托尔[566] 、 圣小詹姆斯[567]、锡诺普的圣佛卡斯、殷勤的圣朱利安、圣菲利克斯•德坎塔里斯[568]、 柱头修士圣西门、第一个殉教者圣斯蒂芬、天主的圣约翰、[569]、圣费雷欧尔、圣勒加德、圣西奥多图斯、[570] 圣沃尔玛尔、圣理查、 圣味增爵•德保罗[571] 、托迪的圣马丁、图尔的圣马丁[ 572] 、圣阿尔弗烈德、圣约瑟[573] 、圣但尼、圣科尔内留斯、圣利奥波德[ 574] 、圣伯尔纳、圣特伦斯、圣爱德华[575] 、圣欧文•卡尼库鲁斯[ 576] 、圣匿名、圣祖名、圣伪名、圣同名、圣同语源、 圣同义语、圣劳伦斯•奥图尔、丁格尔和科穆帕斯帖拉的圣詹姆斯[577] 、圣科拉姆西尔和圣科伦巴、圣切莱斯廷[578] 、圣科尔曼[579] 、 圣凯文[580] 、圣布伦丹、 圣弗里吉迪安、圣瑟南[581] 、圣法契特纳、圣高隆班、圣加尔、圣弗尔萨[582]、圣芬坦、圣菲亚克、圣约翰•内波玛克、圣托马斯•阿奎那[ 583]、不列塔尼的圣艾夫斯、圣麦昌、圣赫尔曼- 约瑟[584] 、 三个圣青年的主保圣人——圣阿洛伊苏斯•贡萨加、圣斯坦尼斯劳斯•科斯塔卡、圣约翰•勃赤曼斯[585] 、热尔瓦修斯、瑟瓦修斯、博尼费斯[586]等圣徒、圣女布赖德、圣基兰、基尔肯尼的圣卡尼克[587] 、蒂尤厄姆的圣贾拉斯、圣芬巴尔、巴利曼的圣帕平[588] 、 阿洛伊修斯•帕西费 库斯修士、路易斯•贝利克苏斯修士[589] 、利马和维泰博的二位圣女萝丝[590]、伯大尼的圣女玛莎、埃及的圣女玛丽、圣女露西、圣女布里奇特[591] 、圣女阿特拉克塔、圣女迪姆普娜[592] 、 圣女艾塔、圣女玛莉恩•卡尔彭西斯[593] 、 小耶稣的圣修女德肋撒、圣女芭巴拉、圣女斯科拉丝蒂卡，还有圣女乌尔苏拉以及她那一万一千名童贞女[ 594] 。所有这些人都跟光环、后光与光轮一道出现了。 他们手执棕榈叶、竖琴、剑、橄榄冠， 袍子上织出了他们的职能的神圣象征： 角制墨水瓶[595] 、箭、 面包、坛子、脚镣、斧子、树木、桥梁、 浴槽里的娃娃们、 贝壳、行囊[596] 、大剪刀、钥匙、龙[ 597]、百合花、鹿弹、胡须、猪、灯、风箱、蜂窝、长柄杓、星星、蛇[598] 、铁砧、一盒盒的凡士林、钟、 丁字拐、镊子、 鹿角、防水胶靴、老鹰、磨石、盘子上的一双眼球[599] 、蜡烛、洒圣水器、独角兽[600] 。他们一边沿着纳尔逊圆柱、亨利街、玛利街、卡佩尔街、 小不列颠街透迤而行，一边吟唱以“起来吧。发光”[601] 为首句的“将祭经” 《上主显现》，[ 602] 接着又无比甜美地唱着圣歌“示巴的众人”[603]。 他们行着各种神迹：诸如驱逐污灵，使死者复活，使鱼变多，治好跛子和盲人。[604]还找到了种种遗失物品，阐释并应验《圣经》中的话，祝福并做预言。最后， 由玛拉基和帕特里克陪伴着，可敬的奥弗林神父[605]在金布华盖的遮荫下出现了。这几位好神父抵达了指定地点，小布列颠街八、九、十号的伯纳德•基尔南股份有限公司的店堂；这是食品杂货批发商，葡萄酒和白兰地装运商；特准在店内零售啤酒、葡萄酒和烈酒。司仪神父祝福了店堂，焚香熏了那装有直棂的窗户、交叉拱、拱顶、棱、柱头、山墙、上楣、锯齿状拱门、尖顶和圆顶阁，把圣水撒在过梁上，祈求天主祝福这座房舍，一如曾经祝福过亚伯拉罕、以撒和雅各的房舍那样，并且让天主的光明天使们住在里面。神父一面往里走，一面祝福食品与饮料。所有那些被祝福的会众，都应答着他的祷词。

因主之名，济佑我等。

上天下地，皆主所造。

主与尔偕焉。

亦与尔灵偕焉。[606] 

于是他将双手放在他所祝福的东西上面，念感谢经，并做祷告，众人也随之祷告。

主啊，万物因尔之言而圣洁，俯垂护佑尔所创造之生灵。

凡感谢尔之恩宠，恪遵规诫，服从尔旨者，俯允其颂扬尔

圣名，俾使肉身健康，灵魂平安。因基利斯督我等主。[607]

“咱们大家都念同样的经，”杰克说。

“每年收入一千镑[608] ，兰伯特，”克罗夫顿或姓克劳福德的说。

“对，”内德拿起他那杯“约翰•詹姆森”[609]说，“鱼肉不能缺黄油，”［610]

我正挨个儿看他们的脸，琢磨着到底谁能出个好主意，刚巧该死的他又十万火急地闯进来了。

“我刚才到法院兜了一圈找你去啦，”他说，“但愿我没有……”

“哪里的话，”马丁说，“我们准备好了。”

法院？天晓得！金币和银市塞得你的衣兜裤兜都往下坠了吧。

该死的抠门儿鬼。叫你请我们每人喝一杯哪。真见鬼，他简直吓得要死！地地道道的犹太佬！只顾自己合适。跟茅坑里的老鼠一样狡猾。以一百博五。

“谁也不要告诉，”“市民”说。

“请问，你指的是什么？”他说。

“来吧，伙计们，”马丁发现形势不妙，就说，“马上就去吧。”

“跟谁也别说，”“市民”大嚷大叫地说，“这可是个秘密。”

那条该死的狗也醒了过来，低声怒吼着。

“大家伙儿再见喽，”马丁说。

他就尽快地催他们出去了——杰克•鲍尔和克罗夫顿——或随便你叫他什么吧，把那家伙夹在中间，假装出一副茫然的样子，挤上了那辆该死的二轮轻便马车。

“快走，”马丁对车夫说。

乳白色的海豚蓦地甩了一下鬃毛，舵手在金色船尾站起来，顶着风扯开帆，使它兜满了风。左舷张起大三角帆，所有的帆都张开，船便向大海航去。众多俊美的宁芙[611] 忽而挨近右舷，忽而凑近左舷，依依不舍地跟在华贵的三桅帆船两侧。她们将闪闪发光的身子盘绕在一起，犹如灵巧的轮匠在车轮的轴心周围嵌上互为姐妹的等距离的轮辐，并从外面将所有一切都用轮辋把她们统统箍住。这样就加快了男人们奔赴沙场或为博得淑女嫣然一笑而争相赶路的步伐。这些殷勤的宁芙们，这些长生不老的姐妹们欣然而来。船破浪前进，她们一路欢笑，在水泡环中嬉戏着。[ 612] 

然而，天哪，我正要把杯中残酒一饮而尽时，只见“市民”腾地站起来，因患水肿病呼呼大喘，踉踉跄跄走向门口，用爱尔兰语的“钟、《圣经》与蜡烛”[613]，对那家伙发出克伦威尔的诅咒[ 614] ，还呸呸地吐着唾沫。乔和小阿尔夫像小妖精般地围着他，试图使他息怒。

“别管我，”他说。

嘿，当他走到门口，两个人把他拽住时，那家伙大吼了一声：

“为以色列三呼万岁！”

哎呀，为了基督的缘故，像在议会里那样庄重地一屁股坐下，别在大庭广众之下丑态毕露啦。哼，一向都有一些该死的小丑什么的，无缘无故地干出骇人听闻的勾当。呸，照这样下去，黑啤酒会在你肠肚里发馊的，一定的。

于是，全国的邋遢汉和婊子们都聚到门口来了。马丁叫车把式快赶起来：“市民”乱吼一气，阿尔夫和乔叫他住口[615]。那家伙呢，趾高气扬地大谈其犹太人。二流子们起哄要他发表演说，杰克•鲍尔试图叫他在马车里坐下来，让他闭上该死的嘴巴。有个一只眼睛上蒙着眼罩的二流子，扯着喉咙唱开了：倘若月亮里那个男子是个犹太人，犹太人，犹太人[616] ；有个婊子大喊道：

“哎，老爷！你的裤钮儿开啦，喏，老爷！”

于是他说：

“门德尔松[617] 是个犹太人，还有卡尔•马克思、梅尔卡丹特和斯宾诺莎。[618] 救世主也是个犹大人，他爹就是个犹太人。你们的天主。”

“他没有爹，”马丁说，“成啦。往前赶吧。”

“谁的天主？”“市民”说。

“喏，他舅舅是个犹太人”他说，“你们的天主是个犹太人。耶稣是个犹太人，跟我一样。”

嗬，“市民”一个箭步蹿回到店堂里去。

“耶稣在上，”他说，“我要让那个该死的犹太佬开瓢儿，他竟然敢滥用那个神圣的名字。哦，我非把他钉上十字架不可。把那个饼干罐儿递给我。”

“住手！住手！”乔说。

从首都都柏林及其郊区拥来好几千名满怀赞赏之情的朋友知己们，为曾任皇家印刷厂亚历山大•汤姆公司职员的纳吉亚撒葛斯•乌拉姆•利波蒂•维拉格[619] 送行。他要前往远方的地区撒兹哈明兹布洛尤古里亚斯-都古拉斯[620] 《潺潺流水的牧场》。在大声喝采[621] 声中举行的仪式以洋溢着无比温暖的友爱之情为特征。一幅出自爱尔兰艺术家之手的爱尔兰古代犊皮纸彩饰真迹卷轴，被赠送给这位杰出的现象学家，聊表社会上很大一部分市民之心意。附带还送了一只银匣，是按古代凯尔特风格制成的雅致大方的装饰品，足以反映厂家雅各布与雅各布先生们[622] 的盛誉。启程的旅客受到热烈的欢送。经过选拔的爱尔兰风笛奏起家喻户晓的曲调回到爱琳来》[623] ，紧接着就是《拉科齐进行曲》[624] 。在场的众人显然大受感动。柏油桶和篝火沿着四海[625] 的海岸，在霍斯山、三岩山、糖锥山[626] 布莱岬角、莫恩山、加尔蒂山脉[627] 、牛山、多尼戈尔、斯佩林山岭、纳格尔和博格拉、[ 628] 康尼马拉山、麦吉利卡迪[629] 的雾霭、奥蒂山、贝尔纳山和布卢姆山[630] 燃起。远处，聚集在康布利亚和卡利多尼亚[631] 群山上的众多支持者，对那响彻云霄的喝彩声报以欢呼。最后，在场的众多女性的代表向巨象般的游览船献花表示敬意，接着它便缓缓驶去。它由彩船队护卫着顺流而下时，港务总局、海关、鸽房水电站以及普尔贝格灯塔[632] 都向它点旗致敬。

再见吧，我亲爱的朋友！再见吧！[634] 离去了，但是不曾被遗忘。

他好歹抓住那只该死的罐头飞奔出去，小阿尔夫吊在他的胳膊上。哼！连魔鬼也不会去阻拦。他就像是被刺穿了的猪那样嘶叫着，精采得可以同皇家剧场上演的任何一出该死的戏媲美。

“他在哪儿？我非宰了他不可！”

内德和杰•杰都笑瘫啦。

“一场血腥的战斗，”我说，“我能赶上最后一段福音[634] 。”

运气还不错，车把式将驽马的头掉转过去，一溜烟儿疾驰而去。

“别这样，‘市民’，”乔说，“住手！”

他妈的，他把手朝后一抡。竭尽全力抛出去。天主保佑，阳光晃了他的两眼，否则对方会一命呜呼的。哼，凭着那势头，他差点儿把它甩到朗福德郡[635] 去。该死的驽马吓惊了，那条老杂种狗宛如该死的地狱一般追在马车后边。乌合之众大叫大笑，那老马口铁罐头沿街咯嗒咯嗒滚去。

这场灾祸立即造成可怕的后果。根据邓辛克气象台[636] 记录，一共震动了十一次。照梅尔卡利的仪器[637] 记算，统统达到了震级的第五级。五三四年——也就是绢骑士托马斯[638] 起义那一年的地震以来，我岛现存的记录中还没有过如此剧烈的地壳运动。震中好像在首都的客栈码头区至圣麦昌教区一带，面积达四十一英亩二路德一平方杆（或波尔赤）[639] 。司法宫左近的巍峨建筑一古脑儿坍塌了；就连灾变之际正在进行法律方面的重要辩论的那座富丽堂皇的大厦，也全部彻底地化为一片废墟，在场的人恐怕一个不漏地都被活埋了。据目击者报告说，震波伴随着狂暴的旋风性大气变动。搜查队在本岛的偏僻地区发现了一顶帽子，已查明系属于那位备受尊重的法庭书记乔治•弗特里尔[640] 先生；还有一把绸面雨伞——金柄上镌刻着都柏林市记录法官[641] 博学可敬的季审法院院长弗雷德里克•福基纳爵士姓名的首字、盾形纹章以及住宅号码。也就是说，前者位于巨人堤道[642]第三玄武岩埂上；后者埋在古老的金塞尔海岬[643] 附近霍尔奥彭湾的沙滩深达一英尺三英寸的地方。其他目击者还作证说，他们瞥见一颗发白热光的庞然大物，以骇人的速度沿着抛射体的轨道朝西南偏西方向腾空而去。每个钟头都有吊唁及慰问的函电从各大洲各个地方纷至沓来。罗马教皇慨然恩准颁布教令：为了安慰那些从我们当中如此出乎意料地被召唤而去的虔诚的故人之灵，凡是隶属于教廷精神权威的主教管辖区，每座大教堂都应在同一时刻，由教区主教亲自专门举行一场追思已亡日弥撒。一切救助工作，被毁物[644] 及遗体等等的搬运，均托付给大布伦斯威克街一五九号的迈克尔•米德父子公司以及北沃尔街七十七、七十八、七十九和八十号的T与C。马丁公司办理，并由康沃尔公爵麾下轻步兵团的军官和士兵们在海军少将阁下赫尔克里斯•汉尼拔•哈比亚斯•科尔普斯[645] •安德森爵士殿下的指挥下予以协助。殿下的头衔包括：嘉德勋位爵士、圣帕特里克修会勋位爵士、圣殿骑士团骑士、枢密院顾问官、巴斯高级骑士、下院议员、治安推事、医学士、杰出服务勋位获得者、鸡奸者[646] 、猎狐犬管理官、爱尔兰皇家学会院士、法学士、音乐博士、济贫会委员、都柏林三一学院院士、爱尔兰皇家大学院士、爱尔兰皇家内科医师学会会员和爱尔兰皇家外科医师学会会员。

自从呱呱落地以来，你绝没有见过这样的场面。呸，要是这骰子击中了他的脑袋，连他也会想起金质奖杯的事，准会的；可是他妈的“市民”就会以暴行殴打、乔则以教唆帮凶的罪名被逮捕。车把式拼死拼活地赶着车，就像天主创造了摩西那样地有把握，遂救了那家伙一命。什么？啊，天哪，可不是嘛。他从后面向那家伙发出连珠炮般的咒骂。

“我杀死他了吗，”他说，“还是怎么的？”

接着又对他那只该死的狗嚷道：

“追呀，加利！追呀，小子！”

我们最后看到的是：该死的马车拐过弯去，坐在车上的那张怯生生的老脸在打着手势。那只该死的杂种狗穷迫不舍，耳朵贴在后面，恨不得把他撕成八瓣儿！以一百博五！天哪，我敢担保，它可把那家伙得到的好处都给搞掉了。

此刻，看哪，他们所有的人都为极其明亮的光辉所笼罩。他们望到他站在里面的那辆战车升上天去。[647] 于是他们瞅见他在战车里，身披灿烂的光辉，穿着宛若太阳般的衣服，洁白如月亮，是那样地骇人，他们出于敬畏，简直不敢仰望。[648] 这时，天空中发出“以利亚！以利亚！”的呼唤声，他铿锵有力地回答道：“阿爸！阿多尼。”[649]于是他们望到了他——确实是他，儿子布卢姆•以利亚，在众天使簇拥下，于小格林街多诺霍亭上空，以四十五度的斜角，像用铁锹甩起来的土块一般升到灿烂的光辉中去。
Chapter 13 Nausicca
THE SUMMER EVENING HAD BEGUN TO FOLD THE WORLD IN ITS mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on the quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the stillness the voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the storm-tossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea. 
The three girl friends were seated on the rocks, enjoying the evening scene and the air which was fresh but not too chilly. Many a time and oft were they wont to come there to that favourite nook to have a cosy chat beside the sparkling waves and discuss matters feminine, Cissy Caffrey and Edy Boardman with the baby in the pushcar and Tommy and Jacky Caffrey, two little curlyheaded boys, dressed in sailor suits with caps to match and the name H.M.S. Belleisle printed on both. For Tommy and Jacky Caffrey were twins, scarce four years old and very noisy and spoiled twins sometimes but for all that darling little fellows with bright merry faces and endearing ways about them. They were dabbling in the sand with their spades and buckets, building castles as children do, or playing with their big coloured ball, happy as the day was long. And Edy Boardman was rocking the chubby baby to and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman fairly chuckled with delight. He was but eleven months and nine days old and, though still a tiny toddler, was just beginning to lisp his first babyish words. Cissy Caffrey bent over him to tease his fat little plucks and the dainty dimple in his chin. 

-- Now, baby, Cissy Caffrey said. Say out big, big. I want a drink of water. 

And baby prattled after her: 

-- A jink a jink a jawbo. Cissy Caffrey cuddled the wee chap for she was awfully fond of children, so patient with little sufferers and Tommy Caffrey could never be got to take his castor oil unless it was Cissy Caffrey that held his nose and promised him the scatty heel of the loaf of brown bread with golden syrup on. What a persuasive power that girl had! But to be sure baby was as good as gold, a perfect little dote in his new fancy bib. None of your spoilt beauties, Flora MacFlimsy sort, was Cissy Caffrey. A truerhearted lass never drew the breath of life, always with a laugh in her gipsylike eyes and a frolicsome word on her cherryripe red lips, a girl lovable in the extreme. And Edy Boardman laughed too at the quaint language of little brother. 

But just then there was a slight altercation between Master Tommy and Master Jacky. Boys will be boys and our two twins were no exception to this golden rule. The apple of discord was a certain castle of sand which Master Jacky had built and Master Tommy would have it right go wrong that it was to be architecturally improved by a frontdoor like the Martello tower had. But if Master Tommy was headstrong Master Jacky was selfwilled too and, true to the maxim that every little Irishman's house is his castle, he fell upon his hated rival and to such purpose that the would be assailant came to grief and (alas to relate!) the coveted castle too. Needless to say the cries of discomfited Master Tommy drew the attention of the girl friends. 

-- Come here, Tommy, his sister called imperatively, at once! And you, Jacky, for shame to throw poor Tommy in the dirty sand. Wait till I catch you for that. 

His eyes misty with unshed tears Master Tommy came at her call for their big sister's word was law with the twins. And in a sad plight he was after his misadventure. His little man-o'-war top and unmentionables were full of sand but Cissy was a past mistress in the art of smoothing over life's tiny troubles and very quickly not one speck of sand was to be seen on his smart little suit. Still the blue eyes were glistening with hot tears that would well up so she kissed away the hurtness and shook her hand at Master Jacky the culprit and said if she was near him she wouldn't be far from him, her eyes dancing in admonition. 

-- Nasty bold Jacky! she cried. 

She put an arm round the little mariner and coaxed winningly: 

-- What's your name? Butter and cream? 

-- Tell us who is your sweetheart, spoke Edy Boardman. Is Cissy your sweetheart? 

-- Nao, tearful Tommy said. 

-- Is Edy Boardman your sweetheart? Cissy queried. 

-- Nao, Tommy said. 

-- I know, Edy Boardman said none too amiably with an arch glance from her shortsighted eyes. I know who is Tommy's sweetheart, Gerty is Tommy's sweetheart. 

-- Nao, Tommy said on the verge of tears. 

Cissy's quick motherwit guessed what was amiss and she whispered to Edy Boardman to take him there behind the pushcar where the gentlemen couldn't see and to mind he didn't wet his new tan shoes. 

But who was Gerty? 

Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance, was in very truth as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see. She was pronounced beautiful by all who knew her though, as folks often said, she was more a Giltrap than a MacDowell. Her figure was slight and graceful, inclining even to fragility but those iron jelloids she had been taking of late had done her a world of good much better than the Widow Welch's female pills and she was much better of those discharges she used to get and that tired feeling. The waxen pallor of her face was almost spiritual in its ivorylike purity though her rosebud mouth was a genuine Cupid's bow, Greekly perfect. Her hands were of finely veined alabaster with tapering fingers and as white as lemon juice and queen of ointments could make them though it was not true that she used to wear kid gloves in bed or take a milk footbath either. Bertha Supple told that once to Edy Boardman, a deliberate lie, when she was black out at daggers drawn with Gerty (the girl chums had of course their little tiffs from time to time like the rest of mortals) and she told her not let on whatever she did that it was her that told her or she'd never speak to her again. No. Honour where honour is due. There was an innate refinement, a languid queenly hauteur about Gerty which was unmistakably evidenced in her delicate hands and higharched instep. Had kind fate but willed her to be born a gentlewoman of high degree in her own right and had she only received the benefit of a good education Gerty MacDowell might easily have held her own beside any lady in the land and have seen herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow and patrician suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their devoirs to her. Mayhap it was this, the love that might have been, that lent to her softlyfeatured face at whiles a look, tense with suppressed meaning, that imparted a strange yearning tendency to the beautiful eyes a charm few could resist. Why have women such eyes of witchery? Gerty's were of the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and dark expressive brows. Time gas when those brows were not so silkilyseductive. It was Madame Vera Verity, directress of the Woman Beautiful page of the Princess novelette, who had first advised her to try eyebrowleine which gave that haunting expression to the eyes, so becoming in leaders of fashion, and she had never regretted it. Then there was blushing scientifically cured and how to be tall increase your height and you have a beautiful face but your nose? That would suit Mrs Dignam because she had a button one. But Gerty's crowning glory was her wealth of wonderful hair. It was dark brown with a natural wave in it. She had cut it that very morning on account of the new moon and it nestled about her pretty head in a profusion of luxuriant clusters and pared her nails too, Thursday for wealth. And just now at Edy's words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest rosebloom, crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish shyness that of a surety God's fair land of Ireland did not hold her equal. 

For an instant she was silent with rather sad downcast eyes. She was about to retort but something checked the words on her tongue. Inclination prompted her to speak out: dignity told her to be silent. The pretty lips pouted a while but then she glanced up and broke out into a joyous little laugh which had in it all the freshness of a young May morning. She knew right well, no-one better, what made squinty Edy say that because of him cooling in his attentions when it was simply a lovers' quarrel. As per usual somebody's nose was out of joint about the boy that had the bicycle always riding up and down in front of her window. Only now his father kept him in the evenings studying hard to get an exhibition in the intermediate that was on and he was going to Trinity college to study for a doctor when he left the high school like his brother W. E. Wylie who was racing in the bicycle races in Trinity college university. Little recked he perhaps for what she felt, that dull aching void in her heart sometimes, piercing to the core. Yet he was young and perchance he might learn to love her in time. They were protestants in his family and of course Gerty knew Who came first and after Him the blessed Virgin and then Saint Joseph. But he was undeniably handsome with an exquisite nose and he was what he looked, every inch a gentleman, the shape of his head too at the back without his cap on that she would know anywhere something off the common and the way he turned the bicycle at the lamp with his hands off the bars and also the nice perfume of those good cigarettes and besides they were both of a size and that was why Edy Boardman thought she was so frightfully clever because he didn't go and ride up and down in front of her bit of a garden. 

Gerty was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a votary of Dame Fashion for she felt that there was just a might that he might be out. A neat blouse of electric blue, selftinted by dolly dyes (because it was expected in the Lady's Pictorial that electric blue would be worn), with a smart vee opening down to the division and kerchief pocket (in which she always kept a piece of cottonwool scented with her favourite perfume because the handkerchief spoiled the sit) and a navy threequarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful figure to perfection. She wore a coquettish little love of a hat of wideleaved nigger straw contrast trimmed with an underbrim of eggblue chenille and at the side a butterfly bow to tone. All Tuesday week afternoon she was hunting to match that chenille but at last she found what she wanted at Clery's summer sales, the very it, slightly shopsoiled but you would never notice, seven fingers two and a penny. She did it up all by herself and what joy was hers when she tried it on then, smiling at the lovely reflection which the mirror gave back to her! And when she put it on the waterjug to keep the shape she knew that that would take the shine out of some people she knew. Her shoes were the newest thing in footwear (Edy Boardman prided herself that she was very petite but she never had a foot like Gerty MacDowell, a five, and never would ash, oak or elm) with patent toecaps and just one smart buckle at her higharched instep. Her wellturned ankle displayed its perfect proportions beneath her skirt and just the proper amount and no more of her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose with high spliced heels and wide garter tops. As for undies they were Gerty's chief care and who that knows the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet seventeen (though Gerty would never see seventeen again) can find it in his heart to blame her? She had four dinky sets, with awfully pretty stitchery, three garments and nighties extra, and each set slotted with different coloured ribbons, rosepink, pale blue, mauve and peagreen and she aired them herself and blued them when they came home from the wash and ironed them and she had a brickbat to keep the iron on because she wouldn't trust those washerwomen as far as she'd see them scorching the things. She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against hope, her own colour and the lucky colour too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere on her because the green she wore that day week brought grief because his father brought him in to study for the intermediate exhibition and because she thought perhaps he might be out because when she was dressing that morning she nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out and that was for luck and lovers' meetings if you put those things on inside out so long as it wasn't of a Friday. 

And yet and yet! That strained look on her face! A gnawing sorrow is there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she would give worlds to be in the privacy of her own familiar chamber where, giving way to tears, she could have a good cry and relieve her pentup feelings. Though not too much because she knew how to cry nicely before the mirror. You are lovely, Gerty, it said. The paly light of evening falls upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. Gerty MacDowell yearns in vain. Yes, she had known from the first that her daydream of a marriage has been arranged and the weddingbells ringing for Mrs Reggy Wylie T. C. D. (because the one who married the elder brother would be Mrs Wylie) and in the fashionable intelligence Mrs Gertrude Wylie was wearing a sumptuous confection of grey trimmed with expensive blue fox was not to be. He was too young to understand. He would not believe in love, a woman's birthright. The night of the party long ago in Stoers' (he was still in short trousers) when they were alone and he stole an arm round her waist she went white to the very lips. He called her little one in a strangely husky voice and snatched a half kiss (the first!) but it was only the end of her nose and then he hastened from the room with a remark about refreshments. Impetuous fellow! Strength of character had never been Reggy Wylie's strong point and he who would woo and win Gerty MacDowell must be a man among men. But waiting, always waiting to be asked and it was leap year too and would soon be over. No prince charming is her beau ideal to lay a rare and wondrous love at her feet but rather a manly man with a strong quiet face who had not found his ideal, perhaps his hair slightly flecked with grey, and who would understand, take her in his sheltering arms, strain her to him in all the strength of his deep passionate nature and comfort her with a long long kiss. It would be like heaven. For such a one she yearns this balmy summer eve. With all the heart of her she longs to be his only, his affianced bride for riches for poor, in sickness in health, till death us two part, from this to this day forward. 

And while Edy Boardman was with little Tommy behind the pushcar she was just thinking would the day ever come when she could call herself his little wife to be. Then they could talk about her till they went blue in the face, Bertha Supple too, and Edy, the spitfire, because she would be twenty-two in November. She would care for him with creature comforts too for Gerty was womanly wise and knew that a mere man liked that feeling of hominess. Her griddlecakes done to a golden-brown hue and queen Ann's pudding of delightful creaminess had won golden opinions from all because she had a lucky hand also for lighting a fire, dredge in the fine selfraising flour and always stir in the same direction then cream the milk and sugar and whisk well the white of eggs though she didn't like the eating part when there were any people that made her shy and often she wondered why you couldn't eat something poetical like violets or roses and they would have a beautifully appointed drawingroom with pictures and engravings and the photograph of grandpapa Giltrap's lovely dog Garryowen that almost talked, it was so human, and chintz covers for the chairs and that silver toastrack in Clery's summer jumble sales like they have in rich houses. He would be tall with broad shoulders (she had always admired tall men for a husband) with glistening white teeth under his carefully trimmed sweeping moustache and they would go on the continent for their honeymoon (three wonderful weeks!) and then, when they settled down in a nice snug and cosy little homely house, every morning they would both have brekky, simple but perfectly served, for their own two selves and before he went out to business he would give his dear little wifey a good hearty hug and gaze for a moment deep down into her eyes. 

Edy Boardman asked Tommy Caffrey was he done and he said yes, so then she buttoned up his little knickerbockers for him and told him to run off and play with Jacky and to be good now and not to fight. But Tommy said he wanted the ball and Edy told him no that baby was playing with the ball and if he took it there'd be wigs on the green but Tommy said it was his ball and he wanted his ball and he pranced on the ground, if you please. The temper of him! O, he was a man already was little Tommy Caffrey since he was out of pinnies. Edy told him no, no and to he off now with him and she told Cissy Caffrey not to give in to him. 

-- You're not my sister, naughty Tommy said. It's my ball. But Cissy Caffrey told baby Boardman to look up, look up high at her finger and she snatched the ball quickly and threw it along the sand and Tommy after it in full career, having won the day. 

-- Anything for a quiet life, laughed Ciss. 

And she tickled tiny tot's two cheeks to make him forget and played here's the lord mayor, here's his two horses, here's his gingerbread carriage and here he walks in, chinchopper, chinchopper, chinchopper chin. But Edy got as cross as two sticks about him getting his own way like that from everyone always petting him. 

-- I'd like to give him something, she said, so I would, where I won't say. 

-- On the beetoteetom, laughed Cissy merrily. 

Gerty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of Cissy saying an unladylike thing like that out loud she'd be ashamed of her life to say, flushing a deep rosy red, and Edy Boardman said she was sure the gentleman opposite heard what she said. But not a pin cared Ciss. 

-- Let him! she said with a pert toss of her head and a piquant tilt of her nose. Give it to him too on the same place as quick as I'd look at him. 

Madcap Ciss with her golliwog curls. You had to laugh at her sometimes. For instance when she asked you would you have some more Chinese tea and jaspberry ram and when she drew the jugs too and the men's faces on her nails with red ink make you split your sides or when she wanted to go where you know she said she wanted to run and pay a visit to the Miss White. That was just like Cissycums. O, and will you ever forget the evening she dressed up in her father's suit and hat and the burned cork moustache and walked down Tritonville road, smoking a cigarette? There was none to come up to her for fun. But she was sincerity itself, one of the bravest and truest hearts heaven ever made, not one of your twofaced things, too sweet to be wholesome. 

And then there came out upon the air the sound of voices and the pealing anthem of the organ. It was the men's temperance retreat conducted by the missioner, the reverend John Hughes S. J., rosary, sermon and benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. They were there gathered together without distinction of social class (and a most edifying spectacle it was to see) in that simple fane beside the waves, after the storms of this weary world, kneeling before the feet of the immaculate, reciting the litany of Our Lady of Loreto, beseeching her to intercede for them, the old familiar words, holy Mary, holy virgin of virgins. How sad to poor Gerty's ears! Had her father only avoided the clutches of the demon drink, by taking the pledge or those powders the drink habit cured in Pearson's Weekly, she might now be rolling in her carriage, second to none. Over and over had she told herself that as she mused by the dying embers in a brown study without the lamp because she hated two lights or oftentimes gazing out of the window dreamily by the hour at the rain falling on the rusty bucket, thinking. But that vile decoction which has ruined so many hearths and homes had cast its shadow over her childhood days. Nay, she had even witnessed in the home circle deeds of violence caused by intemperance and had seen her own father, a prey to the fumes of intoxication, forget himself completely for if there was one thing of all things that Gerty knew it was the man who lifts his hand to a woman save in the way of kindness deserves to be branded as the lowest of the low. 

And still the voices sang in supplication to the Virgin most powerful, Virgin most merciful. And Gerty, wrapt in thought, scarce saw or heard her companions or the twins at their boyish gambols or the gentleman off Sandymount green that Cissy Caffrey called the man that was so like himself passing along the strand taking a short walk. You never saw him anyway screwed but still and for all that she would not like him for a father because he was too old or something or on account of his face (it was a palpable case of doctor Fell) or his carbuncly nose with the pimples on it and his sandy moustache a bit white under his nose. Poor father! With all his faults she loved him still when he sang Tell me, Mary, how to woo thee or My love and cottage near Rochelle and they had stewed cockles and lettuce with Lazenby's salad dressing for supper and when he sang The moon hath raised with Mr Dignam that died suddenly and was buried, God have mercy on him, from a stroke. Her mother's birthday that was and Charley was home on his holidays and Tom and Mr Dignam and Mrs and Patsy and Freddy Dignam and they were to have had a group taken. No-one would have thought the end was so near. Now he was laid to rest. And her mother said to him to let that be a warning to him for the rest of his days and he couldn't even go to the funeral on account of the gout and she had to go into town to bring him the letters and samples from his office about Catesby's cork lino, artistic standard designs, fit for a palace, gives tiptop wear and always bright and cheery in the home. 

A sterling good daughter was Gerty just like a second mother in the house, a ministering angel too with a little heart worth its weight in gold. And when her mother had those raging splitting headaches who was it rubbed on the menthol cone on her forehead but Gerty though she didn't like her mother taking pinches of snuff and that was the only single thing they ever had words about, taking snuff. Everyone thought the world of her for her gentle ways. It was Gerty who turned off the gas at the main every night and it was Gerty who tacked up on the wall of that place where she never forgot every fortnight the chlorate of lime Mr Tunney the grocer's christmas almanac the picture of halcyon days where a young gentleman in the costume they used to wear then with a threecornered hat was offering a bunch of flowers to his ladylove with oldtime chivalry through her lattice window. You could see there was a story behind it. The colours were done something lovely. She was in a soft clinging white in a studied attitude and the gentleman was in chocolate and he looked a thorough aristocrat. She often looked at them dreamily when there for a certain purpose and felt her own arms that were white and soft just like hers with the sleeves back and thought about those times because she had found out in Walker's pronouncing dictionary that belonged to grandpapa Giltrap about the halcyon days what they meant. 

The twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly fashion, till at last Master Jacky who was really as bold as brass there was no getting behind that deliberately kicked the ball as hard as ever he could down towards the seaweedy rocks. Needless to say poor Tommy was not slow to voice his dismay but luckily the gentleman in black who was sitting there by himself came gallantly to the rescue and intercepted the ball. Our two champions claimed their plaything with lusty cries and to avoid trouble Cissy Caffrey called to the gentleman to throw it to her please. The gentleman aimed the ball once or twice and then threw it up the strand towards Cissy Caffrey but it rolled down the slope and stopped right under Gerty's skirt near the little pool by the rock. The twins clamoured again for it and Cissy told her to kick it away and let them fight for it so Gerty drew back her foot but she wished their stupid ball hadn't come rolling down to her and she gave a kick but she missed and Edy and Cissy laughed. 

-- If you fail try again, Edy Boardman said. 

Gerty smiled assent and bit her lip. A delicate pink crept into her pretty cheek but she was determined to let them see so she just lifted her skirt a little but just enough and took good aim and gave the ball a jolly good kick and it went ever so far and the two twins after it down towards the shingle. Pure jealousy of course it was nothing else to draw attention on account of the gentleman opposite looking. She felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell, surging and flaming into her cheeks. Till then they had only exchanged glances of the most casual but now under the brim of her new hat she ventured a look at him and the face that met her gaze there in the twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the saddest she had ever seen. 

Through the open window of the church the fragrant incense was wafted and with it the fragrant names of her who was conceived without stain of original sin, spiritual vessel, pray for us, honourable vessel, pray for us, vessel of singular devotion, pray for us, mystical rose. And careworn hearts were there and toilers for their daily bread and many who had erred and wandered, their eyes wet with contrition but for all that bright with hope for the reverend father Hughes had told them what the great saint Bernard said in his famous prayer of Mary, the most pious Virgin's intercessory power that it was not recorded in any age that those who implored her powerful protection were ever abandoned by her. 

The twins were now playing again right merrily for the troubles of childhood are but as fleeting summer showers. Cissy played with baby Boardman till he crowed with glee, clapping baby hands in air. Peep she cried behind the hood of the pushcar and Edy asked where was Cissy gone and then Cissy popped up her head and cried ah! and, my word, didn't the little chap enjoy that! And then she told him to say papa. 

-- Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa. 

And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent for eleven months everyone said and big for his age and the picture of health, a perfect little bunch of love, and he would certainly turn out to be something great, they said. 

-- Hajajajahaja. 

Cissy wiped his little mouth with the dribbling bib and wanted him to sit up properly, and say pa pa pa but when she undid the strap she cried out, holy saint Denis, that he was possing wet and to double the half blanket the other way under him. Of course his infant majesty was most obstreperous at such toilet formalities and he let everyone know it: 

-- Habaa baaaahabaaa baaaa. 

And two great big lovely big tears coursing down his cheeks. It was all no use soothering him with no, nono, baby, no and telling him about the geegee and where was the puffpuff but Ciss, always readywitted, gave him in his mouth the teat of the suckingbottle and the young heathen was quickly appeased. 

Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby home out of that and not get on her nerves no hour to be out and the little brats of twins. She gazed out towards the distant sea. It was like the paintings that man used to do on the pavement with all the coloured chalks and such a pity too leaving them there to be all blotted out, the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth and to hear the music like that and the perfume of those incense they burned in the church like a kind of waft. And while she gazed her heart went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking at and there was meaning in his look. His eyes burned into her as though they would search her through and through, read her very soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, but could you trust them? People were so queer. She could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual face that he was a foreigner, the image of the photo she had of Martin Harvey, the matinée idol, only for the moustache which she preferred because she wasn't stagestruck like Winny Rippingham that wanted they two to always dress the same on account of a play but she could not see whether he had an aquiline nose or a slightly retmussé from where he was sitting. He was in deep mourning, she could see that, and the story of a haunting sorrow was written on his face. She would have given worlds to know what it was. He was looking up so intently, so still and he saw her kick the ball and perhaps he could see the bright steel buckles of her shoes if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the toes down. She was glad that something told her to put on the transparent stockings thinking Reggy Wylie might be out but that was far away. Here was that of which she had so often dreamed. It was he who mattered and there was joy on her face because she wanted him because she felt instinctively that he was like no-one else. The very heart of the girlwoman went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she knew on the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned against than sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a wicked man, she cared not. Even if he was a protestant or methodist she could convert him easily if he truly loved her. There were wounds that wanted healing with heartbalm. She was a womanly woman not like other flighty girls, unfeminine, he had known, those cyclists showing off what they hadn't got and she just yearned to know all, to forgive all if she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the memory of the past. Then mayhap he would embrace her gently, like a real man, crushing her soft body to him, and love her, his ownest girlie, for herself alone. 

Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. Ora pro nobis. Well has it been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy can never be lost or cast away: and fitly is she too a haven of refuge for the afflicted because of the seven dolours which transpierced her own heart. Gerty could picture the whole scene in the church, the stained glass windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers and the blue banners of the blessed Virgin's sodality and Father Conroy was helping Canon O'Hanlon at the altar, carrying things in and out with his eyes cast down. He looked almost a saint and his confession-box was so quiet and clean and dark and his hands were just like white wax and if ever she became a Dominican nun in their white habit perhaps he might come to the convent for the novena of Saint Dominic. He told her that time when she told him about that in confession crimsoning up to the roots of her hair for fear he could see, not to be troubled because that was only the voice of nature and we were all subject to nature s laws, he said, in this life and that that was no sin because that came from the nature of woman instituted by God, he said, and that Our Blessed Lady herself said to the archangel Gabriel be it done unto me according to Thy Word. He was so kind and holy and often and often she thought and thought could she work a ruched teacosy with embroidered floral design for him as a present or a clock but they had a clock she noticed on the mantelpiece white and gold with a canary bird that came out of a little house to tell the time the day she went there about the flowers for the forty hours' adoration because it was hard to know what sort of a present to give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of Dublin or some place. 

The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and Jacky threw the ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it. Little monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone ought to take them and give them a good hiding for themselves to keep them in their places, the both of them. And Cissy and Edy shouted after them to come back because they were afraid the tide might come in on them and be drowned. 

-- Jacky! Tommy! 

Not they! What a great notion they had! So Cissy said it was the very last time she'd ever bring them out. She jumped up and called them and she ran down the slope past him, tossing her hair behind her which had a good enough colour if there had been more of it but with all the thingamerry she was always rubbing into it she couldn't get it to grow long because it wasn't natural so she could just go and throw her hat at it. She ran with long gandery strides it was a wonder she didn't rip up her skirt at the side that was too tight on her because there was a lot of the tomboy about Cissy Caffrey and she was a forward piece whenever she thought she had a good opportunity to show off and just because she was a good runner she ran like that so that he could see all the end of her petticoat running and her skinny shanks up as far as possible. It would have served her just right if she had tripped up over something accidentally on purpose with her high crooked French heels on her to make her look tall and got a fine tumble. Tableau! That would have been a very charming exposé for a gentleman like that to witness. 

Queen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, of all saints, they prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and then Father Conroy handed the thurible to Canon O'Hanlon and he put in the incense and censed the Blessed Sacrament and Cissy Caffrey caught the two twins and she was itching to give them a ringing good clip on the ear but she didn't because she thought he might be watching but she never made a bigger mistake in all her life because Gerty could see without looking that he never took his eyes off of her and then Canon O'Hanlon handed the thurible back to Father Conroy and knelt down looking up at the Blessed Sacrament and the choir began to sing Tantum ego and she just swung her foot in and out in time as the music rose and fell to the Tantumer gosa cramen tum. Three and eleven she paid for those stockings in Sparrow's of George's street on the Tuesday, no the Monday before Easter and there wasn't a brack on them and that was what he was looking at, transparent, and not at her insignificant ones that had neither shape nor form (the cheek of her!) because he had eyes in his head to see the difference for himself. 

Cissy came up along the strand with the two twins and their ball with her hat anyhow on her to one side after her run and she did look a streel tugging the two kids along with the flimsy blouse she bought only a fortnight before like a rag on her back and bit of her petticoat hanging like a caricature. Gerty just took off her hat for a moment to settle her hair and a prettier, a daintier head of nutbrown tresses was never seen on a girl's shoulders, a radiant little vision, in sooth, almost maddening in its sweetness. You would have to travel many a long mile before you found a head of hair the like of that. She could almost see the swift answering flush of admiration in his eyes that set her tingling in every nerve. She put on her hat so that she could see from underneath the brim and swung her buckled shoe faster for her breath caught as she caught the expression in his eyes. He was eyeing her as a snake eyes its prey. Her woman's instinct told her that she had raised the devil in him and at the thought a burning scarlet swept from throat to brow till the lovely colour of her face became a glorious rose. 

Edy Boardman was noticing it too because she was squinting at Gerty, half smiling, with her specs, like an old maid, pretending to nurse the baby. Irritable little gnat she was and always would be and that was why no-one could get on with her, poking her nose into what was no concern of hers. And she said to Gerty: 

-- A penny for your thoughts. 

-- What? replied Gerty with a smile reinforced by the whitest of teeth. I was only wondering was it late. 

Because she wished to goodness they'd take the snottynosed twins and their baby home to the mischief out of that so that was why she just gave a gentle hint about its being late. And when Cissy came up Edy asked her the time and Miss Cissy, as glib as you like, said it was half past kissing time, time to kiss again. But Edy wanted to know because they were told to be in early. 

-- Wait, said Cissy, I'll ask my uncle Peter over there what's the time by his conundrum. 

So over she went and when he saw her coming she could see him take his hand out of his pocket, getting nervous, and beginning to play with his watchchain, looking at the church. Passionate nature though he was Gerty could see that he had enormous control over himself. One moment he had been there, fascinated by a loveliness that made him gaze, and the next moment it was the quiet gravefaced gentleman, selfcontrol expressed in every line of his distinguishedlooking figure. 

Cissy said to excuse her would he mind telling her what was the right time and Gerty could see him taking out his watch, listening to it and looking up and clearing his throat and he said he was very sorry his watch was stopped but he thought it must be after eight because the sun was set. His voice had a cultured ring in it and though he spoke in measured accents there was a suspicion of a quiver in the mellow tones. Cissy said thanks and came back with her tongue out and said uncle said his waterworks were out of order. 

Then they sang the second verse of the Tantum ergo and Canon O'Hanlon got up again and censed the Blessed Sacrament and knelt down and he told Father Conroy that one of the candles was just going to set fire to the flowers and Father Conroy got up and settled it all right and she could see the gentleman winding his watch and listening to the works and she swung her leg more in and out in time. It was getting darker but he could see and he was looking all the time that he was winding the watch or whatever he was doing to it and then he put it back and put his hands back into his pockets. She felt a Kind of a sensation rushing all over her and she knew by the feel of her scalp and that irritation against her stays that that thing must be coming on because the last time too was when she clipped her hair on account of the moon. His dark eyes fixed themselves on her again drinking in her every contour, literally worshipping at her shrine. If ever there was undisguised admiration in a man's passionate gaze it was there plain to be seen on that man's face. It is for you, Gertrude MacDowell, and you know it. 

Edy began to get ready to go and it was high time for her and Gerty noticed that that little hint she gave had the desired effect because it was a long way along the strand to where there was the place to push up the pushcar and Cissy took off the twins' caps and tidied their hair to make herself attractive of course and Canon O'Hanlon stood up with his cope poking up at his neck and Father Conroy handed him the card to read off and he read out Panem de clo prstitisti eis and Edy and Cissy were talking about the time all the time and asking her but Gerty could pay them back in their own coin and she just answered with scathing politeness when Edy asked her was she heartbroken about her best boy throwing her over. Gerty winced sharply. A brief cold blaze shone from her eyes that spoke volumes of scorn immeasurable. It hurt. O yes, it cut deep because Edy had her own quiet way of saying things like that she knew would wound like the confounded little cat she was. Gerty's lips parted swiftly to frame the word but she fought back the sob that rose to her throat, so slim, so flawless, so beautifully moulded it seemed one an artist might have dreamed of. She had loved him better than he knew. Lighthearted deceiver and fickle like all his sex he would never understand what he had meant to her and for an instant there was in the blue eyes a quick stinging of tears. Their eyes were probing her mercilessly but with a brave effort she sparkled back in sympathy as she glanced at her new conquest for them to see. 

-- O, responded Gerty, quick as lightning, laughing, and the proud head flashed up, I can throw my cap at who I like because it's leap year. 

Her words rang out crystalclear, more musical than the cooing of the ringdove, but they cut the silence icily. There was that in her young voice that told that she was not a one to be lightly trifled with. As for Mr Reggy with his swank and his bit of money she could just chuck him aside as if he was so much filth and never again would she cast as much as a second thought on him and tear his silly postcard into a dozen pieces. And it ever after he dared to presume she could give him one look of measured scorn that would make him shrivel up on the spot. Miss puny little Edy's countenance fell to no slight extent and Gerty could see by her looking as black as thunder that she was simply in a towering rage though she hid it, the little kinnatt, because that shaft had struck home for her petty jealousy and they both knew that she was something aloof, apart in another sphere, that she was not of them and there was somebody else too that knew it and saw it so they could put that in their pipe and smoke it. 

Edy straightened up baby Boardman to get ready to go and Cissy tucked in the ball and the spades and buckets and it was high time too because the sandman was on his way for Master Boardman junior and Cissy told him too that Billy Winks was coming and that baby was to go deedaw and baby looked just too ducky, laughing up out of his gleeful eyes, and Cissy poked him like that out of fun in his wee fat tummy and baby, without as much as by your leave, sent up his compliments on to his brandnew dribbling bib. 

O my! Puddeny pie! protested Ciss. He has his bib destroyed. 

The slight contretemps claimed her attention but in two twos she set that little matter to rights. 

Gerty stifled a smothered exclamation and gave a nervous cough and Edy asked what and she was just going to tell her to catch it while it was flying but she was ever ladylike in her deportment so she simply passed it off with consummate tact by saying that that was the benediction because just then the bell rang out from the steeple over the quiet seashore because Canon O'Hanlon was up on the altar with the veil that Father Conroy put round him round his shoulders giving the benediction with the blessed Sacrament in his hands. 

How moving the scene there in the gathering twilight, the last glimpse of Erin, the touching chime of those evening bells and at the same time a bat flew forth from the ivied belfry through the dusk, hither, thither, with a tiny lost cry. And she could see far away the lights of the lighthouses so picturesque she would have loved to do with a box of paints because it was easier than to make a man and soon the lamplighter would be going his rounds past the presbyterian church grounds and along by shady Tritonville avenue where the couples walked and lighting the lamp near her window where Reggy Wylie used to turn his freewheel like she read in that book The Lamplighter by Miss Cummins, author of Mabel Vaughan and other tales. For Gerty had her dreams that no-one knew of. She loved to read poetry and when she got a keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely confession album with the coralpink cover to write her thoughts in she laid it in the drawer of her toilettable which, though it did not err on the side of luxury, was scrupulously neat and clean. It was there she kept her girlish treasures trove, the tortoiseshell combs, her child of Mary badge, the whiterose scent, the eyebrowleine, her alabaster pouncetbox and the ribbons to change when her things came home from the wash and there were some beautiful thoughts written in it in violet ink that she bought in Hely's of Dame Street for she felt that she too could write poetry if she could only express herself like that poem that appealed to her so deeply that she had copied out of the newspaper she found one evening round the potherbs. Art thou real, my ideal? it was called by Louis J. Walsh, Magherafelt, and after there was something about twilight, wilt thou ever? and ofttimes the beauty of poetry, so sad in its transient loveliness, had misted her eyes with silent tears that the years were slipping by for her, one by one, and but for that one shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition and that was an accident coming down Dalkey hill and she always tried to conceal it. But it must end she felt. If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be no holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would make the great sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share his thoughts. Dearer than the whole world would she be to him and gild his days with happiness. There was the allimportant question and she was dying to know was he a married man or a widower who had lost his wife or some tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign name from the land of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But even if - what then? Would it make a very great difference? From everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men, with no respect for a girl's honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old flame he was in mourning for from the days beyond recall. She thought she understood. She would try to understand him because men were so different. The old love was waiting, waiting with little white hands stretched out, with blue appealing eyes. Heart of mine! She would follow her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide. Nothing else mattered. Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free. 

Canon O'Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the tabernacle and the choir sang Laudate Dominum omnes gentes and then he locked the tabernacle door because the benediction was over and Father Conroy handed him his hat to put on and crosscat Edy asked wasn't she coming but Jacky Caffrey called out: 

-- O, look, Cissy! 

And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Tommy saw it too over the trees beside the church, blue and then green and purple. 

-- It's fireworks, Cissy Caffrey said. 

And they all ran down the strand to see over the houses and the church, helterskelter, Edy with the pushcar with baby Boardman in it and Cissy holding Tommy and Jacky by the hand so they wouldn't fall running. 

-- Come on, Gerty, Cissy called. It's the bazaar fireworks. 

But Gerty was adamant. She had no intention of being at their beck and call. If they could run like rossies she could sit so she said she could see from where she was. The eyes that were fastened upon her set her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face, passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At last they were left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and face were working and a tremor went over her. She leaned back far to look up where the fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as not to fall back looking up and there was no one to see only him and her when she revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting of his heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew about the passion of men like that, hot-blooded, because Bertha Supple told her once in dead secret and made her swear she'd never about the gentleman lodger that was staying with them out of the Congested Districts Board that had pictures cut out of papers of those skirtdancers and highkickers and she said he used to do something not very nice that you could imagine sometimes in the bed. But this was altogether different from a thing like that because there was all the difference because she could almost feel him draw her face to his and the first quick hot touch of his handsome lips. Besides there was absolution so long as you didn't do the other thing before being married and there ought to be women priests that would understand without your telling out and Cissy Caffrey too sometimes had that dreamy kind of dreamy look in her eyes so that she too, my dear, and Winny Rippingham so mad about actors' photographs and besides it was on account of that other thing coming on the way it did. 

And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and she leaned back and the garters were blue to match on account of the transparent and they all saw it and shouted to look, look there it was and she leaned back ever so far to see the fireworks and something queer was flying about through the air, a soft thing to and fro, dark. And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirt-dancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft! 

Then all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. Ah! She glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he coloured like a girl. He was leaning back against the rock behind. Leopold Bloom (for it is he) stands silent, with bowed head before those young guileless eyes. What a brute he had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul had called to him and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he had been. He of all men! But there was an infinite store of mercy in those eyes, for him too a word of pardon even though he had erred and sinned and wandered. Should a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That was their secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly through the evening to and fro and little bats don't tell. 

Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to show what a great person she was: and then she cried: 

-- Gerty! Gerty! We're going. Come on. We can see from farther up. 

Gerty had an idea, one of love's little ruses. She slipped a hand into her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of course without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he's too far to. She rose. Was it goodbye? No. She had to go but they would meet again, there, and she would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her dream of yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height. Their souls bet in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her heart, full of a strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a sweet forgiving smile, a smile that verged on tears, and then they parted. 

Slowly without looking back she went down the uneven strand to Cissy, to Edy, to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman. It was darker now and there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and slippy seaweed. She balked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care and very slowly because Gerty MacDowell was... 

Tight boots? No. She's lame! O! 

Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That's why she's left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in a woman. But makes them polite. Glad I didn't know it when she was on show. Hot little devil all The same. Wouldn't mind. Curiosity like a nun or a negress or a girl with glasses. That squinty one is delicate. Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish. I have such a bad headache today. Where did I put the letter? Yes, all right. All kinds of crazy longings. Licking pennies. Girl in Tranquilla convent that nun told me liked to smell rock oil. Virgins go mad in the end I suppose. Sister? How many women in Dublin have it today? Martha, she. Something in the air. That's the moon. But then why don't all women menstruate at the same time with same moon, I mean? Depends on the time they were born, I suppose. Or all start scratch then get out of step. Sometimes Molly and Milly together. Anyhow I got the best of that. Damned glad I didn't do it in the bath this morning over her silly I will punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this morning. That gouger M'Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it themselves. Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured out of offices. Reserve better. Don't want it they throw it at you. Catch em alive, O. Pity they can't see themselves. A dream of wellfilled hose. Where was that? Ah, yes. Muioscope pictures in Capel street: for men only. Peeping Tom. Willy's hat and what the girls did with it. Do they snapshot those girls or is it all a fake? Lingerie does it. Felt for the curves inside her deshabillé. Excites them also when they're. I'm all clean come and dirty me. And they like dressing one another for the sacrifice. Milly delighted with Molly's new blouse. At first. Put them all on to take them all off. Molly. Why I bought her the violet garters. Us too: the tie he wore, his lovely socks and turnedup trousers. He wore a pair of gaiters the night that first we met. His lovely shirt was shining beneath his what? of jet. Say a woman loses a charm with every pin she takes out. Pinned together. O Mairy lost the pin of her. Dressed up to the nines for somebody. Fashion part of their charm. Just changes when you're on the track of the secret. Except the east: Mary, Martha: now as then. No reasonable offer refused. She wasn't in a hurry either. Always off to a fellow when they are. They never forget an appointment. Out on spec probably. They believe in chance because like themselves. And the others inclined to give her an odd dig. Girl friends at school, arms round each other's neck or with ten fingers locked, kissing and whispering secrets about nothing in the convent garden. Nuns with whitewashed faces, cool coif and their rosaries going up and down, vindictive too for what they can't get. Barbed wire. Be sure now and write to me. And I'll write to you. Now won't you? Molly and Josie Powell. Till Mr Right comes along then meet once in a blue moon. Tableau! O, look who it is for the love of God! How are you at all? What have you been doing with yourself? Kiss and delighted to, kiss, to see you. Picking holes in each other's appearance. You're looking splendid. Sister souls showing their teeth at one another. How many have you left? Wouldn't lend each other a pinch of salt. 

Ah! 

Devils they are when that's coming on them. Dark devilish appearance. Molly often told me feel things a ton weight. Scratch the sole of my foot. O that way! O, that's exquisite! Feel it myself too. Good to rest once in a way. Wonder if it's bad to go with them then. Safe in one way. Turns milk, makes fiddlestrings snap. Something about withering plants I read in a garden. Besides they say if the flower withers she wears she's a flirt. All are. Daresay she felt I. When you feel like that you often meet what you feel. Liked me or what? Dress they look at. Always know a fellow courting: collars and cuffs. Well cocks and lions do the same and stags. Same time might prefer a tie undone or something. Trousers? Suppose I when I was? No. Gently does it. Dislike rough and tumble. Kiss in the dark and never tell. Saw something in me. Wonder what. Sooner have me as I am than some poet chap with bearsgrease, plastery hair lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid gentleman in literary. Ought to attend to my appearance my age. Didn't let her see me in profile. Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly men marrying. Beauty and the beast. Besides I can't be so if Molly. Took off her hat to show her hair. Wide brim bought to hide her face, meeting someone might know her, bend down or carry a bunch of flowers to smell. Hair strong in rut. Ten bob I got for Molly's combings when we were on the rocks in Holles street. Why not? Suppose he gave her money. Why not? All a prejudice. She's worth ten, fifteen, more a pound. All that for nothing. Bold hand. Mrs Marion. Did I forget to write address on that letter like the postcard I sent to Flynn? And the day I went to Drimmie's without a necktie. Wrangle with Molly it was put me off. No, I remember. Richie Goulding. He's another. Weighs on his mind. Funny my watch stopped at half past four. Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean could do it myself. Save. Was that just when he, she? 

O, he did. Into her. She did. Done. 

Ah! 

Mr Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord, that little limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy Aftereffect not pleasant. Still you have to get rid of it someway. They don't care. Complimented perhaps. Go home to nicey bread and milky and say night prayers with the kiddies. Well, aren't they. See her as she is spoil all. Must have the stage setting, the rouge, costume, position, music. The name too. Amours of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs Bracegirdle, Maud Branscombe. Curtain up. Moonlight silver effulgence. Maiden discovered with pensive bosom. Little sweetheart come and kiss me Still I feel. The strength it gives a man. That's the secret of it. Good job I let off there behind coming out of Dignam's. Cider that was. Otherwise I couldn't have. Makes you want to sing after. Lacaus esant taratara. Suppose I spoke to her. What about? Bad plan however if you don't know how to end the conversation. Ask them a question they ask you another. Good idea if you're in a cart. Wonderful of course if you say: good evening, and you see she's on for it: good evening. O but the dark evening in the Appian way I nearly spoke to Mrs Clinch O thinking she was. Whew! Girl in Meath street that night. All the dirty things I made her say all wrong of course. My arks she called it. It's so hard to find one who. Aho! If you don't answer when they solicit must be horrible for them till they harden. And kissed my hand when I gave her the extra two shillings. Parrots. Press the button and the bird will squeak. Wish she hadn't called me sir. Oh, her mouth in the dark! And you a married man with a single girl! That's what they enjoy. Taking a man from another woman. Or even hear of it. Different with me. Glad to get away from other chap's wife. Eating off his cold plate. Chap in the Burton today spitting back gumchewed gristle. French letter still in my pocketbook. Cause of half the trouble. But might happen sometime, I don't think. Come in. All is prepared. I dreamt. What? Worst is beginning. How they change the venue when it's not what they like. Ask you do you like mushrooms because she once knew a gentleman who. Or ask you what someone was going to say when he changed his mind and stopped. Yet if I went the whole hog, say: I want to, something like that. Because I did. She too. Offend her. Then make it up. Pretend to want something awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters them. She must have been thinking of someone else all the time. What harm? Must since she came to the use of reason, he, he and he. First Kiss does the trick. The propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. Mushy like, tell by their eye, on the sly. First thoughts are best. Remember that till their dying day. Molly, lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her under the Moorish wall beside the gardens. Fifteen she told me. But her breasts were developed. Fell asleep then. After Gencree dinner that was when we drove home the featherbed mountain. Gnashing her teeth in sleep. Lord mayor had his eye off her too. Val Dillon. Apoplectic. 

There she is with them down there for the fireworks. My fireworks. Up like a rocket, down like a stick. And the children, twins they must be, waiting for something to happen. Want to be grownups. Dressing in mother's clothes. Time enough, understand all the ways of the world. And the dark one with the mop head and the nigger mouth. I knew she could whistle. Mouth made for that. Like Molly. Why that high class whore In Jammet's wore her veil only to her nose. Would you mind, please, telling me the right time? I'll tell you the right time up a dark lane. Say prunes and prisms forty times every morning, cure for fat lips. Caressing the little boy too. Onlookers see most of the game. Of course they understand birds, animals, babies. In their line. 

Didn't look back when she was going down the strand. Wouldn't give that satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls. Fine eyes she had, clear. It's the white of the eye brings that out not so much the pupil. Did she know what I? Course. Like a cat sitting beyond a dog's jump. Women never meet one like that Wilkins in the high school drawing a picture of Venus with all his belongings on show. Call that innocence? Poor idiot! His wife has her work cut out for her. Never see them sit on a bench marked Wet Paint. Eyes all over them. Look under the bed for what's not there. Longing to get the fright of their lives. Sharp as needles they are. When I said to Molly the man at the corner of Cuffe street was goodlooking, thought she might like, twigged at once he had a false arm. Had too. Where do they get that? Typist going up Roger Greene's stairs two at a time to show her understandings. Handed down from father to mother to daughter, I mean. Bred in the bone. Milly for example drying her handkerchief on the mirror to save the ironing. Best place for an ad to catch a woman's eye on a mirror. And when I sent her for Molly's Paisley shawl to Presscott's, by the way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her stocking. Clever little minx! I never told her. Neat way she carried parcels too. Attract men, small thing like that. Holding up her hand, shaking it, to let the blood flow back when it was red. Who did you learn that from? Nobody. Something the nurse taught me. O, don't they know? Three years old she was in front of Molly's dressingtable just before we left Lombard street west. Me have a nice face. Mullingar. Who knows? Ways of the world. Young student. Straight on her pins anyway not like the other. Still she was game. Lord, I am wet. Devil you are. Swell of her calf. Transparent stockings, stretched to breaking point. Not like that frump today. A. E. Rumpled stockings. Or the one in Grafton street. White. Wow! Beef to the heel. 

A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads and zrads, zrads, zrads. And Cissy and Tommy ran out to see and Edy after with the pushcar and then Gerty beyond the curve of the rocks. Will she? Watch! Watch! See! Looked round. She smelt an onion. Darling, I saw your. I saw all. 

Lord! 

Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan's, Dignam's. For this relief much thanks. In Hamlet, that is. Lord! It was all things combined. Excitement. When she leaned back felt an ache at the butt of my tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He's right. Might have made a worse fool of myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It couldn't be? No, Gerty they called her. Might be false name however like my and the address Dolphin's barn a blind. 

Her maiden name was Jemina Brown 
And she lived with her mother in Irishtown.
Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same brush. Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if it understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw anything straight at school. Crooked as a ram's horn. Sad however because it lasts only a few years till they settle down to potwalloping and papa's pants will soon fit Willy and fullers' earth for the baby when they hold him out to do ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps them out of harm's way. Nature. Washing child, washing corpse. Dignam. Children's hands always round them. Cocoa-nut skulls, monkeys, not even closed at first, sour milk in their swaddles and tainted curds. Oughtn't to have given that child an empty teat to suck. Fill it up with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call to the hospital. Wonder is nurse Callan there still. She used to look over some nights when Molly was in the Coffee Palace. That young doctor O'Hare I noticed her brushing his coat. And, Mrs Breen and Mrs Dignam once like that too, marriageable. Worst of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the City Arms. Husband rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat. Have that in your nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning: was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the husband. Chickens come home to roost. They stick by one another like glue. Maybe the women's fault also. That's where Molly can knock spots off them. It is the blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance those others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to introduce my. Then they trot you out some kind of a nondescript, wouldn't know what to call her. Always see a fellow's weak point in his wife. Still there's destiny in it, falling in love. Have their own secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if some woman didn't take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of a shilling in coppers, with little 
hobbies. As God made them He matched them. Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one. Or old rich chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May and repent in December. This wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin is not back. Better detach. 

Ow! 

Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and the short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch. Wristwatches are always going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic influence between the person because that was about the time he. Yes, I suppose at once. Cat's away the mice will play. I remember looking in Pill lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism. Earth for instance pulling this and being pulled. That causes movement. And time? Well that's the time the movement takes. Then if one thing stopped the whole ghesabo would stop bit by bit. Because it's arranged. Magnetic needle tells you what's going on in the sun, the stars. Little piece of steel iron. When you hold out the fork. Come. Come. Tip. Woman and man that is. Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress up and look and suggest and let you see and see more and defy you if you're a man to see that and, like a sneeze coming, legs, look, look and if you have any guts in you. Tip. Have to let fly. 

Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before third person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her underjaw stuck out head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and spurs at the horse show. And when the painters were in Lombard street west. Fine voice that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did, like flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine probably in the paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time doing it scraped her slipper on the floor so they wouldn't hear. But lots of them can't kick the beam, I think. Keep that thing up for hours. Kind of a general all round over me and half down my back. 

Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That's her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I leave you this to think of me when I'm far away on the pillow. What is it? Heliotrope? No, Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She'd like scent of that kind. Sweet and cheap: soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her with a little jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the dance night she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She was wearing her black and it had the perfume of the time before. Good conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. Suppose there's some connection. For instance if you go into a cellar where it's dark. Mysterious thing too. Why did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself, slow but sure. Suppose it's ever so many millions of tiny grains blown across. Yes, it is. Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this morning, smell them leagues off. Tell you what it is. It's like a fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine like what do you call it gossamer and they're aways spinning it out of them, fine as anything, rainbow colours without knowing it. Clings to everything she takes off. Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers: little kick, taking them off. Byby till next time. Also the cat likes to sniff in her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater too. Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is really. There or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get it out of all holes and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil or ether or something. Muskrat. Bag under their tails one grain pour off odour for years. Dogs at each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm. Hm. Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that way. We're the same. Some women for instance warn you off when they have their period. Come near. Then get a hogo you could hang your hat on. Like what? Potted herrings gone stale or. Boof! Please keep off the grass. 

Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves Long John had on his desk the other. Breath? What you eat and drink gives that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because priests that are supposed to be are different. Women buzz round it like flies round treacle. Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The tree of forbidden priest. O father, will you? Let me be the first to. That diffuses itself all through the body, permeates. Source of life and it's extremely curious the smell. Celery sauce. Let me. 

Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his waistcoat. Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah, no, that's the soap. 

O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind. Never went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that hag this morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings. I could mention Meagher's just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph. Two and nine. Bad opinion of me he'll have. Call tomorrow. How much do I owe you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellow run up a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back streets into somewhere else. 

Here's this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went as far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had a good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper walk a mile. Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government sit. Walk after him now make him awkward like those newsboys me today. Still you learn something. See ourselves as others see us. So long as women don't mock what matter? That's the way to find out. Ask yourself who is he now. The Mystery Man on the Beach, prize titbit story by Mr Leopold Bloom. Payment at the rate of one guinea per column. And that fellow today at the graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his kismet however. Healthy perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain they say. Must be some somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body feels the atmosphere. Old Betty's joints are on the rack. Mother Shipton's prophecy that is about ships around they fly in the twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal reader. And distant hills seem coming nigh. 

Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of the dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time. Jewels diamonds flash better. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt you. Better now of course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through the small guts for nothing. Still two types there are you bob against. Scowl or smile. Pardon! Not at all. Best time to spray plants too in the shade after the sun. Some light still. Red rays are longest. Roygbiv Vance taught us: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. A star I see. Venus? Can't tell yet. Two, when three it's night. Were those nightclouds there all the time? Looks like a phantom ship. No. Wait. Trees are they. An optical illusion. Mirage. Land of the setting sun this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast. My native land, goodnight. 

Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his way up through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold, sore on the mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst. Friction of the position. Like to be that rock she sat on. O sweet little, you don't know how nice you looked. I begin to like them at that age. Green apples. Grab at all that offer. Suppose it's the only time we cross legs, seated. Also the library today: those girl graduates. Happy chairs under them. But it's the evening influence. They feel all that. Open like flowers, know their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes, in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the lamps. Nightstock in Mat Dillon's garden where I kissed her shoulder. Wish I had a full length oil-painting of her then. June that was too I wooed. The year returns. History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I'm with you once again. Life, love, voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad about her lame of course but must be on your guard not to feel too much pity. They take advantage. 

All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums and I the plumstones. Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names change: that's all. Lovers: yum yum. 

Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out of me, little wretch. She kissed me. My youth. Never again. Only once it comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin's barn. Are you not happy in your? Naughty darling. At Dolphin's barn charades in Luke Doyle's house. Mat Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty. Molly too. Eightyseven that was. 

Year before we. And the old major partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only child. So it returns. Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. And just when he and she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip: tear in Henny Doyle's overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering. Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle coming back. She leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty from the dew. 

Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I'm a tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you could be changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes. Funny little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely. Hanging by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell scared him out, I suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could hear them all at it. Pray for us. And pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the repetition. Same thing with ads. Buy from us. And buy from us. Yes, there's the light in the priest's house. Their frugal meal. Remember about the mistake in the valuation when I was in Thom's. Twentyeight it is. Two houses they have. Gabriel Conroy's brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder why they come out at night like mice. They're a mixed breed. Birds are like hopping mice. What frightens them, light or noise? Better sit still. All instinct like the bird in drouth got water out of the end of a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning on the staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with three colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoise-shell in the City Anns with the letter em on her forehead. Body fifty different colours. Howth a while ago amethyst. Glass flashing. That's how that wise man what's his name with the burning glass. Then the heather goes on fire. It can't be tourists' matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry rub together in the wind and light. Or broken bottles in the furze act as a burning glass in the sun. Archimedes. I have it! My memory's not so bad. 

Ba. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects? That bee last week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be the one bit me, come back to see. Birds too never find out what they say. Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve? they have to fly over the ocean and back. Lot must be killed in storms, telegraph wires. Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of ocean-going steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like seacows. Faugh a ballagh. Out of that, bloody curse to you. Others in vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow. Married too. Sometimes away for years at the ends of the earth somewhere. No ends really because it's round. Wife in every port they say. She has a good job if she minds it till Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he does. Smelling the tail end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The anchor's weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for luck. Well? And the tephilim no what's this they call it poor papa's father had on his door to touch. That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage. Something in all those superstitions because when you go out never know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of a beam for grim life, life-belt round round him, gulping salt water, and that's the last of his nibs till the sharks catch hold of him. Do fish ever get seasick? 

Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid, crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones' locker. Moon looking down. Not my fault, old cockalorum. 

A lost long candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search of funds for Mercer's hospital and broke, drooping, and sheda cluster of violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The shepherd's hour: the hour of holding: hour of tryst. From house to house, giving his everwelcome double knock, went the nine o'clock postman, the glowworm's lamp at his belt gleaming here and there through the laurel hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy's terrace. By screens of lighted windows, by equal gardens a shrill voice went crying, wailing: Evening Telegraph, stop press edition! Result of the Gold Cup race! and from the door of Dignam's house a boy ran out and called. Twittering the bat flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands the coming surf crept, grey. Howth settled for slumber tired of long days, of yumyum rhododendrons (he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze lift, ruffle his fell of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep and slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom. 

Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and breeches buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in the Erin's King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the zoo. Filthy trip. Drunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking overboard to feed the herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in their faces. Milly, no sign of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing. Don't know what death is at that age. And then their stomachs clean. But being lost they fear. When we hid behind the tree at Crumlin. I didn't want to. Mamma! Mamma! Babes in the wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing them up in the air to catch them. I'll murder you. Is it only half fun? Or children playing battle. Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at each other? Sometimes they go off. Poor kids. Only troubles wildfire and nettlerash. Calomel purge I got her for that. After getting better asleep with Molly. Very same teeth she has. What do they love? Another themselves? But the morning she chased her with the umbrella. Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking. Little hand it was: now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says when you touch. Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her first stays I remember. Made me laugh to see. Little paps to begin with. Left one is more sensitive, I think. Mine too. Nearer the heart. Padding themselves out if fat is in fashion. Her growing pains at night, calling, wakening me. Frightened she was when her nature came on her first. Poor child! Strange moment for the mother too. Brings back her girlhood. Gibraltar. Looking from Buena Vista. O'Hara's tower. The seabirds screaming. Old Barbary ape that gobbled all his family. Sundown, gunfire for the men to cross the lines. Looking out over the sea she told me. Evening like this, but clear, no clouds. I always thought I'd marry a lord or a gentleman with a private yacht. Buenos noches, se?orita. El hombre ama la muchacha hermosa. Why me? Because you were so foreign from the others. 

Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes you dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for Leoh, Lily of Killarney. No. Might be still up. Call to the hospital to see. Hope she's over. Long day I've had. Martha, the bath, funeral, house of keys, museum with those goddesses, Dedalus' song. Then that bawler in Barney Kiernan's. Got my own back there. Drunken ranters. What I said about his God made him wince. Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought to go home and laugh at themselves. Always want to be swilling in company. Afraid to be alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers for Israel. Three cheers for the sister-in-law he hawked about, three fangs in her mouth. Same style of beauty. Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea. The sister of the wife of the wild man of Borneo has just come to town. Imagine that in the early morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as Morris said when he kissed the cow. But Dignam's put the boots on it. Houses of mourning so depressing because you never know. Anyhow she wants the money. Must call to those Scottish widows as I promised. Strange name. Takes it for granted we're going to pop off first. That widow on Monday was it outside Cramer's that looked at me. Buried the poor husband but progressing favourably on the premium. Her widow's mite. Well? What do you expect her to do? Must wheedle her way along. Widower I hate to see. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O'Connor wife and five children poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some good matronly woman in a pork-pie hat to mother him. Take him in tow, platter face and a large apron. Ladies' grey flannelette bloomers, three shillings a pair, astonishing bargain. Plain and loved, loved for ever, they say. Ugly: no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we die. See him sometimes walking about trying to find out who played the trick. U. p.: up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop often noticed. Curse seems to dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. Something confused. She had red slippers on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does. Would I like her in pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti's gone. Mailboat. Near Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes's. Work Hynes and Crawford. Petticoats for Molly. She has something to put in them. What's that? Might be money. 

Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand. He brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can't read. Better go. Better. I'm tired to move. Page of an old copybook. All those holes and pebbles. Who could count them? Never know what you find. Bottle with story of a treasure in it thrown from a wreck. Parcels post. Children always want to throw things in the sea. Trust? Bread cast on the waters. What's this? Bit of stick. 

O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come here tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back. Murderers do. Will I? 

Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write a message for her. Might remain. What? 

I. 

Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide comes here a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark mirror, breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and letters. O, those transparent! Besides they don't know. What is the meaning of that other world. I called you naughty boy because I do not like. 

AM. A. 

No room. Let it go. 

Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand. Nothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming up here. Except Guinness's barges. Round the Kish in eighty days. Done half by design. 

He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck. Now if you were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn't. Chance. We'll never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made me feel so young. 

Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat long gone. Not even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too. And Belfast. I won't go. Race there, race back to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a moment. Won't sleep though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat again. No harm in him. Just a few. 

O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met him pike hoses frillies for Raoul to perfume your wife black hair heave under embon se?orita young eyes Mulvey plump years dreams return tail end Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return next in her next her next. 

A bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr Bloom with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned, breathed. Just for a few. 

Cuckoo 
Cuckoo 
Cuckoo
The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest's house cooed where Canon O'Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S. J. were taking tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup and talking about 
Cuckoo 
Cuckoo 
Cuckoo
Because it was a little canarybird bird that came out of its little house to tell the time that Gerty MacDowell noticed the time she was there because she was as quick as anything about a thing like that, was Gerty MacDowell, and she noticed at once that that foreign gentleman that was sitting on the rocks looking was 
Cuckoo 
Cuckoo 
Cuckoo


夏日的黄昏开始把世界笼罩在神秘的拥抱中。在遥远的西边，太阳沉落了。这一天转瞬即逝，将最后一抹余晖含情脉脉地投射在海洋和岸滩上，投射在一如往日那样厮守着湾水做然屹立的亲爱的老霍斯岬角以及沙丘海岸那杂草蔓生的岸石上；最后的但并非微不足道的，也投射在肃穆的教堂上。从这里，时而划破寂静，倾泻出向圣母玛利亚祷告的声音。她——"海洋之星"[ 1 ]，发出清纯的光辉，永远像灯塔般照耀着人们那被暴风颠簸的心灵。

三个少女结伴坐在岩石上，饱览着傍晚的风景，享受着那清新而还不太凉的微风。她们曾多次[ 2 ] 到自己所喜爱的这个地方来，在闪亮的波浪旁亲切畅快地谈论女人的家常。西茜•卡弗里和伊迪•博德曼将娃娃放在婴儿车里，还带着两个鬈发的小男孩汤米和杰基•卡弗里。他们身穿水手服，头戴水手帽，衣帽上均印染着"H. M. S. [ 3 ] 美岛号"字样。汤米和杰基•卡弗里是双胞胎，不满四岁，有时吵闹得厉害，被宠坏了。尽管那样，两张活泼快乐的小脸蛋儿和惹人喜爱的动作使他们依然是人人疼爱的小宝宝。他们手执铲子和桶，弄得浑身是沙子，像一般孩童那样筑城堡，或者玩他们的大彩球，快快乐乐地打发着光阴。伊迪•博德曼一前一后地摇着婴儿车里的胖嘟嘟的娃娃。那位小绅士高兴得咯咯直笑。他才十一个月零九天。尽管刚趔趔趄趄地学步，却已开始咿呀学语了。西茜•卡弗里朝他弯下身去，逗弄他那胖嘟嘟的小脸蛋儿和腮帮上那个可爱的小酒窝儿。

"喏，小娃娃，"西茜•卡弗里说，"大——大声说吧：'我要喝口水。'"

娃娃跟着她学舌： "荷、荷、咳、随。"

西茜•卡弗里紧紧地搂抱住小不点儿，因为她非常喜欢孩子，对小病人极有耐性。除非是由西茜•卡弗里捏着汤米•卡弗里的鼻子并且答应给他一截面包尖儿，或涂满金色糖浆的黑面包，他是绝不肯服蓖麻油的。这个姑娘的说服力够多么大啊！当然，娃娃博德曼也确实很乖，他围着崭新的涎布，是个再可爱不过的小家伙。西茜•卡弗里完全不是像弗洛拉•麦克弗利姆西[ 4 ]那种被宠坏了的美人儿。她是位世上罕见的心地纯正的少女：一双吉卜赛人式的眼睛总是笑吟吟的，熟樱桃般的红唇[ 5 ] ，随口说着逗人的话，真是再可爱不过了。伊迪•博德曼听了小弟弟的妙语，不禁也笑起来。

但就在这当儿，汤米和杰基哥儿俩之间发生了一场小小的争执。男孩儿毕竟是男孩儿，我们这对双胞胎也越不出这颠仆不破的道理。争端缘于杰基公子所筑的一座沙堡，汤米公子非要从建筑上对它加以改进，装上一扇圆形炮塔般的正门。然而倘若汤米公子刚愎自用，杰基公子也同样固执己见。俗话说得好：再渺小的爱尔兰人在自己家中也是一座城堡之主。于是，杰基公子便扑向他那誓不两立的劲敌。到头来，不但把他所攻击的对手打得一败涂地，（说起来令人伤心！ ）连他所垂涎的那座城堡，也变成一片废墟。不用说，败下阵来的汤米公子的哭声惊动了女伴们。

"汤米，到这儿来，"他姐姐用刻不容缓的语气嚷道，"马上来！还有你，杰基，把可怜的汤米推到脏沙子里，你害不害羞！等着瞧吧，我得给你点儿厉害尝尝。"

汤米公子噙着满眶热泪，视线模糊起来。他立即应命走来，因为这对双胞胎向来是把姐姐的话当作金科玉律的。败北了的他，可真是一副惨相。小小的水手帽和裤子上沾满沙子。然而西茜•卡弗里少女老成，是舒解生活中小烦扰的能手。转眼之间，他那身漂亮衣服上就连一粒沙子也看不见了。可是那双蓝眼睛里依然热泪盈眶。于是她就用一阵亲吻抹去了他心头的创伤，用拳头朝罪魁祸首杰基公子比划比划，滴溜溜地转着两眼训诫道，要是她在旁边，可轻饶不了他。

"杰基这个讨厌鬼真不讲理！"她大声说。

她用一只胳膊搂住小水手，讨好地哄着他：

"你叫什么名字呀？叫黄油和奶油吧？"

"告诉我们，谁是你的心上人？"伊迪•博德曼说，"西茜是你的心上人吗？"

"不希［是］，"泪汪汪的汤米说。

"伊迪•博德曼是你的心上人吗？"西茜问。

"不希[ 是］，"汤米说。

"我知道，"伊迪•博德曼那双近视眼诡秘地一闪，略微带点刺儿他说，"我知道谁是汤米的心上人哆。格蒂是汤米的心上人。"

"不希[ 是 ] ，"汤米险些儿掉了眼泪。

西茜以她那母性的机警，立即有所察觉。她跟伊迪•博德曼打耳喳说，把他领到那位绅士瞧不见的婴儿车后面去，还得留意不要让他弄湿那双崭新的棕黄色皮鞋。

然而，格蒂是谁呢？

格蒂•麦克道维尔坐在离伙伴不远处。她凝望远方，沉湎在默想中。她在富于魅力的爱尔兰姑娘中间，确实是位不经见的美少女典范。凡是认识她的人都一口称道她的美貌。人们常说，她长得与其说是像父方麦克道维尔家的，倒不如说是更像母方吉尔特拉普家的人。她身材苗条优美，甚至有些纤弱，然而她近日服用的铁片，比寡妇韦尔奇的妇女丸药对她更加滋补。过去常有的白带什么的少了，疲劳感也减轻了不少。她那蜡一般白哲的脸，纯净如象牙，真是天仙一般。她那玫瑰花蕾般的嘴唇，确实是爱神之弓，有着匀称的希腊美。她那双有着细微血管的手像是雪花膏做成的，纤纤手指如烛心，只有柠檬汁和高级软膏才能使它们这般白嫩。然而关于她睡觉时戴羔羊皮手套和用牛奶泡脚之说，则纯属捏造。有一次伯莎•萨波尔被格蒂气昏了头，大有剑拔弩张之势（彼此要好的少女们自然也像其他凡人一样，不时地会闹些小别扭），她便故意对伊迪•博德曼撒了这么个谎。伯莎还告诉伊迪，千万不要对人说这话是从她那儿听来的，不然的话，她就再也不跟伊迪说话了。她当然没有说出去。但是荣誉归于该享受它的人。格蒂天生优雅，有着楚楚动人、女王般的非凡气宇[ 6 ]。她那双秀丽的手和高高拱起的脚背确凿无疑地证明了这一点。倘若福星高照，让她投生上流社会家庭，并受到良好的教育，格蒂•麦克道维尔就会成为与本国任何贵妇相比也毫不逊色的淑女。她额上就会戴起宝石，穿着讲究，跟前必然围满了竞相向她献殷勤的贵公子们。莫非是可能尝到过恋爱的滋味吧，她那柔和俊秀的脸上有时露出自我克制的紧张神情。于是她那双美丽的眼睛就掠过一抹不可思议的渴望的影子。这样的魅力是几乎没有人不倾倒的。女人的眼睛为什么如此富于魅力？格蒂那双爱尔兰蓝眼睛是再蓝不过的，并且有带光泽的睫毛和富于表情的深色眉毛相衬托。她的眉毛原本并不像这样丝绒一般地迷人。还是主编《公主中篇小说》[ 7 ]美容栏的维拉•维利蒂太太最早劝她试着描描眉毛。这样就为她的眼睛平添了一种诱人神情，而这是十分合乎社交界名流趣向的。她从未因之而后悔过。还有用科学方法治愈脸红的毛病啦，怎样用身高促进法来使你身材硕长啦，再就是你有张漂亮脸蛋儿，可是鼻子呢？对迪格纳穆太太挺合式，因为她长的是个蒜头鼻子。然而格蒂最值得夸耀的还是她那一头丰茂的秀发：是深褐色的，而且天生地鬈曲。为了图个新月上升的吉利，当天早晨她曾把头发剪了剪，浓密的鬈发蓬蓬松松地环绕在她那俊秀的头上。她还修剪了指甲。星期四剪，招财进宝。此刻经伊迪这么一说，泄露隐情的红色就像最娇嫩的玫瑰花一般柔和地爬上了她的双颊。甜蜜而少女气的羞涩使她看上去如此姣好。确实踏遍天主的绮丽国土爱尔兰，也找不到能同她媲美的。

她带着些许忧郁，双目低垂，沉默了一会儿。她刚要抢白两句，可是话到嘴边又咽了回去。若按她的脾气，是想回嘴的，可是自尊心告诫她，还是保持缄默为好。她只噘了一下芳唇，接着就抬头望一下，快活地笑了，声音充满了五月早晨的青春气息。她比任何人都清楚，斜眼伊迪为什么这么说。她认为他的感情冷漠了，其实那只不过是恋人之间闹闹别扭而已。由于那个拥有一辆自行车的男孩子总是[ 8 ] 在她窗前骑来骑去，伊迪觉得可不是滋味啦。不过眼下正当取得奖学金资格的期中考试，他父亲把他关在家里，要他拼命用功。念完高中后，他将进入三一学院去学医，就像他那位在三一学院参加自行车赛的哥哥w•E•怀利那样。她心里时而像剜了个洞一般隐隐作痛，一直刺到内心深处，他对此似乎无动于衷。然而他还年轻，到一定的时候说不定就学会爱起她来。他家里是新教徒，而格蒂呢，当然晓得哪一位最重要。其次是圣母玛利亚，然后是圣约瑟。然而他确实是个英俊少年，鼻子长得很美，浑身处处都不折不扣地是位上等人。没戴帽子的时候，从背后望去，她就能认得出来。因为他就是有点儿与众不同。他在街灯那儿撒开车把转弯的那副样子也罢，还有他吸的那种上等纸烟好闻的香味也罢，都非同凡响。而且他和她个头也那么般配。由于他没有骑着车在格蒂家的小院子前面荡来荡去，伊迪•博德曼自以为聪明透顶，说到了点子上。

格蒂穿戴朴素，却又具有一个时髦少女出于本能对社交界流行习尚的敏感。因为她感到，他有可能出门来了。整洁的电光蓝色宽胸罩衫是她亲手染的（因为据《夫人画报》[9 ]，这是即将时新的颜色），V字形的领口潇潇洒洒地开到胸部和手帕兜那儿（手帕会使兜儿变形，所以她一向总在里面放一片脱脂棉，上面洒了她心爱的香水），再加上一条剪裁适度的海军蓝短裙，把她那优美苗条的身材衬托得更加仪态万方。她戴的那顶俏丽可人的小帽是用褐黑色麦秆粗粗编成的，与镶在帽檐底下的蛋青色绳绒形成鲜明对照。边上系着同一色调的丝质蝴蝶结。上星期二整个儿下午，她到处物色配色的绳绒，终于在克勒利[ 10 ]的夏季大甩卖上寻觅到中意的了。她要的正是它，尽管多少摆旧了点儿，然而谁也觉察不出来。一共七中指长[ 11 ]，花了两先令一便士。她亲手把它镶上。试戴时，她朝着映在镜中的情影嫣然一笑，自是心满意足！当她为了怕帽子走形而把它放在水罐上的时候，她才意识到这样做会使某些熟人黯然失色。她的鞋是当前最时髦的。伊迪•博德曼引为得意的是她的鞋号码很小[ 12 ]，然而她从未长过格蒂•麦克道维尔那样一双仅仅五号的脚，永远也不会的。[13 ]鞋尖是漆皮的，高高拱起的脚背上有着精致的饰扣。她那露在裙子底下的漂亮的脚脖子生得极其匀称，线条优美的小腿也合乎体统地略微露出一截，上面套着几乎透明的长袜。脚后跟的部位是特别编织的，上面还系着宽袜带。最使格蒂操心的要算是内衣了。凡是晓得甜蜜的十七岁（格蒂已经同十七岁永远告别了）那种怔忡不安的热望和恐惧的人，难道忍心去责备她吗，她有四套绣得非常精致的出门穿的衣服，三件家常穿的，另外还有几件睡衣。每套出门穿的衣服都分别缀着各色缎带：有玫瑰色、淡蓝色、紫红色和豆青色的。每穿一次，她总是亲自晾晒。从洗衣坊里送回来后，又亲手上蓝、并给烫平。她还有一块垫熨斗用的砖片，因为她怕洗衣妇会把衣服烫糊。简直信不过她们！她穿蓝色是图个吉祥，希望交好运。这是她自己的颜色，新娘子身上要是带一点蓝色总会吉利的。上星期那一天她穿的是豆青色的，就带来了忧伤，因为他父亲把他关在家里让他用功，好参加取得奖学金资格的期中考试。她原寻思，他兴许会出门的，因为今儿早晨换衣服的时候，她差点儿把旧裤衩儿反着穿。除非是赶在星期五，反过来穿是会走运的，有利于情人幽会。要么，如果裤衩儿松开来了，那就说明他在想念你哩。

可是——可是！瞧她脸上那副紧张的神色！总是显得那么忧心忡忡。灵魂通过她那双眼睛透露出来，她渴望能够独自呆在住惯了的房间里，好好哭上一场，用泪水减轻她心头的郁闷。可又不能哭得太厉害。她对着镜子掌握分寸，要哭得恰到好处。镜子说：格蒂，你长得真美。黄昏时分那苍白的余晖投射到一张悲伤、愁闷之至的脸庞上。格蒂•麦克道维尔这种缱绻的情思是徒然的。她从一开始就知道，关于举行一场婚礼的幻想啦，为雷吉•怀利•T•C•D•太太（因为嫁给他哥哥的那一位才能做怀利太太）敲响的喜钟啦，以及据社交栏的报道，格楚德•怀利太太穿了一身用昂贵的青狐皮镶边的豪华灰服，都是不可能的。他太年轻了，还不懂事。他不会相信恋爱，而那是女人生来的权利。很久以前，在斯托尔家举行的晚宴上（他还穿着短裤呢），只有他们两个人在一起时，他悄悄地用一只胳膊搂了她的腰；她呢，连嘴唇都吓白了。他古里古怪地嗄着嗓儿叫着她"小不点儿"，冷不防还接了半个吻（平生第一遭儿！），然而他碰着的仅仅是她的鼻尖儿。随后，他赶忙走出房间，念叨着吃茶点的话。好个鲁莽的小伙子！雷吉•怀利从来不曾以性格鲜明见长，而向格蒂•麦克道维尔求婚并赢得她的爱情者，必须是个杰出人物[ 14 ]。然而她只能等待，总是等待人家来求婚。这又是个闰年，很快就会过去的。她的意中人并不是将珍贵、神奇的爱情献在她脚前的风流倜傥的王子，他毋宁是个刚毅的男子汉；神情安详的脸上蕴含着坚强的意志，却还没有找到理想的女子。他的头发也许或多或少已经斑白了，他会理解她，伸出胳膊来保护她，凭着他那深沉多情的天性紧紧搂住她，并用长长的亲吻安慰她。那就像是天堂一般。在这馨香的夏日傍晚，她企盼着的就是这么一位。她衷心渴望委身于他，做他信誓旦旦的妻子：贫富共当，不论患病或健康，直到死亡使我们分手，自今日以至将来。[ 15 ] 

于是，当伊迪•博德曼带着小汤米呆在婴儿车后面的时候，她正在思忖，能够称自己为他的幼妻的那一天是否会到来。那样，大家就会议论她，直到脸上发青。伯莎•萨波尔也不例外；还有小炮竹伊迪，因为十一月她就满二十岁了。她也会照顾他，使他衣食上舒适。格蒂凭着她那份妇道人家的智慧，晓得但凡是个男人，都喜欢那种家庭气氛。她那烤成金褐色的薄饼和放有大量美味奶油的安妮女王布丁[ 16 ]曾赢得过众人的好评。因为她有一双灵巧的手，不论点火，还是撒上一层加了发酵粉的精白面，不断地朝一个方向搅和，然后搀上牛奶白糖，调成奶油，或是将蛋清搅匀，她样样擅长。不过，她可不喜欢当着人面吃什么，怪害臊的。她常常纳闷为什么不能吃一些像紫罗兰或玫瑰花那样富于诗情的东西！他们还会有一间布置优雅的客厅，装饰着绘画、雕刻以及外祖父吉尔特拉普那只可爱的狗加里欧文[17]的照片。它是那样通人性，几乎能说话了。椅子套着光滑的印花棉布罩子，还有来自克莱利的夏季旧杂货义卖展上的银质烤面包架，就像阔人家拥有的那样。他身材高大，肩膀宽阔（她一向欣赏高个子，丈夫就得要这样的），在仔细修剪过的弯弯的口髭下面，闪烁着一口雪白牙齿。他们将到大陆上去度蜜月（多么美妙的三个星期！）然后就安顿在精致、整洁、舒适而又亲切的安乐窝里。每天早晨他们两人共进早餐，吃得虽然简单，却都是精心烹制的。他去治公之前，总先热烈地紧紧拥抱一下亲爱的小妻子，并且垂下头去深深凝视一会儿她的眼睛。

伊迪•博德曼问汤米•卡弗里"好了吗"，他说"好啦"。于是，她就替他扣上小小短裤的钮扣，叫他跑去跟杰基玩耍：要乖乖的，可别打架。但是汤米说他要那只球， 而伊迪告诉他说：不行，娃娃在玩球呢；要是他把球拿了去，又该吵架了。然而汤米说，这是他的球， 他要自己的球。瞧，他竟然在地上跺起脚来了。好大的脾气！哦，他已经成人了， 小汤米•卡弗里成人啦，因为已经摘掉围嘴儿了嘛。伊迪对他说，不行，不行，马上走开吧， 她还告诉西酋•卡弗里，对他可不能让步。 "你不是我姐姐，"淘气包汤米说，"这是我的球。"

但是西酋•卡弗里对小娃子博德曼说，高高地望上看，看她的指头！这时，她飞快地把球抢到手，沿着沙地丢过去，汤米胜利了，就一溜烟儿拚命在后面追。

"为了图清静，怎么着都行[ 18 ]，"西丝[ 19 ]笑道。

于是，她就轻搔了一下小娃子的脸蛋儿，好让他分神，哄着他玩什么市长大人出门啦，这里是他的两匹马啦，这里是他的花哨马车。瞧，他进来了，咕喽喽，咕喽喽，咕喽喽，咕。[ 20 ]然而伊迪对他非常气恼，都怪大家总是溺爱他，把他惯得这么任性。

"我恨不得揍他一顿，"她说，"至于揍哪儿，我就不说啦。"

"屁——股——呗，"西茵快活地笑道。

格蒂•麦克道维尔低下头去，单是想到她自己一辈子也说不出口的、不像是大家闺秀的话，西酋居然会这么大声说了出来，就弄得格蒂羞红了脸，浮泛出一片深玫瑰色。伊迪•博德曼估计对面那位先生准听见了她那句话。然而西酋丝毫也不在乎。"随他听去吧！"她挑衅地把头一抬，尖刻地翘起鼻子，恨不得迅雷不及掩耳地也朝他那部位来一下子。

鲁莽的西酋，长着一头古怪的黑面木偶般的鬈发，有时会惹你发笑。例如，当她问你要不要再喝点中国茶和碧玉浆果酒以及把水罐拽过去时，她那指甲上用红墨水画的男人的脸，会叫你笑破肚皮；她想去方便一下的话，就说什么要跑去拜访怀特小姐。这就是西酋一惯的作法。哦，你永远也不会忘记那个傍晚：她穿戴上父亲的衣帽，用软木炭画上口髭，边抽雪茄烟边沿着特里顿维尔[ 21 ]走去。逗起乐来，谁都赛不过她。然而她真是诚恳到家了，是上天创造的最勇敢、最真诚的一位，绝不是通常那种表里不一的家伙。甜言蜜语是不可能由衷诚恳的。

接着，合唱声和风琴奏出的嘹亮圣歌声从空中传来。这是耶稣会传教士约翰•休斯所主持的成人戒酒活动，他们在那里静修，诵《玫瑰经》，倾听布道并接受圣体降福。大家聚集在那里，彼此间没有社会阶层的畛域（那是最为感人的情景）。饱经令人厌倦的现世风暴后，在浪涛旁边这座简陋的教堂里，跪在无染原罪圣母的脚下，口诵洛雷托圣母[ 22 ]的启应祷文。用自古以来说惯了的圣母玛利亚、童贞中之圣童贞等等称呼，恳请她代他们祈求。可怜的格蒂听了，心中何等悲戚！倘若她父亲发誓戒酒或服用《皮尔逊周刊》[ 23 ]上所载的那些根除酒瘾的粉剂，摆脱了酒的魔爪，而今她蛮能乘着马车到处兜风，绝不逊于任何人。由于她讨厌室内有两个亮光，就连灯也不点。忧思重重，守着炉火的余烬出神，一遍又一遍地对自己这么说着。有时她又一连几个钟头恍恍惚惚地凝视着窗外那打在生锈的铁桶上的雨水，沉思默想。然而那个曾经破坏过多少家庭的罪孽深重的杯中物，给她的童年也投下了阴影。岂止是这样，她甚至在家里目击到酗酒引起的暴行，看到她的亲爹撒酒疯，完全失了常态。格蒂比什么都知道得清楚的是：凡是并非为了帮助女人而对女人动手的男子，理应都被打上最卑鄙者的烙印[ 24 ]。

向最有权能的童贞，最大慈大悲的童贞祈求的诵歌声继续传来。格蒂陷入沉思，对于女伴们和正在稚气地嬉戏着的双胞胎以及从沙丘草地那边走来的先生，她几乎都视而不见，听而不闻。西茜•卡弗里说那位沿着岸滩做短途散步的先生像煞格蒂她爹。不过西茜从来没见过喝得醉醺醺的他。不管怎样，她才不想要这么个爹呢。也许因为他太苍老，要么就是由于他那张脸的缘故（活脱儿像是费尔博士[ 25 ]），或是他那长满酒刺的红鼻子和鼻下那银丝斑斑的沙色口髭。可怜的爹！他缺点纵多，她依然爱他[ 26 ]。当他唱《告诉我玛丽，怎样向你求爱》[ 27 ]和"我的意中人及其茅舍在罗切尔附近[28 ] ，一家人作为晚饭吃炖乌蛤和拌上拉曾拜的生菜调味料的莴苣，以及他和迪格纳穆（那位先生因患脑溢血突然逝世，已被埋葬了，天主对他发慈悲吧）合唱《月亮升起来了》[29 ]的时候。那是她妈妈的生日，查理在家休假，还有汤姆[ 30 ]、迪格纳穆夫妇、帕齐和弗雷迪•迪格纳穆[31 ]，要是大家合影留念就好了。谁也不曾料到他这么快就会死去。如今他已长眠了。她妈妈对他爹说，让他终身把这引以为戒吧。由于患痛风症，他连葬礼都没能去参加。她只好进城到他的办公室去替他取来凯茨比公司关于软木亚麻油毡的函件和样品：富于艺术性，标准图案，适于装饰豪华邸宅，耐久力极强，能使府上永远明亮而愉快。

在家里，格蒂是个真正的好女儿，恰似第二个母亲，还是个护守天使[32 ]。她那颗小小的心，贵重如黄金。当她妈妈头痛欲裂的时候，替她在前额上擦锥形薄荷锭的不是别人，正是格蒂。不过，她讨厌妈妈吸鼻烟的嗜好，母女之间也仅仅就吸鼻烟一事拌过嘴。大家都认为对人体贴入微的她是个乖妞儿。每天晚上扭紧煤气总开关的是她。她从来也没忘记过每两周在那个地方[ 33 ]撒氯酸盐。把过圣诞节时食品杂货商滕尼[34 ]先生送的日历贴在那面墙上的，也是她。那是一幅以哈尔西昂时期[ 35 ]为题材的画：一个青年绅士身着当时流行的衣服，头戴三角帽，隔着格子窗以往昔的骑士气概向他所爱慕的姑娘献上一束鲜花。可以看出，个中必有一段故事。色调十分优美。她穿的是柔和而剪裁得体的白衫，举止端庄稳重。男子则是一身巧克力色服装，显出地地道道的贵族派头。每逢她去方便一下时，就心荡神移地望着他们，挽起袖子，抚摩着自己那双像她那样白皙柔嫩的膀子[ 36 ]，并驰想着那个时代的往事。因为她在外祖父吉尔特拉普所收藏的《沃克发音辞典》[ 37 ]中查到了哈尔西昂一词的含意。

现在这对双生兄弟无比和睦地玩耍着，接着，鲁莽到了家的杰基公子故意使出吃奶的力气把球猛地朝着覆满海藻的岩石踢去。不消说，可怜的汤米立即沮丧地叫了起来。幸而独自坐在那儿的一位穿黑衣的绅士仗义帮了忙，把球截住了。我们这对小选手使劲地喊叫，要求把球还给他们。为了避免惹麻烦，西茜•卡弗里就大声招呼那位绅士，请他把球扔给她。绅士用球瞄了瞄，就从岸滩朝上扔给西茜•卡弗里。但是球沿坡滚下，刚好停在格蒂的裙子下面，离岩石旁的小小水洼子不远。双胞胎又吵吵闹闹地要球，西茜叫格蒂把球踢开，任他们两个去争夺。于是，格蒂将一只脚向后一抬，暗想：要是这只笨球没滚到她这儿多好。她踢了一脚，却没踢中，招得伊迪和西茜大声笑了起来。

"失败了，就再试它一回，"[ 38 ]伊迪•博德曼说。

格蒂笑一笑，表示同意，并且咬了咬嘴唇。淡淡的粉红色爬上她俊美的两颊，然而她打定主意要让他们看个究竟。于是就把裙子稍微撩起，免得碍事，对准了目标，使劲踢了一脚。球滚得老远，那对双胞胎就跟在后面跑向满是沙砾的海滩。当然，伊迪纯粹是出于嫉妒才这么说的。惟有这样才能引起对面望着的那位绅士的注意。她感到一阵热辣辣的红晕高涨着，燃烧着她的双颊。对格蒂•麦克道维尔来说，这一向是个危险信号。在这之前，他们两人仅只极其漫不经心地交换过一下视线。而今，她大胆地从新帽子的帽檐底下瞥了他一眼。迎着她的视线的那张浮泛在暮色苍茫中的脸，憔悴而奇怪地扭歪着，她好像从未见过那么悲戚的面色。

从教堂那敞着的窗口里飘溢出阵阵馨香，同时还传来无染原罪始胎之母那些芬香的名字；妙神之器，为我等祈；可崇之器，为我等祈；圣情大器，为我等祈；玄义玫瑰。那些饱经忧患的心灵，为每天的面包操劳的，众多误入歧途，到处流浪的。他们的眼睛被悔恨之泪打湿，却又放出希望的光辉，因为可敬的休神父曾经把伟大的圣伯尔纳在他那篇歌颂玛利亚的著名祷文[ 39 ]中所说的话告诉过他们：任何时代也不曾记载过，那些恳求最虔诚的童贞玛利亚为之祈祷、有力地保护他们的人，曾被她所遗弃。

这对双胞胎如今又十分快活地玩起来了，因为儿时的烦恼犹如夏日的骤雨一般短暂。西茜•卡弗里哄着娃娃博德曼玩耍。他一会儿就快活地咯咯笑了起来，望空中拍着娃娃手。 她躲在婴儿车的篷子后面喊了声"不在"，伊迪就问："西茜哪儿去啦？"于是，西茜抽冷子伸出脑袋来大叫："啊！"瞧，小家伙甭提有多么高兴啦！接着她又教他说"爸爸"。

"说'爸爸'，娃娃。说呀：爸爸爸爸爸爸爸。"

娃娃就使出吃奶的力气来说。因为他才十一个月，大家都说他非常聪明，个子也比一般娃娃要大，简直是健康的化身，是爱情完美的小结晶。大家都说，他将成为一个了不起的人物。

"哈加、加、加、哈加。"

西茜用围嘴替他揩了揩小嘴儿，要他坐直了，说"爸爸爸"；但是当她解开皮带时却大声嚷道："哎呀呀，这娃娃都湿透啦，得把垫在下面的小毛毯翻过来重新叠一叠。"当然喽，娃娃陛下对这种方便安排极为抵触，并且让人人都知晓：

"哈吧啊、吧啊哈吧啊、吧啊啊。"

于是，两大行晶莹的泪水沿着他的面颊滚滚淌下。用那套乖乖乖，娃娃乖来哄他，给他讲咭咭的故事，告诉他噗噗在哪儿都是白搭；然而一向能随机应变的西茜把奶瓶嘴往他的嘴里一塞，这下子小异教徒立即被安抚了。

格蒂衷心巴望他们能把咭哇乱叫的娃娃打这儿领回家去，免得再刺激她的神经。现在已不适宜呆在外面了，对那孪生的调皮鬼来说也是一样。她放眼凝望着海洋远处。那景色宛如画匠用彩色粉笔在马路上做的画。多么可惜，那一幅幅的画就全留在那儿等人给抹掉。暮色渐深，云雾弥漫，霍斯岬角的贝利灯台的光，乐声萦回耳际。还吹来教堂里所焚的馨香气味。她一边眺望着，一边心里怦怦直跳。可不是嘛，他瞧的正是她呢，而且他的目光是意味深长的。他的眼神犹如烈火，烧进她的内心，仿佛要把她搜索个透，要对她的灵魂了如指掌。那是一双神采奕奕的眼睛，表情丰富，可是信得过吗？人们就是这样古怪。从他那双黑眼睛和苍白而富于理智的脸来看，他是个外国人，长得跟她所收藏的那帧红极一时的小生马丁•哈维[ 40 ]的照片一模一样。只不过多了两撇小胡子。然而她更喜欢有胡子，因为她不像温妮•里平哈姆那样一心一意想当演员，看了一出戏[ 41 ] 后就说咱们老是穿同样的衣服吧。但是她看不出坐在那边的他，长的是鹰钩鼻呢，还是不明显的狮子鼻[ 42 ]。她看得出，他身穿纯黑的丧服，戚容满面，为了了解个中原因，她不惜任何代价。他纹丝不动，专心致志地仰望着。当她踢球的时候，他瞅见了她怎样趾尖朝下，把脚摆动得很细心，也许他还看到了她鞋上那锃亮的钢质饰扣哩。她很高兴由于某种预感而穿上了这双透明的袜子。原来想的是兴许雷吉•怀利会出门，然而那已经过去了。她一向梦寐以求的，就在眼前。重要的是他，她喜形于色，因为她要他；因为她直觉地感到，他跟任何人都不一样。这个稚气未脱的女人的整个儿一颗心，扑向他——她幻梦中的丈夫，因为她一眼就看出他就是她的意中人。倘若他受过苦，没有犯多大罪，却受了很大冤屈[ 43 ]；不，哪怕他本人就是个罪人，一个坏人，她也满不在乎。即使他是个新教徒或遁道公会教徒，倘若他真心爱她， 她还是不难把他改变过来的。[ 44 ] 有些创伤只能用爱情的香膏来医治。她是个温柔的女性，不像他所认识的那种没有女人气的轻浮丫头，那些骑上自行车到处炫耀自己所并不具备的品质的人们。她渴望他能把什么都告诉自己，她什么都能宽恕；倘若她能使他爱上自己， 她就能使他忘掉过去的回忆[ 45 ]。那样一来，他或许就会像个真正的男子汉那样温存地拥抱她，把她那绵软的身子紧紧地搂住，爱她——唯一属于他的姑娘。他只爱她一个人。

罪人之避难所，苦恼者之安慰。为我等祈。[46 ]这话说得对：凡是怀着信仰持续不断地向她祷告者，永远不会迷失方向或遭到遗弃。说圣母是受苦受难者的避难港也是贴切的，因为她自己的心脏就被七苦[ 47 ] 刺穿了。格蒂能够想象得出教堂里的一切情景：被灯光照亮的彩色玻璃，蜡烛，鲜花，圣母玛利亚教友会的蓝色旗帜。 康罗伊神父在祭坛上协助教堂蒙席奥汉龙，他双目低垂，把一些圣器搬出搬进。 他看上去几乎是一位圣徒。他那间忏悔阁子是那么宁静、清洁、幽暗，他那双手白得像蜡一般。 倘若有朝一日她当上了多明我会的修女，身着白袍，说不定他会到女修道院来主持圣多明我的九日敬礼[ 48 ]哩。她在忏悔的当儿告诉他那档子事后，生怕他看得见，连头发根儿都羞红了。他却说， 不要苦恼，因为那不过是自然的声音，而我们生在现世，都要服从自然的规律。 那不是什么过错， 因为它来自天主所制定的妇女天性。他还说，我们的圣母玛利亚本人就曾对大天使加百列说过："愿你的话应验在我身上。"[ 49 ]他是那样的和蔼、圣洁，她多次想做一只带褶饰的绣花茶壶保温罩送给他。要么就是一只座钟。只是那一天她为了四十小时朝拜[50 ]用的鲜花而去那里时，曾注意到他们的壁炉台上摆着一只白、金两色的座钟， 一只金丝雀从一个小屋里踱出报时。想知道送什么礼物合适可真难哪。干脆送一本都柏林或什么地方的彩色风景画册吧。

令人发急的双生小家伙们又吵起来了。杰基把球朝大海丢去，两个人一道跟在后面追。这样的小猴儿就像沟里的水似的，到处乱蹿。除非什么人把他们双双逮住，狠狠地揍上一顿，他们是不会消停下来的。西茜和伊迪大声喊他们回来，生怕会涨潮，把他们淹死。

"杰基！汤米！"

他们才不回来呢！多么任性的娃娃们呀！西茜说，她再也不带他们出门啦。她跳起来，喊叫他们，从他身边擦过去，跑下了坡，头发披散在背后。头发的颜色倒还过得去，只是不够浓密，尽管她不断地擦着什么药，由于不对路子，总也不见长。所以她对那药的怨气可大啦。她像雄鹅一般迈着大步跑，裙子箍得那么紧，令人惊异的是居然没裂开。西茜•卡弗里颇像个假小子，只要认为有个一显身手的机会，就不放弃。她有双飞毛腿，跑起来她那皮包骨的腿肚子抬得高高的，能够让他看到她的衬裙下摆。为了使身材显得高一些，她特意穿上了弓形的法国式高跟鞋。要是不巧绊倒在什么东西上头，摔了个屁股墩儿，那才活该呢。看哪！[ 51 ]满可以让像那样一位绅士赏心悦目的了。

他们向诸天神之王后，诸圣祖之王后，诸先知之王后，诸圣人之王后，至圣玫瑰之王后祷告。然后，康罗伊神父把香炉递给教堂蒙席奥汉龙。他添上香料，把圣心薰香。西茜•卡夫里逮住了双胞胎，她恨不得掴他们几个大耳刮子，但是想到他也许在瞧着，所以她没这么做。然而西茜一辈子也没有过更大的误会，因为格蒂即使不看也能知道，他始终目不转睛地看着的是她。然后，教堂蒙席奥汉龙将香炉递还给康罗伊神父，跪下来瞻仰圣心。唱诗班开始吟唱堂堂圣体。她随着堂堂圣体奥——妙至极[ 52 ]的悠扬乐声，用一只脚一前一后地踩着拍子。她在乔治街的斯帕罗商店花三先令十一便士买下了这双长袜。那是星期二，不——是复活节前的星期一。他定睛望着的正是这双连一根线也没绽的透明袜子，而不是西茜那双毫无可取、一点样儿也没有的袜子（真是丢人现眼！）他有眼光，辨别得出其间的差别。

西茜领着一对双胞胎带着他们的球，沿着沙滩走来了。由于跑了一阵，帽子歪到一边去了，勉强扣在脑袋上。两个星期前才买的便宜衬衫像抹布似的耷拉在背后，还邋里邋遢地拖出一截衬裙下摆，那副样子简直像是拖着两个娃娃的荡妇[53 ] 。为了整理一下头发，格蒂摘了一会儿帽子。还没见过一个少女肩上披散着这么漂亮、优美的一头深栗色鬈发呢。 看上去如此娇艳可爱，说实在的，妖娆得几乎令人发狂。 你得走上多少英里漫长的道路才能遇上这么一头美发。她几乎可以看到他对此蓦地做出的反应： 两眼闪过一丝赞赏的目光，她的每一根神经都为之震颤。她戴上帽子，好从帽檐底下窥伺。 当她瞥见他眼睛里的神情时，不禁紧张起来，就赶快甩开那只有着饰扣的鞋。 他就像是蛇盯住猎物般地盯着她。女人的本能告诉她，她唤醒了他心中的魔鬼。这么一想， 一片火红色就从喉咙刷地掠到眉字间，最后，她那鲜活的面庞变成一朵容光焕发的玫瑰。

伊迪•博德曼也发觉了这一点，因为她一面斜起眼睛望着格蒂，一面像个老处女似的戴着眼镜，半笑不笑的，假装在哄娃娃。她动不动就生气，像一只蚋似的，永远也改不了，因此谁都跟她处不好。与她毫无关系的事，她也会横加干涉。于是，她就对格蒂说：

"你呆呆地在想什么呢？"

"什么？"格蒂回答说，皓齿使她的微笑格外迷人，"我只是纳闷着天色是不是太晚了。"

因为她巴不得她们早些把这对净流鼻涕的双胞胎和那个娃娃领回家去，省得他们老在这里淘气，所以才委婉地暗示天色已晚的话。当西茜走上来时，伊迪问她几点了。爱耍贫嘴的西茜小姐说，接吻时间已过了半小时，到了再接吻一次的时刻啦[54 ] 。然而伊迪还是想知道时间，因为家里要他们早点儿回去。

"等一等，"西茜说，"我跑去问问那边的我那位彼得伯伯[ 55］，他那只大破表几点钟啦。"

于是，她走过去了。当他瞧见她走过来时，格蒂看到他把手从兜里掏出来，紧张地边抬头望望教堂边摆弄着表链。格蒂看得出，尽管他是个多情的人，自我抑制力却极强。刚才他还被一位情女弄得神魂颠倒，目不转睛地盯着她看；转瞬之间他又成为举止安详、神态端庄的绅士了，堂堂仪表的每个线条都显示出他的自制力。

西茜对他说，劳驾，能不能麻烦他告诉她一下准确的时间？格蒂看见他掏出表，听了听，仰起脸来，清了清喉咙，说他非常抱歉，他的表停了。然而，他估计八点过了，因为太阳已经落下。从他的声音听得出是有教养的，语调虽平稳，圆润的嗓音却带点颤巍。西茜道了谢，走回来伸伸舌头说，那位伯伯说他的水道[ 56 ] 堵塞啦。

接着，他们唱起"跪拜赞颂"第二段。教堂蒙席奥汉龙又站起来，向圣体献香， 重新跪下。他告诉康罗伊神父，有一枝蜡几乎把鲜花点着了，康罗伊神父便起身去侍弄好。格蒂瞧见那位绅士正在给表上弦。听到那咔嗒咔嗒声，她越发使劲一前一后地甩腿打着拍子。天色越来越黑下来了，但是他还看得见，而且不论正给表上弦还是摆弄它的当儿，他都一直在看着。随后，他把表塞回去，双手揣在兜里。她感到一股激情涌遍全身，凭着头皮的感觉和触碰胸衣时引起的焦躁感，告诉她那个想必快来了。因为上次她为了新月而铰头发时，就有过这样的感觉。他那双黑黑眸子又盯住她了，陶醉在她的整个轮廓里，扑扑实实地参拜着她的神龛。倘若男人那热情洋溢的注视中含有不加掩饰的爱慕的话，那就在此人脸上表露得再清楚不过了。都是为了你呀，格楚德•麦克道维尔，而且你是知道的。

伊迪开始准备回去，而且也到了该回去的时刻。格蒂留意到，她所给的小小暗示已产生了预期的效果，因为沿着岸滩走上一大段路才能够抵达把婴儿车推上大道的地方。西茜摘掉双胞胎的便帽，替他们拢了拢头发，当然，这是为了使她自己富于魅力。身穿领口打着褶子的祭袍的教堂蒙席奥汉龙站了起来，康罗伊神父递给他一张卡片来读。于是，他诵读起你赐与他们神粮[57 ] 。伊迪和西茜一直在谈论时间，还向格蒂打听。格蒂倒也善于以其人之道还治其身，口气辛辣而彬彬有礼地做了答复。这时伊迪又问格蒂，她莫非是由于遭到男朋友的遗弃而心碎。一阵剧烈的痉挛穿过格蒂的全身。刹那间，她的眼睛里闪出冰冷的火焰，显示出无限轻蔑。她受到了创伤——对，深重的创伤。伊迪活像是一只可恶的小猫，偏偏用一种独特的安详口吻说这类明知道会伤害对方的活。格蒂旋即张开嘴要说什么，但是她竭力抑制住涌到嗓子眼里的哽咽——她喉咙的造型细溜、完美而俊秀，像是艺术家所梦寐以求的。她对那个青年爱得比他所知道的还要强烈。他跟所有其他男性一样，是个轻浮的负心人，见异思迁，永远也不会理解他在她心目中是何等重要。她那双蓝眼睛倏地热泪盈眶。她们两个人的眼睛冷酷无情地盯着她望。但是她却英勇地以同情的目光瞟了她新征服的那个男子一眼，让她们瞧瞧。

"哦，"格蒂闪电般地回应着，傲然扬起头，笑着说，"这是个闰年嘛，我喜欢谁，就追求谁。"

她的话清澈如水晶，比斑尾林鸽咕咕的叫声还要悦耳；然而却像冰块似的划破了寂静。她那年轻的声音宣告说：她可不是能够随随便便地被人摆布的。至于凭着几个钱就那么神气活现的雷吉先生，她蛮可以当作垃圾一样地把他抛掉，再也不会想到他，并把他寄来的那张无聊的明信片撕个粉碎。倘若今后他胆敢放肆，她就会从容冷静地对他投以轻蔑的一瞥，使他当场蜷缩作一团。寒酸小姐小伊迪的神情颇为沮丧。格蒂看到她脸色非常阴沉，便知道这个鲁莽自负的丫头简直气得厉害，尽管她还在掩饰。因为格蒂那句锋利的话刺穿了她那小气的嫉妒心。她们两人都知道，格蒂子然一身，与众不同，属于另一个星球。她不是她们当中的一个，永远也不会是。另外一位先生也晓得这一点，并且亲眼看到了。让她们扪心自问去吧。[ 58 ]

伊迪把娃娃博德曼的衣服整理停当，准备动身了。西茜将皮球、铲子和桶一古脑儿塞进去。而且确实也该回去了，因为睡魔已经来接小少爷博德曼了。西茜也告诉他说，伙伴眨巴眼儿快来了，娃娃该睡啦。娃娃看上去简直太可爱了，他抬起一双喜气洋洋的眼睛笑着。西茜为了逗乐儿戳了一下他那胖胖的小肚皮，娃娃连声对不起也没说，却把他的答谢一古脑儿送到他那崭新的围嘴上了。

"啊唷！布丁和馅饼！"西茜大叫了一声，"他把围嘴儿糟塌啦。"

这一小小事故[ 59 ] 给她添了麻烦，然而转眼她就把这档子小事料理好了。

格蒂将冒到嗓子眼儿的喊叫抑制住了，神经质地咳嗽了一下。伊迪问她怎么啦？她差点儿对伊迪说，谁有工夫回答你这种过了时的问题！然而她是向来不忘记上流妇女的举止的，所以就十分机敏地说了句"正在举行降福仪式呢"，就给敷衍过去了。刚好这当儿，宁静的海滨传来教堂的钟声，教堂蒙席正站在祭坛上（肩上的纱中是康罗伊神父替他披上去的），手捧圣心，举行降福仪式。

暮色苍茫，这片景色是多么地动人啊。爱琳那最后一抹姿容，晚钟[60 ]那扣人心弦的合奏；同时从爬满常春藤的钟楼里飞出一只蝙蝠，穿过黄昏，东飞西飞，发出微弱的哀鸣。她能看见远处灯塔的光，美丽如画。她巴不得自己带着一匣颜料，因为写生比画人物素描要容易。灯夫很快就会沿路点起街灯了。他将走过长老会教堂场地，沿着特里顿维尔大树的树荫下踱来。人们成双成对地在这里漫步。他还点燃她那扇窗户附近的一盏灯，雷吉•怀利常在这里骑车表演空轮[ 61 ]，就像卡明女士那本《点灯夫》中所描述的那样。她也是《梅布尔•沃恩》和其他一些故事的作者[62]。格蒂有着无人知晓的梦想。她喜爱读诗。伯莎•萨波尔送给她一本珊瑚色封面的漂亮忏悔簿，以便她把随感记下来。她就将它放到梳妆台抽屉里了。这张桌子虽不豪华，却整洁干净得纤尘不染。这是姑娘的宝库， 收藏着玳瑁梳子、"玛利亚的孩子"[ 63 ] 徽章、白玫瑰香水、描眉膏、雪花石膏香盒、替换着钉在洗衣房刚送回来的衣服上用的丝带等。忏悔薄上记载着她用紫罗兰色墨水（是从戴姆街希利[ 64 ]的店里买来的）写下的一些隽永的思想。因为她感到， 只要她能够像如此深深地感染了她的这首诗那样表达自己，她就也能够写诗。那还是一天傍晚，她从包蔬菜的报纸上找到并抄下来的。以《我理想的人儿，你是凡人吗？》 为题的此诗作者是玛赫拉非尔特的路易斯•J。沃尔什。后面还有什么"薄暮中，你会到来吗？"之句[ 65 ]。诗是那样可爱，其中所描绘的无常之美是那样令人悲伤，以致她的眼睛曾多次被沉默的泪水模糊了。因为她感到时光年复一年地逝去，倘非有那唯一的缺陷，她原是不用怕跟任何人竞争的。那次事故是她下多基山时发生的，她总是试图掩盖它。但是她感到，应该了结啦。倘若她看到了他眼中那种着了魔般的诱惑，那就什么力量也阻止不住她了。爱情嘲笑锁匠[66 ]。她会付出巨大的牺牲，尽一切力量和他心心相印。她将会比整个世界对他更为亲密，并使他的生活由于幸福而熠熠生辉。有个最重要的问题：她渴望知道他究竟是个有妇之夫，抑或是个丧偶的鳏夫呢，要么就像那位来自歌之国[67]有着外国名字的贵族，他只好把妻子关进疯人医院——为了仁慈，不得不采取残忍手段。[68]真是悲剧！然而即便如此——那又怎么样？难道会有多大分别吗？她禀性高尚，对任何稍微有点粗俗的东西，都会本能地回避开。她讨厌那种在多德尔河畔的客栈附近跟大兵以及粗俗的男人鬼混的浪荡女人。她们毫不爱惜少女的贞操，丢尽女人的脸，给抓到警察局去。不，不，那种事我可不干。他们仅仅是好朋友而已，就像是大哥哥和小妹妹，完全没有那方面的事，尽管并不符合一般社交界的惯例[ 69 ]。也许他在哀悼已淡忘了的往昔岁月[70]的情人呢。 她认为她是理解的。她要试图理解他，因为男人们是那样地不同。老情人等待着，伸出白皙的小手等待着，还有那双动人的蓝眼睛。我的意中人！她会跟随她梦中之恋，服从她心灵的指挥。它告诉她，他是她一切的一切。整个世界上，他是她唯一的男人，因为爱情才是最有权威的向导。其他都无所谓。不管怎样，她就是要无拘无束，自由奔放。

教堂蒙席奥汉龙将圣体放回圣龛，屈膝跪拜。接着，唱诗班唱起：列国啊，你们要颂赞上主[ 71 ]！然后，他锁上圣龛，因为降福仪式已结束。康罗伊神父递给他帽子让他戴上。刁猫伊迪间格蒂走不走，可是杰基•卡弗里嚷道：

"啊，看哪，西茜！"

于是，他们都看了。原以为那是一道闪电，然而汤米也看见了：在教堂旁边的树林上空，起初是蓝的，继而是绿的和紫的。

"放焰火哪！"西茜•卡弗里说。

于是，为了观赏屋舍和教堂上空的焰火，她们全都慌慌张张地沿着岸滩跑去。伊迪推着娃娃博德曼所坐的那辆婴儿车，西茜拉着汤米和杰基的手，免得他们栽跟头。

"来呀，格蒂，"西茜大声叫道，"是义卖会[ 72 ] 的焰火哩。"

然而格蒂态度坚决，无意听任她们摆布。倘若她们能够像荡妇[ 73]那样野跑，她蛮可以这么原地坐着；所以她说，她从自己坐的地方也瞧得见。那双紧盯着她的眼睛，使她的心怦怦直跳。她瞥了他一眼，视线同他相遇。那道光穿透了她全身。那张脸上有着炽热的激情，像坟墓般寂静的激情。她遂成为他的了。终于只剩下他们两个了，再也没有人刺探并叽叽喳喳。而且她晓得他是至死不渝的，坚定不移，牢固可靠，通身刚正不阿。他的双手和五官都在活动，于是，她浑身颤栗起来。她尽量仰着身子，用目光寻觅那焰火，双手抱膝，免得栽倒。除了他和她而外，没有一个人在看着，所以她把她那双俊秀而形态优美、娇嫩柔韧而细溜丰腴的小腿整个儿裸露出来。她似乎听到他那颗心的悸跳，粗声粗气的喘息，因为她也晓得像他那样血气方刚的男人，会有着怎样的情欲。还因为一次伯莎•萨波尔告诉过她一桩绝对的秘密，并要她发誓永远不说出去。她家的一位在人口密集地区调查局[ 74 ]工作的房客，从报纸上剪下那些表演短裙舞和翘腿舞的舞女的照片。她说，他不时地在床上做些不大文雅的勾当，这，你也想象得到吧。不过，眼下这档子事可跟那个大不相同，情况完全两样。她几乎觉得他使她的脸贴近他自己的脸，并用他那俊俏的嘴唇飞快地给了她一个热烈的初吻。再说，只要你在婚前不做那另一档子事，罪行就能得到赦免。应该设个女忏悔师，即便你不说出口，她们也能领会得一清二楚。西茜•卡弗里两眼有时也露出梦幻般的恍惚神情，唷，她准也是那样的。还有温妮•里平哈姆，对一些男演员的照片简直入了迷，而且是由于那个快来了，才会有这种感觉。

这时，杰基•卡弗里大声嚷道："瞧，又来了一个。"格蒂把上半身往后仰，露出的蓝袜带刚好同透明的长袜子般配。他们都瞅见了，并且都嚷着："瞧，瞧，就在那儿。"她一个劲儿地往后仰着看那焰火。这时，有个软软的古怪玩艺儿腾空飞来飞去，黑黑的。她瞧见一只长长的罗马蜡烛[ 75 ]高高地蹿到树木上空，高高地，高高地。大家紧张地沉默着。待它越升越高时，大家兴奋得大气儿不出。为了追踪着瞧，她只好越发往后仰。焰火越升越高。几乎望不到了。由于拼命往后仰，她脸上洋溢出一片神圣而迷人的红晕。他还能看到她旁的什么：抚摩皮肤的印度薄棉布裤衩，因为是白色的，比四先令十一便士的那条绿色佩蒂怀斯牌的看得更清楚。那袒露给他，并意识到了他的视线；焰火升得那么高，刹那间望不到了。她往后仰得太厉害，以致四肢发颤，膝盖以上高高的，整个儿映入他的眼帘。就连打秋千或膛水时，她也不曾让人这么看过。她固然不知羞耻，而他像那样放肆地盯着看，倒也不觉得害臊。他情不自禁地凝望着一半是送上来的这令人惊异的袒露，看啊，看个不停：就像着短裙的舞女们当着绅士们的面那么没羞没臊。她恨不得抽抽嗒嗒地对他喊叫，朝他伸出那双雪白、细溜的双臂，让他过来，并将他的嘴唇触到她那白皙的前额上。这是一个年轻姑娘的爱之呼声，从她的胸脯里绞出来的、被抑制住的小声叫唤，古往今来这叫喊一直响彻着。这当儿一支"火箭"蹿了上去，蹦的一声射向黑暗的夜空。哦，紧接着，"罗马蜡烛"爆开来，恰似哦的一声叹息。每一个人都兴高采烈地哦哦直叫。这当儿，喷出一股金发丝，像雨一般倾泻下来。啊！全都是绿色的、露水般的星群，滔滔不绝地散发着金光，哦，多么可爱，哦，多么柔和，甜蜜，柔和！

然后，一切都宛若露水一般融化到灰色的氛围里。万籁俱寂。啊！当她敏捷地向前弯过身去的时候，瞥了他一眼。这是感伤的短短一瞥，带有可怜巴巴的抗议和羞怯的嗔怪，弄得他像个少女一般飞红了脸。他正倚着背后的岩石。在那双年轻天真的眼睛面前，利奥波德•布卢姆（因为这正是他）耷拉着脑袋，默默地站着。他是何等地残忍啊！又干了吗？一个纯洁美丽的灵魂向他呼唤，而他这个卑鄙的家伙竟做出了什么样的回应呢？他简直下流透顶！偏偏是他！然而她那双眼睛里却蕴蓄着无穷无尽的慈祥，连对他也有一句宽恕的话，尽管他做错了事，犯了罪，误入歧途。一个姑娘家应该倾吐出来吗？不，一千个不。这是他们的秘密——仅属于他们两个人之间的秘密。他们两个人独自藏身在薄暮中，没有人知晓，他们也不会泄露。除了那只穿过薄暮轻盈地飞来飞去的小蝙蝠，而小蝙蝠们是不会泄露隐情的。

西茜 • 弗里学着足球场上的少年们那么吹口哨，以便显示她多么了不起。接着，她喊道：

"格蒂！格蒂！我们走啦。来吧。从那边高处也瞧得见。"

格蒂想起了主意——一个小小的爱情策略。她把一只手伸进手绢兜里，掏出那块洒了香水的棉布，挥动几下作为回答。当然不让他知道用意，然后又把它悄俏地放了回去。不晓得他是不是离得太远了。她站了起来。分别了吗？她非走不可啦，然而他们还会在那儿见面的。直到那时——直到明天，她都会重温今晚这个好梦的。她站直了身子。他们的灵魂在依依不舍的最后一瞥中相遇。射到她心坎儿上的他那视线，充满了奇异的光辉，如醉如痴地死死盯着她那美丽如花的脸。她对他露出苍白的微笑，表示宽恕的温柔的微笑，热泪盈眶的微笑。接着，两个人就分手了。

她连头都没回，慢慢地沿着坑坑洼洼的岸滩走向西茜、伊迪，走向杰基与汤米•卡弗里，走向小娃娃博德曼。暮色更浓了，岸滩上有着石头、碎木片儿以及容易让人滑倒的海藻。她以特有的安详和威严款款而行，小心翼翼，而且走得非常慢，因为——因为格蒂•麦克道维尔是……

靴子太紧了吗？不。她是个瘸子！哦！

布卢姆先生守望着她一瘸一拐地离去。可怜的姑娘！所以旁人才撇下她，一溜烟儿跑掉了。一直觉得她的动作有点儿别扭来着。被遗弃的美人儿。女人要是落了残疾，得倒楣十倍。可这会使她们变得文雅。幸而她袒露的时候我还不曾知道这一点。不论怎样，她毕竟是个风流的小妞儿。我倒不在乎。犹如对修女、黑女人或戴眼镜的姑娘所抱的那种好奇心。那个斜眼儿姑娘倒也挺爱挑剔的。我估计她的经期快到了，所以才那么烦躁。今天我的头疼得厉害。[ 76 ]我把信放在哪儿啦，嗯，不要紧。各种古怪的欲望。舔舔一便士的硬币什么的。那个修女说，特兰奎拉女修道院[ 77 ]有个姑娘爱闻石油气味。估计处女们到头来会发疯的。修女吗？如今都柏林有多少修女呢？玛莎，她。能够有所觉察。都是月亮的关系。既然这样，为什么所有的女人不在同一个月亮升上来的时候一齐来月经呢？我推测这要看她们是什么时候生的。兴许开头一致，后来就错开了，有时摩莉和米莉赶在同一个时候。反正我沾了光，亏得今天上午在澡堂里我没为她那封"我可要惩罚你啦"的傻信干上一通。今儿早晨电车司机那档子事，这下子也得到了补偿。[ 78 ]那个骗子麦科伊拦住了我，说了一通废话。什么他老婆要到乡间去巡回演出啦，手提箱啦，[ 79 ]，那嗓门就像是鹤嘴锄。为点小恩小惠就很感激。而且要价不高，有求必应。因为她们自己也想搞。这是她们生来的欲望。每天傍晚，她们成群结伙地从办公室里往外涌。你不如做出一副冷漠的样子。你不要，她们就会送上门来。那么就捉活蹦乱跳的吧。噢，可惜她们看不到自己。关于涨得鼓鼓的紧身裤的那场梦。是在哪儿看的来着？啊，对啦。卡佩尔街上的活动幻灯器[ 80 ] ：仅许成年男子观看。《从钥匙孔里偷看的汤姆》[ 81 ]。《姑娘们拿威利的帽子做了什么？那些姑娘的镜头究竟是抓拍的呢，还是故意做戏呢？棉布汗衫[ 82 ]给以刺激。抚摩她那曲线[ 83]。那样一来，也会使她们兴奋的。我是十分干净的，来把我弄脏了吧。在做出牺牲之前，她们还爱相互打扮。米莉可喜欢摩莉的新衬衫了。起初，统统穿上去，无非是为了再脱个精光。摩莉。所以我才给她买了一副紫罗兰色的袜带。我们也一样。他系的领带，他那漂亮的短袜和裤脚翻边儿的长裤。我们初次见面的那个晚上，[ 84 ]，他穿了双高帮松紧靴。他那件华丽衬衫闪闪发光，外面罩了件什么呢？黑玉色的。女人每摘掉一根饰针，就失去一份魅力。靠饰针拢在一起。哦，玛丽亚丢了衬裤的饰针。[ 85 ]为某人打扮得尽善尽美。赶时髦是女性魅力的一部分。你一旦探出女人的秘密，她的态度就起变化。东方的可不同。玛丽亚，玛莎。[ 86 ]从前是如此，现在还是如此。不会拒绝任何正正经经提出来的要求。她也并不着急。去会男人时，女人总是急匆匆的，她们从来不爽约。也许是出于一种投机心理。她们相信机缘，因为她们本身就像是机缘。另外那两个动辄就对她说上一句莫名其妙的挖苦话。学校里的女伴儿们相互搂着脖子或彼此把十指勾在一起。在女修道院的庭园里又是接吻，又是嘁嘁喳喳说些莫须有的秘密。修女们那一张张白得像石灰水般的脸，素净的头巾以及举上举下的念珠。对她们自己得不到的东西说着尖刻的话语。铁蒺藜[ 87 ]。喏，一定要给我写信啊。我也会给你写的。一定的，好吗？摩莉和乔西•鲍威尔[ 88 ]。以后白马王子来了，就轻易见不着面了。看哪！[89 ] 哦，天哪，瞧，那是谁呀！你好吗？你都干什么来着？（亲吻）真高兴，（再吻一下）能够见到你。相互挑剔对方的衣装。你这身打扮真漂亮。 姊妹般的感情。相互龇着牙齿。你还剩几个孩子呀？彼此连一撮盐也不肯借给对方。

啊！

身上那玩艺儿一来，女人就成了魔鬼。神色阴沉可怕。摩莉常常告诉我，只觉得什么都有一英吨重。"替我搔搔脚底板儿。哦，就这样！哦，舒服极啦！ "连我都会有那么一种感觉。偶尔休息一下是有好处的。身上来了的时候搞，也不晓得好不好。从某一方面来说是安全的。会把牛奶变酸，使提琴啪的一声断了弦。有点像我在什么书上读到过的关于花园里的树都会枯了的事。他们还说，要是哪个女人佩带的花儿枯了，她就是个卖弄风情者。她们都是。我敢说她对我有所觉察。当你有那种感觉的时候，常常会遇见跟你有同样感觉的人。她对我有好感吗？她们总先注意服装打扮。一眼就能知道谁在献着殷勤。硬领和袖口。喏。公鸡和狮子也这么样吗？还有雄鹿。同时，她们兴许喜欢松开来的领带或是什么的。长裤？那时候我该不至于……吧？不，要轻轻地搞。莽莽撞撞会招对方讨厌。摸着黑儿接吻，永远莫说出口。[ 90 ]她看中了我的什么地方。不知道是哪一点。她宁可要保持真正面目的我，也不要个所谓诗人，那种头发上涂满胶泥般的熊油， 右边的眼镜片上耷拉着一络爱发[ 91 ]。协助一位先生从事文字工作。[ 92 ]。到了我这年纪，就该注意一下仪表了。我没让她瞧见我的侧脸。可也难说。漂亮姑娘会嫁给丑男人。美女与野兽。[ 93 ]而且我不能那样做，倘若摩莉……她摘下帽子来显示头发。宽檐的。买来遮掩她的脸。 要是遇见了可能认识她的人，就低下头去，或是捧起一束鲜花来闻。动情的时候，头发的气味很强烈。当我们住在霍利斯街日子过得很紧的时候，我曾把摩莉脱落的头发卖了十先令。那有什么关系呢？只要他给她钱，为什么不可以呢？这全都是偏见。她值十先令，十五先令，也许还不止——值一镑哩。什么？我是这么想的。一个钱也不要。笔力遒劲：玛莉恩太太[ 94 ]。我忘没忘记在那封信上写地址呢，就像我寄给弗林的那张明信片那样？再就是那一天我连领带都没系就到德里米公司[ 95] 去了。和摩莉拌了嘴，弄得我心烦意乱。不，我想起来了。是在里奇•古尔丁家。他的景况也一样，心思很重。奇怪，我的表四点半钟就停了，准是灰尘闹的。他们曾经用鲨鱼肝油来擦油垢。我自己都干得了。节约嘛。时间是不是刚好他和她？

哦，他搞了。进入了她。她搞了。搞完了。

啊！

布卢姆先生小心翼翼地动手整理他那湿了的衬衫。哦，天哪，那个瘸腿小鬼。开始感到凉冰冰黏糊糊的。事后的滋味并不好受。反正你也得想办法把它抹掉。她们才不在乎呢；也许还觉得受到恭维了呢。回到家， 吃上一顿美味的面包牛奶， 跟娃娃们一道作晚间祷告。喏，她们不就是这样的吗？要是看穿了女人的本色，就大失风趣了。无论如何也得有舞台装置、胭脂、衣装、身份、音乐。还有名字。女演员们的恋爱[ 96 ]。内尔•格温、布雷斯格德尔夫人[ 97 ]、莫德•布兰斯科姆[ 98 ] 。启幕。灿烂的银色月光。胸中充满忧郁的少女出现。小情人儿，来吻我吧。我依然感觉得出。它给与男人的力量。这就是其中的奥妙。从迪格纳穆家一出来，我就在墙后痛痛快快地干了一场。都是由于喝了苹果酒的关系。不然的话，我是不会的。事后你就想唱唱歌。事业是神圣的。嗒啦。嗒啦[ 99 ]。假若我跟她说话呢。说些什么？不过，你要是不晓得怎样结束这谈话，可就糟啦。向她们提一个问题，她们也会问你一句，倘若谈不下去了，这么问也是个办法。可以争取时间。可是那么一来，你就走入困境啦。当然，如果你打招呼说：晚上好；对方也有意，就会回答说：晚上好，那就太妙啦。哦，可那个黑夜在阿皮安路上，我差点儿跟克林奇太太那么打招呼，噢，以为她是那个。哎呀！那天晚上在米思街遇到的那个姑娘。我叫她把所有的脏活都说遍了。当然，说得驴唇不对马嘴。说什么我的方舟[ 100 ] 。想找个像样的有多么难哪。喂喂！要是她们来拉客而你却不理睬，她们一定会难堪吧。后来也就铁了心。当我多付给她两先令时，她吻了我的手。鹦鹉。一按电钮，鸟儿就会叽叽叫唤。她要是没称我作"先生"就好了。哦，黑暗中，她那张嘴啊！哦，你这个有家室的人跟这个黄花姑娘！女人就喜欢这么样。把另外一个女人的男人夺过来。或者，哪怕就这么说说。我可不然。我愿意离旁人的老婆远远的。凭什么吃旁人的残羹剩饭！今天在巴顿饭馆里，那家伙把齿龈嚼过的软骨吐了出去。[ 101 ] "法国信"[ 102 ] 还在我的皮夹子里哪。一半祸端就是它[ 103 ]引起来的。但是有时可能会发生哩，我想不至于吧。进来吧[ 104 ] ，什么都准备好啦。我做了个梦。梦见什么？最坏的开始发生了。女人一不顺心就转换话题。问你喜不喜欢蘑菇，因为她曾经认识一位喜欢蘑菇的先生。如果什么人说了半截话，念头一转住了口，她就问你那人究竟想说什么来着、不过我要是一不做二不休的话，就会说"我想搞"什么的。因为我真是想搞嘛。她也想。先冒犯她，再向她讨好。先假装非常要一样东西，随后又为她的缘故把它放弃了。拼命夸她。她很可能一直都在想着旁的什么男人。那又有什么关系呢？她从懂事以来想的就是男人，这个男人和那个男人。头一回的接吻就使她开了窍。那是幸福的一刹那。在她们内部有个什么突然萌动起来。痴情，眼神里含着痴情，偷偷摸摸的。最早的情愫是最美好的。直到死去的那一天都会铭记心头。摩莉，马尔维中尉在花园旁边的摩尔墙脚下吻了她。[ 105 ] 她告诉我，当时她才十五岁。然而奶头已经丰满了。那一次她睡着了。发生在格伦克里的宴会结束之后，我们驱车回家去，翻过羽毛山。她在睡梦中咬着牙。市长大人也用两眼盯着她。维尔•狄龙[106 ] 。患有中风。

她正在下边等着看焰火呢。我的焰火啊。蹿上去时像火箭，下来时像棍子[107] 。那两个孩子想必是双胞胎，等着瞧热闹。巴不得长大成人， 穿上妈妈的衣服。时间充裕得很，逐渐懂得了一切人情世故。还有那个皮肤黑黑的丫头，头发乱蓬蓬的，嘴巴像黑人。我晓得她会吹口哨，天生的一张吹口哨的嘴。就像摩莉。说起来，詹米特旅馆[108 ]里的高级妓女把围巾只围到鼻子那儿。对不起，能不能告诉我一下几点啦？咱们到一条黑咕隆咚的小巷去，我就告诉你准确的时间。每天早晨说四十遍"梅干和棱镜"[109] ，就能治好肥嘴唇。 她还在亲热地抚摩小男孩们哪。旁观的人一眼就看穿。当然喽，她们了解鸟儿、动物和娃娃。这是她们的本行。

她沿着岸滩往下走时，并没有回头看。才不那么让人称心呢。那些姑娘，那些姑娘，海滨那些俏丽的姑娘。[ 110 ] 她长着一双好看的眼睛，清澈如洗，这双眼睛格外引人注目的毋宁说是眼白，而不是瞳孔。她知道我是什么样的？当然喽，就像一只猫坐在狗所蹿不到的地方。女人们可从来没见过像威尔金斯那样的：他一面在中学[111 ]画维纳斯像，一面把自己的物儿一古脑儿袒露出来。难道这叫作天真吗？可怜的白痴！他的老婆真够呛的。从来没看到过女人坐在标明"油漆未干"字样的长凳上。她们浑身都是眼睛。床底下什么都没有，她们也要探头去瞧一瞧。渴望着在生活中遇上骇人的事。 她们敏感得像针似的。 当我对摩莉说，卡夫街拐角那儿的男子长得英俊，她想必喜欢这样的，她却马上发现他有一只胳膊是假的。果不其然是那样。她们究竟是打哪儿得到的线索呢？女打字员一步两蹬地跨上罗杰•格林[ 112 ] 的楼梯，以显示她对男人的理解。由父亲传下来，我的意思是说，由母亲传给女儿。血统里带来的。比方说，米莉把手绢贴在镜面上晾干，就省得用熨斗烫了。把广告贴在镜面上最能吸引女人的眼目了。有一次我派米莉到普雷斯科特[ 113 ] 去取摩莉那条佩斯利披肩（对了，我还得安排一下那则广告），她竟把找给她的零钱塞在袜筒里捎回来了！好聪明的小顽皮妞儿。我可从来也没教过她。她挟着大包小包的，动作总是那么麻利。像这样的小地方，却能吸引男人。当手涨红了的时候，就举起来，挥动着，让血淌回去。这你倒是跟谁学的呢？没跟任何人学。是护士教的。噢，她们知道得可多啦！我们从西伦巴德街搬走之前不久，三岁的她居然就坐在摩莉的梳妆台前面。我有一张好看的连[ 脸］。穆林加尔。谁知道呢？人之常情。年轻的学生。不管怎样，两条腿直直溜溜，不像另外那个。不过，那妞儿还是蛮够意思的。唉呀，我湿了。你这个鬼丫头。小腿肚子鼓鼓的。透明的袜子，绷得都快裂了。跟今天那个穿得邋里邋遢的女人可不一样。A•E•皱巴巴的长筒袜子[114 ]。或是格拉夫顿街上的那个。白的。[ 115 ]喔 ！胖到脚后跟。

智利松型的"火箭"爆开了，噼噼啪啪地四下里迸溅。吱啦、吱啦、吱啦、吱啦。西茜、汤米和杰基赶紧跑出去看，伊迪推着娃娃车跟在后面，接着就是从岩石拐角绕过去的格蒂。她会……吗？瞧！瞧！看哪！回头啦。她闻见了一股葱头气味。[ 116 ] 亲爱的，我看见了，你的。我统统看见了。

啊呀！

不管怎样，我总算得了济。基尔南啦，迪格纳穆啦，弄得我灰溜溜的。[ 117 ] 你来替换，多谢啦。[ 118 ] 这是《哈姆莱特》里的。啊呀！各种感情搅在一起。兴奋啊。当她朝后仰的时候，我感到舌头尖儿一阵疼痛。简直弄得你晕头转向。[ 119 ] 他说得对。我原是有可能闹出更大的笑话的，而不是仅只说些无聊的话。那么我就什么都告诉你吧。然而，那只能是我们两人能理解的话。该不是……？不，她们叫她作格蒂来着。不过，也可能是个假名字哩，就像我的名字似的。海豚仓这个地址也不清楚。

布朗是杰迈玛娘家的姓氏，

她跟母亲住在爱尔兰区。[ 120 ]

估计我是由于地点的关系才想到那个的。这些姑娘都一模一样。 把钢笔尖儿往袜筒上擦。然而那只球好像会意地朝着她滚了去。每颗子弹都得有个归宿。当然喽，在学校的时候我从来没有笔直地扔过什么，总是弯弯曲曲。像公羊犄角。然而可悲的是，青春只有短暂的几年。然后她们就围着锅台转。不久，威利穿起爸爸的裤子就合身了。[ 121 ] 或是嘘嘘地给娃娃把尿时，还得用上漂白土。[ 122 ] 家务可不轻。这倒也保全了她们，免得她们走入歧途。这是天性。给娃娃洗澡，为尸体净身。迪格纳穆。 总是被孩子们缠着。头盖骨像椰子，像猴子，起初甚至没有长结实，襁褓里那馊奶和变了质、肮里肮脏的凝乳。 不该给那个孩子空橡皮奶头去咂。得灌满空气才行。博福伊太太，普里福伊。[ 123 ] 得到医院去探望一下。不知道卡伦护士是不是还在那里。当摩莉在咖啡宫[ 124 ] 的时候，她来照看过几个晚上。我注意到，她为年轻的奥黑尔大夫刷上衣。布林太太和迪格纳穆太太也曾这么做过。到了结婚年龄。在市徽饭店，达根太太告诉我，最糟糕的是在晚上。丈夫醉醺醺地滚进来，浑身散发着酒吧气味，像只臭猫似的。你在黑暗中闻一闻试试，一股予馊酒味儿。到了早晨却来问：昨天夜里我醉了吗？然而，责备丈夫并不是上策。小雏儿们是回窝来歇一歇的。他们彼此鳔在一块儿。也许女人也有责任。在这一点上，她们都得甘拜摩莉的下风。这是由于她那南国的血液吧。摩尔人的。还有她那体态，身材。伸手抚摩她那丰满的……[125 ] 譬如说，把她跟旁的女人比比看。关在家里的老婆，家丑不可外扬。请允许我介绍我的。然后他们让人见一位不起眼的妇女，也不晓得该怎样称呼她。总是能在一个人的妻子身上看到他的弱点，然而他们是命中注定爱上的。他们之间有独自的隐秘。这些男人要是得不到女人的照顾，就准会堕落下去。再就是把总共值一先令的铜币[ 126 ] 摞在一起那么高的小不点儿丫头，带上她那小矮子丈夫。天主造了他们，并使他们结缡。有时候娃娃们长得不赖。零乘零得一。要么就是七旬老富翁娶上一位羞答答的新娘。五月结的婚，十二月就懊悔了。湿漉漉的，真不舒服。黏糊糊的。咦，原来是包皮还沾着哪。不如把它拽开。

啊呀！

另一方面，六英尺高的大汉娶个只有他的表兜高的小娘子。长短搭配。 大男子和小女人。我的表可真怪。手表总是出毛病。莫非人与人之间也会发生磁力作用不成。因为就在这个时刻，他即将。对，我估计是这样，分秒不差。猫儿不在，老鼠翻天。记得我曾在皮尔小巷看过一次。眼下这也是磁力的力量。什么东西背后都有磁力。比方说，地球一方面产生磁力，同时又被磁力所吸引。这就是运动的起源。至于时间呢，喏，时间就是运动所需要的东西。那么，如果一样东西停止了，整体就会一点点地停下来。这一切都是安排好了的。磁针告诉你，太阳和星体正发生着什么事。小小的钢铁片。当你把叉子靠上时，它就会颤啊，颤啊，轻轻地碰一下。这就是男人和女人。叉子与钢铁。摩莉，他。梳妆打扮，以目传情并且暗示。让你看，再多看一些。还将你一军：倘若你是个男子汉，就瞧吧。仿佛要打喷嚏似的，瞧啊，瞧这两条腿。有种的，你就。轻轻地碰一下。只有放纵下去了。

她那个部位究竟有什么感觉呢？在第三者面前才装出一副害臊的样子。长袜上要是有个洞，就更尴尬了。那次在马匹展示会[ 127 ] 上摩莉看到脚登马靴、上了踢马刺的农场主就不禁将下颚往前一伸，扬起了头。我们住在西伦巴德街的时候，画家们曾经来过。那家伙的嗓门真好，就像是刚走上歌坛时的吉乌利尼[ 128 ] 。我闻了闻，宛若鲜花儿似的。可不是嘛。紫罗兰。那大概是颜料中的松节油气味吧。不论什么东西，女人们都自有用途。正搞着的时候，用拖鞋在地板上蹭来蹭去，免得让别人听见。但是我认为，很多女人达不到高潮。一连能搞几个钟头。仿佛浸透我整个身子，直到脊背。

且慢。哼。哼。我是她那香水。所以她才挥手来着。我把这留给你，当我在远处睡下时，你好思念我。那是什么？天芥菜花吗？不是。风信子吗？哦，我想是玫瑰吧。这倒像是她喜爱的那种气味。芳香而便宜。很快就会发馊的。喏，摩莉喜欢苦树脂。这对她合适，还掺上点茉莉花。她的高音和低音。在晚间的舞会上，她遇见了他，《时间之舞》[129 ]。热气把香味发散开来。她穿的是件黑衫，上面还留有上一次的香气。黑色是良导体吧？抑或是不良导体呢？还有光。假定它和光有什么联系。比方说，你要是走进黑黝黝的地窖子。还挺神秘的哩。我怎么现在才闻出来呢？起反应需要时间，就像她自己似的，来得缓慢却确凿。假若有几百万微粒子被刮过来。对，就是粒子。因为那些香料群岛，今天早晨发自锡兰岛的香气，多少海里以外都闻得见。告诉你那是什么吧。那就像是整个儿罩在皮肤上的极薄的一层纱中或蛛网，细微得宛若游丝。它总是从女人体内释放出来，无比纤细，犹如肉眼辨认不出的彩虹色。它巴在她脱下来的一切东西上面。长筒袜面。焐热了的鞋。紧身褡，衬裤。轻轻地踢上一脚，脱了下来。下次再见。猫儿也喜欢闻她床上的衬衣。在一千个人当中，它也嗅得出她的气味来。她泡过澡的水也是这样。使我联想到草莓与奶油。究竟是哪儿来的气味呢？是那个部位还是腋窝或脖颈底下。因为只要有孔眼和关节，就有气味。风信子香水的原料是油、乙醚或什么东西。麝鼠。尾巴底下有个兜儿。一个颗粒就能散发出几年的香气。两只狗互相绕到对方的后部。晚上好。晚上好。你闻起来如何？哼，哼。非常好，谢谢你。动物们就靠这么闻。是啊，想想看，咱们也是一样。比方说，有些女人来月经的时候，发出警告信号。你挨近一下试试。顿时就准能嗅到一股令人掩鼻的气味。像什么？腐烂了的罐头曹白鱼什么的。唔。勿踏草地。

说不定她们也闻得出我们所发出的男人气味。然而，那是什么样的气味呢？那一天，高个儿约翰在桌子上摆了双雪茄烟气味的手套。口臭？就看你吃什么喝什么啦。不，我指的是男人的气味。想必是与那个有关，因为被认为是童贞的神父们，气味就大不一样。女人们就像苍蝇跟踪糖蜜似的嗡嗡嗡地包围着。不顾祭坛周围的栏杆，千方百计想凑过去。树上的禁神父[ 130 ] 。哦，神父，求求您啦，让我头一个来尝吧。那气味四处弥漫、渗透全身。生命的源泉。那气味奇妙之至。芹菜汁吧。让我闻闻。

布卢姆先生把鼻子（哼）伸进（哼）背心襟口。是杏仁或者……不，是柠檬。啊，不，是肥皂哩。

啊，对啦，还有化妆水呢。我就觉得自己在记挂什么事来着。一直没回去，肥皂也没付钱。我不愿意像今天早晨那个老太婆那样提着瓶子走路。按说海因斯该还我那三先令了。可以向他提一下马尔商店的事，也许他就会记起来的。然而，倘若他把那一段写好了。两先令九便士[ 131 ] 。不然的话，他对我的印象就坏了。明天再去吧。我欠你多少？三先令九便士吗？不，两先令九便士，先生。啊。兴许下回他就不肯再赊账了。可也有由于那样就失掉主顾的。酒吧就是这样。有些家伙由于账房石板上的账赊多了，就溜到后巷另外一家去了。

刚才走过去的老爷又来了，是一阵风把他从海湾刮来的。走去多远，照样又走回来。午餐时总是在家。浑身狼狈不堪。美美地饱餐上一顿。眼下正在欣赏自然风光。饭后念祝文。晚饭之后再去散步一英里。他准在某家银行略有存款。有份闲职。就像今天报童尾随着我那样。现在跟在他后面走会使他难堪， 不过， 你还是学到了点乖。 用旁人的眼光反过来看自己。只要不遭到女人的嘲笑，又有什么关系？只有那样才能弄清楚。你自问一下他如今是何许人？《珍闻》悬赏小说《海滩上的神秘人物》，利奥波德•布卢姆著。稿酬：每栏一基尼[132]。还有今天在墓边的那个身穿棕色胶布雨衣的家伙。不过，他脚[133]上 长了鸡眼。对健康倒是有好处，因为什么都吸收了。据说吹口哨能唤雨。总有地方在下雨。奥蒙德饭店的盐就发潮。身体能感觉出周围的气氛。老贝蒂就闹着关节痛。希普顿妈妈预言说，将会有一种一眨眼的工夫就绕世界一周的船。不，关节痛是下雨的预兆。皇家读本。[ 134 ]远山好像靠近了。[ 135 ] 

霍斯。贝利灯台的光。二、四、六、八、九。瞧啊。非这么旋转不可，不然的话，会以为它是一幢房子。营救船。格蕾斯•达令。[ 136 ] 人们害怕黑暗。也怕萤火虫。骑自行车的人：点灯时间。[ 137 ] 宝石、金刚钻更亮一些。女人。光使人心里踏实。不会伤害你。如今当然比早年好多了。乡间的道路。无端地就刺穿你的小肚子。可是还得同两种人打交道：绷着脸的或笑眯眯的。对不起。没关系。日落之后，最适宜在阴凉地儿给花喷水。稍微还有点儿阳光。射线就数红色的长。是罗伊格比夫•万斯[138 ] 教给我们的：红、橙、黄、绿、蓝、靛青、紫罗兰。我望到了一颗星。是金星吗？还弄不清。两颗。倘若有了三颗，就是晚上了。夜云老是浮在那儿吗？看上去宛如一艘幽灵船。不。等一等。它们是树吧？视力的错觉。海市蜃楼。这是落日之国。[139] 自治的太阳在东南方向下沉。[140]我的祖国啊，晚安。[ 141 ]

降露了。亲爱的。坐在那块石头上会伤身体的。患白带下。除非娃娃又大又壮，能靠自己的力量生下来，否则就连娃娃也养不成。我本人说不定还会患痔疮哩。就像夏天患感冒似的，且好不了呢。伤口辣辣作痛。被草叶或纸张割破的最糟糕。摩擦伤口。我恨不得充当她坐着的那块岩石。哦，甜蜜的小妞儿，你简直不知道你看上去有多么俊美！我喜欢上这个年龄的姑娘了。绿苹果。既然送到嘴边，就饱餐一顿。只有在这个年龄才会翘起二郎腿坐着呢。还有今天在图书馆看到的那些女毕业生。她们坐的那一把把椅子，多么幸福啊。然而那是黄昏的影响。她们也都感觉到。知道什么时候该像花儿那么怒放。宛如向日葵啦，北美菊芋啦。在舞厅，在枝形吊灯下，在林荫路的街灯下。马特•狄龙家的花园里开着紫茉莉花。在那儿，我吻了她的肩膀。我要是有一幅她当时的全身油画肖像该有多好！我求婚，也是在六月。年复一年。岁月周而复始。巉岩和山峰啊，我又回到你们这儿来了。[142 ] 人生，恋爱，环绕着你自己的小小世界航行。而今呢？当然，你为她瘸腿一事感到悲哀，但是提防着点儿，不要过于动恻隐之心。会被人钻空子的。

眼下，霍斯笼罩在一片寂静中。远山好像。[143 ]那就是我们……的地方。杜鹃花。也许我是个傻子。他[ 144 ] 得到的是李子，我得到的是核儿，这就是我扮演的角色。那座古老的小山把一切都看在眼里，演员的名字换了，仅此而已。一对情侣。真好吃。真好吃。

现在我觉得累了。站起来吗？小妖精，把我身上的精力都吸净了。她吻了我。我的青春一去不复返了。它只来一次。她的青春也一样。明天乘火车到那儿去吧。不，回去就全不一样了。像孩子似的重新回到一座房子。我要的是新的。太阳底下一件新事都没有。[ 145 ] 海豚仓邮局转。难道你在自己家里不幸福吗？亲爱的淘气鬼。在海豚仓的卢克•多伊尔家里玩哑剧字谜游戏。马特•狄龙和他那一大群闺女：蒂尼、阿蒂、弗洛伊、梅米、卢伊、赫蒂。摩莉也在场。那是八七年。我们结婚的头一年。还有老鼓手长，喜欢一点点地呷着酒的那个。真妙，她是个独生女，我也是个独生子。下一代也是这样。以为可以逃脱，结果自己还是撞上了。以为绕了最远的路，原来是回自己家的最近的路。就在这当儿，他和她。马戏团的马兜着圈子走。我们玩"瑞普•凡•温克尔"来着。瑞普：亨尼•多伊尔的大衣裂缝。凡：运货车。温克尔：海扇壳和海螺。[146 ]接着，我扮演重返家园的瑞普•凡•温克尔。她倚着餐具柜，观看着。摩尔人般的眼睛。在睡谷[ 147 ]里睡了二十年。一切都变了。被遗忘了。原来的年轻人变老了。他的猎枪由于沾上露水生了锈。

身魂[ 148] 。是什么在飞来飞去？燕子吗？大概是蝙蝠吧。只当我是一棵树哩，简直是个瞎子。难道鸟儿没有嗅觉吗？轮回转世。人们曾经相信，悲伤可以使人变成一棵树。泣柳。[ 149 ] 身魂。又飞来了。可笑的小叫化子。我倒想知道它住在哪儿。那边高处的钟楼上。很可能。在一片圣洁的馨香中，用脚后跟倒吊着。我想它们必是被钟声惊吓得飞出来的。弥撤好像已完毕。可以听到会众的声音。为我等祈。为我等祈。为我等祈。 一遍遍地重复，是个好主意。广告也是这样。请在本店购买。请在本店购买。对，那是神父住宅的灯光。他们吃着简朴的饭菜。记得我在汤姆那爿店的时候，曾做过错误的估计。是二十八。他们有两所房子。加布里埃尔•康罗伊[ 150 ]的兄弟是位教区神父。身魂。又来啦。它们为什么一到晚间就像小耗子似的跑出来呢？是杂种。鸟儿就像是跳跳蹿蹿的耗子。是什么吓住了它们呢？灯光还是喧嚣声，还不如静静地坐着呢。这全都是出于本能，犹如干旱时的鸟儿，往水罐里丢石头子儿，好让水从罐嘴儿淌出来。[ 151 ] 它仿佛是个穿大衣的矮子，有着一双小手。纤细的骨架。几乎能看到它们发出微光，一种发蓝的白色。颜色要看你在什么光线下看了。比方说，要是照老鹰那样朝太阳逼视，再瞧瞧鞋，发黄的小斑点便映入眼帘。太阳总想在一切东西上盖上自己的标记。例如，今天早晨呆在楼梯上的那只猫。毛色如褐色草皮。你说是从来没见过三色毛的猫。才不是那么回事呢。 市徽饭店那只前额上有着M字型花纹的猫，毛皮就是玳瑁色的，夹着白斑纹。人身上有五十种不同的颜色。刚才霍斯还是紫晶色的。那是玻璃照的。因此，脑袋爪儿挺灵的某人就利用凸透镜来点火。石楠丛生的荒野也会起火。决不会是旅人的火柴引起的。是什么呢？兴许是枯干的茎与茎被风刮得互相摩擦燃起来的。要么就是荆豆丛中的玻璃瓶碎片在阳光下起到凸透镜的作用。阿基米德[ 152 ] ！"我发现啦！"我的记性还不是那么坏。

身魂。谁知道它们为什么老是那样飞。昆虫吗？上星期钻到屋里的那只蜜蜂，跟映在天花板上的自己的影子嘻戏来着。说不定就是蜇过我的那一只呢，又回来看一看。鸟儿也是一样。它们究竟在说些什么，永远也无从知晓。就像我们聊天儿似的。她一句，他一句。它们挺有勇气，从海面上飞过来飞过去。死在风暴中或触着电线的，想必很多。水手们也过着可怕的生活。巨兽般的越洋轮船在一团漆黑中踉跄前进，像海洋似的吼叫着。前进无阻！[153] 滚开，混帐！另外一些人坐的是小船，一旦狂风大作[154] ，就会像守灵夜的鼻烟那样被扔来扔去。[155 ]他们还是结了婚的。有时候一连几年漂泊在地球尽头。其实也并非尽头，因为地球是圆的。他们说， 在每个港口都有个老婆。让做老婆的在家里规规矩矩地一直等到约翰尼阔步返回家园[ 156 ] ，倒也不容易。一旦回来了，浑身散发着个个港口的里巷气味。

他们怎么会爱那海洋呢？然而他们就是爱哩。起锚了。[ 157 ] 为了图个吉利，他披上肩衣或佩带徽章[ 158 ] ，乘船而去。就是这样。还有那个护符——不，他们叫它作什么来着。可怜的爹的父亲曾把它挂在门上让大家摸。[ 159 ]它把我们领出埃及的土地，进入为奴之家[ 160 ]任何迷信都是有些名堂的，因为你一旦外出，就无从知道会有什么危险。拼死拼活地抓住一块板子，或跨在一根桁条上，身上缠着救生带，[ 161 ]嘴里灌进海水。这是他最后的挣扎了，直到被鲨鱼捉住。鱼儿在海里也会发晕吗？

接着就是美丽的平静，海面光滑明净，万里无云。船员和货物，一片残骸碎片。水手的坟墓。[ 162 ]月亮安详地俯瞰着。这怪不得我。自命不凡的小家伙。

为默塞尔医院募款而举办的麦拉斯义卖会上，最后一枝孤寂的蜡烛[163]飘上天空，绽开来，一面落下去，一面撒出一簇紫罗兰色的星星，其中只有一颗是白的。它们飘浮着，往下落，逐渐消失了。牧羊人的时辰，把羊群关进栏内的时辰，幽会的时辰。晚上九点那趟的邮递员，从一家到另一家，敲两下门，永远受到欢迎。他腰带上的那盏萤光灯一闪一闪的，[164]在月桂树篱间穿行。在五棵小树之间，一根火绳杆伸了出去，点燃了莱希家阳台上的灯。沿着那一连串灯光明亮的窗户，沿着那排一模一样的庭园，一路用尖嗓门嚷着："《电讯晚报》，最后一版！金杯赛马的结果！"有个男孩儿从迪格纳穆的房子里跑出来， 呼喊了一声。蝙蝠唧唧叫着，飞这儿飞那儿。远远地在沙滩上，碎浪爬了过来，灰灰的。漫长的时日，真好吃，真好吃。[165]杜鹃花丛，使霍斯山丘感到疲惫了（它老了）。 夜风习习，拨 弄着羊齿茸毛，给他以快感。他卧在那里，却睁开一只未入睡的眼睛，深深地、缓慢地呼吸着，虽困盹却是醒着的。远远地在基什的防波堤那儿，抛锚的灯台船上，灯光闪烁着，向布卢姆先生眨巴着眼儿。

那艘船上的人们过的日子真够受的，成天总是呆在一个地方，动弹不得。爱尔兰灯塔管理处。为了他们所犯的罪愆而受到的惩罚。沿岸警备队也是如此。火箭和救生裤，浮圈和救生艇。发生在我们乘爱琳王号[ 166 ] 去游览的那一天。曾丢给他们一袋旧报纸。简直成了动物园里的熊。那可是一次肮脏的旅行。醉汉跑到甲板上来倾倒他们胃里的东西。吐到船外，好喂曹白鱼。晕船。妇女们满脸惧怕天主的神色。米莉可毫无害怕的苗头。她笑着，淡蓝色头巾系得松松的。她那个年龄还不懂什么叫作死呢。而且胃里也干净。她们就是害怕迷路。在克鲁姆林[167 ] ，当我和玛莉恩藏到树后时（我原是不愿意这么藏的），她就嚷：妈妈！妈妈！树林里的娃娃们。[168 ] 戴上假面具，吓唬她们一下。把她们抛到半空，然后再去接住。说什么我要杀你。难道仅仅是半开玩笑吗？孩子们打仗玩，也是一本正经。怎么能够相互拿枪口瞄准对方呢。有时会走火的呀。可怜的孩子们！只有丹毒和荨麻疹这两种病最麻烦。为了这，我给她买了甘汞泻剂。病好了一点，她就和摩莉睡在一起了。她那口牙长得和妈妈的一样。女人多么疼爱孩于！当作自己的化身吗？但是一天早晨，她拿着雨伞去追那孩子来着。大概不至于伤害她。我号了号她的脉。怦怦跳着。那手多小啊。如今大了。最亲爱的爹爹。当你抚摩那只手的时候，它像是有那么多话要说。她喜欢数我背心上的钮扣。我记得她头一回系的胸衣，可把我逗乐了。奶头起初挺小。我想，左边的那只更敏感一些。我的也是如此。因为离心脏更近一些吧？流行大奶的时候，就填上点儿什么。晚上疼得厉害了，就叫嚷，把我喊醒。头一回来月经那次，可把她吓坏了。可怜的孩子！对妈妈来说，那也是个奇怪的时刻。把她带回到少女时代了。直布罗陀。从布埃纳维斯塔俯瞰。奥哈拉之塔。[ 169 ] 海鸟尖声叫着。把家族统统吞食掉的老叟猴[ 170 ] 。日暮时分，通知士兵返回要塞的号炮。那是像这样的一个傍晚，但是晴朗无云。她一边眺望海洋，一边对我说：我一直以为我会嫁给一个拥有私人游艇的贵族或绅士。晚上好，小姐。男人爱美丽的年轻姑娘。[ 171 ] 为什么嫁了我呢？因为你和别人那么不同。

最好不要像帽贝似的整个晚上粘在这儿。这样的气候，令人感到沉闷。从天光看，想必快到九点了。来不及去看《丽亚》了。《基拉尼的百合》。[ 172 ] 不，也许还没演完呢。到医院去探望一下吧。但愿她已经完事了。[ 173 ]这可是漫长的一天：玛莎、洗澡、葬礼、钥匙议院、女神像所在的博物馆，迪达勒斯之歌。还有在巴尼•基尔南酒馆里那个骂骂咧咧的家伙。我也顶撞了他。那帮吹牛皮的醉鬼，我说的那句关于他的天主的话，使他不敢回嘴了。难道不该反击他吗？不。他们应该回家去嘲笑自己。总想聚在一起狂饮一通。就像两岁的娃娃似的，害怕孤独。倘若他揍了我一顿。从他的立场来看，倒也不赖。兴许他也无意伤害我。为以色列三呼万岁。为他到处带着走的小姨子三呼万岁，她嘴里长着三颗大齿哩。同一类的美人儿吧。特别适宜一道喝杯茶。勃尼奥野人的妻妹刚进城。[174 ]想想看，一清早旁边有了这么一个人。莫里斯边吻母牛边说，人嘛，总是各有所好。[175 ] 然而迪格纳穆那档子事把什么都弄得一团糟。办丧事的家，[ 176 ] 大家总是愁眉不展的，因为你永远不知道下文。总之，那位寡妇缺钱。得去找找"苏格兰遗孀"，[177 ]照我答应过的。古怪的名字。认为丈夫先一命呜呼乃是理所当然的事。就在星期一， 那个寡妇在克拉默那家店外面瞧我来着。把可怜的丈夫埋葬了，然而靠保险金过得也蛮不错。她那寡妇的铜板[178] 。那又怎么样？你还指望她做什么？她得花言巧语，好歹活下去。我讨厌瞧见鳏夫。看上去那么孤独无助。奥康纳这个人好可怜哪，老婆和五个孩子在这儿都吃贻贝中毒死了。污水。 真没办法。得由一位戴卷边平顶毡帽的、主妇般的善心女人来对他尽尽母道。大浅盘脸的大妈，系上一条大围裙，照料着他。灰法兰绒布卢默女裤[ 179 ]三先令一条，便宜得惊人。人家说，被爱上的丑女人将永远被爱上。丑陋：没有女人认为自己长得丑。恋爱吧，扯谎吧，保持得漂漂亮亮，因为明天我们总将死去。不时地碰见他走来走去，试图找到那个捉弄他的人。万事休矣：完蛋。这是命中注定的。轮到他头上了，而不是我。店铺也常常被人贴上一张警告。就像是被灾祸紧紧缠住了似的。昨天夜里做梦了吗？[180 ] 且慢。有些弄混了。她趿拉着红拖鞋：土耳其式的。穿着紧身裤。倘若她真穿上了呢？我会不会更喜欢她穿宽松的睡衣裤呢？这就很难说啦。南尼蒂也走啦。乘的是邮船，这会子快到霍利黑德[181] 啦。得把凯斯那则广告敲定了。做做海因斯和克劳福德的工作。替摩莉买条衬裙。她倒是有一副好身材。那是什么呀？说不定是钞票哩。

布卢姆先生弯下身去，从沙滩上掀起一片纸。把它凑到眼前，迎着暮色看。是信吗？不。没法辨认。不如走吧。那要好一些。我累得不想动了。这是一本旧练习簿的一页。有这么多的窟窿和小石头子儿。谁数得过来呢？永远也不知道你能找到什么。轮船遇难时，把财宝的下落写在一张纸上，塞进瓶子里。邮包。孩子们总爱往海里扔东西。是信仰"将你的粮食撤在水面"[ 182 ]这话吗？这是什么？一截木棍。

哦！那个女人把我弄得筋疲力尽。如今已经不那么年轻了。明天她还到这儿来吗？在什么地方永永远远地等待她。准会再来一次。杀人犯都是这样的。我怎么样呢？

布卢姆先生用那截木棍轻轻地搅和脚下的厚沙，为她写下一句话吧。兴许能留下来。写什么呢？

"我"。

明天早晨就会有个拖着脚步走路的人把它踏平。白费力。会被波浪冲掉。 涨潮的时候到这儿来，看见她脚跟前有个水洼子。弯下身去，照照我的脸，黑糊糊的镜子，朝它哈口气，弄得一片朦胧。所有的岩石上都净是道道、斑痕和字迹。噢，那双透明的袜子！而且她们也不了解。

另一个世界意味着什么。我曾称你作淘气鬼，因为我不喜欢……［183 ] 

"是阿"。[ 184 ]

写不下。算了吧。

布卢姆先生用靴子慢慢地把字涂掉了。沙子这玩艺儿毫无用处。什么也不生长。一切都会消失。用不着担心大船会驶到这儿来。除非是吉尼斯公司的驳船。八十天环游基什。[ 185 ]一半是出于天意。

他扔掉了水笔。那截木棍戳到沉积的泥沙里，竖立不动了。可你要是有意让它竖着不动，一连试上一个星期，也办不到。机缘。咱们再也见不着了。然而那是何等地快乐啊。再见吧，亲爱的。谢谢。那曾使我感到那么年轻。

这会子我倒是想打个盹儿。大概将近九点钟了。驶往利物浦的船[ 186 ] 早就开走了。连烟都不见了。她也可以搞嘛。已经搞完了。然后前往贝尔法斯特。我不想去。匆匆赶去，再匆匆赶回恩尼斯。随它去吧。闭会儿眼睛。不过，不会入睡的。半睡半醒。往事不会重演了。又是蝙蝠。没有害处。不过几只。

哦 心肝儿 你那小小的白皙少女 尽里边我统统瞧见了 肮脏的吊裤带 使我作了爱 黏糊糊 我们这两个淘气鬼 格蕾斯•达令[ 187 ] 她他越过床的一半 遇见了他尖头胶皮管[ 188 ] 为了拉乌尔的褶边[ 189 ] 香水 你太太 黑头发 一起一伏的丰腴魅力 小姐 年轻的眼睛 马尔维 胖小子们 我 面包•凡•温克尔[ 190 ] 红拖鞋 她生锈 的睡觉 流浪 多年的岁月 回来 下端 阿根达斯[ 191 ] 神魂颠倒 可爱的给我看她那 第二年 抽屉里 返回 下一个 她的下一个 她的下一个

蝙蝠翩翔着。这儿。那儿。这儿。远远地在一片灰暗中，钟声响了。布卢姆先生张着嘴，将左脚上的靴子斜插在沙子里，倚着它，呼吸着。仅仅一会儿工夫。

咕咕

咕咕

咕咕[192] 

神父住宅的壁炉台上的座钟咕的一声响了，教堂蒙席奥汉龙、康罗伊神父和耶稣会士约翰。休斯神父边喝茶，吃着涂了黄油的苏打面包、浇了番茄酱的炸羊肉片，边谈着

傻话

傻话 

傻话[ 193]

从一间小屋中出来报时的是一只小金丝雀。格蒂•麦克道维尔那次来这儿，立即注意到了，因为关于这类事情，她比谁都敏感。格蒂•麦克道维尔就是这样的。她还顿时发觉，那位坐在岩石上朝这边望着的外国绅士，是个

王八

王八
Chapter 14 Oxen of the Sun
DESHIL HOLLES EAMUS. DESHIL HOLLES EAMUS. DESHIL HOLES Eamus. 
Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. 

Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, hoyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa. 

Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitable by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature's incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on the contrary anyone so is there inilluminated as not to perceive that as no nature's boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves every most just citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past been by the nation excellently commenced might be in the future not with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively who would have the hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence can for anyone be than to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined? 

It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians relate, among the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature admirable admired, the art of medicine shall have been highly honoured. Not to speak of hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their greatest doctors, the O'Shiels, the O'Hickeys, the O'Lees, have sedulously set down the divers methods by which the sick and the relapsed found again health whether the malady had been trembling withering or loose boyconnell flux. Certainly in every public work which in it anything of gravity contains preparation should be with importance commensurate and therefore a plan was by them adopted (whether by having preconsidered or as the maturation of experience it is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of subsequent inquirers are not up to the present congrued to render manifest) whereby maternity was so far from all accident possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that allhardest of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for the copiously opulent but also for her who not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely and often not even scarcely could subsist valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was provided. 

To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent mothers prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when the case was so having itself, parturient in vehicle the reward carrying desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her to be received into that domicile. O thing of prudent nation not merely in being seen but also even in being related worthy of being praised that they her by anticipation went seeing mother, that she by them suddenly to be about to be cherished had been begun she felt! 

Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever in that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives attended with wholesome food reposeful cleanest swaddles as though forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set: but to this no less of what drugs there is need and surgical implements which are pertaining to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together with images, divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct females is to tumescence conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and reproductitive, it is come by her thereto to lie in, her term up. 

Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night's oncoming. Of Israel's folk was that man that on earth wandering far had fared. Stark ruth of man his errand that him lone led till that house. 

Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers they there walk, white sisters in ward sleepless. Smarts they still sickness soothing: in twelve moons thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne holding wariest ward. 

In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mild-hearted eft rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin! Full she dread that God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's house. 

Loth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her stow he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land and seafloor nine year had long outwandered. Once her in townhithe meeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he craved with good ground of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face, hers, so young then had looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word winning. 

As her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared. Glad after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor tidings sent from far coast and she with grameful sigh him answered that O'Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that word to hear that him so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing death for friend so young, algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. She said that he had a fair sweet death through God His goodness with masspriest to be shriven, holy housel and sick men's oil to his limbs. The man then right earnest asked the nun of which death the dead man was died and the nun answered him and said that he was died in Mona island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she prayed to God the Allruthful to have his dear soul in his undeathliness. He heard her sad words, in held hat sad staring. So stood they there both awhile in wanhope, sorrowing one with other. 

Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came naked forth from his mother's womb so naked shall he wend him at the last for to go as he came. 

The man that was come into the house then spoke to the nursingwoman and he asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there in childbed. The nursingwoman answered him and said that that woman was in throes now full three days and that it would be a hard birth unneth to bear but that now in a little it would be. She said thereto that she had seen many births of women but never was none so hard as was that woman's birth. Then she set it forth all to him that time was had lived nigh that house. The man hearkened to her words for he felt with wonder women's woe in the travail that they have of motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a young face for any man to see but yet was she left after long years a handmaid. Nine twelve bloodflows chiding her childless. 

And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sat there at meat. And there came against the place as they stood a young learning knight yclept Dixon. And the traveller Leopold was couth to him sithen it had happed that they had had ado each with other in the house of misericord where this learning knight lay by cause the traveller Leopold came there to be healed for he was sore wounded in his breast by a spear wherewith a horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he did do make a salve of volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said now that he should go into that castle for to make merry with them that were there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go otherwhither for he was a man of cautels and a subtle. Also the lady was of his avis and reproved the learning knight though she trowed well that the traveller had said thing that was false for his subtility. But the learning knight would not hear say nay nor do her mandement ne have him in aught contrarious to his list and he said how it was a marvellous castle. And the traveller Leopold went into the castle for to rest him for a space being sore of limb after many marches environing in divers lands and sometimes venery. 

And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move for enchantment. And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously. And there were vessels that are wrought by magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a warlock with his breath that he blares into them like to bubbles. And full fair cheer and rich was on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And there was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this be possible thing without they see it natheless they are so. And these fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olive press. And also it was marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make a compost out of fecund wheat kidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of certain angry spirits that they do into it swells up wondrously like to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of these serpents they brew out a brewage like to mead. 

And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and halp thereto the while all they that were there drank every each. And childe Leopold did up his beaver for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat in amity for he never drank no manner of mead which he then put by and anon full privily he voided the more part in his neighbour glass and his neighbour wist not of his wile. And he sat down in that castle with them for to rest him there awhile. Thanked be Almighty God. 

This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them at the reverence of Jesu our alther liege lord to leave their wassailing for there was above one quick with child a gentle dame, whose time hied fast. Sir Leopold heard on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered what cry that it was whether of child or woman and I marvel, said he, that it be not come or now. Meseems it dureth overlong. And he was ware and saw a franklin that hight Lenehan on that side the table that was older than any of the tother and for that they both were knights virtuous in the one emprise and eke by cause that he was elder he spoke to him full gently. But, said he, or it be long too she will bring forth by God His bounty and have joy of her childing for she hath waited marvellous long. And the franklin that had drunken said, Expecting each moment to be her next. Also he took the cup that stood tofore him for him needed never none asking nor desiring of him to drink and, Now drink, said he, fully delectably, and he quaffed as far as he might to their both's health for he was a passing good man of his lustiness. And sir Leopold that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars' hall and that was the meekest man and the kindest that ever laid husbandly hand under hen and that was the very truest knight of the world one that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in the cup. Woman's woe with wonder pondering. 

Now let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the intent to be drunken an they might. There was a sort of scholars along either side the board, that is to wit, Dixon yclept junior of saint Mary Merciable's with other his fellows Lynch and Madden, scholars of medicine, and the franklin that high! Lenehan and one from Alba Longa, one Crotthers, and young Stephen that had mien of a frere that was at head of the board and Costello that men clepen Punch Costello all long of a mastery of him erewhile gested (and of all them, reserved young Stephen, he was the most drunken that demanded still of more mead) and beside the meek sir Leopold. But on young Malachi they waited for that he promised to have come and such as intended to no goodness said how he had broke his avow. And sir Leopold sat with them for he bore fast friendship to sir Simon and to this his son young Stephen and for that his languor becalmed him there after longest wanderings insomuch as they feasted him for that time in the honourablest manner. Ruth red him, love led on with will to wander, loth to leave. 

For they were right witty scholars. And he heard their aresouns each gen other as touching birth and righteousness, young Madden maintaining that put such case it were hard the wife to die (for so it had fallen out a matter of some year agone with a woman of Eblana in Horne's house that now was trespassed out of this world and the self night next before her death all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel of her case). And they said farther she should live because in the beginning they said the woman should bring forth in pain and wherefore they that were of this imagination affirmed how young Madden had said truth for he had conscience to let her die. And not few and of these was young Lynch were in doubt that the world was now right evil governed as it was never other howbeit the mean people believed it otherwise but the law nor his judges did provide no remedy. A redress God grant. This was scant said but all cried with one acclaim nay, by our Virgin Mother, the wife should live and the babe to die. In colour whereof they waxed hot upon that head what with argument and what for their drinking but the franklin Lenehan was prompt each when to pour them ale so that at the least way mirth might not lack. Then young Madden showed all the whole affair and when he said how that she was dead and how for holy religion sake by rede of palmer and bedesman and for a vow he had made to Saint Ultan of Arbraccan her goodman husband would not let her death whereby they were all wondrous grieved. To whom young Stephen had these words following, Murmur, sirs, is eke oft among lay folk. Both babe and parent now glorify their Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in purge fire. But, gramercy, what of those Godpossibled souls that we nightly unpossibilise, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost, Very God, Lord and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he said, our lust is brief. We are means to those small creatures within us and nature has other ends than we. Then said Dixon junior to Punch Costello wist he what ends. But he had overmuch drunken and the best word he could have of him was that he would ever dishonest a woman whoso she were or wife or maid or leman if it so fortuned him to be delivered of his spleen of lustihead. Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young Malachi's praise of that beast the unicorn how once in the millennium he cometh by his horn the other all this while pricked forward with their jibes wherewith they did malice him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his engines that he was able to do any manner of thing that lay in man to do. Thereat laughed they all right jocundly only young Stephen and sir Leopold which never durst laugh too open by reason of a strange humour which he would not bewray and also ford that he rued for her that bare whoso she might be or wheresoever. Then spoke young Stephen orgulous of mother Church that would cast him out of her bosom, of law of canons, of Lilith, patron of abortions, of bigness wrought by wind of seeds of brightness or by potency of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius saith, by the influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or an she lie with a woman which her man has but lain with effectu secuto, or peradventure in her bath according to the opinions of Averroes and Moses Maimonides. He said also how at the end of the second month a human soul was infused and how in all our holy mother foldeth ever souls for God's greater glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a dam to bring forth beastly should die by canon for so saith he that holdeth the fisherman's seal, even that blessed Peter on which rock was holy church for all ages founded. All they bachelors then asked of sir Leopold would he in like case so jeopard her person as risk life to save life. A wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, as his wont was, that as it was informed him, who had ever loved the art of physic as might a layman, and agreeing also with his experience of so seldom seen an accident it was good for that Mother Church belike at one blow had birth and death pence and in such sort deliverly he scaped their questions. That is truth, pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant word. Which hearing young Stephen was a marvellous glad man and he averred that he who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord for he was of a wild manner when he was drunken and that he was now in that taking it appeared eftsoons. 

But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause he still had pity of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour and as he was minded of his good lady Marion that had borne him an only manchild which on his eleventh day on live had died and no man of art could save so dark is destiny. And she was wondrous stricken of heart for that evil hap and for his burial did him on a fair corselet of lamb's wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish utterly and lie akeled (for it was then about the midst of the winter) and now sir Leopold that had of his body no manchild for an heir looked upon him his friend's son and was shut up in sorrow for his forepassed happiness and as sad as he was that him failed a son of such gentle courage (for all accounted him of real parts) so grieved he also in no less measure for young Stephen for that he lived riotously with those wastrels and murdered his goods with whores. 

About that present time young Stephen filled all cups that stood empty so as there remained but little mo if the prudenter had not shadowed their approach from him that still plied it very busily who, praying for the intentions of the sovereign pontiff, he gave them for a pledge the vicar of Christ which also as he said is vicar of Bray. Now drink we, quod he, of this mazer and quaff ye this mead which is not indeed parcel of my body but my soul's bodiment. Leave ye fraction of bread to them that live by bread alone. Be not afeard neither for any want for this will comfort more than the other will dismay. See ye here. And he showed them glistering coins of the tribute and goldsmiths' notes the worth of two pound nineteen shilling that he had, he said, for a song which he writ. They all admired to see the foresaid riches in such dearth of money as was herebefore. His words were then these as followeth: Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions. What means this? Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark me now. In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation. Omnis cam ad te veniet. No question but her name is puissant who aventried the dear corse of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and mother most venerable and Bernardus saith aptly that she hath an omnipotentiam deiparae supplicem, that is to wit, an almightiness of petition because she is the second Eve and she won us, saith Augustine too, whereas that other, our grandam, which we are linked up with by successive anastomosis of navelcords sold us all, seed, breed and generation, for a penny pippin. But here is the matter now. Or she knew him, that second I say, and was but creature of her creature, vergine madre figlia di tuo figlio or she knew him not and then stands she in the one denial or ignorancy with Peter Piscator who lives in the house that Jack built and with Joseph the Joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy marriages parce que M. Léo Taxil nous a dit que qui l'avait mise dans cette fichue position c'était le sacré pigeon, ventre de Dieu! Entweder transsubstantiality oder consubstantiality but in no case subsubstantiality. And all cried out upon It for a very scurvy word. A pregnancy without joy, he said, a birth without pangs, a body without blemish, a belly without bigness. Let the lewd with faith and fervour worship. With will will we withstand, withsay. 

Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the board and would sing a bawdy catch Staboo Stabella about a wench that was put in pod of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he did now attack: The first three months she was not well, Staboo, when here nurse Quigley from the door angerly bid them hist ye should shame you nor was it not meet as she remembered them being her mind was to have all orderly against lord Andrew came for because she was jealous that not gasteful turmoil might shorten the honour of her guard. It was an ancient and a sad matron of a sedate look and christian walking, in habit dun beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor did her hortative want of it effect for incontinently Punch Costello was of them all embraided and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness some and with menace of blandishments others whiles all chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in the peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut up his drunken drool out of that like a curse of God ape, the good sir Leopold that had for his cognisance the flower of quiet, margerain gentle, advising also the time's occasion as most sacred and most worthy to be most sacred. In Horne's house rest should reign. 

To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon of Mary in Eccles, goodly grinning, asked young Stephen what was the reason why he had not cided to take friar's vows and he answered him obedience in the womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his days. Master Lenehan at this made return that he had heard of those nefarious deeds and how, as he heard hereof counted, he had besmirched the lily virtue of a confiding female which was corruption of minors and they all intershowed it too, waxing merry and toasting to his fathership. But he said very entirely it was clean contrary to their suppose for he was the eternal son and ever virgin. Thereat mirth grew in them the more and they rehearsed to him his curious rite of wedlock for the disrobing and deflowering of spouses, as the priests use in Madagascar island, she to be in guise of white and saffron, her groom in white and grain, with burning of nard and tapers, on a bridebed while clerks sung kyries and the anthem Ut novetur sexus omnis corporis mysterium till she was there unmaided. He gave them then a much admirable hymen minim by those delicate poets Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is in their Maid's Tragedy that was writ for a like twining of lovers: To bed, to bed, was the burden of it to be played with accompanable concent upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee, young sir, better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my truth, of such a mingling much might come. Young Stephen said indeed to his best remembrance they had but the one doxy between them and she of the stews to make shift with in delights amorous for life ran very high in those days and the custom of the country approved with it. Greater love than this, he said, no man hath that a man lay down his wife for his friend. Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that effect, said Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the university of Oxtail nor breathed there ever that man to whom mankind was more beholden. Bring a stranger within thy tower it will go hard but thou wilt have the secondbest bed. Orate, fratres, pro memetipso. And all the people shall say, Amen. Remember, Erin, thy generations and thy days of old, how thou settedst little by me and by my word and broughtest in a stranger to my gates to commit fornication in my sight and to wax fat and kick like Jeshurum. Therefore hast thou sinned against the light and hast made me, thy lord, to be the slave of servants. Return, return, Clan Milly: forget me not, O Milesian. Why hast thou done this abomination before me that thou didst spurn me for a merchant of jalaps and didst deny me to the Roman and the Indian of dark speech with whom thy daughters did lie luxuriously? Look forth now, my people, upon the land of behest, even from Horeb and from Nebo and from Pisgah and from the Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. But thou hast suckled me with a bitter milk: my moon and my sun thou hast quenched for ever. And thou hast left me alone for ever in the dark ways of my bitterness: and with a kiss of ashes hast thou kissed my mouth. This tenebrosity of the interior, he proceeded to say, hath not been illumined by the wit of the septuagint nor so much as mentioned for the Orient from on high which brake hell's gates visited a darkness that was foraneous. Assuefaction minorates atrocities (as Tully saith of his darling Stoics) and Hamlet his father showeth the prince no blister of combustion. The adiaphane in the noon of life is an Egypt's plague which in the nights of prenativity and postmortemity is their most proper ubi and quomodo. And as the ends and ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure with their inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First saved from water of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor to what processes we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or to Edenville in the like way is all hidden when we would backward see from what region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched his whenceness. 

Thereto Punch Costello roared out mainly Etienne chanson but he loudly bid them lo, wisdom hath built herself a house, this vast majestic longstablished vault, the crystal palace of the Creator all in applepie order, a penny for him who finds the pea. 

Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack, 
See the malt stored in many a refluent sack, 
In the proud cirque of Jackjohn's bivouac.
A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled, back. Loud on left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm that hist his heart. And Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry. And he that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed pale as they might all mark and shrank together and his pitch that was before so haught uplift was now of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart shook within the cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm. Then did some mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to his yale which Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a word and a blow on any the least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an old Nobodaddy was in his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag behind his lead. But this was only to dye his desperation as cowed he crouched in Horne's hall. He drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for it thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden, being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs upon that crack of doom and Master Bloom, at the braggart's side spoke to him calming words to slumber his great fear, advertising how it was no other thing but a hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of fluid from the thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of the order of a natural phenomenon. 
But was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words? No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived withal? Indeed not for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged up the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw that he was in the land of Phenomenon where he must for a certain one day die as he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away? By no means would he and make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence. 

This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them, for Preservative had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm and spill their souls for their abuses and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth. 

So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of an apoplexy and after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too. Hard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flags and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles street, a swash of water running that was before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman's gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore's the writer's (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite) chanced against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob (which are now In with dance cloaks of Kendal green) that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his coz and Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel and all this while poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Bloom of Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, T. Lenehan, very sad for a racinghorse he fancied and Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was now better, he having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers on in pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, the midwives sore put to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks they say, but God give her soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand in the king's bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the Sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear. In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi's almanac (and I hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the Hindustanish for his farmer's gazette) to have three things in all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities no telling how. 

With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the letter was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him (for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on Stephen's persuasion he gave over to search and was bidden to sit near by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of woman, horseflesh, or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boiling-cook's and if he had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself off with his tongue, some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every mother's son of them would burst their sides. The other, Costello, that is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank (that was his name), 'tis all about Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go hang, says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it. There's as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly he offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed wishly in the meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief design of his embassy as he was sharpset. Mort aux vaches, says Frank then in the French language that had been indentured to a brandy shipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and the use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his volumes. One time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, then nought would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the Romany folk, kidnapping a squire's heir by favour or moonlight or fecking maid's linen or choking chickens behind a hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to his father the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw him. What, says Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this day morning going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wools, having been some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose of the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but very handsomely, told him no such matter and that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief tailtickler thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and Irish by nature, says Mr Stephen, and he sent the ale purling about. An Irish bull in an English chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattle breeder of them all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, a coat of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains. What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors, who were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my cousin german the Lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue then lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the road with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that he could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full he would rear up on his hind quarters to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bull's language and they all after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself (for that was the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying: By the lord Harry green is the grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he run amok over half the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion bull of the Romans, Bos Bovum, which is good bog Latin for boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a cow's drinking trough in the presence of all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bull's language to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it up on what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was that the men of the island, seeing no help was toward as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty: 

-- Pope Peter's but a pissabed. 
A man's a man for a' that.
Our worthy acquaintance, Mr Malachi Mulligan, now appeared in the doorway as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon, who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi Mulligan, Fertiliser and Incubator, Lambay Island. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiating on his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey for the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep. To curb this inconvenience (which he concluded due to a suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of not much in favour with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of fashion, if so be their constructions, and their tempers were warm persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies. After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had shielded it. The both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr Mulligan's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which as it dwelt upon his memory seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of his contention: Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut matres familiarum nostro lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt: while for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake and duck. 
Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man of his person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a passage that had befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an interesting condition, poor lady, from woman's woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storms of mirth and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber. 

Here the listener, who was none other than the Scotch student, a little fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a questioning pose of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the head, asked the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. Mais bien s?r, noble stranger, said he cheerily, et mille compliments. That you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give thanks to the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband that very picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feast day as she told me) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God I thank thee as the Author of my days! Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent Disseminator of blessing to all Thy creatures, how great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys! Maledicity! Would to God that foresight had remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, Tut! cries le Fécondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle avec lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, sans blague, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world. Pooh! A livre! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear Kitty told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted it in our heart and it has become a household word that il y a deux choses for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest nay, the only, garment. The first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a bath... but at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge. 

Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and while all were conjecturing what might be the cause Miss Callan entered and, having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a party of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not less severe than beautiful refrained the humorous sallies even of the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A monstrous fine bit of cow-flesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you. What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud. Immensely so, said Mr Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice. Demme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin? As I look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid there any time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and immodest squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me, I'm all of a wibblywobbly. Why, you're as bad as dear little Father Cantekissem that you are! May this pot of four half choke me, cried Costello, if she ain't in the family way. I knows a lady what's got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young surgeon, however, rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence had been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was enceinte which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the astonishment of ours and at an instant the most momentous that can befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of the future of a race where the seeds of such malice have been sown and where no right reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of Horne. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur of approval arose from all and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a design which would have been effected nor would he have received more than his bare deserts had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a horrid imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was as good a son of the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most particular to honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand to a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on with a loving heart. 

To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious of some impudent mocks which he, however, had borne with being the fruits of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown children: the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly understood and not often nice: their testiness and outrageous mots were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity born out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback teethed and feet first into the world, which the dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull lent indeed a colour to, so as it put him in thought of that missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now for more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had passed through the thousand vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy and self a man of a rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting them with the readiest precaution, foster within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a habit of mind which he never did hold with) to them he would concede neither to bear the name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding: while for such that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer express it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be owned, not a little alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now testified once more to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being. 

Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to express one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy young blade said it was her husband's that put her in that expectation or at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. I must acquaint you, said Mr Crothers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujerum was round again to-day, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife, I'll be round with you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock another child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same young blade held with his former view that another than her conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed in every household. Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further added, it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress them for I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together. 

But with what fitness, let it be asked, of the noble lord, his patron, has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to civil rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled? During the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that moment to discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his four per cents? Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from being a deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is, if report belie him not his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy woman she has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to his objurgations with any other feeling than the derision of the desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of society. Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary angel it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seed-field that lies fallow for the want of a ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an opprobium in middlelife. If he must dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is the repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort neglected and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative. 

The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial usages of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the junior medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the delegation that an heir had been born. When he had betaken himself to the women's apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation, the delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and officer rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to restrain. The moment was too propitious for the display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was successively eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that rarer form, with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as the Childs murder and endered memorable by the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of the wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and king's bounty touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated and dissimulated, acardiac ftus in ftu, aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnatia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan) in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetuation of the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of multigeminal, twikindled and monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents - in a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified in his master-piece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a country stile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a primafacie and natural hypothetical explanation of swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the taledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views with such heat as almost carried conviction the theory of copulation between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which none better than he knew know to affect, postulating as the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and theological dilemma in the even of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which he was invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly, and as some thought perfunctorily, the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder what God has joined. 

But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in the recess appeared... Haines! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep? He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial marked Poison. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghastly grin. I anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! The inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance is on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland's, is in this life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rookshooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope... Ah! Destruction! The black panther! With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at Westland row station at ten past eleven. He was gone! Tears gushed from the eyes of the dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The vendetta of Mananaan! The sage repeated Lex talionis. The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was unveiled. Haines was the third brother. His real name was Childs. The black panther was himself the ghost of his own father. He drank drugs to obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely house by the graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The spider pitches her web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on it. It is haunted. Murderer's ground. 

What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in the funds. He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clambrassil street to the high school, his book satchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas, a thing now of the past!), and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile but more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, to a tiny speck within the mist. Now he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luck-penny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night, first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant (fiat!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas done but - hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold! Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph. 

The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms are they yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken sea, Lacus Mortis. Ominous, revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the sun. 

Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And, lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer! It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till after a myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled sign upon the forehead of Taurus. 

Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had been at school together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending bard, am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring forth the work you meditate. I heartily wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent, Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him, have no fear. He could not leave his mother an orphan. The young mans face grew dark. All could see how hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise and of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from the feast had not the noise of voices allayed the smart. Madden had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the rider's name: Lenehan as much more. He told them of the race. The flag fell and, huuh, off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with O. Madden up. She was leading the field: all hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself. She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the straight on the run home when all were in close order the dark horse Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But her lover consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay some oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. A whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and three today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could have seen my queen today, Vincent said, how young she was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them that Periplepomenos sells in his booth near the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm with which I held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I pressed too dose. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then. Her posies too! Mad romp that it is, she had pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you will not think who met us as we left the field. Conmee himself! He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the very trees adore her. When conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely echo in the little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of the moon, Theosophos told me, an orange-fiery shipload from planet Alpha of the lunar chain, would not assume the etheric doubles and these were therefore incarnated by the ruby-coloured egos from the second constellation. 

However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised, which was entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs, while the above was going on, were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation, was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to attract anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself which put quite an altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the moment before's observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, however, both their eyes met and, as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other was endeavouring to help himself to the thing, he involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at the same time however, a considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about the place. 

The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne's house had never beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crothers was there at the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to him was Lynch, whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the resident indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the figure of Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come. 

It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) contentions would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated, deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the man in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer - at present - such as the first problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary (the postmenstrual period, assert others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both? This would be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature's favourite devices) between the nisus formativus of the nemasperm on the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position, succubitus felix, of the passive element. The other problem raised by the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk in dust. These facts, he alleges, and the revolting spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors and unfructified duennas - these, he said, were accountable for any and every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied, would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all these little attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular condition to pass the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers (Disc. Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to abnormal trauma in the case of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to marital discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the former (we are thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case he cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges In the peritoneal cavity is too rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do, all things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which often balk nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general, everything, in fine, in nature's vast workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which beautify our public parks, is subject to a law of numeration as yet unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet's words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous germs have taken up their residence (modern science has conclusively shown that only the plasmic substance can be said to be immortal) tend to disappear at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an arrangement, which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings (notably the maternal), is nevertheless, some of us think, in the long run beneficial to the race in general in securing thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals as nought else could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lower class licensed victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place in the commons' hall of the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of which, as is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Mdw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the able and popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once a woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthetic allusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated and marvellous of all nature's processes, the act of sexual congress) she must let it out again or give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of her own was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor none the less effective for the moderate and measured tone in which it was delivered. 

Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a happy accouchement. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God, how beautiful now across the mist of years! But their children are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low and so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time. You too have fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant! 

There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquillity of the evening or at the feast at midnight when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful. 

The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an unhealthiness, a flair, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn where the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know not what of arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched) is standing on the urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this young man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment of danger but must needs glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the piazzetta giving upon the flower-close with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach (alles Verg?nghche) in her glad look. 

Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of custody rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the Word. 

Burke's! Outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha? They are out tumultuously, off for a minute's race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Dixon follows, giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has told its tale in that washedout pallor. Them all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping he whispers close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee? 

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistering on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up? For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music. Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathusthra? Deine kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst Du die süsse Milch des Euters. See! It displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead, rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzlingden, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum! 

All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides. Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole Billyo. Any brollies or gumboots in the family? Where the Henry Nevil's sawbones and ole clo? Sorra one o me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward the ribbon counter. Where's Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospal! Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius. A make, mister. The Denzille lane boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight. Yous join us, dear sir? No hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee this bunch. En avant, mes enfants! Fire away number one on the gun. Burke's! Thence they advanced five parasangs. Slattery's mounted foot where's that bleeding awfur? Parson Steve, apostates' creed! No, no. Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead. Keep a watch on the clock. Chuckingout time. Mullee! What's on you? Ma mère m'a mariée. British Beatitudes! Ratamplan Digidi Boum Boum. Ayes have it. To be printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf covers of pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come out of Ireland my time. Silentium! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp the boys are (attitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs, battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beerbeef trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers. Thunderation! Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops' boosebox. Halt! Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You hurt? Most amazingly sorry! 

Query. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall. Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the übermensch. Dittoh. Five number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's candle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? Caramba! Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he was settin sleep in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin, I do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here. Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine! Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear thee best a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity sagaciating OK? How's the squaws and papooses? Womanbody after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss. Mummer's wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified orchidised polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine's writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray goodygood Malachi. 

Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw Hielentman's your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot boil! My tipple. Merci. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket. Don't stain my brandnew sitinems. Give's a shake of pepper, you there. Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. Les petites femmes. Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence? Machree, Macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull altogether. Ex! 

Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like seeing as how no shiners is acoming, Underconstumble? He've got the chink ad lib. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy bilks? Won't wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile vely solly. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou. We're nae tha fou. Au reservoir, Mossoo. Tanks you. 

'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir. Bantam, two days teetee. Mowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do. Gum, I'm jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he'd like? Rose of Castille. Rows of cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers. Gemini, he's going to holler. The colleen bawn, my colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen. Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospel-true. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O, lust, our refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Comeahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen. 

You move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, wee drap to pree. Cut and some again. Right Boniface! Absinthe the lot. Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum diabolus capiat posteriora nostra Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads? Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous! Play low, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie. And snares of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann will yu help, yung man hoose frend tuk bungalo kee to find plais whear to lay crown off his hed 2 night. Crickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the bestest putties longbreakyet. Item, curate, couple of cookies for this child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed spirits. Time. Who wander through the world. Health all. A la v?tre! 

Golly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies. Pardon? See him today at a runefal? Chum o yourn passed in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore picanninies! Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg! Did urns blubble bigsplash crytears cos fries Padney was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like since I was born. Tiens, tiens, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. O get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah, the Excellent One, your soul this night ever tremendously conserve. 

Your attention! We're nae thy fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my thrue love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook. 

Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes. Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up. Pflaap! Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap! 

Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips there shady Mary is. Righto, any old time. Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming long? Whisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! Ut implerentur scripturae. Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy. Christicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? Elijah is coming washed in the Blood of the Lamb. Come on, you winefizzling ginsizzling booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed four flushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J. Christ Dowie, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from 'Frisco Beach to Vladivostok. The Deity ain't no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that he's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, In his backpocket. Just you try it on. 


朝右走向霍利斯街[1] 。朝右走向霍利斯街。朝右走向霍利斯街。

光神啊；日神啊，霍霍恩[2] 啊，将那经过胎动期，孕育于子宫之果实赐与我等。光神啊，日神啊，霍霍恩啊，将那经过胎动期、孕育于子宫之果实赐与我等。光神啊，日神啊，霍霍恩啊，将那经过胎动期、孕育于子宫之果实赐与我等。

呼啦，男娃啊男娃，呼啦！[3] 呼啦，男娃啊男娃，呼啦！呼啦，男娃啊男娃，呼啦！

最精通教义故最能赢得众人尊重，精神崇高且值得骄傲之人士所经常倡导，并得到社会公认之见解乃是：只要其他情况未起变化，一个民族之繁荣兴盛并非取决于其表面之光辉，乃取决于该民族对繁衍子孙所寄予之考虑及改进之程度。缺乎此，即构成罪恶之根源。今幸有此寄予，则能确保获得万能大自然之纯洁恩泽。倘有人于此主张毫无所知，彼对诸事之认识（即有识之士视为裨益良多之研究）必极为肤浅，绝非贤人也。此乃一般世人之观点。盖凡能认识重要事物者，必知表面之光辉无非掩盖其内在之虚弱而已。且不论何等蠢人亦应省悟：大自然赐予之所有恩惠，均无法与繁殖之恩惠相比拟，故一切正直之市民皆须对同胞劝诫忠告，并为之焦虑，惟恐本民族过去所开创之辉煌业绩，日后不能发扬光大也。倘因风俗之愚昧，对世代相传之光荣习惯加以轻视，否定其深远意义，从而对有关分娩作用之崇高要义等闲视之，岂不令人深恶痛绝哉！盖此要义系天主所做繁殖之预言[4]及对减少繁衍之警告，并命令全人类遵照行事，使之做出承诺。

因此，据杰出之史家所云，在本质上毫无值得珍视之物，亦从未珍视过何物之凯尔特人中，唯医术受到极高推崇，亦不足为奇。[5] 举凡医院、麻疯病人收容所、蒸汽浴室、瘟疫患者埋葬所自不待言，彼等之名医奥希尔家族、奥希基家族、奥利家族[6] ，亦均孜孜不倦制定了能够使病人及旧病复发者康复之种种疗法——不论彼等所患为乳毒病、痨病抑或痢疾。凡属有意义之社会保健事业，咸须慎重进行筹备。彼等遂采取一项方案[7] （不知为深思熟虑之结果，抑或出自积年累月之经验，尚难断言。因后世研究者意见纷纭，迄今尚无定论）：分娩乃女性所面临之最大苦难。当此之际，只需交纳微不足道之费用，不论其家道殷实，抑或仅能勉强糊口，乃至一贫如洗，产院律施以必要之医疗，俾使孕妇免遭任何可能发生之意外。

就孕妇而言：产前产后均应无任何忧虑，因全体市民皆知，倘无伊等多产之母，任何繁荣皆无从实现。彼等深知只因有母性，彼等方能享有永恒与神明，死亡与出生。临盆用车辆将孕妇送到产院，其他妇女受此启发，亦纷纷渴望由该院收容。众人在产妇身上见到一位未来的母亲，产妇则感到自己开始受到爱护。伟哉，此乃彼稳健国民之功绩！不仅目睹而已，更应赞许传颂。

婴儿尚未诞生，即蒙祝福。尚在胎中，便受礼赞。举凡此种场合应做之事，均已做到。分娩之前，众人即凭借明智之预见，将助产妇所守护之卧榻，有益于健康之食品以及舒适而洁净之褪褓一一备齐，一如婴儿已呱呱坠地。另有药品以及临盆孕妇所需之外科器械，一应俱全。此外，尤匠心独运，于室内悬挂寰球各地绮丽风光，并配以神明及凡人之画像。孕妇身怀六甲，产期临近时，即为分娩而至此浴满阳光、构造牢固之广厦。此乃清洁华美的母亲之家，四周景物赏心悦目，促使腹部蠕动，从而得以顺产。

夜幕即将降临之际，流浪男子仁立于产院门口。此人属以色列族，出于恻隐之心，踽踽独行，远途跋涉而至此产院。

安•霍恩乃本院院主。彼在此院设有床位七十张，孕妇卧于床上，强忍阵痛，生下健壮婴儿，即如天主派遣之天使对玛利亚所言者。[8] 两白衣护士彻夜不眠，在产房中巡视，为产妇止痛治病，每年达三百次。二人兢兢业业为霍恩看守病房，确属无限忠诚之护士。正当护士恪尽职守之际，一名护士忽闻一心地温良者至。伊遂裹上头巾，趋前将门启开。俄尔但见一道令人眩目之闪电，蹿遍爱尔兰西部上空。护士不禁畏惧，疑为怒神降临，欲以倾盆之雨将人类毁灭殆尽，以惩其所犯罪愆。护士忙在胸前划十字，并邀来者速进陋室。男子接受其盛情，遂步入霍恩产院。

来访者深恐冒失，乃执帽伫立于霍恩产院之门厅内。盖彼曾偕爱妻娇女与此护士住于同一屋顶之下。兹后海陆漂泊长达九年之久。某日于本市码头与护士邂逅。护士向彼致意，彼未摘帽还礼。今特来恳请护士宽恕，并解释曰：上次擦身走过，因觉汝极其年少，未敢贸然相认。护士闻言，双目遽然生辉。面庞倏地绽开红花。

此时护士乃将目光转向来者身着之黑色丧服，并满怀忧戚，讯及彼有何伤心之事。后又消除疑虑。彼问及奥黑尔大夫可曾从遥远之彼岸捎信来？护士不胜悲伤，乃叹曰：奥黑尔大夫已升天堂矣。男子闻讫，哀痛万分，肠断魂销。此刻护士方倾诉全部情况，对英年早逝之友深表哀悼，然又谓此乃出于天主正当之旨意，不敢妄加评议。护士云：蒙上主恩宠，彼临终已向主持弥撒之神父忏悔，并领圣体。病体被涂以圣油，获得清清白白之善终。男子诚心诚意讯问护士，死者因患何疾而终？护士答曰，彼在莫纳岛[ 9] 死于肠癌。不日到来之圣婴孩殉教节[10]为其三周年忌辰。护士向大慈大悲之天主祷告，裨使彼亲爱之灵魂获得永生。该男子闻护士所陈可悲之经过，持帽瞠目凄然而视。二人伫立片刻，均沉浸于阴郁哀思之中。

故人生在世，俱应预想其最终之归宿。举凡母胎所生者，终必面临死亡，并化为尘埃。我等赤条条来自母胎，亦终必仍赤条条而去。

该男子问护士曰：彼待产之妇女情况如何。护士答曰：妇人之阵痛已持续三昼夜，诚属无法忍受之难产，然而即将产矣。伊复曰，余曾目睹多少妇女之分娩，从无难产至此者。伊遂将经过情况向曾在此间居住之男子和盘托出。男子聆听其言，洞悉妇女为分娩所受之痛苦，频感惊异。彼端详伊在任何男人眼中均不失为俊秀之脸庞，并纳闷伊为何多年来停留于佣人身份。九年来，每年十二次月经，责怪伊何以仍不受孕，而使血潮徒然流失。

当彼等谈话时，城堡[11]之门开启，众多就餐者之喧嚣声在近旁响起。名叫迪克森[12]之年轻学生（一名骑士），步向彼等站立之处。旅人利奥波德与彼相识。盖该学生骑士因故服务于仁慈圣母医院之际，旅人利奥波德曾被一可怕丑陋之龙用标枪刺穿胸膛，负重伤，[13]前往就医。骑士曾于伤口上涂以大量挥发性油及圣油，予以妥善处置。此时对利奥波德云：“欲入城堡与众人喝酒作乐欤？”旅人利奥波德为人谨慎机智，答以另有去处。妇人深知利奥波德乃是出于慎重而说谎，但因对彼抱有同感，遂嗔怪学生骑士不该如此建议。然而学生骑士既不容旅人说一“否”字，不允许旅人违背己意，对妇人之谴责更充耳不闻；乃曰：“那是座何等神奇之城堡。”旅人利奥波德周游列国，长途跋涉，时而纵欲，四肢酸痛，遂入堡歇息片刻。

城堡中央设芬兰桦木桌一座，系由该国四名侏儒所支撑。彼等被妖术蛊惑，动弹不得。桌上摆有大小刀剑若干，寒气逼人；此刀剑均于冶炼魔王之巨大洞穴中，以白色火焰铸成，再套以群栖于当地的水牛与牡鹿之角。此外还有凭着玛罕德[14]之魔法以海沙与空气制成，并由魔术师以丹田之气吹制的许多容器。桌上珍膳佳馔样样俱全，无人能做出如此丰盛美味之菜肴。尚有银缸一只，其盖须用特殊技巧方能开启。内横卧无头怪鱼。[ 15] 此情此景，心存疑窦者非亲眼所见绝难相信。诸鱼浸于运自葡萄牙的油液中；此液脂肪甚丰，酷似榨自橄榄之油。堡内，凭借魔术从迦勒底[16] 所产丰腴的小麦胚胎中制成之混合物，又以烈性醑剂使之奇妙膨胀为状如大山之物。[17]彼等并还将长竿插于地中，令蛇缠于竿上，并在蛇鳞中酿出蜂蜜酒般之饮料。

学生骑士嘱为贵胄利奥波德斟酒，劝彼畅饮，一似座中众人。贵胄利奥波德为了讨好，乃掀起面甲[18]，略加品尝以示亲睦。然而彼素无饮蜂蜜酒之习惯，遂将酒杯置于一旁，少顷潜将大半杯倾入邻人杯中，邻人则浑然不觉。彼在堡内与众人同座片刻，以便歇息。感谢全能之主。

此刻，善良之护士伫立门口，恳请众人出于对我等祭坛主耶稣之敬畏，中止欢宴，因楼上一位有身孕之贵妇即将分娩。利奥波德爵士闻楼上尖叫声，正疑此声发自何人：子欤？母欤？“怪哉，”爵士曰，“迄未生而今方生乎？何其太久！”惟见桌子对面坐一年长乡绅，名利内翰，二人同为享有崇高荣誉之骑士。利奥波德稍长几岁，遂文雅恳切地启口云：“承蒙天主恩宠，伊即将安产，喜得婴孩，伊已等候甚久矣。”酩酊大醉之乡绅乃曰：“此子便是时刻所盼企者。”[19]不待人请或劝，彼即举起眼前之杯，曰：“曷不痛饮！”乃畅饮一通，祝母子健康。 盖彼素以擅长寻欢作乐著称。利奥波德爵士为曾莅临学生食堂之最佳宾客，彼乃将手伸到母鸡[20]下腹之最温顺和蔼的丈夫，亦为世上最忠实地向贵族小姐奉献爱情之骑士，遂殷勤地干了杯。彼思忖妇女之苦难，不胜惊奇。

话题转至众人肆饮大醉上。桌子两侧就坐者为：仁慈圣母玛利亚医院二年级学生迪克森，其伙伴医科学生林奇和马登[ 21] ，乡绅利内翰、阿尔巴•隆加出身之克罗瑟斯[ 22] ，以及青年斯蒂芬。斯蒂芬面庞酷似修士，坐于上座，另有不久前因表现出豪饮之勇而获得“潘趣[23]•科斯特洛”之雅号的科斯特洛（座中除了青年斯蒂芬而外，彼乃最烂醉如泥者，越醉越讨蜂蜜酒喝），再有即是谦和的利奥波德爵士。此刻众人在等候青年玛拉基，彼曾允诺前来。心感不悦者责彼何以爽约。利奥波德爵士留于席间，盖彼与西蒙爵士及其公子、青年斯蒂芬亲密无间。彼长途跋涉后，备受殷勤款待，倦意渐消。恋情驱使彼到处飘泊，此刻却满怀友情，不忍遽然离去。

彼等均为聪颖学生，乃就分娩与正义展开辩论。青年马登强调，在此种情况[24]下，听任产妇死去未免过于残忍（数载前，如今已谢世的一名艾布拉那[25]妇女即于霍恩产院面临此问题。伊逝世前，全体医师及药剂师曾为伊会诊）。众人又云，创世之初，曾谓妇女须经历“生产的阵痛”[26]，因而应让伊活下去。持同样见解者断言，青年马登所云听任产妇死去有昧良心之语，乃是真话。尽管心术不良者并不相信，但不少人，其中包括青年林奇在内，均认为现世正被空前的邪恶所支配，而法律及法官均矫正乏术。乃祷告曰：“天主啊，乞予匡正。”话音甫落，众口齐声叫道：“不，童贞圣母玛利亚在上，妻子应活下去，让婴儿死掉。”争论与饮酒，使彼等面泛红晕，乡绅利内翰惟恐席间缺乏欢乐，频频为众人斟上浓啤酒。青年马登遂原原本本告以实情，并云产妇如何一命呜呼，其夫凭借虔诚之信仰，遵从托钵修士与祈祷僧的劝诫，并根据彼对阿尔布拉坎的圣乌尔但[27]所发之誓，曾如何祈愿勿让伊死去。众人听罢，哀痛不已。青年斯蒂芬曰：“诸君，俗众间亦频频窃窃私议。而今，婴孩及其母，一在混混沌沌的地狱外缘[28]，一在炼狱火焰中，偕崇敬造物主。然而，按照天主之旨意，本应生存之灵魂，我等则逐夜消灭之，岂非对圣神，天主本身，上主以及生命之赐与者[29]犯下罪孽？因为诸君，”彼又云：“我等之情欲犹如过眼浮云。对我等内部之小生命而言，我等仅一媒介而已。大自然冥冥之中另有用意。”青年迪克森旋即对潘趣•科斯特洛云：“汝解其目的乎？”然而彼烂醉如泥，仅曰：“为了发泄郁积之情欲，只要有机会，则不拘他人之妻、处女，抑或情妇，一概奸污之。”此刻，阿尔巴•隆加的克罗瑟斯吟咏了青年玛拉基为每千年长一次角的独角兽[30]所作之赞歌。众人竖耳聆听，皆笑且讥之，曰：“以圣福蒂努斯[31]之名发誓，众所周知，凡是男子所能做到者，其[32]器官均能做到。”在座者嘻嘻哈哈大笑一通，惟有青年斯蒂芬与利奥波德爵士则毫无笑意。奥波德虽不言，想法却与众不同。不论是谁，在何处分娩，彼均抱有恻隐之心。青年斯蒂芬傲然谈及母亲教会[33]欲将彼推出其怀抱，谈及教规以及堕胎之守护神夜妖利利斯。并谈及妊娠之种种原因：或由风播下光辉的种子[34]，或通过吸血鬼之魔力嘴对嘴地[35]怀上了孕；或如维吉尔所云，借西风之力[36]，或借月光花之腥臭，或与一名刚跟丈夫睡过觉的女人刻不容缓地[37]去睡觉。据阿威罗伊与摩西•迈蒙尼德之见解，或入浴时亦能怀孕。[38]彼又云：“次月底，胎儿被注入一具人类的灵魂，我等神圣之母[39]为了天主更大之光荣，永远庇护所有灵魂。而地上之母仅只是一头下仔的母兽而已，依照教规理应死去。掌握渔夫印玺之圣彼得亦如是说。神圣的教会永远建立在磐石彼得之上。[40]”众单身汉问利奥波德爵士曰：“在类似情况下，汝为拯救一条命，不惜让产妇冒丧命之危险乎？”彼为人谨慎，为了做出迎合众人心意之答复，手托下颚，乃按习惯诡称：“吾虽外行，却挚爱医术；目睹如此罕见之事件，吾以为母亲教会如能同时拿到诞生与死亡之献金[ 41] ，确为一举两得之好事。”遂用此言岔开彼等之质疑。“此话确实不假，”迪克森曰，“倘使吾未听错，亦堪称意义深长之语。”青年斯蒂芬闻讫，喜出望外，并断言：“偷自贫穷的，就是借给耶和华。”[42]每当酒醉，彼即狂态毕露，今又故态复萌矣。

然而利奥波德爵士嘴上虽如是云，却忧心如焚。盖彼仍怜悯因产前阵痛而发出骇人尖声喊叫之产妇也。彼亦念及曾为彼产独子之贤夫人玛莉恩；因医疗乏术，命途乖舛，该婴生后十一日即夭折矣。伊为此横祸痛心疾首。时值隆冬，伊惟恐亡儿冻僵，尸骨无存，遂以通称为羊群之花的小羊羔毛制一精致胸衣，裹于儿身。利奥波德爵士失却嗣子后，每当目睹友人之子，即怀念往日之幸福，遂沉浸于凄楚之中。悲的固然是与心地如此善良之子嗣永别（众人皆对彼之前途寄予厚望焉），亦同样为青年斯蒂芬哀伤，盖彼与诸荡儿为伍，饮酒狂闹，将财产糟踏在娼妓身上。[43]

此刻青年斯蒂芬将空杯斟满，倘非较彼谨慎者出面拦阻，则所余即无几矣。斯蒂芬继续忙于劝酒，既祈愿获得教皇之祝福，又提出为基督之代理干杯，并曰，教皇堪称布雷教区代理主教[44]。斯蒂芬曰：“干杯，诸君，且饮蜂蜜酒。虽非属吾肉身，此亦吾魂魄之象征。对仅靠面包而生存者，[ 45] 赐之以面包。勿愁酒将匮乏。面包使人沮丧，酒则带来慰藉。且看！”言罢，遂亮出贡品：闪闪发光之硬币及金饰师所制钞票[46]，共计二镑十九先令。谓此乃彼所作歌曲之报酬。在座者均知彼素来拮据，故见此巨款，均惊异不止。此时，彼陈辞如下：“诸君，且听吾言，于时间之废墟上筑造永恒之宫殿。此话何解？情欲之风摧残荆棘丛，随后荆棘丛在时间之小园中萌芽，绽开玫瑰。聆听吾言：在女子的子宫内，道成了肉身[47]，然而在造物主心中，所有必将消亡之肉身，一概变成不会消亡之道。此乃第二创造也。凡有血气者，均来归顺。我等强有力的母亲，可敬之母[48]，孕育了为凡人赎罪者（即救世主、牧人）之贵体，其名何其有力。伯尔纳[49]此言不谬矣！圣母玛利亚拥有向天主恳求的全能之术[50]。吾辈凭借连绵不绝之脐带与之保持血缘的远祖[51]，为了一只便宜苹果竟将我等子孙、种族，祖祖辈辈悉数出卖，而玛利亚作为第二个夏娃，正如奥古斯丁[52]所云，拯救了芸芸众生。问题在于：第二个夏娃知晓基督乃是神之子，伊身为童贞之母，汝子之女，[53]仅只是造物主所造之物；抑或不知基督乃神之子，与住在杰克所盖之房[54]中之渔夫彼得以及木匠约瑟（彼乃使一切不幸婚姻获得圆满之主保圣人）一道不认耶稣或对耶稣不予理睬。[55]因利奥•塔克西尔告诸吾曹，使伊沦至此步尴尬田地者，圣鸽也。天主可怜我等！[56]非变体论即同体论，然而绝非实体下。[57]”众人闻讫，大叫曰：“此言可鄙矣。”“受孕无愉悦，”彼曰，“分娩无阵痛，肉身无疤痕，腹部未鼓起。好色之徒自可虔诚、热烈礼赞之。吾曹断然予以抵制，抗拒。”

此时，潘趣•科斯特洛砰然以拳击桌，唱起淫狠小调《斯塔布•斯塔布拉》，谓醉汉使阿尔马尼[58]一少女有了身孕云，并径自吆喝道：

头三个月身上不舒服，斯塔布。护士奎格利遂从门口怒吼曰：“不害臊吗！安静点儿。”盖伊一心一意欲在安德鲁君到来之前，将一切整顿就绪。惟恐无聊之喧嚣，有损于伊值勤之声誉，理应敦促彼等切记之。老护士面带戚色，神情安详，步伐稳重，身着暗褐长袍，与其布满皱纹之阴郁面庞颇为相称。此番劝诫当即见效，潘趣•科斯特洛遂成为众矢之的。彼等或软硬兼施，给以教诲，或郑重严肃训斥此村夫。齐声谴责曰：“遭瘟之白痴！”“冒失鬼！”“乡巴佬！”“侏儒！”“私生子！”“废物！”“猪小肠！”“乱臣贼子！”“生在阴沟里的！”“不足月份的！”“闭上汝那为神诅咒之猴嘴，少说酒后之胡言乱语！”以举止温和镇静为特征之贤明绅士利奥波德亦建议曰：“当前乃最神圣之时刻，亦为最不可侵犯之时刻。霍恩产院应为静谧氛围所笼罩。”

长话短说。随后，埃克尔斯街仁慈圣母玛利亚医院之迪克森君乃会心一笑，问青年斯蒂芬曰：“汝为何未立誓出家当修士？”彼答曰：“在胎中必顺从，入墓后自贞节。余毕生受穷，实非出自本意也。”利内翰君立即驳斥曰：“吾风闻汝之恶行。”遂将所闻一一道来：谓彼曾玷污信任彼之女子那百合般之贞操，此乃未成年者之堕落行为也。举座咸证明确属事实，乃欢声大作，为彼做人之父而干杯。然而斯蒂芬曰：“与汝等所想大相径庭。吾乃永恒之子，至今仍为童贞。”闻讫，众人愈益欢呼，对彼曰：“汝之婚礼犹如祭司于马达加斯加岛上所举行之稀奇仪式[ 59] ：剥掉新娘衣裳，使其失去贞操。新娘身裹素白与桔黄嫁衣， 新郎着洁白与胭脂色衣，点燃甘松油脂及小蜡烛，双双躺在新婚床上。众教士齐唱。‘主啊’[60]及赞歌‘为了通晓性交之全部奥秘’[61]，直至新娘当场被破瓜为止。”斯蒂芬遂将敏感之诗人约翰•弗莱彻君与弗朗西斯•博蒙特君所作《处女之悲剧》中旨在开导情侣之精彩结婚小调教给众人。在维金纳琴[62]和谐伴奏下，反复唱叠句：“上床！上床！”[63]此首绝妙而优美动听之喜歌，给予年轻情侣莫大慰藉及信念。彼等在男女傧相所持馥郁华丽之花烛照耀下，来到颠鸾倒凤所用之四脚舞台跟前。“彼等二人幸得相会矣，”迪克森君喜曰，“然而，年轻的先生，且听吾言，彼等毋宁改称博•蒙特与莱彻。[64]这一结合，成果必甚丰。”青年斯蒂芬曰，彼记得一清二楚，彼等二人共享有一名情妇，伊实为娼妇是也。[65]彼时生活中充满了欣喜欢乐[66]，伊周旋于二人之间。家乡风俗[67 ] 对此甚为宽容。“一个人让妻子与友同寝，”彼曰，“人间之爱莫此为甚。[68]‘汝去，照样为之！’[69]此言，或其他有类似含意之言语，系出自曾在牛尾大学开‘法国文学’钦定讲座之查拉图斯特拉[70] 教授。此人赐与人类之恩惠，无人企及。带陌生人入汝之圆形炮塔，汝必睡次好之床[71]，否则大难必然临头。弟兄们，为吾本人祈祷。[ 72] 众人遂曰：‘啊们。’让爱琳记住历代之年，上古之日。[72]汝何以不尊重吾人及吾言，擅将陌生人引进吾门，于吾眼前行邪淫[ 74] ，如耶书仑，渐渐肥胖，踢踢踹踹[75]。因此，汝背叛光犯下罪行；致使汝主沦为众仆之奴。[76]归来兮，归来兮，米利族， 勿忘吾，噫，米列西亚族。[77]汝为何在余眼前作恶，为一名药喇叭商贾踢开余？[78]汝女为何不认余，并与罗马人及不通语言之印度人共寝于豪华床榻？[79]看哪，吾民，自何列布、尼波与比斯迦[80]以及哈顿角峰[ 81] ，俯瞰那流淌奶与钱之地方[82]。然而，汝供余饮者，苦奶也。余之太阴与太阳，则被汝永远消灭之。汝将余永远撇在苦难黑暗之路途上。汝吻吾唇时，有股湿灰气味[83]。此乃内心之黑暗也。”彼续曰：“以《七十子希腊文本圣经》[84]之睿智，亦未能使其豁然开朗，甚至只字未提。来自苍穹之黎明已破地狱之门，并造访极偏远之黑暗[85]。对暴虐习以为常，遂麻木不仁矣（正如塔尔[86]关于亲爱的斯多葛派所云）。哈姆莱特之父即不曾将燎浆泡之疤痕[87]出示王子。出现于人生白昼之不透明，犹如埃及之灾害，惟有生前与死后之黑暗，方为最适当之场所与途径[88]。然而万物之目的及终局多少均与发端及起源相一致：即诞生后逐渐发育成长，随后则依自然法则，朝终局缩小、退步，以后退之变化告终。吾曹在天日下之生存，亦同于上述众多相对关系。三名老姊妹[89]为吾曹接生：吾曹涕哭、长胖、嬉戏、接吻、拥抱、别离、衰老、死亡。伊等则屈身俯视我等遗容。初卧于老尼罗河之畔芦苇丛中用枝条所编之床上，得到拯救。[90]最后，伴以山猫与鹗鸟之齐声哀鸣，埋葬于隐蔽之墓中。该墓之所在无人知晓[91]，吾曹将受何判决：赴陀斐特[92]抑或伊甸城[93]，亦全然不知。回顾后方，欲知吾曹存在之意义，起源于何等遥远地域，亦不可得矣。”

此刻，潘趣•科斯特洛高声引唱《斯蒂芬，唱啊》[94]。彼大叫曰：“看，智慧为自己盖起一座殿堂，乃造物主之水晶宫[95]，宽敞、巍峨、永恒之苍穹，井然有序，找到豌豆者即奖给一便士。[96]”

瞧，巧匠杰克盖起了大房，

看，满溢的麦芽存了多少囊，

在杰克约翰露营的漂亮马戏场。[ 97]。

呜呼！阴沉沉之器物破碎声响彻街头，发出回音。托尔[ 98] 在左边轰鸣。掷锤者之愤怒可畏。暴风雨袭来，使科斯特洛之心得以沉静。林奇君瞩彼曰，力戒对人出口不逊，肆意谩骂，盖其应下地狱之饶舌与亵读神明之言词，使神震怒也。彼原先肆意寻衅，而今则面色倏地发白，引人注目，并缩成一团。其始气势汹汹，俄而闻言丧胆，雷声隆隆之时，心在胸膛内狂跳不已。有人挖苦，有人嘲笑。潘趣•科斯特洛复狂饮啤酒，利内翰君发誓曰：“吾亦效之。”此言既轻浮且具挑衅性，不值得理睬。然彼吹牛大王则叫嚣曰：“即便神老爹[99]藏于吾杯中，与吾何干？吾决不落人后。”然彼乃蜷缩于霍恩大厅之内而出此言，愈益显示其懦弱之至也。为鼓起勇气，彼遂将杯中物一饮而尽。此时雷声经久不息，遍及苍穹。马登君耳闻世界末日之霹雳信号，一时满腔敬畏，捶胸不已。布卢姆君则趋近吹牛者，以缓和其巨大恐惧，并安慰曰：“吾仅略闻噪音。看，雷神头部降雨矣，此皆正常之自然现象耳。” 

然而青年吹牛大王所怀恐惧，因“安抚者”之语而消失欤？否。盖彼胸中插有尖钉，名曰苦恼，非语言所能消除者也。彼能安详若布卢姆，虔诚若马登乎？彼虽愿如此，却未能如愿。但彼能否努力重新觅到少年时代赖以为生之“纯洁”瓶欤？诚然，彼缺“圣恩”，无从寻觅该瓶，奈何。彼是否在轰鸣中闻得“生育”神之声，或“安抚者”所云“现象”之噪音乎？闻欤？若非塞住“理解”之管（彼并未塞），彼必闻之。通过该管，彼始领悟自己位于“现象”之国，迟早必死。盖彼一如他人，在进行一场即将消逝之演出也。彼肯于接受死亡，如他人一般消逝乎？彼绝不欲接受。“现象”根据《法则》一书，命令彼从事男人与妻子所行之举，彼亦断然拒绝。盖彼不欲从事更多之演出也。然彼对被称作“信吾者”[100] 之另一国土，“欢喜”王之福地，无死、无生、不娶不嫁[101] 、无母性、凡信仰者悉能进入之永恒之地，一无所知乎？然。“虔诚”告彼以该国之事，“节操”指示彼以通往该国之路。但途中，彼遇一形貌艳丽之妓，自称“一鸟在手”，曰：“呔，汝美男子，跟吾来，带汝赴一极佳之所。”一片甜言蜜语，将彼从正路诱人歧途！凭借甜嘴蜜舌，将彼引入名“双鸟在林”之洞穴，学者或称之为“肉欲”。

此乃在“母性之舍”中围桌而坐之众人所渴求者也。倘彼等遇该妓“一鸟在手”（伊栖于一切瘟疫、怪物及一个恶魔中），势必竭尽全力接近之，并与之交媾。彼等曰：“信吾者”系一观念而已，无从领会。首先，伊诱彼等前去之“双鸟在林”，乃天下第一洞，内设置四枕，附四标签，印有“骑角”，“颠倒”、“赦颜”、“狎昵”字样。其次，“预防法”给彼等以牛肠制成之坚固盾牌，对恶疫“全身梅毒”及其他妖怪，亦无须惧怕。第三，凭借称作“杀婴”之盾牌，恶鬼“子孙”亦无从加害于彼等。彼等遂沉湎于盲目幻想。“挑剔氏”、“时或虔诚氏”、，‘狂饮猴氏”、“伪自由民氏”、“臭美迪克森氏”、“青年吹牛大王”以及“谨慎安抚者氏”。鸣呼，尔等不幸之徒，皆受骗矣。盖该轰鸣巨响乃上主无比悲愤之声，因彼等违背上主繁衍生息之令，肆意滥用浪费，上主遂伸臂扬弃彼等之灵魂。

于是，六月十六日（星期四）帕特里克•迪格纳穆卒于脑溢血。葬于地下。久旱之后，天降喜雨。一名运泥炭约航行五十英里水路之船夫曰：“种子无从萌芽，田野涸竭，色极暗淡，恶臭冲天，沼地与小丘亦如是矣。”无人记得旱越为虐始自何时，嫩芽尽皆枯萎，呼吸亦复艰难。玫瑰花蕾均化为褐色，锈迹斑斑，丘陵上惟有干涸之葛蒲与枝条而已。星星之火，即可燎原。举世皆云，与此旱情相比，去岁二月间风暴之灾亦小巫见大巫矣。如前所述，日暮时，风起西空，夜幕降临后，出现大朵乌云，翻滚膨胀。喜观天象者咸望之：惟见一道道闪电，十时许，一声巨雷，伴以悠长轰鸣，骤雨若烟雾，众人仓皇遁往家中。暴雨乍下，男子即以布片或手帕遮草帽，女子则撩起裙裾，跳蹿而去。自伊利广场、巴戈特街与杜克草坪，穿过梅里翁草地，直至霍尔街。当初干涸龟裂，而今猛水奔流，轿子、公共马车、出租小马车，一概不见踪影。然而最初之霹雳后，即不再闻雷声。在法官菲茨吉本[102] 阁下（彼乃于大学境内与律师希利[103]“平起平坐之人物）住宅之对门，绅士中之绅士玛拉基•穆利根适从作家穆尔[104]先生（原为教皇派， 人谓而今乃虔诚之威廉派[105]）家中步出，路遇亚历克•班农（[106]。班农留短发（身着肯达尔绿色粗呢舞衣者近来时兴此种发式），正乘驿马车从穆林加尔进城来。彼曰，彼堂弟与玛拉基•穆利根之弟在该处逗留一月，直至圣斯维辛节[107] 。相互讯问欲往何处？班农曰：“返家途中。”穆利根曰：“吾应邀赴安德烈•霍恩产院，饮上一盅。”并要班农告以身高超过同龄人、胖到脚后跟之轻佻妞儿[108] 事，因大雨滂沦，二人同赴霍恩产院。《克劳福德日报》之利奥波德•布卢姆与一帮喜诙谐、看似好争论之徒于此宽坐。计有：仁慈圣母医院三年级学生迪克森、文•林奇、一苏格兰人、威尔•马登、为亲自下赌注之马伤心不已之托•利内翰和斯蒂芬•迪。利奥波•布卢姆原为解乏而来，现已略恢复元气。今晚彼曾做一奇梦：其妻摩莉足登红拖鞋，身着土耳其式紧身裤，博闻多识者谓此乃进入一个新阶段之征兆。普里福伊太太系住院待产妇[109] ，惜预产期已过二日，仍卧于产褥上，助产士焦急万分，不见分娩。灌以可充作上好收敛剂之米汤一碗，亦呕吐之，且呼吸无比困难。众人云：据胎动，必得一顽皮小子，企盼天主使其平安产下。吾闻此胎儿乃第九名生存者。报喜节日[110] ，普里福伊太太曾为满周岁之小八剪指甲。然该儿已尾随其三个曾哺以母乳之兄姊夭折，仅在君王《圣经》[ 111]上用秀丽字迹留下芳名而已。夫君普里福伊业已五十开外，虽系遁道公会教徒，仍照领圣体[112] 不误。每逢主日，倘天气晴朗，彼即携二儿至阉牛港[113] 外，以装有牢固鱼轮之竿垂钓，或乘自备方头平底船，用拖网捕比目鱼与绿鳕，满载而归。如是我闻。简言之，大雨无尽， 万物复苏，丰收在望。然而见多识广者云： 据玛拉基[114]之历书，风雨之后预测将有火灾（吾闻拉塞尔先生本着源于印度的同一要旨，为其“农民报”[115] 撰写预见性咒文），三者不可缺一）此乃无稽之谈，仅能迷惑老妪小儿而已 ，但偶尔立论亦能恰当中肯，实为奇妙。

此刻利内翰趋至桌边，曰：“当日晚报上刊一函[116]，”遂浑身翻找（彼赌咒云，该函使彼心如刀绞）。经斯蒂芬劝解，彼方作罢，并嘱迅速在近旁落座。彼放荡成性，自谓生性滑稽诙谐、调皮而不怀恶意。平素玩弄女人、赛马、传播淫秽艳闻为其拿手好戏。实言之，彼身无长物，与人贩子、马夫、赌注经纪人、二流子、走私者、徒弟、暗娼、妓女以及其他无赖为伍，多在咖啡店及小酒馆中盘桓。或经常与萍水相逢之法警及巡警狂饮蛋糖白葡萄酒[117] ，自午夜至天明，探听众多黄色丑闻。彼通常就餐于简易食堂，只凭囊中仅有之一枚六便士银币，即可吃上一碗残羹剩饭或一盘下水。随即鼓起舌簧，满口皆更自娼妓之流的淫乱秽语，致使每个母胎所生之子莫不捧腹。另一男子科斯特洛闻言，问该函文系诗乎？或故事乎？利内翰曰：“皆非也，弗兰克（此乃科斯特洛之名），该函涉及因瘟疫而即将悉数被屠杀之凯里母牛。让其连同罐头牛肉一道见鬼去！（彼眨眼云）遭瘟的！锡器中盛有无比美味之鱼，请品尝之。”遂殷勤劝弗兰克进食旁边所置腌西鲱鱼。其间，利内翰贪婪注视之，终于得手。彼饿矣，食鱼实乃此行之主要目的。弗兰克遂用法语云：“让母牛死光。”彼曾受雇于一名在波尔多[118] 拥有酒窖之白兰地出口商，操上流人士之文雅法语。弗兰克生性怠情，其父（一小警官）煞费苦心，送彼学习文理并掌握地球仪；注册升入大学，专攻机械学。然而彼任性放肆若未驯之野驹，对法官与教区差役比对书本更亲。彼一度志愿做演员，继而欲当随军酒食小贩，时赖赌账，时又耽于斗熊[119]与斗鸡。忽而立志乘船远航，忽而又与吉卜赛人结伙，浪迹天涯；借月光绑架乡出之嗣子，或偷女佣之内衣，或藏身于柴垣之后，勒死雏鸡。彼离家出走之次数与猫儿转生不相上下。每逢囊空如洗，彼即返回家中。其父任小警官，每次见彼即洒下一品脱泪水。利奥波德先生诚心欲知晓缘由，乃抱臂曰：“彼等欲将牛屠杀殆尽乎？今朝吾确曾见到牛群，将用船载往利物浦[120] 。吾不相信事情竟至如此糟糕。”数载前，彼曾在约瑟夫•卡夫[121] 先生手下任雇员。卡夫乃一可敬之生意人，在普鲁西亚街加文•洛先生的牧场附近从事畜牧业，在草地上拍卖牲畜。因此，布卢姆对传种牲畜、产前之母牛、满两岁之肥公猪以及阉羊，均十分熟悉。“吾对汝言持有疑问，”彼曰，“牛所患之疾病听来更似支气管炎或牛舌炎。”斯蒂芬先生略为动容，但仍文质彬彬地答曰：“并非如此。奥地利皇帝[ 122]之御马主事已发来快函表示谢意。彼将派遣全莫斯科维[ 123] 首屈一指之名兽医[124] ——牛瘟博士，凭藉一两粒大药丸，即能抓住公牛角[ 125] 。”“呔，吹，”文森特先生曰，“坦率言之，倘该博士对爱尔兰公牛动手，必将被牛角勾住，进退维谷。”“名称与产地均为爱尔兰，”斯蒂芬先生曰，并依次为众人斟浓啤酒，一如闯入英国瓷器店中之一头爱尔兰公牛。[126] “吾理解汝意，”迪克森先生曰，“此即农场主尼古拉斯送往本岛之同一公牛[127] 耳。彼为最优秀之家畜饲养员，鼻孔上穿着一枚绿宝石[128] 环。”“诚然诚然，”文森特先生隔桌曰，“一语道破，如此膘肥体壮之公牛，从未在三叶苜蓿[129]上拉过屎。彼生有巨角，毛色金黄，鼻孔散发芳香，若袅袅轻烟。本岛妇女遂撇下生面团与擀面杖，与公牛殿下戴上串串雏菊花环，随彼而去。”“何以至此？”迪克森先生曰，公牛动身之前，宦官兼农场主尼古拉斯嘱一帮同为阉人之医生，将其彻底阉割之。尼古拉斯云：‘去！吾表弟哈利陛下之命令，汝必言听计从。现接受农场主之祝福！’话音未落，啪地击其臀部。”“表示祝福之一击，稗益良多。”文森特先生曰：“作为补偿，彼将力量相当于两头公牛之秘诀传授下来。处女、妻子、女修道院院长与寡妇至今断言，伊等与其跟爱尔兰四片绿野[130] 上最英俊、强壮、专门勾引女人之年轻小伙子睡觉， 不如随时都于幽暗牛棚中，对着牛耳嗫嚅[131] ，并希望彼用神圣的长舌舔自己的脖颈。” 此刻另一男子曰：“伊等给彼穿上刺绣花边衣裙，配以坎肩及腰带，袖口缀以褶边，将额发剪短，浑身涂以鲸脑油[132] 。于每一街角为其筑一座黄金牛槽[133]，装满市上最上等干草，供其尽情伏卧拉屎。此时教友们之神父（彼等对公牛之别称）因过于肥胖，难以步行至牧场。为了不使其受累，工于心计之妇人及姑娘乃将饲料兜在围裙中为彼送去。饱餐后，彼用后腿立起，供太大小姐一窥奥秘，并以公牛之语既吼且叫，伊等齐声效之。”“哎，”另一人曰，“彼益愈纵容自己，除了供自己食用之绿草（彼头脑中惟有绿色）不容国土上生长任何植物。岛屿中央之小山丘，竖有一牌，上云：“奉哈利王[134] 御旨，地上生绿草。”“因此，”迪克森先生曰，“只要风闻罗斯康芒或康尼马拉原野上有盗牲畜者，抑或斯莱戈[135] 农夫播种一把芥籽或一袋菜籽，彼即奉哈利王御旨，跑遍半壁乡村，用犄角将所种之物连根掘起。”“起初二人之间发生争执，”文森特先生曰，“哈利王称农场主尼古拉斯为‘天下老尼克[136] 之大杂烩’，家中蓄七名私娼之老鸨[ 137] 。吾欲惩戒之。尼古拉斯曰：‘用先父遗下之牛阴茎快鞭，使此畜生一尝地狱味道’。”“然某日傍晚，”迪克森先生曰，“哈利王于划船比赛中获得冠军（彼使用鍬型桨子，惟依比赛规章第一条， 其他选手均用草耙划船），为了赴晚宴，彼正修整高贵之皮肤[138] 时， 发现自己酷似公牛。遂翻阅藏于餐具室、手垢斑斑之小册子[139] ，查明自己确系罗马人通称为 “牛中之牛”[140] 那头著名斗牛[141] 旁系之后裔。其名字确为蹩脚拉丁语，意即：“展览主持者。”“此后，”文森特先生曰，“哈利于当众廷臣之面， 将头扎进牛之饮水槽，及至从水中伸出头后，告以自己之新名[142] 。彼听任水哗哗流淌， 身着祖母所遗旧罩衫及裙子，并购一册公牛语[143] 语法书习之。然而只学会人称代名词，遂用大字抄录，默记之，每当外出散步，衣袋中辄装满粉笔，在岩石边沿、茶馆桌子、棉花包或软木浮子上胡乱涂写。简言之。彼与爱尔兰牛[144] 旋即成为莫逆，犹如臀部与衬衫然。”“此语不差”，斯蒂芬先生曰，“其结果，本岛男子发现负情女子异口同声，无可救药。遂建造舟筏，携家财登船，桅杆尽皆竖起，举行登舷礼，转船首向风，顶风停泊，扬起三面帆，在风与水之间挺起船首，起锚，转舵向左，海盗旗迎风飘扬，三呼万岁，每次三遍，开动舱底污水泵，离开兜售杂物之小舟，驶至海面上，航往美洲大陆。”“彼时，”文森特先生曰，“一水手长谱一首滑稽歌曲： 

教皇彼得虽尿床，

仍不失为男子汉。[145]”

学生们之寓言行将结束时，吾等畏友玛拉基•穆利根先生偕初邂逅之友出现于门口，系一青年绅士，名亚历克•班农[146] 也。彼新近进城，报名参军，欲在国防军中购一旗手或骑兵旗手之位置[147]。适才谈论之治病方案，与穆利根先生之方针不谋而合，因此彼欣然表示兴趣。乃递予众人各一组名片，系当日出自昆内尔先生之印刷厂承印者。上以秀丽之斜体字印着“兰贝岛”[148]“受精媒介业 人工授精业 玛拉基•穆利根先生”。彼阐述曰：在城里，福普林•波平杰伊[149]爵士与米尔克索普•奎德南克[150] 爵士游手好闲，专事寻欢作乐。彼拟远离此圈子，献身于赋予吾曹肉体机能之最高尚事业。“好友请道来，吾等当洗耳恭听，”迪克森先生曰，“个中想必有猥亵气味。二位且移身坐下。坐与站都一样便宜。[151] ”穆利根先生遂接受邀请，对听众详述其计划。此计划系根据对不妊之原因进行考察而得，原因包括抑制与禁欲。抑制乃夫妇不和或互不协调所致，禁欲则由于天生缺陷或后天之习癖。彼曰：目睹新婚燕尔之床最宝贵之担保[152]被剥夺，痛何如哉。众多可人之富孀被恶贯满盈之僧侣所霸占，禁锢于格格不入之女修道院中，使光艳藏诸木斗之下[153]；另有如花似玉之女子，在市井粗鄙之徒怀中凋零，而伊等本应倍享幸福。如上诸多冰清玉洁之女性成为牺牲品，而附近本有百名英俊男子欲爱之不能。穆利根云，每念及此，心如刀割。为了免除祸患（彼已下结论，认为此乃潜热受到压抑之故），彼与有识之士共商谈对策，决心向兰贝岛主塔尔博待•德马拉海德爵士[ 154]购买该岛土地之绝对所有权及自由保有权。此爵士系著名之托利党成员，对蒸蒸日上之吾党颇加赞许。乃提议在此建造国立受精场[155] ，取名“中心”，并竖一方尖碑[156] ，乃据埃及式样凿成。不论何等身分之女子，凡欲满足其天然官能者一旦来此，彼必为之忠心效劳，俾使之受孕。彼曰，吾所图并非金钱，劳务费不取分文。最穷之厨娘乃至社交界阔夫人，只要渴望在身心方面得到尽情满足，均能在彼处找到理想之男性。彼曰，为了取得营养，食谱限于馥郁之球根、鱼及野兔——尤其后者乃多产啮齿动物，极适宜达到彼之目的。不论烤或炖，只需添上一片肉豆寇叶，一二颗辣椒即可。热切而坚定地发表完此冗长演说之后，穆利根先生立即取下遮帽手帕。二人似均受雨淋。虽已加快步伐，通身仍均湿透，见于彼所着灰色手织灰呢短裤上之斑纹。众人闻其计划，莫不欣喜，并衷心颂扬之。惟独玛利亚医院之迪克森先生则故意责难。谓：彼欲运煤至纽卡斯尔[157]乎？穆利根先生则对该学者报以脑中所记一段恰如其分之古典引文，根据既充分，又能雍容大方地支持其论点：噫，诸市民，当代道义之颓废，江河日下。吾辈家中妇女，偏爱被温柔男予以手指作淫荡之搔痒，而弃罗马百人队长之沉重辜丸及异常勃起于不顾。[158] 彼并为不够机智者举出更合乎彼等胃口之动物界实例——诸如树林间空地上之公鹿母鹿，农家场院中之公鸭母鸭等，以此类推，阐述要点。

彼饶舌家着实仪表堂堂，并素以风度翩翩自豪。现将话题转至本人服装上，对天气之乍变，愤然予以谴责。众人则大赞此公所提方案。其友， 一年轻绅士，对新近之艳遇[159] 喜不自胜，不禁告知邻座。此刻，穆利根先生扫视桌面， 问饼与鱼[160]系供何人食用？及至瞥见异邦人，乃彬彬有礼地深打一躬，问曰：“敢问足下需要吾曹在专业方面提供协助欤？”异邦人闻言，衷心表示谢意， 却依然保持适当之距离。答曰：彼乃为霍恩产院一名女病友而来。 不幸伊属难产（言至此，深叹一声），欲知是否已安然分娩。 迪克森先生嘲笑穆利根先生之初期腹部肥大症以转换气氛，曰： “此乃前列腺囊内部或男性子宫内部卵子怀胎之征兆乎？抑或如名医奥斯汀•梅尔顿[ 161] 先生所云，乃胃中之狼[162] 所致乎？”穆利根先生从腰部发出一阵哄笑作答，毅然拍打横隔膜下部，并很精采且滑稽地模仿葛罗甘老婆婆[163]（惜伊系一妓女[164]，但仍不失为最杰出之女性），同时扬言：“妾腹从未养过私孩子也。”彼演技高超奇巧，哄笑屡屡爆发，使满室无不振奋喜悦。 倘非前厅发出警报声，此场轻快喧嚣之摹拟闹剧仍将续演。

闻者非他人，乃一苏格兰学生也。此公性易激动，金发宛如亚麻，以无比热烈之语气向该年轻绅士[165]深表祝贺。绅士谈兴正浓时，彼予以打断， 以谦恭之神态向对面所坐人士招手，恳请递与一瓶甘露酒。同时，将头一歪，似有所迟疑（即使整整一世纪之良好教养，亦未必能训练出如此优雅之举止）。然后将瓶子朝相反方向倾之，以清楚之口齿询问该讲述者：“饮一杯如何，”“拜受，[166] 贵客，”彼欣然曰，“万谢，[167] 。此举正合时宜。有此杯酒，吾之幸福方能完满。然而，上天保佑，即使吾行囊中仅有些许饼屑，以及一杯井水，吾亦深感满足，并甘愿跪于地下，为万宝之赐与者所确保之幸福，向上苍之神力致谢。”言讫，彼将杯凑至唇边，以心满意足之神态，饮甘露酒少许，抚发袒胸，拽出丝带所系之小匣。匣内嵌有女友亲笔题字之相片。彼接后，甚为珍爱。彼含情脉脉审视该面影，并曰：“噫，先生，倘汝若吾然，于激动人心之刹那间，目睹伊人身着雅致披肩，头戴俏丽新软帽[ 168] （伊以悦耳声调，告以此乃生日礼物也），淳朴洒脱， 温存妖冶；足下必慨然向之五体投地，或永远逃离战场。吾断言，此生从未如此动心。 主啊，感谢尔为吾创造日日夜夜。备受该倩女青睐者，诚为三生有幸。”无限温存之叹息愈益使此番话语感人至深。彼将小匣揣入怀中，并再度拭泪叹息。“大慈大悲之天主，尔所创造之物，普获尔之祝福。尔之治下最美妙者乃人之恋情也。恋情如此深广伟大，足以使自由人与奴隶，蠢乡巴佬与文雅纨袴子弟，风华正茂、热情奔放之情人与中年丈夫，均顿然堕入五里雾中。然而先生，吾走题矣。吾曹现世之欢乐是何等杂以悲哀，何等不完美。命运不济！”彼痛苦呼叫曰，“倘若主上赋吾以先见之明，提醒吾携带雨衣，当不至此！”遂不禁落泪。“纵下七场骤雨，对吾曹亦毫无害处。吾过于大意矣！”彼手击前额，大声曰，“明日将迎来新的一天，雷鸣千遍。吾识一‘外衣’商人[169] 波因茨先生，可售与法式舒适‘外衣’，每件一里弗尔[170] ，确保不致湿及女方。”“呔呔！”授精业者[171] 大声插嘴曰，“吾友穆尔[172] 先生乃一非凡之旅人（适才吾与彼[173] 曾共饮酒半瓶，座中有市内博学之士），彼据可靠消息告知，霍恩岬角，雨势猛烈[174] ，致使所有‘外衣’（无论何等结实），均已湿透。彼曰，诚然[175] ，大雨倾盆，罹难者无一不当即匆匆告别人世。”“呸！一里弗尔[176] ！”林奇先生大声曰，“货色粗陋至此，不值一苏[177]”耳。‘伞’[178]之大小纵然仅及仙女蘑菇[179] ，然亦顶得过十件如此‘搪孔之物’。任何稍有机智之女子，决不会用此等‘外衣’。 吾之情妇基蒂今日相告，伊情愿舞于洪水中，亦不愿在救命方舟中挨饿。何耶？伊对予倾诉云（此时，尽管除翩翩起舞之蝴蝶，绝无偷听者，伊依然脸色红涨，附耳低语）：‘吾曹生就无垢之肌肤，换个情况必将导致破坏礼仪，然而在二种场合下[180] ，会成为唯一之可身衣裳。蒙自然女神赐与神圣祝福后，吾曹心中铭刻该语之意， 而今已家喻户晓。吾搀扶该姣好哲学家坐上双轮马车后，伊用舌尖轻触吾外耳廓以引起吾之注意，告曰：‘头一种场合，乃是入浴……，”彼时， 前厅铃响，今番足以丰富吾曹知识宝库之议论遂被打断矣。

正当举座说笑寻欢作乐之际，铃声大作，众人遂纷纷猜测。须臾，卡伦小姐步入，对青年迪克森先生蹑嚅数言讫，向与座者深打一躬，然后退去。一贤淑端庄、容貌标致之淑女一时出现于荡子群中，彼等淫荡之徒便即刻收敛其轻佻猥亵。然而俟伊退出后，秽言秽语刹那间重新爆发。“吾甚觉荒唐矣，”酩酊大醉之痞子科斯特洛曰，“极美味之母牛肉！伊想必邀汝幽会。狗杂种作如何想？汝精于此道矣。”“确然如此，”林奇先生曰，“圣母济贫院同人擅长床上技巧。孽种奥加格大夫不曾搔诸护士下颚欤？七个月以来，吾基蒂在该院病房任护士，此系伊所告，当属确凿。”“大夫，祈天主可怜奴家！”身着淡黄色背心之后生[181] 仿妇人腔调狂呼傻笑，并扭动身躯作淫荡态曰：“汝勿戏弄奴家！讨厌鬼！呜呼，妾浑身颤悠发晕矣。汝之轻薄，确与可爱之小神父坎特基塞姆[182] 不相上下！”“倘若伊未身怀六甲，”卡斯特洛大叫曰，“吾将被此啤酒呛得半死矣！大凡由于有喜而膨胀之妇女，吾只消瞟一眼即可看出。”此时青年外科医生[183] 起身，乞求众人准其退席，盖护士顷通知彼需立即赶赴病房也。彼曰：“该怀孕妇女曾以可钦之刚毅忍受阵痛，而上苍大发慈悲，已结束其苦难，使之生下一名强壮男婴。吾无法容忍某些人士。彼等既无足以使人开心之机智又乏指导他人之学识，竟对护士这一高贵天职肆意辱骂，而除却应予以敬畏之神明外，护士乃最造福人间者。伊所从事之高尚职业，非但不应成为笑柄，且可激励人心，使之向上。吾敢断言，倘有必要，吾能推出多如云彩之证人[184]，以阐述该项职业如何不比寻常。吾实难宽恕彼等。何以竟中伤和蔼可亲之卡伦小姐这等人！伊乃女性之光辉，实令男性叹服不已。护士所接生者乃用尘土造出之[185] 小娃，当此最关键之时刻加以诽谤，该念头实属可恶至极！竟播下如此邪恶之种籽，以致产妇与接生婆在霍恩产院得不到应有之尊重。每念及民族之未来，辄不寒而栗。”谴责完毕，彼乃向与座众人点头示意，走向门外。举座发出一片赞同之低语声，有人扬言应立即将该下流醉汉逐之门外。此计划几近付诸实践，将给彼以应有之惩罚。然而彼可鄙地赌咒发誓（而且发得八面玲珑），谓彼乃天下最善良之人子也，从而减轻其罪责。“谨以吾之生命发誓，”彼曰，“诚实的弗兰克•科斯特洛自幼被教以格外孝敬父母[186]。 家母擅长做果酱布丁卷与麦片糊，吾一向对她怀有敬爱之心。”

却说布卢姆先生乍一进来，留意到那片肆无忌惮之冷嘲热讽，认为此系年少通常不懂怜悯所致，故容忍之。彼等荡儿实似狂妄自大之顽童，喜议论喧嚣，用语费解，且口出不逊。每闻其暴躁与寡廉鲜耻之话语[187] ，顿感愤慨。虽能以血气方刚勉强为之开脱，但如此无礼实难以忍受。尤使人不快者为科斯特洛先生言词之粗野。据观察，此令人作呕之流氓乃私生子耳。彼呱呱坠地即畸形缺耳，身躯伛偻，满口生牙。分娩时属逆产，足先露，且驼背[ 188］。外科医用钳子在彼头盖上留下了明显痕迹。布卢姆遂联想到，彼即已故富于独创性之达尔文先生毕生探求不已之进化论中所谈之过渡生物[189] 也。布卢姆已过人生之半途[190] ，历尽沧桑，系一谨慎民族之后裔，生就稀有的先见之明，遂抑制心中所冒怒气，最迅速慎重地克制住感情，告诫自己胸中要怀一“忍”字。心地卑鄙者对此加以嘲笑，性急之判断者藐视之，然而众人咸认为此乃稳妥之举。妙语连珠以损害女性之优雅，乃精神上一大恶习，彼坚不赞成；彼不认为此种人堪称才子，更弗言继承良好教养之传统。布卢姆对彼等实忍无可忍，根据往日经验，只得采取激烈之手段，以迫使此傲慢之徒丢尽颜面，及时退却。盖年轻气盛之徒，向来无视年老昏愦者之皱眉与道学家之抱怨，一味欲食（据圣书著者凭借纯洁想象所写）树上禁果；布卢姆与彼等未尝不抱有同感。惟当一淑女分娩产子之际，无论如何亦不得对人性等闲视之。最后，据护士所云，布卢姆曾预料产妇迅将分娩，经此长时间之阵痛后，果然瓜熟蒂落，此事再度证明天主之恩惠与慈悲，使布卢姆顿感释然。

布卢姆遂与领座坦诚相见，曰：“吾对此事之看法（不妨将己见发表）为：彼妇并非由于本人之过错而受尽痛苦，闻其安产而不知喜悦者，想必生性淡漠或心肠冷酷也。”该衣着入时之浮华青年[191] 曰：“使伊陷入如此困境者，其夫也；理应是其夫，除非伊乃另一名以弗所女子[192] 。”此时，克罗瑟斯击桌以使众人倾听其嗓音洪亮之话语：“吾有话告汝等。蓄邓德利尔里式胡子[193] 之老叟——年迈之格洛里•阿列路朱拉姆[194] 今日又来矣。彼用鼻音央告曰：‘吾欲对吾之生命（此即彼对伊之称呼）威廉明娜进一言。’吾嘱彼心中宜有数，盖婴儿即将呱呱坠地矣。见鬼！容吾坦率道来。吾不禁叹服该老汉之生殖力，竟足以令伊再生一胎。”众人异口同声赞誉老叟，惟独该风流后生[195]坚持己见曰：“否。把关者[196]’非其夫也，乃修道院之教士、夜间向导（有勇气者）或家庭用品之行商。”客人闻讫，暗自思量：“彼等具有之神奇的轮回力实无与伦比，不同凡响。产院与解剖室均已变为轻佻话语之操练厅。然而一旦获得学位，彼等轻浮荡子摇身一变即成为被杰出人士誉为最高尚技艺之典范实践者。然而，”彼继续思索，“或许彼等平时个个心中郁愤，欲寻解脱。因吾曾屡次目睹同一色羽毛之鸟齐声大笑[197]也。”

彼异邦人系承蒙仁慈之陛下核准而取得市民权，然而吾曹欲询问彼之保护者总督阁下，彼凭何资格而取得我国内政之最高权力欤？[198] 发自满腔忠诚之感激，如今安在哉？在近日之战争[199] 中，只要敌人凭借手榴弹暂时取得优势，该叛徒即一面惟恐其四分利公债暴跌而浑身颤抖，一面则抓紧机会向根据其本人意愿而臣服之帝国开火！彼是否已忘却此事，一如忘却其所承受之一切恩泽？倘传闻无谬，彼则为只顾个人享乐之利己主义者，诚属欺世盗名。闯入贞节妇女（一名勇敢少校之女）之寝室，或对其妇德妄加谴责，此决非君子所为。若彼欲引人注意（其实，此举对彼甚为不利），亦无可奈何也。该妇命途多舛，其合法特权屡遭践踏，时间既久，对方态度复顽强，致使伊每闻彼之斥责，辄报以由绝望而导致之嘲笑。彼身为社会风纪监察官，虔诚严若鹈鹕[220]，竟将自然之羁绊抛诸脑后，肆无忌惮，试图与出身于社会最下层之女仆发生暖味关系！倘非该女仆以擦地所用之毛刷为护守天神，进行自卫，则必身遭不幸，有如埃及女夏甲[201]然！关于牧场问题，彼之乖戾粗暴已臭名远扬。某次，当着卡夫先生之面，触怒一牧场主，以致遭到该乡人以刻薄言词之反击。彼不适宜宣扬福音。家旁岂不有片耕地，只因无人播种，遂闲置下来。青春期之恶习，人届中年遂成为第二天性，带来耻辱。倘若彼一定要将基列香油[ 202] 这一效验可疑之秘方与“金科玉律”，分发给一代乳臭未干之荡子，以促使彼等康复，则应使彼之行为与正全力奉行之教义相一致。身为丈夫，彼之内心乃诸多秘密之贮藏库。为了体面，而轻易不肯泄露，色衰之美女或以淫言猥语挑逗之，代替因被冷遇以致堕落之妻，给彼以慰藉。然而人伦之新倡导者以及恶行之矫正者，充腴量仅为异邦之树。其扎根于东方本上时，则茁壮繁茂，香脂丰腴，造移植于他处暖土，根即失去原有之勃勃生气，香脂亦变为混浊发酸，失去灵效。

嗣子诞生消息之通告极其慎重，令人联想及土耳其朝廷仪式之惯例：由第二女护士转告值勤之下级医务官，彼再向代表团传达。彼遂赴产室，以便在内务大臣与枢密顾问官（彼等由于争先称赞已精疲力竭，沉默不语）亲临下，协助完成规定之产后仪式。漫长肃穆之值勤使代表团焦躁不安。彼等认为既逢喜事，放纵一番亦应获得宽容。于是，护士与医务官走后，立即展开舌战。只闻兜揽员布卢姆先生竭力劝解之，平息之，抑制之，均属徒然。此乃最适宜高谈阔论之良机，亦为将彼等性格迥异者联结起来之唯一纽带。分娩问题依次从各个方面加以剖析：异父兄弟之间先天的敌对，剖腹产，遗腹子，以及稀有的例子：产妇死后之分娩。蔡尔兹谋杀胞兄案，由于律师布希先生之激烈辩护，被诬告者已被宣判无罪。此事至今仍被人们广为铭记在心；长子继承权，国王赐予双胞胎与三胞胎赏金；流产及溺婴，加以伪装或掩饰；缺乏心脏的胎儿内胎儿[203]以及充血导致的缺脸。某缺下巴中国佬[204]（候补者穆利根先生语） 之男系亲属，先天性缺颚乃系沿中线颚骨突起接合不全之结果，（据彼曰）一只耳朵能听见另一只所云。麻醉或昏睡分娩法[205]之长处。高年妊娠的情况下，因受血管压迫，阵痛延长。早期破水（眼下即一实例）导致的子宫败血症之危险。用注射器进行人工受精。闭经后之子宫收缩。因被强奸而妊娠的情况下，人种之延续问题。勃兰登堡[206]人称之为坠生[207] 的可怕分娩。医学记载中之月经期间怀孕或近亲结婚导致之一产多胎、阴阳儿、畸形儿等。一言以蔽之，亚理斯多德在其《杰作》[208] 中附上彩色石印插图加以分类的人类出生之各种情形。对产科学与法医学上至关重要之问题，以及关于妊娠最普遍的信念（诸如惟恐母体之活动将导致脐带勒死胎儿，遂禁止孕妇迈田舍栅栏；或强烈情欲得不到有效满足时，辄将手放诸身上由于经年使用而作为惩戒场所[209] 被神圣化之部位），均予以热烈研讨。有人断言，兔唇、胸痣、冗指、黑痣、赤痣、紫痣等畸形，均足以对时而诞生之猪头儿（人们并没有淡忘格莉塞尔•斯蒂文斯夫人[210] 的例子）或狗毛婴儿做出确凿[211] 而自然之说明。喀里多尼亚[ 212] 使节所提出之原生质记忆假定，无愧于彼所代表的具有形而上学传统[213] 之国土。预见到此等例子乃胎儿发育达到人类这一阶段前被抑制之表征。某异国使节则驳斥上述意见，以热切而坚信不疑之口吻曰：“此乃女子与雄兽交媾所生者。”其根据则为优雅拉丁诗人凭其才华在《变形记》中所传至今之弥诺陶洛斯之类神话。[214 ]彼之话语立即引起轰动，然而为时短暂。因候补者穆利根先生比任何人均了解开玩笑所能引起之效果，乃面谕曰；“如要发泄淫欲，宜寻一干净可爱之老臾。”遂使方才那番感动顿然消失。同时，使节马登先生与候补者林奇先生之间就连体双胞胎[215] 中之一名先逝世之际，在法学及神学上之矛盾，展开激烈争论。经双方同意，将此难题委托兜揽员布卢姆先生立即交由副主祭助手迪达勒斯先生处理。不知彼是否欲以超自然之庄重，显示其衣着之奇妙威严，抑或服从內心之声音，迄今保持缄默。此刻亦仅简短地（有人认为敷衍塞责地）陈述《福音书》之教导曰：“天主所配合的，人不可拆开。”[216] 

然而玛拉基之故事则使彼等不寒而栗。彼一念咒，如下情景即出现在彼等面前：壁炉旁的暗门吱呀一声开启，海恩斯从中出现！我等无不毛骨惊然！彼一手持装满凯尔特文学之公事包，另一只手则持写有“毒品”字样之小瓶。当彼面泛鬼笑扫视众人时，个个脸上露出惊讶、恐怖、厌恶之神色。“如此之接待原在吾预料之中，”彼遂发出阴森之笑声并谓：“看来这要怪历史。[ 217] 吾乃杀害塞缨尔•蔡尔兹之凶手，千真万确。吾已遭到何等惩罚！吾对地狱毫无畏惧。可惧者幽灵附体也。耶稣之眼泪伤口[218]！究竟如何吾方能得到安息乎？”彼嗓音模糊，“吾携自己所整理之民谣，在都柏林长期流浪，而幽灵宛如淫梦魔[219] 或牛魔般跟踪不止。吾之地狱以及爱尔兰之地狱，皆在现世。为了忘却所犯罪恶，吾曾多方设法：消愁解闷，射击白嘴鸦，学习埃尔斯语[220] （遂诵数句），服鸦片酊（彼将小瓶举至唇边），扎营露宿。一切均归徒然！彼之亡灵与吾形影不离。吞服鸦片乃吾唯一希望……呜呼！毁灭矣！黑豹！[221]”彼大叫一声，须臾间消失矣，暗门滑动着，闭紧。少顷，彼在对面门口露头，曰：“十一时十分，到韦斯特兰横街车站[222] 与吾碰头。”彼去矣。众放荡之徒涕泅滂沱。占卜者[223] 举手向天，嗫懦曰：“马南南之报复[ 224] ！”哲人反复曰：“同态复仇法。伤感主义者乃只顾享受而对所做之事不深觉歉疚之人。[225] ”玛拉基激动之至，闭口不言。谜底遂揭开矣。海恩斯为三弟[226] ，真名蔡尔兹，黑豹为彼父之鬼魂也。彼吞服鸦片，以忘却此事，使予得到解脱，不胜感谢。[227] 坟场旁之房屋无人居住。谁都不肯居于彼处。蜘蛛在孤寂中张网。夜鼠自洞穴中窥伺。该屋受咒诅。闹鬼。为一座凶宅。[ 228] 

人之灵魂，寿命有多长？灵魂禀有变色龙之特性，每接近一样新物即改变颜色，与欢乐者接近即愉快，与悲哀者相处则沮丧，年龄亦随情绪而改变。利奥波德坐在那里，反刍并咀嚼往事之回忆时，彼已不再是沉着踏实之广告经纪人，亦非一小笔公债之所有者。念载光阴顿然消失，彼已成为少年利奥波德矣。仿佛是通过回顾性之安排，镜中镜（刹那间）照出本人。彼目睹自家当年之英姿，早熟而老气横秋，于刺骨寒晨，将书包（内装有母亲精心制作之美味大面包）当作子弹带般挎着，从克兰布拉西尔街之老宅踱向高中。一两年后，同一身姿初戴硬毡帽（啊，何等神气！）已开始跑外勤。彼乃家族公司之正式推销员，备有订货簿，洒了香水的手帕（不仅是为了充当样品），皮箱里装满锃亮之小装饰品。（噫！可惜均属于往昔岁月！）彼到处对犹豫不决而用指尖掐算之主妇或妙龄女郎，满脸掬以殷勤温顺之笑容。后者对彼佯装出之礼仪[ 229] ，亦羞涩地点头会意。（然而其内心如何，则天晓得矣！）香水气息，微笑，尤其乌黑眸子及圆滑周到之谈吐应对，使彼于傍晚为公司老板[230]携回大量订货单。老板做完同样工作，口衔雅各烟斗[231] ，坐在祖传的炉边（上面必煮着面条），透过角质圆框眼镜，阅读一个月前之欧洲大陆报纸。然而，刹那间镜面模糊了，少年游侠骑士后退，干瘪，缩成雾中极细微之一点。而今自己做了父亲，周围兴许是儿辈。谁知晓欤！聪明的父亲方知自己之子。[232] 彼思及哈奇街关栈附近蒙蒙细雨之夜。彼与伊在一道（可怜，伊无家可归，系私生女，只付一先令与一便士吉利钱，便属于汝，属于吾，属于众人），当两名夜警头戴雨帽之阴影路过新修建的皇家大学时，彼等一道倾听其沉重脚步声。布赖迪！布赖迪•凯利！[233] 彼决不会忘记此名，将永远铭记该夜：初夜，新婚之夜。彼等（求者与被求者）于黑暗之底层缠扭在一起。转瞬之间。（要有！）光就浴满世界。 心与心可曾悸动在一起！否，敬爱的读者，一霎时事即毕，然而——“且慢，撒开！不许如此！”可怜的姑娘摸着黑，逃之夭夭。伊乃黑暗之新娘，夜之新娘。伊不敢生下白昼那金太阳之子。不，利奥波德。名字与记忆无从给汝慰藉。青年时期汝对精力所抱幻想，已被剥夺——一切归于徒然。汝之腰力已生不出子嗣，无能为力矣。鲁道夫[234]生利奥波德，而今利奥波德却不再能有子嗣矣。

众声纷杂，融人阴暗之寂静中。寂静乃无限之空间也。灵魂迅疾而沉默地飘浮于世世代代生息不已之空间。灰色薄暮弥漫于此，却从不落到暗绿色之辽阔牧场上。仅降下苍茫暮色，抛撒星宿的永恒之露。伊步履蹒跚，跟随乃母，犹如由母马带引之小母马驹。伊等乃一片朦胧中之幻影，然而婀娜多姿，腰肢纤细优美，脖颈柔和矫健，面容温顺，头脑聪慧。阴郁之幻象逐渐模糊，以至消失殆尽。阿根达斯乃荒原也，向为仑枭与半盲戴胜鸟栖息之所。鼎盛之内泰穆[235] 已不复存在。彼等群兽亡灵发出反叛之雷鸣，沿着云彩大道拥来。呼！哈喀！呼！[236]视差[ 237] 从背后阔步逼向彼等，用刺棒戳之，射自其眉眼之光锐利如蝎。大角鹿与牦牛，巴珊[238]与巴比伦之公牛，猛犸象与柱牙象，均成群结队涌向下陷之海——死海[239] 。那一大群黄道十二宫不祥而伺机报复之兽类！彼等呻吟，越云而来，犄角或长或短，有长鼻者，撩牙者，或鬃毛若狮，或有多叉巨角，用鼻拱者，爬行者，啮齿动物，反刍动物，厚皮动物，彼等大群地移动，吼叫。太阳之屠杀者。[ 240] 

彼等踏着大地朝死海挺进，以便贪婪而不知餍足地狂饮那沉滞呆倦、永不枯涸之咸湖水。此刻，马状怪物于寂寥之空中复长大矣，大得犹如天空本身，漫无边际，朦朦胧胧出现于室女座[24]之上端。看哪，轮回之奇迹，伊乃永恒之新娘，晨星之信使，新娘——永恒之处女。伊乃玛尔塔，“失去了的你”[242]，年轻，可爱、光艳照人之米莉森特[243] 。稍早于黎明前之最后时刻，伊足登灿烂之金色凉鞋，[244] 身披汝所称之薄纱巾。伊乃昂星团[245]女王，此刻正冉冉升起，何等安详。面纱在伊那星宿所生之肌肤周围飘扬，融为鲜绿、天蓝、紫红与淡紫色，任凭穿过星际刮来之阵阵冷风摆布，翻腾、卷曲，回旋，在天空中婉蜒移动，写出神秘字迹。其表象经过轮回之千变万化，成为金牛座额上之一颗红宝石，三角形标记阿尔法[246]，熠熠发光。

弗朗西朗斯正在提醒斯蒂芬，多年前康米神父任校长时，他们二人曾同过学的事。他问起格劳康、亚西比德[247]和皮西斯特拉图斯[248] 。“他们如今在哪儿？”两个人都不晓得。“你所谈的是过去和它的幽灵，”斯蒂芬说，“何必去想那些呢？要是我隔着忘川[249]把它们唤回到现世来，那些可怜的幽灵会不会应声而至呢？有谁知道呢？我，斯蒂芬的公牛精神[250]，阉牛之友派‘大诗人’[251]乃是它们的主人，又是赋与它们生命的人。”他把葡萄叶编成的冠戴在蓬乱的头发上，并朝文森特微笑着。“当你能够凭着远比两三首轻飘飘的诗更为伟大的作品向你天才的父亲[252]呼唤时，”文森特对他说，“这句答复和那些叶子就能成为更适合于你的装饰了。凡是为你着想的人，都盼望这样。大家都已不得你完成你所构思的这部作品，并称赞你是戴花冠者[253] 。我衷心祝愿你不要让他们失望。”“哦，不，文森特，”利内翰把一只手放在挨近他的文森特的肩膀上说，“不用担心。他才不会让他母亲做孤儿[254]呢。”那个年轻人的脸色阴郁了。大家都看得出，在他来说，被人提醒对前途的指望和新近丧母一事是何等难以忍受。倘非喧嚣声减轻了痛苦，他会退出宴席的。马登只因为一时看上了骑手的名字，便心血来潮地把赌注下在“权杖”[255] 身上，结果输了五德拉克马[256] 。利内翰的损失也那么大。他对大家讲述赛马情况。旗子往下一挥，唿啦！母马驮着奥马登，一个箭步蹿出去，精神饱满地奔跑起来，它领先。每一颗心都怦怦悸动。连菲莉斯[257] 都克制不住自己了。她挥舞头巾喊着：“好哇！‘权杖’赢啦！”然而在快要到终点的直线跑道上，“丢掉”[258]迫近、拉平并超过了它。全都完啦[259]。菲莉斯一声不响：她的两眼像是悲哀的银莲花。“朱诺，”她大声说，“我输定啦。”然而她的情侣安慰她，给她带来一只闪亮的小金匣，里面装着几块椭圆形小糖果。她吃了。她落了泪，仅只一滴。“W. 莱恩可是个顶出色的骑手，”利内翰说，“昨天赢了四场，今天三场。哪里有比得上他的骑手呢？骆驼也罢，狂暴的野牛也罢，他都骑得稳稳当当。可是咱们也像古人那样忍耐吧。对不走运者发发慈悲吧！可怜的‘权杖’！”说到这里，他轻轻叹了口气，“它再也不是从前那匹精神抖擞的小母马啦。我敢发誓，咱们永远再也看不到那样一匹马了。老兄，我对天主发誓，它是马中女王，你还记得它吗，文森特？”“我倒是巴不得你今天能见到我的女王哩，”文森特说，“她有多么年轻，容光焕发（拉拉吉[260] 跟她站在一起也会黯然失色），穿着淡黄色的鞋和好像是平纹细布做的连衣裙。遮蔽我们的栗子树花儿正盛开。诱人的花香与飘浮在我们周围的花粉使空气浓郁得往下垂。在浴满阳光的小块儿地面的石头上，似乎毫不费力地就能烤出一炉科林斯水果馅小圆面包——就是佩利普里波米涅斯[ 261 ] 在桥头摆摊卖的那种。然而，除了我那只搂住她的胳膊，她没得可咬的。于是，每逢我搂紧了，她就顽皮地咬我一口。一星期前她卧病四天，然而今天她神态自在，快快活活，还拿病危开着玩笑。这当儿，她就更富于魅力了。还有她那花束！她可真是个疯疯颠颠的野丫头。我们相互偎倚着的时候，她采够了花。这话只能悄悄地告诉你，我的朋友。我们离开田野的时候，你简直想不到我们竟碰见了谁。不是别人，正是康米呀！[262] 他沿着篱笆踱来，正在读着什么，好像是《圣教日课》。我相信他当作书签夹在里面的准是葛莉色拉或奇洛伊[263] 写来的一封俏皮的信。我那甜姐儿狼狈得飞红了脸，假装整理稍微弄乱了的衣裳。矮树丛的一截小树枝巴在上面了，因为连树棵子都爱慕她。当康米走过去后，她就用随身携带的小镜子照自己的芳容。然而他挺慈祥，走过去的时候，还祝福了我们呢。”“神明也从来都是仁慈的，”利内翰说，“虽然我在已思那匹母马身上吃了亏，也许他这酒[264] 倒更合胃口哩。”他把手放在酒瓶上。玛拉基瞅见了，就制止他这一动作，并指了指那个异邦人和鲜红色商标[265]。“小心点儿，”玛拉基悄悄他说，“像德鲁伊特[266] 那样保持沉默吧。他的灵魂飘到远处去了。从幻梦中醒过来，也许跟出生同样痛苦。任何东西，只要认真逼视，兴许都可以进入诸神不朽的永恒世界之门。你不这么认为吗，斯蒂芬？”“西奥索弗斯[267] 对我这么说过，”斯蒂芬说，“在前世，埃及司祭曾向他传授过因果报应法则的奥秘。西奥索弗斯对我说，月亮上的君主乃是太阳系游星阿尔法用船送来的桔黄色火焰。不凭灵气来再现自己，以第二星座之红玉色的自我为化身。”

然而，说实在的，关于他[268] 处于某种郁闷状态或被施行了催眠术之类的荒谬臆测，纯属最浅薄之误解，有悖于事实。正在发生这些事的当儿，此公两眼开始显露勃勃生机。即使不比别人更敏锐，至少也跟他同样敏锐。任何曾经做过相反推测的人，都会立即发现自己搞错了。他朝特伦特河畔伯顿的巴思公司所产瓶装一级啤酒凝望了足足四分钟。它夹在好多瓶酒当中，刚好摆在他对面，其鲜红色商标，无疑是为了引起所有人的注意。在方才那番关于少年时代和赛马的谈话后，由于只有他自己才知道得最透彻的理由（这一点，后来才弄清楚），周围发生的事被涂上了迥异的色彩。于是，他就沉浸在两三档子私事的回忆里。对此，另两个人犹如尚未出生的婴儿一般，丝毫也不了解。不过，他们二人的视线终于相遇。他一旦明白对方迫不及待地想要喝上一盅，便不由自主地决定为他斟上。因此，他攥着那装有对方所渴求的液体之中型玻璃容器颈部，足倒一气，以致它都快空了，然而又相当小心翼翼地，不让一滴啤酒溅到外面。

随后进行的辩论，其范围与进度均是人生旅途的缩影。会场也罢，讨论也罢，都气派十足。论头脑之敏锐，参加辩论者乃属海内第一流的，所论的主题则无比崇高重要。霍恩产院那高顶棚的大厅，从未见过如此有代表性而且富于变化的集会。这座建筑的古老椽子，也从未听到过如此博大精深的言词。那确实是一派雄伟景象。克罗瑟斯身穿醒目的高地服装，坐在末席上。加洛韦岬角[269] 那含有潮水气味的风；使他容光焕发。坐在对面的是林奇，少年时代行为放荡以及早慧，都已在他脸上留下烙印。挨着苏格兰人的座位是留给怪人科斯特洛的；马登蹲坐在科斯特洛旁边，呆头呆脑地纹丝不动。壁炉前的主席那把椅子是空着的，两边分别为身穿探险家派头的花呢短裤、脚蹬生牛皮翻毛靴子的班农，还有与他形成鲜明对照的玛拉基•罗兰•圣约翰•穆利根那淡黄色的优美服装和一派城市的举止教养。最后，桌子上首坐着位年轻诗人，他逃脱了教师这个行当和形而上学的审问，在苏格拉底式讨论的快活氛围中找到了避难所。右边是刚从赛马场来的油嘴滑舌的预言家，左边是那位谨慎的流浪者。他被旅途与厮打扬起的尘埃弄脏，又沾上了难以洗刷的不名誉的污点。然而他那坚定不移、忠贞不渝的心中却怀着妖娆的倩女面影，那是拉斐特[270]在灵感触发下用那支画笔描绘下来的传世之作。任何诱惑、危险、威胁、屈辱，都无法消除。

开头最好先说明一下：斯•迪达勒斯先生（神性怀疑论者[271] ）的议论似乎证明他所沉溺并被歪曲的先验论，与一般人所接受的科学方法是截然相反的。重复多少遍也不为过分的是：科学乃处理有实质的现象的。科学家正如一般人一样，必须面对硬邦邦的现实，不容躲闪，并须做出详尽的说明。目前确实可能还有一些科学所不能解答的问题，例如利•布卢姆先生（广告经纪人）所提的头一个问题：即将诞生者的性别是如何决定的。我们究竟应该接受特利纳克利亚的恩培多克勒的说法，即认为男子的诞生决定于右卵巢[272]（另外一些人则主张是在月经后的时期），还是应该认为被放置过久的精子或精虫乃是决定性别的重要因素？抑或像众多胚胎学家（卡尔佩珀、斯帕兰札尼[273] 、布鲁门巴赫、勒斯克、赫特维希[274] 、利奥波德和瓦伦丁[275] ）所设想的那样，是二者的混合物呢？这个论点也许意味着：一方面是精虫的生殖本能[276] ，另一方面是被动因素那巧妙地选择的体位——即卧在下面受胎[277] 之间的协力（大自然喜用的方法之一）。同一位问讯者所提出的另一问题，其重要性不亚于此：婴儿死亡率。这个问题很有意思，因为他中肯恰当地提出：尽管我们诞生的方式相同，死法却各异。玛•穆利根先生（卫生学兼优生学博士）谴责本地的卫生状态道，我们这些肺部发灰的市民吸进了飘浮在尘埃中的细菌，以致患上腺样增殖症和肺结核等症。他声称，民族素质的衰退应统统归咎于这些因素以及我们街头上那些令人厌恶的景象：触目惊心的海报，各种支派的教士，陆海军的残废军人，风里雨里赶马车的坏血症患者，悬吊着的兽骸，患偏执狂的单身汉以及不能生育的护理妇。他预言审美学[278] 将普遍地为人们所接受，生活中所有的优美事物，纯正的好音乐，令人赏心悦目的文学，轻松愉快的哲学，饶有教育意义的绘画，维纳斯与阿波罗等古典雕刻的石膏复制像，优良婴儿的艺术彩照——只要在这些方面略加注意，就能使孕妇在无比愉快中度过分娩前的那几个月。J．克罗瑟斯先生（议论学学士） 将婴儿夭折的一部分原因归咎于女工在工厂内从事重劳动引起的腹腔部外伤，以及婚后夫妻生活中的节制问题，但绝大多数还是由于在公私两方面的疏忽。这种疏忽达到极点，便会造成遗弃新生婴儿、堕胎犯罪或残忍的杀婴罪。尽管前者（我们指的是疏忽）毫无疑问是确凿的，但他所举的那个关于护士忘记点清填入腹腔的海绵数目之事例，太不经见了，不足为训。其实，当我们仔细调查这个问题时就会发现，尽管有上述种种人为的缺陷，往往妨碍大自然的意图，但是妊娠与分娩却依然在大量地顺利地进行着，诚然令人惊奇。文•林奇先生（算术学士）提出了富于独创性的建议：出生与死亡，与所有其他进化现象（潮汐的涨落、月亮的盈亏、体温的高低、一般疾病）一样。总而言之，大自然之巨大作坊中的万物，远方一颗恒星之消失乃至点缀公园的无数鲜花之绽开，均应受计数法则的支配，而这一法则迄今尚未确定下来。但是这里也有个简单而直截了当的问题：为什么一对正常、健康的父母所生下的看上去健康并得到适当照顾的娃娃，竟会莫名其妙地夭折，而同一婚姻中所生的其他孩子并不这样呢？用诗人的话来说，这确实不能不使我们踌躇顾虑。[279] 我们确信，大自然不论做什么，都自有充分而中肯的理由。这样的死亡很可能是某种预测的法则所导致的。据此法则，病原菌所栖息的生物（现代科学毫无争论余地地显示：只有原生质的实体可以是不朽的）越是在发育初期，死亡率越高。这种安排纵然给我们的某种感情（尤其是母性）以痛苦，然而有些人认为从长远来看是有益于一般人类的，因为它保证了适者生存。斯•迪达勒斯先生（神学怀疑论者）发表意见（或者应该说是插话）道，患黄疽症的政治家和害萎黄病的尼姑自不用说，由于分娩而衰弱的女癌症患者和从事专门职业的胖绅士总是咀嚼形形色色的食品，下咽，消化，并以绝对的沉着使其经过通常的导管。当这些杂食动物吃小牛息肉这样好消化的食品时，大概会减轻肠胃的负担吧。这番话从极其不利的角度无比透彻地揭示了上述倾向。这位有着病态精神的审美学兼胚胎哲学家，尽管连酸与碱都分不清，在科学知识上却摆出一副傲慢自负的架子。为了启发那些对市立屠宰场的细节没他那么熟悉的人们，也许应该在此说明一下：我们那些拥有卖酒执照的低级饮食店的俚语小牛崽肉，指的就是打着趔趄的牛崽子[280]那可供烹调食用的肉。在霍利斯街第二十九、三十、三十一号国立妇产医院的公共食堂里，能干而有名望的院长安•霍恩博士（领有产科医生执照、曾为爱尔兰女王医学院成员）最近与利•布卢姆先生（广告经纪人）之间举行了一场公开辩论。据目击者说，该院长曾指出，一个女人一旦把猫放进口袋里（这大概是对大自然之最复杂而奇妙的作用——交媾的雅喻），她就非把它再送出去不可；或赐与它生命（用他的话来说），以便保全自己的命。他的论敌富于说服力地驳斥说：这可是冒着自己丧失生命的危险！尽管说话的语调温和而有分寸，仍然击中了要害。

这当儿，医生的本领与耐心导致了一次可喜的分娩[281] 。不论对产妇还是医生来说，那都是令人厌倦、疲劳的一段时间。凡是外科技术所能做的，都做到了。这位产妇也极为勇敢，她用坚韧不拔的精神加以配合。她确实这么做了。打了一场漂亮仗[282] ，而今她非常、非常快乐。那些过来人，比她先经历过这一过程的，也高高兴兴地面带微笑俯视着这一动人情景。她们虔诚地望着她。她目含母性之光，横卧在那里，对全人类的丈夫——天主，默诵感谢经。新的母性之花初放，殷切地渴望摸到婴儿的指头（多么可爱的情景）。当她用那双无限柔情的眼睛望着婴儿时，她只盼望着再有一种福气：让她亲爱的大肥[283] 在她身边分享她的快乐，把天主的这一小片尘土[ 284] ——他们的合法拥抱之果实，放在他怀抱里。而今他上了些岁数（这是你我之间的悄悄话），双肩稍见弯屈。但是随着岁月的流逝，厄尔斯特银行学院草地分行的这位认真负责的副会计师已具有了一种庄重的威严。“哦，大肥，往昔的恋人，如今的忠实生活伴侣，遥远的过去那玫瑰花一般的岁月再也不会回来了！”她像从前那样摇摇俊美的头，回顾着那些日子。天哪！而今透过岁月之雾望去，那是何等美丽呀！在她的想像中，他们——他和她——的孩子们聚拢在床畔：查理、玛丽•艾丽斯、弗雷德里克•艾伯特（倘若他不曾夭折）、玛米、布吉（维多利亚•弗朗西丝）、汤姆、维奥莱特•康斯但斯•路易莎、亲爱的小鲍勃西（是根据南非战争中我们的著名英雄——沃特福德与坎大哈的鲍勃斯勋爵[285] 而命名的）。现在又生下了他们二人结合的最后的象征，一个地地道道的普里福伊，长着真正的普里福伊家的鼻子。这个前途无量的婴儿，将以普里福伊先生那个在都柏林堡财务厅工作的有声望的远房堂弟莫蒂默•爱德华而命名。光阴茬苒。然而时间老爹轻而易举地就把事情了结啦。不，亲爱的、温柔的米娜，不要从你胸中叹气。还有大肥，把你烟斗里的灰磕打掉吧。通知熄灯的晚钟已敲（但愿那是遥远的未来的事！），你却还在摆弄着使惯了的这只欧石南根烟斗。用以读《圣经》的灯也给熄灭了吧，因为油已剩得不多了，所以还是心情平稳地上床休息吧。天主无所不知，到时候就会来召唤你。你曾打了一场漂亮仗，忠实地履行了男人的职责。先生，请握住我的手。干得出色，你这善良而忠实的仆人！[286] 

有一种罪或者（照世人的叫法就是）恶的记忆，隐蔽在人们心中最黑暗处，埋伏在那里，等待时机。一个人尽可以听任记忆淡漠下去，将其撂开，仿佛不存在一般，并竭力说服自己，好像那些记忆并不存在或至少是以另一种形式存在。然而抽冷子一句话会勾起这些记忆：会在各种各样的场合——幻想或梦境里，或者当铃鼓与竖琴抚慰他的感觉之际，或在傍晚那凉爽的银色寂静中，或像当前这样深夜在宴席上畅饮时——浮现在他面前。这个幻象并非为了侮辱他而至，像对待那些屈服于她的愤怒的人们那样，也并非为了使他与生者离别，对他进行报复，而是裹以过去那可怜的尸衣，沉默，冷漠，嗔怪着。

异邦人继续望着自己眼前这个人脸上那故意做出的冷静神情慢慢地消失。出于习惯或乖巧心计的这种不自然的冷静似乎也包含在他的辛辣话语之中，好像在谴责说话人对人生粗野方面的不健康的偏爱[287] 。听者的记忆里，宛若被一句朴实自然的话所唤醒了一般，浮现出一副光景。仿佛是往昔的岁月伴随着当前的种种喜悦真地存在于现实中似的（就像某些人所想的那样）。平静的五月傍晚那修剪过的草坪。他们对朗德镇[ 288] 或紫或白的丁香花丛记忆犹新。小球缓缓地沿着草地向前滚去，要么就相互碰撞，短暂机警地震颤一下，挨在一起停了下来。香气袭人的苗条淑女们兴致勃勃地观看着。那边，每逢灰色水池里的灌溉用水徐徐流淌，水面便起涟漪。水池周围，你可以瞥见同样香气袭人的姐妹们：弗洛伊、阿蒂、蒂尼[289]以及她们那位身姿不知怎地分外引人注目的肤色稍黑的朋友——樱桃王后[290] 。她一只耳朵上佩带着玲珑的樱桃耳坠子：冰凉火红的果实衬着异国情调的温暖肌肤，相得益彰。（正是开花时节。及至将滚球聚拢起来收进箱子，大家就围坐在温暖的炉边，其乐融融。）一名身穿亚麻羊毛混纺衣服的四五岁幼童正站在池边，姑娘们用爱怜的手围成一圈，保护着他。现在男童略微皱起眉来。也许他像这个青年似的过于意识到自身处境危险的快感，但是又只得不时地朝他母亲瞥上一眼。她正从面对花坛的游廊[291] 守望着，喜悦之中却又含着一抹漠然或嗔怪之色（凡事都是无常的[ 292] ）。

注意下述事件并且铭记在心头吧，结局来得很突然。走进学生们聚集的产房外面的前厅，留意他们的神色吧。那里仿佛丝毫也没有鲁莽或强暴的痕迹。一片守护者的宁静，这倒很合乎他们在产院中的地位。恰似昔日在犹大的伯利恒，牧羊人和天使曾通宵达旦守护在马槽周围一样。[293] 然而闪电之前，密集的雨云因含湿气过多变得沉甸甸的，膨胀起来。大团大团地蔓延，围住天与地，使其处于深沉的酣睡状态；并低垂在干涸的原野、困倦的牛和枯萎的灌木丛与新绿的嫩叶上。接着，刹那间闪光将它们一劈两半，随着雷声轰鸣，大雨倾盆而下。话音刚落，立即发生了急剧的变化。

“到伯克[294] 去！”爵爷斯蒂芬喊罢，一个箭步向前蹿去。那群帮腔的也一起跟在后面：有血气方刚的，顽劣的，赖债的，庸医，还有一本正经的布卢姆。大家分别攥着帽子、梣木手杖、比尔博剑[295] 、巴拿马帽和剑鞘、采尔马特登山杖[296] 等等。这儿有各式各样的壮小伙子，一个个气宇轩昂的学生。卡伦护士在门厅里给吓了一跳，她拦也拦不住。正笑嘻嘻地走下楼梯的外科医生也阻止不了——他是来告诉大家胎盘已处置完毕，”足足有一磅重。他们催促着他。大门！敞着吗？好极啦！他们喧嚣地冲出去，雄赳赳地参加一分钟的赛跑，最终目的地乃是登齐尔和霍利斯这两条街交叉处的伯克。迪克森对他们说了些尖酸话语，并咒诅了一句，也跟了来。布卢姆想托护士给楼上那位欣喜的母亲和她的宝宝捎句问候，所以就在她身边停下脚步。最好的治疗就是营养和静养。她的脸色不是正表露出这一点吗？憔悴苍白，说明霍恩产院里那些日以继夜的护理多么辛苦。大家既然都已走光，他就仗着天生的智慧，临告辞时凑近她，悄悄他说：“太太，鹳鸟啥时候来找你呢？”[ 297] 

户外的空气饱含着雨露的润湿，来自天上的生命之精髓，在星光闪烁的苍穹下，在都柏林之石上闪闪发光。天主的大气，全能的天父之大气，光芒四射的柔和的大气，深深地吸进去吧。老天在上，西奥多•普里福伊，你漂漂亮亮地做出一桩壮举！我敢起誓，在包罗万象最为庞杂的烦冗记录中，你是无比出众的繁殖者。真令人吃惊啊！她身上有着天主所赐予的、按照天主形象而造人的可能性[298]， 你作为男子汉，不费吹灰之力便使她结了果实。跟她紧密结合吧！侍奉吧！操劳吧！完全像一只看门狗那样忠于职守，把学者和所有的马尔萨斯人口论者统统绞死吧。西奥多，你是他们所有人的老爹。在家里，你为肉铺的帐单；在帐房里，则为金锭银块（都不是你的！）辛辛苦苦操持，莫非不堪重负而意气消沉了吗？昂起头来！每新生一个娃娃，你便会收获一侯马[299] 熟小麦。瞧，你的毛都湿透了。你羡慕达比•达尔曼和他的琼[300] 吗？他们的子孙只是些鸣声凄惋的松鸡和烂眼儿的杂种狗。呸！告诉你。巴！他是一头骡子，一个死了的软体动物：既无精力，又无体力，连一枚有裂纹的克娄泽[301]都不值。没有生殖的性交！不，我说！婴儿屠杀者希律[302]才是他更真实的名字。真的，光吃蔬菜，夫妇同床可不怀孕！给她吃牛排吧：红殷殷，生的，带着血的！她是各种疾病盘踞的自发魔窟：瘰疬、流行性腮腺炎、扁桃体周脓肿、拇趾囊肿胀、枯草热、褥疮、金钱癣、浮游肾、甲状腺肿、瘊子、胆汁病、胆结石、冷血症和静脉瘤。诵悼歌，连续举行三十天的弥撒，《那利米哀歌》[303]，以及所有这类哀悼的歌。一概谢绝吧！不要后悔那二十年的婚姻生活。你不同于许许多多曾经企盼、愿望、等待过而一直也不曾实现的。你瞧见了你的美国[304] ，你毕生的事业，像大洋彼岸的野牛那样，为了交配而猛冲过。琐罗亚斯德[305]是怎么说的呢？你从悲哀这头母牛身上挤奶。现在你喝着它的乳房里那甜美的奶。[30 6]瞧！它为了你而充裕地流淌。喝吧，老兄，满满一乳房！母亲的乳汁，普里福伊，人类的乳汁[307] ，也是在上空化为稀薄的水蒸气，灼灼生辉，扩展开来的银河的乳汁，放荡者在酒店里咕嘟咕嘟狂饮的潘趣[308] 奶，疯狂的乳汁，迦南乐土的奶与蜜[309] ，母牛的奶头挺坚硬，是吗？对，然而她的奶水又浓又甜，最能滋补。那是不会发硬、然而黏稠浓厚的酸凝乳。老族长，到她那儿去吧！奶头！凭着女神帕图拉和泊滕达，让我们干杯！[310]

为了纵酒豪饮，大家相互挽着臂，沿街大喊大叫地冲去。真正的。[ 311] 昨晚你是在哪儿睡的？打扁了的碎嘴子蒂莫西[312] 那儿。加油儿，快点儿。家里有雨伞或长统胶靴吗？给亨利•内维尔[313] 瞧过病的穿旧衣的外科医生在哪儿？对不起，谁都不知道。喂，迪克斯！往前走到缎带柜台那儿。潘趣在哪儿？百事顺利。天哪，瞧瞧那个从产院走出来的醉醺醺的牧师！[314] 伏惟全能至仁天主圣父，及圣子……降福保全我众。[315] 一个冤大头[316] ，先生。登齐尔巷的小伙子们[ 317] 。见鬼，活该！快去。对，以撒[318] ，把他们从明亮的地方赶走。亲爱的先生，你要跟我们一道去吗？一点儿也不碍事。你是个好人，咱们彼此不必见外。去吧，我的孩子们！[319] 第一炮手，开火。到伯克去！到伯克去！他们从那里挺进了五帕拉桑[320]。 斯莱特里那骑马的步兵[ 321] 。该死的丑东西在哪儿？背弃教义的[322] 斯蒂夫牧师！不，不，是穆利根！在后面哪！朝前推进。要盯着钟。打烊的时间。[ 323] 穆丽！你怎么啦？我妈叫我出嫁啦。[324] 英国人的至福[325]！擂鼓吧，咚咚，嘭嘭，[ 326] 赞成者占多数。由德鲁伊特德鲁姆印刷厂叫你喝啥？来杯超人[333] 喝的世代相传的蜂蜜酒。我也照样。来五杯一号的。[334] 你呢，先生？姜汁甜露酒。嘿，是车把式喝的蛋酒汁。刺激得浑身热腾腾的。给钟[335] 上弦。突然停摆，再也不走了。当老……[336] 我要苦艾酒，知道了吗？哎呀！[337] 要一份蛋酒或加了调料的生蛋。几点钟啦？我的表进当铺啦。差十分。费心啦。不用客气。是胸部外伤吗，呃，迪克斯？千真万确。只要睡在他那小院儿里，随时都会挨蜜蜂螫的。家就住在圣母医院附近。这位仁兄有妻室。认识他太太吗？嗯，当然认识喽。她身材可丰腴哩。瞧瞧她脱掉衣服时的样子吧，那裸体真能饱人眼福。漂亮的母牛可跟你们那瘦母牛[338]不一样，一点儿也不。拉下百叶窗，宝宝。[339] 两杯阿迪劳恩[340] 。我也一样。麻利点儿，要是倒下，就马上爬起来：五，七，九。好极啦！她有着一双顶好看的眼睛，一点不含糊。还有她那奶头和丰满的臀部。只有亲眼看了才能相信。你那双饥饿的眼睛和石膏的脖颈， 把我的心偷去了。噢，排精的气味。先生，土豆？又是风湿病吗？[341] 真是荒唐，请原谅我这么说。大家都这么认为。我看你可能是个大傻瓜。 呃，大夫？刚从拉普兰[ 342] 回来吗？您还是这么富态，贵体安康吧？老婆娃娃都好吗？尊夫人快生养了吧？站住，交出来。[343] 口令。瞧那头发。[344] 苍白的死亡和殷红的诞生。[345]嘿！唾沫溅到你眼睛里去啦，老板！打给戏子的电报。从梅瑞狄斯那儿剽窃来的。[346] 以耶稣自居的那个患了睪丸炎、满是臭虫跳蚤的耶稣会会士！我姨妈给金赤他爹去了信，说坏透了的斯蒂芬把好极了的玛拉基带上邪路啦。

晦，小伙子，抓住球[ 347] ！把那啤酒递过来。为了勇敢的苏格兰长久沸腾。[ 349] 我的烈酒。谢谢。[350]祝咱们大家健康。怎么样？犯了规。别把我这条新裤子弄脏了。喂，给我撤上点儿那边的胡椒粉。喏，接着。带上芷茴香籽儿[351] 。你明白吗？沉默的喊叫。每个汉子都去找自己的漂亮姑娘。[352] 肉欲维纳斯[353] 。小妇人们。[354] 来自穆林加尔镇的厚脸皮的坏姑娘[355] 。告诉她，我打听她来着。搂着萨拉的腰肢[356]。通往马拉海德[357] 的路上。我吗？勾引我的那个女人，哪怕留下名字也好。[358]你花九便士要买什么？我的心，我的小坛子[359] 。跟放荡的窑姐儿搞一通。一块儿摇桨。退场[360] ！

你在等着吗，头儿？就那么一回，可不是嘛。瞧你那副发愣的神儿，好像亮闪闪的金钱不见了似的。明白了吗？他身上有的是钱。刚才我瞅见他差不多有三镑哩，说是他自己的。我们都是你请来的客人，晓得吧？你掏腰包，老弟。拿出钱来呀。才两先令一便士呀。这手法你是从法国骗子那儿学来的吧？你那一套在这儿可行不通。小伙子，对不起。这一带就数我的脑袋瓜子灵。千真万确。你呀，我们没喝醉，我们一点儿也没醉[361] 。再见，先生。[362]谢谢你。

对，可不是嘛。你说啥？这是在非法的秘密酒店。完全喝醉啦。老弟。班塔姆，你已经有两天滴酒未沾了。除了红葡萄酒，啥也不喝。[ 363] 。给我滚！瞧一眼吧，务必瞧瞧。天哪，不会吧！他刚去过理发馆。[ 364] 喝得太多，连话都说不出来啦。跟车站上的一个家伙在一块儿。你怎么知道的？他爱听歌剧吗？《卡斯蒂利亚的玫瑰》。并排的铸[365] 。叫警察来呀！给这位晕过去的先生拿点儿水来。瞧瞧班塔姆有多么年轻。哎呀，他哼起来啦。金发少女。我的金发少女[366] 。喂，停下吧！用手使劲捂住他那肮脏的嘴巴。本来他是蛮有把握的， 只因为我跟他暗通消息，告诉了他“绝对可靠的事”，这才砸了锅。就欠让魔鬼掰掉脑袋[367 ]的斯蒂芬•汉德这个家伙塞给了我一匹劣马。 他遇见一个从练马场替巴思老板往仓库送电报的人。他给了那人四便士，借着蒸气私拆了那封电报。“母马竞技状态良好。”[ 368] 好比是花金币买醋栗。这是一种骗局。《福音书》中的真理。莫非是恶劣的消遣吗？我想是这样的。没错儿。要是被警察当作猎物逮住了，就得去坐牢。 马登把赌注下在马登骑的那匹马上了，发疯地下赌注。[369]啊，肉欲，我们的避难所和力量。[370] 开溜啦。你非走不可吗？回到妈妈那儿去。付账。 可别让人瞧出我的脸盘儿发红。要是给他发现了，就完蛋啦。回家去吧，班塔姆。再见，老伙计。别忘记给老婆捎立金花[371]去。老老实实告诉我，是谁把小公马的事儿透露给你的？这只是你我之间的悄悄话。不瞒你说，凭着圣托马斯[372]发誓，是她的丈夫。不骗你，是利奥[373]那个老家伙。我发誓，真格的。要是我撒了谎，就让我粉身碎骨。我对着神圣的大托钵修士发誓。你为啥没有告诉我？哼， 倘若不是那个犹太人的奷计，就让我暴死。凭着上主阴茎发誓，啊们。你要提议吗？斯蒂夫老弟，你再破费点儿也成吧？他妈的，还喝得下去吧？你这个出手无比大方的东道主，肯让这开始得如此豪华的酒宴散席吗？要知道，你请来的客人个个都是极度贫困、 渴得厉害的啊。总得喘口气。老板，老板，你有好酒吗，斯塔布[374]？喂，老板，让咱们开开斋。请大家尽情地喝吧。好的，老板！给每人斟杯苦艾酒。咱们个个喝绿毒，谁来迟了就倒楣。[375]打烊了，先生们，呃？给那神气活现的布卢姆来杯朗姆酒， 我听你说过葱头[376] ？布卢？那个兜揽广告的？那个照相姑娘的爹[377]，这可让我吃了一惊。小声点儿，伙计。悄悄地溜掉吧。各位，晚安[378]卫我于梅毒魔鬼。[379]那个花花公子和女模女样[380]的家伙哪儿去啦？上当了吧？逃走了。啊，好的，你们爱到哪儿就到哪儿去吧。将军。王移到象的位置。善良的基督徒，请你帮助这个被朋友夺走住处钥匙的小伙子[381]找个今晚睡觉的地方。唷，我快要酩酊大醉啦。妈的，我敢说这是最好的、最开心的假日。喂。伙计，给这孩子几块点心。扯蛋，我才不吃那白兰地夹心糖呢！那是哄女人孩子的，我才不吃呢！把海毒丢到地狱里去吧。连同那领了执照的烈性酒。[382]时间到了，先生们！祝大家健康！祝你！[383]

天哪；！那边穿胶布雨衣的家伙究竟是谁呀？达斯蒂•罗兹[384]，瞧他那身打扮。可真神气。他在吃啥？六十周年纪念羊肉[385] 。对着詹姆斯发誓， 像是喝牛肉汁。真想吃上点儿。你认识那个穿旧短袜的吗？里奇蒙[386] 那个下流讨厌的怪家伙吗？痛苦得很哪！他认定自己的阴茎里有颗子弹。胡言乱语的疯子。我们称他作“面包巴特尔”[387] 。先生，他曾经是个家道兴旺的市民。穿破衣服的男人娶了个孤女[388] 。可是姑娘逃之夭夭。瞧，就是那个被遗弃的男人。穿着件胶布雨衣在寂寞的峡谷里徜徉。[389] 喝完酒就去睡吧，规定的时间到了，盯着点儿警察。对不起，你今天在葬礼上瞧见他了吗？是你那个翘了辫子的伙伴吗？天主啊，对他发发慈悲吧！可怜的孩子们！波德老兄，千万别说下去啦！莫非因为朋友帕德尼[390] 被装在黑口袋里运走了，你们就泪如雨下吗？在所有的黑人当中，帕特是最好的一个。我平生没见过这么好的一个人。别说了，别说了，[391] 然而这是个非常可悲的故事，千真万确。唉呀，滚！在九分之一坡度的地方翻了车。活动车轴碎得一塌糊涂。杰纳齐准定会彻底打败他的。[392] 日本佬吗？朝高角度开炮，是吗？据战时号外，给击沉了。他说，形势对俄国有利，而不是日本。[393] 到时间了。十一点啦，走吧。前进， 醉得脚步蹒跚的人们！晚安。晚安。但愿至尊的真主今晚大力保护你的灵魂。喂，留点神！我们一点儿也没醉。[394] 是利斯的警察把我们撵走的。[ 395] 一点儿也不宽容。小心，那家伙要呕吐啦。他觉得恶心。哇！晚安。蒙娜，我真诚的宝贝。哇！蒙娜，我的心肝儿宝贝。[396] 噢！

听哪！别吵吵闹闹的啦，呼啦！呼啦！着火哪。瞧，去啦。消防队！改变方向。沿着蒙特街走去。招摇过市！呼啦！嗬嗬。你不来吗？跑吧，冲啊，赛跑。呼啦！
Chapter 15 Circe
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 (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 bars tool, sways over the munching spaniel.) 

BOB DORAN Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw. 

(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pigs knuckle between his molars through which rabid scrumspittle 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, passion pale, in liontamer's costume with diamond studs in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus paper hoop, a curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the going 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 pully 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 Bloom Pasha. Umpteen mil lions. Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt. Cousin. 

FIRST WATCH Proof. 

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

BLOOM (In red fez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a false badge of the Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and offers it.) Allow me. My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor's Walk. 

FIRST WATCH (Reads.) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Un lawfully watching and besetting. 

SECOND WATCH An alibi. You are cautioned. 

BLOOM (Produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower.) This is the flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name. (Plausibly.) You know that old joke, rose of Castille. Bloom. The change of name Virag. (He murmurs privately and confidentially.) We are engaged you see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entanglement. (He shoulders the second watch gently.) Dash it all. It's a way we gallants have in the navy. Uniform that does it. (He turns gravely to the first watch.) Still, of course, you do get your Waterloo sometimes. drop in some evening and have a glass of old Burgundy. (To the second watch gaily.) I'll introduce you, inspector. She's game. Do it in shake of a lamb's tail. 

(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.) 

THE DARK MERCURY The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army. 

MARTHA (Thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the Irish Times in her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing.) Henry! Leopold! Leopold! Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name. 

FIRST WATCH (Sternly.) Come to the station. 

BLOOM (Scared, hats himself steps back, then, plucking at his heart and lifting his right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and dueguard of fellowcraft.) No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail. Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We medical men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned. 

MARTHA (Sobbing behind her veil.) Breach of promise. My real name is Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother, the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt. 

BLOOM (Behind his hand.) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (He murmurs vaguely the past of Ephraim.) Shitbroleeth. 

SECOND WATCH (Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself. 

BLOOM Gentleman of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable married man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant upstanding gentleman, who do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his majority for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift. 

FIRST WATCH Regiment. 

BLOOM (Turns to the gallery.) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the earth, known the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. The R. D. F. With our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the service of our sovereign. 

A VOICE Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain? 

BLOOM (His hand on the shoulder of the first watch.) My old dad too was a J.P. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours for king and country in the absentminded war under General Gough in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches. I did all a white man could. (With quiet feeling.) Jim Bludso. Hold her nozzle again the bank. 

FIRST WATCH Profession or trade. 

BLOOM Well, I follow a literary occupation. Author-journalist. In fact we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British and Irish press. If you ring up... 

(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. His scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles a hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.) 

MYLES CRAWFORD (His cock's wattles wagging.) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello. Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arse wiper here. Paralyse Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom? 

(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing, creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He cames a lace portfolio labelled Matcham's Masterstrokes.) 

BEAUFOY (Drawls.) No, you aren't, not by a long shot if I know it. I don't see it, that's all. No born gentleman, no one with the most rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading as a literateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling books, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom. 

BLOOM (Murmurs with hangdog meekness.) That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may... ? 

BEAUFOY (His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court.) You funny ass, you! You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't think you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university. 

BLOOM (Indistinctly.) University of life. Bad art. 

BEAUFOY (Shouts.) It's a damnably foul lie showing the moral rottenness of the man! (He extends his portfolio.) We have here damning evidence, the corpus delicti, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the beast. 

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY 

Moses, Moses, king of the jews, 
Wiped his arse in the Daily News.
BLOOM (Bravely.) Overdrawn. 
BEAUFOY You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter! (To the court.) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a quadruple existence! Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed society. The arch conspirator of the age. 

BLOOM (To the court.) And he, a bachelor, how. 

FIRST WATCH The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll. 

THE CRIER Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid! 

(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a bucket on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.) 

SECOND WATCH Another! Are you of the unfortunate class? 

MARY DRISCOLL (Indignantly.) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out, and I had to leave owing to his carryings on. 

FIRST WATCH What do you tax him with? 

MARY DRISCOLL He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am. 

BLOOM (In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers, unshaven, his hair rumpled softly.) I treated you white. I gave you mementoes, smart emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously I took your part when you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all things. Play cricket. 

MARY DRISCOLL (Excitedly.) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to them oysters! 

FIRST WATCH The offence complained of? Did something happen? 

MARY DRISCOLL He surprised me in the rere of the premises, your honour, when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he interfered twice with my clothing. 

BLOOM She counterassaulted. 

MARY DRISCOLL (Scornfully.) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had. I remonstrated with him, your lord, and he remarked: Keep it quiet! 

(General laughter.) 

GEORGES FOTTRELL (Clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly.) Order in court! The accused will now make a bogus statement. 

(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily, begins a long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel had to say in his stirring address to the grand-jury. He was down and out but, though branded as a black sheep, if he might say so, he meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a purely sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A seven months' child, he had been carefully brought up and nurtured by an aged bedridden parent. There might have been lapses of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new leaf and now, when at long last in sight of the whipping post, to lead a homely life in the evening of his days, permeated by the affectionate surroundings of the heaving bosom of the family. An acclimatised Britisher he had seen that summer eve from the footplate of an engine cab of the Loop line railway company while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through the windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent British born bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums, model young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times the strains of the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest bargain ever... ) 

(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain that they cannot hear.) 

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND (Without looking up from their notebooks.) Loosen his boots. 

PROFESSOR MACHUGH (From the presstable, coughs and calls.) Cough it up, man. Get it out in bits. 

(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A lace bucket. Bloom himself Bowel trouble. In Beaver street. Gripe, yes. Quite bad. A plasterers bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered untold misery. Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes, some spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket. Nobody. Rather a mess. Not completely. A Titbits back number.) 

(Uproar and catcalls. Bloom, in a torn frockcoat stained with whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of sticking-plaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.) 

J. J. O'MOLLOY (In barrister's grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of pained protest.) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my client's native place, the land of the Pharaoh. Prima facie, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I would deal inespecial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he could a tale unfold one of the strangest that have ever been narrated between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact. 

BLOOM (Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers, apologetic toes turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion and with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one thumb heavenward.) Him makee velly muchee fine night. (He begins to lilt simply.) 

Li li poo lil chile, 
Blingee pigfoot evly night. 
Payee two shilly...
(He is howled down.) 
J. J. O'MOLLOY (Hotly to the populace.) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered with. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter. (Bloom takes J. J. O'Molloy's hand and raises it to his lips.) I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be shown. (To Bloom.) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing. 

BLOOM A penny in the pound. 

(The mirage of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.) 

DLUGACZ (Hoarsely.) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W. 13. 

(J. J. O'Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.) 

J. J. O'MOLLOY (Almost voicelessly.) Excuse me, I am suffering from a severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words. (He assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the doubt. (A paper with something written on it is handed into court.) 

BLOOM (In court dress.) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman. Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex-lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest . Queens of Dublin Society. (Carelessly.) I was just chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal, at the levee. Sir Bob, I said... 

MRS YELVERTON BARRY (In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brick quilted dolman, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair.) Arrest him constable. He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply inflamed him, he said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled The Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays. 

MRS BELLINGHAM (In cap and seal coneymantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzingglasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff.) Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information that it was a blossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm. 

MRS YELVERTON BARRY Shame on him! 

(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins sues forward.) 

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS (Screaming.) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo! 

SECOND WATCH (Produces handcuffs.) Here are the darbies. 

MRS BELLINGHAM He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman Balmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He urged me, stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me, to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity. 

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (In amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with bra idea drums, long train held up and hunting crop with which she strikes her welt constantly.) Also me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Phnix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping. 

MRS BELLINGHAM Me too. 

MRS YELVERTON BARRY Me too. 

(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters received from Bloom.) 

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of sudden fury.) I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive. 

BLOOM (His eyes closing, quails expectantly.) Here? (He squirms.) Again! (He pants cringing.) I love the danger. 

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS Very much so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Jack Latten for that. 

MRS BELLINGHAM Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it! 

MRS YELVERTON BARRY Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man! 

BLOOM All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation. 

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Laughs derisively.) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury. 

MRS BELLINGHAM (Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his life. The cat-o' nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him. 

BLOOM (Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands with hangdog mien.) O cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet. Let me off this once. (He offers the other cheek.) 

MRS YELVERTON BARRY (Severely.) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should be soundly trounced! 

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS (Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently.) I'll do no such thing. Pig dog and always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (She swishes her hunting crop savagely in the air.) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready? 

BLOOM (Trembling, beginning to obey.) The weather has been so warm. 

(Davy Stephens, ringleted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.) 

DAVY STEPHENS Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint Patrick's Day Supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in Dublin. 

(The very reverend Canon O'Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.) 

THE TIMEPIECE (Unportalling.) 

Cuckoo 
Cuckoo 
Cuckoo
(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.) 
THE QUOITS Jigjag, Jigajiga. Jigjag. 

(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rapidly in the jurybox the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman silkhatted, Jack Power Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry Menton, Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and the featureless face of a Nameless One.) 

THE NAMELESS ONE Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her. 

THE JURORS (All their heads turned to his voice.) Really? 

THE NAMELESS ONE (Snarls.) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five. 

THE JURORS (All their heads lowered in assent.) Most of us thought as much. 

FIRST WATCH He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Jack the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward. 

SECOND WATCH (Awed, whispers.) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist. 

THE CRIER (Loudly.) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a well-known dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold ad a public nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most honourable. 

(His Honour sir Frederick Falkiner recorder of Dublin, in judicial garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. He bears in his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise starkly the Mosaic ramshorns.) 

THE RECORDER I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! (He dons the black cap.) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have-mercy on your soul. Remove him. (A black skullcap descends upon his head.) 

(The subsheriff long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent Henry Clay.) 

LONG JOHN FANNING (Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.) Who'll hang Judas Iscariot? 

(H. Rumbold, master barber in a bloodcoloured jerk in and tanner's apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder mounts the block. A life preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He rubs grimly his grapping hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.) 

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 chimpanzees. (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 eyeflashes 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. Dow 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, toad bellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.) 

FATHER COFFEY (Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak.) Namine. Jacobs Vobiscuits. Amen. 

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

PADDY DIGNAM (With pricked up ears, winces.) Overtones. 

(He wriggles forward, places an ear to the ground.) My masters' 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 tailstiffpointed, his ears cocked.) 

PADDY DIGNAM Pray for the repose of his soul. 

(He worms down through a coal hole, 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 two-columned 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. 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! Yummyumm Wom worn! (Warbling.) Big comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! (Twittering.) Leeolee! (Warbling.) O Leo! 

(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddyflecks, 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 gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (Suspiciously.) You're not his father, are you? 

BLOOM Not I! 

ZOE You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight? 

(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand slides over his left thigh.) 

ZOE How's the nuts? 

BLOOM Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier I suppose. One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says. 

ZOE (In sudden alarm.) You've a hard chancre. 

BLOOM Not likely. 

ZOE I feel it. 

(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist lips.) 

BLOOM A talisman. Heirloom. 

ZOE For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh? 

(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket, then links his arm, cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.) 

ZOE You'll know me the next time. 

BLOOM (Forlornly.) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to. 

(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.) 

ZOE (Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim. 

BLOOM (Fascinated.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent. 

ZOE And you know what thought did? 

(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth sending on him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.) 

BLOOM (Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward hand.) Are you a Dublin girl? 

ZOE (Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.) No bloody fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot? 

BLOOM (As before.) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device. (Lewdly.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed. 

ZOE Go on. Make a stump speech out of it. 

BLOOM (In workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap.) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say, he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life! 

(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.) 

THE CHIMES Turn again, Leopold! Lord Mayor of Dublin! 

BLOOM (In alderman's gown and chain.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my programme. Cui Bono? But our buccaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom ship of finance... 

AN ELECTOR Three times three for our future chief magistrate! 

(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.) 

THE TORCH BEARERS Hooray! 

(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the city shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet, gold chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens. They nod vigorously in agreement.) 

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON (In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and lace white silk scarf) That alder man sir Leo Bloom's speech be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom. 

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK Carried unanimously. 

BLOOM (Impassionedly.) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bug-bears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev... 

(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mille Failte and Mah Ttob Melek Israel spans the street. All the windows are thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the Kings Own Scottish Boraerers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers, standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering. The pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. The chryselephantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are followed by the Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Dublin, the lord mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Watedord, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of the saints of finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the bishop of Down and Connor His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William Alexander archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society of friends. her them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopen, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimney sweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertaken, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository hands, bullion broken, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bed chamber Black Rod, Deputy Garter Gold Stick, the master of hone, the lord great chamberlain, the earl marshal, the high constable carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen's iron crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. Beefeaten reply, winding clarions of welcome. Under an arch of triumph Bloom appears bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff the orb and sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite hone with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden heads tall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw down rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men cheer. Bloom's boys run amid the bystanders with branches of hawthorn and wrenbushes.) 

BLOOM'S BOYS 

The wren, the wren, 
The king of all birds, 
Saint Stephen's his day, 
Was caught in the furze.
A BLACKSMITH (Murmurs.) For the Honour of God! And is that Bloom? He scarcely looks thirtyone. 
A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER That's the famous Bloom now, the world's greatest reformer. Hats off! 

(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.) 

A MILLIONAIRESS (Richly.) Isn't he simply wonderful? 

A NOBLEWOMAN (Nobly.) All that man has seen! 

A FEMINIST (Masculinely.) And done! 

A BELLHANGER A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker. 

(Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.) 

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR I here present your un doubted emperor president and king chairman, the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm. God save Leopold the First! 

ALL God save Leopold the First! 

BLOOM (In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and Connor with dignity.) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. 

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH (In purple stock and shovel hat.) Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging? 

BLOOM (Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears.) So may the Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do. 

MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH (Pours a cruse of hair oil over Bloom's head.) Gaudium magnum annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed! 

(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby ring. He ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative peers put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George's and gay Malahide. Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all sides with symbolical phallopyrotechnic designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching and genuflecting.) 

THE PEERS I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship. 

(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set for reception of message.) 

BLOOM My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the splendour of night. 

(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moon blue robes, a silver crescent on her head, descends from a Sedan chair borne by two giants. An outburst of cheering.) 

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL (Raises the royal standard.) Illustrious Bloom! Successor to my famous brother! 

BLOOM (Embraces John Howard Parnell.) We thank you from our heart, John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our common ancestors. 

(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter. The keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given to him. He shows all that he is wearing green socks.) 

TOM KERNAN You deserve it, your honour. 

BLOOM On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry, Bonafide Sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man. 

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS Hear! Hear! 

JOHN WYSE NOLAN There's the man that got away James Stephens. 

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY Bravo! 

AN OLD RESIDENT You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are. 

AN APPLEWOMAN He's a man like Ireland wants. 

BLOOM My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future. 

(Thirtytwo workmen wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder construct the new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice, with crystal roof built in the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are demolished. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the letters: L. B. Several paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.) 

THE SIGHTSEERS (Dying) Morituri te salutant. (They die.) 

(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trap-door. He points an elongated finger at Bloom.) 

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH Don't you believe a word he Says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins. 

BLOOM Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh! 

(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom with his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, members of standing committees, are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives, in sealed envelopes tied with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available for all tram lines, coupons of the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints of the World's Twelve Worst Books: Froggy and Fritz (politic), Care of the Baby (infantilic), So Meals for 7/6 (culinic), Was Jesus a Sun Myth? (historic), Expel that Pain (medic), Infant's Compendium of the Universe (cosmic), Let's All Chortle (hilaric), Canvasser's Vade Mecum (journalic), love-letters of Mother Assistant (erotic), Who's Who in Space (astric), Songs that Reached Our Heart (melodic), Pennywise's Way to Wealth (parsimonic). A general rush and scramble. Women press forward to touch the hem of Bloom's robe. The lady Gwendolen Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight photograph is taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.) 

THE WOMEN Little father! Little father! 

THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS 

Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, 
Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.
(Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the stomach.) 
BABY BOARDMAN (Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth.) Hajajaja. 

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.
CHRIS CALLINAN What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran? 
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. 

THE VEILED SIBYL (Stabs herself.) My hero god! (She dies.) 

(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guinness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in gas ovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from windows of different storeys.) 

ALEXANDER J. DOWIE (Violently.) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men. A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban! 

THE MOB Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox! 

(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, stale bread, sheeps' tails, odd pieces of fat.) 

BLOOM (Excitedly.) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Henry. He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist to give medical testimony on my behalf. 

DR MULLIGAN (In motor jerkin, green motoroggles on his brow.) Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta. 

(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.) 

DR MADDEN Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the national teratological museum. 

DR CROTTHERS I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent. 

DR PUNCH COSTELLO The fetor judaicus is most perceptible. 

DR DIXON (Reads a bill of health.) Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feeble-minded in the medical sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby. 

(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver coins, bank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing bills of exchange, I.O.U.s, wedding rings' watch-chains, lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.) 

BLOOM O, I so want to be a mother. 

MRS THORNTON (In nursetender's gown.) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be soon over it. Tight, dear. 

(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with expensive plants. All are handsome, with valuable metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences. Each has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindorée, Silversmile, Silberselber Vifargent, Panargros. They are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, vice chairmen of hotel syndicates.) 

A VOICE Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David? 

BLOOM (Darkly.) You have said it. 

BROTHER BUZZ Then perform a miracle. 

BANTAM LYONS Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger. 

(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes through several walls, climbs Nelson's Pillar, hangs from the the ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), heals several sufferers from kings evil, contracts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, lord Beaconsfield, lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Rossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different directions, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun by extending his little finger.) 

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO (In papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and brown paper mitre.) Leopoldi autem generatio. Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli began Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat Ben Maimun and Ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel. 

A DEADHAND (Writes on the wall.) Bloom is a cod. A CRAB (In bush ranger's kit.) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack? 

A FEMALE INFANT (Shakes a rattle.) And under Ballybough bridge? 

A HOLLYBUSH And in the devil's glen? 

BLOOM (Blushes furiously all over from front to nates, three tears falling from his left eye.) Spare my past. 

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS (In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs.) Sjambok him! 

(Bloom with asses' ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed arms, his feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite direction.) 

THE ARTANE ORPHANS 

You big, you bog, you dirty dog! 
You think the ladies love you!
THE PRISON GATE GIRLS 
If you see kay 
Tell him he may 
See you in tea 
Tell him from me.
HORNBLOWER (In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) And he shall carry the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham. 
(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.) 

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON Belial! Laemlein of Istria! the false Messiah! Abulafia! 

(George S. Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under his arm, presenting a bill.) 

MESIAS To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. 

BLOOM (Rubs his hands cheerfully.) Just like old times. Poor Bloom! 

(Reuben J. Dodd, black bearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing on his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the pillory.) 

REUBEN J. (Whispers hoarsely.) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip the first rattler. 

THE FIRE BRIGADE Pflaap! 

BROTHER BUZZ (Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder round his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying.) Forgive him his trespasses. 

(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.) 

THE CITIZEN Thank heaven! 

BLOOM (In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid phoenix flames.) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin. 

(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters of Erin, in black garments with lace prayerbooks and long lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.) 

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN Kidney of Bloom, pray for us. Flower of the Bath, pray for us. Mentor of Menton, pray for us. Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us. Charitable Mason, pray for us. Wandering Soap, pray for us. Sweets of Sin, pray for us. Music without Words, pray for us. Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us. Friend of all Frillies, pray for us. Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us. Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us. 

(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Mr Vincent O'Brien, sings the Alleluia chorus, accompanied on the organ by Joseph Glynn. Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.) 

ZOE Talk away till you're black in the face. 

BLOOM (In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an emigrant's red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye.) Let me be going now, woman of the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a bating. (With a tear in his eye.) All insanity. Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not to be. Life's dream is o'er. End it peacefully. They can live on. (He gazes far away mournfully.) I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. (He breathes softly.) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell. 

ZOE (Stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet.) Honest? Till the next time. (She sneers.) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts. 

BLOOM (Bitterly.) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle. 

ZOE (In sudden sulks.) I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a bleeding whore a chance. 

BLOOM (Repentantly.) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. Where are you from? London? 

ZOE (Glibly.) Hog's Norton where the pigs play the organs. I'm Yorkshire born. (She holds his hand which is feeling for her nipple.) I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a short time? Ten shillings? 

BLOOM (Smiles, nods slowly.) More, houri, more. 

ZOE And more's mother? (She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I'll peel off. 

BLOOM (Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled pears.) Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster. (Earnestly.) You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you. 

ZOE (Flattered.) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. (She pats him.) Come. 

BLOOM Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle. 

ZOE Babby! 

BLOOM (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a chubby finger, his moist tongue tolling and lisping.) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone. 

THE BUCKLES Love me. Love me not. Love me. 

ZOE Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the pass touch of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard. 

(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.) 

THE MALE BRUTES (Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro.) Good! 

(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are seated. They examine him curiously from under their pencilled brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.) 

ZOE (Her lucky hand instantly saving him.) Hoopsa! Don't fall upstairs. 

BLOOM The just man falls seven times. (He stands aside at the threshold.) After you is good manners. 

ZOE Ladies first, gentlemen after. 

(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding out her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the an tiered rack of the hall hang a man's hat and waterproof Bloom uncovers himself but, seeing them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return landing is thrown open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with an apes gait, his bald head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar his twotailed black braces dangling at heels. Averting his face quickly Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the chandelier. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapes-tried with a paper of yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearth rug of matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he beats time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain purse in her hand, sits perched on the edge of the table swinging her leg and glancing at herself in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag of her corset lace hangs slightly below her jacket. Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the piano.) 

KITTY (Coughs behind her hand.) She's a bit imbecilic. (She signs with a waggling forefinger.) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt and white petticoat with the wand. She settles them down quickly.) Respect yourself. (She hiccups, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna.) O, excuse! 

ZOE More limelight, Charley. (She goes to the chandelier and turns the gas full cock.) 

KITTY (Peers at the gasjet.) What ails it tonight? 

LYNCH (Deeply.) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins. 

ZOE Clap on the back for Zoe. 

(The wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands at the pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the sofa corner, her limp forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy stye droops over her sleepy eyelid.) 

KITTY (Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot.) O, excuse! 

ZOE (Promptly.) Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift. 

(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides over her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. Stephen glances behind at the squatted figure with its cap back to the front.) 

STEPHEN As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Cla enarrant gloriam Domini. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about his almightiness. Mais, nom de nom, that is another pair of trousers. Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se passe. (He stops, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs.) Which side is your knowledge bump? 

THE CAP (With saturnine spleen.) Bah! It is because it is. Woman's reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Bah! 

STEPHEN You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone! 

THE CAP Bah! 

STEPHEN Here's another for you. (He frowns.) The reason is because the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible interval which . 

THE CAP Which? Finish. You can't. 

STEPHEN (With on effort.) Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which. 

THE CAP Which? (Outside the gramophone begins to blare The Holy City.) 

STEPHEN (Abruptly.) What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not itself. God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself, becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow's noise in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. Ecco! 

LYNCH (With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe Higgins.) What a learned speech, eh? 

ZOE (Briskly.) God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten. 

(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.) 

FLORRY They say the last day is coming this summer. 

KITTY No! 

ZOE (Explodes in laughter.) Great unjust God! 

FLORRY (Offended.) Well, it was in the papers about Anti christ. O, my foot's tickling. 

(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patterpast, yelling.) 

THE NEWSBOYS Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist. 

(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.) 

STEPHEN A time, times and half a time. 

(Reuben J. Antichrist, wanderingjew, a clutching hand open on his spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrims wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which the sodden huddled mass of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering darkness.) 

ALL What? 

THE HOBGOBLIN (His jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping, with outstretched clutching arms, then all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs.) Il vient! C'est moi! L'homme qui rit! L'homme primigene! (He whirls round and round with dervish howls.) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his hands.) Les jeux son! faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks.) Rien n'va plus. (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.) 

FLORRY (Sinking into torpor, crosses herself secretly.) The end of the world! 

(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and feetshuffling.) 

THE GRAMOPHONE Jerusalem! Open your gates and sing Hosanna... 

(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star falls from it, proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tight-rope taut from zenith to nadir the End of the World, a two headed octopus in gillies kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels, in the fob of the Three Lugs of Man.) 

THE END OF THE WORLD (With a Scotch accent.) Wha'll dance the keel row, the keel row, the keel row? 

(Over the passing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's voice, harsh as a corncrakes, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergefaced above a rostrum about which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps the parapet.) 

ELIJAH No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dave Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's time is 12.25. Tell mother you'll be there. Rush your order and you play a slick ace. Join on right here! Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener, sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and getting down to bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that? O.K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You call me up by sunphone any old time. Bumboosers, save your stamps. (He shouts.) Now then our glory song. All join heartily in the singing. Encore! (He sings.) Jeru... 

THE GRAMOPHONE (Drowning his voice.) Whorusalaminyour highhohhhh. 

(The disc rasps gratingly against the needle.) 

THE THREE' WHORES (Covering their ears, squawk.) Ahhkkk! 

ELIJAH (In rolledup shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the top of his voice, his arms uplifted.) Big Brother up there, Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them. Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the way you been, Miss Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. (He winks at his audience.) Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he ain't saying nothing. 

KITTY-KATE I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a working plumber was my ruination when I was pure. 

ZOE-FANNY I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it. 

FLORRY-TERESA It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three stars I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed. 

STEPHEN In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end. Blessed be the eight beatitudes. 

(The beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students' gowns, four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching.) 

THE BEATITUDES (Incoherently.) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum bishop. 

LYSTER (In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly.) He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the light. 

(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser attire, shinily laundered, his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears a mandarin's kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizard-lettered, and a high pagoda hat.) 

BEST (Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the crown of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot.) I was just beautifying him, don't you know. A thing of beauty, don't you know. Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says. (Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a corner; with carping accent.) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them. 

(In the cone of the search light behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaan MacLir broods, chin on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid mantle. About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His left hand grasps a huge crayfish by its two talons.) 

MANANAAN MACLIR (With a voice of waves.) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor! Ma! White yoghin of the Gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. (With a voice of whistling seawind.) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't have my leg pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult of Shakti. (With a cry of stormbirds.) Shakti, Shiva! Dark hidden Father! (He smites with his bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its co-operative dial glow the twelve signs of the zodiac. He wails with the vehemence of the ocean.) Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead, I am the dreamery creamery butter. 

(A skeleton judas hand strangles the light. The green light wanes to mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.) 

THE GASJET Pooah! Pfuiiiiii! 

(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the mantle.) 

ZOE Who has a fag as I'm here? 

LYNCH (Tossing a cigarette on to the table.) Here. 

ZOE (Her head perched aside in mock pride.) Is that the way to hand the pot to a lady? (She stretches up to light the cigarette over the flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch with his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her garters up her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie's green. She puffs calmly at her cigarette.) Can you see the beauty spot of my behind? 

LYNCH I'm not looking. 

ZOE (Makes sheep's eyes.) No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you suck a lemon? 

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloom, then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the poker. Blue fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desirously, twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger with her spittle and gazing in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts. He is sausaged into several overcoats and wears a brown macintosh under which he holds a roll of parchment. In his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. On his head is perched an Egyptian pshent. Two quills project over his ears.) 

VIRAG (Heels together bows.) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. (He coughs thoughtfully, drily.) Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Good. 

BLOOM Granpapachi. But... 

VIRAG Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I should opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a word. Hippogriff. Am I right? 

BLOOM She is rather lean. 

VIRAG (Not unpleasantly.) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallax! (With a nervous twitch of his head.) Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax! 

BLOOM (An elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek.) She seems sad. 

VIRAG (Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left eye with a finger and barks hoarsely.) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Colombus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon. (More genially.) Well then, permit me to draw your attention to item number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel. 

BLOOM (Regretfully.) When you come out without your gun. 

VIRAG We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either... 

BLOOM With?... 

VIRAG (His tongue upcurling.) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. (His throat twitches.) Slapbang! There he goes again. 

BLOOM The stye I dislike. 

VIRAG (Arches his eyebrows.) Contact with a goldring, they say. Argumentum ad feminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyo saurus. For the rest Eve's sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. (He twitches.) It is a funny sound. 

(He coughs encouragingly.) But possibly it is only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg. 

BLOOM (Reflecting.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said . 

VIRAG (Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking.) Stop twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. La causa è santa. Tara. Tara. (Aside.) He will surely remember. 

BLOOM Rosemary also did I understand you to say or will power over parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand cures. Mnemo? 

VIRAG (Excitedly.) I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. (He taps his parchmentroll energetically.) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? (With a dry snigger.) You intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem and the summer months of 1882 to square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gusseted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? (He crows derisively.) Keekeereekee! 

(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores, then gazes at the veiled mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.) 

BLOOM I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will then tomorrow as now was be past yester. 

VIRAG (Prompts into his ear in a pig's whisper.) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal verve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! (His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally.) They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar. Bear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. (He coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully with a scooping hand.) You shall find that these night insects follow the light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun. Nightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! Buzz! 

BLOOM Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I... 

VIRAG (His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key.) Splendid! Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. (He gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles.) Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth! (He unrolls his parchment rapidly and reads, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the letters which he claws.) Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. I'm the best o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. (He wags head with cackling raillery.) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. 

BLOOM (Absently.) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the serpent contradict. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis. 

VIRAG (His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed, psalms in outlandish monotone.) That the cows with their those distended udders that they have been the known... 

BLOOM I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (He repeats.) Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (Profoundly.) Instinct rules the world. In life. In death. 

VIRAG (Head askew, arches his back and hunched wing- shoulders, peers at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a homing claw and cries.) Who's Ger Ger? Who's dear Gerald? O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? (He mews.) Luss puss puss puss! (He sighs, draws back and stares sideways down with dropping underjaw.) Well, well. He doth rest anon. 

I'm a tiny tiny thing 
Ever flying in the spring 
Round and round a ringaring. 
Long ago I was a king, 
Now I do this kind of thing 
On the wing, on the wing! 
Bing!
(He rushes against the mauve shade flapping noisily.) Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats. 
(From left upper entrance with two sliding steps Henry Flower comes forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and drooping plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacobs pipe, its clay bowl fashioned as a female head. He wears dark velvet hose and silverbuckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour's face with flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage of his amorous tongue.) 

HENRY (In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar.) There is a flower that bloometh. 

(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom regards Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendent dewlap to the piano.) 

STEPHEN (To himself.) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (He touches the keys again.) Minor chord comes now. Yes. Not much however. 

(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.) 

ARTIFONI Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto. 

FLORRY Sing us something. Love's old sweet song. 

STEPHEN No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter about the lute? 

FLORRY (Smirking.) The bird that can sing and won't sing. 

(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with Matthew Arnold's face.) 

PHILIP SOBER Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am watching you. 

PHILIP DRUNK (Impatiently.) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who was it told me his name? 

(His lawnmower begins to purr.) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere? Mac somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no? 

FLORRY And the song? 

STEPHEN Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. 

FLORRY Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once. 

STEPHEN Out of it now. (To himself.) Clever. 

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER (Their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms.) Clever ever. Out of it. Out of it. By the by have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us. 

ZOE There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with his coat buttoned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to him. I know you've a Roman collar. 

VIRAG Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (Harshly, his pupils waxing.) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag who disclosed the sex secrets of monks and maidens. Why I left the Church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. (He wriggles.) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. (He cries.) Coactus volui. Then giddy woman will run about. Strong man grasps woman's wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. (He chases his tail.) Piffpaff! Popo! (He stops, sneezes.) Pchp! (He worries his butt.) Prrrrrht! 

LYNCH I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting a bishop. 

ZOE (Spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils.) He couldn't get a connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush. 

BLOOM Poor man! 

ZOE (Lightly.) Only for what happened him. 

BLOOM How? 

VIRAG (A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte Goim! He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchias, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's bastard. (He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid, his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute world.) A son of a whore. Apocalypse. 

KITTY And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral. 

PHILIP DRUNK (Gravely.) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe? 

PHILIP SOBER (Gaily.) C'était le sacré pigeon, Philippe. 

(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair. And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a whores shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.) 

LYNCH (Laughs.) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes. 

FLORRY (Nods.) Locomotor ataxy. 

ZOE (Gaily.) O, my dictionary. 

LYNCH Three wise virgins. 

VIRAG (Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic lips.) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orange flower. Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. (He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork.) Messiah! He burst her tympanum. (With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm.) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk! 

(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fatpapped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing bagslops.) 

BEN POLLARD (Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone.) When love absorbs my ardent soul. 

(The virgins, Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley, burst through the ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.) 

THE VIRGINS (Gushingly.) Big Ben! Ben MacChree! 

A VOICE Hold that fellow with the bad breeches. 

BEN DOLLARD (Smites his thigh in abundant laughter.) Hold him now. 

HENRY (Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs.) Thine heart, mine love. (He plucks his lutestrings.) When first I saw. 

VIRAG (Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting.) Rats! (He yawns; showing a coalblack throat and closes his jaws by an upward push of his parchment roll.) After having said which I took my departure. Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck! 

(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb and gives a cows lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to the door his wild had slung behind him. Virag reaches the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and deftly claps sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.) 

THE FLYBILL K. 11. post no bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks. 

HENRY All is lost now. 

(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.) 

VIRAG'S HEAD Quack! 

(Exeunt severally.) 

STEPHEN (Over his shoulder to Zoe.) You would have preferred the fighting parson who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Anus Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet. 

LYNCH All one and the same God to her. 

STEPHEN (Devoutly.) And Sovereign Lord of all things. 

FLORRY (To Stephen.) I'm sure you are a spoiled priest. Or a monk. 

LYNCH He is. A Cardinal's son. 

STEPHEN Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw. 

(His Eminence, Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of all Ireland, appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals and socks. Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins, uphold his train, peeping under it. He wears a battered silk hat sideways on his head. His thumbs are stuck in his armpits and his palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary of corks ending on his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs, he invokes grace from on high with lace wave gestures and proclaims with bloated pomp.) 

THE CARDINAL 

Conservio lies captured. 
He lies in the lowest dungeon 
With manacles and chains around his limbs 
Weighing upwards of three tons.
(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks to and fro, ads akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour.) O, the poor little fellow Hi-hi-hi-hi-his legs they were yellow He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake But some bloody savage To graize his white cabbage He murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake. 
(A multitude of midges swarms over his robe. He scratches himself with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims.) I'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they'd walk me off the face of the bloody globe. 

(His head aslant, he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers, imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying his hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his train bearers. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling, Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow from afar, merciful, male, melodious.) Shall carry my heart to thee, Shall carry my heart to thee, And the breath of the balmy night Shall carry my heart to thee. 

(The trick doorhandle turns.) 

THE DOORHANDLE Theeee. 

ZOE The devil is in that door. 

(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard taking the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.) 

ZOE (Sniffs his hair briskly.) Hum. Thank your mother for the rabbits. I'm very fond of what I like. 

BLOOM (Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, pricks his ears.) If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event? 

ZOE (Tears open the silverfoil.) Fingers was made before forks. (She breaks off and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then turns kittenishly to Lynch.) No objection to French lozenges? (He nods. She taunts him.) Have it now or wait till you get it? (He opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the prize in left circle. His head follows. She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.) Catch. 

(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it through with a crack.) 

KITTY (Chewing.) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady. The gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still. 

BLOOM (In Svengali's fur overcoat, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the door. Then, rigid, with left foot advanced, he makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing his right arm downwards from his left shoulder.) Go, go, go, I conjure you, whoever you are. 

(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist outside. Blooms features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat, posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.) 

BLOOM (Solemnly.) Thanks. 

ZOE Do as you're bid. Here. 

(A firm heelclacking is heard on the stairs.) 

BLOOM (Takes the chocolate.) Aphrodisiac? But I thought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red influences lupus. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. This black makes me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. (He eats.) Influence taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Must come. Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews. 

(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress enters. She is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the hem with tasselled selvedge, and cools herself flirting a black horn fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her left hand are wedding and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated and fullnosed, with orangetainted nostrils. She has lace pendant beryl eardrops.) 

BELLA My word! I'm all of a mucksweat. 

(She glances around her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom with hard insistence. Her lace fan winnows wind towards her heated face, neck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.) 

THE FAN (Flirting quickly, then slowly.) Married, I see. 

BLOOM Yes... Partly, I have mislaid . 

THE FAN (Half opening, then closing.) And the missus is master. Petticoat government. 

BLOOM (Looks down with a sheepish grin.) That is so. 

THE FAN (Folding together, rests against her eardrop.) Have you forgotten me? 

BLOOM Yes. No. 

THE FAN (Folded akimbo against her waist.) Is me her was you dreamed before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we? (Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.) 

BLOOM (Wincing.) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which women love. 

THE FAN (Tapping.) We have met. You are mine. It is fate. 

BLOOM (Cowed.) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's spittle, as you probably... (He winces.) Ah! 

RICHIE GOULDING (Bagweighted, passes the door.) Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for a prince's liver and kidney. 

THE FAN (Tapping.) All things end. Be mine. Now. 

BLOOM (Undecided.) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman. Rain, exposure at dewfall on the sea rocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every phenomenon has a natural cause. 

THE FAN (Points downwards slowly.) You may. 

BLOOM (Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace. ) We are observed. 

THE FAN (Points downwards quickly.) You must. 

BLOOM (With desire, with reluctance.) I can make a true black knot. Learned when I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellet's. Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today. Ah! 

(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged ageing, bends over her hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.) 

BLOOM (Murmurs lovingly.) To be a shoefitter in Mansfield's was my love's young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris. 

THE HOOF Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight. 

BLOOM (Crosslacing.) Too tight? 

THE HOOF If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you. 

BLOOM Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad luck. Nook in wrong tache of her... person you mentioned. That night she met... Now! 

(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in mid-brow. His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.) 

BLOOM (Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen. 

BELLO (With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.) Hound of dishonour! 

BLOOM (Infatuated.) Empress! 

BELLO (His heavy cheekchops sagging.) Adorer of the adulterous rump! 

BLOOM (Plaintively.) Hugeness! 

BELLO Dungdevourer! 

BLOOM (With sinews semiflexed.) Magnificence. 

BELLO Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan.) Incline feet forward! Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You are falling. On the hands down! 

BLOOM (Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing.) Truffles! 

(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, snuffling, rooting at his feet, then lies, shamming dead with eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude of most excellent master.) 

BELLO (With bobbed hair purple gills, fat moustache rings round his shaven mouth, in mountaineer's puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with moor cock's feather, his hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in.) Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious heels, so glistening in their proud erectness. 

BLOOM (Enthralled, bleats.) I promise never to disobey. 

BELLO (Laughs loudly.) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm the tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume. 

(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe. 

ZOE (Widening her slip to screen her.) She's not here. 

BLOOM (Closing her eyes.) She's not here. 

FLORRY (Hiding her with her gown.) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good, sir. 

KITTY Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir. 

BELLO (Coaxingly.) Come, ducky dear. I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom puts out her timid head.) There's a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward.) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready. 

BLOOM (Fainting.) Don't tear my. 

BELLO (Savagely.) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. You're in for it this time. I'll make you remember me for the balance of your natural life. (His forehead veins swollen, his face congested.) I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat ham rashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter. (He belches.) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice Of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. 

(He twists her arm. Bloom squeaks, turning turtle.) 

BLOOM Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't! 

BELLO (Twisting.) Another! 

BLOOM (Screams.) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad! 

BELLO (Shouts.) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you. (He slaps her face.) 

BLOOM (Whimpers.) You're after hitting me. I'll tell... 

BELLO Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him. 

ZOE Yes. Walk on him! I will. 

FLORRY I will. Don't be greedy. 

KITTY No, me. Lend him to me. 

(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib, men's grey and green socks and brogues, flour-smeared, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door.) 

MRS KEOCH (Ferociously.) Can I help? (They hold and pinion Bloom.) 

BELLO (Squats, with a grunt, on Bloom's upturned face, puffing cigar-smoke, nursing a fat leg.) I see Keating Clay is elected chairman of the Richmond Asylum and bytheby Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quarters. Curse me for a fool that I didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. (He quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's ear.) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray? 

BLOOM (Goaded, buttocksmothered.) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one! 

BELLO Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg, pray for it as you never prayed before. (He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar.) Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss. (He throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman's knees, calls in a hard voice.) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (He bends sideways and squeezes his mount's testicles roughly, shouting.) Ho! off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper fashion. (He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle.) The lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop. 

FLORRY (Pulls at Bello.) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you. 

ZOE (Pulling at Florry.) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress? 

BLOOM (Stifling.) Can't. 

BELLO Well, I'm not. Wait. (He holds in his breath.) Curse it. Here. This bung's about burst. (He uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features, farts loudly.) Take that! (He recorks himself) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters. 

BLOOM (A sweat breaking out over him.) Not man. (He sniffs.) Woman. 

BELLO (Stands up.) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over head and shoulders and quickly too. 

BLOOM (Shrinks.) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tip-touch it with my nails? 

BELLO (Points to his whores.) As they are now, so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille, with whalebone busk, to the diamond trimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will remind you... 

BLOOM (A chafing soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and lace male hands and nose, leering mouth.) I tried her things on only once, a small prank, in Holles street. When we were hardup I washed them to save the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift. 

BELLO (Jeers.) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh! and showed off coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind close-drawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders, in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho! Ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunk leg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne Hotel, eh? 

BLOOM Miriam, Black. Demimondaine. 

BELLO (Guffaws.) Christ Almighty, it's too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade, about to be violated by Lieutenant Smythe Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell, M.P., Signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henry Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Cr&Aelig;sus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. (He guffaws again.) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat laugh? 

BLOOM (Her hands and features working.) It was Gerald converted me to be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful. 

BELLO (With wicked glee.) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn throne. 

BLOOM Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (Earnestly.) And really it's better the position... because often I used to wet. 

BELLO (Sternly.) No insubordination. The sawdust is there in the corner for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir! I'll teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds. 

THE SINS OF THE PAST (In a medley of voices.) He went through a form of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black Church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in d'Olier Street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a postal order? 

BELLO (Whistles loudly.) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out. Be candid for once. 

(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, Eooloohoom. Poldy Hock, Bootlaces a penny, cassidy's hag, blind stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, the other the... ) 

BLOOM Don't ask me. Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the half of the... I swear on my sacred oath... 

BELLO (Peremptorily.) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good-ghoststory or a line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr... ! 

BLOOM (Docile, gurgles.) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant... 

BELLO (Imperiously.) O get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when you're spoken to. 

BLOOM (Bows.) Master! Mistress! Mantamer! 

(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall.) 

BELLO (Satirically.) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes, also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (He places a ruby ring on her finger.) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress. 

BLOOM Thank you, mistress. 

BELLO You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one. Ay, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne. Drink me piping hot. Hop! you will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush. You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night your wellcreamed braceleted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. (He chuckles.) My boys will be no end charmed to see you so ladylike, the colonel, above all. When they come here the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First, I'll have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a short knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop shoulders. What offers? (He points.) For that lot trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (He bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom's vulva.) There's fine depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (He shoves his arm in a bidder's face.) Here, wet the deck and wipe it round! 

A BIDDER A florin! 

(Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.) 

A VOICE One and eightpence too much. 

THE LACQUEY Barang! 

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean. 

BELLO (Gives a rap with his gavel.) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points. Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stock getter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa, my jewel! Beg up! Whoa! (He brands his initial Con Bloom's croup.) So! Warranted Cohen! What advance on two bob, gentlemen? 

A DARKVISAGED MAN (In disguised accent.) Hoondert punt sterlink. 

VOICES (Subdued.) For the Caliph Haroun Al Raschid. 

BELLO (Gaily.) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blasé man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis XV heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your power of fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices. 

BLOOM (Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in mouth.) O, I know what you're hinting at now. 

BELLO What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (He stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suetfolds of Bloom's haunches.) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. (Loudly.) Can you do a man's job? 

BLOOM Eccles Street. 

BELLO (Sarcastically.) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (He spits in contempt.) Spittoon! 

BLOOM I was indecently treated, I... inform the police. Hundred pounds. Unmentionable. I. 

BELLO Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want, not your drizzle. 

BLOOM To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll!... We... Still... 

BELLO (Ruthlessly.) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and see. 

(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.) 

SLEEPY HOLLOW Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle! 

BLOOM (In tattered moccasins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tip toeing, fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries out.) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's! But that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and he. 

BELLO (Laughs mockingly.) That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar student. 

(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her bluescab in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.) 

MILLY My! It's Papli! But. O Papli, how old you've grown! 

BELLO Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writing table where we never wrote, Aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his men friends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest! Why not? How many women had you, say? Following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts. What, you male prostitute? Blameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander, O. 

BLOOM They... I 

BELLO (Cuttingly.) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art for art's sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's. 

BLOOM Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I will prove... 

A VOICE Swear! 

(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowie knife between his teeth.) 

BELLO As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and out and don't you forget it, old bean. 

BLOOM Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody... ? 

(He bites his thumb.) 

BELLO Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have. If you have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, what ever the buggers' names were, suffocated in the one cess pool. (He explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh.) We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (He pipes scoffingly.) Byby, Poldy! Byby, Papli! 

BLOOM (Clasps his head.) My will power! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff... (He weeps tearlessly.) 

BELLO (Sneers.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears! 

(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, 0. Mastiansky, the Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.) 

THE CIRCUMCISED (In a dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no flowers.) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad. 

VOICES (Sighing.) So he's gone. Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes. 

(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oak frame a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown art colours, descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews, stands over Bloom.) 

THE YEWS (Their leaves whispering.) Sister. Our sister. Ssh. 

THE NYMPH (Softly.) Mortal! (Kindly.) Nay, dost not weepest! 

BLOOM (Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with dignity.) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit. 

THE NYMPH Mortal! You found me in evil company, high kickers, coster picnic makers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in flesh tights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married. 

BLOOM (Lifts a turtle head towards her lap.) We have met before. On another star. 

THE NYMPH (Sadly.) Rubber goods. Neverrip. Brand as sup plied to the aristocracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo. 

BLOOM You mean Photo Bits? 

THE NYMPH I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame. 

BLOOM (Humbly kisses her long hair.) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal. I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray. 

THE NYMPH During dark nights I heard your praise. 

BLOOM (Quickly.) Yes, yes. You mean that I... Sleep reveals the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of my bed or rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless inoffensive vent. (He sighs.) 'Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage. 

THE NYMPH (Her fingers in her ears.) And words. They are not in my dictionary. 

BLOOM You understood them? 

THE YEWS Ssh. 

THE NYMPH (Covers her face with her hand.) What have I not seen in that chamber? What must my eyes look down on? 

BLOOM (Apologetically.) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea, long ago. 

THE NYMPH (Bends her head.) Worse! Worse! 

BLOOM (Reflects precautiously.) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle. 

(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.) 

THE WATERFALL 

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca 
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS (Mingling their boughs.) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days. 
JOHN WYSE NOLAN (In the background, in Irish National For ester's uniform, doffs his plumed hat.) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland! 

THE YEWS (Murmuring.) Who came to Poulaphouca with the high school excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade? 

BLOOM (Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered stockings with turnover tops, and a red school cap with badge.) I was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling odours of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the throng penned tight on the old Royal stairs, for they love crushes, instincts of the herd, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice. Even a pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days. 

(Halcyon Days, high school boys in blue and white football jerseys and shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton, Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.) 

THE HALCYON DAYS Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! 

(They cheer.) 

BLOOM (Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamufflered, stunned with spent snowballs, struggles to rise.) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's ring all the bells in Montague Street. (He cheers feebly.) Hurray for the High School! 

THE ECHO Fool! 

THE YEWS (Rustling.) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses are heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the leaves and break blossoming into bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade? 

THE NYMPH (Coyly through parting fingers.) There! In the open air? 

THE YEWS (Sweeping downward.) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward. 

THE WATERFALL 

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca 
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH (With wide fingers.) O! Infamy! 
BLOOM I was precocious. Youth. The fauns. I sacrificed to the god of the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette through ill-closed curtains, with poor papa's operaglasses. The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto Bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their crooked tree and I... A saint couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw? 

(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf thrusts a ruminating head with humid nostrils through the foliage.) 

STAGGERING BOB Me. Me see. 

BLOOM Simply satisfying a need. (With pathos.) No girl would when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play. 

(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping curvants.) 

THE NANNYGOAT (Bleats.) Megegaggegg! Nannannanny! 

BLOOM (Hatless, flushed, covered with burn of thistledown and gotrepine.) Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (He gazes intently downwards on the water.) Thirtytwo head over heels per second. Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of government printer's clerk. (Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a mummy, rolls rotatingly from the Lion's Head cliff into the purple Waiting waters.) 

THE DUMMYMUMMY Bbbbblllllbbblblodschbg? 

(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin's King sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards the land.) 

COUNCILLOR NANNETI (Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellow kitefaced, his hand in his waistcoat opening, declaims.) When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then let my epitaph be written. I have... 

BLOOM Done. Prff. 

THE NYMPH (Loftily.) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth.) Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could you... ? 

BLOOM (Pacing the heather abjectly.) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia, to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the ladies' friend. 

THE NYMPH In my presence. The powderpuff. (She blushes and makes a knee.) And the rest. 

BLOOM (Dejected.) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar where the back changes name. (With sudden fervour.) For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules... ? 

(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the treestems, cooeeing.) 

THE VOICE OF KITTY (In the thicket.) Show us one of them cushions. 

THE VOICE OF FLORRY Here. 

(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.) 

THE VOICE OF LYNCH (In the thicket.) Whew! Piping hot! 

THE VOICE OF ZOE (From the thicket.) Came from a hot place. 

THE VOICE OF VIRAG (A birdchief bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.) Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull! 

BLOOM It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. So womanly full. It fills me full. 

THE WATERFALL 

Phillaphulla Poulaphouca 
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS Ssh! Sister, speak! 
THE NYMPH (Eyeless, in nun's white habit, coif and huge winged wimple, softly, with remote eyes.) Tranquilia convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel, the apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (She reclines her head, sighing.) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the waters dull. 

(Bloom half rises. His back trousers button snaps.) 

THE BUTTON Bip! 

(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.) 

THE SLUTS 

O Leopold lost the pin of his drawers 
He didn't know what to do, 
To keep it up, 
To keep it up.
BLOOM (Coldly.) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing, like an ass pissing. 
THE YEWS (Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms ageing and swaying.) Deciduously! 

THE NYMPH Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (A large moist stain appears on her robe.) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (She clutches in her robe.) Wait, Satan. You'll sing no more lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (She draws a poniard and, clad in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins.) Nekum! 

BLOOM (Starts up, seizes her hand.) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat of nine lives! Fair play, madam. No pruning knife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do we lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (He clutches her veil.) A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue of the watercarrier or good Mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard? 

THE NYMPH (With a cry, flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a cloud of stench escaping from the cracks.) Poli... ! 

BLOOM (Calls after her.) As if you didn't get it on the double yourselves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength our weakness. What's our stud fee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee men dancers on the Riviera, I read. (The fleeing nymph raises a keen.) Eh! I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me. And would a jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Fool someone else, not me. (He sniffs.) But. Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease. 

(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.) 

BELLA You'll know me the next time. 

BLOOM (Composed, regards her.) Passée. Mutton dressed as lamb. Lone in the tooth and superfluous hairs. A raw onion the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your eyes are as vapid as the glass eyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller. 

BELLA (Contemptuously.) You're not game, in fact. (Her sowcunt barks.) Fohracht! 

BLOOM (Contemptuously.) Clean your nailless middle finger first, the cold spunk of your bully is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself. 

BELLA I know you, canvasser! Dead cod! 

BLOOM I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor! 

BELLA (Turns to the piano.) Which of you was playing the dead march from Saul? 

ZOE Me. Mind your cornflowers. (She darts to the piano and bangs chords on it with crossed arms.) The cat's ramble through the slag. (She glances back.) Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (She darts back to the table.) What's yours is mine and what's mine is my own. 

(Kitty disconcerted coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom approaches Zoe.) 

BLOOM (Gently.) Give me back that potato, will you? Zoe Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing. 

BLOOM (With feeling.) It is nothing, but still a relic of poor mamma. 

ZOE 

Give a thing and take it back 
God'll ask you where is that 
You'll say you don't know 
God'll send you down below.
BLOOM There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it. 
STEPHEN To have or not to have, that is the question. 

ZOE Here. (She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking.) Those that hides knows where to find. 

BELLA (Frowns.) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash that piano. Who's paying here? 

(She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.) 

STEPHEN (With exaggerated politeness.) This silken purse I made out of the sow's ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom.) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch. Dans ce bordel où tenons nostre état. 

LYNCH (Calls from the hearth.) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me. 

STEPHEN (Hands Bella a coin.) Gold. She has it. 

BELLA (Looks at the money, then at Zoe, Florry and Kitty.) Do you want three girls? It's ten shillings here. 

STEPHEN (Delightedly.) A hundred thousand apologies. (He fumbles again and takes out and hands her two crowns.) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is somewhat troubled. 

(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to himself in monosyllables. Zoe bounds over to the table. Kitty leans over Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty's waist, adds his head to the group.) 

FLORRY (Strives heavily to rise.) Ow! My foot's asleep. (She limps over to the table. Bloom approaches.) 

BELLA, ZOE. KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM (Chattering and squabbling.) The gentleman... ten shillings... paying for the three allow me a moment... this gentleman pays separate who's touching it?... ow... mind who you're pinching... are you staying the night or a short time? who did?... you're a liar, excuse me... the gentle man paid down like a gentleman... drink... it's long after eleven. 

STEPHEN (At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence.) No bottles! What, eleven? A riddle. 

ZOE (Lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the top of her stocking.) Hard earned on the flat of my back. 

LYNCH (Lifting Kitty from the table.) Come! 

KITTY Wait. (She clutches the two crowns.) 

FLORRY And me? 

LYNCH Hoopla! (He lifts her carries her and bumps her down on the sofa.) 

STEPHEN The fox crew, the cocks flew, The bells in heaven Were striking eleven. 'Tis time for her poor soul To get out of heaven. 

BLOOM (Quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and Florry.) So. Allow me. (He takes up the pound note.) Three times ten. We're square. 

BELLA (Admiringly.) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you. 

ZOE (Points.) Hum? Deep as a drawwell. (Lynch bends Kitty back over the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes with the poundnote to Stephen.) 

BLOOM This is yours. 

STEPHEN How is that? Le distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles again in his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object falls.) That fell. 

BLOOM (Stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches.) This. 

STEPHEN Lucifer. Thanks. 

BLOOM (Quietly.) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of. Why pay more? 

STEPHEN (Hands him all his coins.) Be just before you are generous. 

BLOOM I will but is it wise? (He counts.) One, seven, eleven, and five. Six. Eleven. I don't answer for what you may have lost. 

STEPHEN Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next Lessing says. Thirsty fox. (He laughs loudly.) Burying his grandmother. Probably he killed her. 

BLOOM That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say. 

STEPHEN Doesn't matter a rambling damn. 

BLOOM No, but... 

STEPHEN (Comes to the table.) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette from the sofa to the table.) And so Georgina Johnson is dead and married. (A cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it.) Wonder. Parlour magic. Married. Hm. (He strikes a match and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.) 

LYNCH (Watching him.) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer. 

STEPHEN (Brings the match nearer his eye.) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat. (He draws the match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable modality of the visible. (He frowns mysteriously.) Hm. Sphinx. The beast that has two backs at midnight. Married. 

ZOE It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him. 

FLORRY (Nods.) Mr Lambe from London. 

STEPHEN Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world. 

LYNCH (Embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply.) Dona nobis pacem. (The cigarette slips from Stephens fingers. Bloom picks it up and throws it into the grate.) 

BLOOM Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (To Zoe.) You have nothing? 

ZOE Is he hungry? 

STEPHEN (Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the bloodoath in the Dusk of the Gods.) 

Hangende Hunger, 
Fragende Frau, 
Macht uns alle kaput.
ZOE (Tragically.) Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (She takes his hand.) Blue eyed beauty, I'll read your hand. (She points to his forehead.) No wit, no wrinkles. (She counts.) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (Stephen shakes his head.) No kid. 
LYNCH Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake. (To Zoe.) Who taught you palmistry? 

ZOE (Turns.) Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. (To Stephen.) I see it in your face. The eye, like that. (She frowns with lowered head.) 

LYNCH (Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.) Like that. Pandy bat. 

(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs up.) 

FATHER DOLAN Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye. 

(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises from the pianola coffin.) 

DON JOHN CONMEE Now, Father Dolan! Now. I'm sure that Stephen is a very good little boy. 

ZOE (Examining Stephen's palm.) Woman's hand. 

STEPHEN (Murmurs.) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock. 

ZOE What day were you born? 

STEPHEN Thursday. Today. 

ZOE Thursday's child has far to go. (She traces lines on his hand.) Line of fate. Influential friends. 

FLORRY (Pointing.) Imagination. 

ZOE Mount of the moon. You'll meet with a... (She peers at his hands abruptly.) I won't tell you what's not good for you. Or do you want to know? 

BLOOM (Detaches her fingers and offers his palm.) More harm than good. Here. Read mine. 

BELLA Show. (She turns up Bloom's hand.) I thought so. Knobby knuckles, for the women. 

ZOE (Peering at Bloom's palm.) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry money. 

BLOOM Wrong. 

ZOE (Quickly.) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong? 

(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises, stretches her wings and clucks.) 

BLACK LIZ Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook. 

(She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off.) 

BLOOM (Points to his hand.) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it twenty-two years ago. I was sixteen. 

ZOE I see, says the blind man. Tell us news. 

STEPHEN See? Moves to one great goal. I am twenty two too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled, twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (He winces.) Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money? 

(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.) 

FLORRY What? 

(A hackneycar number three hundred and twentyfour, with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.) 

THE BOOTS (Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers.) Haw, haw, have you the horn? 

(Bronze by gold they whisper.) 

ZOE (To Florry.) Whisper. 

(They whisper again.) 

(Over the well of the car Blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw set sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan, in a yachtsman's cap and white shoes, officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes Boylan s shoulder.) 

LENEHAN Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few quims? 

BOYLAN (Seated, smiles.) Plucking a turkey. 

LENEHAN A good night's work. 

BOYLAN (Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks.) Blazes Kate! Up to sample or your money back. (He holds out a forefinger.) Smell that. 

LENEHAN (Smells gleefully.) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah! 

ZOE AND FLORRY (Laugh together.) Ha ha ha ha. 

BOYLAN bumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear. ) Hello, Bloom! Mrs Bloom up yet? 

BLOOM (In a flunkey's plum plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings and powdered wig.) I'm afraid not, sir, the last articles... 

BOYLAN (Tosses him sixpence.) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. (He hangs his hat smartly on a peg of Bloom's antlered head.) Show me in. I have a little private business with your wife. You understand? 

BLOOM Thank you, sir. Yes, sir, Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir. 

MARION He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (She plops splashing out of the water.) Raoul, darling, come and dry me. I'm in my pelt. Only my new hat and a carriage sponge. 

BOYLAN (A merry twinkle in his eye.) Topping! 

BELLA What? What is it? 

(Zoe whispers to her.) 

MARION Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt. 

BELLA (Laughing.) Ho ho ho ho. 

BOYLAN (To Bloom, over his shoulder.) You can apply your eye to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times. 

BLOOM Thank you, sir, I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot? (He holds an ointment jar.) Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower?... Lukewarm water?... 

KITTY (From the sofa.) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What. 

(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur lip-lapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.) 

MINA KENNEDY (Her eyes upturned.) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stuck together! Covered with kisses! 

LYDIA DOUCE (Her mouth opening.) Yumyum. O, he's carrying her round the room doing it! Ride a cock horse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream. 

KITTY (Laughing.) Hee hee hee. 

BOYLAN'S VOICE (Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach.) Ah! Gooblazqruk brukarchkrasht! 

MARION'S VOICE (Hoarsely, sweetly rising to her throat.) O! Weeshwashtkissima, pooisthnapoohuck! 

BLOOM (His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself) Show! Hide! Show! Plough her! More! Shoot! 

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY. KITTY Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee! 

LYNCH (Points.) The mirror up to nature. (He laughs.) Hu hu hu hu hu hu. 

(Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The face of William Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, crowned by the reflection of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the hall.) 

SHAKESPEARE (In dignified ventriloquy.) 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind. (To Bloom.) Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible. Gaze. (He crows with a black capon's laugh.) Iagogo! How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymomun. Iagogogo! 

BLOOM (Smiles yellowly at the whores.) When will I hear the joke? 

ZOE Before you're twice married and once a widower. 

BLOOM Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon, when measurements were taken near the skin after his death... 

(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed with deathtalk, tears and Tunny's tawny sherry, hurries by in her weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, lips and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup boots, lace eights. She holds a Scottish widow's insurance policy and lace marqueeumbrella under which her brood runs with her, Patsy hopping on one short foot, his collar loose, a hank of porksteaks dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cods mouth, Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her streamers flaunting aloft.) 

FREDDY Ah, ma, you're dragging me along! 

SUSY Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over! 

SHAKESPEARE (With paralytic rage.) Weda seca whokilla farst. 

(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures Shakespeares beardless face. The marqueeumbrella sways drunkenly, the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham in Merry Widow hat and kimono gown. She glides sidling and bowing, twisting japanesily.) 

MRS CUNNINGHAM (Sings.) And they call me the jewel of Asia. 

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM 

(Gazes on her impassive.) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep! 

STEPHEN Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgross father made the first confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was open. 

BELLA None of that here. Come to the wrong shop. 

LYNCH Let him alone. He's back from Paris. 

ZOE (Runs to Stephen and links him.) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo. 

(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace, where he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a painted smile on his face.) 

LYNCH (Pommelling on the sofa.) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrr rrrmmmmm. 

STEPHEN (Gobbles, with marionette jerks. ) Thousand places of entertainment to expenses your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps her heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world. All chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants. (He clocks his tongue loudly.) Ho, la la! Ce pif qu'il a! 

LYNCH Vive le vampire! 

THE WHORES Bravo! Parleyvoo! 

STEPHEN (Grimacing with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself) Great success of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable cos turned. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? (He points about him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and the whores reply to.) Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptoms virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter gentlemen to see in mirrors every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omelette on the belly pièce de Shakespeare. 

BELLA (Clapping her belly, sinks back on the sofa with a shout of laughter.) An omelette on the... Ho! ho! ho! ho!... Omelette on the... 

STEPHEN (Mincingly.) I love you, Sir darling. Speak you englishman tongue for double entente cordiale. O yes, mon loup. How much cost? Waterloo. Watercloset. (He ceases suddenly and holds up a forefinger.) 

BELLA (Laughing.) Omelette... 

THE WHORES (Laughing.) Encore! Encore! 

STEPHEN Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon. 

ZOE Go abroad and love a foreign lady. 

LYNCH Across the world for a wife. 

FLORRY Dreams go by contraries. 

STEPHEN (Extending his arms.) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine Avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet spread? 

BLOOM (Approaching Stephen.) Look. 

STEPHEN No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without end. (He cries.) Pater! Free! 

BLOOM I say, look... 

STEPHEN Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors! (He cries, his vulture talons sharpened.) Hola! Hillyho! 

(Simon Dedalus' voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but ready.) 

SIMON That's all right. (He swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling, uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard wings.) Ho, boy! Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with those halfcastes. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up! Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant in a field argent displayed. Ulster king at arms! hai hoop! (He makes the beagle's call giving tongue.) Bulbul! Burblblbrurblbl! Hai, boy! 

(The fronds and spaces of the wallpaper file rapidly across country. A stout fox drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, runs swift for the open, bright-eyed, seeking badger earth, under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrblng to be blooded. Ward union huntsmen and huntswomen live with them, hot for a kill. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, grey negroes waving torches. The crowd bowls of dicers, crown and anchor players, thimbleriggers, broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.) 

THE CROWD 

Card of the races. Racing card! 
Ten to one the field! 
Tommy on the clay here! 
Tommy on the clay! 
Ten to one bar one. 
Ten to one bar one. 
Try your luck on spinning Jenny! 
Ten to one bar one! 
Sell the monkey, boys! 
Sell the monkey! 
I'll give ten to one! 
Ten to one bar one!
(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost, his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field follows, a bunch of bucking mounts. Skeleton horses: Sceptre, Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the Duke of Westminsters Shotover, Repulse, the Duke of Beauforts' Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarfs ride them, rusty armoured, leaping, leaping in their saddles. Last in a drizzle of rain, on a broken-winded isabelle nag, Cock of the North, the favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the reins, a hockey stick at the ready. His nag, stumbling on whitegaitered feet, jogs along the rocky road.) 
THE ORANGE LODGES (Jeering.) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll be home the night! 

GARRETT DEASY (Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postage stamps, brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the chandelier as his mount lopes by at a schooling gallop.) Per vias rectas! 

(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag, a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes.) 

THE GREEN LODGES Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour! 

(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath the windows, singing in discord.) 

STEPHEN Hark! Our friend, noise in the street! 

ZOE (Holds up her hand.) Stop! 

PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON and CISSY CAFFREY 

Yet I've a sort a 
Yorkshire relish for...
ZOE That's me. (She claps her hands.) Dance! Dance! (She runs to the pianola.) Who has twopence? 
BLOOM Who'll. 

LYNCH (Handing her coins.) Here. 

STEPHEN (Cracking his fingers impatiently.) Quick! Quick! Where's my augur's rod? (He runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating his foot in tripudium.) 

ZOE (Turns the drumhandle.) There. 

(She drops two pennies in the slot. Glow pink and violet lights start forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Professor Goodwin, in a bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing a stained inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters across the room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the piano stool and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding with damsels grace, his bowknot bobbing.) 

ZOE (Twirls around herself heeltapping.) Dance. Anybody here for there? Who'll dance? 

(The pianola, with changing lights, plays in waltz time the prelude to My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the table and seizes Zoe around the waist. Florry and Bella push the table towards the fireplace. Stephen, aiming Zoe with exaggerated grace, begins to waltz her around the room. Her sleeve, falling from gracing arms, reveals a white fleshflower of vaccination. Bloom stands aside. 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 go-et of cream tulle, a green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief tight lavender trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In his buttonhole is a dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand limply on his breastbone, bows and fondles his flower and buttons.) 

MAGINNI The poetry of motion, art of callisthenics. No connection with Madam Legget Byrne's or Levinstone's. Fancy dress balls arranged. Deportment. The Katty Lanner steps. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (He minuets forward three paces on tripping bee's feet.) Tout le monde an avant! Révérence! Tout le monde en place! 

(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms,shrivels, shrinks, his live cape falling about the stool. The air, in firmer waltz time, pounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The lights change, glow, fade, gold, rose, 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, slim, 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 vis a vis. 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 eight hours 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 (Twisting, her hand to her brow.) O! 

MAGINNI Los tiroirs! Cha?ne de dames! La corbeille! Dos à dos! 

(Arabesquing wearily, they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving, unweaving, curtseying, twisting, simply swirling.) 

ZOE I'm giddy. 

(She frees herself droops on a chair, Stephen seizes Florry and turns with her.) 

MAGINNI Boulangère! Los ronds! Los ponts! Chevaux de bois! Escargots! 

(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands, the night hours link, each with arching arms, in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and Florry turn cumbrously.) 

MAGINNI Dansez avec vos dames! Changes de dames! Donnes le petit bouquet a 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 bit tern'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 arm's, 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 horn blower 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 scotlootshoot 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 one handled 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 wiswitchback lumbering up and down bump mash tub 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 wall. He stops dead.) 

STEPHEN Ho! 

(Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor in leper grey with a wreath of faded orange blossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave mould. 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? What bogey man's trick is this? 

BUCK MULLIGAN (Shakes his curling capbell.) The mockery of it! Kinch killed her dogsbody bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes into 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 said 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 all powerful. 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 brain work. 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.) 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 fingers.) 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 hits 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 flees from the room past the whores at the door.) 
BELLA (Screams.) After him! 

(The two whores rush to the halldoors. 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.) There. 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 hand 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 a 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 vice-chancellor. You don't want a scandal. 

BELLA (Angrily.) Trinity! Coming down here ragging after the boat races and paying nothing. Are you my commander here? 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 you incog? 

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

BLOOM What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and shouts.) 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 uses on her whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses. Corny Kelleher replies with a ghostly 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 Baschid, 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, womans 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, Whatdoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatslike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwith, Chris Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, Joe Hynes, red Murray, editor Brayden, T.M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland Row postmistress, C.P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, man in the street, other man in the street, Footballboots, pugnosed driver rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M'Guinness, Mrs Joe Gallaher George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector Generals, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, handsomemamedwomanrubbed againstwidebehindinClonskeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the managing clerk of Drimmies colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E. Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Galbraith, the constable off Eccles Street corner old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the mystery man on the beach, a retriever Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers. 

THE HUE AND CRY (Helterskelterelterwelter) He's Bloom! Stop Bloom! Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stop him on the corner! 

(At the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding Bloom panting stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not knowing a jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat brawlaltogether.) 

STEPHEN (With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly.) You are my guests. The uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory. 

PRIVATE CARR (To Cissy Caffrey.) Was he insulting you? 

STEPHEN Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive. 
VOICES No, he didn't. The girl's telling lies. He was in Mrs Cohen's. What's up? Soldiers and civilians. 

CISSY CAFFREY I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do - you know and the young man ran up behind me. But I'm faithful to the man that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore. 

STEPHEN (Catches sight of Kitty's and Lynch's heads.) Hail, Sisyphus. (He points to himself and the others.) Poetic. Neopoetic. 

VOICES She's faithfultheman. 

CISSY CAFFREY Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend. 

PRIVATE COMPTON He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Harry. 

PRIVATE CARR (To Cissy.) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss? 

LORD TENNYSON (In union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.) Their's not to reason why. 

PRIVATE COMPTON Biff him, Harry. 

STEPHEN (To Private Compton. ) I don't know your name but you are quite right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole. 

CISSY CAFFREY (To the crowd.) No, I was with the private. 

STEPHEN (Amiably.) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for example... 

PRIVATE CARR (His cap awry, advancing to Stephen.) Say, how would it be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw? 

STEPHEN (Looks up in the sky.) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of self-pretence. Personally, I detest action. (He waves his hand) Hand hurts me slightly. Enfin, ce sont vos oignons. 

(To Cissy Caffrey.) Some trouble is on here. What is it, precisely? 

DOLLY GRAY (From her balcony waves her handkerchief giving the sign of the heroine of Jericho.) Rahab. Cook's son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly. Dream of the girl you left behind and she will dream of you. 

(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.) 

BLOOM (Elbowing through the crowd plucks Stephen's sleeve vigorously.) Come now, professor, that carman is waiting. 

STEPHEN (Turns.) Eh? (He disengages himself) Why should I not speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (He points his finger.) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye. Retaining the perpendicular. 

(He staggers a pace back.) 

BLOOM (Propping him.) Retain your own. 

STEPHEN (Laughs emptily.) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the law of existence but modern philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of England, have invented arbitration. (He taps his brow.) But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king. 

BIDDY THE CLAP Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor out of the college. 

CUNTY KATE I did. I heard that. 

BIDDY THE CLAP He expresses himself with much marked refinement of phraseology. 

CUNTY KATE Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy. 

PRIVATE CARR (Pulls himself free and comes forward.) What's that you're saying about my king? 

(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched, with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinners' and Probyns' horse, Lincoln's Inn bencher and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. He sucks a red jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perfect and sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked made in Germany. In his left hand he holds a plasterers bucket on which is printed: Défense d'uriner. A roar of welcome greets him.) 

EDWARD THE SEVENTH (Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly.) Peace, perfect peace. For identification bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. (He turns to his subjects.) We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best of good luck. Mahak makar a back. 

(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen, Bloom and Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts the bucket graciously in acknowledgement.) 

PRIVATE CARR (To Stephen.) Say it again. 

STEPHEN (Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up.) I understand your point of view, though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age of patent medicine. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the point. You die for your country, suppose. (He places his arm on Private Carr's sleeve.) Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I don't want it to die. Damn death. Long live life! 

EDWARD THE SEVENTH (Levitates over heaps of slain in the garb and with the halo of Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his phosphorescent face.) 

My methods are new and are causing surprise. 
To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.
STEPHEN Kings and unicorns! (He falls back a pace.) Come somewhere and we'll... What was that girl saying?... 
PRIVATE COMPTON Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry. 

BLOOM (To the privates, softly.) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taking a little more than is good for him. Absinthe, the greeneyed monster. I know him. He's a gentleman, a poet. It's all right. 

STEPHEN (Nods, smiling and laughing.) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of impostors. 

PRIVATE CARR I don't give a bugger who he is. PRIVATE COMPTON We don't give a bugger who he is. 

STEPHEN I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull. 

(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-o'-day boys hat signs to Stephen.) 

KEVIN EGAN H'lo. Bonjour! The vieille ogresse with the dents jaunes. 

(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbit face nibbling a quince leaf.) 

PATRICE Socialiste! 

DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY (In medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble indignation points a mailed hand against the privates.) Were those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy! 

BLOOM (To Stephen.) Come home. You'll get into trouble. 

STEPHEN (Swaying.) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence. 

BIDDY THE CLAP One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage. 

THE VIRAGO Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone. 

THE BAWD The red's as good as the green, and better. Up the soldiers! Up King Edward! 

A ROUGH (Laughs.) Ay! Hands up to De Wet. 

THE CITIZEN (With a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls.) 

May the God above 
Send down a cove 
With teeth as sharp as razors 
To slit the throat 
Of the English dogs 
That hanged our Irish leaders.
THE CROPPY BOY (The rope noose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both hands.) 
I bear no hate to a living thing, 
But love my country beyond the king.
RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER (Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with a gladstone bag which he opens.) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from the body of Miss Barrow which sent Seddon to the gallows. 
(He jerks the rope, the assistants leap at the victims legs and drag him downward, grunting: the croppy boys tongue protrudes violently.) 

THE CROPPY BOY Horhot ho hray ho rhother's hest. 

(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of sperm spouting through his death clothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up.) 

RUMBOLD I'm near it myself. (He undoes the noose.) Rope which hanged the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time as applied to His Royal Highness. (He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws out his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.) My painful duty has now been done. God save the king! 

EDWARD THE SEVENTH (Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket and sings with soft contentment.) 

On coronation day, on coronation day, 
O, Won't We have a merry time, 
Drinking whisky, beer and wine!
PRIVATE CARR Here. What are you saying about my king? 
STEPHEN (Throws up his hands.) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some brutish empire of his. Money I haven't. (He searches his pockets vaguely.) Gave it to someone. 

PRIVATE CARR Who wants your bleeding money? 

STEPHEN (Tries to move off.) Will some one tell me where I am least likely to meet these necessary evils? ?a se voit aussi à Paris. Not that I... But by Saint Patrick!... 

(The women's heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf hat appears seated on a toadstool, the deathflower of the potato blight on her breast.) 

STEPHEN Aha! I know you, grammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow! 

OLD GUMMY GRANNY (Rocking to and fro.) Ireland's sweetheart, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! (She keens with banshee woe.) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! (She wails.) You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand? 

STEPHEN How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow. 

CISSY CAFFREY (Shrill.) Stop them from fighting! 

A ROUGH Our men retreated. 

PRIVATE CARR (Tugging at his belt.) I'll wring the neck of any bugger says a word against my fucking king. 

BLOOM (Terrified.) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding. 

THE CITIZEN Erin go bragh! 

(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, decorations, trophies of war wounds. Both salute with fierce hostility.) 

PRIVATE COMPTON Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proboer. 

STEPHEN Did I? When? 

BLOOM (To the redcoats.) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch. 

THE NAVVY (Staggering past.) O, yes. O, God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr! O! Bo! 

(Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted spear points. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible, in bearskin cap with hackle plume and accoutrements, with epaulette, gilt chevrons and sabretache, his breast bright with medals, toes the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the knights templars.) 

MAJOR TWEEDY (Growls gruffly.) Rorke's Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahal shalal hashbaz. 

PRIVATE CARR I'll do him in. 

PRIVATE COMPTON (Waves the crowd back.) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher's shop of the bugger. 

(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the king.) 

CISSY CAFFREY They're going to fight. For me! 

CUNTY KATE The brave and the fair. 

BIDDY THE CLAP Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best. 

CUNTY KATE (Blushing deeply.) Nay, Madam. The gules doublet and merry Saint George for me! 

STEPHEN The harlot's cry from street to street Shall weave old Ireland's windingsheet. 

PRIVATE CARR (Loosening his belt, shouts.) I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king. 

BLOOM (Shakes Cissy Caffrey's shoulders.) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver. 

CISSY CAFFREY (Alarmed seizes Private Carr's sleeve.) Amn't I with you? Amn't I your girl? Cissy's your girl. (She cries.) Police! 

STEPHEN (Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey.) 

White thy fambles, red thy gan 
And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES Police! 
DISTANT VOICES Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire! 

(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey, winging from the sea, rising from marsh lands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, connorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlin, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The midnight sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black goat-fell cloaks arise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom Rochford, winner in athletes singlet and breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves. laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on broomsticks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragon's teeth. Armed heroes spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel O'Connell, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M'Carthy against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond John O'Leary against liar O'Johnny, lord Edward Fitzgerald against lord Gerald Fitzedward, The O'Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of The Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the field altar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns. From the high barbicans of the tower two shafts of light fall on the smokepalled altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies naked, fettered, a chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father Malachi O'Flynn, in a long petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front, celebrates camp mash. The Reverend Mr Hugh C. Haines love MA. in a plain cassock and mortar board, his head and collar back to the front, holds over the celebrants head an open umbrella.) 

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN Introibo ad altare diaboli. 

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE To the devil which hath made glad my young days. 

FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN (Takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host.) Corpus Meum. 

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE (Raises high behind the celebrant's petticoats, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.) My body. 

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rot, Aiulella! 

(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.) 

ADONAI Dooooooooooog! 

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! 

(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.) 

ADONAI Goooooooooood! 

(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of mange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.) 

PRIVATE CARR (With ferocious articulation.) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe! 

OLD GUMMY GRANNY (Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen's hand.) Remove him, acushla. At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (She prays.) O good God, take him! 

BLOOM (Runs to Lynch.) Can't you get him away? 

LYNCH He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (To Bloom.) Get him away, you. He won't listen to me. (He drags Kitty away.) 

STEPHEN (Points.) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit. 

BLOOM (Runs to Stephen.) Come along with me now before worse happens. Here's your stick. 

STEPHEN Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason. 

CISSY CAFFREY (Pulling Private Carr.) Come on, you're boosed. He insulted me but I forgive him. (Shouting in his ear.) I forgive him for insulting me. 

BLOOM (Over Stephen's shoulder.) Yes, go. You see he's incapable. 

PRIVATE CARR (Breaks loose.) I'll insult him. 

(He rushes towards Stephen, fists outstretched, and strikes him in the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls stunned. He lies prone, his face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and picks it up.) 

MAJOR TWEEDY (Loudly.) Carbine in bucket! cease fire! Salute! 

THE RETRIEVER (Barking furiously.) Ute ute ute ute ute ute uteute. 

THE CROWD Let him up! Don't strike him when he's down! Air! Who? The soldier hit him. He's a professor. Is he hurted? Don't manhandle him! He's fainted! 

(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.) 

What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the influence? Let them go and fight the Boers! 

THE BAWD Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? He gave him the coward's blow. 

(They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit.) 

THE RETRIEVER (Barking.) Wow wow wow. 

BLOOM (Shoves them back, loudly.) Get back, stand back! 

PRIVATE COMPTON (Tugging his comrade.) Here bugger off, Harry. There's the cops! 

(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group) 

FIRST WATCH What's wrong here? 

PRIVATE COMPTON We were with this lady and he insulted us and assaulted my chum. (The retriever barks.) Who owns the bleeding tyke? 

CISSY CAFFREY (With expectation.) Is he bleeding? 

A MAN (Rising from his knees.) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right. 

BLOOM (Glances sharply at the man.) Leave him to me. I can easily... 

SECOND WATCH Who are you? Do you know him? 

PRIVATE CARR (Lurches towards the watch.) He insulted my lady friend. 

BLOOM (Angrily.) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness. Constable, take his regimental number. 

SECOND WATCH I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty. PRIVATE COMPTON (Pulling his comrade.) Here, bugger off, Harry. Or Bennett'll have you in the lockup. 

PRIVATE CARR (Staggering as he is pulled away.) God fuck old Bennett! He's a whitearsed bugger. I don't give a shit for him. 

FIRST WATCH (Taking out his notebook.) What's his name? 

BLOOM (Peering over the crowd.) I just see a car there. If you give me a hand a second, sergeant. 

FIRST WATCH Name and address. 

(Corny Kelleher weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his hand, appears among the bystanders.) 

BLOOM (Quickly.) O, the very man! (He whispers.) Simon Dedalus' son. A bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back. 

SECOND WATCH Night, Mr Kelleher. 

CORNY KELLEHER (To the watch, with drawling eye.) That's all right. I know him. Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (He laughs.) Twenty to one. Do you follow me? 

FIRST WATCH (Turns to the crowd.) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on out of that. 

(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.) 

CORNY KELLEHER Leave it to me, sergeant. That'll be all right. (He laughs, shaking his head.) We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse. What? Eh, what? 

FIRST WATCH (Laughs.) I suppose so. 

CORNY KELLEHER (Nudges the second watch.) Come and wipe your name off the slate. (He lilts, wagging his head.) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me? 

SECOND WATCH (Genially.) Ah, sure we were too. 

CORNY KELLEHER (Winking.) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there. 

SECOND WATCH All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night. 

CORNY KELLEHER I'll see to that. 

BLOOM (Shakes hands with both of the watch in turn.) Thank you very much gentlemen, thank you. (He mumbles confidentially.) We don't want any scandal, you understand. Father is a well known, highly respected citizen. Just a little wild oats, you understand. 

FIRST WATCH O, I understand, sir. 

SECOND WATCH That's all right, Sir. 

FIRST WATCH It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have had to report it at the station. 

BLOOM (Nods rapidly.) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty. 

SECOND WATCH It's our duty. 

CORNY KELLEHER Good night, men. 

THE WATCH (Saluting together.) Night, gentlemen. (They move off with slow heavy tread.) 

BLOOM (Blows.) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car?. 

CORNY KELLEHER (Laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to the car brought up against the scaffolding.) Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race. Drowning his grief and were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown. 

BLOOM I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to... 

CORNY KELLEHER (Laughs.) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. No, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (He laughs again and leers with lacklustre eye.) Thanks be to God we have it in the house what, eh, do you follow me? Hah! hah! hah! 

BLOOM (Tries to laugh.) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow he's laid up for the past week) and we had a liquor together and I was just making my way home... 

(The horse neighs.) 

THE HORSE Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome! 

CORNY KELLEHER Sure it was Behan, our jarvey there, that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Cohen's and I told him to pull up and got off to see. (He laughs.) Sober hearsedrivers a specialty. Will I give him a lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what? 

BLOOM No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop. 

(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher asquint, drawls at the horse. Bloom in gloom, looms down.) 

CORNY KELLEHER (Scratches his nape.) Sandycove! (He bends down and calls to Stephen.) Eh! (He calls again.) Eh! He's covered with shavings anyhow. Take care they didn't lift anything off him. 

BLOOM No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick. 

CORNY KELLEHER Ah well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll shove along. (He laughs.) I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead. Safe home! 

THE HORSE (Neighs.) Hohohohohome. 

BLOOM Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few... 

(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The horse harness jingles.) 

CORNY KELLEHER (From the car, standing.) Night. 

BLOOM Night. 

(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly. The car and horse back slowly, awkwardly and turn. Corny Kelleher on the sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of mirth at Blooms plight. The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic merriment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes his head in mute mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher reassures that the two bobbies will allow the sleep to continue for what else is to be done. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom with his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their tooralooloolooloo lay. Bloom, holding in his hand Stephens hat festooned with shavings and ashplant, stands irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by the shoulder.) 

BLOOM Eh! Ho! (There is no answer he bends again.) Mr Dedalus! (There is no answer.) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (He bends again and, hesitating, brings his mouth near the face of the prostrate form.) Stephen! (There is no answer. He calls again.) Stephen! 

STEPHEN (Groans.) Who? Black panther vampire. (He sighs and stretches himself then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels.) Who... drive... Fergus now. And pierce... wood's woven shade?... 

(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.) 

BLOOM Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (He bends again and undoes the buttons of Stephen's waistcoat.) To breathe. (He brushes the wood shavings from Stephen's clothes with light hands and fingers.) One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (He listens.) What! 

(Murmurs.) 

... shadows... the woods 
... white breast... dim...
(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom holding his hat and ashplant stands erect. A dog barks in the distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He looks down on Stephen's face and form.) 
BLOOM (Communes with the night.) Face reminds me of his poor mother. In the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl. Some girl. Best thing could happen him... (He murmurs.)... swear that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts... (He murmurs.) in the rough sands of the sea. a cabletow's length from the shore... where the tide ebbs ... and flows... 

(Silent, thoughtful, alert, he stands on guard, his fingers at his lips in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads from right to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.) 

BLOOM (Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.) Rudy! 

RUDY (Gazes unseeing into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing, smiling. He has a delicate mauveface. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim ivory cane with a violet howknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat pocket.) 


通向红灯区的马博特街口。路面未铺卵石，骨骼般的电车岔道伸向远方，沿线是像鬼火似的红绿信号灯和危险信号机。一排排简陋的房屋半敞着门。偶有灯火朦朦胧胧地映出彩虹般的扇形光环。一群矮小的男男女女围着停在这里的拉白奥蒂的平底船型冰淇淋车[1] ，争争吵吵。他们抓取夹有煤炭色[2]和紫铜色冰淇淋的薄脆饼。这些孩子们边嘬着，边缓缓地散去。平底车高高抬起鸡冠形天鹅头，穿过灯台下的黑暗前进，依稀浮现出蓝白两色。回荡着口哨的相互呼应声。）

呼声

等一等，亲爱的。我跟你一道去。

应答

到马棚后面来。

（一个又聋又哑的白痴鼓着金鱼眼，松弛的嘴巴淌着口水，因患舞踏病浑身发颤，趔趔趄趄地走过。孩子们手拉着手，把他圈在中间。）

孩子们

左撇子！敬礼！

白痴

（举起麻痹的左臂，发出咯咯声）金立！

孩子们

老爷儿哪儿去啦？

白痴

（结结巴巴地）施边儿。[3] 

（他们放开了他。他打着趔趄往前走。一个侏儒女子在两道栏杆之间吊根绳子，坐在上面打秋千，口中数着数。一个男子趴在垃圾箱上，用胳膊和帽子掩着脸，移动一下[4]，呻吟，咯吱咯吱地磨牙齿，接着又打起呼噜。台阶上，一个到处掏垃圾的侏儒，蹲下身去，把一袋破布烂骨扛到肩上。一个老妪手执一盏满是油烟的煤油灯站在一旁，将她那最后一只瓶子塞进他的口袋。男子扛起猎物，将鸭舌帽拽歪，一声不响地蹒跚而去。老妪摇晃着灯，也回到自己的窝。一个罗圈腿娃娃手里拿着纸做的羽毛球，蹲在门口，跟在她后面使劲地横爬着，并抓住她的裙子往上攀。一个喝得醉醺醺的壮工双手握住地窖子前的栅栏，东倒西歪，踉踉跄跄地踱着。拐角处，两个披着短斗篷的夜班巡警，手按着装警棍的皮套，朦朦胧胧中身影显得高大无比。一只盘子打碎了，一个女人尖声嚷叫，接着是娃娃的啼哭声。男人厉声咒骂，嘟嘟囔囔，随后沉默下来。几个人影晃来晃去，忽而潜藏起来，忽而又从破房子里窥伺。一间点燃着嵌在瓶口里的蜡烛的屋中，一个邋里邋遢的女人正替一个长着瘰疠的娃娃梳理着其乱如麻的头发。从一条巷子里传出西茜•卡弗里那依然很年轻的高亢歌声。）

西茜•卡弗里

我把它给了摩莉，

因为她无忧无虑，

把鸭腿儿给了她，

把鸭腿儿给了她。

（士兵卡尔和士兵康普顿[5]，腋下紧紧夹着短棍，摇摇晃晃地走着，向右转，一起放屁。从巷子里传出男人们的一阵朗笑声。一个悍妇嗄声恶言还击。）

悍妇

天打雷霹的，毛屁股蛋儿。卡文妞儿，加油儿。

西茜•卡弗里

我运气好着呢。卡文、库特黑尔和贝尔士尔贝特[6] 。（唱）

我把它给了内莉，

让她戳到肚皮里，

把鸭腿儿给了她，

把鸭腿儿给了她。

（士兵卡尔和士兵康普顿转过身来反唇相讥。他们的军服在灯光映照下鲜艳如血色，凹陷的黑军帽扣在剪得短短的金黄色头发上。斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯和林奇穿过人群，同英国兵擦身而过。）

士兵康普顿

（晃动手指）给牧师[7] 让路。

士兵•卡尔

（转过身来招呼）哦，牧师！

西茜•卡弗里

（嗓音越来越高）

她拿到了鸭腿儿。

不知放在哪儿啦，

把鸭腿儿给了她。

（斯蒂芬左手抡着梣木手杖，快活地唱着复活节“将祭文”。林奇陪伴着她，将骑手帽低低地拉到额下，皱起眉头，面上泛着不悦的冷笑。）

斯蒂芬

我瞧见殿堂右手喷出一股水。哈利路亚。

（一个上了年纪的妓院老鸨从门口龇出饥饿的龅牙。）

老鸨

（嗓音嘶哑地低声说）嘘！过来呀，我告诉你。里面有个黄花姑娘哩。嘘！

斯蒂芬

（略提高嗓音）凡是挨近水的人。

老鸨

（在他们背后恶狠狠地啐了一口）三一学院的医科学生。输卵管咋啦？尽管长了根鸡巴，可一个子儿也不称。

（伊迪•博德曼吸吮着鼻涕，跟伯莎•萨波尔蜷缩在一

起。此刻拉过披肩掩住鼻孔。）

伊迪•博德曼

（骂骂咧咧地）接着，那家伙说：“我瞧见你在弗思富尔广场跟你那个戴睡帽的浪荡汉——铁道涂油工一道鬼混啦。”“你瞧见了又怎么样？”我说。“你这是多管闲事，”我说。“你从来也没见我跟一个有老婆的山地人勾搭过！”我说。瞧她那副德性！一个告密者！顽固得像头骡子！她自己才同时跟两个男人一道溜达呢：火车司机基尔布赖德和一等兵奥利芬特。

斯蒂芬

（得意洋洋地）个个都得到拯救。[8]

（他胡乱木手杖，瓦斯灯的晕轮便抖动起来，那光撒遍世界。一只到处觅食的白色褐斑长毛垂耳狗吼叫着，跟在他后面。林奇踢了它一脚，把它吓跑了。）

林奇

还有呢？

斯蒂芬

（回头望了望）因此，将成为人类共同语言的，乃是手势，而并非音乐或气味。这种传达手段所明确显示的不是通常的意义，而是生命第一原理，结构性的节奏。

林奇

黄色哲学的言语宗教学。梅克伦堡街[ 9] 的形而上学！

斯蒂芬

莎士比亚就受尽了悍妇的折磨，苏格拉底也怕老婆。就连那位绝顶聪明的斯塔基莱特人[10]都被一个荡妇套上嚼子和笼头，骑来骑去。

林奇

哎！

斯蒂芬

不管怎样，谁需要打两次手势来比划面包和瓮呢？在莪默的诗里，这个动作就表示面包和酒瓮。[11]替我拿着手杖。

林奇

让你的黄手杖见鬼去吧。咱们到哪儿去呀？

斯蒂芬

好色的山猫[12]，咱们找无情的美女乔治娜•约翰逊[13]去，走向年少时曾赐与我欢乐的女神。[14]

（斯蒂芬把梣木手杖塞给林奇，缓缓摊开双手，头朝后仰。在距胸部一拃的地方手心向下，十指尖交叉，若即若离。左手举得略高。）

林奇

哪个是面包瓮[15]？简直不中用。究竟是瓮还是海关，你来说明吧。喏，接住你的拐棍儿，走吧。

（他们走过去。汤米•卡弗里爬行到一根瓦斯灯杆跟前，紧紧抱住它，使劲爬上去。接着又从顶上前蹬后踹地哧溜下来。杰基•卡弗里也抱住灯杆要往上爬。一个壮工歪倚着灯杆。双胞胎摸着黑仓皇逃走。工人晃晃悠悠地用食指按住鼻翼的一边，从另一边鼻孔里擤出长长的一条鼻涕。壮工挑着忽明忽暗的号灯，从人丛中脚步蹒跚地踱去。

（河雾宛若一条条的蛇一般徐徐蠕动过来。从阴沟、裂缝、污水坑和粪堆，向四面八方发散出污浊的臭气。南面，在朝海洋流去的河水那边，有红光跳跃着。壮工拨开人群，朝着电车轨道侧线趔趔趄趄地走去。远处，布卢姆出现在铁桥下的彼端，面庞涨得通红，气喘吁吁，正往侧兜里塞面包和巧克力。隔着吉伦理发店的窗户可以瞥见一帧综合照片[ 16] ，映出纳尔逊的潇洒英姿。映在旁边那凹面镜里的是害着相思病、憔悴不堪、阴郁忧伤的布——卢——姆。严峻的格拉顿从正面逼视着他——身为布卢姆的布卢姆。骠悍的威灵顿瞪着双目，吓得他赶紧走过去，然而映在凸面镜里那小猪眼睛肥下巴胖脸蛋儿、快快活活的波尔迪，逗乐的笨蛋，笑嘻嘻的，却丝毫也没让他受惊。

（布卢姆走到安东尼奥•拉白奥蒂的门口时停下脚步。在亮晃晃的弧光灯下淌着汗。他消失了一下，俄而又重新出现，匆匆赶路。）

布卢姆

鱼配土豆，哎，真够呛！

（他消失在正往下撂百叶窗的奥尔豪森猪肉店里。少顷，呼哧呼哧的布——卢——姆，气喘吁吁的波尔迪，又从百叶窗底下钻出来。两只手里各拎着一个包儿。一包是温吞吞的猪脚，另一包是冷羊蹄，上面撒着整粒的胡椒。他喘着气，直挺挺地站在那里。然后歪起身子，用一个包儿顶住肋骨，呻吟着。）

布卢姆

小肚子疼得慌。我何必这么跑呢？

（他小心翼翼地呼吸，慢慢腾腾地朝着点了灯的岔道走去。红灯又跳跃了。）

布卢姆

那是什么？是信号灯吗？是探照灯哩。

（他站在科马克那家店的拐角处，观望着。）

布卢姆

是北极光[17]，还是炼钢厂？啊，当然是消防队喽。不管怎样，是南边。好大一片火焰。说不定是他[18]的房子哩。贝格尔灌木[ 19] 。我们家不要紧。（他愉快地哼唱。）伦敦着火啦，伦敦着火啦！[ 20] 着火啦；着火啦！（他瞥见壮工在塔尔博街另一头拨开人群穿行。）我会跟他失散的。跑！快点儿。不如从这儿穿过去。

（他一个箭步蹿过马路。顽童们喊叫。）

顽童们

当心点儿，大爷！

（两个骑车人，点燃的纸灯晃悠着，丁零零地响着铃，像游泳般地擦身而过。）

铃铛

丁零零，丁零零。

布卢姆

（脚上抽筋，直挺挺的站着）噢！

（他四下里望望，猛地朝前一蹿。穿过朦朦上升的雾，一辆龙头撒沙车[21]谨慎地驶来。它眨巴着巨大的前灯，沉甸甸地朝他压将过来。车顶的触轮嘶嘶地摩擦着电线。驾驶员当当地踩着脚钟。）

警钟

当当布啦吧喀布啦德吧咯布卢。

（制动器猛烈地嘎嘎响。布卢姆举起那只像警察般戴着白手套的手，双腿僵直地跌跌撞撞跳离路轨。长着狮子鼻的电车司机猛地栽到驾驶盘上。他一边滑也似的驶过去，一边从轮锁与销子上面叫喊。）

司机

嘿，你这屎裤子，打算耍帽子把戏[22]吗？

（布卢姆灵巧地跳到边石上，又停下脚步。他伸出一只拿着包包的手，从脸蛋儿上抹掉溅上去的泥点子。）

布卢姆

原来是禁止通行。好险哪，然而这下子疼痛倒是消了，又得重新练练桑道操[23]了。俯卧撑。还得加入交通事故保险才行。天主保佑。（他摸了摸裤兜。）可怜的妈妈的身符。鞋后跟动不动就被轨道卡住，鞋带又容易被车轮勾住。有一天在利奥纳德街的拐角那儿、，警察局的囚车把我一只鞋刮走了。第三回就灵验了。用鞋耍把戏。司机真蛮横。我本该举报他。他们太紧张了，所以弄得神经过敏。今天早晨我瞧马车里那个女人时，跟我捣乱的，兴许就是这个家伙。同一类的美人儿。不管怎么说，他的动作够敏捷的哩。腿脚不灵便了。用打趣的口吻说真心话。在莱德小巷，抽筋抽得好厉害。我大概是食物中毒吧。幸运的征兆。怎么回事呢？那也许是私宰的牛。牲口身上打着烙印。（他闭一会儿眼睛。）头有点儿发晕。每月都闹一次，要么就是另外那档子事的反应。脑袋瓜儿晕晕忽忽的。那种疲倦的感觉。我已经吃不消啦。

噢！

（一个不祥的人影交叉着腿，倚着奥贝恩[24]的墙。这是一张陌生的脸，仿佛注射了发黑的水银。那人影从一顶墨西哥阔帽底下，用凶狠的目光盯着他。）

布卢姆

晚上好，怀特小姐。这是什么街呀？[25]

人影

（面无表情地举起胳膊作为信号）口令。马博特街[26]。

布卢姆

哈哈。谢谢。世界语。再见。[27]（他喃喃地说）是那个爱打架的家伙派来的盖尔语联盟的密探。

（他向前迈步。一个肩上扛着麻袋的拾破烂的拦住他的去路。他朝左边走，拾破烂的也朝左拐。）

布卢姆

劳驾。

（他朝右边跳去，拾破烂的也朝右跳。）

布卢姆

劳驾。

（他转了个弯，侧身而行，躲到一旁，悄悄地溜过去往前走。

布卢姆

一直靠右边、右边、右边走。旅行俱乐部在斯蒂普阿塞德竖起了路标，是谁带来这项公共福利的呢？是由于我迷了路，给《爱尔兰骑车人》的读者来信栏写了封信，题目是《在最黑暗的斯蒂普阿塞德》。靠、靠、靠右边走。半夜里捡着破烂和骨头。更像是买卖贼赃哩。杀人凶手首先会到这种地方来，以便洗涤尘世间的罪恶。

（杰基•卡弗里被汤米•卡弗里追逐着奔来，同布卢姆撞个满怀。）

布卢姆

噢！

（吓了一跳，大腿发软，停了下来。汤米和杰基就在那儿，当场失去踪影。布卢姆双手持包，轻拍着怀表袋，装笔记本的裤兜，装皮夹子的裤兜，那本《偷情的快乐》、土豆和香皂。）

布卢姆

可得当心扒手。小偷儿惯耍的花招：撞你一下，顺手就摸走你的包。

（一只能叼回猎物的狼狗，鼻子贴地嗅着，踱了过来。一个仰卧着的人影打了个喷嚏。出现了一个弯腰驼背、留着胡子的人。他身着锡安的长老所穿的那种长袍，头戴有着深红流苏的吸烟帽。玳瑁框眼镜一直耷拉到鼻翼上。鼻歪嘴斜的脸上是一道道黄色毒药的斑痕。）

鲁道尔夫

今天你是第二次浪费半克朗银市了。我不是跟你说过吗：决不可跟那帮异教徒醉鬼们混在一起。瞧，你就是攒不住钱。

布卢姆

（将猪脚和羊蹄藏在背后，垂头丧气地抚摩着温吞吞的和冰冷的脚肉和蹄肉。）是的，我明白，爹。[28] 

鲁道尔夫

你在这儿干些什么名堂啊？你没有灵魂吗？（他伸出虚弱的秃鹫爪子，抚摩着布卢姆那沉默的脸。）你不是我儿子利奥波德吗？不是利奥波德的孙子吗？你不是我那亲爱的儿子利奥波德吗？就是那个离开父亲的家，也离开祖先亚伯拉罕和雅各的上帝的利奥波德吗？

布卢姆

（惶恐地）大概是的，父亲。莫森索尔[ 29] 。这就是他的下场。

鲁道尔夫

（严厉地）那天晚上，你把宝贵的金钱挥霍了一通，喝得烂醉如泥，被他们护送回家。那帮流浪汉究竟是你的一些什么人？

布卢姆

（身着年轻人穿的一套时髦的蓝色牛津服装，白色窄肩背心，头戴褐色登山帽。怀里是一块绅士用的纯银沃特伯里牌转柄表，佩着一条缀有图章的艾伯特双饰链[30]。半边身子满是厚厚一层泥巴。）是越野赛跑的选手，父亲。我就那么一回。

鲁道尔夫

一回！从头到脚都是泥。手上还划破了个口子。会患破伤风的。他们会要你命的，充满生气的利奥波德。对那帮家伙你可得当心啊。

布卢姆

（懦弱地）他们问我敢不敢比比短跑。道路上净是泥，我跌了一跤。

鲁道尔夫

（轻蔑地）不务正业的异教徒。[31]你那可怜的母亲要是看见了该怎么说！

布卢姆

妈妈！

艾琳•布卢姆

（她手里斜端着蜡台，出现在楼梯栏杆上端。头戴哑剧中贵妇人戴的那种下巴上系带子的头巾式软帽，身穿寡妇吐安基[32]那种有衬架和腰垫的裙子；衬衫钮扣钉在背后，袖子是羊脚型的；戴着灰色露指长手套，配以有浮雕的玉石胸针。盘成辫子的头发用绉网罩起。她吃惊地尖声嚷叫。）噢，神圣的救世主，这孩子给糟践成什么样子啦！快给我嗅盐[33]。（她撩起一道裙褶，在那铅灰色条纹衬裙的兜儿里摸索。从兜儿里掉出一只小药瓶、一枚“天主羔羊”[34]、一只干瘪的土豆和一个赛璐璐玩偶。）圣母圣心啊，你到底在哪儿呢，在哪儿呢？

（布卢姆嗫嚅着，两眼垂下，开始把那两个包儿往鼓鼓囊囊的兜儿里塞，却又打消了这个念头，嘴里不知嘟囔些什么。）

声音

（尖锐地）波尔迪！

布卢姆

谁呀？（他急忙弯下腰去，笨拙地搪开什么人打过来的一拳。）有何贵干？

（他抬头看。眼前出现了一位亭亭玉立、身着土耳其装束的美女，旁边是几棵枣椰树的蜃景。丰腴的曲线将她那猩红色长裤与短上衣撑得鼓鼓的，开叉儿处露出金色衬里。她系着一条宽幅黄色腰带，脸上蒙着白色——夜间变为紫罗兰色——面纱，只露出一双乌黑的大眼睛和黑亮的头发。）

布卢姆

摩莉！

玛莉恩

什么呀？亲爱的，打今儿起，你招呼我的时候，就叫我玛莉恩太太吧。（用挖苦口吻）可怜的小丈夫，叫你等了这么半天，脚都冰凉了吧？

布卢姆

（调换了一下双脚的位置）不，不，一点儿都不。（他极其激动地呼吸着，大口大口地吞进空气。有多少话想问，有多少希望，为她的晚餐备下的猪脚，要告诉她的事，解释，欲望，简直着迷了。一枚硬币在她前额上闪烁着。她脚上戴着几枚宝石趾环。踝部戴着纤细的脚镣。她身旁是一只骆驼，缠着塔楼状头巾，伫候着。那上下跳动着的驼桥[35]，垂下一道有着无数阶磴的绸梯。骆驼不大情愿地摆动着它那臀部，慢慢腾腾地凑过来：她猛揍了一下它的屁股，包金的手镯玎玲玲响着，愠怒地用摩尔话骂他：）

玛莉恩

女性的小天堂！[36]

（骆驼举起一只前脚，从树上摘下一枚大芒果，将它夹在偶蹄间，献给女主人。然后它眨巴着眼睛，扬起脖子，耷拉下脑袋，咕哝着，挣扎着跪下。布卢姆像做蛙跳游戏般地弯下腰去。）

布卢姆

我可以给你……我的意思是说：作为你的经纪人……玛莉恩太太……假若你……

玛莉恩

那么，你注意到什么变化了吗？（双手徐徐地抚摩饰着珠宝的三角胸衣，眼中逐渐显出友善的揶揄神色。）哦，波尔迪，波尔迪，你依然是个老古板！去见见世面，到广阔的天地中去[37]开开眼界吧。

布卢姆

我正要折回去取那加了香橙花液的白蜡洗剂呢。每逢星期四，铺子总要提前打烊。可是，明天早晨我首先要办的就是这事儿。（他把身上的几个兜儿都拍了拍。）浮游肾。哎！

（他指指南边，又指指东边。一块洁净、崭新的柠檬肥皂发散出光与芳香，冉冉升起。）

肥皂

布卢姆和我，是般配的一对。

他拭亮地球，我擦光天空。

（药剂师斯威尼那张满是雀斑的脸出现在太阳牌肥皂的圆盘上。）

斯威尼

您哪，三先令一便士。

布卢姆

好的。是为我老婆买的。玛莉恩太太。特制的。

玛莉恩

（柔声）波尔迪！

布卢姆

哦，太太？

玛莉恩

你的心跳得快些了吗？[38]

（她面泛轻蔑神色款款踱开，嘴里哼着《唐乔万尼》中的二重唱。她身材丰满得像只娇养着的胸脯鼓鼓的鸽子。）

布卢姆

关于“沃利奥”[39]，你有把握吗？我指的是发音……

（他尾随于后，四处嗅着的狼狗又跟踪着他。上了年纪的老鸨拽住他的袖子。她下巴上的那颗黑痣上长的毛闪闪发光。）

老鸨

一个处女十先令。黄花姑娘哩，从来没有人碰过。才十五岁。家里除了她那烂醉的爹，啥人也没有。

（她伸手指了指。布赖迪•凯利[40]被雨淋得精湿，站在她那黑洞洞的魔窟裂缝里。）

布赖迪

哈奇街。你心目中有好的吗？

（她尖口叫一声。唿扇着蝙蝠般的披肩，撒腿就跑。一个粗壮的暴徒脚蹬长靴，跨着大步追赶着。他在台阶那儿磕绊了一下，站稳了，纵身一跳，消失在黑暗中。传来一阵微弱的尖笑声，越来越低微了。）

老鸨

（她那狼一般的眼睛贼亮贼亮的）那位老爷找乐子去啦。在妓馆里可弄不到黄花闺女。十先令。可要是整宵泡在这儿，会给便衣警察撞上的。六十六号巡警可真是个狗养的。

（格蒂•麦克道维尔斜瞅着。一瘸一拐地走过来。她一面送秋波，一面从背后抽出血迹斑斑的布片，卖弄风情地拿给他看。）

格蒂

我把在世上的全部财产你和你[41]。（她喃喃地说）是你干的。我恨你。

布卢姆

我？什么时候？你作梦哪，我从来没见过你。

老鸨

你这骗子，放开老爷。还给老爷写什么满纸瞎话的信。满街拉客卖淫。像你这么个荡妇，就欠你妈没把你捆在床柱子上，用皮带抽你一顿。

格蒂

（对布卢姆）我那衬裤的秘密，你统统瞧见了。（她哽咽着，爱抚他的袖子。）你这个下流的有妇之夫！正因为你对我干了那档子事，我爱你。

（她跛着脚溜走了。布林太太身穿有着松垮垮的褶裥口袋的起绒粗呢男大氅，伫立在人行道上。她那双调皮的眼睛睁得老大，笑咪咪地龇着食草动物般的龅牙。）

布林太太

这位先生是……

布卢姆

（庄重地咳嗽着）太太，我荣幸地收到了您本月十六日的大函……

布林太太

布卢姆先生！你竟跑到这罪恶的魔窟来啦！这下狐狸尾巴可给我抓住啦！你这个流氓！

布卢姆

（着了慌）别那么大声喊我的名字。你究竟把我看成什么人啦？可别出卖我。隔墙有耳嘛。你好吗？好久不见啦。你看上去挺好。可不是嘛。这月气候真好。黑色能够折射光。从这儿抄近路就到家啦。这一带蛮有趣。拯救沦落的风尘女子。玛达琳济良所。我是秘书……

布林太太

（翘起一个指头）喏，别瞎扯啦！我知道有人不喜欢这样。哦，等我见了摩莉再说！（狡黠地）你最好马上如实招来，否则就会大难临头！

布卢姆

（回头看看）她时常念叨要来见识见识哩。逛逛这花街柳巷。喏，异国情调嘛。她说要是有钱，还想雇上几名穿号衣的黑皮肤仆役呢。就像黑兽奥瑟罗那样的。[42]尤金•斯特拉顿[43]。连利弗莫尔黑脸合唱团[44]的打拍员和巧辩演员[45]都行。还有博赫弟兄[46]。只要是黑的，连扫烟囱的都成。

（化装成黑脸的汤姆和萨姆，博赫跳了出来，身穿雪白帆布上衣，猩红短袜，浆洗得硬梆梆的萨姆勃[47]高领，扣眼儿里插着大朵的鲜红紫苑花。肩上各挂着一把五弦琴[48]。黑人特有的浅黑小手嘣嘣地拨弄着琴弦。一双白色卡菲尔[49]那样的眼睛和一嘴暴牙闪闪发光。他们脚蹬粗陋的木靴，咯噔咯噔地跳着喧嚣、急促的双人舞。拨弦，歌唱，忽而背对背，忽而脚尖挨后跟，忽而又后跟挨脚尖。用黑人的厚嘴唇吱吱咂咂地鼓噪助威。）

汤姆与萨姆

有人和迪娜一道在家里，

有人呆在家里，我知道的，

有人和迪娜一道在家里，

弹奏那把古老的五弦琴[50 ] 。

（他们猛地摘掉黑人面具，露出那淳朴的娃娃脸。然后哧哧窃笑，哈哈大笑，咚咚、当当地奏着琴，跳着步态舞，扬长而去。）

布卢姆

（面泛着酸溜溜甜蜜蜜的微笑）要是你有兴致的话，咱俩何妨也厮混一阵？也许你肯让我拥抱上那么几分之一秒吧？

布林太太

（快活地尖口叫着）哦，你这个傻瓜！也该去照照镜子！

布卢姆

咱们是老交情嘛。我的意思不过是要在两对不同的小夫妻问再来个杂婚，也就是交老婆。你晓得，在我心窝儿里对你总有点儿意思。（忧郁地）情人节那天，是我把那张可爱的小羚羊图片送给你的。

布林太太

哎呀，天哪，瞧你这副丑样子！简直是滑稽。（她好奇地伸出一只手。）你背后藏着什么？告诉咱，好乖乖。
布卢姆

（用自己空着的那只手攥住她那只手的手腕子。）当年的乔西•鲍威尔[51]是都柏林首屈一指的美人儿。时间过得好快啊！咱们回顾一下吧。你还记得一个圣诞夜，乔治娜•辛普森举行新屋落成宴那次，他们玩欧文•毕晓普游戏[52]：蒙起眼睛找饰针啦，表演测心术什么的。提问：这只鼻烟盒里装着什么？

布林大太

那天晚上你可是明星，表演半滑稽的朗诵，演得维妙维肖。你一向都是妇女们的红人儿。

布卢姆

（装扮成贵妇的随从。身着波纹绸镶边的无尾晚礼服，扣眼上戴着一枚共济会蓝色徽章，系着黑蝴蝶结领带，珍珠领扣，一只手里歪举着棱形的香槟酒杯。）女士们，先生们，为了爱尔兰，为了家园和丽人[53]干杯。

布林太太

那一去不复返的日子令人怀念。那古老甜蜜的情歌[54]。

布卢姆

（有意把嗓门放低）说实在的，我怀着强烈的好奇心想知道，某一位的某物眼下是不是有点儿热热的。

布林太太

（亲昵地）热得厉害！伦敦热热的，我简直浑身热热的！（同他的侧腹相蹭蹬）咱们在客厅里玩猜谜游戏，再从圣诞树上取下摔炮玩它一阵然后就坐在楼梯口的长凳上，檞寄生枝[55]的荫影里。光是咱俩在一起。

布卢姆

（头戴缀有琥珀色半月的紫色拿破仑帽，慢慢地把手指放到她那柔软、湿润、丰腴的手心里。她顺从地任听他摆布。）那是一夜之中最阴森的时候[56] 。我小心翼翼地从这只手里慢慢儿挑出一根刺。（将一枚红玉戒指轻轻地套到她的手指上，并温存他说）手拉着手[57]。

布林太大

（身穿染成月白色的连衣裙式晚礼服，额上戴着一顶华丽灿烂的仙女冠，跳舞卡片落在月白色缎子拖鞋旁边。她温柔地弯起手掌。急促地喘着气。）我要，又[58] ……你发烧哪！你都烫伤啦！左手最挨近心脏啦。

布卢姆

当你做了目前这个选择时，人家都说你们不啻是美女与野兽[59]。对这一点，我永远也不能饶恕你。（他攥起一个拳头，按住前额。）想想看，这对我意味着什么。当年，你对我意味着一切。（沙哑地）女人哪，快要把我毁灭啦！

（丹尼斯•布林头戴白色大礼帽，前后胸挂着威兹德姆•希利的广告牌，吸拉着毡拖鞋，从他们身边磨蹭着踱过去。他那把不起眼的胡子扎煞着，忽而朝左边，忽而朝右边咕哝着。小个子阿尔夫•柏根身穿印有黑桃么[60]的外套，笑弯了腰。忽而朝左忽而朝右地跟踪着他。）

阿尔夫•柏根

（嘲弄地指着广告牌）万事休矣：完蛋。

布林太太

（对布卢姆）楼下在表演天翻地覆[61]。（给他递了个媚眼）你为什么不吻一吻那个部位，好医治创伤呢？你心里直痒痒嘛。

布卢姆

（震惊）你是摩莉最好的朋友啊！怎么能这样？

布林太大

（从嘴唇问伸出果肉般的舌头，想要给他个鸽吻）哼。你问得无聊，没法回答。你那里有什么小礼物送给我吗？

布卢姆

（生硬地）清真食品。当晚饭吃的快餐。家里没有李树商标罐头肉，那就是美中不足[62]。我看了《丽亚》的演出，班德曼•帕默夫人，她演的莎士比亚，真是再精采不过了。可惜我把节目单扔了。要是买猪脚，就数这个地方好。摸摸看。

（里奇•古尔丁用饰针在头上别了三顶女帽，腋下夹着考立斯- 沃德律师事务所的公文包，上面用白灰涂着一副骷髅与交叉的大腿骨。公文包太重，使他的身子往一边坠。打开一看，满是半熟的干香肠，熏曹白鱼、芬顿[63] 黑线鳕和裹得严严实实的药丸。）

里奇

都柏林的东西，货真价实。

（秃头帕特，愁眉苦脸的聋子，站在人行道的边石上，折叠着餐巾，等着服侍客人。）

帕特

（斜端着一只盘子，嘀嘀嗒嗒地洒着肉汁）牛排和腰子。一瓶贮存啤酒[64]。嘻嘻嘻。等着我来上吧。

里奇

老天爷，我从来也没吃过……

（他耷拉着脑袋一个劲儿地往前走。躲藏在左近的壮工用火热的角叉戳了他一下。）

里奇

（伸手按住背部，痛苦地喊叫）啊！布赖特氏病[65]！肺脏！

布卢姆

（指着壮工）一个奸细。别惹人注意。我对愚蠢的人群厌恶透了，我可没有心情去找乐子，我处在严重的困境中。

布林太太

你这是照例用老一套的谎话来骗人。

布卢姆

关于我怎么会来到这儿，我想透露给你个小小的秘密。但是你可别告诉旁人。甚至连对摩莉也不能说。有个特殊的原因。

布林太太

（极度兴奋）哦，无论如何也不会说出去。

布卢姆

咱们去散散步好吗？

布林太太

好的。

（老鸨打了个手势，无人理睬。布卢姆和布林太太一道走起来。骾狗可怜巴巴地呜呜叫着，摇着尾巴跟在后面。）

老鸨

犹大人的脾脏！

布卢姆

（身穿燕麦色运动服，翻领上插着一小枝忍冬草，里面是时髦的浅黄色衬衫，系着印有圣安德鲁十字架的黑白方格花呢领带。白色鞋罩，臂上挎了件鹿毛色风衣，脚蹬赤褐色生皮翻毛皮鞋。将一架双筒望远镜像子弹带那样斜挎在肩上，头戴一顶灰色宽边低顶的毡帽。）你还记得吗，很久很久，多年以前，米莉——我们管她叫玛莉奥内特。刚断奶，我们大家曾一道去看过仙女房赛马会？

布林太太

（穿一身定做的款式新颖的萨克森蓝衣衫，头戴白丝绒帽，脸上蒙着蛛网状面纱。）在利奥波德镇。

布卢姆

对，是利奥波德镇。摩莉把赌注下在一匹名叫“永勿说”的马上，赢了七先令。然后坐那辆有五个座位的双轮破旧马车，沿着福克斯罗克回的家。当时你可风华正茂，戴着镶了一圈鼹鼠皮的白丝绒新帽。那是海斯太太劝你买的，因为价钱降到十九先令十一便士了。其实就是那么一点铜丝支着一些破破烂烂的旧丝绒。我敢跟你打赌，她准是故意的……

布林太太

当然喽，可不是嘛，猫婆子！别说下去啦！真会出馊主意！

布卢姆

比起另外那顶插上极乐鸟翅膀的可爱的宽顶无檐小圆帽来，它连四分之一也跟你般配不上。你戴上那一顶，简直太迷人啦，我十分神往。可惜宰那只乌儿大损了，你这淘气残忍的人儿。那小鸟的心脏只有一个句号那么大呀。

布林太太

（捏他的胳膊，假笑）我确实又淘气又残忍来着！

布卢姆

（低声说悄悄话，语调越来越快）摩莉还从乔•加拉赫太太[66]的午餐篮里拿一块香辣牛肉三明治吃。老实说，尽管她有一批参谋或崇拜者，我一向不喜欢她那派头。她……

布林太太

过于……

布卢姆

是呀。摩莉那时正在笑，因为当我们从一座农舍前面经过的时候，罗杰斯和马戈特•奥里利学起鸡叫来了。茶叶商人马库斯。特蒂乌斯•摩西带上他的女儿乘着轻便二轮马车赶到我们前面去了。她名叫舞女摩西。坐在她腿上的那只长卷毛狗神气活现地昂着头。你问我，可曾听说过、读到过、经历过或遇上过……

布林太太

（起劲地）对呀，对呀，对呀，对呀，对呀，对呀，对呀。（她从他身边倏地消失。他朝地狱门[67]走去，后边跟了一条呜呜叫着的骾狗。一个妇女站在拱道上，弯下身子，叉开双腿，像头母牛那样在撒尿。已经撂下百叶窗的酒吧外面，聚着一群游手好闲的人，倾听着他们那个塌鼻梁的工头用急躁刺耳的沙声讲着妙趣横生的故事。其中一对缺臂者半开玩笑地扭打起来。残疾人之间进行着拙笨的较量，吼叫着，扑通一声倒下去。）

工头

（蹲着，瓮声瓮气地）当凯恩斯从比弗街的脚手架上走下来后，你们猜猜他往什么地方撒来着？竟然往放在刨花上的那桶黑啤酒里撒了一泡，可那是给德尔旺的泥水匠准备的呀！[68]

游手好闲的人们

（从豁嘴唇里发出傻笑）哦，天哪!

（他们摇晃着那满是油漆斑点的帽子，这些无臂者身上沾满了作坊的胶料和石灰，在他周围跳跳蹦蹦。）

布卢姆

也是个巧合。他们还觉得挺可笑哩。其实，一点儿也不。光天化日之下，想试着走走。幸亏没有女人在场。

游手好闲的人们

天哪，真有意思。结晶硫酸钠。哦，天哪，往那些人的黑啤酒里撒了一泡。

（布卢姆走过去。下等窑姐儿，或只身或结伴，裹着披肩，

头发蓬乱，从小巷子、门口和拐角处大声拉客。）

窑姐儿们

去远处吗怪哥哥？

中间那条腿好吗？

身上没带火柴吗？

来吧，我把你那根弄硬了。

（他拖着沉重的脚步穿过她们那片污水坑，走向灯光明亮的大街。鼓着风的窗帘那边，留声机扬起那老掉了牙的黄铜喇叭。阴影里，一家非法出售漏税酒的酒吧老板正跟壮工和两个英国兵在讨价还价。）

壮工

（打嗝）那家该死的小店儿在哪儿？

老板

珀登街。一瓶黑啤酒一先令[69]。还有体面的娘儿们。

壮工

（拽住两个英国兵，跟他们一道脚步蹒跚地往前走。）来呀，你们这些英国兵！

士兵卡尔

（在他背后）这小子一点儿也不傻。

士兵康普顿

（大笑）嗬，可不是嘛！

士兵卡尔

（对壮工）贝洛港营盘[70]的小卖部。找卡尔。光找卡尔就行。

壮工

（大声喊）我们是韦克斯福德的男子汉。[71]

士兵康普顿

喂！你觉得军士长怎么样？

士兵卡尔

贝内特吗？他是我的伙伴。我喜欢亲爱的贝内特。[72] 

壮工

（大喊）

……磨人的锁链，

迎来祖国的解放。[ 73] 

（他拖着他们，摇摇晃晃地往前走。布卢姆不知所措，停下脚步。骾狗耷拉着舌头，气喘吁吁地靠过来。）

布卢姆

简直就像是在追“野鹅”。[74]乌七八糟的妓院。天晓得他们到哪儿去了。醉汉跑起来要快上一倍。一场热闹的混战。先在韦斯特兰横街车站吵了一通，然后又拿着三等车票跳进头等车厢。一下子被拉得老远。火车头是装在列车后头的。有可能把我拉到马拉海德，要么就在侧线过夜，要么就是两趟列车相撞。都是喝第二遍喝醉的。一遍其实正好。我跟在他后面干什么？不论怎样，他是那帮人当中最像个样儿的。要不是听说了博福伊•普里福伊太太的事儿，我决不会去，那么也就遇不上他了。这都是命中注定的。他会丢失那笔钱的。这里是济贫所[75]。沿街叫卖的小贩和放高利贷的倒是有好生意可做啦。你缺点儿啥？来得容易，去得也快。有一次，几乎给司机开的那辆当啷啷响的锃亮有轨电动讫里什那神像车[76] 轱辘压了。要不是我头脑镇定，早就把命送掉了。不过，并非每一次都能幸免。那天倘若我迟两分钟走过特鲁洛克的窗户，就会给枪杀的。亏得我没在那儿。然而，要是子弹仅仅穿透了我的上衣，我倒是能为了受惊而索取五百英镑的赔偿费哩。他是干什么的来着？基尔代尔街俱乐部的花花公子。替他看守猎场也够不容易的。

（他朝前望着那用粉笔在一面墙上胡乱画着的阴茎图案，下面题着：《梦遗》。）

奇怪！在金斯敦，摩莉也曾往结了一层霜的马车玻璃上画各式各样的图来着。画的是些什么呢？（衣着花哨、像玩偶般的女人懒洋洋地靠在灯光明亮的门口或漏斗状窗口，吸着鸟眼纹理烟卷[77]。令人作呕的甜蜜的烟草气味慢慢形成椭圆形的环，向他飘来。）

烟环

快乐真甜蜜。偷情的快乐[78]。

布卢姆

我的脊骨有点儿酸痛。往前走，还是折回去呢？还有这吃的呢？吃下去，浑身都会粘上猪的味道。我太荒谬了。白糟塌钱。多付了一先令八便士[79]。（狼狗摇着尾巴，流着鼻涕的冰凉鼻子往他手上蹭。）奇怪，它们怎么这么喜欢我。今天连那只猛犬都是这样。不妨先跟它说说话。它们就像女人一样，喜欢逢场作戏[80]。发出一股鸡貂的气味。各有所好。兴许这还是一条疯狗呢。大热天的。脚步也不稳。费多！好小子！加里欧文[81]。（那只狼狗摊开四肢趴在他的背上，伸出长长的黑舌头。用乞讨的前爪作猥亵状，扭动着。）是环境的影响。给它点儿什么，把它打发走吧。只要没有人在场。

（亲切地招呼着，像一个鬼鬼祟祟的偷猎者似的蹒蹒跚跚地蜇回来。在那只塞特种猎狗的跟随下，走进满是尿骚气味的黑暗角落。他打开一个包儿，刚要轻轻地丢掉猪脚，却又停下手来，并摸摸羊蹄。）才三便士，可真不小。但是我只好用左手拿着它。更吃力一些。为什么呢？不大用，所以就抽缩了。哦，给掉拉倒。两先令六便士。

（他打开包，依依不舍地将猪脚羊蹄丢过去。那只皮滑腰短的大看家狗拙笨地撕咬着那摊肉，贪婪地嘷叫着，嘎吱嘎吱啃着骨头。两名披着防雨斗篷的巡警在旁警戒着，默默地走近。他们不约而同地念叨。）

巡警们

布卢姆。布卢姆的。为布卢姆。布卢姆。[ 82] 

（他们各伸出一只手，按在布卢姆肩上。）

巡警甲

当场抓获，不许随地小便。

布卢姆

（结巴着）我在替大家做好事哪。

（一群海鸥与海燕饥饿地从利菲河的稀泥里飞起，口中衔着班伯里馅饼。）

海鸥们

嗒噶啦嘣吧哩吓乒。[83]

布卢姆

这是人类的朋友，是用慈爱之心来培养的。

（他指了指。鲍勃•多兰正从酒吧问的高凳上越过嘴里正贪馋地咀嚼着什么的长毛垂耳狗，栽了下来。）

鲍勃•多兰

陶瑟尔。把爪子伸过来。把爪子伸过来。[84]

（那只斗犬竖起颈背，低沉地怒吼着。它用臼齿叨着猪蹄，齿缝间嘀嘀嗒嗒淌着狂犬病那满是泡沫的涎水。鲍勃•多兰静悄悄地跌到地下室前的空地上。）

巡警乙

禁止虐待动物。

布卢姆

（热切地）功德无量！在哈罗德陆桥上，有个车把式正虐待一匹被挽具磨伤了皮肉的可怜的马，我就朝他嚷了一通。结果自废力气，倒招得他用法国话骂了我一顿。当然喽，那天下着霜，又是末班马车。所有关于马戏团生活的故事，全都是极其有伤风化的。

（马菲[85]先生兴奋得脸色苍白，身穿驯狮人的服装，迈步向前。衬衫前胸钉有钻石饰扣，手执马戏团用的大纸圈，马车夫的弯鞭以及一把转轮手枪。他用手枪瞄准大吃大嚼的猎野猪犬。）

马菲先生

（面泛狞笑）女士们，先生们，这是我训练出来的灵猰[86]。用食肉动物专利特许的尖钉鞍，把那匹北美西部平原的野马埃阿斯驯服的，也是我。用满是结子的皮条鞭打它肚子下边。不论多么暴躁的狮子，哪怕是利比亚的食人兽——一头猛狮，只要装个滑车，狠狠地一勒，也会乖乖儿地就范。用烧得通红的铁棍烙过之后，再在烫伤处涂上膏药，便把阿姆斯特丹的弗里茨，会思考的鬣狗造就出来了。（目光炯炯）我掌握印度咒文[87]。靠的是我的两眼和胸前的钻石。（面泛带有魔力的微笑）现在我来介绍一下马戏团的明星鲁碧小姐。

巡警甲

说！姓名和地址。 

布卢姆

我一时忘记了。啊，对啦！（他摘下那顶高级帽子，敬礼）布卢姆医生[88]，利奥波德，牙科手术师。你们一定听说过封。布鲁姆•帕夏[89]吧。财产也不知有多少亿英镑。好家伙[90]！他拥有半个奥地利。还有埃及。他是我堂兄。

巡警甲

拿出证据来。

（一张名片从布卢姆那顶帽子的鞣皮圈里掉了下来。）

布卢姆

（头戴红色土耳其帽，身穿穆斯林法官长袍，腰系宽幅绿饰带，胸佩一枚伪造的法国勋级会荣誉军团[91]勋章。他赶紧捡起名片，递上去。）请过目。敝人是陆海军青年军官俱乐部[92]的会员。律师是约翰•亨利•门顿。住在巴切勒步道二十七号。

巡警甲

（读）亨利•弗罗尔。无固定住址。犯有非法埋伏并骚扰罪。

巡警乙

要拿出你不在作案现场的证明。对你是一直提防着的。

布卢姆

（从胸兜里掏出一朵揉皱了的黄花）这就是关键性的那朵花。是一个我连姓名都不晓得的人给我的。（花言巧语地）你知道《卡斯蒂利亚的玫瑰》那个古老的笑话吧。布卢姆。把姓名改改呗。维拉格[93]。（他熟头熟脑他说起贴心话来。）您啊，警官先生，我们是订了婚的。这档子事儿涉及一个女人。爱情纠纷嘛。（他轻轻地拍着巡警乙的肩膀。）真讨厌。我们这些海军里的英俊小 伙子，总是碰上这种事儿。都是这身军服惹出的麻烦。（他一本正经地转向巡警甲。）不过，当然喽，有时也会一败涂地。哪天晚上顺路过来坐坐，咱们喝上一杯陈年的老勃艮第酒吧。（快活地对巡警乙）我来介绍一下，警官先生。她劲头可足啦。不费吹灰之力就能搞到手。

（出现了一张被含汞的药弄得浅黑的脸，后面跟随一个蒙着面纱的身影。）

浅黑水银

都柏林堡正在搜索他呢。他是给军队开除的。

玛莎

（蒙着厚厚的面纱，脖间系着深红色圣巾[94]，手执一份《爱尔兰时报》，以谴责口吻指着说。）亨利！利奥波德！莱昂内尔，迷失的你！[95]替我恢复名誉。

巡警甲

（严峻地）到警察局来一趟吧。

布卢姆

（惊愕，戴上帽子，向后退一步。然后，抓挠胸口，将右臂伸成直角形，做共济会会员的手势和正当防卫的架势。）哪里的话，可敬的师傅[96]，这是个轻佻的女人。她认错人啦。里昂邮件。莱苏尔柯和杜博斯[ 97] 。您该还记得蔡尔兹杀兄案[98]吧。我们是医生。控告我用小斧子把他砍死了，实在是冤枉啊。宁可让一个犯人逃脱法网，也不能错判九十九个无辜者有罪。[99]

玛莎

（蒙着面纱啜泣）他毁弃了誓约。我的真名实姓是佩吉•格里芬。他给我写信说，他很不幸。你这没心肝的专门玩弄女人的家伙，我要告诉我哥哥，他可是贝克蒂夫橄榄球队[100] 的后卫哩。

布卢姆

（用手捂脸）她喝醉啦。这女人喝得酩酊大醉。（他含糊不清地咕哝着以法莲人的口令。）示布罗列[101]。

巡警乙

（泪汪汪地，对布卢姆）你应该感到十分害臊。

布卢姆

陪审团的各位先生，请听我解释一下。真是搞得一塌糊涂啊！我被误解啦。我给当成了替罪羊。我是个体面的有妇之夫，一向品行端正，没有污点。我住在埃克尔斯街，我老婆是赫赫有名的指挥官的女儿，一个豪侠耿直之士，对，叫作布赖恩•特威迪陆军少将。是一位屡次在战役中立过功勋的英国军人，由于英勇地保卫了洛克滩，曾被授予少将头衔。[102] 

巡警甲

属于哪个团队？

布卢姆

（转向旁听席）各位，属于举世闻名的都柏林近卫连队，那是社会中坚[103] 啊。我好像瞧见你们当中就有几位他的老战友哩。都柏林近卫步兵连队与首都警察署一道保卫咱们的家园，也是忠于国王陛下的最骁勇精壮的小伙子们。

一个声音

叛徒！谁喊“支持布尔人”来着！谁侮辱了乔•张伯伦？[104]

布卢姆

（一只手扶着巡警甲的肩膀）我老爹也曾当过治安推事。我跟你们一样，也是个忠诚的英国人。正如当时的电讯所报道的那样，为了国王与祖国，我也曾在公园里那位郭富将军麾下，在那场令人心神恍惚的战争中服过役，[105] 转战于斯皮昂•科帕和布隆方丹，受了伤。[106] 战报里还提到过我。凡是白人所能做的，我全做到了。（安洋地，带着感情）吉姆•布卢德索。把船鼻子转向岸边[107]。

巡警甲

报你的职业或行当。

布卢姆

喏，我是耍笔杆子的，作家兼记者。说实在的，我们正在策划出版悬赏短篇小说集，这是我想出来的，是个空前的举动。我跟英国和爱尔兰报纸都有联系。假若你打电话……

（迈尔斯•克劳福德口衔鹅毛笔，跨着大步趔趔趄趄地出现，他那通红的鼻子在草帽的光环中闪闪生辉。他一只手甩着一串西班牙葱头，另一只手将电话机听筒贴着耳朵。）

迈尔斯•克劳福德

（他颈部那公鸡般的垂肉晃来晃去。）喂，七七八四。喂，这里是《自由人尿壶》和《擦臀周刊》。[108] 会使欧洲大吃一惊。[109] 你是哪儿？哦，《蓝袋》[110]吗？由谁执笔？布卢姆吗：

（面色苍白的菲利普•博福伊[111]先生站在证人席上。他身穿整洁的常礼服，胸兜里露出尖尖的一角手绢，笔挺的淡紫色长裤和漆皮靴子。他拎着一只大公事包，上面标着《马查姆的妙举》字样。）

博福伊

（慢腾腾地）不，你不是那样的人。无论怎么看，我也决不认为你是那样的人。一个人只要生来就是个绅士，只要具有绅士那种最起码的素质，就决不会堕落到干下如此令人深恶痛绝的勾当。审判长阁下，他就是那帮人当中的一个。是个剽窃者。戴着文人[112] 面具的油滑而卑怯的家伙。显而易见，他以天生的卑鄙，抄袭了我的几部畅销书。都是些真正了不起的作品，完美的珠玉之作。毫无疑问，他剽窃了其中描绘恋爱的段落。审判长阁下，对以爱情和财富为主题的《博福伊作品集》，您想必是熟悉的，它在王国内也是家喻户晓的。

布卢姆

（羞愧畏缩，低声咕哝）我对那段关于大笑着的魔女手拉着手[113] 的描写有异议，如果我可以……

博福伊

（撇着嘴，目空一切地朝整个法庭狞笑着）你这可笑的笨驴，你呀！简直卑鄙得让人无法形容了！我认为你最好不这么过度地替自己开脱。我的出版代理人J．B. 平克尔[114] 也在座。审判长阁下，我相信会照例付给我们证人出庭费吧？这个讨厌的报人几乎使我们囊空如洗了，这个里姆斯的贼寒鸦[ 115] 连大学都没上过。

布卢姆

（含糊不清地）人生的大学。堕落的艺术。

博福伊

（大声嚷）卑鄙下流的谎话，证明他在道德上的腐败堕落！（打开他的公事包）我这里铁证如山，掌握犯罪事实[116]。审判长阁下，这是我的杰作的样本，可是被这畜生弄上的印记给糟蹋啦。[117]

旁听席上的声音

摩西，摩西，犹太王，

用《日报》把屁股擦。

布卢姆

（勇敢地）太夸张了。

博福伊

你这下流痞子！就该把你丢到洗马池里去，你这无赖！（对法庭）喏，瞧瞧这家伙的私生活吧！他当面一套，背后一套。在外面他是天使，回到家里就成了恶魔。当着妇女的面，他的行为简直不堪入耳！真是当代最大的阴谋家！

布卢姆

（对法庭）可他是个单身汉呀，怎么会……

巡警甲

公诉人控告布卢姆。传妇女德里斯科尔出庭。

庭役

女佣玛丽•德里斯科尔！

（衣着邋遢的年轻女佣玛丽•德里斯科尔走来。臂上挎着一只桶，手持擦地用的刷子。）

巡警乙

又来了一个！你也属于那不幸的阶级吧？

玛丽•德里斯科尔

（愤慨地）我可不是个坏女人。我品行端正，在先前伺候的那一家呆了四个月呢。工钱是每年六英镑，星期五放假。可是这个人调戏我，我就只好辞工不干啦。

巡警甲

你控告他什么？

玛丽•德里斯科尔

他调戏过我。但是我尽管穷，却懂得自重。

布卢姆

（身穿波纹细呢家常短上衣，法兰绒长裤，没有后跟的拖鞋，胡子拉碴，头发稍乱。）我待你蛮好。我送过你纪念品，远远超过你身份的漂亮的鲜棕色袜带。当女主人责备你偷了东西的时候，我轻率地偏袒了你。什么都不要过分，为人得公正。

玛丽•德里斯科尔

（激昂地）今晚当着天主的面发誓。我才不会伸手去拿这样的好处呢！

巡警甲

你控告他什么？发生什么事了吗？

玛丽•德里斯科尔

这个人在房屋后院抽冷子把我吓了一跳，审判长老爷。一天早晨，趁着女主人出门买东西的当儿，他要我摘下一根饰针给他，又搂住了我，害得我身上至今还有四块紫斑。他还两次把手捅进我的衣服里。

布卢姆

她回手打了我。

玛丽•德里斯科尔

（轻蔑地）我更尊重的是擦地的毛刷[118] ，正是这样。审判长老爷，我责备他了。他对我说，可别张扬出去。

（引起一阵哄堂大笑。）

乔治•弗特里尔[119]

（法庭书记。嗓音洪亮地宣布）肃静！现在由被告做他编造的供词。（布卢姆申辩自己无罪。他手持一朵盛开的睡莲花，开始，一场冗长而难以理解的发言。人们将会听取辩护人下面这段对大陪审团所作激动人心的陈说：被告落魄潦倒，尽管被打上害群之马的烙印，他却有决心改邪归正，全然温顺地缅怀过去，作为养得很驯顺的动物回归大自然。他曾经是个七个月就出生的早产儿，由多病并断了弦的老父精心抚养大的。他本人是可能几次误入歧途的父亲，可他渴望翻开新的一页。如今终于面对被绑上去受鞭挞的笞柱，就巴不得周围弥漫着家族的温暖气息，在团聚中度过晚年。他已经被环境熏陶成了英国人。那个夏天的傍晚，当雨住了的时候，他站在环行线铁道公司机丰驾驶室的踏板上，隔着都柏林市内和郊区那些恩爱之家的窗户，瞥见幸福的、地地道道牧歌式的乡间生活，墙上糊的是由多克雷尔[120] 店里买来的每打一先令九便士的墙纸。这里，在英国出生的天真烂漫的娃娃们，口齿不清地对圣婴作着祷告；年轻学子们拼死拼活地用着功；模范的淑女们弹着钢琴，或围着噼噼啪啪燃烧着的那截圣诞夜圆木，阖家念诵玫瑰经。同时，姑娘们和小伙子们沿着绿荫幽径徜徉；随着他们的步调，传来了美国式簧风琴的旋律，音质听来像煞管风琴，用不列颠合金[121] 镶边，有四个挺好使的音栓和十二褶层风箱，售价低廉，最便宜的货色……）

（又爆发了一阵哄笑。他语无伦次地咕噜着。审判记录员们抱怨听不清楚。）

普通记录员和速记员

（依旧低头看着记录册）让他放松一点。

马休教授

（在记者席上咳嗽一声，大声嚷）统统咳出来，伙计，一点一点地。（关于布卢姆和那只桶的盘讯。一只大桶。布卢姆本人。拉肚子。在比弗街。肠绞痛，对。疼得厉害。泥水匠的桶[ 122] 。）两腿发僵，拖着脚步走。忍受难以形容的痛苦。疼得要命。接近晌午的时候。要么是情欲，要么是勃艮第葡萄酒。对，一点儿菠菜。关键时刻。他不曾往桶里看。无人在场。一团糟。没有拉完。一份过期的《珍闻》[123]。

（起哄鼓噪，一片嘘声。布卢姆身穿沾满石灰水、破破烂烂的大礼服，歪戴着瘪下去一块的大礼帽，鼻子上横贴着一条橡皮膏，低声说着话。）

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊

（头戴高级律师的银色假发，身着呢绒长袍，用悲痛的抗议口吻。）本庭并非可以肆意发表猥亵轻率的演说，不惜伤害一个酒后犯罪者的场所。这里既不是斗熊场，也不是可以从事恶作剧的牛津。[124]不能在法庭上表演滑稽戏。我的辩护委托人尚未成年，一个来自外国的可怜的移民。他开头是个偷渡客，如今正竭力靠规规矩矩地工作挣点钱。被诬告的那些不轨行为是幻觉引起偶发的遗传性神经错乱导致的。本案中被控所犯的亲昵举动，在我这位辩护委托人的出生地法老[ 125] 之国，是完全被容许的。我要说的是，据初次印象[126]并没有肉欲的企图。既没发生暧昧关系，而德里斯科尔所指控的对她的调戏，也并没有重犯。我要特别提出隔代遗传的问题。我这位辩护委托人的家族中有着精神彻底崩溃与梦游症的病史。倘若允许被告陈述的话，他就可以诉说一桩事[127]——那是书里所曾叙述过的最奇妙的故事之一。审判长阁下，他在肉体方面是个废人，这是补鞋匠通常患的那种肺病造成的。据他所申诉的，他属于蒙古血统，对自己的行为不负任何责任。事实上，什么问题都不存在。

布卢姆

（赤脚，鸡胸，身着东印度水手的衫裤，歉疚般地将两脚的大趾头摆成内八字。睁开鼹鼠般的眯缝眼儿，茫然四顾，慢腾腾地用一只手抚摩前额。随后按水手的派头把腰带使劲一勒，以东方人的方式耸肩向法庭深打一躬，朝天翘起大拇指。）多、好、的、夜、晚。（天真地欢唱起来。）

可怜小娃子莉莉，

每晚猪脚送来哩，

两个先令付给你……

（众人怪叫，把他轰下台去。）

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊

（愤怒地对起哄者）这是一场匹马单枪的斗争。我对冥王哈得斯发誓，绝不能允许我的辩护委托人像这样被一帮野狗和大笑着的鬣狗所玩弄，而且还不准他发言。《摩西法典》[128] 已经取代了丛林法令。我绝不想损害司法的目的，然而这一点我必须反复强调指出：被告不是事先参与预谋的从犯，而起诉人被玩弄的事实也不存在。被告一直把该年轻女子当作自己的女儿来对待。（布卢姆握住杰•杰•奥莫洛伊的手，把它举到自己的唇边。）我要举出反证，彻底证明那只看不见的手[129] 在玩弄惯用的伎俩了。要是还认为可疑，就尽管迫害布卢姆好了。我这位辩护委托人生性腼腆，决做不出那种被损害贞节者会抗议的非礼举动。当一个理应对姑娘的状况负责的懦夫，在她身上满足了自己的情欲，使她误入歧途之后，他是决不会去朝她扔石头的。他要做个循规蹈矩的人。他是我所认识的人们当中最高尚清白的一位。眼下他的境遇不佳，因为他那份移民垦殖公司的辽阔地产被抵押出去了，那是在遥远的小亚细亚。现在把幻灯片放给你们看。（对布卢姆）我建议你出手大方一些。

布卢姆

每英镑付一便士。[130]

（墙上映出其尼烈湖的影象：朦朦胧胧一片银色的薄雾中，牛群在吃草。长着一双鼹鼠眼的白化病患者摩西•德鲁加茨[131] 从旁听席上站起来。他身穿印度粗蓝斜纹布褂子，双手各持着香橼、桔子和一副猪腰子。）

德鲁加茨

（嘶哑地）柏林西十三区布莱布特留大街[132]。

（杰•杰•奥莫洛伊迈上低矮的台座，一本正经地攥住上衣翻领。他的脸变得长而苍白，胡子拉碴，两眼深陷，像约翰•弗•泰勒[133] 那样出现了结核症的肿疱，颊骨上一片潮红。他用手绢捂着嘴，审视着迸溅出来的一股玫瑰色血液。）

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊

（声音小得几乎听不见）请原谅。我浑身冷得厉害，新近才离开病床。扼要他说几句话。（他模仿那有着鸟一般的头、狐狸似的胡子和宛若大象的鼻子的西摩•布希[ 134] 的雄辩。）当天使的书被打开来的时候，萌生于沉思的胸中那颗净化了的灵魂和正在净化着的灵魂的化身，倘若还有存在下去的任何价值的话[135] ，我就要提出，请对这位刑事被告人所蒙受的嫌疑，给予神圣而有利的裁定。

（一张写了些字的纸条被递交给法庭。）

布卢姆

（身着礼服）我可以提出最好的证人，就是卡伦和科尔曼[136] 二位先生、威兹德姆•希利•J．P。先生、我以前的上司乔•卡夫、前都柏林市长维•B•狄龙[137]先生。我和上流社会富于魅力的人士有交往……都柏林社交界的名媛们。（漫不经心地）今天下午我还在总督官邸的一个招待会上，跟老朋友天文台长罗伯特•鲍尔爵士和夫人聊天来着。我说：鲍勃[138] 爵士……

那尔弗顿•巴里[139] 夫人

（身穿开领低低的乳白色舞衫，戴一副长及臂肘的象牙色手套，罩着用黑貂皮镶边、薄薄地絮了棉花、拍出花纹的砖色披肩式外衣，头发上插着一把嵌着宝石的梳子和白鹭羽饰。）警察，逮捕他吧。当我丈夫参加芒斯特的巡回审判，前往蒂珀雷里[140] 北区的时候，他用反手给我写了一封字体蹩脚的匿名信，署名詹姆斯•洛夫伯奇[141] 。信里说，当我坐在皇家剧场包厢里观看《蚱蜢》的御前公演时，[142]他从楼座看见了我那举世无双的眼珠。他说，我使他的感情像烈火般高涨起来了。他向我作了非礼的表示，邀我下星期四在邓辛克[143] 标准时间下午四点半钟跟他幽会。他还表示要邮寄给我保罗•德•科克先生的一本小说，书名是《系了三条紧身褡的姑娘》。[144] 

贝林厄姆夫人

（头戴无边帽，身披仿海豹兔皮斗篷，领子一直围到鼻子上。她走下四轮轿式马车，从她那只袋鼠皮大手笼里掏出一副龟甲框带柄单眼镜。）他对我也曾这样说过。对，这准是那个行为不端的家伙。九三年二月间下雨夹雪的一天，冷得连污水管的铁格子和澡缸的浮球活栓都结了冰。在索恩利•斯托克爵士[145] 的住宅外面，他替我关上了马车门。随后，他在信里附了一朵火绒草，说是为了向我表示敬慕，特地从山丘上采来的。我请一位植物学专家给鉴定一下。原来是他从模范农场的催熟箱里偷来的本地所产马铃薯花。

那尔弗顿•巴里夫人

真不要脸！

（一群妓女与邋遢汉一拥而上。）

妓女与邋遢汉

（尖声喊叫）可别让贼跑啦！好哇，蓝胡子[146] ！犹大佬摩[147] 万岁！

巡警乙

（掏出手铐）放老实点！

贝林厄姆夫人

这家伙用种种笔迹给我写信，肉麻地恭维我是穿皮衣的维纳斯[148] ，说他深切地同情我那冻僵了的马车夫帕尔默，同时又表示羡慕帕尔默的帽子护耳、蓬蓬松松的羊皮外衣以及他能呆在我身边有多么幸运。也就是说，羡慕他身穿印有贝林厄姆家徽的号衣——黑色盾纹面上配以金线绣的雄鹿头。他肆无忌惮地夸奖我的脚尖，严严实实裹在丝袜子里的丰满的腿肚子，还热切地颂扬我那藏在昂贵花边里的另外一些宝贝，说这一切仿佛都历历在目。他怂恿我——还说他感到怂恿我乃是他一生的使命——尽早抓个机会玷污婚姻之床，犯淫乱之罪。

默雯•塔尔博伊贵妇人[ 149] 

（身着骑马装，头戴圆顶硬礼帽，脚蹬长统靴——上面装有状似公鸡脚上的距那样的踢马刺；朱红色背心，戴着火枪手用的小鹿皮长手套一手套筒是编织成的。她撩起长长的裙据，不断地甩着猎鞭，抽打鞭子的滚边。）他对我也是这样。因为在凤凰公园的马球赛场上，他瞥见了我。那一次，全爱尔兰队和爱尔兰第二队[150] 举行对抗赛。当英尼斯基林的强手登内希上尉骑着他所宠爱的那匹短腿壮马森特，在最后一局中获胜的时候，我的眼睛发出了圣洁的光。这个平民唐璜[151]从一辆出租马车背后瞅见了我。他把一张淫秽的相片——就是天黑之后在巴黎的大马路上卖的那种——装在双层信封里寄给了我。对任何上流妇女来说，这都是不能容忍的。我至今还保留着哪。相片上是一位半裸的女士，纤弱美丽——他一本正经地告诉我，这是他的老婆，是实地拍的。她正在跟一个壮实的徒步斗牛士[ 152] ——显然是个坏蛋——偷偷干着那种事。他怂恿我也这么做，放荡一下，去跟驻军的军官们干不规矩的事。他央求我用说不出口的方式弄脏他那封信，惩罚他——其实他就欠挨一顿严厉的惩罚——容许他驮着我，把他当马骑，并且狠狠地鞭打他。

贝林厄姆夫人

他对我也是这样。

那尔弗顿•巴里太太

对我也是这样。

（几位都柏林的最上流的夫人都举起布卢姆写给她们的卑鄙龌龊的信给大家看。）

默雯•塔尔博伊贵妇人

（突然发起怒来。她脚下的踢马刺丁当作响。）向天主发誓，我要教训教训他，我要使劲鞭打这条胆小卑劣的野狗。我要活剥他的皮。

布卢姆

（闭上眼睛，自知难以幸免，缩作一团）是当场吗？（窘促不安地蠕动着）又是一次！（战战兢兢地喘着气）我喜欢冒这样的危险。

默雯•塔尔博伊贵妇人

正是这样！我要给你点厉害尝尝。叫你像杰克•拉坦那样跳舞。[153] 

贝林厄姆夫人

这个暴发户！使劲揍他的屁股。在那上面划得一道道的，就像星条旗那样。

耶尔弗顿•巴里夫人

丢人现眼！他没有什么可辩解的！一个有妇之夫！

布卢姆

这些人哪。我的意思是拍打拍打而已。热辣辣地一片红，可又不至于流血。文雅地用烨木条抽打几下，还能促进血液循环哩。

默雯•塔尔博伊贵妇人

（嘲笑）咦，真的吗，我的好人儿？那么，当着神圣的天主发誓，我会吓掉你的小命的。我说话算话，准让你挨到一顿最残酷的鞭打。你已经把沉睡在我天性中的那只母老虎激怒了。

贝林厄姆夫人

（咬牙切齿地摇晃着围巾和带柄单眼镜）亲爱的哈纳，让他尝尝滋味。给他块生姜[154] 。用九尾鞭把这杂种狗抽打个半死。把他阉割了。把他劈成八块儿。

布卢姆

（浑身发抖，缩作一团，卑躬屈膝地双手合十）噢，好冷啊！噢，我一个劲儿地打哆嗦！那是因为您美得像天仙似的。忘掉吧，宽恕吧。这都是天命[155] 啊。请饶恕我这一次。（他伸过另一边面颊。）

耶尔弗顿•巴里夫人

（严峻地）塔尔博伊夫人，绝不能饶恕他！应该痛打他一顿！

默雯•塔尔博伊贵妇人

（气势汹汹地解开长手套的钮扣）凭什么宽恕他。狗畜生，而且生下来就是这副德性！他居然敢向我求爱！我要在大街上把他打得黑一块蓝一块的。把踢马刺上的齿轮刺进他的肉里。人人都晓得他是个王八。（她凶猛地凌空甩着猎鞭。）马上扒下他的裤子！过来，你这家伙！快点儿！准备好了吗？

布卢姆

（浑身发抖，开始照她的话做）今天天气还挺暖和。（鬈发的戴维•斯蒂芬斯[156] 跟一群赤足报童一道走过去。〕

戴维•斯蒂芬斯

《圣心使者》[157] 和《电讯晚报》，附有圣帕特里克节日的增刊，上面刊登了都柏林所有那些王八们的地址。

（披着金色斗篷的教长——教堂蒙席奥汉龙举起大理石座钟给众人看。康罗伊神父和耶稣会的约翰•休斯神父低垂着头。）

时钟

（钟门启开。）

咕咕。

咕咕。

咕咕。

（传来床架上的黄铜环丁零当啷的响声。）

铜环

咭咯甲咯。咭嘎唁嘎。咭咯甲咯。[ 158] 

（雾做成的镶板急剧地向后滚去，陪审员席上突然出现了一张张的脸：戴大礼帽的首席陪审员马丁•坎宁翰、杰克•鲍尔、西蒙•迪达勒斯、汤姆•克南、内德•兰伯特、约翰•亨利•门顿、迈尔斯•克劳福德、利内翰、帕迪•伦纳德、大鼻子弗林、麦科伊以及一无名氏[159] 的毫无特征的脸。）

无名氏

光着屁股骑裸马。按照年龄规定的负载重量。[160] 混蛋。他把她骗到了手。

陪审员们

（一起朝着声音转过头去）真的吗？

无名氏

（咆哮）还撅起屁股来。我敢打赌，以一百先令博五先令。

陪审员们

（一起低下头去表示同意）我们大多认为大概是这么回事。
巡警甲

这家伙是个嫌疑犯。另一个姑娘的辫子给铰掉了。[ 161] 通缉杀人犯杰克[162] 。

悬奖一千英镑。

巡警乙

（畏惧，低语）还穿着黑衣服。是个一夫多妻主义者。无政府主义者。

庭役

（大声地）没有固定地址的利奥波德•布卢姆是个臭名昭著的使用炸药的盗匪，他还是伪造文书者，重婚犯，猥亵者，又是个王八。他有损都柏林市民的公益。如今在本巡回法庭陪审团面前，经庭长阁下……

（都柏林市记录法官、弗雷德里克•福基纳爵士阁下，身穿灰白石色袍子，蓄着石像[163] 般的胡须，从法官席上站起来。他双臂捧着雨伞状的权杖。前额上直挺挺地长出一双摩西那样的公羊角。）

记录法官

本法官将断然废止这种贩卖白奴的活动，以使都柏林免遭可憎的蠹虫之危害。真是令人发指！（他戴上黑帽子 164] 。）行政司法副长官先生，把站在被告席的这个家伙押下去，关进蒙乔伊监狱里，听候国王陛下的圣旨。然后把他绞死，要做到万无一失。愿天主大发慈悲，保佑你的灵魂。把他带走。

（一顶黑色头盖帽[165] 扣到布卢姆头上。行政司法副长官高个儿约翰•范宁出现了，他吸着一支刺鼻的亨利•克莱。[166] ）

高个儿约翰•范宁

（脸色阴沉，用洪亮、圆润的嗓音说）谁来绞死加略人犹大？

（高级理发师霍•朗博尔德[167] 穿着血红色紧身皮背心，系着揉皮工人的围裙，肩上扛着盘成一圈的绳子，爬上绞刑架。腰带上插着救生用具和一根满是钉子的大头棒。他使劲搓着那双因戴着金属制关节保护套而隆起的手。）

朗博尔德

（用令人发惊的亲昵语气对记录法官说）陛下[168] ，敝人是绞刑吏哈利，默西河[169] 的凶神。每绞死一名，酬金五基尼。脖子不断不要钱。[170] 

（乔治教堂的钟缓慢地响着，铁在黑暗中轰鸣着。[171] ）

众钟

丁当！丁当！！

布卢姆

（绝望地）等一等。住手。这是一场骗局。发发善心。我瞧见了。清白无辜。姑娘给关在猴圈里。动物园。淫猥的黑猩猩。（上气不接下气地）骨盆。姑娘天真地羞红了脸，使我浑身瘫软。[172] （激动不已）我离开了那地方。（转向群众中的一个人，哀求地）海因斯，我能跟你说句话吗？你认得我。那三先令，你就留下吧。[173] 假若你还想多要一点的话……

海因斯

（冷漠地）我和你素不相识。

巡警乙

（指着一个角落）炸弹在这儿哪。

巡警甲

一颗可怕的定时炸弹。

布卢姆

不，不。那是只猪脚，我参加葬礼去了。

巡警甲

（抄起警棍）你撒谎！

（猎兔狗抬起鼻子尖儿，露出帕狄•迪格纳穆那张患坏血症的灰脸。他已经吃得一于二净。他吐出一股像是吃了腐肉般的臭气。他长得个头和形状都跟人一样了。那身猎獾狗的黑褐色毛皮成为褐色尸衣。一双绿眼睛杀气腾腾地闪着光。半截耳朵、整个鼻子和双手的大拇指都被食尸鬼吃掉了。）

帕狄•迪格纳穆

（瓮声瓮气地）可不是嘛。是我的葬礼。菲纽肯大夫[174]给开了死亡诊断书。我是因病自然死亡的。

（他把那张残缺不全的死灰般的脸转向月亮，忧伤地吠着。）

布卢姆

（昂然自得地）你们听见了吗？

帕狄•迪格纳穆

布卢姆，我是帕狄•迪格纳穆的鬼魂。听着，听着，啊，听着[ 175] ！

布卢姆

这是以扫的声音。[176] 

巡警乙

（画十字）这怎么可能呢？

巡警甲

一便士一本的《要理问答》里可没有。[177] 

帕狄•迪格纳穆

是转生[178] 。亡灵。

一个嗓音

哦，别转文啦！

帕狄•迪格纳穆

（诚挚地）我曾经是约•亨•门顿的雇员，他是律师，负责办理宣誓和宣誓书事务，住在巴切勒步道二十七号。如今我因心壁肥大而死了。时运不济啊。我那可怜的老婆可遭了殃。她怎样忍受着这一切呢？可别让她挨近那瓶雪利酒。（他四下里打量着。）给我一盏灯。我得满足一下动物的欲望。那脱脂奶不合我的口味。

（公墓管理员约翰•奥康内尔[179] 那魁梧的身姿出现了。他手持一串系了黑纱的钥匙。站在他身边的是教诲师科菲神父[180]，肚子鼓得像只癞蛤馍，歪脖儿，身穿白色法衣，头戴印花布夜帽，昏昏欲睡地拄着一根用罂粟编成的手杖。）

科菲神父

（打个呵欠，用阴郁的嗄声吟诵）呐咪内。雅各。尔饼干[181] 。啊们。

约翰•奥康内尔

（用喇叭筒像吹雾中警报般大声喊叫）已故迪格纳穆•帕特里克•T。

帕狄•迪格纳穆

（尖起耳朵，畏畏缩缩地）陪音[182]。（挣扎着向前移动，将一只耳朵贴在地面上）

是我主人的声音！[183] 

约翰•奥康内尔

埋葬许可证死亡[ 184] 第八万五千号。第十七墓区。钥匙议院。[185] 第一0 一号地域。

（帕狄•迪格纳穆一边沉思默想，一边直挺挺地翘着尾巴尖儿，竖起耳朵，显然在使劲地倾听着。）

帕狄•迪格纳穆

祈求他的灵魂获得永安。

（他沿着地下堆煤场的抛煤口像虫子一般慢慢地向前蠕动，系着褐衣的带子从卵石上拖过去，喳喳作响。一只胖墩墩的老鼠：[186] 爷爷趔趔趄趄地跟在后面。它长着一双蘑菇般的鸟龟爪子和灰色甲壳。从地底下传来迪格纳穆那闷哑的呻吟声：“迪格纳穆已死，并已入葬了。”汤姆•罗赤福特身穿深红色背心和马裤，头戴便帽，从他那有两根圆柱的机器里跳出来。）

汤姆•罗赤福特

（一手接着胸骨，深打一躬）那是吕便•杰。我得从他手里搞到一枚两先令银市。

（他死死地盯着检修口。）[187] 轮到我啦。跟我去卡洛。[188] 

（他就像是一条鲁莽的鲑鱼一般纵身跳到空中，被吸入抛煤口。圆柱上的两个圆盘晃了晃，宛如一双眼睛。显示出一对“零”字。一切都消失了。布卢姆拖着沉重的脚步膛着污水继续向前走。众吻在尘雾的空隙间，吱吱响着。传来了钢琴声。他在一座点了灯的房舍前停下脚步，倾听着。众吻从它们藏匿的地方展翼飞出，在他周围翱翔，调哳着，啾唧着，颤颤巍巍地唱着。）

众吻

（颤巍巍地唱着）利奥！（啁哳着）黏糊糊，舔啊舔，腻得得，吧唧唧，跟利奥！（啾唧着）咕咕咕！真好吃，吱吱吱！（颤巍巍地唱着）大呀大！转啊转！利奥波波德！（啁哳着）利奥利！（颤巍巍地唱着）噢，利奥！

（众吻飒飒响着，在他的衣服上拍翅，飞落在上面，成为锃亮得令人眼花缭乱的斑点，化为银光闪闪的圆形金属小饰片。）

布卢姆

准是男人弹的。悲哀的曲子。教堂音乐哩。兴许就在这儿。（年轻妓女佐伊•希金斯[189] 身穿钉有三颗青铜钮扣的蔚蓝色宽松套衫，脖颈上系了一条长长的黑色天鹅绒细带。她点点头，轻盈飞快地跑下台阶，勾引他。）

佐伊

你在找什么人吗？他正在里面跟他的朋友在一道哪。

布卢姆

这里是麦克太太[190]家吗？

佐伊

不，她住八十一号。这里是科恩大大家。你走得越远，可能越倒媚。斯利珀斯莱珀老妈妈[191] 。（亲昵地）今儿晚上她自个儿在跟兽医搞着哪。他就是那个向她透露消息的人，告诉她哪些马会获胜，还接济她儿子在牛津读书。打了烊她照样接客。可是今天她并不走运。（觉得蹊跷地）你该不是他爹吧？

布卢姆

我可不是！

佐伊

你们两个人都穿黑衣服哩。今儿晚上小耗子儿痒痒吗，

（他的皮肤敏锐地感觉出她的指尖儿挨近了。一只手沿着他的左边大腿滑动。）

佐伊

球球儿好吗？

布卢姆

在另一边。可怪啦，我的长在右边儿。想必份量更重一些。我的裁缝梅西雅斯[192]

说，每一百万人当中才有一个。

佐伊

（猛地大吃一惊）你患了硬下疳啦。

布卢姆

不会吧。

佐伊

我摸出来啦。

（她把手滑进他左边的裤兜，拽出一个又硬又黑、干瘪了的土豆。她紧闭着湿润的嘴唇，打量着土豆和布卢姆。）

布卢姆

是个护身符。传家宝。

佐伊

是给佐伊的吧？留作纪念？我对你多好哇，呃？

（她贪婪地把土豆塞进自己的衣兜，挽住他的臂，柔情谴绪地搂抱着他。他不自在地泛着微笑。东方音乐徐徐奏起，一曲接一曲。他凝视着她那双眼圈涂得黑黑的、像黄褐色水晶般的眼睛。他的微笑变得柔和了。）

佐伊

下次你就是熟客了。

布卢姆

（哀切地）我只要跟可爱的羚羊亲热那么一回，我就永远也不会......（一群羚羊跳跳蹦蹦，在山上吃着草。附近有凡个湖泊。沿着湖畔是一溜杉树丛的黑色阴影。升起一股芳香，树脂发出生发剂般的浓郁气味。东方，蔚蓝的苍穹燃烧着，青铜色的鹰群划破天空，展翅飞去。下面横卧着女都[193] ，赤裸，白皙，纹丝不动，清凉，呈现着豪华气派。淡红色玫瑰丛中，喷泉淙淙响着。巨大的玫瑰咕哝着深红色葡萄的事。耻辱、肉欲与血液之酒，奇妙地私语着，淌了出来。）

佐伊

（她那后宫女奴般的嘴唇上，令人腻味地涂满了猪油与玫瑰香水调成的软膏，配合着音乐，声调平板地低语。）耶路撒冷的女子们哪，我虽然黝黑，却秀美。[194]

布卢姆

（神魂颠倒）从你的发音，我想你的家庭出身必然不错。

佐伊

我心里想些什么，你能知道吗？

（她用镶金小牙轻轻地咬他的耳朵，朝他喷着浓郁的烂蒜气息。那簇玫瑰花分裂开来，露出历代国王的金基和他们那朽骨。）

布卢姆

（犹豫了一下，笨拙地扎煞着手，机械地爱抚她的右乳房）你是个都柏林姑娘吗？

佐伊

（灵巧地握住一根散发，将它和挽起来的头发拢在一起）用不着担心。我是英国人。你有烟卷儿吗？

布卢姆

（继续爱抚着）我难得抽烟卷儿，亲爱的，偶尔倒吸根雪茄烟。哄孩子玩的。（好色地）嘴里与其叼那臭烟草卷成的圆筒，不如派上更好的用场。

佐伊

接下去！用它发表一通政见演说吧、

布卢姆

（身穿工人的灯芯绒工装裤和黑色羊毛衫，系着一条飘扬的红领带，头戴阿帕切[195] 式便帽。）人类是不可救药的。沃尔特•雷利爵士：[196] 从新大陆带回了土豆和烟草。前者能够借吸收作用消灭恶疫[197]后者毒害耳朵、眼睛、心脏、记忆力、意志力、理解力，它毒害一切。也就是说，他带回了毒药，这比我忘记了名字的带回食品来的另一位要早一百年。自杀。谎言。一切我们都习以为常。喏，瞧瞧我们的公共生活吧！

（从远处的尖塔传来了午夜钟声。）

钟声

回来吧，利奥波德！都柏林的市长大人！

布卢姆

（身穿高级市政官的长袍，挂着链子）阿伦码头、英斯码头、圆堂、蒙乔伊和北船坞的选民们，我认为应该从牲畜市场铺设一条电车道，一直通到河边。[198] 这是未来的音乐。是敝人提出的施政方案。谁能获得好处？[ 199] 然而我们这几位搭乘金融界幽灵船的冒险家范德狄肯们[200] ……

一个选民

为我们未来的总督九呼万岁！

（火炬游行队伍中的北极光跳跃着。）

持火炬者

万岁！

（几位大名鼎鼎的议员、本市大亨以及市民们与布卢姆握手，向他祝贺。曾经连任三届都柏林市长的蒂莫西•哈林顿[201] ，身穿市长的猩红色袍子，胸佩金链，系着白丝领带，仪表堂堂，与临时代理洛坎•舍洛克参议员攀谈着。二人频频点头，表示已谈妥。）

哈林顿前市长

（身穿猩红袍子，手执权杖，佩带市长的金链，系着白丝大领带）高级市政官利奥•布卢姆爵士的演说词将付梓，费用由地方纳税者支付。他出生的那所房子用纪念牌装饰起来。科克街尽头的那条原名考•帕勒的通道，今后将改名为布卢姆大街。

参议员洛坎•舍洛克

全场一致通过。

布卢姆

（充满激情地）这些飞行的荷兰人或撒谎的荷兰人，当他们斜倚在布置一新的船尾楼甲板上掷骰子时，他们在乎什么呢？机器是他们的口号，他们的非非之想，他们的万应妙丹。那是节省劳力的设备，是褫夺者，是妖精，是为了互相残杀而制造出来的怪物，是根据一群资本家的欲望，用我们所出售的劳动生产出来的可怕的妖怪。穷人在挨饿。他们却饲养着高贵的牡山鹿，沉溺在目光短浅的虚饰中，利用他们的财富和权势，对庄稼人也罢，鹧鸪也罢，胡乱射杀。然而他们的海盗统治已垮台，永远地，永远地，永……[202]

（经久不息的掌声。五彩缤纷的饰柱、五月柱[203]和节日的牌楼拔地而起。街上张挂起写有“十万个欢迎”和“以色列王多么美好”[204]字样的幡。所有的窗口都簇拥着看热闹的人，大多是妇女。沿途，都柏林近卫步兵连队、苏格兰边防近卫军、卡梅伦高原连队以及威尔士步兵连队的士兵们，以立正的姿势排列着，挡住群众。高中的男生们蹲在街灯柱、电线杆、窗口、檐口檐槽、烟囱顶管、栏杆和排水管上，又是吹口哨，又是欢呼出现了云柱[205] 。远处传来鼓笛队演奏《我们的一切誓约》的声音。先遣队举着帝国的鹰徽[206] ，旗帜随风飘扬，摇着东方的棕桐叶。用黄金与象牙装饰起来的教皇旗帜高高耸起，周围是一面面细长的三角形市旗。队伍的头排出现了，领先的是身穿棋盘花样袍子的市政典礼官约翰，霍华德•巴涅尔[207] ，阿斯隆地方选出来的议员兼阿尔斯特纹章院院长。跟在后面的是都柏林市市长阁下约瑟夫•哈钦森[208] 、科克市市长阁下、利默里克、戈尔韦、斯莱戈和沃特福德等市的市长阁下，二十八位爱尔兰贵族代表[209]，印度的达宫贵人们，西班牙的大公们，佩带着宝座饰布的印度大君，都柏林首都消防队，按照资财顺序排列的一群财界圣徒，唐郡兼康纳主教[210] 、全爱尔兰首席阿马大主教——红衣主教迈克尔•洛格阁下，全爱尔兰首席阿大主教——神学博士威廉•亚历山大阁下，犹太教教长、长老派教会大会主席，浸礼会、再浸礼会、卫理公会以及弟兄会首脑，还有公谊会的名誉干事。走在他们后面的是各种行会、同业工会和民团，打着飘扬的旗帜行进。其中包括桶匠、小鸟商人、水磨匠、报纸推销员、公证人、按摩师、葡萄酒商、疝带制造者、扫烟囱的，提炼猪油的，织波纹塔夫绸和府绸的，钉马掌的铁匠，意大利批发商，教堂装饰师，制造靴拔子的，殡仪事业经营人、绸缎商、宝石商、推销员、制造软木塞的、火灾损失估价员、开洗染行的，从事出口用装瓶业的，毛皮商、印名片的，纹章图章雕刻师、屯马场的工役、金银经纪人、板球与射箭用具商、制造粗筛子的，鸡蛋土豆经销人、经售男袜内衣和针织品商人、手套商、自来水工程承包人。尾随于后的是侍寝官、黑仗侍卫、勋章院副院长、仪仗队队长、主马官、侍从长、纹章局局长，以及手持御剑、圣斯蒂芬铁制王冠、圣爵与《圣经》的侍从武官长。四名司号步兵吹信号。卫兵们答以欢迎的号角。没帽子的布卢姆出现在凯旋门下。他披着镶了白貂皮边的绯红天鹅绒斗篷，手执圣爱德华的权杖、象征王权的宝珠、有着鸽状装饰的王节和慈悲剑[211] 。他骑着一匹乳白色的马，它甩着猩红色的长尾巴，鞍辔装点得十分华丽，马笼头是用金子制成的。狂热的兴奋。显贵的妇女们从阳台上掷下玫瑰花瓣。空气里弥漫着一片馨香气息。男人们喝采。布卢姆的侍童们拿着山楂枝与鹪鹩枝[212] ，在围观的人丛中跑来跑去。）

布卢姆的侍童们

鹪鹩啊，鹪鹩啊，

众鸟之王当推你；

圣斯蒂芬的节日，

你被缠于荆豆枝。

一铁匠

（喃喃地）真了不起！原来这就是布卢姆？看上去还不到三十一岁哪！

石板铺装工

呃，那就是遐迩闻名的布卢姆，世界上最伟大的改革家。向他脱帽致敬！

（众人摘帽。妇女们热切地交头接耳。）

一位女富豪

（阔气地）这个人多么了不起啊！

一位贵妇

（高贵地）他见识该有多么广！

一位女权运动者

（富于男子气概地）而且干了那么多！

一个装铃匠

一张典雅的脸！他有着一位思想家的前额。

（艳阳天[213] 。太阳从西北方向光芒四射。[214]）

唐郡兼康纳主教

毫无疑问，这是我国领土的无比沉着强悍、有权有势的统治者，他集皇帝、大总统、国王、议长于一身。愿天主保佑利奥波德一世！

众人

愿天主保佑利奥波德一世！

布卢姆

（身穿加冕服，披着紫斗篷，威风凛凛地对唐郡兼康纳主教）谢谢你，多少有些名气的阁下。

阿马大主教威廉

（系着紫色宽领带，头戴宽边铲形帽）陛下对爱尔兰及其属地进行审判的时候，会尽力慈悲为怀来施行法律吗？

布卢姆

（将右手放在睾丸上，宣誓[215] 。）愿造物主引导我如此行事。我发誓将这样去做。

阿马大主教迈克尔

（将瓦罐里的发油倒在布卢姆头上）我向你们宣布一桩大喜讯：我们有了一位刽子手[216] 。利奥波德，帕特里克，安德鲁，大卫，乔治。现在我为你涂油！

（布卢姆披上一件金线织成的斗篷，戴上一枚红玉戒指。他拾级而上，站在即位的石台上。贵族代表们也戴上他们那二十八顶王冠。基督教堂、圣帕特里克教堂、乔治教堂与快乐的马拉海德响起一片祝福的钟声。麦拉斯义卖会的焰火从四面八方升上天空，构成辉煌灿烂的象征阴茎的图案。贵族们一个挨一个地走到跟前，屈膝表示敬意。）

贵族们

愿作您的臣民，全心全意捍卫您在地上的尊严。

（布卢姆举起右手，上面闪烁着科- 依- 诺尔钻石[217] 。他的坐骑嘶鸣着。周围立即万籁俱寂。架起州际及行星际的无线电发报机，以接收信息。）

布卢姆

我的臣民们！我特此任命忠实的战马“幸运的纽带”为世袭首相[218]，并且宣布，今天就与前妻离婚，迎娶夜之光辉塞勒涅[219]公主为妻。

（布卢姆那位身份悬殊的前任配偶旋即被警察局的囚车押走。塞勒涅公主穿着月白色衣裳，头戴银色月牙儿，从一辆由两个巨人抬着的轿子里走下来。一阵暴风雨般的喝采声。）

约翰•霍华德•巴涅尔

（举起王旗）卓越的布卢姆！我那遐尔闻名的兄长的继承人！

布卢姆

（拥抱约翰•霍华德•巴涅尔）朕衷心感谢你的厚意。约翰，由于你在我们共同的祖先所许下的土地[220]—— 绿色的爱琳上，给我以对国王的隆重欢迎。

（他被授予体现着宪章的荣誉市民权，呈给他的都柏林市钥匙交叉放在深红色的软垫上。他让大家看他穿的是绿袜子[221]。）

汤姆•克南

陛下啊，您是当之无愧的。

布卢姆

二十年前的今天，我们在莱迪史密斯[222] 击败了宿敌。我们的榴弹炮和轻回旋炮接连击中敌军阵地，给以重创。前进一英里半！[223] 敌军冲过来了！一切都失去啦。[224] 投降吗？绝不！无论如何也要把他们击退！看哪！冲锋啊！我们的轻骑兵队扫荡普列文高地，一路呐喊着：“忠诚的士兵！”[225]把萨拉逊[226] 的炮兵杀得一个也不留。

《自由人报》排字工人工会

说得好！说得好！

约翰•怀斯•诺兰

放跑了詹姆斯•斯蒂芬斯[ 227] 的就是他。

慈善学校学童

真棒！

一个老居民

您是国家的光荣，老爷，不折不扣是这样。

卖苹果的老妪[228] 

他正是爱尔兰所需要的人。

布卢姆

亲爱的臣民们，一个新时代即将来临。朕布卢姆，老实告诉你们，它甚至就在我们眼前。是的，朕以布卢姆的名义发誓，不久你们就将进入未来的新爱尔兰的金都新布卢姆撒冷[229] 。

（来自爱尔兰各郡的三十二名工人[230] ，佩带着玫瑰花饰，在营造业者德尔旺[ 231] 的指挥下，建筑起崭新的布卢姆撒冷。那是一座水晶屋顶的广厦，状如巨大的猪肾，内有四万间屋子。在扩建的过程中，曾拆毁了数座建筑物和纪念碑。政府官厅暂时迁移到铁道库房里。大批房屋被夷为平地。居民搬到用红笔标出“利•布”字样的桶里和箱子里。几名贫民从梯子上跌下来。挤满了忠实围观者的都柏林城墙的一部分坍塌下来。）

围观者们

（奄奄一息）行将咽气者向您致敬[232] 。（他们死去。）

（一个穿棕色胶布雨衣的人从活板门里跳出来，用伸长了的手指[233 ］指着布卢姆。）

穿胶布雨衣的人

他的话，你们一句也别信。这个人叫作利奥波德•明托施，是个臭名昭著的纵火犯。

其实，他姓希金斯[234] 。

布卢姆

开枪打死他！像狗一样的基督教徒！管他什么明托施呢！（一声炮响，身穿胶布雨衣的人不见踪影了。布卢姆抡起权杖将一株株罂粟砍倒。有人报告说，众多劲敌、牲畜业者、下院议员、常务委员会委员当即死亡了。布卢姆的卫兵们散发濯足节的贫民抚恤金[ 235] 、纪念章、面包和鱼、戒酒会员徽章、昂贵的亨利．克莱雪茄、煮汤用的免费牛骨、装在密封的信封里并捆着金线的橡胶预防用具、菠萝味硬糖果、黄油糖块、折叠成三角帽形的情书、成衣、一碗碗裹有奶油面糊的烤牛排、一瓶瓶杰那斯溶液、购货券、四十天大赦[236]。）、伪币、奶场饲养的猪做成的香肠、剧场免票、电车季票、匈牙利皇家特许彩票[237] 、一便士食堂的餐券、十二卷世界最劣书的廉价版：《法国佬与德国佬》（政治学）、《怎样育婴》[238]（幼儿学）、《七先令六便士的菜肴五十种》（烹饪学）、《耶稣是太阳神话吗？》（史学）、《止痛法》（医学）、《供幼儿阅读的宇宙概略》（宇宙学）、 《福临笑家门》（乐天生活法）、《广告兜揽员便览》（报业学）、 《助产妇情书》（情欲学）、《宇宙空间人名录》（星辰学）、《动人心弦的歌曲》（旋律学）、《省小钱发财法》（吝啬学）。全场争先恐后地一拥而上。妇女们往前挤，以便触摸布卢姆那件袍子的下摆。格温多林•杜比达特小姐[239]推开人群，跳上他的马，在掌声雷动中吻他的双颊。用镁光灯为他们拍摄了照片。婴儿们与乳儿们被高高举起。）

妇女们

小爹[240]！小爹！

婴儿们与乳儿们

拍拍手等待，波尔迪回家来，

兜里的点心，只给利奥吃。

（布卢姆弯下身，轻轻地戳博德曼娃娃的肚皮。）

娃娃博德曼

（打嗝儿，凝乳从他嘴里往外冒）哈加加加。

布卢姆

（跟一个双目失明的小伙子握手）你比我的兄弟还亲！（伸出双臂搂着一对老夫妻的肩膀）亲爱的老朋友们！（他与衣衫褴褛的少男少女玩抢壁角游戏。）不在！猫儿！（他推着双胞胎所坐的那辆婴儿车。）嘀嗒乖乖俩，你们穿鞋吗？（他变起魔术，从嘴里拽出红、橙、黄、绿、蓝、靛青以及紫罗兰色的丝帕。）罗伊格比夫[241] 每秒三十二英尺。[242] （他安慰一位寡妇。）独居使心灵更加年轻。（他以怪诞的滑稽动作跳起苏格兰高地舞。）跳呀，伙计们！（他吻一位瘫痪老乒的褥疮。）光荣负伤！（他把一位胖警察绊了一跤。）万事休矣：完蛋。[243]万事休矣：完蛋。（他跟一个羞红了脸的女侍咬耳朵，和善地微笑着。）啊，淘气，[244]淘气！（他啃着农民莫里斯•巴特里[245]递给他的一个生芜菁。）不错！好极啦！（他拒绝接受记者约瑟夫•海因斯递过来的三先令。）我亲爱的伙计，这可不行！（他把上衣送给一个乞丐。）请你收下。（他参加上了年岁的男女瘫子的爬行比赛。）来呀，小伙子们！向前爬呀，姑娘们！

市民

（感动得说不出话来，用鲜绿色围巾擦拭眼泪。）愿好天主保佑他！

（山羊角制号角[246]响了，要人们保持肃静。升起了锡安旗[247]。）

布卢姆

（威风凛凛地脱下大笔，露出肥胖的身躯。打开一卷纸，庄严地朗读。）阿列夫、贝特、吉梅尔、达列特[248]，《哈加达》书[249]，门柱圣卷[250]，合礼[251]，赎罪日[252]，再献圣殿节[253]，罗施•哈沙纳[254]，圣约之子会[ 255] ，受诫礼，无酵饼[ 256] ，德系犹太人，梅殊加[257] ，带流苏的围巾[258] 。

（市政府副书记官吉米•亨利[259] 宣读一篇正式译文。）

吉米•亨利

债权法院现在开庭。最宽宏大量的陛下即将举行户外审判。免费提供医学和法律方面的咨询。解答模棱两可的辞句以及其他问题。竭诚欢迎大家光临。乐园历元年于我们忠实的王都都柏林举行。

帕迪•伦纳德

我的地方税和国税怎么办？

布卢姆

朋友，就交纳吧。

帕迪•伦纳德

谢谢您。

大鼻子弗林

我能用火灾保险证书作抵押吗，

布卢姆

（冷漠地）各位先生，请注意，由于你们的侵权行为，应交保释金五英镑，限期六个。

杰•杰•奥莫洛伊

我说过他是个但尼尔[260] 吗? 不！他简直就是彼得•奥布赖恩[ 261] 。

大鼻子弗林

这五英镑，我打哪儿支取呢？

精明鬼[262]伯克

膀眺有毛病怎么办？

布卢姆

稀硝盐酸[263]，二十滴。

酊剂混和催吐剂，[264]五滴。

蒲公英精液[265]，三十滴。

兑上蒸馏水，每日三次。[266] 

克里斯•卡利南[ 267] 

毕宿五的周年视差是多少？［268] 

布卢姆

克里斯，很高兴能见到你。吉11。

乔•海因斯

你为什么不穿制服？

布卢姆

当我那道德崇高的祖先身穿奥地利暴君的制服被关在潮湿的牢房里的时候，你的祖先哪儿去啦？

本•多拉德

三色堇？

布卢姆

装饰（美化）郊区的花园。

本•多拉德

双胞胎到来的时候呢？

布卢姆

父亲（老子、爹）开始思索[269] 。

拉里•奥罗克[270] 

为我新开的这家酒吧发个八天的许可证[271] 吧。利奥爵士，还记得我吧？那时你们住在七号来着，我正要给你太太送一打烈性黑啤酒哩。

布卢姆

（冷冰冰地）你的记性比我的好。可布卢姆太太是从来不接受礼物的。

克罗夫顿

这真像是过节。

布卢姆

（庄严地）你说这是过节。我说这是领圣体。

亚历山大•凯斯

我们什么时候才能有自己的钥匙议院[272]呢，

布卢姆

我主张整顿本市的风纪，推行简明浅显的《十诫》。让新的世界取代旧的。犹太教徒、伊斯兰教徒与异教徒都联合起来。每一个大自然之子都将领到三英亩土地和一头母牛。[273] 豪华的殡仪汽车[274] 。强制万民从事体力劳动。所有的公园统统昼夜向公众开放。电动洗盘机。一切肺病、精神病、战争与行乞必须立即绝迹。普遍大赦。每周举行一次准许戴假面具的狂欢会。一律发奖金。推行世界语以促进普天之下的博爱。再也不要酒吧间食客和以治水肿病为幌子来行骗的家伙们的那种爱国主义了。自由货币，豁免房地租，自由恋爱以及自由世俗国家中的一所自由世俗教会。

奥马登•勃克

一个自由鸡窝里的自由狐狸。

戴维•伯恩[275]

（打哈欠）！阿——哧！

布卢姆

混合人种和混合通婚。

利内翰

男女混浴怎样？

（布卢姆向身边的人们阐述了自己的社会改革计划。众人一致表示同意。基尔代尔街博物馆的管理员出现了。他拉着一辆排子车，上面摇摇晃晃地载着儿具裸体女神雕像：美臀维纳斯[276] ，肉欲维纳斯[277] 、轮回维纳斯[278] ，还有九位也是裸体的新缪斯女神石膏像。她们司的是：商业、歌剧、恋爱、广告、工业、言论自由、多重投票权、烹调法、家庭卫生法、海边音乐会、无痛分娩法和通俗天文学。）

法利神父[279] 

他是个主教派[280] 教友，一个不可知论者，一个企图推翻我们神圣信仰的无教义者。

赖尔登老太太[281]

（撕碎她的遗嘱）我对你失望啦！你这坏蛋！

葛罗甘老婆婆[ 282] 

（脱掉一只长靴子朝布卢姆丢去）你这畜生！可恶的家伙！

大鼻子弗林

给咱们唱个小曲儿吧，布卢姆。唱一支古老甜蜜的情歌[283]。

布卢姆

（欢乐诙谐地逗弄着）

我发誓不离开她，永永远远，

原来她好残忍，把我欺骗，

我的吐啦噜，吐啦噜，吐啦噜。[284] 

“独脚”霍罗翰[285] 

好样的老布卢姆！不管谁也比不过他。

帕迪•伦纳德

爱尔兰戏子！

布卢姆

哪一出铁道歌剧像一条直布罗陀的电车线路？并排的铸铁。[286] （笑声。）

利内翰

剽窃家！打倒布卢姆！

蒙面纱的女巫

（狂热地）我是布卢姆的信徒，并且以此为荣。不管怎样，我相信他。他是天底下最逗的人，我情愿为他献出自己的生命。

布卢姆

（朝围观者眨眼）我敢断定她准是个漂亮姑娘。

西奥多•普里福伊[287] 

（头戴钓鱼帽，身穿防水布前克）他利用机械的设计来阻挠大自然神圣掌画的实现。

蒙面纱的女巫

（用短刀刺胸脯）我英雄的天神啊！（死去。）（众多最富于魅力和狂热的妇女也纷纷自杀。有用匕首刺胸口的，有自溺的，服氢氰酸、附子或砒霜的，割动脉的，绝食的，纵身投到蒸气碾路机轮下的，从纳尔逊纪念柱顶上跳进吉尼斯啤酒公司那巨大酒桶里的，还有把头伸到煤气灶底下气绝身死，用时髦的袜带自缢，或从各层楼窗口跳下的。）

亚历山大•约•道维[288] 

（语气激烈地）基督教徒们和反布卢姆主义者，这个名叫布卢姆的家伙是从地狱的底层来的，丢尽了基督教徒的脸。门德斯这只臭山羊[289]从小就是个恶魔似的浪子，露出早熟幼儿的淫荡症状，令人联想到低地各镇[290] 。而且他竟跟一个放荡的老妪勾勾搭搭。这个厚颜无耻、假冒为善的恶棍，简直就是《启示录》里提到的那只白牛。[291] 他是绯红女[292] 的崇拜者。他鼻孔里呼吸的净是阴谋诡计。火刑柱和烧滚了的油锅正是他的去处。凯列班[293 ]！

群氓

用私刑拷打他！把他活活烧死！他跟巴涅尔一样坏。福克斯先生！[294]

（葛罗甘老婆婆把长靴朝布卢姆丢去。上多尔塞特街上方和下方的几家店的老板朝他丢一些廉价的或根本不值一文的物品：火腿骨头、炼乳罐头、卖不出去的卷心菜、陈面包、羊尾和肥猪肉碎片。）

布卢姆

（兴奋地）这简直是中了暑又在发疯了，[295]又开起可怕的玩笑来了。对上苍发誓，我就像没有被太阳照射过的白雪一般皎洁[296]。那是我哥哥亨利干的。我们两个人长得一模一样。他住在海豚仓巷二号。谣言这条毒蛇对我进行了恶意中伤。[ 297] 各位同胞，索然无味的故事犹如没有马的公共马车。[298]我提请我的老友、性病专家玛拉基•穆利根博士对我从医学上做出鉴定。
穆利根博士

（身着驾车穿的皮前克，额上戴着一副绿色防尘眼镜）布卢姆博士是个变态的阴阳人。他是新近从优斯塔斯大夫为神经失常的男病人所设的私立精神病院里逃出来的。他有着遗传性癫痫病征象，这是纵欲所导致的。曾经发现他的祖先有着象皮病迹象。慢性下体裸露狂的征候十分明显。还潜伏着灵巧地使用双手的现象。由于手淫，他过早地歇了顶，结果形成了乖僻的梦想家气质。他是个改邪归正的放荡者，装有金牙。家庭矛盾使他暂时丧失了记忆。我相信他是个并没有犯多大罪，却受了很大冤屈的人[299] 我曾对他做过全面检查，对肛门、腋窝、胸部和阴部的五千四百二十六根毛做了酸性试验。我敢断言，他是个处女膜未受损的童贞女[300]。

（布卢姆用高级礼帽遮住自己的生殖器。）

马登[301] 大夫

泌尿生殖器高度畸型也很显著。为了禆益后世，我建议把患部用酒精浸泡，保存在国立畸形博物馆里。

克罗瑟斯大夫

我检查了患者的尿。含有硬蛋白。唾液的分泌不充分，膝反射是间歇性的。

潘趣•科斯特洛大夫

犹太人气味[302]也挺显著。

迪克森大夫

（宣读健康诊断书）布卢姆先生是新型阴性男人的最佳典型。他的品行淳朴可爱。许多人认为他是个和蔼可亲的男子，和蔼可亲的人。整个说来，他挺古怪。从医学上看，他虽腼腆，但不低能。他曾经给改革派牧师保护协会的法庭委员写过一封措词优美的信，堪称是一首诗，它把一切都解释得一清二楚。他简直是个绝对戒酒的人。我敢断言，他睡在稻草褥子上，吃的是最俭朴的食物——菜店里那冰凉的干豌豆。不论冬夏，穿的都是爱尔兰制造的马尾毛织的衬衫。每星期六鞭打自己一顿。我听说他曾经是格伦克里感化院[303]里品行最坏的少年犯。据另一份报告，他还是个地地道道的遗腹子。我以人类的发声器官所发出过的最神圣的言辞，恳请对他宽大处理。他眼看就要生娃娃啦。

（全场骚动，一致表示同情。妇女们晕倒。一位美国富翁为布卢姆在街头募款。转眼之间就募到金币与银币、空白支票、钞票、宝石、债券、已到期的汇票、借据、结婚戒指、表链、小金盒、项链和手镯。）

布卢姆

噢，我多么想做妈妈呀。

桑顿太太[204]

（身穿护士服）亲爱的，紧紧地搂住我。很快就结束了。紧紧地，亲爱的。（布卢姆紧紧搂住她，并生下八个黄种和白种男娃。他们出现在铺了红地毯的楼梯上。装饰着珍贵花草的楼梯上。这八胞胎个个相貌英俊，有着贵重金属般的脸，身材匀称，衣着体面，举止端庄，能够流利地操五种现代语言，对各种艺术与科学饶有兴趣。每个人的名字都清晰地印在衬衫前襟上：金鼻[305] 、金指、金口[306] 、金手[307] 、银微笑、银本身[308]、水银[309]、全银[310]他们当即被委以几国的重要公职，诸如银行总裁、铁路运输经理、股份有限公司董事长、饭店联合组织的副主席。）

一个声音

布卢姆，你是救世主本•约瑟夫还是本•大卫[311]？

布卢姆

（阴郁地）你说的是。[312] 

巴茨修士[ 313] 

那么，就像查尔斯神父那样创造奇迹吧。

班塔姆•莱昂斯

你预言一下哪一匹马将在圣莱杰赛场上获胜。[314]（布卢姆在一张网上踱步。他用左耳遮住左眼，穿越凡堵墙，爬上纳尔逊纪念柱，用眼睑勾住柱顶横梁，悬空吊在那里。他吃掉十打牡蛎（连同外壳），治好了几名瘰疠患者，颦蹙起鼻子眼来模仿众多历史人物：贝肯斯菲尔德勋爵[ 315]、拜伦勋爵、沃特•泰勒[316]、埃及的摩西、摩西•迈蒙尼德[317]、摩西•门德尔松[318]、亨利•欧文[319] 、瑞普•凡•温克尔[320] 、科苏特[321] 、冉- 雅克•卢梭[322] 、利奥波德•罗思柴尔德男爵[323]、鲁滨孙•克鲁索、夏洛克•福尔摩斯、巴斯德[324]。他将两条腿同时朝不同的方向掉换，吩咐潮水倒流，伸出小指，导致日蚀[325]。）

罗马教皇的大使布利尼[ 326] 

（身穿教皇军的祖亚沃军服，披着钢制皑甲，包括胸甲、臂甲、护腿具、护胫具；蓄着亵渎神明的大胡子，头戴褐色纸制主教冠。）利奥波德的家谱如下[327] ：摩西生挪亚[328] ，挪亚生尤尼克[329]，尤尼克生奥哈罗汉，奥哈罗汉生古根海姆[330] ，古根海姆生阿根达斯，阿根达斯生内泰穆[331] ，内泰穆生勒•希尔施[332]，勒•希尔施生耶书仑[333] ，耶书仑生麦凯，麦凯生奥斯特罗洛普斯基，奥斯特罗洛普斯基生斯梅尔多兹[334] ，斯梅尔多兹生韦斯，韦斯生施瓦茨[335] ，施瓦茨生阿德里安堡[336] ，阿德里安堡生阿兰胡埃斯[337] ，阿兰胡埃斯生卢维•劳森，卢维．劳森生以迦博多诺索[ 338]，以迦博多诺索生奥唐奈•马格纳斯[339]，奥唐奈•马格纳斯生克里斯特鲍默[340] ，克里斯特鲍默生本•迈默[ 341] ，本•迈默生达斯蒂•罗兹[342] ，达斯蒂•罗兹生本阿莫尔[ 343]，本阿莫尔生琼斯- 史密斯[344] ，琼斯- 史密斯生萨沃楠奥维奇[345]，萨沃楠奥维奇生贾斯珀斯通[346]，贾斯珀斯通生万图尼耶姆，万图尼耶姆生松博特海伊[347] ，松博特海伊生维拉格，维拉格生布卢姆，给他起名叫以马内利。[348] 

一只死者的手[349] 

（在墙上写着）布卢姆是个傻瓜。

克雷布[350] 

（土匪装束）你在基尔巴拉克后面的牛洞里干啥来着？[351] 

一个女娃

（摇着拔浪鼓）在巴利鲍桥[352] 下又干了些什么？

冬青树[353] 

在魔鬼谷[354] 里呢？

布卢姆

（从前额一直涨红到臀部，左眼落下三滴泪）我那些往事，请不要去提啦。

被赶出去的爱尔兰房客们

（穿着紧身衣和短裤，手持顿尼溪集市[355] 上使用的那种橡树棒。）用犀牛鞭[356]抽他一顿！

（布卢姆长着一副驴耳朵[357] ，交抱着胳膊，伸出两脚，坐在示众台上。他用口哨吹起《唐乔万尼》中的“今晚同你”[358] 。阿尔坦[359] 的孤儿们手拉着手在他周围跳跳蹦蹦。狱门救济会[360] 的姑娘们也手拉着手，朝相反的方向跳跳蹦蹦。）

阿尔坦的孤儿们

你是猪猡，你是脏狗！

娘儿们咋会爱上你！

狱门救济会的姑娘们

你若遇凯伊，

告诉他可以

喝茶时见你，

替我捎此语。[361]

霍恩布洛尔[362] 

（身罩祭披[363] ，头戴猎帽，宣布说）他将为众人负罪，前往住在荒野里的恶魔阿撒泻勒[364] 以及夜妖利利斯[365]那里，对，来自阿根达斯•内泰穆[366] 和属于含的土地麦西[367]的人们，全都朝他扔石头，羞辱他。

（众人朝布卢姆做掷石状。许多真正的旅客[368]的丧家之犬凑近他，羞辱他。马斯羌斯基和西特伦穿着宽大长外套，耳后垂着长长的鬈发，走了过来。他们朝布卢姆摇着大胡子。）

马斯羌斯基和西特伦

恶魔！伊斯特拉的莱姆兰[369] ，伪救世主！阿布拉非亚[ 370]！叛教者！

（布卢姆的裁缝乔治•R•梅西雅斯[371]腋下夹个弯把熨斗出现，他出示一张帐单。）

梅西雅斯

改一条裤子的工钱：十一先令。

布卢姆

（快快活活地搓着两只手）还是老样子。布卢姆一文不名！

（黑胡子叛徒吕便•杰•多德，坏心眼的牧羊人，将其子的溺尸扛在肩上，走近示众台跟前。）

吕便•杰•多德

（嗄声悄悄地说）事情败露了。奸细向警察告了密。一见到出租马车立刻就给拦截住。

消防队

呜呜呜！

巴茨修士

（给布卢姆穿上一件黄袍，上面绣着色彩鲜明的火焰，并给他戴上一顶高尖帽。还在布卢姆的脖颈上挂起一口袋火药，把他交到市政当局手里，并且说：）赦免他的罪过[372] 。
（根据众人的要求，都柏林市消防队的迈尔斯[373] 中尉在布卢姆身上点了火。一片悲叹声。）

“市民”[374] 

谢天谢地！

布卢姆

（身穿标有I．H.S[375]字样的无缝衣，直挺挺地站在火凤凰[376] 的火焰中）爱琳的女儿们啊！别为我哭泣。[377] 

（他向都柏林的新闻记者们出示自己身上烧的的伤痕。爱琳的女子们身穿黑衣，手持巨大的祈祷书和点起的长蜡烛，跪下来祷告。）

爱琳的女儿们

布卢姆之腰子，为我等祈。[378] 

浴槽之花，为我等祈。

门顿之导师，为我等祈。

《自由人报》的广告兜揽员，为我等祈。

仁慈之共济会会员，为我等祈。

漂泊之肥皂，为我等祈。

《偷情的快乐》，为我等祈。

《无言之歌》，为我等祈。

“市民”之训斥者，为我等祈。

褶边之友，为我等祈。

最仁慈之产婆，为我等祈。

驱灾避邪之土豆，为我等祈。

（由文森特•奥布赖恩[379] 先生指挥的六百人的唱诗班，在约瑟夫•格林[380] 的风琴伴奏下，齐唱叠句《弥赛亚》中的“哈利路亚”叠句。布卢姆沉默下来，逐渐缩小，焦化了。）

佐伊

一直聊到脸上发黑吧。

布卢姆

头戴一顶破旧帽子，帽带上插着一支陶制烟斗。脚蹬一双满是尘埃的生皮翻毛鞋[381] 手执移民的红手绢包，拽着一口用稻草绳拴着的黑泥炭色的猪，眼中含笑。）现在放我走吧，大姐，因为凭着康尼马拉[382] 有的山羊发誓，我刚刚挨的那顿毒打真够呛。（眼里噙着一滴泪）一切都是疯狂的。爱国主义也罢，哀悼死者也罢，音乐或民族的未来也罢。生存还是毁灭。[383]人生之梦结束了。但求一个善终。他们可以活下去。（他哀痛地望着远方。）我完蛋啦。服上几片附子。拉下百叶窗。留一封信。然后躺下来安息。（他轻轻地呼吸。）不过如此而已。我曾经生活过。去了。再见。

佐伊

（把手指插到缠在脖颈上的缎带里，板起面孔）你说的是老实话吗？下次再说吧。（她冷笑）我猜你是从不同于往日的那边下的床[384]，要么就是跟你相好的姑娘操之过急。噢，你转些什么念头，我都一清二楚！

布卢姆

（惨痛地）男女，作爱，算什么？塞子和瓶子罢了。[ 385]

佐伊

（佛然作色）我就恨口是心非的无赖。你去嫖下等窑姐儿好啦。

布卢姆

（表示反悔）我知道自己着实叫人厌烦。你固然邪恶，可我没你还真不行。你是从哪儿来的？伦敦吗？

佐伊

（伶牙俐齿地）连猪都弹风琴的霍格斯•诺顿[386] 。我是在约克郡[387] 出生的。（她握住他那只正在抚摩她乳房的手。）喂，汤米•小耗子儿[388] 。别这样，来点更带劲儿的。你身上有够干一会儿的钱吗？十先令？

布卢姆

（微笑，慢慢点头）有更多的，霍丽[389] ，更多的。

佐伊

有更多的吗？（她用天鹅绒般柔嫩的手不在意地拍着他。）你要到音乐室里去瞧瞧我们那架新的自动钢琴吗？来吧，我会脱光的。

布卢姆

（像一个焦虑不安的行商那样打量她那对削了皮的梨有多么匀称，感到无比困惑[390]，迟迟疑疑地摸着后脑勺。）要是给某人知道了，她吃起醋来可厉害哩。一个绿眼的恶魔[391]。（一本正经地）不用说你也晓得会有多么棘手。

佐伊

（受宠若惊）眼不见心不烦。（她拍拍他。）来吧。

布卢姆

大笑着的魔女！推摇篮的手[392]。

佐伊

娃娃呀！

布卢姆

（裹着襁褓和斗篷，脑袋挺大，乌黑的头发恰似胎膜。一双大眼睛盯着她那晃来晃去的衬裙，用胖嘟嘟的指头数着上面的青铜扣子。他伸出湿漉漉的舌头，口齿不清他说：）一、二、山[三] 、山［三］、儿[二]、咦［一]。

扣子们

爱我，不爱我，爱我[393]。

佐伊

沉默就表示同意喽。（扎煞着小小指头，抓住他的手，用食指尖戳戳他的掌心，悄悄地给他暗示，[394] 把他诱向毁灭。）手热证明内脏冷。

（他在香气、乐声与诱惑中犹豫不决。她把他领向台阶，用她腋下的气味、描了眼线的双目的魅力以及套裙的窸窣声吸引着他，荷叶边的裙褶还遗留着所有那些曾经占有过她的雄兽如狮子般的臭气。）

雄兽们

（散发出发情、粪便和硫黄的气味，在饲养场里横冲直撞，低声吼叫，摇晃着服了麻醉药的脑袋。）真够味儿！

（佐伊和布卢姆来到门口，两个姐妹妓女坐在那里。她们画了眉，抬起眼睛好奇地打量着他。他连忙鞠了一躬，她们报以微笑。他狼狈地差点儿栽倒。）

佐伊

（亏得她立即伸出一只手扶住了他。）哎呀！可别栽到楼上去。[395] 

布卢姆

正直的人可以摔七个跟头。（他在门口让路。）照规矩，请您先走。

佐伊

夫人先走，先生随后。

（她迈门坎。他迟疑着。她转过身，伸出双手，将他往里拽。他跳了进去。门厅里那个多叉鹿角状衣帽架上，挂着一顶男帽和一件雨衣。布卢姆摘下帽子，然而一眼瞥见那些，就皱起眉头，微笑着出起神来。楼梯平台处一扇门猛地打开。一个穿紫衫灰裤褐色袜子的男人迈着猴子般的步子走过。他扬着秃头和山羊胡，紧紧抱着一只装满了水的罐子，一副黑背带一直耷拉到脚后跟那儿。布卢姆赶紧扭过脸去，弯下身，端详起放在门厅里桌子上的那只剥制狐狸：它做着跑路的姿势，有着一双长毛垂耳狗那样的眼睛。随后，他抬起头嗅着，跟着佐伊走进音乐室。红紫色的薄纸罩子把枝形吊灯的光线遮暗了。一只蛾子正围在那里飞来飞去，东冲西撞地想逃出去。地板上铺着翡翠、天蓝、朱红三色扁菱形拼花图案的漆布，上面布满了形形色色的脚印：脚跟顶着脚跟，脚跟对着脚心，脚尖顶着脚尖，交叉起来的脚以及没有身子的幽灵拖着脚步在跳莫利斯舞的脚，都乱七八糟地扭在一起。四壁上糊着的墙纸图案是：紫杉木和明亮的林中小径。壁炉格子前展开一扇孔雀毛花样的屏风。反戴着便帽的林奇盘腿坐在用兽毛编织的炉毯上。他用一根细棍缓慢地打着拍子。基蒂•里凯茨，一个身着海军服、瘦骨磷峋、面色苍白的妓女，把鹿皮手套翻过来，露出珊瑚镯子。她拿着麻花式样的手提包，高高地坐在桌边上，悠荡着一条腿，对着壁炉台上端那面镀金的镜子，顾影自怜。她上衣底下略微露出一点垂下来的胸衣饰穗。林奇嘲笑般地指了指坐在钢琴对面的一对男女。）

基蒂

（用手捂着嘴，咳嗽。）她有点傻头傻脑。（她晃着食指，打手势。）布噜布噜。（林奇用他那根细棍挑起她的裙子和白衬裙。她连忙又拽好。）放规矩点儿。（她打个嗝儿，然后赶快低下她那水手帽，她那用散沫花染料染红了的头发在帽檐底下闪着光。）噢，对不起！

佐伊

再弄亮点儿，查理。（她走到枝形吊灯跟前，将煤气开关拧到头。）

基蒂

（瞅着煤气灯的火苗）今天晚上出了什么毛病？

林奇

（声音低沉地）亡灵和妖怪上场。

佐伊

替佐伊捶捶背吧。

（林奇晃了一下手里的细棍：这是一根黄铜拨火棍。斯蒂芬站在自动钢琴旁边，琴上胡乱丢着他的帽子和梣木手杖。他用两个手指再一次重复空五度[396] 的音程。弗洛莉•塔尔博特，一个虚弱，胖得像鹅一样的金发娼妇，身穿发霉的草莓色褴褛衣衫，摊开四肢躺在沙发的一角，一只前臂从长枕上耷拉下来，倾听着。困倦的眼皮患了严重的麦粒炎。）

基蒂

（又打了个嗝儿，同时用悬空的脚一踢）噢，对不起！

佐伊

（赶紧说）你的心上人在想你哪。把汗衫带子系好吧。（基蒂•里凯茨低下头去。她那圆筒形皮毛围巾松开了，哧溜哧溜地顺着肩、背、臂、椅子，一直滑落到地上。林奇用他手里的细棍挑起那卷曲的毛毛虫般的东西。她扭着脖子，做小鸟依人状。斯蒂芬掉过头去，朝那个反戴着便帽、盘腿而坐的身影瞥了一眼。）

斯蒂芬

事实上，究竟是本尼迪多•马尔切罗[397] 所发现的，还是他创作的，那无关紧要。仪式是诗人的安息。那也许是献给得墨忒耳[398] 的一首古老赞歌，要么就是为“诸天宣布上帝的荣耀”[399]谱的曲。它的音节或音阶可能迥乎不同，正如高于弗里吉亚调式与混合吕底亚[400]调式之间的差别很大似的。歌词也可能很不一样，犹如围绕着大卫——不，刻尔吉[401]，我在说些什么呀，我指的是刻瑞斯[402]——的祭坛，祭司们所发出的喧嚣声不同于大卫从马房里得来又讲给首席巴松管吹奏者[403]听的有关神之全能的那些话。哎呀，说实在的，这完全是风马牛不相及的两码事。趁着年轻干荒唐勾当吧，青春一去不复返嘛。[404]（他住了口，指着林奇的便帽，始而微笑，继而大笑起来。）你的智慧瘤子长在哪边？

便帽

（忧郁消沉）呸！正因为才所以。这是妇道人家的歪理。犹太裔希腊人是希腊裔犹太人。物极必反。死亡是生命的最高形式。算了

斯蒂芬

我所有的错误、自负、过失，你都记得相当准确。对于你的不忠诚，我还要继续闭眼睛到什么时候呢？砺石[ 405] ！

便帽

哎！

斯蒂芬

我还有句活跟你说。（他皱起眉头。）原因是基音和全音阶第五音被最大限度的音程[406] 分割开来了，它……

便帽

它？说完呀。你说不完。

斯蒂芬

（竭力说下去）音程分割开来了，它就是最大限度的省略。两极相通。八度。它。

便帽

它？

（外面，留声机喧嚣地奏起《圣城》[ 407]。）

斯蒂芬

（唐突地）为了不从自我内部穿行[408] ，一直跋涉到世界尽头。天主，太阳，莎士比亚[409] ，推销员，走遍了现实，方成为自我本身。且慢。等一等。街上那家伙的喊叫[410] 真该死。预先就安排好不可避免地会成为这个样子。瞧！[411]

林奇

（发出哀鸣般的嘲笑声，朝着布卢姆和佐伊•希金斯咧嘴一笑。）多么渊博的一番演说啊，呃？

佐伊

（刻薄地）你的脑袋空空如也，他知道的比你忘掉的还多哩。

（弗洛莉•塔尔博特又胖又蠢地望着斯蒂芬。）

弗洛莉

人家说，世界未日[412]今年夏天就到了。

吉蒂

不会的。

佐伊

（哈哈大笑）伟大的天主好不公道啊！

弗洛莉

（不悦）喏，是报纸上登伪基督[413]的事时提到的。哦，我的脚好痒啊。

（破衣褴衫的赤足报童放着一只尾巴摆来摆去的风筝[414]，啪嗒啪嗒地跑过去，大声嚷着。）

报童们

最新消息。摇木马比赛的结果出来啦。皇家运河里出现了一条海蛇[415] 。伪基督平安抵达。

（斯蒂芬掉过身去，瞥见了布卢姆。）

斯蒂芬

一拍子、多拍子和半拍子。[416] 

（吕便•杰•伪基督，一个流浪的犹太人，张开紧握着的手，接着脊梁骨，脚步蹒跚地走来。他腰上系着一只香客的行囊，露出约定支付的期票和遭到拒付的票据。肩上高高地扛着长长的船篙，一头钩着他那湿透了缩作一团的独子的裤裆，是刚从利菲河里救上来的。暮色苍茫中，跟潘趣•科斯特洛长得一模一样的妖怪翻着跟头滚了过来。他瘸腿，驼背，患有脑水肿，下巴突出，前额凹陷，长着阿里•斯洛珀[417] 式的鼻子。）

众人

哦？

妖怪

（下颚卡嗒卡嗒响着，蹿来蹿去，转动着眼珠，尖声叫着，像只大袋鼠般地跳跳蹦蹦，摊开双臂，仿佛要一把抓住什么似的。随即猛地从叉开的两腿间伸出他那张缺嘴唇的脸。）出来啦！笑面人。原始人！[418]（他发出苦修教士那种哀号，打转转。）先生们，女士们，请下赌注！[419]（他蹲下来，变戏法。从他手里飞出轮盘赌用的小行星。）来，赌个输赢！[420]（行星们相互碰撞，发出脆亮的噼噼啪啪声。）到此为止。[421]（行星们化为轻飘飘的气球，涨大并飞走。他跳进虚空，消失了。）

弗洛莉

（茫然失措，悄悄地连连画十字。）世界未日到了！

（从她身上散发出女性温吞吞的臭气。周围星云弥漫，一片朦朦。穿过飘浮在外面的雾，留声机的轰鸣压住了咳嗽声和嚓嚓的脚步声。）

留声机

耶路撒冷呀！

敞开城门唱吧：

和散那[ 422] …•

（焰火冲上天空，爆炸开。一颗白星从中坠下，宣告万物的终结和以利亚的再度来临。[423]从天顶到天底，紧紧绷着一根肉眼看不见的、没有尽头的绳子。“世界末日”——身穿苏格兰高地游猎侍从的百褶格子呢短裙和格子花呢服、头戴熊皮鸟缨高顶帽的双头章鱼[424] ，以“人的三条腿”[425] 的姿势头朝下顺着此绳在黑暗中旋转着。）

世界未日

（用苏格兰口音）谁来跳划船舞，划船舞，划船舞？[426]

（以利亚的嗓音像秧鸡般刺耳，在天际回荡，压住了一阵过堂风和哽噎般的咳嗽声。他身穿有着漏斗形袖子、宽宽松松的上等细麻布白色法衣，以执牧杖者的神气，汗涔涔地出现在悬挂着古老光荣之旗[ 427] 的讲坛上。他砰砰地敲着栏秆。）

以利亚

请不要在这间小屋子里吵吵嚷嚷。杰克•克兰、克雷奥利•休[428] 、达夫•坎贝尔、阿贝•基尔施内尔，你们要闭着嘴咳嗽。喏，这条干线完全由我来操纵。伙计们，现在就登记吧。上帝的时间[429] 是十二点二十五分。告诉母亲你们将会在那儿[430] 。赶紧去订，那才是捷足先登哪。就在这儿当场参加吧。买一张通往来世联轨点的直达票，一路上不停车。再说一句。你们是神呢，还是该死的傻瓜？基督一旦再度来到科尼艾兰[431] ，咱们准备好了吗？弗洛莉•基督、斯蒂芬•基督、佐伊•基督、布卢姆•基督、吉蒂•基督、林奇•基督，宇宙的力量应该由你们去感觉。我们害怕宇宙吗？不。要站在天使这边。[ 432] 当一面棱镜[433] 。你们内心里有那么一种更崇高的自我。你们能够跟耶稣、跟乔答摩[434] 、跟英格索尔[435] 平起平坐。你们统统处在这样的震颤中吗？我认为是这样。各位会众，你们一旦有所领悟，前往天堂的起劲愉快的兜风，就不赶趟儿了。你们明白我的意思吗？这确实是回春灵药。最强烈的玩艺儿。完整的果酱馅儿饼。再也没有比这更乖巧、伶俐的货色了。它是无穷无尽，无比豪华的。它使人恢复健康，生气勃勃。我知道，我也是个使人振奋者。且别开玩笑，归根结底，就是亚•约•基督•道维以及调和的哲学。诸位明白了吗？好的。六十九街西七十六号。明白我的意思了吗？对啦。随时都可以给我挂太阳电话。烂醉如泥的酒徒们，省下那邮票吧。（大嚷）那么，现在唱赞美歌吧。大伙儿都一道热情地唱吧。再来一个！（他唱起来。）耶路……

唱片

（压住他的声音）和路撒拉米牛亥和……（唱针磨擦唱片，吱吱嘎嘎响。）

三名妓女

（捂住耳朵，粗声喊着）啊咯咯咯！

以利亚

（挽起衬衫袖子，满脸乌黑[436]，高举双臂，声嘶力竭地嚷着）天上的大哥啊，总统先生，我刚才跟你说的话，你该听见了吧。我当然坚决相信你，总统先生。现在我确实认为，希金斯小姐和里凯茨小姐虔心信着教。说实在的，我从来也没见过像你这般吓得战战兢兢的女子，弗洛莉小姐，正如我刚才瞧见的那样。总统先生，你来帮我拯救咱们亲爱的姐妹们吧。（他朝听众眨巴眼睛。）咱们的总统先生对一切都了如指掌，可是他啥也不说。

吉蒂- 凯特

我一时控制不住自己，脆弱失足，在宪法山[ 437] 干下了那样的事，是主教为我行的坚振礼[438] ，［我还参加了褐色肩衣组织[439] 。] 我姨妈嫁给了蒙莫朗西[440] 家的人。我原是纯洁的，可一个管子工破坏了我的贞操。

佐伊- 范妮

为了逗趣儿，我让他把那物儿像鞭子似的塞到我里面。

弗洛莉一德肋撒

都是由于喝了亨尼西的三星[441] ，再掺上葡萄酒的缘故。当维兰[442] 溜进我的被窝之后，我就失了身。

斯蒂芬

太初有道[443] ，以迨永远，及世之世[444]。保佑八福[ 445] 。

（迪克森、马登、克罗瑟斯、科斯特洛、利内翰、班农、穆利根与林奇等八福，身穿外科医学生的白大褂，排成四路纵队，喧嚣地快步走过去。）

八福

（语无伦次地）啤酒，牛肉，斗犬，牛贩子，生意、酒吧、鸡奷，主教[446] 。

利斯特[447] 

（身穿公谊会教徒的灰色短裤，头戴宽檐帽，慎重地）他是我们的朋友。我用不着提名道姓。你去寻求光[ 448] 吧。

（他踩着“科兰多”舞步[449] 过去了。贝斯特[450] 身穿理发师那浆洗得发亮的罩衣，鬈发上缠着卷发纸。他领着约翰•埃格林顿[451]走进来，后者穿的是印有蜥蜴形文字的黄色中国朝服，头戴宝塔式高帽。）

贝斯特

（笑吟吟地摘下帽子，露出剃过的头，脑顶翘起一条根部扎着橙黄蝴蝶结的辫子。）你们知道吗，我正在打扮他哪。美丽的事物[452] ，你们知道吗？这是叶芝说的——不，是济慈说的。

约翰•埃格林顿

（取出一盏绿罩暗灯，把灯光朝屋角晃。用挑剔的口吻）美学和化妆品是为闺房而设的。我要寻求的则是真理。朴素人的朴素真理。但德拉吉[453] 人要的是事实，而且非得到不可。

（在投射到煤篓后面的探照灯那圆锥形光束里，马南南•麦克李尔将下颚托在膝盖上，沉思默想着。[454] 他长着圣者的眼睛，奥拉夫般的脸上胡子拉碴的。他慢腾腾地站起来。从他那活像是德鲁伊特[455] 的嘴里冒出凛冽的海风，鳝鱼与小鳗鱼在他头部周围翻腾着。他身上覆满海藻和贝壳。右手握着一只自行车[456]打气筒。左手攥着一只巨大的蝲蛄的双爪。）

马南南•麦克李尔

（用波浪声）噢姆！嘿喀！哇嚕！啊喀！噜哺！摩啊！嘛！[457] 诸神的白色瑜咖僧。赫尔墨斯•特里斯美吉斯托斯的玄妙的《派曼德尔》[458]。（ 发出海风呼啸声）普纳尔甲纳穆•帕齐•潘•贾乌布！[459] 我决不受人愚弄。有人说：当心左边，对萨克蒂的膜拜。[460] （发出预告暴风雨的海燕的叫声）萨克蒂、湿婆、黑暗神秘之父！（他用打气筒敲打左手捏着的蝲蛄。他那只合作社的表盘上，黄道十二宫图在灼灼发光。他以海洋汹涌澎湃的势头大声哭号。）噢姆！咆姆！毗噍姆！我是家园的光！[461] 我是梦幻般的奶油状黄油[462] 。

（一只瘦骨嶙峋的犹大的手压住了光。绿光越来越淡。变成红紫色。煤气灯在吱吱地哀鸣。）

煤气灯

噗啊！噗咿咿咿咿咿咿！

（佐伊跑到枝形吊灯跟前，弯起一条腿，把灯罩摆摆正。）

佐伊

谁给我支烟抽？

林奇

（轻轻地往桌上丢一支烟）拿去。

佐伊

（佯装作傲慢地把头一歪）怎么能这样递东西给一位女士呢？（她不慌不忙地把烟卷捻松探过身去，就着火苗把它点上，露出腋窝里那簇褐色毛毛。林奇大胆地用拨火棍撩起她那半边套裙。袜带上边裸露出的肉，在天蓝色套裙的遮掩下，呈现出水中精灵的绿色。她安详地喷着烟雾。）你瞧见我屁股后头那颗美人痣了吗？


林奇

我没在看。

佐伊

（送着秋波）没看吗？光看还不过瘾哩。你要咂个柠檬吗？

（她装出一副羞答答的样子，斜眼望着布卢姆，朝他扭过身去，把被拨火棍勾住的套裙拽开。一片天蓝色液体重新流到她身上。布卢姆站在那儿，眼里露出贪馋的神色微笑着，摆弄两手的拇指。吉蒂•里凯茨用唾沫舔湿中指，对着镜子抹平双眉。皇家文书利波蒂•维拉格沿着壁炉烟囱的槽敏捷地滑下来，踩着粗糙的粉红色高跷，趾高气扬地朝左边迈两步。他身上紧紧地裹着几件大氅，外面罩着棕色胶布雨衣。雨衣下面，手里拿着个羊皮纸书卷。左眼上戴着卡什尔•博伊尔•奥康内尔•菲茨莫里斯•蒂斯代尔•法雷尔[463] 那闪闪发光的单片眼镜。他头顶埃及双冠[464] 。两耳上伸出两支鹅毛笔。）

维拉格

（脚跟并拢，鞠躬）我叫作维拉格•利波蒂，松博特海伊人。[465]（他若有所思地干咳了几声。）这里男女混杂，赤身露体，触目皆是，呃？我无意中瞥见了她的后身，说明她并没有穿你特别喜爱的那种贴身内衣。我希望你已瞅见了她大腿上注射的痕迹，呃？好吧。

布卢姆

爷爷[466] 。可是……

维拉格

另一方面，第二个姑娘，那涂了樱桃红唇膏，戴着白色头饰，头发上抹了不少咱们犹太族传统的侧柏[467] 灵液的，穿着散步衣。从她坐的姿势来看，想必是胸罩勒得紧紧的。也可以说是把脊梁骨掉到前面来了。如果我理解错了，请指出来。可我一向认为，那些轻佻女子隐隐约约地让你瞥见内衣。这种下体裸露狂患者的表现，正投你的所好。一句话，是半鹰半马的怪兽[468]。我说得对吗，

布卢姆

她太瘦啦。

维拉格

（不无愉快地）正是这样！观察得很细。裙子上撑出两个兜儿，略作陀螺形，是为了让屁股显得格外丰满。想必是刚从专门敲诈的大甩卖摊子上买的。钱也是从哪个冤大头手里骗来的。那是用来糊弄人的俗不可耐的玩艺儿。瞧她们怎样留意细小的斑点。今天能穿的，决不要拖到明天。视差！（神经质地扭动一下脑袋）你听见我的头卡嗒一声响了吗？多音节的绕嘴词！[469] 

布卢姆

（手托臂肘，食指杵着面颊）她好像挺悲哀的。

维拉格

（讥消地，龇着鼬鼠般的黄板牙，用手指翻开左眼皮，扯着嘶哑的嗓音吼叫）骗子！当心这轻佻丫头和她假装出的悲伤。巷子里的百合[470] 。人人都有鲁亚尔杜斯•科隆博所发现的矢车菊。压翻她。[471] 让她变得像只鸽子。水性杨花的女人。（口吻温和了一些）喏，请你注意第三位吧。她的大部分身于都展现在眼前。仔细观察她脑壳上那簇用氧处理过的植物质吧。嗨哟，她撞着了[472] 。长腿大屁股，伙伴中的丑小鸭。

布卢姆

（懊悔不迭）偏偏我没带枪出来。

维拉格

不论是什么号的——宽松的，中等的，紧的，都能提供。只要出钱，随便挑。哪一个都能使你快乐[473] ……

布卢姆

哪一个……？

维拉格

（卷着舌头）利姆！[ 474] ）瞧，她可真丰满，浑身长了好厚的一层脂肪。从胸脯的份量看，她显然是个哺乳动物。你能看到她身子前面突出两个尺寸可观的大肉疙瘩，大得几乎垂进午饭的汤盆里。背后下身也有两个隆起的东西，看来直肠必是结实的。那两个鼓包摸着会给人以快感，唯一的美中不足是不够紧。注意保养就能使这个部位的肉厚实。要是关起来喂，肝脏就会长得像象那么大[475] 。把掺了胡芦巴[476] 和安息香的新鲜面包搓成小丸，浸泡在一剂绿茶里吞服，就能在短暂的一生中，自自然然长出一身肥膘，活像是个球形针插。这样该中你的意了吧，呃？使人馋涎欲滴的热腾腾的埃及肉锅[477] 。尽情享受吧。石松粉[ 478] 。（他的喉咙抽搐着。）恰好，他又干起来啦。[479] 

布卢姆

我讨厌麦粒肿。

维拉格

（扬扬眉毛）他们说，用金戒指碰一下就好了。[480] 利用女性的弱点来辩论[481]这是旧日时罗马和古代希腊的狄普罗多库斯和伊赤泰欧扫罗斯[482] 担任执政官时所说的。此外，单靠夏娃的灵药就够了。非卖品。只供租借。胡格诺派[483] 。（抽动一下喉咙）好古怪的声音。（像是为了振作起来般地咳嗽）然而，这也许只不过是个瘊子。我想你还记得我曾经教过你的一个处方吧？小麦粉里掺上蜂蜜和肉豆蔲。

布卢姆

（仔细琢磨）小麦粉里搀上石松粉和希拉巴克斯[484] 。这可是个严峻的考验啊。

今天是个格外劳累的日子，一连串的灾难。且慢，我的意思是，您说过，瘊子血能使瘊子传播开来。……

维拉格

（鹰钩鼻子，眨巴着眼睛，严厉地）别再摆弄你那大拇指了，好好想想吧。瞧，你已经忘记了。运用一下你的记忆术吧。事业是神圣的。咯啦。嗒啦[485]。（旁白）他准会想起来的。

布卢姆

记得您提到过迷迭香和抑制寄生组织的意志力的事。那么，不，不，我想起来啦。让死者的手摸一下就能痊愈。记得吗？

维拉格

（兴奋地）可不是嘛。可不是嘛。正是这样。记忆术。（使劲拍打他那个羊皮纸书卷）此书详尽地告诉你该怎样处置。查查索引吧。用附子来治错乱性恐怖，用盐酸来治忧郁症，用白头翁来炼制春药。下面维拉格还要谈谈截肢术。我们的老友腐蚀剂。对瘊子要采取饥饿疗法。等它于瘪成空壳之后，用马鬃齐根勒掉。然而把论点移到保加利亚人和巴斯克人身上。关于喜不喜欢女扮男装，你究竟拿定主意了没有？[486]（干涩地窃笑）你曾打算花上一整年的时间来研究宗教问题。一八八六年夏季，你曾试图绘制一幅与圆形面积相等的正方形[487]，赢得那一百万英镑。石榴[488]！崇高和荒谬只有一步之差。[489]比方说，睡衣睡裤。或者垫有三角形布料的针织扎口死裆短裤？要么就是那种复杂的混合物——连裤女衬衣？（他嘲弄般地学鸡叫。）咯、咯尔、咯！

（布卢姆迟迟疑疑地环顾三名妓女，然后又盯着蒙了罩子的红紫色灯光，听着那飞个不停的蛾声。）

布卢姆

那么现在就该做出结论了。睡衣是从来也不。所以是这个样儿。不过，明天将是新的一天。过去曾经是今日。因此，到了明天，现在也会成为过去的昨天。

维拉格

（像是提词般地低声私语）蜉蝣在不断地交媾中度过短暂的一生。雌性的体态虽逊于雄性，背后那外阴部却是精美绝伦的，它被其气味所引诱。美丽的鹦鹉！[490] （他那鹦鹉的黄嘴用鼻音急促不清他说着）犹太历五五五0 年前后，喀尔巴阡山脉[491] 有过一句谚语。一大调羹蜂蜜要比六桶最高级的麦芽醋更能吸引熊先生。熊直哼哼，蜜蜂嫌吵。且慢。这容别的时候再接着说吧。我们这些局外人很高兴。（他咳嗽一声，低下头，用掏挖的手势若有所思地搓着鼻子）你会发现这些夜虫总是跟踪着灯光。这是错觉。要记住，它们长着无法调节的复眼。关于这些棘手的论点，可参看我著的《性科学原理，或爱的情欲》第十七卷。利•布•博士说，这是本年度最为轰动的一部书。举例来说，有些人的动作是自发的。深入领会。那是适合于他的太阳。夜鸟，夜阳，夜镇。追我吧，查理！（他朝布卢姆的耳朵嚷。）嗡嗡！

布卢姆

那天不知是蜜蜂还是青蝇，撞着了墙上的影子，撞晕了。于是迷迷糊糊地冲进了我的衬衫，害得我好苦……

维拉格

（面无表情，以圆润、女声女气的腔调笑着）妙极了！他的裤裆里藏着斑蟊，或者阴茎上贴着芥未软膏。（晃动着颈上那火鸡般的垂肉，并像火鸡似的贪婪地咯咯叫着）火鸡！火鸡！咱们说到哪儿来着？芝麻，开门！[492] 出来吧！（他麻利地打开那个羊皮纸书卷，读起来。他牢牢抓住书卷，萤火虫般的鼻于沿那文字倒着迅速地移动。[493]）且慢，好朋友，我给你带来了答案。咱们很快就能吃上红沙洲的牡蛎[494]了。我是手艺最高的厨师。这种有滋味的双壳贝对身体有好处，让无所不吃的猪先生去挖掘佩里戈尔[495]的块菌，那对神经衰弱和悍妇炎患者有着奇效。尽管发臭，却富于刺激性。（摇头晃脑，尖声讥笑着）滑稽啊。眼睛里塞进单片眼镜。[496] （他打了个喷嚏。）啊们！

布卢姆

（心不在焉地）妇女患的双壳贝病更厉害。什么时候都是开着的芝麻[497] 。裂开的女性[498] 。所以她们害怕虫子啦，爬虫动物什么的。然而夏娃和蛇却不然。这并不是史实吧。依我看，显然是以此类推。蛇对女人的奶也贪得无厌。它们从包罗万象的森林里婉蜒爬行好几英里前来，吱吱地把她的乳房吮干。就像在艾里芳图利亚里斯[499] 的作品中所读到的那些雄火鸡般滑稽的罗马婆娘似的。

维拉格

（嘴上吸出深深的皱纹，两眼像石头般绝望地紧闭着，以异国情调。用单音咏诵圣歌。）那些乳房胀鼓鼓的母牛，它们四远驰名……

布卢姆

我想要大声喊叫。请您原谅。哦？那么，（他重复一遍。）主动地去找到蜥蜴窝，以便供其贪婪地吸吮自己的乳房。蚂蚁吸蚜虫的奶水。（意味深长地）本能支配着世界。[500]不论生前，还是死后。

维拉格

（歪着头，脊背与隆起如翼状的肩膀，弯作弓形，鼓起昏花的两眼凝视着蛾，用触角股的指头指指点点，喊叫。）谁是蛾，蛾？谁是亲爱的杰拉尔德[501] ？亲爱的杰，是你吗？哦，哎呀，他就是杰拉尔德。哦，我非常担心他会被严重地烧伤。有人肯摇摇高级餐巾来防止这场灾难吗？（学猫叫）猫咪猫咪猫咪猫咪！（他叹口气，朝后退，下颚低垂，朝两旁斜晚着。）好的，好的。这家伙等下就会安静下来的。（望空猛地咬了一口。）

飞蛾

我是个小小东西，

永远翱翔在春季，

兜着圈子且嬉戏。

想当年，我曾登基，

到如今展开双翼，

天地间飞来飞去！

砰！（他冲向红紫色灯罩，喧噪地拍着翅膀。）漂亮、漂亮、漂亮、漂亮、漂亮、漂亮的衬裙。

（亨利•弗罗尔从左首上端的入口登场。他溜着脚步悄悄走了两步，来到左前方中央。他披着深色斗篷，头戴一顶垂着羽毛饰的墨西哥宽边帽。手执一把嵌了花纹的银弦大扬琴和一支有着长竹管的雅各烟斗[502] ，陶制的烟袋锅作女头状。他穿着深色天鹅绒紧身裤，浅口无带轻舞鞋有着银质饰扣。他的脸像是一位充满浪漫主义色彩的救世主，鬈发飘垂、胡子和口髭稀稀疏疏。一双细长的腿和麻雀脚活脱儿像是男高音歌手坎迪亚亲王马里奥[503]。 他理了理皱领的褶子，伸出好色的舌头舔湿了嘴唇。）

亨利

（一面拨弄吉他琴弦，一面以低沉动听的嗓音唱道）有一朵盛开的花[504]。

（蛮横的维拉格收拢起下巴，盯着灯。庄重的布卢姆端详着佐伊的脖颈。风流的亨利颈部的肉耷拉着，转向钢琴。）

斯蒂芬

（自言自语）闭上眼睛弹琴吧，学爸爸的样儿。把我的肚子填满猪食。这已经够受的了。我要起身，回到我的[505]。想必这就是。斯蒂夫，你可陷入了窘境。得去看望老迪希，要么就给他打个电报。我们今天早晨的会见给我留下了深刻的印象。尽管我们的年龄。明天我将尽情地写出来。说起来，我真有点儿醉啦。（他又碰一下键盘。）这一次是小三和弦。是的。醉得还不厉害。

（阿尔米达诺•阿尔蒂弗尼一边精神抖擞地抨着口鹿，一边伸出用乐谱卷成的指挥棒。）

阿尔蒂弗尼

好好考虑一下吧。你毁掉了一切。[506]

弗洛莉

给咱唱点什么吧。《古老甜蜜的情歌》。[ 507]

斯蒂芬

没有嗓子。我是个最有才能的艺术家。林奇，我给你看过关于古琵琶[508] 的那封信了吗？

弗洛莉

（假笑）一只会唱可是不肯唱的鸟儿呗。

（在牛津大学做特别研究员的一对连体双胞胎：醉汉菲利普和清醒菲利普[509] 拿着推草机出现在漏斗状斜面墙上的窗口。两个人都戴着马修•阿诺德[510]的假面具。）

清醒菲利普

接受一个傻子的忠告吧。有点不对头。用铅笔头数数看，像个乖乖的小傻瓜那样。你有三镑十二先令。两张纸币，一英镑的金币，两克朗。倘若年轻人有经验。[511] 城里的穆尼酒馆，海岸上的穆尼，莫伊拉那一家，拉切特那一家，[512] 霍尔街医院，伯克[513]。呃？我在盯着你哪。

醉汉菲利普

（不耐烦地）啊，瞎说，你这家伙。下地狱去吧！我没欠过债。我要是能够弄明白八音度是怎么回事就好了。双重人格。是谁把他的名字告诉我的呢？（他的推草机开始嗡嗡地响起来。）啊哈，对啦。我的在命，我爱你。[514] 我觉得先前到这儿来过。是什么时候来着？他不姓阿特金森[515] ，我有他的名片，不知放在哪儿啦。叫作麦克什么的。想起来了，叫昂马克。他跟我谈起过——且慢，是斯温伯恩[516]吧，对吗？

弗洛莉

那么，歌儿呢？

斯蒂芬

心灵固然愿意，肉体却是软弱的。[ 517]

弗洛莉

你是梅努斯毕业的吗？你跟我过去认识的一个人长得可像哩。

斯蒂芬

如今已经毕业啦。（自言自语）脑袋瓜儿挺灵。

醉汉菲利普与清醒菲利普

（他们的推草机嗡嗡响着，草茎随之轻快地跳跃起来。）脑袋瓜儿一向挺灵。已经毕业啦，已经毕业啦。顺便问一声，你可有那本书，那玩艺儿，那根梣木手杖吗？对，就在那儿。脑袋瓜儿一向挺灵，如今已经毕业了。要保持下去。像我们这样。

佐伊

前天晚上有个教士到这儿来办点事。他把上衣钮扣扣得严严实实的。我对他说，你用不着那么躲躲闪闪的。我认得出你那脖领是天主教教士的。

维拉格

从他的角度来说，这完全是理所当然的。人的堕落。（愤怒地瞪大眼睛，厉声地）让教皇下地狱去！太阳底下没有新鲜事。[518] 我就是曾经揭露出僧侣与处女的性之秘密的那个维拉格。因此，我脱离了罗马教会。读读那本《神父、女人与忏悔阁子》[519] 吧。彭罗斯[520] 。弗力勃铁•捷贝待[521]。（他扭动身子。）女人带着甜蜜的羞涩解开灯心草编的腰带，将湿透了的阴部献给男子的阳物。少顷，男子赠与女人丛林之中的几片兽肉。女悦，以带羽之皮遮身。男人用大而硬的阳物热烈爱抚女人之阴部。（他大喊。）我是被迫首肯的。[522] 于是，轻浮的女人四处乱跑。强壮的男人抓住女人的手脖子。女人尖声呼叫，又咬又啐[ 523]。此刻，男人怒气冲天，揍女人那肥胖的臀部[524]。（他追逐自己的屁股。）唏噼！啵啵！（他停下脚步，打喷嚏。）哈哧！（他咬住自己的屁股，晃悠着。）噗噜噜！

林奇

我希望你让那位好神父用苦行来赎罪。飞个主教[525]，就要罚他念九遍《荣耀颂》。

佐伊

（从鼻孔中喷出海象般的烟雾）他根本搞不了。你知道，仅仅兴奋一阵。干巴巴地摩擦一通罢了。

布卢姆

可怜的人哪！

佐伊

（满不在意地）他就能这样嘛。

布卢姆

怎样呢？

维拉格

（龇牙咧嘴，冒出恶魔般的黑光，歪扭着脸，朝前伸着骨瘦如柴的脖子。他仰起妖精[526] 般的鼻子眼，怒吼。）可恶的基督教徒们！[527] 他有个父亲，四十个父亲[528] 。他从来也没存在过。猪神！他长着两只左脚[529] 。他是犹大•伊阿其阿[530] ，一个利比亚的宦官，教皇的私生子。（他身倚扭曲了的前爪，僵硬地弯着臂，扁平的骷髅脖颈上端是一双神色痛苦的眼睛，朝沉默的世界叫喊。）婊子的儿子。《启示录》。

吉蒂

玛丽•肖特尔被蓝帽[531] 吉米•皮金传染上了梅毒，住进了花柳病医院。她还跟那家伙生了个娃娃，连奶都不会咽。因惊风在被窝里憋死了。我们大家捐钱，给办的葬事。

醉汉菲利普

（严肃地）谁使你落到这步田地的呢，菲利普？[532] 

清醒菲利普

（快活地）是由于神圣的鸽子，菲利普[533] 。

（吉蒂摘下帽子上的饰针，安详地把帽子撂下，拍了拍她那用散沫花染过的头发。从没见过一个娼妓肩上披散着这么一头秀美漂亮、光艳动人的鬈发呢。林奇把她的帽子戴在自己的头上。她把它扒拉下去。）

林奇

（笑）令人高兴的是，梅奇尼科夫[534] 在类人猴身上接了种。

弗洛莉

（点头）运动机能失调了。

佐伊

（快活地）哦，我得翻翻字典。

林奇

三位聪明的处女[535] 。

维拉格

（因疟疾犯了打起冷颤，喷出大量的淡黄色鱼卵。他那皮包骨的患癫痫的嘴唇上冒着泡。）她贩卖春药、白蜡、香橙花。一个名叫“豹”的罗马百人队长[536]用自己的生殖器把她玷污了。（他手按在胯间，伸出闪烁着光的蝎子般的舌头。）救世主啊！他弄破了她的膜[537] 。（他叽叽喳喳地发出狒狒的叫声，玩世不恭地抽搐着，扭动着屁股。）嘻咳！嘿咳！哈咳！嗬咳！呼咳！喀咳！咕咳！

（本•大象•多拉德走向前来。他生得红脸膛，肌肉僵硬，鼻孔里毛茸茸的，大胡子，白菜耳朵，胸脯多毛，头发蓬乱，奶头肥大。腰部和生殖器紧紧地箍在黑色的游泳裤里。）

本•多拉德

（肥胖的大手奏着骨制响板，愉快地用约德尔唱法发出低沉的桶音）。当狂恋使我神魂颠倒之际。

（两个处女——卡伦护士与奎格利护士猛地冲过竞技场的管理员和拦绳，张开双臂朝他扑来。）

处女们

（极度热情地）大本钟！本，我的心肝儿[538] ！

一个声音

抓住那个穿不像样子的裤子的家伙。

本•多拉德

（拍着大腿哈哈大笑）马上把他抓住。

亨利

（怀里抱着一具砍下来的女头，边爱抚着边喃喃自语）你的心，我的爱。（拨弄着古琵琶弦）当我初见……[539] 

维拉格

（蜕皮，大量羽毛脱落下来）混蛋！（他打个哈欠，露出漆黑的喉咙，用羊皮书卷卷成的圆筒朝上一顶，闭上口腔。）说完这些，我就告辞了。再见。多多保重。狗屁！[540] 

（亨利•弗罗尔用随身携带的梳子迅速地梳理口髭和胡于，并蘸着唾沫抹平头发。他用长剑掌舵，疾步向门口走去，背后挎着荒腔走调的竖琴。[541] 维拉格翘起尾巴，像踩高跷般笨拙地跳了两下，来到门边。他熟练地在墙上斜贴了一张黄脓液色的传单，用头顶着按紧。）

传单

吉•11。禁止招贴。严加保密。亨利•弗兰克斯大夫：[542] 。

亨利

现在一切都失去啦。[543]

（维拉格转瞬间取下螺丝，摘掉自己的头，夹在腋下。）

维拉格的头

庸医！

（二人分别退场。）

斯蒂芬

（侧过头来对佐伊说）你大概会更喜欢创立了新教异端邪说的那个好斗的牧师[544] 吧。但是要当心犬儒学派的安提西尼[545]和异教祖师爷阿里乌的最后下场。在厕所里所受的死的痛苦。[546]

林奇

对她来说，是同一个神。

斯蒂芬

（虔诚地）而且是支配万物的至高无上的主。

弗洛莉

（对斯蒂芬）你准是个酒肉神父。要么就是个修士。

林奇

可不是嘛。一位红衣主教的儿子。

斯蒂芬

犯了大罪[547] 。不守清规的修士们[548] 。

（全爱尔兰首席红衣主教、西蒙•斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯大人在门口出现。他身着红色法衣、短袜便鞋。担任助祭的小人猿——即七样大罪，也穿红衣，捧着他的衣裾，从下面窥伺。他头上歪戴着一顶压扁了的大礼帽。他张开手掌，把大拇指戳在腋窝里，脖子上挂着一串软木塞制成的念珠，末端是一把十字架形的螺丝锥，垂在胸前。他撒开大拇指，从高处以波浪状大摇大摆的姿势祈求神灵保佑，并趾高气扬、装模作样地宣告。）

红衣主教

康瑟维奥陷囹囿，

躺在地牢深又深，

手铐脚镣戴在身，

重量又何止三吨。[549] 

（他右眼紧闭，鼓起左颊，朝众人望了片刻。然后抑制不住内心的快乐，就双手叉腰，浑身晃来晃去，嘻嘻哈哈地畅怀唱着。）

噢，可怜的小东西，

它、它的脚那么黄，

蹿动如蛇身宽胖，

可该死的野蛮人，

为了给白菜添油荤，

竟把内莉•弗莱厄蒂的爱鸭屠宰[550] 。

（大群小虫白糊糊地簇拥在他的法衣上。他交抱着胳膊，抓挠着双肋，愁眉苦脸地叫唤。）

我正在受着被打入地狱的苦难。凭着这把廉价的提琴发誓，感谢耶稣，这帮可笑的小家伙还没有一起出动。不然的话，它们就会使我离开这该死的地球啦。

（他歪着头，用食指和中指敷敷衍衍地祝福众人，并给予复活节的亲吻。他边来回晃动着帽子，边拖着滑稽的双舞步溜走。转瞬间他的个子就缩到捧衣裾者那么小了。那些助祭的侏儒哧哧地笑着，窥伺着，用肘轻捅着，挤眉弄眼，或给予复活节之吻，跟在他后面走成“之”字形。从远处传来他那圆润嗓音，慈祥而充满阳刚之气，优美动听。）

把我的心带给你，

把我的心带给你，

馨香微风夜飘溢，

把我的心带给你！[551] 

（魔门的把手转了一下。）

门把手

吱咿——！

佐伊

门里有魔鬼。

（一个男子的身影走下咯吱作响的楼梯。传来他从挂钩上取下雨衣和帽子的声音。布卢姆不由自主地冲向前，顺便把门半掩上，从兜里掏出巧克力，怯生生地朝佐伊递过去。）

佐伊

（起劲地嗅他的头发）唔！谢谢你母亲送给我的兔子。我喜欢什么东西，简直就着了迷。

布卢姆

（听见一个男人在门阶上同妓女们交谈的声音，便竖起两耳。）假若是他呢？干完了吗？要么是没搞？要么就是吃回头草？

佐伊

（撒开银纸）没有叉子以前就有指头了。（她掰下一截，啃起来，递给吉蒂•里凯茨一截，又像只小猫咪似的转向林奇。）不讨厌法国菱形糖果吧？（他点点头。她吊他的胃口）。是现在要，还是等把它弄到手呢？（他扬起头，张开嘴。她把奖赏朝左边转，他的头跟着转过去。她又把它朝右边转过来。他盯着她。）接住！

（她抛起一截巧克力。他敏捷地叼住它，嘎吱一声咬下一块。）

吉蒂

（咀嚼着）在义卖会[ 552] 上跟我在一道的那位工程师有好吃的巧克力。里面满是高级甜露酒。总督也带着夫人去啦[553] 。我们骑上托夫特的旋转木马，好开心哪。至今我还发晕呢。

布卢姆

（身穿斯文加利[ 554] 式的皮大衣，交抱双肘，前额上垂着拿破仑式鬈发。他双眉紧皱，念着腹语术的驱邪咒文，用老鹰般锐利的目光凝视着门。然后僵直地迈出左脚，右臂顺着左肩滑下来，用咄咄逼人的指头在空中迅速地一划，做了老练的师傅[555] 的暗号。）不管你是谁，我借着法术命令你：走，走，走！

（穿过外面的雾，传来一个男子边咳嗽边逐渐走远的脚步声。布卢姆的表情变得松弛了。他一只手插迸背心，安详地摆好姿势。佐伊将巧克力朝他递过去。）

布卢姆

（一本正经地）谢谢。

佐伊

叫你怎么做，你就怎么做吧。给！

（从楼梯上传来坚定的脚步橐橐声。）

布卢姆

（接巧克力）是春药吗？艾菊与薄荷。可这是我买的呀。香子兰是镇静剂呢，还是？能够增进记忆。光线混乱，连记忆都混乱了。红色对狼疮有效。[ 556] 颜色能够左右女人的性格，倘若她们有性格的话。这黑色使我难过。为了明天，吃喝玩乐吧。[557]（他吃起来。）淡紫色也对口味产生影响。可已经过了那么久啦，自从我。所以觉得那么新鲜。春。那个教士。准会来的。晚来总比不来强。我在安德鲁斯试试块菌吧。[558] 

（门开了。贝拉•科恩，一个大块头老鸨走了进来。她身穿半长不短的象牙色袍子，褶边上镶着流苏。像《卡门》中的明妮•豪克[559]那样扇起一把黑色角质柄扇子来凉快一下。左手上戴着结婚戒指和护圈。眼线描得浓浓的。她长着淡淡的口髭，那橄榄色的脸蛋厚厚实实，略有汗意。鼻子老大，鼻子、是橙色的。她戴着一副绿玉的大坠子。）

贝拉

唉呀！我浑身出着臭汗。

（她环顾一对对男女。然后，日光停在布卢姆身上，一个劲儿地端详着他。她手中那把大扇子不住地朝她那热腾腾的脸、脖子和富富态态的身躯上扇着。她那双鹰隼般的眼睛发出锐利的光。）

扇子

（起先迅速地，接着又缓慢地挥动[560] 。）喔，结过婚的。

布卢姆

是的。并不完全，阴错阳差的……

扇子

（先打开一半，然后一边阖上一边说）太太当家。夫人统治。

布卢姆

（垂下两眼，怯懦地咧嘴笑着）可不是嘛。

扇子

（折叠起来，托着她左边的耳坠子）你忘记我了吗？

市卢姆

没。哦。[561]

扇子

（阖拢，斜顶着腰肢）你原先梦想过的她，就是我吗？那么，她和他是在你跟咱们相识之后吗？我现在是所有的女人，又是同一个女人吗？

（贝拉走过来，轻轻地用扇子拍打着。）

布卢姆

（畏缩）好厉害的人儿。她看到了我眼中那种睡意，那正是使女人们着迷的。[562]

扇子

（轻轻拍打着）咱们相遇了。你是我的。这是命运。

布卢姆

（被吓退）精力充沛的女人。我非常渴望受你的统治。我已精疲力竭，心灰意懒，不再年轻了。我像是手持一封尚未投递的信函，上面按规章贴着特别的邮资[563]， 站在人生这所邮政总局所设的迟投函件邮筒前。按照物体坠落的规律，门窗开成直角形便导致每秒钟三十二英尺的穿堂风。这会儿我感到左臀肌的坐骨神经痛。这是我们这个家族的遗传。可怜亲爱的爸爸，一个鳏夫，每逢犯病就能预知天气的变化。他相信动物能保暖。冬天他穿的背心是用斑猫皮做里子的。快死的时候，他想起大卫王和舒念的故事[564]，就跟阿索斯睡在一起。他去世后，这条狗也一直忠于他。狗的唾沫，你大概[565] ……（他退缩）啊！

里奇•古尔丁

（挟着沉重的文件包，从门口经过）弄假成真。在都柏林说得上是最实惠的。足可以招待一位王爷。[566] 肝和腰子。

扇子

（轻轻拍打）什么事都得有个结局。做我的心上人吧。现在。

布卢姆

（犹豫不决）现在就？那个避邪物我不该撒手。雨啦，曝露在海边岩石上的露水里啦。到了我这把年纪，竟还闹了那么个过失。所有的现象都是自然的原因造成的。

扇子

（慢慢地朝下指着）你可以动手了。

布卢姆

（朝下望去，瞧见她把靴带松开了）咱们可是在众目睽睽之下。

扇子

（迅速地朝下指着）你非动手不可。

布卢姆

（既有意，又忸怩）我会打地道的黑花结。是在凯利特的店[567] 里当伙计，管发送邮购货物的时候学的。熟练着呢。每个结子都各有各的名堂。我来吧。算是尽一片心意。今天我已经跪过一回啦。啊！

（贝拉略提起衣据，摆好架势，把蹬着半高腰靴的胖蹄子和穿丝袜的丰满的骹举到椅边。上了岁数的布卢姆腿脚僵硬，伏在她的蹄子上，用柔和的手指替她把靴带穿出穿进。）

布卢姆

（温柔地咕哝着）我年轻时候做的一个心爱的梦，就是在曼菲尔德[568]当上一名替人试鞋的伙计。克莱德街[ 569] 的太太们那缎子衬里的考究的小山羊皮靴简直小得出奇，令人难以置信。我为那靴子扣上钮扣，把带子十字交叉地一直系到齐膝盖，那就别提有多么快活啦。我甚至曾每天去参观雷蒙德的蜡人，欣赏妇人脚上穿的那种巴黎式蛛网状长筒袜和大黄茎般光滑的脚趾尖。

蹄子

闻闻我这热腾腾的山羊皮气味吧。掂掂我这沉甸甸的份量。

布卢姆

（十字交叉地系着活扣儿）太紧了吧？

蹄子

你要是弄不好，可就汉迪•安迪[570] ，我朝你的要害处踢上一脚。

布卢姆

可别像那个晚上在义卖会的舞会上似的，穿错了眼儿。倒楣。穿到她——就是您说的那一位——的鞋扣环里去了……当天晚上她遇到了……好啦！

（他系好了靴带。贝拉将脚撂到地板上。布卢姆抬起头来。她那胖脸，她的两眼从正面逼视着他。他的目光呆滞，暗淡下来，眼皮松弛，鼻翼鼓起。）

布卢姆

（嗫嚅着）先生们，听候各位的吩咐……

贝洛

（像怪物小王[571]那样恶狠狠地瞪着他，然后用男中音[572] 说）不要脸的狗！

布卢姆

（神魂颠倒地）女皇！

贝洛

（他那胖嘟嘟的腮颊松垂下来。）通奸的臀部的崇拜者！

布卢姆

（可怜巴巴地）硕大无比！

贝洛

贪吃大粪的人！

布卢姆

（半屈膝）庄严崇高！

贝洛

弯下身去！（他用扇子拍打她的肩膀）。双脚向前屈！左脚向后退一步！你会倒下的。正在倒。手扶地，趴下！

布卢姆

（眼睛往上翻，表示仰慕，边闭眼边大叫）块菌！

（随着一声癫痫性的喊叫，她趴了下来，呼噜呼噜直喘，喷着鼻子，刨着脚跟前的地。然后双目紧闭，眼睑颤动，以无比娴熟的技巧把身子弯成弓形，装死躺下。）

贝洛

（头发剪得短短的，紫色的肉垂了下来。剃过的唇边是一圈浓密的口髭。打着登山家的绑腿，身穿有着银钮扣的绿色上衣和运动裙，头戴饰有公赤松鸡羽毛的登山帽。双手深深插进裤兜，将脚后跟放在她的脖颈上，嘎吱嘎吱地踩着。）脚凳！让你知道一下我的份量。奴才，你的暴君那灿烂的脚后跟骄傲地翘立着，闪闪发光。你在这王座前叩拜吧。

布卢姆

（慑服，颤声说）我发誓，永远不违背您的旨意。

贝洛

（朗笑）天哪！你还不知道会落到什么样的下场哪。我就是那个决定你这贱人的命运、要你就范的鞑靼人！老儿子，我敢打赌，要是不能把你收拾出个样子，就情愿请大家喝一通肯塔基鸡尾酒。你敢顶撞我一下试试。那你就穿上运动服浑身打着哆嗦等挨一顿脚后跟的惩罚吧。

（布卢姆钻到沙发底下，偷偷从缘饰的缝隙间窥伺。）

佐伊

（摊开裙裾，遮住布卢姆）她不在这儿。

布卢姆

（阖上眼睛）她不在这儿。

弗洛莉

（用长衫藏起布卢姆）贝洛先生，她不是故意的。老爷，她会放乖的。

吉蒂

不要对她太凶狠啦，贝洛先生。老爷，您准不会的。

贝洛

（用好话引逗着）来呀，好乖乖，我有话跟你说，亲爱的，我不过是训斥你两句罢了。咱们说点儿知心话吧，心肝儿。（布卢姆胆怯地探出头来。）这才是个好姑娘。（贝洛粗暴地一把揪住她的头发，把她硬往前边拽。）我只是为你好，才想在那个又软和又安全的地方来整治你一下。你那嫩屁股怎样啦？哦，宝贝儿，我只不过轻轻儿地爱抚一下。开始准备吧。

布卢姆

（快晕过去了）可别把我劈成两半……

贝洛

（狂暴地）笛子吹奏起来的当儿，我要让你像努比亚奴隶[573] 似的，把套鼻圈、用老虎钳来夹、打脚掌、吊钩、鞭打的滋味，全都尝个够。这回可叫你赶上啦。我得让你至死也忘不了我。（他额上暴起青筋，脸上充血。）每天早晨我先进一顿包括马特森[574] 的煎肥火腿片和一瓶吉尼斯黑啤酒的讲究的早餐，接着就跨在你的背上，只当那是铺了绒垫的鞍子。（他打个嗝。）然后，我一边读《特许饮食业报》[575]，一边吸着证券交易所的高级雪茄烟。我很可能会叫人在我的马房里把你宰掉，把你的肉用扦子串起来，涂上油，放在马口铁罐里，烤得像乳猪似的又松又脆；配上米饭、柠檬或蘸着醋栗酱，津津有味地吃它一片。够你受的吧。

（贝洛拧布卢姆的胳膊，把她摔个仰八脚儿。布卢姆尖声呼叫。）

布卢姆

别这么残忍，护士！别这么样！

贝洛

（拧着）再来一遍！

布卢姆

（尖叫）哦，简直是活地狱啊！我浑身疼得发狂！

贝洛

（大喊）好哇！凭着扭屁股跳跳蹦蹦的将军！这可是六个星期以来我听到的最好的消息。混蛋！别耽搁我的工夫。（他掴了她个耳光。）

布卢姆

抽噎地诉说）你打我啦。我要去告你……

贝洛

按住这家伙，姑娘们，我要跨在这家伙身上。

佐伊

对。踩这家伙吧！我给你按住。

弗洛莉

我来按。别那么贪心。

吉蒂

不，我来。把这家伙借给我。

（妓院厨娘基奥大妈在门口出现。她满脸皱纹，胡子花白，系着满是油垢的围裙，脚穿男人的灰绿相间的短袜和生皮翻毛鞋，裸露着通红的胳膊，手里攥着一根巴满生面的擀面杖。）

基奥大妈

（凶狠地）我能帮上忙吗？

（众人抓住布卢姆，紧紧按住。）

贝洛

（咕哝一声，一屁股坐在布卢姆那仰着的脸上，一口口猛喷着雪茄烟，揉着胖胖的小腿。）我晓得基廷•克莱被选作里奇蒙精神病院[576]副院长啦。顺便说一句，吉尼斯的特惠股份是十六镑四分之三[577]。我真是个笨蛋，竟没把克雷格和加德纳[578] 同我谈起的那一股买下来。真是倒楣透顶，他们的。可是那匹该死的没有希望赢的“丢掉”[579]，居然以二十博一获胜了。（他气冲冲地在布卢姆的耳朵上掐灭雪茄烟。）那只该死的混帐烟灰缸哪儿去啦？

布卢姆

（受尽折磨，被屁股压得透不过气来。）唉！唉！禽兽！残酷的家伙！

贝洛

叫你每隔十分钟就央告一次。乞求吧。使出吃奶的劲儿来祈求吧。（他攥起拳头，然后把臭哄哄的雪茄烟夹在指间[580]，表示轻蔑地伸过来。）喂，吻一吻。两样都吻。（他迈开一条腿，跨坐在布卢姆身上，像骑士那样用双膝紧紧夹着布卢姆，厉声喊。）驾！骑上木马摇啊摇，摇到班伯里十字路口。[581]我要骑着这家伙到埃克里普斯的有奖赛马场上去。（他把身子弯向一边，粗暴地攥住坐骑的睾丸，喊着。）嗬！向前冲呀。我要照正规方式训练你。（他像是跨坐在木马上似的，在鞍上蹦蹦跳跳。）小姐碎步款款行，马夫驾车快步走，老爷骑马直奔跑，奔跑，奔跑、奔跑。

弗洛莉

（指指贝洛）该让我骑了。你已经骑够啦。我比你先开的口。

佐伊

（拽拽弗洛莉）我。我。你还没够吗，吸血鬼！

布卢姆

（奄奄一息）不行啦。

贝洛

唔，我还没够呢。慢着。（他屏住气。）混帐。喏。这只塞子快要崩掉了。（他拔掉屁股后头的塞子，然后，扭歪着脸，放个响屁。）接着！（重新塞好）是啊，天哪，十六镑四分之三。

布卢姆

（浑身淌满汗水）不是男人。（嗅着。）是个女人哩。

贝洛

（站起来）别这么三心二意的。你所梦寐以求的，终于实现啦。从此，你不再是男人，却真正属于我了，并被套上了轭。[582] 这会儿穿上你的惩戒服吧。你得脱掉你那男人衣服，明白吗，鲁碧•科恩？你要穿上这身闪光绸，头上和肩上都窸窣作响，雍容华贵。而且马上就换！

布卢姆

（畏缩起来）太大说是绸子！哦，窸窸窣窣、沙啦沙啦的！难道我得用指尖悄悄地摸吗？

贝洛

（指着他那帮妓女）看到她们现在的样子了吧，你也将跟她们一样。[583] 戴上假发，用火剪卷边，洒香水，擦香粉，腋窝剃得光光溜溜的。用卷尺贴身替你量尺寸。你将被狠狠地塞进胸部有着鲸骨架、活像老虎钳子的淡红灰色斜纹帆布紧身衣里，带子一直勒到尽头——装饰着钻石的骨盆那儿。你的身材比放任自流的时候要来得丰满，将把它束缚在网眼的紧身衣里，另外还有那二英两重的漂亮衬裙和流苏什么的，上面当然都标着我家的徽记。为艾丽斯做的漂亮亚麻布衬衣，和为她准备的上等香水。艾丽斯会伸手去摸摸吊袜带。玛莎和玛丽亚[584]腿上穿得那么薄，起先会觉得有儿凉。可你那光着的膝盖周围一旦用薄丝带镶起褶边，就会使你想到……

布卢姆

（一个娇媚的女仆，双颊厚厚地涂了脂粉，芥未色头发，长着一双男人的手和鼻子，眼睛斜睨着。）在霍利斯街的时候，我只半开玩笑地试穿过两次她的衣服。那阵子我们手头紧，为了省下洗衣店那笔开销，我都是亲自洗。我还翻改自己的衬衫。过的是最节省不过的日子。

贝洛

（嘲笑）是为了让妈妈高兴才做的吧，呃？然后把百叶窗拉严，身上只穿件化装舞衣，对着镜子，轻佻地卖弄你那脱了裙子的大腿和公山羊的乳房，做出各种委身的姿势，呃？哈哈，我不得不笑。米莉亚姆•丹德拉德太太[585]在谢尔本饭店卖给你的那件黑色旧高级敞领衬衣和短裤，上次被她[586]强奸的时候全都绽线了吧，呃？

布卢姆

米莉亚姆。黑色的。名声不好的女人。

贝洛

（大笑）伟大的基督，这简直太逗啦！你把后门的毛剃干净，盖上那玩艺儿，晕倒在床上的时候，可真成了美人儿米莉亚姆啦。活像是即将被下面这些人强奸的丹德拉德太大。他们是：斯迈思- 斯迈思陆军中尉、下院议员菲利普•奥古斯塔斯•布洛克维尔先生、健壮的男高音拉西•达列莫[587]先生、开电梯的蓝眼睛伯特、因获得戈登•贝纳特奖杯[588]而扬名的亨利•弗勒里、曾在三一学院的大学代表队做过滑艇第八号选手的黑白混血大富豪谢里登、她那只漂亮的纽芬兰狗庞托，以及马诺汉密尔顿[589]公爵遗孀鲍勃斯。（他又大笑一阵。）哎呀，连暹罗猫都给招笑了。


布卢姆

（她活动着双手和五官。）当我念高中的时候，曾在《颠倒》[590]这出戏里扮演过女角。那回，杰拉尔德[591] 使我真正变成一个胸衣爱好者，对，就是亲爱的杰拉尔德。他对姐妹的紧身褡着了迷，养成了这么个怪毛病。如今可爱的杰拉尔德擦粉红色的油彩，还把眼睑涂成金色的。这是对美的崇拜。

贝洛

（不正经地嘻笑着）美！当你撩起裙子巨浪式的荷叶边，以女人特有的细心坐到打磨得光光滑滑的宝座上的时候，连气儿都喘不过来了！

布卢姆

这是一门科学。把我们各自享受的形形色色的快乐比较一下。（热切地）说实在的，还是那个姿势好一些……因为过去我常常弄湿……

贝洛

（严厉地）不许顶嘴！角落里为你准备好锯末了。我不是严格地指示过你吗？站着干，老兄！我要教你像个骗子那样干！你敢在襁褓上留点污痕试试。哎嘿！凭着多兰的驴[592] 发誓，你会发现我是个纪律严明的人。你过去的罪恶会起来声讨你。很多。好几百桩。

过去的罪恶

（声音混杂中）他在黑教堂[ 593] 的阴影中，至少跟一个女人偷偷举行了婚礼。他一边对公共电话阁子的电话机做猥亵的举动，一边在精神上给居住在多利尔某号的邓恩小姐[594] 打电话，说些不堪入耳的话。他还公然用言语和行动来怂恿暗娼把粪便和其他污物丢到空房旁边龌龊的厕所里。在五个公共厕所里，他都用铅笔写道，愿为一切身体强壮之男子提供本人的妻子。难道他不曾每夜在发散异臭的硫酸工厂[ 595] 附近，从一对对热恋着的情侣身边走过，想碰碰运气，巴不得多少能看到点儿什么吗？难道这头肥公猪不曾躺在床上，用姜汁饼和邮政汇票来鼓励一个讨厌的妓女，让她提供用过好多遍令人作呕的草纸，并躺在床上馋涎欲滴地盯视它吗？

贝洛

（大声吹口哨）喂！在你这罪恶的生涯中，最使人恶心的淫荡行为是什么？统统说出来。吐个干净！这回可要老老实实他讲。

一张张沉默、冷酷的脸拥过来，有的斜眼瞅着，有的在逐渐消失，有的在嘲笑着。波尔迪•德•科克[596] ，靴子带儿一便士[597] ，卡西迪的老妪[598] ，盲青年[599] ，拉里•莱诺塞罗斯[600]，姑娘，妇女，娼妓，另外还有……）

布卢姆

不要问我！咱们共同的信仰。[601] 普莱曾茨街。我只转了一半念头……我凭着神圣的誓约保证……

贝洛

（断然地）回答！你这讨人嫌的下贱货！我非知道不可。给我讲点开心的事：不论是猥亵的，还是血淋淋、顶刮刮的鬼故事，要么就来上一行诗。快，快，快！在哪儿发生的？用什么方法？什么时候？跟多少人？我只给你三秒钟。一！二！三！……

布卢姆

（俯首贴耳，喉咙里发出咯咯声）我下、下、下作地嗅了讨、讨、讨厌的东西……

贝洛

（专横地）哦，给我滚出去，你这贱人！住口！问到你，再回答。

布卢姆

（鞠躬）老爷！太太！驯服男子的人！

（他举起双臂。手镯落地。）

贝洛

（刻薄地）白天，你把我们那一套套臭哄哄的内衣衬裤泡在水里捶打。我们这些夫人们不舒服的时候，也得你来伺候。你还得撩起衣服，屁股后头拴块搌布，替我们擦茅房。那该有多么称心啊！（他把一枚红玉戒指套在她的手指上。）这就好啦！戴上这戒指，你就属于我啦。说：谢谢您，太太。

布卢姆

谢谢您，太太。

贝洛

你得为我们叠被铺床，替我准备澡水，倒各间房里的尿罐，包括老厨娘基奥那只沙色的。对，你还得记住把七只尿罐都好好涮一遍，或当作香槟酒那样舔个干净。把我撒的尿趁热喝下去。你得麻麻利利、低三下四地伺候着，不然的话，我就训斥你不懂规矩。鲁碧[602]小姐，我要用头发刷子狠狠地揍你的光屁股。这样，你就会懂得怎样循规蹈矩了。晚上，你那双擦足了雪花膏、套上镯子的手，还得戴上一副有着四十三个钮扣、刚涂过滑石粉的手套，指尖上考究地洒了香水。为了能得到这些好处，从前的骑士不惜献出生命。（他咯咯笑着。）我手下那些小伙子看到你这副贵妇人的风度一定会神魂颠倒，尤其是那位上校，当他们在婚礼前夕来这儿爱抚我这个靴子后跟镀了金的新招牌姑娘的时候。首先，我得亲自试试你。我在赛马场上结识的查尔斯•艾伯塔•马什——我刚刚跟他睡过觉。还有一位文件筐与小包保管科[603] 的先生，正在物色一个百依百顺的女仆。挺起胸脯来。笑一笑。垂下肩去。肯出多少钱？（指着）现货就在这里。经过雇主的训练，能嘴里叼着水桶，搬呀运呀。（他挽起袖管，将前臂整个儿伸进布卢姆的阴户。）够深的吧！怎样，小伙子们？见了这，你们还能不挺起来吗？（他把胳膊伸到一个竞买者脸前。）喏，搞吧，挨着个儿地来！

一个竞买者

两先令银市。

（狄龙[604] 的伙计摇着手铃。）

伙计

当啷！

一个声音

多付了一先令八便士。[605] 

查尔斯•艾伯塔•马什

想必是个处女。气儿挺足。蛮干净。

贝洛

（抡起拍卖槌重重地敲了一下）两先令。低到了家的价钱，这简直跟白扔似的。有十四个举手的，摸一摸，检查一下她的部位。尽管用手摆弄。这长了茸毛的皮肤，这么柔软的筋，这么嫩的肉。要是我那把金锥子在手头就好了！而且奶水也挺足。一天能挤三加仑新鲜的奶。是多产的纯种，不出一个小时就能下崽。她老子的产奶纪录是四十周之内产两千加仑纯奶。嗬，我的宝贝儿！央求一下！嗬！（他把自己姓氏的首字C刺在布卢姆的臀部。）行啦！地地道道的科恩牌[606]！两先令还给涨多少，先生们？

浅黑脸男子

（用假嗓子）一百英镑整。

众声

（放低嗓门）拍卖结果归哈利发了。哈伦•拉施德[607] 。

贝洛

（兴高采烈地）好吧。让他们统统都来吧。窄小而毫无顾忌，只及膝盖的短裙，裙裾掀起，露出一抹白色宽松裤子，乃是强有力的武器。还有那透明的长袜，笔直的长长的棱线直伸到膝盖上端，再系上鲜绿色袜带，很投合城里玩厌了的人那种想别开生面的本能。要学会穿路易十五式后跟足有四英寸高的鞋，[608] 走路时忸忸怩怩，装腔作势。还得会行希腊式的屈膝礼，挑逗地撅起屁股，大腿丰腴匀称，双膝端庄地并着。朝他们发挥出你的全部魅力吧。勾引他们去沉溺在蛾摩拉的恶习中[609] 。

布卢姆

（把羞得通红的脸藏在腋窝里，口叼食指，傻笑。）哦，我现在好容易才明白你暗示的是什么了！

贝洛

像你这么个阳萎的家伙，除此而外还能做什么？（他弯下身去，边盯视边用扇子粗暴地戳布卢姆臀部那脂肪很厚的褶皱下面。）起来！起来！曼克斯猫[610] ！这是怎么啦？你那卷毛的茶壶哪儿去啦？要么就是什么人把它铰掉了吗，你这鸟儿？唱吧，鸟儿，唱呀。软搭拉的，就跟在马车后面撒尿的六岁娃娃那物儿一样。买只桶或卖掉水泵。（大声）你起得了男人的作用吗？

布卢姆

在埃克尔斯街……

贝洛

（讽刺地）我绝不想伤害你的感情，可有个肌肉发达的男人在那儿顶替了你。这叫作形势逆转，你这年轻的相公！他可是个粗壮有力的剽悍男子。咳，你这窝囊废，要是你也有那么个满是疙瘩、瘤子和瘊子的物儿就好啦。告诉你吧，他把浑身的劲头全使出来啦。脚对脚，膝对膝，肚子对肚子，乳房对胸脯！他可不是个阉人。屁股后头像荆豆丛似的扎煞着一簇红毛毛！小伙子，等上九个月吧！哎呀呀，它已经在她肚子里上下翻腾，蹬蹬踹踹，又咳嗽什么的！难道这还不使你气得火冒三丈吗？碰到痛处了吧？（他轻蔑地朝布卢姆啐口唾沫。）你这痰盂！

布卢姆

我深深受了凌辱，我……要去告警察。索赔一百英镑。竟然说得出口！我……

贝洛

有能耐你就去告吧，瘸鸭子。我们要的是瓢泼大雨，不是你那毛毛细雨。

布卢姆

会把我逼疯的！摩尔[611] ！我忘记了！饶恕我吧！摩尔……我们……还……

贝洛

（冷酷无情地）不行，利奥波德•布卢姆。自从你趴在睡谷里，在睡眠中度过长达二十年的夜晚[ 612] ，一切都按女人的意志改变了。回去瞧瞧吧。

（老睡谷隔着荒原呼唤。）

睡谷

瑞普•凡•温克尔！瑞普•凡•温克尔！

布卢姆

（脚上穿着破破烂烂的鹿皮靴，手里拿着一杆锈迹斑斑的鸟枪。他踮起脚尖，用手指摸索着。面容憔悴，骨瘦如柴而胡子拉碴的脸，对着菱形窗玻璃凝视，然后喊道）我看见她啦！是她！在马特•狄龙家第一次见到她的那个夜晚！可那件衣裳，绿色的！她的头发染成了金色的，而他……

贝洛

（愚弄地笑着）你这猫头鹰，那是你闺女哩，正跟穆林加尔的一名学生在一起。

（米莉•布卢姆，一头金发，身着绿衫，足蹬细长的凉鞋[613] ，听任蓝色头巾被海风吹拂得翻卷，甩开情人的双臂，惊奇地睁大眼睛叫着。）

米莉

天哪！这是爹爹啊。可是，哦，爹爹，你怎么苍老成这个样子啦！

贝洛

变啦，对吧？咱们的什锦柜，咱们那张从没在上边写过字的书桌，姨姥姥哈格蒂的扶手椅，是按古代大师的作品仿制的。一个男人和他的男友们在那儿养尊处优。王八窝[614] 。这也好嘛。你有过多少女人，呃，在黑咕隆咚的街上拖着脚步走，跟在她们后面，瓮声瓮气地咕哝着，使她们兴奋起来。怎样啊，你这男妓？跟踪那些捧着一包包食品杂货的规规矩矩的太太。向后转吧。我的公鹅啊，你和母鹅是半斤八两。[615] 

布卢姆

她们……我……

贝洛

（尖酸刻薄地）我们的鞋后跟将踩着你从雷恩[616] 拍卖行买的那条仿制的布鲁塞尔地毯。他们跟顽皮的莫尔胡闹一气，捉她裤子里的雄跳蚤，把你为艺术而艺术冒雨抱回家的那座小小雕像[617] 一下子砸个粉碎。他们把你收藏在尽底下那只抽屉里的秘密全暴露出来。他们将把你那本天文学手册扯碎，搓成擦烟斗用的纸捻儿。他们还往你从汉普顿•利德姆[618] 那家店里花十先令买来的黄铜炉档里啐唾沫。

布卢姆

是十先令六便士。卑鄙无赖干下的勾当。放我走吧。我要回去。我要证明……

一个声音

宣誓！[619] 

（布卢姆攥紧拳头，口叼长猎刀，匍匐前进。）

贝洛

是作为一名房客，还是一个男妾呢？太迟啦[620] 。你既然做了那张次好的床[621]，其他人就得睡在上面。你的墓志铭[622] 已经写好了。老家伙，可不要忘记，你已经完蛋了，被逐出去啦。

布卢姆

正义啊！整个爱尔兰在跟一个人作对！难道谁都……”

（他啃自己的大拇指。）

贝洛

要是你还有一点点自尊心或体面感的话，就死掉并下地狱去吧。我可以给你点珍藏的陈年老酒，你喝了就能跳跳蹦蹦地往返一趟地狱。签下一份遗嘱，将现钱统统留给我们！要是你一文不名，那么就偷也罢，抢也罢，横竖你这混蛋就非得把钱弄到手不可！我们把你葬在灌木丛中的茅坑里。那儿有我嫁过的继侄老卡克•科恩——一个该死的老痛风患者，诉讼代理人，颈部不断抽筋儿的鸡奸者。还有我另外十个或十一个丈夫，不管这帮鸡奸者叫什么名字，反正你都将跟他们死在一起，浑身龌龊，窒息在同一个粪坑里。（他爆发出含痰的朗笑声。）我们会把你沤成肥料的，弗罗尔先生！（他嘲弄地吹口哨。）拜拜，波尔迪！拜拜，爹爹！

布卢姆

（紧紧抱着自己的头）我的意志力！记忆！我犯了罪！我受了苦！[623] 

（他于哭起来。）

贝洛

（讥笑）哭娃娃！鳄鱼的眼泪！

（布卢姆丧魂落魄，紧紧地蒙起眼睛，脸伏在地上哽咽着，等待着当牺牲品。这时，传来丧钟声。行过割礼者披着黑围巾的身姿，着麻蒙灰，伫立在饮位墙[624] 旁。M•舒勒莫雏茨、约瑟夫•戈德华特、摩西•赫佐格、哈里斯•罗森堡、M•莫伊塞尔、J．西特伦、明尼•沃赤曼、P•马斯添斯基，以及领唱者利奥波德。阿布拉莫维茨导师[625] 。他们摇着手臂，呼唤着圣灵，为哀悼叛教者布卢姆之死而恸哭。）

行过割礼者

（他们边以阴郁的喉音唱着，边往他身上撒死海之果，没有鲜花[626]。）以色列人哪，你们要留心听！上主是我们的上帝；惟有他是上主。[627] 

众声

（叹息）那么，他走啦。啊，对。对，正是这样。布卢姆？从来没有听说过他。没有？是个古怪家伙。还有个寡妇。是吗？啊，对。

（从寡妇殉夫自焚的柴堆里，升起橡胶樟脑的火焰。香烟像棺衣一般遮住周围，逐渐消散。一位宁芙[628] 从栎木镜框里走了出来。她披散着头发，身上轻飘飘地穿着人工着色的茶褐色衣服，钻出她的洞穴，从枝叶交错的几棵紫杉下经过，站在布卢姆旁边。）

紫杉们

（叶子叽叽喳喳）是姐姐。咱们的姐姐。嘘！（柔声）凡人！（亲切地）不，可不要哭！

布卢姆

（软绵绵地在枝叶下匍匐前进，浴着透过枝叶缝隙射进来的阳光，威严地）落到这么个境地。我早就觉出会是这样的。习惯势力。

宁芙

凡人！你在一堆歹徒当中找到了我。跳大腿舞的，沿街叫卖水果蔬菜的小贩，拳师，得人心的将军。穿肉色紧身衣、道德败坏的哑剧演员，在本世纪最叫座儿的歌舞节目《曙光女神和卡利尼》中跳希米舞[629] 的俏皮漂亮的舞女。我藏在散发着石油味的粉红色廉价纸页当中。周围是俱乐部的男人们那些老掉牙的猥亵之谈，扰乱乳臭未干的小青年心情的话语，以及各种广告：透明装饰图片，按照几何图形制造的骰子，护胸，专利品，经疝气患者试用证明合格的疝带。有益于已婚者的须知。

布卢姆

（朝她的膝盖抬起海龟头）咱们曾经见过面。在另一个星球上。

宁芙

（悲戚地）橡胶制品。永远不会破的品种，专供贵族人士使用。男用胸衣。保治惊厥，无效退款。沃尔德曼教授神奇胸部扩大器使用者主动寄来的感谢信。据格斯•鲁布林太太来信说：我的胸围在三周内扩大了四英寸，并附照片。

布卢姆

你指的是《摄影点滴》吗？

宁芙

是啊。你带走了我，将我镶在装饰着金属箔的栎木镜框里，把我挂在你们夫妻的床上端。一个夏日傍晚，当没人看到时，你还吻了我身上的四个部位，并怀着爱慕心情用铅笔把我的眼睛、乳房和阴部都涂黑了。

布卢姆

（谦卑地吻她的长发）美丽的不朽的人儿啊，你有着何等古典的曲线。你是美的化身。我曾经仰慕你，赞颂你，几乎向你祷告。

宁芙

在漫漫黑夜，我听见了你的赞美…

布卢姆

（急促地）是啊，是啊。你指的是我……睡眠把每个人的最坏的一面暴露出来，也许孩子们是例外。我晓得我曾从床上滚了下去，或者毋宁说是被推下去了。据说浸过铁屑的葡萄酒能够治疗打鼾。另外，还有那个英国人的发明。尽管地址写错了，几天前我还是收到了关于医治打鼾的那份小册子。它说，能使人打一种不出声、不妨碍任何人的鼾。（叹息）一向都是这样的：脆弱啊，你的名字就是婚姻。[630] 

宁芙

（用手指堵住耳朵）还有话。我的字典里可没有那些话。

布卢姆

你听得懂那些话吗？

紫杉们

嘘！

宁芙

（用手捂住脸）在那间屋子里，我什么没见到呀？我不得不瞧些什么呀！

布卢姆

（抱歉地）我晓得。贴身穿的脏衬衣，还特意给翻了过来。床架上的环儿也松了，是老早以前由海上从直布罗陀运来的。

宁芙

（垂下头去）比那还糟糕，比那还糟糕！

布卢姆

（仔细审慎地想）是那个陈旧的尿盆吧？那不怪她的体重。她刚好是一百六十七磅。断奶后，增加了九镑。尿盆上有个碴儿，胶也脱落了。呃？那只有一个把儿的、布满回纹的蹩脚用具。

（传来瀑布晶莹地倾泻而下的声音。）

瀑布

噗啦呋咔[631] ，噗啦呋咔。

噗啦呋咔，噗啦呋咔。

紫杉们

（枝条交叉）听啊。小点儿声。姐姐说得对。我们是在噗啦呋咔瀑布旁边生长的。在令人倦怠的夏日，我们供大家遮荫。

约翰•怀思•诺兰

（身穿国民林务员制服，出现在后方。摘下那顶插了饰毛的帽子。）在令人倦怠的日子，遮荫吧，爱尔兰的树木！

紫杉们

（低语）是谁随同高中生的郊游到噗啦呋咔来啦？是谁丢下寻觅坚果的同学们，到我们树底下找荫凉儿来啦？[632] 

布卢姆

（鸡胸，瓶状肩膀，身穿不三不四的黑灰条纹相间、尺寸太小的童装，脚蹬白网球鞋，滚边的翻筒长袜，头上是一顶带着徽章的红色学生帽。）我当时才十几岁，是个正在发育的男孩儿。看什么都有趣儿。颠簸的车啦，妇人衣帽间和厕所混淆在一起的气味啦，密密匝匝地拥塞在古老的皇家剧场[633] 楼梯上的人群啦。因为他们喜欢你拥我挤，这是群体的本能，而且散发出淫荡气味的黑洞洞的剧场更使邪恶猖獗起来。我甚至喜欢看袜子的价目表。还有那股暑气。那个夏季，太阳上出现了黑点。学期结束。还有浸了葡萄酒的醉饼。多么宁静幸福的日子啊。

（宁静幸福的日子：高中男生穿着蓝白相间的足球运动衫和短裤。唐纳德•特恩布尔、亚伯拉罕•查特顿、欧文•戈德堡、杰克•梅雷迪思和珀西•阿普约翰[634] 站在林间空地上，朝着少年利奥波德•布卢姆喊叫。）

宁静幸福的日子

青花鱼[635]！咱们再一道玩玩吧。好得很！（他们喝彩。）

布卢姆

（一个笨拙的小伙子，戴着暖和的手套，裹着妈妈的围巾，朝他丢来的松软的雪球像星星般地沾在身上。他挣扎着要站起来。）再一道！我觉得又回到十六岁啦！真有趣儿！咱们把蒙塔古街[636]上所有的钟都敲响吧。（他有气无力地欢呼。）好得很，高中时代！

回声

傻瓜！

紫杉们

（飒飒作响）咱们的姐姐说得对。小声些。（整座树林子里，遍处都是喊喊喳喳的接吻声。树精从树干与枝叶间露出脸来窥伺，猛地绽开一朵朵的花。）是谁玷污了咱们这寂静的树荫儿？

宁芙

（羞答答地，从扎煞开的指缝间）那儿吗？在光天化日之下？

紫杉们

（朝下弯曲）是啊，姐姐。而且是在咱们这纯洁的草地上。

瀑布

噗啦呋咔，噗啦呋咔，

噗咔呋咔，噗咔呋咔。

宁芙

（扎煞着手指）哦，不要脸！

布卢姆

我曾经是个早熟的孩子。青春时期，法乌娜[637] 。我向森林之神献了祭。春季开的花儿[638] 。那是交尾的季节。毛细管引力是自然现象。我用可怜的爸爸那架小望远镜，从没拉严的窗帘缝儿偷看了亚麻色头发的洛蒂•克拉克在化晚妆。那个轻浮丫头吃起草来可野啦。在里亚托桥[639] ，她滚下山去，用她那旺盛的血气来勾引我。她爬上了弯弯曲曲的树，而我呢。连个圣徒也抑制不住自己。恶魔附在我身上啦。而且，谁也不曾看见呀。

（一头打着趔趄的无角白色小牛崽[640] 从叶丛间伸出头来。它蠕动着嘴，鼻孔湿漉漉的。）

刚生下的小牛崽

（大滴大滴的泪珠子从鼓起的眼睛里滚滚而下，吸溜着鼻涕。）我。我瞧。

布卢姆

仅仅是为了满足一阵欲望，我……（凄楚地）我追求姑娘，却没有一个理睬我。太丑啦。她们不肯跟我玩……

（在高高的霍斯山顶儿上，一只大奶、短尾母山羊缓步走在杜鹃花丛中，醋栗一路坠落着。[641] ）

母山羊

（鸣叫）咩 、咩、咩、咩！呐喃呐呢！

布卢姆

（无帽，涨红着脸，浑身沾满蓟冠毛和荆豆刺）正式订了婚。境遇迁，情况变[642] 。（目不转睛地俯视水面）每秒三十二英尺，[643] 倒栽葱跌下去。印刷品的恶梦。发晕的以利亚。[644] 从断崖上坠落。政府印刷公司职员[645] 的悲惨下场。

（裹成木乃伊状的布卢姆木偶，穿过夏日静穆的银色空气，从狮子岬角的崖上旋转着滚进等待着他的紫水。）

木偶木乃伊

布鲁布鲁布鲁布鲁布罗施布！

（远远地在海湾的水面上，爱琳王号[646] 从贝利灯塔与基什灯塔之间穿行。烟囱吐出羽毛状煤烟，扩散开来，朝岸边飘浮。）

市政委员南尼蒂[647] 

（独自站在甲板上。身着黑色羊驼呢衣服，面作黄褐色，手插进背心敞口，口若悬河地演说着。）当我的祖国在世界各国之间占有了一席之地，直到那时，只有到了那时，方为我写下墓志铭，我的话……

布卢姆

完了。噗噜呋！

宁芙

（高傲地）我们这些神明，正如你今天所瞧见的那样，身上没有那个部位，也没长着毛。[648] 我们像石头一样冰凉而纯洁。我们吃电光。（她把身子淫荡地弯成弓形，咬着食指。）你对我说话来着吧。声音是从背后传来的，你怎么竟能这样……？

布卢姆

（沮丧地用脚踢着石南丛）哎，我真是地地道道的一头猪猡。我甚至还灌了肠。从苦树采下的苦味液三分之一品脱，兑上一汤匙岩盐。插进肛门。用的是妇女之友牌汉密尔顿•朗[ 649] 的灌肠器。

宁芙

当着我的面。粉扑。（飞红了脸，屈膝）还不只这一桩呢！

布卢姆

（垂头丧气）对。我犯了罪！[650] 我已经向不再这么叫的后背那个部位——一座活生生的祭坛致了敬。（突然以热切的口吻）为什么那双馥郁秀丽、珠光宝气的手，支配……的手[ 651] ？

（一个个身影缓缓地勾勒出森林图案，像蛇一般缠到树干上，柔声呼唤着。）

吉蒂的声音

（在矮树丛里）拿出个靠垫给咱瞧瞧。

弗洛莉的声音

喏。

（一只松鸡笨拙地从乱丛棵子中扑扇而过。）

林奇的声音

（在矮树丛里）哎唷！热得快开锅啦！

佐伊的声音

（在矮树丛里）从热地儿来的嘛。

维拉格的声音

（百鸟首领，披戴着饰以蓝竖纹羽毛的全副甲胄，手执标枪，踩着山毛榉果和橡子，大踏步穿过僻僻啪啪响的藤丛。）好热啊！好热！可得提防着坐牛[652] ！

布卢姆

我受不了啦。她那热呼呼的身子留下的热烘烘的烙印。就连在女人坐过的地方坐坐都受不了，尤其在那叉开大腿仿佛要最后开恩的地方，甚至还留下把圆盘般的白棉缎衬裙高高撩起来的痕迹。充满了女人气息。我已经满得饱和啦。

瀑布

啡啦噗啦，噗啦呋咔，

噗啦呋咔，噗啦呋咔。

紫杉们

嘘！姐姐，说呀！

宁芙

（双目失明，身穿修女的白袍，包着两边张出翼状大折裥的头巾，望着远处，安详地）特兰奎拉女修道院。阿加塔修女。迦密山。[653] 诺克和卢尔德的显圣。[654] 没有了欲望。（她垂下头去叹气。）只剩下苍穹的灵气了。梦幻一般浓郁的海鸥，在沉滞的水上飞翔。[655]

（布卢姆欠起身来。他的后裤兜儿上的钮扣崩掉了。）

钮扣

嘣！

（库姆[656] 的两个婊子身披围巾，淋着雨，边跳着舞过去，边用呆板的音调嚷着。）

哦，利奥波德丢了衬裤的饰针。

他不知道怎么办，

才能不让它脱落，

才能不让它脱落。

布卢姆

（冷漠地）你们把符咒给破了。这可是最后一根稻草[657] 啊。倘若只有天上的灵气，该把你们这些圣职申请者和见习修女往哪儿摆呢？羞涩而心甘情愿，就像一头撒尿的驴。

紫杉们

（银纸叶子坠落，骨瘦如柴的胳膊老迈而摇来摆去。）虚幻无常！

宁芙[ 658] 

这简直是亵渎神明！竟敢试图破坏我的贞操！（她的衣服上出现一大片湿渡渡的污痕。）玷污我的清白！你不配摸一位纯洁女子的衣服。（她重新把衣服拢紧。）且慢。魔鬼，不许你再唱情歌。啊们。啊们。啊们。啊们。（她拔出短剑，披着从九名中选拔出来的骑士[ 659] 的锁子甲，朝布卢姆的腰部扎去。）你这个孽障！

布卢姆

（大吃一惊，攥住她的手。）嗬！受保佑的！[ 660］有九条命的猫！太太，要讲讲公道，用刀子割可使不得。是狐狸和酸葡萄吧，呃？你已经有了铁蒺藜[661] ，还缺什么？难道十字架还不够粗吗？（一把抓住她的头巾）你究竟想要可敬的男修道院院长呢，还是瘸腿园丁布罗菲；要么就是没有出水口的送水人[662] 雕像，或是好母亲阿方萨斯，呃，列那[663] ？

宁芙

（大叫一声，丢下头巾，逃出他的手掌。她那用石膏塑成的壳子出现裂纹，从裂缝里冒出一股臭气[664] 。）警……！

布卢姆

（从她背后喊）倒好像你自己井没有加倍地享乐似的。连动也不动一下就浑身糊满各种各样的黏液了。我试了一下。你的长处就是我们的弱点。你给我多少配种费呀？马上付多少现款？我读过关于你们在里维埃拉雇舞男的事。[665]（正在逃跑的宁芙哭了一声。）呃？我像黑奴般地干了十六年的苦役。难道明天陪审员会给我五先令的赡养费吗，呃，去愚弄旁人吧，我可不上这个当。（嗅着。）动情。葱头。酸臭的气味[666] 。硫磺。脂肪。

（贝拉•科恩[667] 的身影站在他面前。）

贝拉

下次你就认得我啦。

布卢姆

（安详地打量着她）容颜衰退。[ 668] 老婊子装扮成少妇的样子。牙齿长，头发密。晚上临睡吃生葱头，可以滋润容颜。通过锻炼，能消除双下巴颏。你那两眼就像你那只剥制狐狸的玻璃眼睛那么呆滞。它门跟你的胸腰臀尺寸也相当。就是这样。我可不是一架三翼螺旋桨。

贝拉

（轻蔑地）其实你已经不行啦。（她那母猪的阴部吼叫着。）吹牛皮！

布卢姆

（轻蔑地）先把你那没有指甲的中指擦干净吧。你那情人的冰凉精液正在从你的鸡冠上嘀嗒着哪。抓把干草自己擦擦吧。

贝拉

我晓得你是个拉广告的！阳萎！

布卢姆

我瞧见你的情人啦：窑子老板！贩卖梅毒和后淋症的！

贝拉

（转向钢琴）你们之间是谁弹《扫罗》中的送葬曲[669] 来着？

佐伊

是我。当心你的鸡眼儿吧。[670]（ 她一个箭步蹿到钢琴跟前，交抱着胳膊使劲碰琴键。）平板、机械、单调、生硬的旋律。（她回过头来瞟一眼。）呃？谁在向我的情人儿献殷勤？（她一个箭步蹿回到桌边。）你的就是我的，我的就是我自己的。（吉蒂仓皇失措，用银纸遮住牙齿。布卢姆走近佐伊。）

布卢姆

（用柔和的声调）把那个土豆还给我好吗？

佐伊

没收啦。好东西，非常好的东西。

布卢姆

（深情地）那玩艺儿什么价值也没有，但毕竟是我可怜的妈妈的遗物。

佐伊

给人东西又索讨，

天主问哪儿去了，

你就推说不知道，

天主送你下地狱。[ 671] 

布卢姆

这是有纪念意义的。我想拥有它。

斯蒂芬

拥有还是没有，这是一个值得考虑的问题。[672]

佐伊

喏。（她撩起衬裙褶子，露出裸着的大腿，然后往下卷了卷长袜口，掏出土豆。）藏的人自然知道上哪儿去找。

贝拉

（皱眉）喂，这儿可不是有音乐伴奏、透过小孔看的那种下流表演。可别把那架钢琴砸烂啦。帐由谁付呀？

（她走到自动钢琴旁边。斯蒂芬掏兜，捏着一张纸币的角儿，提拎出来递给她。）

斯蒂芬

（故作夸张的彬彬有礼）这个丝制钱包我是用酒吧间的猪耳朵做的[673] 大太，请原谅。要是您允许的话。（他含含糊糊地指林奇和布卢姆。）金赤和林奇，我们同赌共济。[674] 在我们“开庭”的这家窑子里[675]。

林奇

（从炉边招呼）迪达勒斯！替我祝福她吧。[676]

斯蒂芬

（递给贝洛一枚硬币）喏，还是金的哩。她已经被祝福过啦。

贝拉

（瞧瞧钱，[ 677] 然后看看佐伊、弗洛莉和吉蒂。）你们要三个姑娘吗？这里是十先令。

斯蒂芬

（欣喜地）十万个对不起。（他又掏兜，并摸出两枚克朗递给她。）请原谅，少给了[ 678] ，我的眼神儿有点毛病。

（贝拉走到桌边去数钱，斯蒂芬用单音节词喃喃自语。佐伊朝桌子弯下身去。吉蒂偎倚着佐伊的脖颈。林奇站起来，把便帽扶正，紧紧搂住吉蒂的腰肢，把头凑到众人当中。）

弗洛莉

（使劲挣扎着站起来）噢！我的脚发麻。（她一瘸一拐地来到桌边。布卢姆挨了过去。）

贝拉、佐伊、吉蒂、林奇、布卢姆

（叽哩叭啦，拌嘴）那位先生……十先令……付了三份……稍等一等……这位先生的帐另外算……谁在碰它？……噢！……掐我，可饶不了你……你是过夜呢，还是只泡一会儿？……谁干的？……你撒谎，对不起……这位先生已经像个上等人那样结清了帐……喝酒……早就过十一点啦。

斯蒂芬

（在自动钢琴旁边，做表示厌恶的手势）不要酒啦！什么，十一点？一个谜语[679] ！

佐伊

（撩起裙裾，将那枚半克朗金市夹在长袜口里）这是躺在床上好不容易才挣到的哪。

林奇

（把吉蒂从桌旁抱起）来呀！

吉蒂

等一等。（她一把抓住两枚克朗。）

弗洛莉

还有我哪？

林奇

呼啦！

（他举起她，把她抱到沙发跟前，咕咯一声撂下去。）

狐狸叫，公鸡飞，

天堂钟声响，

整整十一点。

她可怜的灵魂，

该离开天堂啦。[680] 

布卢姆

（不动声色地把一枚半英镑金币放在贝洛与弗洛莉之间的桌子上。）就这样，请允许我。（他拿起那张一英镑纸币。）十乘三。咱们两不欠。[681] 

贝拉

（钦佩地）你可真狡猾，翘尾巴的老家伙。我都想吻吻你啦。

佐伊

（指着）他吗？深得像口吊桶井。

（林奇弯下身去吻着仰面躺在沙发上的吉蒂。布卢姆拿着那张一英镑钞票，走到斯蒂芬跟前。）

布卢姆

这是你的。

斯蒂芬

这是怎么回事？心神恍惚的男子[682]或心神恍惚的乞丐[ 683] 。（他又掏兜，摸出一把硬币。掉了一样东西。）掉啦。

布卢姆

（蹲下去，捡起一盒火柴，递给斯蒂芬。）这个。

斯蒂芬

晓星[684] 。谢谢。

布卢姆

（温和地）你不如把那笔现款交给我来保管。凭什么多付呢？

斯蒂芬

（把硬币统统交给他。）先公正再慷慨。[685] 

布卢姆

我要这么做，可这是个明智的办法吗？（他数着。）一，七，十一，再加上五。六。十一。你可能已经丢失的，我就不负责任了。

斯蒂芬

为什么说是敲了十一点呢？从语尾倒数第二音节上有重音。莱辛说：“动作中的某一顷刻[ 686] 。”口渴的狐狸。（他大笑。）埋葬它的奶奶。[687} 兴许她还是死在他手里的呢[688] 。

布卢姆

统共是一英镑六先令十一便士。就算是一英镑七先令吧。

斯蒂芬

管它呢，没关系。

布卢姆

那倒也是，不过……

斯蒂芬

（来到桌旁）给我根香烟。（从沙发那儿往桌上丢了一支香烟。）于是，乔治娜。约翰逊[689]死去了，并且结过婚。（一支香烟出现在桌上。斯蒂芬瞅着它。）奇怪。客厅里的魔术。结过婚。哼。（他划着一根火柴，沉浸在神秘的忧郁中，试图点燃香烟。）

林奇

（注视着他）要是把火柴挨近一点，就更容易点着了。

斯蒂芬

（把火柴凑到眼前）山猫般锐利的目光。得配副眼镜。昨天把眼镜打碎了。十六年前[690]。距离。一眼望去，都是平面。（他把火柴移开。熄灭了。）脑子在思索。是近还是远。[691] 无可避免的视觉认知形态。[692] （他故作玄虚地皱皱眉头。）哼。斯芬克斯。双背禽兽[693] 在半夜里结了婚。

佐伊

娶她的是一个行商，把她带走啦。

弗洛莉

（点点头）伦敦的兰姆先生。

斯蒂芬

伦敦的羔羊，带走世人罪孽的。[694] 

林奇

（在沙发上搂抱着吉蒂，用深沉的嗓音吟诵。）赐我等平安。[ 695] 

（香烟从斯蒂芬的手指问滑落下去。布卢姆拾起，投到炉格子后面。）

布卢姆

别抽烟啦。你得吃。我碰上的那条狗真可恶。（对佐伊）你们这儿什么都没有吗？

佐伊

他饿了吗？

斯蒂芬

（笑吟吟地朝她伸出一只手，用《众神的黄昏）中“血誓[696] 的曲调诵着。）

腹中难耐的饥饿，

刨根问底的老婆，

我们全都休想活。[ 697]

佐伊

（悲剧味十足）哈姆莱特，我是你父亲的手锥！[698] （她抓住他的手。）蓝眼睛的美男子，我要替你看着手相。（她指着他的前额。）缺智慧，没皱纹。（她数着。）二，三，战神丘[699]表明有勇气。（斯蒂芬摇摇头。）不骗你。

林奇

这是片状闪电的勇气。小伙子不会惊恐颤栗。（对佐伊）是谁教会你看手相的？

佐伊

（转过身来）问问我压根儿就没有的睾丸吧。（对斯蒂芬）从你脸上就看得出来。眼神儿，像这样。（她低下头去，皱皱眉。）

林奇

（边笑边啪啪地打了两下吉蒂的屁股。）像这样吧。戒尺。

（戒尺啪啪地大声响了两下。自动钢琴这口棺材的盖儿飞快地打开，多兰神父那又小又圆的秃头就像玩具匣里的木偶一般蹿了上来。）

多兰神父

哪个孩子想要挨顿打？打碎了他的眼镜？游手好闲、吊儿郎当的小懒虫！从你的眼神儿就看得出来。

（唐约翰•康米的头从自动钢琴这口棺村里伸了出来：温厚，慈祥，一副校长派头，用训诫口吻。）

唐约翰•康米

喏，多兰神父！喏，我保证斯蒂芬是个非常乖的小男孩儿。[700] 

佐伊

（仔细看斯蒂芬的掌心）是只女人的手。

斯蒂芬

（咕哝）说下去。躺下。搂着我。爱抚。除了留在黑线鳕身上的他那罪恶的大拇指印，我永远也辨认不出他的笔迹。[701] 

佐伊

你的生日是星期几？

斯蒂芬

星期四。[702]今天。

佐伊

星期四生的孩子前程远大。[703] （她追踪着他的掌纹。）命运纹。结交有权有势的朋友。

弗洛莉

（指着）富于想象。

佐伊

月丘。你会遇上一个……（突然端详起他的双手来）对你不利的兆头，我就不告诉你啦。难道你想要知道吗？

布卢姆

（拽开她的手指，摊开自己的手掌）凶多吉少。这儿，替我瞧瞧。

贝洛

让我来瞧。（把布卢姆的手翻过来）不出我的所料：骨节突起，为了女人。

佐伊

（凝视布卢姆的手心）活像个铁丝格子。飘洋过海，为钱结婚。

布卢姆

不对。

佐伊

（快嘴快舌地）哦，我明白啦。小指短短的。怕老婆。不对吗？

（大母鸡黑丽泽[70 4]在粉笔画的圈儿里孵着蛋。这时站了起来，扑扇着翅膀鸣叫。）

黑丽泽

嘎啦。喀噜呵。喀噜呵。喀噜呵。（它离开刚下的蛋，摇摇摆摆地走掉。）

布卢姆

（指着自己的手）这疤痢是个伤痕。二十二年前跌了个跤划破的。当时我十六岁。

佐伊

瞎子说：我明白啦，告诉咱点消息。

斯蒂芬

明白吗？朝着一个伟大的目标前进。[705]我二十二岁。十六年前，我在二十二岁上跌了个跤。二十二年前，十六岁的他从摇马上跌了下去。（他畏缩。）我手上的什么地方伤着了。得去找牙医瞧瞧。钱呢？

（佐伊跟弗洛莉交头接耳。二人吃吃地笑。布卢姆把手抽回来，用铅笔在桌上反手信意写着字，形成舒缓的曲线。）

弗洛莉

怎么？

（家住多尼布鲁克-哈莫尼大街的詹姆斯•巴顿赶的第三百二十四号出租马车，由一匹扭着壮实的屁股小跑的母马拉着驰过。博伊兰和利内翰摊开手脚躺在两侧的座席上，晃来晃去。[706]奥蒙德的擦鞋侍役蜷缩在后面的车轴上边。莉迪亚•杜丝和米娜•肯尼迪隔着半截儿窗帘悲哀地凝望着。）

擦鞋侍役

（颠簸着，伸出大拇指和像虫子般扭动的另外几个指头，嘲弄女人们。）嗬，嗬，你们长了角吗？

（金发女侍和褐发女侍窃窃私语。）

佐伊

（对弗洛莉）交头接耳。

（布莱泽斯•博伊兰倚着马车座席靠背。他歪戴硬壳平顶草帽，口衔红花。利内翰头戴游艇驾驶人的便帽，脚蹬白鞋，爱管闲事地从布莱泽斯•博伊兰的大衣肩上摘掉一根长发。）

利内翰

嗬！我看见的是什么呀？难道你从几个阴道上掸掉蜘蛛网来着吗？

博伊兰

（心满意足，微笑）我在薅火鸡毛哪。[707] 

利内翰

够你于个整宿的。

博伊兰

（伸出形成钝角的四个粗手指，挤了挤眼。）让凯特狂热起来[708]！倘若和样品不同，就照样退款。（他把小指伸过去。）闻一闻。

利内翰

（开心地嗅着）啊！像是浇了蛋黄酱的龙虾。啊！

佐伊和弗洛莉

（一道笑着）哈哈哈哈。

博伊兰

（矫健地跳下马车，用人人都听得见的大嗓门嚷着）嘿，布卢姆！布卢姆太太穿好衣服了吗？

布卢姆

（身着仆役穿的那种深紫红色长毛绒上衣和短裤，浅黄色长袜，头戴撒了粉的假发。）好像还没有，老爷。还差几样东西……

博伊兰

（丢给他一枚六便士硬币）喂，去买杯兑苏打水的杜松子酒喝吧。（灵巧地把帽子挂在布卢姆头上长的多叉鹿角尖儿上。）给我引路。我跟你妻子之间有件小小的私事要办，你懂吗，

布卢姆

谢谢，老爷。是的，老爷。特威迪太太正在洗澡呢，老爷。

玛莉恩

他应该感到非常荣幸才是。（她噗噜噜地飞溅着澡水，走了出来。）拉乌尔[709] 亲爱的，来替我擦干了。我光着身子哪。除了一顶新帽子和随身携带的海绵，我可一丝不挂。

博伊兰

（眼睛快乐地一闪）再好不过啦！

贝拉

什么？怎么回事？

（佐伊跟她打耳喳。）

玛莉恩

让他看着，邪魔附体[710] ！男妓！他该鞭打自己一顿！我要写信给有势力的妓女巴托罗莫娜，一个长胡子的女人，叫她在他身上留下一英寸厚的鞭痕，并且要他给我带回一张签字盖章的字据。[711]

贝拉

（嘲笑）呵呵呵呵。

博伊兰

（侧过身来对布卢姆）我去跟她干几回。这当儿，你可以把眼睛凑在钥匙孔上，自己跟自己干干。

布卢姆

谢谢您，老爷，我一定遵命，老爷。我可不可以带上两个伙伴来见识见识，并且拍张快照？（捧上一罐软膏）要凡士林吗，老爷？橙花油呢？……温水？

吉蒂

（从沙发上）告诉咱，弗洛莉，告诉咱。什么……

（弗洛莉跟她打耳喳。悄悄他说着情话，啪嚓啪嚓地大声咂着嘴唇，吧唧吧唧，噼嚓唧嚓）

米娜•肯尼迪

（两眼朝上翻着）噢，准是像天竺葵和可爱的桃子那样的气味！噢，他简直把她每个部位都膜拜到了，紧紧鳔在一块儿[712] ！浑身都吻遍了！

莉迪亚•杜丝

（张着嘴）真好吃，真好吃。[713] 噢，他一边搞，一边抱着她满屋子转！骑着一匹摇木马。他们这样搞法，甚至在巴黎和纽约，你都听得见。就像是嘴里塞满了草莓和奶油似的。

吉蒂

（大笑）嘻嘻嘻。

博伊兰的嗓音

（既甜蜜又嘶哑，发自胸口窝）啊！天主布莱泽咯噜喀哺噜咔哧喀啦施特！

玛莉恩的嗓音

（既嘶哑又甜蜜，从嗓子眼儿里涌出来）喂施哇施特吻呐噗咿嘶呐噗唿喀！

布卢姆

（狂热地圆睁双目，抱着肘）露出来！藏起来！露出来！耕她！加把劲儿！射！

贝洛、佐伊、弗洛莉、吉蒂

嗬嗬！哈哈！嘿嘿！

林奇

（指着）一面反映自然[714]的镜子。（他笑着。）哧哧哧哧！

（斯蒂芬和布卢姆朝镜中凝望。威廉•莎士比亚那张没有胡子的脸在那里出现。面部麻痹僵硬，头上顶着大厅里那个多叉驯鹿角形帽架的反影。）

莎士比亚

（作庄严的腹语）高声大笑是心灵空虚的反映。[715] （对布卢姆）你以为人们瞧不见你的形影。瞧瞧吧。（他发出黑色阉鸡[716] 的笑声，啼鸣。）伊阿古古！我的老伙伴怎样勒死了他的星期四莫娜[717] 。伊阿古古古！

布卢姆

（懦怯地朝三个婊子微笑）什么时候我才能听听这个笑话呢？

佐伊

在你两度结婚并做一次鳏夫之前。

布卢姆

对过失要宽容。就连伟大的拿破仑，当他死后赤身露体地被人量尺寸的时候[718] ……

（守了寡的迪格纳穆太太由于谈论死者而流了泪，并饮滕尼[719] 的黄褐色雪利酒，使她那狮子鼻和面颊泛红起来。她身着丧服，歪戴软帽，涂了口红，脸上抹着粉，匆匆赶路，活像一只母天鹅赶着成群的小天鹅。[720] 裙子底下露出她的亡夫家常穿的长裤和那双帮口翻过来的八英寸大号靴子。她手持苏格兰遗孀保险公司[721] 的保险单，打着一把大阳伞。她那窝小雏在伞下跟着她跑。帕齐用穿着单帮鞋的那只脚在前边跳跳蹿蹿，脖领松开来，手里提拎着一块猪排。弗雷迪啜泣着。苏茜那张嘴活像是哭着的鳕。艾丽斯吃力地抱着个娃娃。她啪啪地打着孩子们，催他们往前走，黑纱高高地飘扬着。）

弗雷迪

啊，妈，别这么拽我呀！

苏茜

妈妈，牛肉茶[722] 都噗出来啦！

莎士比亚

（带着中风患者的愤怒）先把头一个丈夫杀了，然后嫁给第二个[723] 。

（莎士比亚那张没有胡子的脸，变成马丁•坎宁翰的胡子拉碴的脸。阳伞仿佛喝得酩酊大醉，晃晃悠悠。孩子们都躲闪开来。坎宁翰太太头戴风流寡妇帽[724]，身穿和服式晨衣，出现在伞下。她像日本人那样滴溜溜地旋转，鞠着躬，滑也似地侧身走过。）

坎宁翰大太

（唱）

他们称我作亚洲的珍宝。[725]

马丁•坎宁翰

（冷漠地凝视着她）好家伙！最恶毒、最令人讨厌的婆娘！

斯蒂芬

惟有义人之角，必被高抬。[726]皇后们跟优良公牛们一道睡觉。要记住：由于帕西菲的荒淫，我那肥胖的老祖父修建了第一间忏悔阁子。[727] 不要忘记格莉塞尔•斯蒂文斯夫人[728] ，也不要忘记兰伯特家的猪子猪孙[729] 。挪亚喝醉了酒[730] 。他的方舟[731]敞着盖儿。

贝拉

可别在这儿来这一套。你认错门儿啦。

林奇

随他去吧。他是从巴黎回来的。

佐伊

（跑到斯蒂芬身边，挽住他的臂。）哦，说下去！说几句法国话给咱们听。

（斯蒂芬急忙戴上帽子，一个箭步蹿到壁炉跟前，耸肩伫立在那里。他摊开鱼鳍般的一双手，脸上勉强微笑着。）

林奇

（用拳头连擂沙发）噜哞噜哞噜哞，噜呜哞呜。

斯蒂芬

（像牵线木偶股地颤悠着身子，唠叨着）有千百家娱乐场所供你和可爱的仕女们消磨夜晚。她们把手套和其他东西，也许甚至连心都卖给你。在应有尽有的时髦而又非常新奇的啤酒厅里，许多穿得漂漂亮亮的公主般的高等妓女跳着康康舞[732] ，给外国单身汉表演特别荒唐的巴黎式滑稽舞蹈。尽管英国话讲得蹩脚，然而风骚淫荡起来，她们可真是驾轻就熟。凡是对冶游格外挑剔的老爷们，可务必去观赏一下她们在流银色泪水的葬仪蜡烛映照下的天堂地狱表演[733] 。那是每天晚上都举行的。普天之下再也没有比这更加阴森可怕、触目惊心的对宗教的嘲弄了。所有那些时髦潇洒的妇道人家，端庄淑静地走来，随即脱光衣服，尖声大叫起来，观看那个扮成吸血鬼的男人奸污衬衣凌乱[734] 的非常年轻鲜嫩的尼姑。（大声砸舌）哎呀呀！瞧他那大鼻子！

林奇

吸血鬼万岁！[735] 

妓女们

法国话说得好！

斯蒂芬

（仰面朝天地大笑，作怪相，为自已鼓掌喝采）笑得大获成功。既有很像窑姐儿的天使，又有大恶棍式的神圣使徒。有些高级娼妇衣着极其可人，佩带着一颗颗璀璨晶莹、闪闪发光的钻石。要么，你更喜欢老人们那种说得上是现代派快乐的猥亵吗？（他以怪诞的手势向周围指指点点，林奇和妓女们回应着。）把可以翻转的弹性橡皮女偶或非常肉感的等身大处女裸体像吻上五遍十遍。进来吧，先生们，瞧瞧镜子里的这些偶人扭着身子的各种姿势。要是想看更加过瘾的，还有肉铺小徒弟把温吞吞的牛肚或莎士比亚的剧作[736] 煎蛋饼[737] 放在肚子上手淫的场面。

贝拉

（拍着肚子，深深地往沙发上一躺，放开嗓门大笑着。）煎蛋饼放在……嗬！嗬！嗬！嗬！……煎蛋饼放在……

斯蒂芬

（吞吞吐吐地）我爱你，亲爱的先生。为了相互间达成真诚的谅解[738]，我讲你们的英国话吧。哦，对，我的狼。[739]得花多少钱。滑铁卢。抽水马桶。（他突然止住，伸出个小指。）

贝洛

（笑着）煎蛋饼……

妓女们

（笑着）再来一个！再来一个！

斯蒂芬

注意听着。我梦见一个西瓜。

佐伊

那就意味着到海外去，爱上一个外国女人。

林奇

为了讨个老婆，去周游世界。

弗洛莉

梦和现实正相反。

斯蒂芬

（摊开双臂）就在这儿。娼妓街。[740]在蛇根木林荫路上，魔王让我看到了她——一个矮胖寡妇。[741] 红地毯铺在哪儿呢？

布卢姆

（挨近斯蒂芬）瞧……

斯蒂芬

不，我飞了。我的仇敌在我下面。[742] 以迨永远，及世之世。[743]父亲[744] ！

自由！

布卢姆

喂，你呀……

斯蒂芬

他想要使我意气消沉吗？哦，他妈的！[745]（他那秃鹫爪子磨得尖尖的，喊叫着。）喂，呵，呵！[746]

（西蒙•迪达勒斯的嗓音。虽昏昏欲睡，却及时“呵，呵”地回应着。）

西蒙

好的。（他展开结实、沉重的秃鹰翅膀，雄赳赳地啼叫着，边兜圈子边从空中笨拙地飞下来。）呵，儿子！你将要赢吗？嗬！呸！净跟那些杂种厮混在一起。不许他们挨近你。抬起头来！让咱们的旗帜飘扬！图案是银白地上，一只展翅飞翔的赤鹰。周身披甲的阿尔斯特王！咳嗬！（他学猎兔犬发现猎物时的吠叫声。）哺儿哺儿！哺儿哺噜哺噜哺儿噜哺噜！嘿，儿子！

（墙纸上的叶子图案和底色排成队迅速地越过田野。一只肥壮的狐狸，从隐匿处被赶出来，刚刚埋葬完奶奶[747]，翘起尾巴，两眼发出锐利的光，在树叶底下寻觅獾的洞穴。一群猎鹿犬跟随着。鼻子贴在地面上，嗅着猎物的气味，哺儿哺噜哺儿哺噜地发出嗜血的吠声。医院俱乐部[ 748] 的男女猎人跟它们一道活动，起劲地捕杀猎物。尾随于后的是来自“六英里小岬”、“平屋”[749] 和“九英里石标”[750] 的助猎者，拿着满是节疤的棍子、干草叉、鮭鱼钩和套索；还有手执牧鞭的羊倌，挎着长筒鼓的耍熊师，携带头牛剑的斗牛士，摇晃着火把的老练的黑人。成群的赌徒、掷冕锚游戏的[751]、 玩杯艺的[752]和玩牌时作弊的，大喊大叫。替盗贼把风者和头戴魔术师高帽、嗓子嘶哑的赌注经纪人，震耳欲聋地吵吵嚷嚷。）

群众

参赛马的程序单。赛马一览表！

冷门马是以十博一！

这里有赚头！生意有赚头！

以十博一，除了一匹！[753] 

旋转詹尼[754] ，撞撞你的运气！

以十博一，除了一匹！

卖猴子[755] ！

我来个以十博一！

以十博一，除了一匹！

（一匹没有骑手的黑马，鬃毛在月光下汗水淋漓，眼珠子像星宿似的闪着光，宛若幽灵般冲过决胜终点。冷门马成群地弓背猛跳着，跟在后面。精瘦的马匹们，“权仗”、“马克西姆二世”、“馨芳葡萄酒”，威斯敏斯特公爵的“跨越”、“挫败”、波弗特公爵那匹获巴黎奖的“锡兰”。[756] 侏儒们披戴锈迹斑斑的铠甲，骑在马上，并在鞍上跳跃，跳跃。在淅淅沥沥的雨中，殿后的是骑着热门马“北方的科克”[757][呼吸急促的灰黄色驽马］的加勒特•迪希。他头戴蜂蜜色便帽，身穿绿茄克衫，橙色袖子。他一手紧攥缰绳，一手执曲棍球棒，摆好了姿势。驽马那一跛一跛的四肢上打着白色绑腿，一路险巘[758] ，缓步前进。）

橙带党[759] 分支成员们

（嘲笑着）老爷，下来推推吧。最后一圈儿啦！晚上您才能到家呢！

加勒特•迪希

（直挺挺地骑在马上，被指甲抓破了的脸上贴满邮票，抡着曲棍球棒，在枝形吊灯灿烂光辉的照耀下，一双蓝眼闪烁着，以练马的步调飞跑过去。）走正路！[760] 

（一对桶整个儿翻在他和用后脚站起的驽马身上，漂浮着硬币般的胡萝卜、大麦、葱头、芜菁、土豆的羊肉汁倾泻而下。）

绿党[761] 分支成员们

雨天儿，约翰爵士！雨天儿！阁下！

（士兵卡尔、士兵康普顿和西茜•卡弗里从窗下走过，荒腔走板地唱着。）

斯蒂芬

听哪！咱们的朋友，街上的喊叫[ 762] 。

佐伊

（举起一只手）站住！

士兵卡尔、士兵康普顿和西茜•卡弗里

可是我有种偏爱，

对约克郡……[ 763] 

佐伊

那指的是我。（她拍着手。）跳舞！跳舞！（她跑到自动钢琴跟前。）

谁有两便士？

布卢姆

谁要……？

林奇

（递给她硬币）喏。

斯蒂芬

（不耐烦地撅着手指发出声音）快！快！我那占卜师的手杖呢[764]？（跑到钢琴跟前，拿起他那梣木手杖，踏着拍子跳起庄严的祭神舞[765] 。）

佐伊

（转着自动钢琴的把手）来吧。

（她往投钱口里丢进两便士。金色、桃红色和紫罗兰色的光束射了出来。圆筒咕噜咕噜转动，迟迟疑疑地以低音调奏出华尔兹舞曲。古德温教授[766]戴着挽成活结的假发，大礼服外面披着污迹斑斑、带护肩的斗篷。他年迈得惊人，身子已经弯成两半截，双手发颤，脚步蹒跚地踱到房间另一端。小得可怜的他端坐在钢琴凳上，像个少女似的娴雅地点点头，活结一颤一颤的，用无手的、棒槌般的双臂敲着琴键。）

佐伊

（用脚后跟打着拍子，滴溜溜地旋转身子。）跳舞吧。这儿有什么人要跳？谁跳舞，把桌子清一清。

（在变幻莫测的灯光下，自动钢琴以华尔兹舞曲的拍子演奏起《我的意中人是位约克郡姑娘》的序曲。斯蒂芬将他的梣木手杖丢到桌上，一把搂住佐伊的腰。弗洛莉和贝洛把桌子朝壁炉推了推。斯蒂芬以夸张的高雅风度搂着佐伊，在室内旋转着跳起华尔兹舞。她的袖子从动作优雅的臂上滑落下来，露出种痘留下的白肉花。布卢姆站在一旁。马金尼[ 767] 教师从帷幕间伸出一只脚来，大礼帽在脚趾尖上滴溜溜旋转。他熟练地一踢，那帽子便旋转着飞到他的头顶上了。他春风得意，滑也似地溜进了屋子。他身穿有着紫红色绸翻领的暗蓝灰色长礼服，系着奶油色护颈胸薄纱，背心的领口开得低低的，打成蝴蝶结的雪白宽饰领，淡紫色紧腿裤，脚蹬浅口无带的漆皮轻舞鞋，手上戴着鲜黄色手套。扣眼里插着一大朵大丽花。他朝相反的方向旋转着一根有云状花纹的手杖，随后又把它紧紧夹在腋下。他将一只手轻轻接着胸骨，深打一躬，把玩着花儿和钮扣。）

马金尼

运动的诗，健美体操的艺术。跟莱格特•伯恩夫人或利文斯顿[ 768] 毫无关系。还安排了化装舞会。举止端庄[769]。凯蒂•兰内尔[ 770]舞步。那么，好好看着我！注意我的舞蹈本领。（他以蜜蜂般轻快的步伐向前迈出三个小碎步。）大家向前走！鞠躬！各就各位！[ 771] 

（序曲终止。古德温教授出神地用臂打着拍子，逐渐缩小、干瘪下去，他那斗篷像活物一般垂落到钢琴凳周围。主旋律越发清晰了，是华尔兹舞曲的节奏。斯蒂芬和佐伊自由自在地旋转着。灯光忽而金色，忽而玫瑰色，忽而紫罗兰色，渐明渐暗地变幻着。）

自动钢琴

两个小伙子谈着他们的姑娘，姑娘，姑娘，

他们留下的心上人……[772]

（早晨的时光们[773] 从角落里跑了出来。金发，足蹬细长的凉鞋，身穿女孩儿气的蓝衣，马蜂腰，清白的手。她们矫健地跳着舞，抡着跳绳。晌午的时光们穿的是呈琥珀色的金黄衣裳。她们笑着，手挽着手，高高地插在头上的梳子闪闪发光，举起双臂，用嘲讽的镜子[774] 捕捉阳光。）

马金尼

（轻轻拍着戴了手套发不出声音的手）摆好方阵！一对儿一对儿地前进！[775] 呼吸要平稳！身体保持平衡！[776]

（早晨的时光们与晌午的时光们各自就地跳起华尔兹舞，旋转着，相互挨近，身子扭来扭去，互行鞠躬礼。站在她们身后的舞伴把胳膊弯成弓形，支撑着，忽而又把手落到她们的肩上，抚摩一下，再抬起来。）

时光们

你可以摸我的……

献殷勤的男舞伴们

我可以摸你的……吗？

时光们

哦，可要轻点儿！

献殷勤的舞伴们

啊，轻轻儿地！

自动钢琴

我那羞答答的小妞儿的腰肢……[777] 

（佐伊和斯蒂芬更舒缓地晃着身子，奔放地旋转着。黄昏的时光们出现在投到地上的长长的影子里，向前移动。拖拖拉拉，散散漫漫，眼神呆滞，脸颊上淡雅地涂着散沫花染料，呈现出一抹人为的红润。她们身穿灰色网纱衣服，在从陆地吹向海上的微风中，扑扇着黑不溜秋的蝙蝠袖。）

马金尼

四对儿前进！面对面！点头致意！交换手！互换方向！[ 778] 

（夜晚的时光们一个挨一个地悄悄来到最后的那个地方。早晨、晌午和黄昏的时光们从她们面前退下去。她们戴着假面具，头发上插着匕首，套着铃铛串成的音色低沉的手镯。她们精疲力竭，隔着面纱行屈膝礼。）

手镯们

嗨嗬！嗨嗬！

佐伊

（滴溜溜地旋转着，手搭凉棚）哦！

马金尼

排在中间！女人手拉手作链条！呈篮子状！背对背！[ 779] 

（她们疲倦地将身体屈向前，一足落地，一足后伸，两手前后平伸，在地板上组成图案。织毕又拆开，行屈膝礼，打着转转翩翩起舞，简直构成漩涡形。）

佐伊

我发晕啦！

（她挣脱开，瘫倒在一把椅子上。斯蒂芬一把抓住弗洛莉，跟她一道旋转起来。）

马金尼

揉面包！兜圈子！手搭桥！摇木马！螺旋形！[780] 

（夜晚的时光们忽而扭在一起，忽而松开，相互拉着的手来回交替，将胳膊弯成弓形，用动作构成拼花图样。斯蒂芬和弗洛莉笨拙地旋转着。）

马金尼

跟女伴跳舞！调换舞伴！送小小的花束给女伴！互相道谢！[ 781]

自动钢琴

美极了，美极了，

吧啦蹦！

吉蒂

（跳起来）哦，在迈勒斯义卖会的旋转木马上，就奏这个曲子来着！

（她朝斯蒂芬奔去。他唐突地撇下弗洛莉，又抓住吉蒂。一只苍鸻的尖叫声像哨子般地刺耳。托夫特那笨重的旋转木马，呻吟抱怨咯咯响，朝右慢腾腾地旋转，在室内兜着圈子。）

自动钢琴

我的妞儿是个约克郡姑娘。

佐伊

地地道道的约克郡姑娘！[ 782] 

都来跳吧！

（她抓住弗洛莉，同她跳起华尔兹舞。）

斯蒂芬

独舞！

（他把吉蒂旋转到林奇的怀抱中，从桌上抓起他那根梣木手杖，参加跳舞。大家滴溜溜地旋转着，翩翩跳起华尔兹舞：布卢姆与贝洛，吉蒂与林奇，弗洛莉与佐伊，嚼着枣味胶糖的女人们。斯蒂芬头戴帽子，手执梣木杖，脚像青蛙似的叉开，对准半空，不高不低地踢着脚。他闭着嘴，半撂着的手放在大腿下。槌子丁当铿锵咚咚乱响，吹号角的嗬嗬地吹着。蓝、绿、黄色的闪光。托夫特那笨重的木马旋转着，骑手们晃来晃去地悬挂在镀金蛇上。腑脏跳方登戈舞[783] ，踢起泥土，用脚踩拍子，随即停了下来。）

自动钢琴

她虽是工厂姑娘。

却不穿花哨衣裳。[784]

（他们紧紧地搂抱着，在眩目、灿烂、摇曳的光芒中，迅速、愈益迅速，嗖嗖嗖，飞也似地走过，脚步声沉重而响亮。吧啦嘣！）

全体

再来一个！再来一个！[785] 妙啊！再来一个！

西蒙

替你妈妈娘家的人想一想！

斯蒂芬

死亡的舞蹈。

（当啷，伙计的手铃又当啷一声。马、驽马、阉牛、猪仔，康米神父骑着基督驴[786] ，拄着拐的独脚瘸腿水兵在小艇上交抱着胳膊，拉纤，跛行，跺脚，跳的整个儿是号笛舞[787] 。吧啦嘣！骑着驽马、阉猪、系着铃裆的马、加大拉[ 788] 猪，科尼[ 789] 在棺材里。钢铁鲨鱼[790] 、石头独臂纳尔逊，两个狡猾的婆娘[791] 身上满是李子汁，大声喊着从婴儿车[792] 里滚下来。天啊，他是无与伦比的。[793] 酒桶出贵族[794] ，蓝色的引线[795] ，洛夫神父[796] 晚祷，布莱泽斯乘轻便二轮马车，盲人[797] ，恰似鳕鱼那样蜷缩着身子[798] 骑自行车的人们，迪丽拿着雪酥糕[799] ，不穿花哨衣裳。最后，是一场“之”字形舞，动作迟缓，步子沉重，一上一下，酿酒桶[800] 嘎噔嘎噔的。合乎总督和王后[801]的口味，呱嗒呱嗒噼通扑通玫瑰花。吧拉嘣！）

（一对对舞伴退到一旁去。斯蒂芬跳得眩晕起来，屋子朝后旋转。他双目紧闭，脚步蹒跚。红栅栏朝着宇宙飞去。太阳周围的全部星辰绕着大圈子旋转。亮的蠓虫在墙上跳舞。他猛地停了下来。）

斯蒂芬

嗬！

（斯蒂芬的母亲憔悴不堪，僵直地穿过地板出现了。她身穿癞病患者的灰衣服，手执枯谢的桔花环，披着扯破的婚纱。面容枯槁，没有鼻子，坟里的霉菌使她浑身发绿。她披散着稀疏的长发，用眼圈发蓝的凹陷的眼窝凝视斯蒂芬，张开牙齿掉光了的嘴，说了句无音的话。童贞女和听忏悔的神父组成的唱诗班唱着无声之歌。）

唱诗班

饰以百合的光明的是司铎群……

极乐圣童贞之群……[802] 

（勃克•穆利根身穿深褐与浅黄色相问的小丑服，头戴装有旋涡形铃铛的丑角帽，站在那里目瞪口呆地凝视着她。他手里拿着掰开来涂了黄油、热气腾腾的甜烤饼。）

勃克•穆利根

她死得怪惨的。真可怜！穆利根遇见了那位不幸的母亲。（他把两眼朝上一翻。）墨丘利•玛拉基！[803] 

母亲

（脸上泛着难以捉摸的微笑，显示出死亡带来的疯狂）我曾经是美丽的梅•古尔丁。我死啦。

斯蒂芬

（吓得发抖）狐猴[804] ，你是谁？不。这是什么妖魔耍的鬼把戏？

勃克•穆利根

（摇着他帽子上那旋涡形铃铛）真是恶作剧！金赤这小狗[805]杀了那母狗婆娘。她翘辫子啦。（溶化了的黄油泪从他的两眼里滴到甜烤饼上。）我们的伟大而可爱的母亲[806！葡萄紫的大海[ 807] 。

母亲

（挨近了些，轻轻地朝他呼出一股湿灰的气味）斯蒂芬，这是人人都得经受的。世上女人比男人多。[808] 你也一样。时候会到来的。

斯蒂芬

（惊愕、悔恨和恐惧使他喘不上气来。）母亲，他们说是我杀死你的。那家伙亵渎了对你的记忆。是癌症害死你的，不是我。这是命运。

母亲

（嘴的一边嘀嘀嗒嗒地淌下绿色胆汁。）你曾为我唱过那首歌。“爱情那苦涩的奥秘”。[809] 

斯蒂芬

（热切地）妈妈，要是你现在知道的话，就告诉我那个字眼吧。那是大家都晓得的字眼。[810] 

母亲

那个晚上，当你和帕迪在多基[811] 跳上火车的时候，是谁救的你？当你在陌生人当中感到悲哀的时候，是谁可怜过你？祷告是万能的。念乌尔苏拉祈祷书里那段为受苦灵魂的经文，就可以获得四十天大赦。[812] 悔改吧，斯蒂芬。

斯蒂芬

食尸鬼！鬣狗！

母亲

我在另一个世界[ 813] 为你祷告。每天晚上用完脑子以后，叫迪丽给你煮点大米粥。自打在肚子里怀上你，多少年来我一直爱着你。哦，我的儿子，我的头一胎。

佐伊

（用大扇子扇着自己）我都快融化啦！

弗洛莉

（指着斯蒂芬）瞧！他脸色苍白。

布卢姆

（走到窗边，把它开大一些）叫人发晕。

母亲

（两眼露出闷郁的神色）悔改吧！啊，地狱的火焰！

斯蒂芬

（气喘吁吁）经受永劫之火[814] ！啖尸肉者！刚砍下来的头和鲜血淋漓的骨头[815] 。

母亲

（她的脸越挨越近，发出湿灰气息。）当心哪！（她拾起那变黑了的、干瘪的右臂，扎煞着手指，慢慢伸向斯蒂芬的胸口。）当心天主的 手！[816] 

（一只长着一双恶毒的红眼睛的绿螃蟹，将它那龇牙咧嘴 的钳子深深戳进斯蒂芬的心脏。）

斯蒂芬

（怒不可遏，几乎窒息，面容变得灰暗苍老。）狗屎！

布卢姆

（在窗边）怎么啦，

斯蒂芬

天哪，没什么！[817] 理智的想象！对我来说：要么得到一切，要么一无所有。[818] 我不侍奉。[819]

弗洛莉

给他点儿冷水。等一等。（她连忙跑出去。）

母亲

（缓慢地使劲扭着双手）噢，耶稣圣心啊，怜悯他吧！啊，神圣的圣心啊！拯救他免下地狱。

斯蒂芬

不！不！不！你们在家有本事就挫我的锐气吧。我将叫你们一个个屈膝投降！

母亲

（临死时痛苦地挣扎着，发出痰声）主啊，为了我的缘故，可怜可怜斯蒂芬吧！当我在骷髅冈[820] 上怀着爱、悲哀和凄楚咽气的时候，我的痛苦是难以形容的。

斯蒂芬

护身剑！[821] 

（他用双手高高举起梣木杖，把枝形吊灯击碎。时光那最后一缕死灰色火焰往上一蹿，紧接着在一片黑暗中，是整个空间的毁灭，玻璃碎成碴儿，砖石建筑坍塌下来。[822] ）

瓦斯灯

卟呋咯！

布卢姆

住手！

林奇

（冲上前去，抓住斯蒂芬的手。）喂！别这样！不要胡闹！

贝拉

警察！

（斯蒂芬丢掉梣木手杖，将头和胳膊僵直地往后一挺，跺着地板，从门口的娼妇们当中穿过，逃出屋子。）

贝拉

（叫嚷）追上他！

（两个妓女奔到大门口。林奇、吉蒂和佐伊从屋里争先恐后地跑出去。他们激动他说着话。布卢姆也跟了出去，又返回来。）

妓女们

（簇拥在大门口，指着）在那儿哪。

佐伊

（指着）哦，准是出了什么事。

贝拉

灯钱归谁赔？（她一把抓住布卢姆的上衣后摆。）嘿，你跟他在一块儿来着，灯被打碎了。

布卢姆

（冲到门厅，又奔跑回来）什么灯呀，大娘？

一个妓女

他的上衣撕破了。

贝拉

（眼神冷酷，充满了愤怒与贪婪，指着）谁来赔这个？十先令。你是见证人。

布卢姆

（抓起斯蒂芬的梣木手杖）我？十先令？难道你还没从他那儿捞够吗？难道他没……？

贝拉

（大声地）喂，别说大话啦。这里可不是窑子。这是十先令的店。

布卢姆

（他把头伸到灯下，拽了一下链子。刚一拽，瓦斯灯光的映照下，一个破碎了的淡紫色罩子便映入眼帘。他举起梣木手杖。）只打碎了灯罩。他不过是……

贝拉

（退缩，尖叫） 唉呀！可别！

布卢姆

（把手杖闪开）我只想让你看看他是怎样打那罩子的。造成的损害还到不了六便士呢。十先令！

弗洛莉

（端着一杯水进来）他哪儿去啦？

贝拉

你要我去喊警察吗？

布卢姆

哦，我知道，宅院里的斗犬[823] 。然而他可是三一学院的学生。那儿净是你们这个店的主顾。替你们出房租的先生们[824] 。（他做了个共济会会员的手势[825] 。）你明白我的意思吗？他是副院长的侄子哩。你不愿意闹出丑闻吧。

贝拉

（愤然）三一学院。赛艇以后闯到这儿来，胡闹一气，连一个便士也不掏。你在这儿是我的长官吗？他在哪儿？我要控告他！让他丢尽了脸！我说到做到！（大声嚷）佐伊！佐伊！

布卢姆

（穷追不舍）这要是你那个在牛津的亲儿子呢？（用警告的口吻）我知道。[826] 

贝拉

（几乎说不出话来）您是哪一位？微服私访！

佐伊

（在大门口）那儿有人打架哪。

布卢姆

什么？哪儿，（他往桌子上丢了一枚先令，然后说）这是灯罩钱。在哪儿？我需要吸点山里的空气。[827] 

（他匆匆穿过门厅走到外面。娼妓们在指着。弗洛莉跟在后面，从她歪拿着的玻璃酒杯一路洒下水来。所有聚在大门口台阶上的娼妓们都指着雾已消散了的右方，七嘴八舌他说着。从左手辚辚地驶来了一辆出租马车。它逐渐减慢了速度，停在房前。布卢姆在大门口瞅见科尼•凯莱赫正要跟两个闷声不响的淫棍一道走下马车。贝拉在门厅里催促着手下的娼妓们。她们给以黏黏涎涎、吧唧吧唧的飞吻。科尼•凯莱赫报以幽灵般轻薄的微笑。一言不发的淫棍们转身去付钱给马车夫。佐伊和吉蒂还在朝右边指着。布卢姆飞快地从她们二人当中穿过去，把他那哈里发的头巾拉得低低的，整理一下，穗饰披肩，将脸扭向一边，匆忙冲下台阶。布卢姆伊然成了微服出访的哈伦•拉希德[ 828] ，从淫棍们背后穿过去，沿着栏杆，以豹子般的飞毛腿往前冲去，一路抛撒着在大回香籽汁里浸泡过的一个撕破了的信封，留下臭迹[829] 。每迈一步，梣木手杖便戳出一个印儿。三一学院的霍恩布洛尔头戴嗬嗬帽[830] ，身穿灰色长裤，手里抡着一根狗鞭，领着一群警大，远远地跟在后面。它们嗅着那股气味，靠近一些，长吠一声，气喘吁吁，失掉了臭迹，四散奔跑，耷拉着舌头，又咬布卢姆的脚后跟，在他后面跳跳蹦蹦。他忽走忽跑，忽而按“之”字形前进，忽而又飞奔起来，两耳贴着后脑勺。砂砾、白菜帮子、饼干匣、鸡蛋、土豆、死鳕鱼、妇女所趿拉的拖鞋[831]都雨点子般地朝他掷过来。重新嗅到气味的一群“学领袖样儿”[832] 的队伍取“之”字形，大喊大叫，吵吵闹闹地奔跑着追逐他，其中包括夜警丙六十五号和丙六十六号、约翰•亨利•门顿、威兹德姆•希利、维•B•狄龙、参议员南尼蒂、亚历山大•凯斯、拉利•奥鲁尔克、乔•卡夫、奥多德太太、精明鬼伯克、无名氏、赖尔登太太[833] 、“市民”、加里欧文、某人、陌生面孔、似曾相识者、一面之缘者、伙伴、克里斯•卡利南、查尔斯•卡梅伦爵士、[834] 本杰明•多拉德、利内翰、巴特尔•达西、乔•海因斯、红穆雷、编辑布雷顿、蒂•迈•希利、菲茨吉本法官先生[835] 、约翰•霍华德•巴涅尔、可敬的鲑鱼罐头萨蒙、乔利教授[836] 、布林太太、丹尼斯•布林、西奥多•普里福伊、米娜•普里福伊、韦斯特兰横街邮政局女局长[837]、C.P.麦科伊、莱昂斯的朋友、“独脚”霍罗翰[838]、街上的男人、街上的另一男人、足球靴子、狮子鼻汽车司机、新教徒阔太太、戴维•伯恩、艾伦•麦吉尼斯太太[839] 、乔•加拉赫太太[ 840] 、乔治•利德维尔、长了鸡眼的吉米•亨利[841] 、拉拉西校长[842] 、考利神父、曾在税务局任职的克罗夫顿、丹•道森、手持镊子的牙医布卢姆[843] 、鲍勃•多兰太太、肯内菲克太太、怀思•诺兰太太、约翰•怀思•诺兰、在驶往克朗斯基亚的电车里的那位将大屁股蹭过来的漂亮的有夫之妇[844] 、出售《偷情的快乐》的书摊老板、杜比达特小姐——而且她真的吃了[845] 、罗巴克[846] 的杰拉德•莫兰太太和斯但尼斯劳斯•莫兰太太、德里米[847] 的事务员、韦瑟亚普、海斯上校[848] 、马斯添斯基、西特伦[849]、彭罗斯[850]、艾伦•菲加泽尔[851] 、摩西•赫佐格、迈克尔•E。杰拉蒂[852] 、警官特洛伊[853] 、加尔布雷斯太太[854] 、埃克尔斯街拐角处的警官、带着听诊器的老医生布雷迪[855] 、海滨上的神秘人物[856] 、衔回猎物的狗、米莉亚姆•丹德拉德太太[857] 和她所有的情人。）

叫嚣声

（慌慌张张，气恼混乱）他就是布卢姆！拦住布卢姆！把布卢姆截住！截住强盗！

喂！喂！在拐角那儿堵住他！

（布卢姆上气不接下气地来到比弗街[ 858] 的脚手架下，在喧嚣地吵着架的一簇人边上停下脚步。至于是谁在骂骂咧咧地吵着什么，围观者完全不摸头脑。）

斯蒂芬

（以优美的姿态，缓慢地深呼吸）你们是我的客人。不速之客。多亏了乔治五世和爱德华七世。[859]看来这要怪历史。[860] 记忆的母亲们所编的寓言。[861] 

士兵卡尔

（对西茜•卡弗里）这家伙是在侮辱你吗？

斯蒂芬

我用女性称呼跟她寒暄来着。也许是中性。不生格。[862] 

众人的声音

没有，他没有。我看见他啦，那个姑娘。他去科恩太太那儿了。出了什么事？士兵和市民搅在一起。

西茜•卡弗里

我跟士兵们呆在一块儿来着，后来他们方便去了，你知道，于是这个小伙子从我背后跑了过来。我对在我身上花钱的主顾是讲信用的，尽管我只是个一次一先令的婊子。

众人的声音

她对男人是讲信用的。

斯蒂芬

（瞧见了林奇和吉蒂的头）你们好，西绪福斯[863]。（他指着自己和旁人。）富于诗意。有新诗情趣。

西茜•卡弗里

是啊，谁跟他走。我跟一个当兵的朋友走！

士兵康普顿

这个下贱东西就欠挨个耳光。哈里，揍他一拳。

士兵卡尔

对西茜）当我和他去撒尿的时候，这家伙侮辱你来着吗？

丁尼生勋爵

（一位绅士诗人，身着美国国旗图案的鲜艳夺目的运动上衣，下身是打板球穿的法兰绒裤子。秃头，胡子飘垂着。）他们用不着去问个究竟。[ 864] 

士兵康普顿

揍他，哈里。

斯蒂芬

（对士兵康普顿）我叫不出你的名字啦，但你说得很对。斯威夫特博士说过，一个全副武装的能打倒十个穿衬衫的人。[865]衬衫是举隅法。举一反三，举三反一。

西茜•卡弗里

（对群众）不，我曾跟士兵们呆在一起。

斯蒂芬

（和蔼地）为什么不能？勇敢的少年兵[866] 。依我看，比方说，每一位妇女……

士兵卡尔

（歪戴着军帽，朝斯蒂芬走来。）喂，老板，我要是朝你的下巴颏来上一拳，怎么样？

斯蒂芬

（仰望天空）怎么样？非常不舒服。自吹的高尚技艺。[867]就我个人来说，我憎恶行动。（他挥挥手。）我的手有点儿疼。这毕竟是你们的争吵，不是我的。[868]（对西茜•卡弗里）这儿有什么纠纷。究竟是怎么回事呀？

多利•格雷[869] 

（从她家的阳台上挥着手绢，做那利哥女杰的记号。）喇合。[870] 再见吧，厨师的儿子。[ 871] 平平安安地回到多利那里吧。在梦中与你撇下的姑娘[872] 相会吧，她也会梦见你。

（士兵们将眩晕的眼睛转向她。）

布卢姆

（用臂肘拨开人群，使劲拽斯蒂芬的袖子。）马上就去吧。老师，车夫在等着哪。

斯蒂芬

（掉过身来）呃？（挣脱开）凭什么不让我跟他或是在这扁圆形桔子[873]上笔直地走着的任何人说话呢？（用指头指着）只要看到对方的眼睛，跟谁说话我都不怕。保持直直地站着的姿势。（他蹒跚地后退一步。）

布卢姆

（扶住他）你自己可要保持平衡。

斯蒂芬

（发出空洞的笑声）我的重心已经移动了。我忘记了窍门儿。咱们找个地方坐下来谈谈吧。生存竞争是人生的规律，然而人类的和平爱好者，尤其是沙皇和英国国王，却发明了仲裁术。[874]（他拍拍自己的前额。）但是在这里，我必须杀死教士和国王。[875] 

患淋病的女仆

你们听见教授说的话了吗？他是学院里的教授哩。

坎蒂[876] •凯特

听见了。我听见啦。

患淋病的女仆

他是用那么极为文雅的语言来表达自己。

坎蒂•凯特

对，可不是嘛。可同时既尖锐锋利，又恰到好处。

士兵卡尔

（甩开拦住他的人，迈步向前。）你在怎么说我的国王来着？ （爱德华七世在拱廊上出现。他身穿绣着圣心[877] 的白色运动衫，胸间佩带着嘉德勋章、蓟花勋章、金羊毛勋章、丹麦的象勋章、[878]斯金纳与普罗宾的骑兵章[879] 、林肯法学团体[880] 主管委员章、古老光荣的马萨诸塞炮兵连队[881] 队徽。他嘴里嘬着红色枣味胶糖[882] ，身穿被推选出来的堂皇完美崇高的共济会会员的衣服，右手拿着袜子，系着围裙，上面标明“德国制造”[883]，左手提着用印刷体写着“禁止小便”字样的泥水匠的桶。人们以雷鸣般的欢呼声来迎接他。）

爱德华七世

（缓慢、庄重，然而含糊不清地）和平，真正的和平。[884] 为了表明身分，朕手里特提着此桶，小伙子们，你们好。（他转向臣民们。）朕来此是为目睹一场光明正大、势均力敌的角斗的。朕衷心祝愿双方好运。你的老于诡计多端[885]。 他同士兵卡尔、士兵康普顿、斯蒂芬、布卢姆和林奇握手。）

（掌声雷动。爱德华七世谦和地举起手中的桶，以表谢意。）

士兵卡尔

（对斯蒂芬）再说一遍。

斯蒂芬

（紧张不安，态度友好，竭力打起精神。）我明白你的见解，尽管眼下我自己没有国王。这是专利成药的时代。在这么个地方很难进行议论。然而要点是：你为你的国家而死。假定是如此。（他把自己的胳膊搭在士兵卡尔的袖子上。）我并不希望你会这样。不过我说：让我的国家为我而亡吧。[886]到目前为止，已经是这样了。我并不曾希望祖国灭亡。灭亡，去他妈的吧。生命永垂不朽！

爱德华七世

（飘浮在成堆的被屠杀者尸体上面。他身穿滑稽的耶稣[887] 的衣裳，头上为耶稣的光晕所环绕。那张散发着磷光的脸上有一颗白色的枣味胶糖。）

我有个新颖办法，人人都称奇：

尘埃丢进盲者眼，立刻就复明。[888] 

斯蒂芬

国王们和独角兽们！[889]（他朝后退了一步。）咱们找个地方去……那个姑娘说什么来着？……

士兵康普顿

喂，哈里，朝他的睾丸踢上一脚，给阴茎也来一下子。

布卢姆

（轻声地对士兵们）他自己都不晓得在说些什么。喝得有点过了头，在作怪呢，苦艾酒。绿妖精[890] 。我了解他。他是个有身分的人，一位诗人。不会有什么事的。

斯蒂芬

（点点头，笑逐颜开）有身分的人，爱国主义者，学者，又是审判骗子的法官。

士兵卡尔

我才管不着他是谁呢。

士兵康普顿

我们才管不着他是谁呢。

斯蒂芬

我好像把他们惹恼了，拿绿布给公牛看。[891]

（巴黎的凯文•伊根身穿有着西班牙式流苏的黑色衬衫，头戴晓党[892]式的帽子，对斯蒂芬打了个手势。）

凯文•伊根

喂，早安！[893] 长着黄牙齿[894] 的母夜叉。[895]。

（帕特里克•伊根[ 896] 从后面窥伺，他有着一张兔子般的脸，正在啃着榅桲叶。）

帕特里克

社会主义者[897] ！

堂埃米尔•帕特里吉奥•弗兰兹•

鲁佩尔托•蒲柏，亨尼西[898] 

（披戴着中世纪的锁子甲和有着两只野鹅飞翔图案的头盔。出于崇高的义愤，伸出一只戴着连环甲的手，指着士兵们。）把这些犹太佬打趴在脚下，浑身都是肉汁的大肥猪，卑鄙的英国佬们！[899]

布卢姆

（对斯蒂芬）回家来吧。你会惹上麻烦的。

斯蒂芬

（恍恍惚惚地）我才不逃跑呢。是他对我的理智进行挑衅。

患淋病的女仆

一眼就看得出他是贵族出身。

悍妇

绿胜似红。这是沃尔夫•托恩说的。[900]

老鸨

红不比绿差。还更强呢。士兵万岁！爱德华国王万岁！

粗野的人

（笑）唉！向德威特[901] 投降吧。

“市民”

（围着鲜绿色大头巾，手执橡木捧，喊叫着。）

祈愿天主从上苍，

一只鸽子派世上，

牙齿锋利若剃刀，

割破英国狗咽喉，

多少爱尔兰领袖，

被他们送上绞架。

推平头的小伙子[902]

（脖子上套着绞索，用双手按住淌出来的内脏。）

对世人我不仇恨，

爱祖国胜过国王。

恶魔理发师朗博尔德[903]

（在两个戴黑面具的帮助伴随下，提着一只旅行包、边往前走，边掏它打开。）女士们，先生们，这把大菜刀是皮尔西太太为了砍死莫格而买的。[904] 这把餐刀是沃伊辛用来肢解一位同胞的老婆的。他用床单将尸体裹起，藏在地窖里。那个不幸的女人的咽喉被从右耳割断到左耳。这是从巴伦小姐的尸体里提取的砒霜，塞登就因而被送上了绞架[905] 。

（他突然拽了一下绞索。助手们蹿跳到被害者脚下，边咕哝边把他往下拽，推平头的小伙子的舌头猛地耷拉下来。）

推平头的小伙子

忘、记、为、母、祈、冥、福。[906] 

（他咽了气。由于被绞死者急剧的勃起[907] ，精液透过尸体进溅到鹅卵石上。贝林厄姆夫人、耶尔弗顿•巴里夫人和默雯•塔尔博伊贵夫人赶紧冲上前，用她们的手绢把精液蘸起。）

朗博尔德

我自己也快轮到了。（他解开绞索。）这是曾经绞死过可怕的反叛者的绳索。经向女王陛下请示，每次是十先令。[908]（他把头扎进被绞死者那剖开的肚子里，等到伸出来时，上面已经粘满了盘绕在一起、热气腾腾的肠子。）我的痛苦的职务已经完成。上帝保佑国王！

爱德华七世

（缓慢、庄严地跳舞，咯咯咯咯地敲打着桶，心满意足地柔声歌唱。）

在加冕日，在加冕日，

啊，咱们快乐一番好吗？

喝威士忌、啤酒和葡萄酒！[909] 

士兵卡尔

喂。关于我的国王，你说什么来着？

斯蒂芬

（举起双手）哦，别老说车轱辘话啦！我什么也没说。为了他那野蛮帝国，他要我的钱，还要我的命，而他本来就是伺候“索取”这个主子的。钱，我是没有的。（他面无表情地在兜里掏来掏去。）给了什么人啦。

士兵卡尔

谁希罕你那臭钱？

斯蒂芬

（想走开）有谁能够告诉我，在什么地方最能躲开这种无可避免的灾难呢？在巴黎也有这类事。[910] 并不是我……然而，凭着圣帕特里克的名义[911] ……！

（几个妇女把头凑在一起。缺牙老奶奶戴着一顶塔糖状的帽子，坐在毒菌[912] 上出现，胸前插着一朵生枯萎病凋谢了的土豆花。）

斯蒂芬

哎嘿！我认识你，老奶奶！哈姆莱特，报复！[913] 吃掉自己的猪崽子的老母猪！

[914] 

缺牙老奶奶

（来回晃悠）爱尔兰的情入，西班牙国王的女儿，我亲爱的。[915]对我家里的陌生人[9116]可不能讲礼貌！（她像狺女[927] 那样不祥地恸哭着。）哎哟！哎哟！毛皮像绢丝般的牛[918] （她哀号着说。）你遇见了可怜的老爱尔兰，她怎样啦[919] ？

斯蒂芬

我怎么来容忍你好呢？帽子的戏法！[920] 三位一体的第三位在哪儿呢？我热爱的教士[921]吗？可敬的吃腐肉的乌鸦[922] 。

西茜•卡弗里

（尖声尖气）拦住，别让他们打起来！

粗野的人

我们的士兵撤退啦。

士兵卡尔

（勒紧自己的皮带）哪个混帐家伙敢说一句反对我那混蛋国王的话，我就拧断他的脖子！

布卢姆

（害起怕来）他什么也没说。一个字也没说。纯粹是一场误会。

士兵康普顿

干吧，哈里。照他眼睛上给一拳。他是个亲布尔[923]派。

斯蒂芬

我说过吗？什么时候？

布卢姆

（对于红衣兵们）我们为你们在南非打过仗。对，爱尔兰的射击队。这不就是史实吗？都柏林近卫步兵连队。我们的君主曾表彰过[924]。

壮工

（脚步蹒跚地走过去）哦，对啦！哦，夭哪，对！哦，打吧，狠狠地打吧！哦！布[925] ！

（披甲戴铠的戟兵在枪尖上挑着一堆呈斜顶棚状的内脏，伸了过来，特威迪鼓手长留着可怕的土耳克[926] 那样的口髭，头顶插有鸟颈毛的熊皮帽，军服上佩带着肩章和镀金的山形袖章，腰刀带上挂着佩囊，胸前是亮晃晃的勋章，准备进击。他打了个圣殿骑士团[927]的朝圣武士的手势。）

特威迪鼓手长

（粗暴地咆哮）洛克滩[928] ！禁卫军，振奋起来，向他们进攻！快抢，速夺！[929] 

士兵卡尔[ 930] 

我要干掉他。

士兵康普顿

（让群众往后退。）这里讲究公平合理。把这坏蛋宰得血淋淋的，像在肉店里那样。（多人组成的乐队奏起“加里欧文”和《上帝拯救我们的国王》。[931]）

西茜•卡弗里

他们快要打起来了。为了我！

坎蒂•凯特

勇士与丽人[932]呗。

患淋病的女仆

我认为那位黑衣骑士的马上枪法是首屈一指的。

坎蒂•凯特

（脸上涨得通红）不，太太。我支持的是穿红色紧身上衣的那位快活的圣乔治！[ 933] 

斯蒂芬

妓女走街串巷到处高呼，

为老爱尔兰织起裹尸布。[934]

士兵卡尔

（边松开他的皮带边喊 ）哪个他妈的杂种敢说一句反对我那残暴的混蛋国王的话，我就拧断他的脖子！

布卢姆

（摇撼西茜•卡弗里的肩膀）说呀，你！你给吓成哑巴了吗？ 你是国民与国民、世代与世代之间的纽带呀。说吧，女人，神圣的生命之赐与者[935]！

西茜•卡弗里

（惊慌，抓住士兵卡尔的袖子。）我不是跟你呆在一起的吗？我不是你的姑娘吗？西茜是你的姑娘呀。（她喊叫。）警察！

斯蒂芬

（欣喜若狂地对西茜•卡弗里）

双手白净红嘴唇，

你的身子真娇嫩。[936]

众声

警察！

远处，众声

都柏林着火啦！都柏林着火啦！[937] 着火啦，着火啦！

（硫磺火熊熊燃烧。浓云滚滚。重加特林机枪[938] 轰鸣着。魔窟。队伍疏散开来。马蹄飞奔。炮兵队。嘶哑的发号施令声。钟声铿锵。赌客吆喝。醉汉大喊大嚷。娼妓尖叫。雾笛嘟嘟。勇士大吼。临终发出的悲鸣。铁镐丁丁当当地敲着胸甲。[ 939] 盗贼剥走被害者的衣物。猛禽们或从海上飞来，或从沼地腾空而起，或从崖上的巢窝俯冲猛扑，盘旋嘶鸣：成群的塘鹅、鸬鹚、秃骛、苍鹰：山鹬、游隼、灰背隼、黑琴鸡、白尾鹰、鸥、信天翁、北极黑雁。午夜的日头暗了下来。大地震动。[940]来自前景公墓和杰罗姆山公墓[941] 的都柏林死者们复活了。他们有的身着白绵羊皮外套，有的披着黑山羊皮斗篷[942] ，在很多人面前出现。一个裂缝无声地张开了大口。冠军汤姆•罗赤福特身着运动员背心和短裤，在全国跳栏障碍赛中领先，接着纵身跳进真空。参加竞赛的人们或跑或跳地跟在后面。他们狂热地从悬崖边沿往下跳，身子倒载葱地跌下去。穿着花哨衣裳的工厂姑娘[ 943] 掷出一颗颗炽热的约克郡炸弹。社交界的显贵妇女们将裙子撩到头顶上，保护着自己。大笑着的魔女[944] 身穿红色短衬衣，骑着扫帚把腾空而去。公谊会教徒利斯特[945]在水庖上贴了膏药。龙牙如雨注。从垄沟里跳出一批全副武装的英雄们。[946]他们友好地交换红十字骑士团[947] 的口令，用骑兵的军刀比武：沃尔夫•托恩对亨利•格拉顿[948] ，史密斯。奥布赖恩对丹尼尔•奥康内尔[949] ，迈克尔•达维特对伊萨克。巴特[950] ），贾斯廷•麦卡锡对巴涅尔[951] ，阿瑟•格里菲思对约翰•雷德蒙[ 952] ，约翰•奥利里对利尔奥•约翰尼[953]，爱德华•菲茨杰拉德勋爵对杰拉德•菲茨爱德华勋爵[ 954]， 峡谷的奥德诺霍对奥德诺霍的峡谷。[955]大地中央的高处，矗立着圣女芭巴拉[ 956] 的祭台。放福音书和放使徒书信的角上，各竖着一支黑蜡烛。从塔那高高的碉楼，两道光束倾泻至轻烟缭绕的祭台石面上。背理女神•米娜•普里福伊太太套着脚镣，赤条条地躺在祭台石面上，鼓起的肚皮上放着圣爵。玛拉基•奥弗林神父穿着网织衬裙和把里子翻过来的祭披；他有一双反长着的左脚，[957]正在举行露营弥撒。可敬的文学硕士休•C•海恩斯•洛夫教士先生，[958]身穿素净的黑袍，戴学士帽，脑袋和脖领都扭到后面去，）打着一把撑开的雨伞，替神父遮着头。）

玛拉基•奥弗林神父

（我要走向魔鬼的祭台。[ 959] ）

海恩斯•洛夫教士先生

走向年少时曾赐与我欢乐的魔鬼。[ 960] 

玛拉基•奥弗林神父

（从圣爵里取出一杯鲜血淋漓的圣体，举扬之。）我的肉体。[961] 

海恩斯•洛夫教士先生

（将司铎的衬裙高高撩起，露出他那插着一根胡萝卜的毛茸茸的灰色光屁股。）我的肉体。

全体被咒诅者之声

王了作主天的能全——主的们我为因，亚路利哈！[962]

（阿多奈[963] ）从空中呼唤。）

阿多奈

主——天！[964]

全体受祝福者[ 965] 之声

哈利路亚，因为我们的主——全能的天主作了王！

（阿多奈从空中呼唤。）

阿多奈

天——主！

（橙带党和绿党的农民和市民嘈杂刺耳地唱着《踢教皇》和《每天为玛利亚唱赞歌》[966]。）

士兵卡尔

（以凶猛的口吻）我要干掉他，愿混蛋基督助我！我要扭断这混帐杂种的残暴该死混蛋的气管！[967]

缺牙老奶奶

（将一把匕首朝着斯蒂芬的手递过去。）除掉他，啊，豆豆[ 968] 。上午八点三十五分你就该升天堂了，[969] 爱尔兰将获得自由。[970]（她祷告着。）哦，好天主，接纳他吧！

布卢姆

（跑向林奇）你不能把他弄走吗？

林奇

他喜欢辩证法这一人类共同语言。吉蒂！（对布卢姆）你把他弄走吧。他不听我的话。

（他拽走吉蒂。）

斯蒂芬

（指着）犹大出去。上吊自杀。[ 971] 

布卢姆

（奔向斯蒂芬）趁着更坏的情况还没发生，马上就跟我走吧。这儿是你的手杖。

斯蒂芬

不要手杖。要理性。这是一次纯粹理性的筵席。

西茜•卡弗里

（拽着士兵卡尔）来呀，你喝醉啦。那家伙侮辱了我，可我原谅他，（对着卡尔的耳朵嚷）我原谅他对我的侮辱。

布卢姆

（隔着斯蒂芬的肩膀）唉，走吧。你瞧，他已经酩酊大醉啦。

士兵卡尔

（挣脱开）我要侮辱他一顿。

（他冲向斯蒂芬，伸出拳头，朝他的脸揍了一拳。斯蒂芬打了个趔趄，垮下来，倒在地上，昏迷不醒。他仰面朝天直挺挺地躺着，帽子向墙下滚去。布卢姆追在后面，将它拾起。）

特威迪鼓手长

（大声地）把卡宾枪丢开！停火！敬礼！

猎狗

（狂怒地吠着）汪汪汪汪汪汪汪汪。

群众

把他扶起来！不许打已经倒下去的人！人工呼吸！谁干的，大兵揍的他。他是个教授哩。他伤着了吗？不许粗暴地对待他！他昏死过去啦！

一个丑婆子

红衣兵凭什么揍咱们的上等人呀，而且又是喝醉了的。让他们去跟布尔人打仗好啦！

老鸨

听听是谁在说话哪！大兵凭什么就不能带着他的妞儿溜达啊！这家伙卑鄙地给了一拳。[972] 

（她们相互揪住头发，用指甲抓，并且朝对方啐唾沫。）

猎狗

（吠着）汪汪汪。

布卢姆

（使劲把她们往后推，大声地）往后退，后面站！

士兵康普顿

（拽他的伙伴）喂。开溜吧，哈里，警察来啦！

（两个头戴雨帽、身材高大的巡警站到人群当中。）

巡警甲

这儿出了什么乱子？

士兵康普顿

我们跟这位小姐在一起来着。他侮辱了我们。还袭击了我的伙伴。（猎狗狂吠。）这只血腥的杂种狗是谁的？

西茜•卡弗里

（以期待口吻）他流血了吗？

一个男人

（原是屈着膝的，这时站了起来。）没有。只是晕过去啦。会缓过气儿来的。

布卢姆

（目光锐利地瞥了那人一眼）把他交给我吧。我能够很容易地就……

巡警乙

你是谁？你认识他吗，

士兵卡尔

（东倒西歪地凑到巡警跟前）是他侮辱了我的女朋友。

布卢姆

（愤怒地）他没招你没惹你，你就揍了他。是我亲眼看到的。警官，请把他的部队番号记下来。

巡警乙

我执行任务，用不着你来指手划脚。

士兵康普顿

（拽他的伙伴）喂，开溜吧，哈里。不然的话，贝内特军士长[973] 会罚你关禁闭。

士兵卡尔

（趔趔趄趄地被拽走）去他妈的老贝内特。他是个白屁股鸡奸者。狗屁不如的家伙！

巡警甲

（取出笔记本）他叫什么名字？

布卢姆

（隔着人群定睛望着）我看见那儿有辆马车。要是您肯为我搭把手，巡官……

巡警甲

姓名和地址。

（科尼•凯莱赫手执送殡的花圈，帽子周围缠着黑纱，出

现在围观者当中。）

布卢姆

（快嘴快舌地）哦，来得正好！（打耳喳）西蒙•迪达勒斯的儿子。有点儿醉啦。让警察们叫这些起哄的往后退一退。

巡警乙

晚安，凯莱赫先生。

科尼•凯莱赫

（对巡警，睡眼惺松地）不要紧的。我认识他。赛马赢了点儿钱。金杯奖。“丢掉”。（他笑了笑。）以二十博一。你明白我的话吗？

巡警甲

（转向人群）喂，你们大家张着嘴在瞧什么哪？快给我躲开。

（群众慢慢地沿着小巷散开，一路上还咕咕哝哝着。）

科尼•凯莱赫

交给我吧，巡官。不要紧的。（他笑着，摇摇头。）咱们自己当年也往往那样荒唐过，可不，也许还更厉害呢。怎么样？呃，怎么样？

巡警甲

（笑）那倒也是。

科尼•凯莱赫

（用臂时轻轻捅捅巡警乙）这事儿就一笔勾销吧。（他摇头晃脑，快活地唱着。）我的吐啦噜，吐啦噜，吐啦噜，吐啦噜。[974]怎么，呃，你明白我的话吗？

巡警乙

（和蔼地）啊，咱们确实是过来人。

科尼•凯莱赫

（眨巴眼儿）小伙子们就是那样的。我有一辆车在那儿。

巡警乙

好吧，凯莱赫先生。晚安。

科尼•凯莱赫

这件事我会处理的。

布卢姆

（轮流与两个巡警握手）非常感激你们，先生们，谢谢你们。（像是在说悄悄话般地咕哝）你们也知道，我们并不愿意引起丑闻。他父亲是一位声望极高、很受尊重的市民。

巡警甲

噢，先生，我明白。

巡警乙

那蛮好，先生。

巡警甲

只有在有人受到伤害的情况下，我才得向局里汇报。

布卢姆

（赶紧点头）敢情。说得对。这只是你们的职责所在。

巡警乙

这是我们的职责。

科尼•凯莱赫

晚安，二位。

巡警们

（一道敬礼）晚安，先生们。

（他们迈着沉重的脚步慢慢离去。）

布卢姆

（喘口气）多亏了你来到现场，这是天意啊。你有辆车吗？……

科尼•凯莱赫

（边笑边隔着右肩用拇指指着停在脚手架旁的马车。）两个推销员在詹米特餐馆[975]请我喝香摈酒来着。简直像王侯一样，真的。他们中间的一个在赛马上输了两英镑。于是借酒浇愁。接着就要去跟姑娘们寻欢作乐。所以我让他们搭贝汉的车到夜街来了。

布卢姆

我正沿着加德纳街回家去，刚好碰上……

科尼•凯莱赫

（笑）他们确实也曾要我去参加冶游。我说：不，可去不得。像你我这样的老马，可使不得。（他又笑了，用呆滞的眼睛斜睨着。）谢天谢地，我们家里的就足够了。怎么样，呃，你明白我的意思吧？哈！哈！哈！

布卢姆

（勉强笑了笑）嘻、嘻、嘻！对。说实在的，我是到那儿拜访一位老朋友去的。姓维拉格，你不认识他（可怜的家伙，整个上星期他都在生病）。我们一道干了一杯，我正往家走……

（马儿嘶鸣。）

马儿

嗬嗬嗬嗬嗬嗬！嗬嗬嗬嗬哞！

科尼•凯莱赫

把两个推销员留在科恩友太的店里后，正是我们的车夫贝汉把这档子事儿告诉了我。他就在那儿哪。我叫他把车停住，下来瞧个究竟。（他笑了笑。）这位车夫没喝醉酒，赶柩车是他的本行。要不要我送他回家去？他住在哪儿？是卡布拉[976]的什么地方吧？

布卢姆

不，根据他无意中说出的，我相信是沙湾。

（斯蒂芬仰面躺在那儿，对着星星呼吸。科尼•凯莱赫慢腾腾地斜眼望着马。布卢姆心情忧郁，在一片朦胧中屈身。）

科尼•凯莱赫

（挠着后颈）沙湾！（他弯下身去，朝斯蒂芬嚷道）呃！（他又嚷）喂！反正他浑身都是刨花哩。查一查他们是不是偷走了他什么东西。

布卢姆

没有，没有，没有。他把钱交给了我。他的帽子和手杖也都在这儿哪。

科尼•凯莱赫

啊，那就好，他总会恢复神智的。喏，我要赶路了。（他笑着。）明儿早晨我还有个约会。是关于出殡的事儿。路上当心点儿！

马儿

（嘶鸣）嗬嗬嗬嗬嗬哞。

布卢姆

晚安。我再等一等，不一会儿就把这个人……

（科尼•凯莱赫回到敞篷二轮马车旁，坐了上去。马具丁当乱响。）

科尼•凯莱赫

（从马车上，站在那儿）晚安。

布卢姆

晚安。

（车夫甩甩疆绳，精神抖擞地扬起鞭子。车和马缓慢笨重地向后倒，拐了个弯。科尼•凯莱赫坐在边沿的座位上，摇晃着脑袋，嘲弄布卢姆的狼狈处境。车夫也参与了这场一言不发的哑剧的欢乐，从另一头的座位上点着头。布卢姆摇摇头，快活地作着无言的回答。科尼•凯莱赫用大拇指和手掌再一次向他保证：两个警察也别无他法，只得允许他继续睡下去。布卢姆慢腾腾地点了一下头，表示谢意，因为这正是斯蒂芬所需要的。马车发出吐啦噜的声响，辚辚地在吐啦噜巷子的尽头拐了弯。科尼•凯莱赫再度摆摆手，让他放心。布卢姆打手势告诉科尼•凯莱赫，他已经十分放心了。嘚嘚的马蹄声和丁丁当当挽具声，随着吐啦噜噜噜噜的音调，逐渐微弱了。布卢姆拿着斯蒂芬那顶挂满了刨花的帽子和梣木手杖，犹豫不决地站在那里。然后他朝斯蒂芬弯下身去，摇晃他的肩膀。）

布卢姆

呃！嗬！（没有回答。他再度弯下身去。）迪达勒斯先生！（没有回答。）得叫他的名字。梦游患者。[977]（他重新弯下身去，迟迟疑疑地把嘴凑近平卧着的斯蒂芬的脸上。）斯蒂芬！（没有回答。他又叫了一遍。）斯蒂芬！

斯蒂芬

（皱皱眉）谁？黑豹。吸血鬼。[978] （他叹了口气，伸开四肢，随即拖长母音，口齿不清地低语。）

而今谁……弗格斯驱车……

穿过……林织成的树荫？……[979]

（他边叹气边朝左边翻身，缩作一团。）

布卢姆

诗。有教养。可怜啊。（他又弯下身去，解开斯蒂芬的背心钮扣。）呼吸吧。（他用手和指头轻轻地把斯蒂芬衣服上的刨花掸掉。）一英镑七先令。好在没受伤。（他尖起耳朵去听。）什么？

斯蒂芬

（嘟喃）

……林…阴影，

……混沌的海洋……雪白的胸脯。[980]

（他摊开双臂，又叹息了一声，蜷缩起身子。布卢姆手持帽子和梣木手杖，站得直直的。一条狗在远处吠着。布卢姆忽紧忽松地握着梣木手杖，他弯下身去俯视斯蒂芬的脸和身姿。）

布卢姆

（与黑夜交谈）这张脸使我想起他那可怜的母亲。树林的阴影。深邃的雪白胸脯。我仿佛听他说是弗格森。是个姑娘。不知是哪儿的一位姑娘。他可能遇上了最大的幸运。（他嘟哝着。）……我发誓。不论是任何工作，任何技艺，我都一概接受，永远守密，绝不泄露。[981] ……（他低语。）……在海边的粗沙里……距岸边有一锚链长[982] ……那里，潮退……潮涨……

（他沉默下来，若有所思，警觉着。他用手指按着嘴唇，俨然是一位共济会师傅。一个人影背对着黑暗的墙壁徐徐出现。这是个十一岁的仙童，被仙女诱拐了去的。身穿伊顿学院的制服，脚蹬玻璃鞋，[983] 头戴小小的青铜盔，手捧一本书。他不出声地自右至左地读着[984] 笑吟吟地吻着书页。）

布卢姆

（惊异万分，不出声地呼唤）鲁迪！

鲁迪

（视而不见地凝望着布卢姆的眼睛，继续阅读，吻着，微笑着。他的脸挺秀气，是紫红色的。衣服上钉着钻石和红宝石钮扣。左手攥着一根系有紫色蝴蝶结的细长象牙手杖。一只小羊羔从他背心兜里探头偷看。）
Chapter 16 Eumaeus
PREPARATORY TO ANYTHING ELSE MR BLOOM BRUSHED OFF THE GREATER bulk of the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion, which he very badly needed. His (Stephen's) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom, in view of the hour it was and there being no pumps of Vartry water available for their ablutions, let alone drinking purposes, hit upon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cabman's shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt Bridge, where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to get a conveyance of some description which would answer in their then condition, both of them being e. d. ed, particularly Stephen, always assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly, after a few such preliminaries, as, in spite of his having forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in the shaving line, brushing, they both walked together along Beaver street, or, more properly, lane, as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left from thence debouching into Amiens Street round by the corner of Dan Bergin's. But, as he confidently anticipated, there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star Hotel and there was no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice. 
This was a quandary but, bringing commonsense to bear on it, evidently there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullet's and the Signal House, which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being handicapped by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons, though, entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the mischance. So, as neither of them were particularly pressed for time, as it happened, and the temperature refreshing since it cleared up after the recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by where the empty vehicle was waiting without a fare or a jarvey. As it so happened a Dublin United Tramways Company's sandstrewer happening to be returning the elder man recounted to his companion à propos of the incident his own truly miraculous escape of some little while back. They passed the main entrance of the Great Northern railway station, the starting point for Belfast, where of course all traffic was suspended at that late hour, and, passing the back door of the morgue (a not very enticing locality, not to say gruesome to a degree, more especially at night), ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store street, famous for its C division police station. Between this point and the high, at present unlit, warehouses of Beresford Place Stephen thought to think of Ibsen, associated with Baird's, the stonecutter's, in his mind somehow in Talbot Place, first turning on the right, while the other, who was acting as his fidus Achates, inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread? At Rourke's the baker's, it is said. 

En route, to his taciturn, and, not to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly sober companion, Mr Bloom, who at all events, was in complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober, spoke a word of caution re the dangers of nighttown, women of ill fame and swell mobsmen, which, barely permissible once in a while, though not as a habitual practice, was of the nature of a regular deathtrap for young fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired drinking habits under the influence of liquor unless you knew a little juijitsu for every contingency as even a fellow on the broad of his back could administer a nasty kick if you didn't look out. Highly providential was the appearance on the scene of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully unconscious that, but for that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour, the finis might have been that he might have been a candidate for the accident ward, or, failing that, the Bridewell and an appearance in the court next day before Mr Tobias, or, he being the solicitor, rather old Wall, he meant to say, or Malony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when it got bruited about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of those policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous in the service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case or two in the A Division in Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot. Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet parts of the City, Pembroke Road, for example, the guardians of the law were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were paid to protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equipping soldiers with firearms or sidearms of any description, liable to go off at any time, which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians should by any chance they fall nut over anything. You frittered away your time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also character besides which the squandermania of the thing, fast women of the demimonde ran away with a lot of #. s. d. into the bargain and the greatest danger of all was who you got drunk with though, touching the much vexed question of stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old wine in season as both nourishing and blood-making and possessing aperient virtues (notably a good burgundy which he was a staunch believer in) still never beyond a certain point where he invariably drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round to say nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others practically. Most of all he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his pubhunting confrères but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the part of his brother medicos under all the circs. 

-- And that one was Judas, said Stephen, who up to then had said nothing whatsoever of any kind. 

Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge when a brazier of coke burning in front of a sentrybox, or something like one, attracted their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped for no special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the light emanating from the brazier he could just make out the darker figure of the corporation watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox. He began to remember that this had happened, or had been mentioned as having happened, before but it cost him no small effort before he remembered that he recognised in the sentry a quondam friend of his father's Gumley. To avoid a meeting be drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge. 

-- Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said. 

A figure of middle height on the prowl, evidently, under the arches saluted again, calling: Night! Stephen, of course, started rather dizzily and stopped to return the compliment. Mr Bloom, actuated by motives of inherent delicacy, inasmuch as he always believed in minding his own business, moved off but nevertheless remained on the qui vive with just a shade of anxiety though not funkyish in the least. Although unusual in the Dublin area, he knew that it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on to be about waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in some secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames embankment category they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moments notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and garotted. 

Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters, though he was not in any over sober state himself, recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley, some called him, and his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of Inspector Corley of the G Division, lately deceased, who had married a certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather, Patrick Michael Corley, of New Ross, had married the widow of a publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Talbot. Rumour had it, though not proved, that she descended from the house of the Lords Talbot de Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of its kind and well worth seeing, his mother or aunt or some relative had enjoyed the distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This, therefore, was the reason why the still comparatively young though dissolute man who now addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley. 

Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell. Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had all deserted him. Furthermore, he had a row with Lenehan and called him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of other uncalled-for expressions. He was out of a job and implored of Stephen to tell him where on God's earth he could get something, anything at all to do. No, it was the daughter of the mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house or else they were connected through the mother in some way, both occurrences happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn't a complete fabrication from start to finish. Anyhow, he was ill in. 

-- I wouldn't ask you, only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the rocks. 

-- There'll be a job tomorrow or the next day, Stephen told him, in a boys' school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Garret Deasy. Try it. You may mention my name. 

-- Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn't teach in a school, man. I was never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. Got stuck twice in the junior at the Christian Brothers. 

-- I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him. 

Corley, at the first go-off, was inclined to suspect it was something to do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney's, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but M'Conachie told him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the person addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too though he hadn't said a word about it. 

Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it still Stephen's feelings got the better of him in a sense though he knew that Corley's brandnew rigmarole, on a par with the others, was hardly deserving of much credence. However, haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere disco, etcetera, as the Latin poet remarks, especially as luck would have it he got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth which was the date of the month as a matter of fact though a good bit of the wherewithal was demolished. But the cream of the joke was nothing would get it Out of Corley's head that he was living in affluence and hadn't a thing to do but hand out the needful - whereas. He put his hand in a pocket anyhow, not with the idea of finding any food there, but thinking he might lend him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at all events and get sufficient to eat. But the result was in the negative for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were all the result of his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect for the moment whether he had lost, as well he might have, or left, because in that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse, in fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough search though he tried to recollect about biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now exactly gave them, or where was, or did he buy? However, in another pocket he came across what he surmised in the dark were pennies, erroneously, however, as it turned out. 

-- Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him. 

And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen lent him one of them. 

-- Thanks, Corley answered. You're a gentleman. I'll pay you back some time. Who's that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in Camden street with Boylan the billsticker. You might put in a good word for us to get me taken on there. I'd carry a sandwichboard only the girl in the office told me they're full up for the next three weeks, man. God, you've to book ahead, man, you'd think it was for the Carl Rosa. I don't give a shite anyway so long as I get a job even as a crossing sweeper. 

Subsequently, being not quite so down in the mouth after the two-and-six he got, he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchandler's bookkeeper there, that used to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow, he was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and disorderly and refusing to go with the constable. 

Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation watchman's sentrybox, who, evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own private account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same time now and then at Stephen's anything but immaculately attired interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other though where he was not in a position to truthfully state nor had he the remotest idea when. Being a levelheaded individual who could give points to not a few in point of shrewd observation, he also remarked on his very dilapidated hat and slouchy wearing apparel generally, testifying to a chronic impecuniosity. Probably he was one of his hangerson but for the matter of that it was merely a question of one preying on his next door neighbour all round, in every deep, so to put it, a deeper depth and for the matter of that if the man in the street chanced to be in the dock himself penal servitude, with or without the option of a fine, would be a very rara avis altogether. In any case he had a consummate amount of cool assurance intercepting people at that hour of the night or morning. Pretty thick that was certainly. 

The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom, who, with his practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said, laughingly, Stephen, that is: 

-- He's down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman. 

At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the direction of a bucket dredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana, moored alongside Customhouse Quay and quite possibly Out of repair, whereupon he observed evasively: 

-- Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it his face was familiar to me. But leaving that for the moment, how much did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive? 

-- Half-a-crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep somewhere. 

-- Needs, Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he invariably does. Everyone according to his needs and everyone according to his deeds. But talking about things in general, where, added he with a smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is Out of the question and, even supposing you did, you won't get in after what occurred at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for nothing. I don't mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you leave your father's house? 

-- To seek misfortune, was Stephen's answer. 

-- I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom diplomatically returned. Today, in fact, or, to be strictly accurate, on yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of conversation that he had moved. 

-- I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered unconcernedly. Why? 

-- A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more respects than one and a born raconteur if ever there was one. He takes great pride, quite legitimately, Out of you. You could go back, perhaps, he hazarded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it was perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan, that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred their third companion, were patently trying, as if the whole bally station belonged to them, to give Stephen the slip in the confusion. 

There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion, however, such as it was, Stephen's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his family hearth the last time he saw it, with his sister, Dilly, sitting by the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he could drink it with the oatmeal water for milk after the Friday herrings they had eaten at two a penny, with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper in accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on the days commanded, it being quarter tense or, if not, ember days or something like that. 

-- No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher, and friend, if I were in your shoes. He knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he never realised what it is to be without regular meals. Of course you didn't notice as much as I did but it wouldn't occasion me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in your drink for some ulterior object. 

He understood, however, from all he heard, that Dr Mulligan was a versatile allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was rapidly coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future as a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services in addition to which professional status his rescue of that man from certain drowning by artificial respiration and what they call first aid at Skerries, or Malahide was it? was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed which he could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a loss to fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he put it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple. 

-- Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking your brains, he ventured to throw out. 

The guarded glance of half solicitude, half curiosity, augmented by friendliness, which he gave at Stephen's at present morose expression of features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact, on the problem as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled, to judge by two or three low spirited remarks he let drop, or, the other way about, saw through the affair, and, for some reason or other best known to himself, allowed matters to more or less... Grinding poverty did have that effect and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities though he possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet. 

Adjacent to the men's public urinal he perceived an icecream car round which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a particularly animated way, there being some little differences between the parties. 

-- Putana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo rotto! 

-- Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano più 

-- Dice lui, pero. 

-- Farabutto! Mortacci sui! 

Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely, if ever, been before; the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints anent the keeper of it, said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat, Fitzharris, the invincible, though he wouldn't vouch for the actual facts, which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet corner, only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the genus homo, already there engaged in eating and drinking, diversified by conversation, for whom they seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity. 

-- Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly suggest to break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape of solid food, say a roll of some description. 

Accordingly his first act was with characteristic sangfroid to order these commodities quietly. The hoi polloi of jarvies or stevedores, or whatever they were, after a cursory examination, turned their eyes, apparently dissatisfied, away, though one redbearded bibulous individual, a portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor, probably, still stared for some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the floor. 

Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute though, to be sure, rather in a quandary over voglio, remarked to his protégé in an audible tone of voice, apropos of the battle royal in the street which was still raging fast and furious: 

-- Beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not write your poetry in that language? Bella Poetria! it is so melodious and full. Belladonna voglio. 

Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn, if he could, suffering from dead lassitude generally, replied: 

-- To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money. 

-- Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it. 

The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this tête-à-tête put a boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed, after which he beat a retreat to his counter. Mr Bloom determining to have a good square look at him later on so as not to appear to... for which reason he encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be called coffee gradually nearer him. 

-- Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little time. Like names, Cicero, Podmore, Napoleon, Mr Goodbody, Jesus, Mr Doyle. Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What's in a name? 

-- Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across. 

The redbearded sailor, who had his weather eye on the newcomers, boarded Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely by asking: 

-- And what might your name be? 

Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion's boot but Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure, from an unexpected quarter, answered: 

-- Dedalus. 

The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old Hollands and water. 

-- You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length. 

-- I've heard of him, Stephen said. 

Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently eavesdropping too. 

-- He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same way and nodding. All Irish. 

-- All too Irish, Stephen rejoined. 

As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole business and he was just asking himself what possible connection when the sailor, of his own accord, turned to the other Occupants of the shelter with the remark: I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder. The left hand dead shot. 

Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain. 

-- Bottle Out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles. Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims. 

He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely, then he screwed his features up some way sideways and glared out into the night with an unprepossessing cast of countenance. 

-- Pom, he then shouted once. 

The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there being still a further egg. 

-- Pom, he shouted twice. 

Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding bloodthirstily: 

Buffalo Bill shoots to kill, 
Never missed nor he never will.
A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness' sake just felt like asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the Bisley. 
-- Beg pardon, the sailor said. 

-- Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth. 

-- Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in Stockholm. 

-- Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen unobtrusively. 

-- Murphy's my name, the sailor continued, W. B. Murphy, of Carrigaloe. Know where that is? 

-- Queenstown Harbour, Stephen replied. 

-- That's right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That's where I hails from. My little woman's down there. She's waiting for me, I know. For England, home and beauty. She's my own true wife I haven't seen for seven years now, sailing about. 

Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene - the homecoming to the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones - a rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a number of stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece, by the way, of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way? Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay and make a fresh start. There she sits, a grass widow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes me dead. Rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Boo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, post mortem child. With a high ro! and a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband, W. B. Murphy. 

The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one of the jarvies with the request: 

-- You don't happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you, do you? 

The jarvey addressed, as it happened, had not but the keeper took a die of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object was passed from hand to hand. 

-- Thank you, the sailor said. 

He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing, and with some slow stammers, proceeded: 

-- We come up this morning eleven o'clock. The threemaster Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon. There's my discharge. See? W. B. Murphy, A. B. S. 

In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket and handed to his neighbours a not very clean looking folded document. 

-- You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked, leaning on the counter. 

-- Why, the sailor answered, upon reflection upon it, I've circumnavigated a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and North America and South America. I seen icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the Dardanelles, under Captain Dalton the best bloody man that ever scuttled a ship. I seen Russia. Gospodi pomilooy. That's how the Russians prays. 

-- You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in a jarvey. 

-- Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug, I seen queer things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor same as I chew that quid. 

He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his teeth, bit ferociously. 

-- Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent me. 

He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket, which seemed to be in its way a species of repository, and pushed it along the table. The printed matter on it stated: Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia. 

All focused their attention on the scene exhibited, at a group of savage women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping, amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of them) outside some primitive shanties of osier. 

-- Chews coca all day long, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more children. See them there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver raw. 

His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns for several minutes, if not more. 

-- Know how to keep them off? he inquired genially. 

Nobody volunteering a statement, he winked, saying: 

-- Glass. That boggles 'em. Glass. 

Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran as follows: Tarjeta Postal. Se?or A. Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago, Chile. There was no message evidently, as he took particular notice. Though not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in Maritana on which occasion the former's ball passed through the latter's hat), having detected a discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he represented himself to be and not sailing under false colours after having boxed the compass on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the fictitious addressee of the missive which made him nourish some suspicions of our friend's bona fides, nevertheless it reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via long sea not to say that he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had consistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead which was his longest. Martin Cunningham frequently said he would work a pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped up with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it did come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd's heart it was not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside, considering the fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six there and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose liver was out of order, seeing the different places along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on, culminating in an instructive tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our modern Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest improvement tower, abbey, wealth of Park Lane to renew acquaintance with. Another thing just struck him as a by no means bad notion was he might have a gaze around on the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a concert tour of summer music embracing the most prominent pleasure resorts, Margate with mixed bathing and firstrate hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so on, beautiful Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar bijou spots, which might prove highly remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and corner scratch company or local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C. P. M'Coy type - lend me your valise and I'll post you the ticket. No, something top notch, an all star Irish cast, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with its own legal consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of success, providing puffs in the local papers could be managed by some fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable wires and thus combine business with pleasure. But who? That was the rub. 

Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with the times apropos of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was once more on the tapis in the Circumlocution departments with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co. 

It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the system really needed toning up, for a matter of a couple of paltry pounds, was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead of being always cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of venue after the grind of city life in the summertime, for choice, when Dame Nature is at her spectacular best, constituting nothing short of a new lease of life. There were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home island, delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well as a bracing tonic for the system in and around Dublin and its picturesque environs, even, Poulaphouca, to which there was a steam tram, but also farther away from the madding crowd, in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen, so long as it didn't come down, and in the wilds of Donegal, where if report spoke true, the coup d'il was exceedingly grand, though the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that the influx of visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering the signal benefits to be derived from it, while Howth with its historic associations and otherwise, Silken Thomas, Grace O'Malley, George IV, rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt with all sorts and conditions of men, especially in the spring when young men s fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off the cliffs by design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their left leg, it being only about three quarters of an hour's run from the pillar. Because of course uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely in its infancy, so to speak, and the accommodation left much to be desired. Interesting to fathom, it seemed to him, from a motive of curiosity pure and simple, was whether it was the traffic that created the route or vice-versa or the two sides in fact. He turned back the other side of the card picture and passed it along to Stephen. 

-- I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened, and every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a house, another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the Chinese does. 

Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces, the globetrotter went on adhering to his adventures. 

-- And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his back. Knife like that. 

Whilst speaking he produced a dangerous looking clasp knife, quite in keeping with his character, and held it in the striking position. 

-- In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers. Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. Prepare to meet your God, says he. Chuck! It went into his back up to the butt. 

His heavy glance, drowsily roaming about, kind of defied their further questions even should they by any chance want to. That's a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable stiletto. 

After which harrowing dénouement sufficient to appal the stoutest he snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket. 

-- They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them using knives. 

At this remark, passed obviously in the spirit of where ignorance is bliss, Mr Bloom and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly entre nous variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face, which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn't understand one jot of what was going on. Funny very. 

There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading by fits and starts a stained by coffee evening journal; another, the card with the natives choza de; another, the seaman's discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as he was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as yesterday, some score of years previously, in the days of the land troubles when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was just turned fifteen. 

-- Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers. 

The request being complied with, he clawed them up with a scrape. 

-- Have you seen the Rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired. 

The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay, or no. 

-- Ah, you've touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point, thinking he had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences but he failed to do so, simply letting spurt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn. 

-- What year would that be about? Mr Bloom interpolated. Can you recall the boats? 

Our soi-disant sailor munched heavily awhile, hungrily, before answering. 

-- I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships. Salt junk all the time. 

Tired, seemingly, he ceased. His questioner, perceiving that he was not likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer, fell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the globe. Suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed, it covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly what it meant, to rule the waves. On more than one occasion - a dozen at the lowest - near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a superannuated old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down the antipodes and all that sort of thing and over and under - well, not exactly under, tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty to nil there was really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless, without going into the minutiae of the business, the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence though it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery and insurance, which were run on identically the same lines so that for that very reason, if no other, lifeboat Sunday was a very laudable institution to which the public at large, no matter where living, inland or seaside,-is the case might be, having it brought home to them like that, should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid the elements, whatever the season, when duty called Ireland expects that every man and so on, and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather. 

-- There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog, himself a rover, proceeded. Went ashore and took up a soft job as gentleman's valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on me and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I'm game for that job, shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about. There's my son now, Danny, run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper's in Cork where he could be drawing easy money. 

-- What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk, away from the carking cares of office, unwashed, of course, and in a seedy getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage. 

-- Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance. My son Danny? He'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it. 

The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was to be seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink, intended to represent an anchor. 

-- There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked. Sure as nuts. I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It's them black lads I objects to. I hate those buggers. Sucks your blood dry, they does. 

Seeing they were all looking at his chest, he accommodatingly dragged his shirt more open so that, on top of the time honoured symbol of the mariner's hope and rest, they had a full view of the figure 16 and a young man's sideface looking frowningly rather. 

-- Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were lying becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton Fellow the name of Antonio done that. There he is himself, a Greek. 

-- Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor. 

That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the someway in his. Squeezing or... 

-- See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is, cursing the mate. And there he is now, he added. The same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn. 

And in point of fact the young man named Antonio's livid face did actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the unreserved admiration of everybody, including Skin-the-Goat who this time stretched over. 

-- Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He's gone too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay. 

He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression of before. 

-- Neat bit of work, longshoreman one said. 

-- And what's the number for? loafer number two queried. 

-- Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor. 

-- Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time, with some sort of a half smile, for a brief duration only, in the direction of the questioner about the number. A Greek he was. 

And then he added, with rather gallowsbird humour, considering his alleged end: 

-- As bad as old Antonio, 
For he left me on my ownio.
The face of a streetwalker, glazed and haggard under a black straw hat, peered askew round the door of the shelter, palpably reconnoitring on her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr Bloom, scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment, flusterfied but outwardly calm, and picking up from the table the pink sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper though why pink? His reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment round the door the same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon on Ormond Quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the lane, who knew the lady in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs B.), and begged the chance of his washing. Also why washing, which seemed rather vague than not? 
Your washing. Still, candour compelled him to admit that he had washed his wife's undergarments when soiled in Holles Street and women would and did too a man's similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's marking ink (hers were, that is) if they really loved him, that is to say. Love me, love my dirty shirt. Still, just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female's room more than her company so it came as a genuine relief when the keeper made her a rude sign to take herself off. Round the side of the Evening Telegraph he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of gazers round Skipper Murphy's nautical chest and then there was no more of her. 

-- The gunboat, the keeper said. 

-- It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am speaking, how a wretched creature like that from the Lock Hospital, reeking with disease, can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober senses, if he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of course, I suppose some man is ultimately responsible for her condition. Still no matter what the cause is from... 

Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely remarking: 

-- In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to buy the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap. 

The elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a prude, said that it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be put a stop to instanter to say that women of that stamp (quite apart from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, were not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing he could truthfully state he, as a paterfamilias, was a stalwart advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on a policy of that sort, he said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would confer a lasting boon on everybody concerned. 

-- You, as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul, believe in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such, as distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup? I believe in that myself because it has been explained by competent men as the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have such inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you? 

Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try and concentrate and remember before he could say: 

-- They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for the possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause, Who, from all I can hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other practical jokes, corruptio per se and corruptio per accidens both being excluded by court etiquette. 

Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he felt bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly rejoining: 

-- Simple? I shouldn't think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a blue moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for instance to invent those rays R?ntgen did, Or the telescope like Edison, though I believe it was before his time, Galileo was the man I mean. The same applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural phenomenon such as electricity but it's a horse of quite another colour to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God. 

-- O, that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by several of the best known passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial evidence. On this knotty point, however, the views of the pair, poles apart as they were, both in schooling and everything else, with the marked difference in their respective ages, clashed. 

-- Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his original point. I'm not so sure about that. That's a matter of every man's opinion and, without dragging in the sectarian side of the business, I beg to differ with you in toto there. My belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it's the big question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them, like Hamlet and Bacon, as you who know your Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of course I needn't tell you. Can't you drink that coffee, by the way? Let me stir it and take a piece of that bun. It's like one of our skipper's bricks disguised. Still, no one can give what he hasn't got. Try a bit. 

-- Couldn't, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the moment refusing to dictate further. 

Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat, Mr Bloom thought well to stir, or try to, the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with something approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance (and lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or nay did a world of good. Shelters such as the present one they were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic evenings, and useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the lower orders. On the other hand, he had a distinct and painful recollection they paid his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had been prominently associated with it at one time, a very modest remuneration indeed for her pianoplaying. The idea, he was strongly inclined to believe, was to do good and net a profit, there being no competition to speak of. Sulphate of copper poison, SO4 or something in some dried peas he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn't remember when it was or where. Anyhow, inspection, medical inspection, of all eatables, seemed to him more than ever necessary which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on account of the medical analysis involved. 

-- Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being stirred. 

Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it, Stephen lifted the heavy mug from the brown puddle - it clopped out of it when taken up - by the handle and took a sip of the offending beverage. 

-- Still, it's solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but regular meals as the sine qua non for any kind of proper work, mental or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different man. 

-- Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But oblige me by taking away that knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history. 

Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly Roman or antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was the least conspicuous point about it. 

-- Our mutual friend's stories are like himself, Mr Bloom, apropos of knives, remarked to his confidente sotto voce. Do you think they are genuine? He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and lie like old boots. Look at him. 

Yet still, though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air, life was full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire fabrication though at first blush there was not much inherent probability in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly accurate gospel. 

He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and Sherlockholmesing him up, ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. He might even have done for his man, supposing it was his own case he told, as people often did about others, namely, that he killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pen Of our national poet) who expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above described. On the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness, because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad, would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the schooner Hesperus and etcetera. And when all was said and done, the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him. 

Mind you, I'm not saying that it's all a pure invention, he resumed. Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants, though, that is rather a far cry you see once in a way. Marcella, the midget queen. In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged. They couldn't straighten their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline, the sinews, or whatever you like to call them, behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as gods. There's an example again of simple souls. 

However, reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who reminded him a bit of Ludwig, alias Ledwidge, when he occupied the boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the management in the Flying Dutchman, a stupendous success, and his host of admirers came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually fell a bit flat as also did trains), there was nothing intrinsically incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary, that stab in the back touch was quite in keeping with those Italianos, though candidly he was none the less free to admit those ice creamers and friers in the fish way, not to mention the chip potato variety and so forth, over in little Italy there, near the Coombe, were sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night so as to have a good old succulent tuck in with garlic de rigueur off him or her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap. 

-- Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own hands and give you your quietus double quick with those poignards they carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally. My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half, that is. Point of fact she could actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in (technically) Spain, i.e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite dark, regular brunette, black. I, for one, certainly believe climate accounts for character. That's why I asked you if you wrote your poetry in Italian. 

-- The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were very passionate about ten shillings. Roberto ruba roba sua. 

-- Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed. 

-- Then, Stephen said, staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles triangle, Miss Portinari, he fell in love with and Leonardo and san Tommaso Mastino. 

-- It's in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in the blood of the sun. Coincidence, I just happened to be in the Kildare street Museum today, shortly prior to our meeting, if I can so call it, and I was just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid proportions of hips, bosom. You simply don't knock against those kind of women here. An exception here and there. Handsome, yes, pretty in a way you find, but what I'm talking about is the female form. Besides, they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which greatly enhances a woman's natural beauty, no matter what you say. Rumpled stockings - it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine, but still it's a thing I simply hate to see. 

Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and the others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog, collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy, of course, had his own say to say. He had doubled the Cape a few odd times and weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him, or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him. 

So then after that they drifted on to the wreck of Daunt's rock, wreck of that illfated Norwegian barque - nobody could think of her name for the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Henry Campbell remembered it, Palme, on Booterstown Strand, that was the talk of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original verse of distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish Times) breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore in commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something about the case of the s. s. Lady Cairns of Swansea, run into by the Mona, which was on an Opposite tack, in rather muggyish weather and lost with all hands on deck. No aid was given. Her master, the Mona's, said he was afraid his collision bulkhead would give way. She had no water, it appears, in her hold. 

At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him to unfurl a reef, the sailor vacated his seat. 

-- Let me cross your bows, mate, he said to his neighbour, who was just gently dropping off into a peaceful dose. 

He made tracks heavily, slowly, with a dumpy sort of a gait to the door, stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore due left. While he was in the act of getting his bearings, Mr Bloom, who noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship's rum sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it, or unscrew, and, applying its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig out of it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible Bloom, who also had a shrewd suspicion that the old stager went out on a manoeuvre after the counterattraction in the shape of a female, who, however, had disappeared to all intents and purposes, could, by straining, just perceive him, when duly refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, gazing up at the piers and girders of the Loop Line, rather out of his depth, as of course it was all radically altered since his last visit and greatly improved. Some person or persons invisible directed him to the male urinal erected by the cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but, after a brief space of time during which silence reigned supreme, the sailor, evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself close at hand, the noise of his bilge-water some little time subsequently splashing on the ground where it apparently woke a horse of the cabrank. 

A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly disturbed in his sentrybox by the brasier of live coke, the watcher of the corporation, who, though now broken down and fast breaking up, was none other in stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now practically on the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all human probability, from dictates of humanity, knowing him before - shifted about and shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again in the arms of Morpheus. A truly amazing piece of hard times in its most virulent form on a fellow most respectably connected and familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who came in for a cool #100 a year at one time which of course the double-barrelled ass proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of. And there he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink, without a beggarly stiver. He drank, needless to be told, and it pointed only once more a moral when he might quite easily be in a large way of business if - a big if, however - he had contrived to cure himself of his particular partiality. 

All, meantime, were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping, coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the same thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra Basin, the only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there only no ships ever called. 

There were wrecks and wrecks, the keeper said, who was evidently au fait. 

What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only rock in Galway Bay when the Galway Harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask her captain, he advised them, how much palmoil the British Government gave him for that day's work. Captain John Lever of the Lever line. 

-- Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor now returning after his private potation and the rest of his exertions. 

That worthy, picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words, growled in wouldbe music, but with great vim, some Kind of chanty or other in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom's sharp ears heard him then expectorate the plug probably (which it was), so that he must have lodged it for the time being in his fist while he did the drinking and making water jobs and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in question. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful libation-cum-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the soirée, boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook: 

-- The biscuits was as hard as brass, 
And the beef as salt as Lot's wife's arse. 
O Johnny Lever! 
Johnny Lever, O!
After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene and, regaining his seat, he sank rather than sat heavily on the form provided. 
Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural resources of Ireland, or something of that sort, which he described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in large quantities, six million pounds' worth of pork exported every year, ten millions between butter and eggs, and all the riches drained out of it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose always, and gobbling up the best meat in the market, and a lot more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was Colonel Everard down there in Cavan growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated crescendo with no uncertain voice - thoroughly monopolising all the conversation - was in store for mighty England, despite her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero - a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons. 

Silence all round marked the termination of his finale. The impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings undismayed. 

-- Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism. 

To which cold douche, referring to downfall and so on, the keeper concurred but nevertheless held to his main view. 

-- Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and generals we've got? Tell me that. 

-- The Irish for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial blemishes apart. 

-- That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins? 

While allowing him his individual opinions, as every man, the keeper added he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible words, when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows. 

From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as time went On, that turned Out to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both countries, even though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee of the place, rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged, as the lookeron, a student of the human soul, if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other person at all, he (Bloom) couldn't help feeling, and most properly, it was better to give people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence - or king's now - like Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that, he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel, and no denying it (while inwardly remaining what he was), a certain kind of admiration for a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political convictions though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing, off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south - have her or swing for her - when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (the man having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on 

his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses, always farewell - positively last performance then come up smiling again. Generous to a fault, of course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some #. s. d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for the others, he had heard not so long before the same identical lingo, as he told Stephen how he simply but effectually silenced the offender. 

He took umbrage at something or other, that much injured but on the whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew, and in a heated fashion, offensively. So I, without deviating from plain facts in the least, told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too, and all his family, like me, though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I not right? 

He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark pride at the soft impeachment, with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly . 

-- Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four eyes conversing, Christus or Bloom his name is, or, after all, any other, secundum carnem. 

-- Of course, Mr Bloom proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality? I resent violence or intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak. 

-- Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Stephen assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market. 

-- Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that was overwhelmingly right and the whole world was overwhelmingly full of that sort of thing. 

-- You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely. 

All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood - bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag - were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop. 

-- They accuse - remarked he audibly. He turned away from the others, who probably... and spoke nearer to, so as the others... in case they... 

-- Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History - would you be surprised to learn? - proves up to' the hilt Spain decayed when the Inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian, who, in other respects, has much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any... because you know the standard works on the subject, and then, orthodox as you are... But in the economic, not touching religion, domain, the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead America. Turks, it's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to live better - at least, so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p.'s raise the wind on false pretences. I'm, he resumed, with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of #300 per annum That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we learned a small smattering of in our classical day in Alma Mater, vita bene. Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work. 

Over his untasteable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular. He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in the morning, burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say the words the voice he heard said - if you work. 

-- Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning to work. 

The eyes were surprised at this observation, because as he, the person who owned them pro. tem. observed, or rather, his voice speaking did: All must work, have to, together. 

-- I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest possible sense. Also literary labour, not merely for the kudos of the thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays. That's work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of you, after all the money expended on your education, you are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important. 

-- You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may be important because I belong to the faubourg Saint Patrice called Ireland for short. 

-- I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated. 

-- But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me. 

-- What belongs? queried Mr Bloom, bending, fancying he was perhaps under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately I didn't catch the latter portion. What was it you?... 

Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee, Or whatever you like to call it, none too politely, adding: 

-- We can't change the country. Let us change the subject. 

At this pertinent suggestion, Mr Bloom, to change the subject, looked down, but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say, the fumes of his recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way, foreign to his sober state. Probably the home life, to which Mr Bloom attached the utmost importance, had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside him, whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly, nipped in the bud of premature decay, and nobody to blame but themselves. For instance, there was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the half crazy faddist, respectably connected, though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries, among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual dénouement after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got landed into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under section two of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, certain names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged, for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen, which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts, even In the House of Lords, because early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy as the law stands was terribly down on, though not for the reason they thought they were probably, whatever it was, except women chiefly, who were always fiddling more or less at one another, it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like distinctive underclothing should, and every well tailored man must, trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a genuine fillip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental. However, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir. 

For which and further reasons he felt it was interest and duty even to wait on and profit by the unlooked for occasion, though why, he could not exactly tell, being, as it was, already several shillings to the bad, having, in fact, let himself in for it. Still, to cultivate the acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection would amply repay any small... Intellectual stimulation as such was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt, of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in, especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz., coalminers, divers, scavengers, etc., were very much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing. Suppose he were to pen something out of the common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per column, My Experiences, let us say, in a Cabman's Shelter. 

The pink edition, extra sporting, of the Telegraph, tell a graphic lie, lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was addressed to A. Boudin, find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over the respective captions which came under his special province, the allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish #200 damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration swindle. Letter from His Grace William. Ascot Throwaway recalls Derby of '92 when Captain Marshall's dark horse, Sir Hugo , captured the blue riband at long odds. New York disaster, thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. 

So to change the subject he read about Dignam, R.I.P., which, he reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. 

-- This morning (Hynes put it in, of course), the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, no 9 Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount, for internment in Clasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise, after a brief illness, came as great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the deceased were present, were carried out (certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge from Corny) by Messrs. H. J. O'Neill & Son, 164 North Strand road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (motherinlaw), John Henry Menton, solr., Martin Cunningham, John Power eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora (must be where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad), Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, Stephen Dedalus, B. A., Edward J. Lambert, Cornelius Kelleher, Joseph M'C. Hynes, L. Boom, C. P. M'Coy, - M'Intosh, and several others. 

Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as it incorrectly stated) and the line of bitched type, but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and Stephen Dedalus, B. A., who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh), L. Boom pointed it out to his companion B. A., engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints. 

-- Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked, as soon as his bottom jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it. 

-- It is, really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded to the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing the thing, there. 

While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his sidevalue 1,000 sovs., with 3,000 sovs. In specie added for entire colts and fillies, Mr F. Alexander's Throwaway, b.h. by Rightaway, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs, Thrale (W. Lane) 1. Lord Howard de Walden's Zinfandel (M. Cannon) 2. Mr W. Bass's Sceptre, 3. Betting 5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off). Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order. It was anybody's race then the rank outsider drew to the fore got long lead, beating lord Howard de Walden's chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass's bay filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course. Winner trained by Braine so that Lenehan's version of the business was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1,000 sovs., with 3,000 in specie. Also ran J. de Bremond's (French horse Bantam Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) Maximum II. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get left. Of course, gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing though, as the event turned out, the poor fool hadn't much reason to congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it reduced itself to eventually. 

-- There was every indication they would arrive at that, Mr Bloom said. 

-- Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said. 

One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read, Return of Parnell. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a time after Committee Room No. 15 until he was his old self again with no-one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his senses. Dead he wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on. 

All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels, and not singly but in their thousands, and then complete oblivion because it was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely, of course, there was even a shadow of truth in the stories and, even supposing, he thought a return highly inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted with his movements even before, there was absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, where art thou order even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart, so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within the bounds of possibility. Naturally then, it would prey on his mind as a born leader of men, which undoubtedly he was, and a commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So-and-So who, though they weren't even a patch on the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay. And then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back - that haunting sense kind of drew you - to show the understudy in the title r?le how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the Insuppressible or was it United Ireland, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he said Thank you, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid expression notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the cup and the lip - what's bred in the bone. Still, as regards return, you were a lucky dog if they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed. Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against the man in possession and had to produce your credentials, like the claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne. Bella was the boat's name to the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in, as the evidence went to show, and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, Lord Bellew, was it? As he might very easily have picked up the details from some pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description given, introduce himself with, Excuse me, my name is So-and-So or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, Mr Bloom said to the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land first. 

-- That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor commented. She put the first nail in his coffin. 

-- Fine lump of a woman, all the same, the soi-disant town-clerk, Henry Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. I seen her picture in a barber's. Her husband was a captain or an officer. 

-- Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added. He was, and a cottonball one. 

This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair amount of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom, he, without the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest at the time when the facts, to make matters worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters that passed between them, full of sweet nothings. First, it was strictly platonic till nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them, till bit by bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of the town till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed however, who were resolved upon encouraging his downfall though the thing was public property all along though not to anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed into. Sino their names were coupled, though, since he was her declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the rank and file from the housetops, the fact namely, that he had shared her bedroom, which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same fashion, a fact that the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch with nothing in common between them beyond the name and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home ties. The usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married folk? Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he regarded her with affection carried away by a wave of folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly, augmented obviously by gifts of a high order as compared with the other military supernumerary, that is (who was just the usual everyday farewell, my gallant captain kind of an individual in the light dragoons, the 18th hussars to be accurate), and inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame, which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents and his beloved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head, much in the same way as the fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement, all seemed a kind of dream. And the coming back was the worst thing you ever did because it went without saying you would feel out of place as things always moved with the times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown Strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number of years, looked different somehow since, as it happened, he went to reside on the north side. North or south however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the very thing he was saying, as she also was Spanish or half so, types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds. 

-- Just bears out what I was saying, he with glowing bosom said to Stephen. And, if I don't greatly mistake, she was Spanish too. 

-- The king of Spain's daughter, Stephen answered, adding something or other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and so many. 

-- Was she? Bloom ejaculated surprised, though not astonished by any means. I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there it was, as she lived there. So, Spain. 

Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket Sweets of, which reminded him by the by of that Capel street library book out of date, he took out his pocketbook and, turning over the various contents rapidly, finally he. 

-- Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a fades photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type? 

Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large sized lady, with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion, as she was in the full bloom of womanhood, In evening dress cut ostentatiously low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than vision of breasts, her full lips parted, and some perfect teeth, standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano, on the rest of which was In old Madrid, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her (the lady's) eyes, dark, large, looked at Stephen, about to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin's premier photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution. 

Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donna, Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about '96. Very like her then. 

Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a singer having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered barely sweet sixteen. As for the face, it was a speaking likeness in expression but it did not do justice to her figure, which came in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the best advantage in that getup She could without difficulty, he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the... He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female form in general developmentally because, as it so happened, no later than that afternoon, he had seen those Grecian statues, perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry. All the rest, yes, Puritanism. It does though, St Joseph's sovereign... whereas no photo could, because it simply wasn't art, in a word. 

The spirit moving him, he would much have liked to follow Jack Tar's good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to speak for itself on the plea he... so that the other could drink in the beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the camera could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional etiquette so, though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for sunshine after storm... And he did feel a kind of need there and then to follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion. Nevertheless, he sat tight, just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear, however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not further increasing the other's possible embarrassment while gauging her symmetry of heaving embonpoint. In fact, the slight soiling was only an added charm, like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new, much better, in fact, with the starch out. Suppose she was gone when he?... I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the morning littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic) in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray. 

The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, distingué, and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the bunch, though you wouldn't think he had it in him... yet you would. Besides he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was, though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of make-believe went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with the usual splash page of letterpress about the same old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the newest stage favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about the whole business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising expressions, leaving no loophole, to show that they openly cohabited two or three times a week at some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the King's Proctor to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, nisi was made absolute. But as for that, the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor, who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course. He, Bloom, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when the thing occurred in the historic fracas when the fallen leader's - who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantle of adultery - (leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated into the printing works of the Insuppressible or no it was United Ireland (a by no means, by the by, appropriate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or something like that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation, reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though palpably a radically altered man, he was still a commanding figure, though carelessly garbed as usual, with that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture that their idol had feet of clay, after placing him upon a pedestal, which she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor injury from a nasty prod of some chap's elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a grave character. His hat (Parnell's) was inadvertently knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity) who, panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time, being a gentleman born with a stake in the country, he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for the kudos of the thing than anything else, what's bred in the bone, instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee in the shape of knowing what good form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and thanked him with perfect aplomb, saying: Thank you, sir though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the course of the day, history repeating itself with a difference; after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory after the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave. 

On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes of the cabmen and so on, who passed it all off as a jest, laughing immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another's arms drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones, with tears in her eyes, though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time, as quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed, and didn't make the smallest bones about saying so either, that man, or men in the plural, were always hanging around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life, and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, the cause of many liaisons between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt. 

It was a thousand pities a young fellow blessed with an allowance of brains, as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with profligate women, who might present him with a nice dose to last him his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the interim ladies' society was a conditio sine qua non though he had the gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump Stephen about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular lodestar who brought him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to whether he would find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship idea and the company of smirking misses without a penny to their names bi- or tri-weekly with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentpaying and walking out leading up to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him house and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother, was really too bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the elder man who was several years the other's senior or like his father. But something substantial he certainly ought to eat, were it only an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled. 

-- At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired though unwrinkled face. 

-- Some time yesterday, Stephen said. 

-- Yesterday, exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already tomorrow, Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve! 

-- The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself. 

Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence, Bloom reflected. Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything, a certain analogy there somehow was, as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some score of years previously when he had been a quasi aspirant to parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance, when the evicted tenants' question, then at its first inception, bulked largely in people's minds though, it goes without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle, at all events, was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession, as voicing the trend of modern Opinion, a partiality, however, which, realising his mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of, and even was twitted with going a step further than Michael Davitt in the striking views he at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he, though often considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though so far as politics themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word. 

Anyhow, upon weighing the pros and cons, getting on for one as it was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed unknown) with a lame paw, not that the cases were either identical or the reverse, though he had hurt his hand too, to Ontario Terrace, as he very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the other hand it was altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which of the two alternatives... Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity, all things considered. His initial impression was that he was a bit standoffish or not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he mightn't what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great personal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled into a pillow. At least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a toast on a trivet. He failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the grasswidower in question, who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn't appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties off Sheriff street lower would be the best clue to that equivocal character's whereabouts for a few days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids') with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to freeze the marrow of anybody's bones and mauling their largesized charms betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for as to who he in reality was let XX equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks passim. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his God being a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles, your God was a jew, because mostly they appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhere about in the county Sligo. 

-- I propose, our hero eventually suggested, after mature reflection while prudently pocketing her photo, as it's rather stuffy here, you just come with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the vicinity. You can't drink that stuff. Wait, I'll just pay this lot. 

The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the keeper of the shanty, who didn't seem to... 

-- Yes, that's the best, he assured Stephen, to whom for the matter of that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less. 

All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (Bloom's) busy brain. Education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to date billing, hydros and concert tours in English watering resorts packed with theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with the accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other things, no necessity of course to tell the world and his wife from the housetops about it and a slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his father's voice to bank his hopes on which it was quite on the cards he had so it would be just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in the direction of that particular red herring just to. 

The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers' association dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who appeared to have some spark of vitality left read out that Sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary's lodge or words to that effect. To which absorbing piece of intelligence echo answered why. - Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner put in, manifesting some natural impatience. 

-- And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed. 

The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears. 

-- Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the town clerk queried. 

-- Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of sea-green portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading. Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the dark, manner of speaking. The Arabian Nights' Entertainment was my favourite and Red as a Rose is She. 

Thereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what, found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched him, as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions, that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial remark. 

To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first to rise to his feet so as not to outstay their welcome having first and foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for the occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine host as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans) he having previously spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite to him in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d., confectionery do., and honestly well worth twice the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to remark. - Come, he counselled, to close the séance. 

Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear, they left the shelter or shanty together and the élite society of oil skin and company whom nothing short Of an earthquake would move out of their dolce far niente. Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and fagged out, paused at the, for a moment... the door to... 

-- One thing I never understood, he said, to be original on the spur of the moment, why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside down on the tables In cafes. 

To which impromptu the never failing Bloom replied without a moment's hesitation, saying straight off: 

-- To sweep the floor in the morning. 

So saying he skipped around nimbly, considering frankly, at the same time apologetic, to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the by, the right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on his pins. 

-- It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk, in a moment. The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a different man. It's not far. Lean on me. 

Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen's right and led him on accordingly. 

-- Yes, Stephen said uncertainly, because he thought he felt a strange kind of flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and all that. 

Anyhow, they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier, etc. where the municipal supernumerary, ex-Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming of fresh fields and pastures new. And apropos of coffin of stones, the analogy was not at all bad, as it was in fact a stoning to death on the part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings. 

So they passed on to chatting about music, a form of art for which Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made tracks arm-in-arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante's Huguenots, Meyerbeer's Seven Last Words on the Cross, and Mozart's Twelfth Mass, he simply revelled in, the Gloria in that being to his mind the acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else into a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the catholic church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or Bid me to live and I will live thy protestant to be. He also yielded to none in his admiration of Rossini's Stabat Mater, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers, in which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable sensation, he might safely say greatly adding to her other laurels and putting the others totally in the shade in the jesuit fathers' church in Upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with virtuosos, or virtuosi rather. There was the unanimous opinion that there was none to come up to her and, suffice it to say in a place of worship for music of a sacred character, there was a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole, though favouring preferably light opera of the Don Giovanni description, and Martha, a gem in its line, he had a penchant, though with only a surface knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned par excellence Lionel's air in Martha, M'appari, which, curiously enough, he heard, or overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of Stephen's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat. Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn't but launched out into praises of Shakespeare's songs, at least of in or about that period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter Lane near Gerard the herbalist, who anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus, an instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom Bloom did not quite recall, though the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their dux and comes conceits and Byrd (William), who played the virginals, he said, in the Queen's Chapel or anywhere else he found them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and John Bull. 

On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond the swing chain, a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground, brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Bloom was not perfectly certain whether he had caught a right the allusion to sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a striking coincidence. 

By the chains, the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual plucked the other's sleeve gently, jocosely remarking: 

-- Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller. 

They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not worth anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near, so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh, because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger, putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such a good poor brute, he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big foolish nervous noodly kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal's fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring the bees; whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator, tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke; chalk a circle for a rooster; tiger, my eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind, somewhat distracted from Stephen's words, while the ship of the street was manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the highly interesting old... 

-- What's this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging in medias res, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind. 

He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen, image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual blackguard type they unquestionably had an indubitable hankering after as he was perhaps not that way built. 

Still, supposing he had his father's gift, as he more than suspected, it opened up new vistas in his mind, such as Lady Fingall's Irish industries concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in general. 

Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air Youth here has End by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come from. Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled Bloom a bit: 

Von der Sirenen Listigkeit 
Tun die Poeten dichten.
These opening bars he sang and translated extempore. Bloom, nodding, said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means, which he did. 
A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons, which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily, if properly handled by some recognised authority on voice production such as Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain, command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate possessor in the near future an entrée into fashionable houses in the best residential quarters, of financial magnates in a large way of business and titled people where, with his university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the good impression he would infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains which also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his clothes were properly attended to, so as to the better worm his way into their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in society's sartorial niceties, hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate against you. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating in their musical and artistic conversaziones during the festivities of the Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he happened to know, were on record, in fact, without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have... Added to which of course, would be the pecuniary emolument by no means to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of time but a step in the required direction it was, beyond yea or nay, and both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little helped. Besides, though taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that, different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue, as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their genus omne. Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he could, with all the cards in his hand and he had a capital opening to make a name for himself and win a high place in the city's esteem where he could command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons of the King street house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so to speak - a big if, however - with some impetus of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped up a too much feted prince of good fellows and it need not detract from the other by one iota as, being his own master, he would have heaps of time to practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so doing without its clashing with his vocal career or containing anything derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. In fact, he had the ball at his feet and that was the very reason why the other, possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat of any sort, hung on to him at all. 

The horse was just then... and later on, at a propitious opportunity he purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying Into his private affairs on the fools step in where angels principle advising him to sever his connection with a certain budding practitioner, who, he noticed, was prone to disparage, and even, to a slight extent, with some hilarious pretext, when not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to call it, which, in Bloom's humble opinion, threw a nasty sidelight on that side of a person's character - no pun intended. 

The horse, having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted, and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall on the floor, which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking globes of turds. Slowly, three times, one after another, from a full crupper, he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she) had ended, patient in his scythed car. 

Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps, with Stephen passed through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping over a strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower, Stephen singing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad: 

Und alle Schiffe brücken
The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent. He merely watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black - one full, one lean - walk towards the railway bridge, to be married by Father Maher. As they walked, they at times stopped and walked again, continuing their tête-à-tête (which of course he was utterly out of), about sirens, enemies of man's reason, mingled with a number of other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind while the man in the sweeper car or you might as well call it in the sleeper car who in any case couldn't possibly hear because they were too far simply sat in his seat near the end of lower Gardiner street and looked after their lowbacked car. 


布卢姆先生首先把沾在斯蒂芬衣服上的刨花掸掉大半，把帽子木手杖递给他，正像个好撒马利亚人[1] 那样给以鼓舞，而这也正是斯蒂芬所迫切需要的。他（斯蒂芬）的精神虽还说不上是错乱，但不大稳定。当他表示想喝点儿什么的时候，布卢姆先生考虑到在这个时刻，连洗手用的瓦尔特里[2] 水泵都找不到，饮用的水就更说不上了。他猛然想出个应急办法，提出不如到离巴特桥左不过一箭之遥的那家通称“马车夫棚”的店铺去，兴许还能喝上杯牛奶苏打水或矿泉水呢。难就难在怎样走到那里。眼下他不知该怎么办才好，然而这又是个义不容辞、刻不容缓的问题。正当他在千方百计琢磨着办法的时候，斯蒂芬连连打着哈欠。他看得出，斯蒂芬的脸色有些苍白。他们两人（尤其是斯蒂芬）都已精疲力竭，在这种情况下，要是能找到什么代步的话，就再好不过了。他认为总会找得到的。他那块略沾肥皂味的手绢尽到掸刨花的责任后，就掉在地上了，他忘记把它拾起来，却用手去揩拭。准备就绪后，他们二人就一道沿着比弗街（或说得更确切些，比弗巷）一直走到蒙哥马利街角那座钉马掌的棚子和散发着强烈臭气的出租马车行那儿，向左转，又在丹•伯金那家店跟前拐弯，走进阿缅斯街。他原来蛮有把握，可不料哪里也看不到等待顾客的车夫的踪影。仅只在北星饭店门外停着一辆四轮马车，那也许是在里面狂欢者雇的。尽管向来不会吹哨，布卢姆先生还是高举双臂，在头上弯成拱形，使劲学着吹上两声口哨，朝那辆马车打招呼，可它丝毫没有移动的迹象。

处境真是狼狈啊。情况摆得很清楚，唯一的办法显然只好若无其事地步行。他们就这么做了。不久，他们来到牟累特食品店和信号所跟前，斜插过去，只得朝着阿缅斯街电车终点站走去。布卢姆先生裤子后面的一个钮扣，套用一句古谚，像所有的钮扣那样终于不中用啦。布卢姆先生尽管处在如此尴尬的境地，由于他透彻地理解事态的本质，就英勇地容忍了这种不便。他们二人都没有什么急事在身，适才雨神一阵造访，如今业已放晴，天朗气清。他们溜溜达达地从那既无乘客又无车夫、空荡荡地等候着的马车旁走过去。这时，恰好一辆都柏林联合电车公司的撒沙车开了回来。于是，年长者[3] 就和同伴谈起有关自己刚才真正奇迹般地捡了一条命的事。他们经过大北部火车站的正面入口，这是驶往贝尔法斯特的起点站。深更半夜的，一切交通自然均都已断绝。他们走过停尸所的后门（即便不令人有些毛骨悚然，这反正也不是具有吸引力的所在，尤其在夜晚），终于来到码头酒店，接着就进了以C区警察局而驰名的货栈街。在从这里走到贝雷斯福德街那目前已熄了灯的高耸的货栈的路上，易卜生兜上斯蒂芬的心头。这所坐落在塔博特街右手第一个拐角处的石匠贝尔德的作坊不知怎地引起了他的联想[4] 。这时，充当斯蒂芬的忠实的阿卡帖斯[ 5] 的另一位，怀着由衷的欣喜闻着近在咫尺的詹姆斯•鲁尔克都市面包房[ 6] 的气味，那是我们的日用粮[7] 的芬香，确实可口，在公众的日用商品中，它是头等重要、最不可缺少的。面包，生命的必需品，挣你的面包[ 8] ，哦，告诉我花式面包在何方[9]？ 据说就在这家鲁尔克面包房里。

路上[10]，不但丝毫不曾失去理智、确实比平素还更加无比清醒的布卢姆先生，对他那位沉默寡言的--说得坦率些，酒尚未完全醒的同伴，就[11]夜街之危险告诫了一番。他说，与妓女或服饰漂亮、打扮成绅士的扒手偶尔打一次交道犹可，一旦习以为常，尤其要是嗜酒成癖，成了酒鬼，对斯蒂芬这个年龄的小伙子来说乃是一种致命的陷阱。除非你会点防身的柔术，不然的话，一不留神，已经被仰面朝天摔倒下去的那个家伙也会卑鄙地踢上你一脚。亏得斯蒂芬幸运地失去知觉的当儿，科尼•凯莱赫来到了。这真是上天保佑。倘若不是他在最后这节骨眼儿上出现，到头来[12]斯蒂芬就会成为被抬往救护所的候补者，要么就成为蹲监狱的候补者；第二天落个在法庭上去见托拜厄斯[13]的下场。不，他是个律师，或许得去见老沃尔[14]，要么就是马奥尼[15]。这档子事传出去之后，你就非身败名裂不可。布卢姆先生为什么这么说呢，因为说实在的，他由衷地厌恶的那些警察，为了效忠皇上，简直就公然不择手段。布卢姆先生回想起克兰布拉西尔甲区的一两个案子，那帮家伙硬是捏造事实，颠倒黑白。需要他们的时候，他们从来也不在现场；可是城里像彭布罗克街那样太平无事的区域，到处都是法律的维护者。显然他们是被雇来保护上流阶级的。他还谈到用随时能射击的步枪和手枪把士兵武装起来，说一旦市民们不知怎样一来闹起纠纷，这不啻是煽动士兵向市民寻衅。他明智地指出，你这是在荒废光阴，糟践身子，损害人格。这还不算，又挥霍成性，听任花柳界[16]那帮放荡女人大笔大笔地把你的英镑、先令和便士骗到手，然后逃之夭夭。说起来，最危险的一点是你跟什么样的伙伴一道喝得醉醺醺的。就拿这个非常令人困扰的酒精饮料来说吧，他本人总是按时津津有味地喝上一盅精选的陈葡萄酒，既滋补，又能造血，而且还是轻泻剂（尤其对优质勃艮第的灵效，他坚信不疑）。然而他从来也不超过自己规定的酒量，否则确实会惹出无穷的麻烦，就只好干脆听任旁人的善心来摆布了。他用严厉谴责的口吻说，除了一个人而外，斯蒂芬那些酒友[17]统统抛弃了他，无论如何，这是医科同学对他最大的背叛。

“而那家伙是个犹大[18] ，”一直保持沉默的斯蒂芬说。

他们扯着诸如此类的话题，抄近路打海关后面走过，并从环行线的陆桥下穿行。这时，岗亭（或类似的所在）前燃着一盆焦炭，把正拖着颇为沉重的脚步走着的他们吸引住了。斯蒂芬没有什么特别的原因就自发地站住了，并瞧着那堆光秃秃的鹅卵石。借着火盆发出的微光，他隐约辩认出幽暗的岗亭里市政府守夜人那更黑的身影。他开始记起以前曾经发生过这样的事，或者听说发生过。他绞尽脑汁才忆起这位守夜人就是他父亲旧日的朋友冈穆利[19]。为了避免打个照面，他紧靠铁道陆桥的柱子那边走。

“有人跟你打招呼哪，”布卢姆先生说。

在陆桥的拱顶下悄悄地踱来踱去的一个中等身材的人影又招呼了一一声。

“晚安！”[20 ]

斯蒂芬当然吃了一惊，昏头昏脑地停下脚步，还了礼。布卢姆先生生来对人体贴周到！，又一向认为不应去多管旁人的闲事，所以移步走开了。他虽然丝毫也没感到害怕，却稍微有点儿放心不下，就警惕地停留在那里。尽管这在都柏林区是罕见的，然而还会有缺衣少食的亡命之徒埋伏在荒郊僻野处，把手枪顶在安分守已的路人头部加以威胁。他们可能像泰晤士河堤岸上那些饥饿的穷流浪汉似的到处荡来荡去，对你进行突然袭击，逼你交出钱来，否则就要你的命。把你抢个精光之后，还往你嘴里塞上东西，脖子用绳索勒起，把你丢在那儿，以便警告旁人，他们就逃之夭夭。

当那个打招呼的男子的身影挨近时，斯蒂芬本人虽宿酒未醒，却闻出科利[21]的呼吸发散着馊臭的玉米威士忌酒气味。有些人称此人作约翰•科利勋爵，其家谱如下：他是新近去世的G地区科利警官的长子。那位警官娶了洛什的农场主的闺女，名叫凯瑟琳。布罗菲。他的祖父--新罗斯[22]的帕特里克•迈克尔，科利，娶的是当地一位客栈老板的女儿，也叫凯瑟琳，娘家姓塔尔伯特。尽管并未得到证实，据传她出身于塔尔伯特•德•马拉海德[23]勋爵家。毫无疑问，勋爵的府第确实是座精美的宅邸，很有看头，她的妈妈或伯母或什么亲戚曾有幸在府第的洗衣房里当过差。因此，现在和斯蒂芬打招呼的这位年纪还较轻却放荡不羁的人，就被某些好事之徒戏称作约翰•科利勋爵。

他把斯蒂芬拉到一旁，照例可怜巴巴地诉起苦来。他囊空如洗，无法投宿。朋友们统统遗弃了他。这还不算，他又和利内翰吵了一架。他对斯蒂芬把利内翰痛骂了一通：什么卑鄙该死的蠢货啦，以及其他一连串莫须有的恶言恶语。他失业了，并且央求斯蒂芬告诉他，在这茫茫大地上，到哪儿才能好歹混个事儿做做。不，在那家洗衣房干活的那位母亲的闺女，跟女继承人是干姐妹；要么就是她们两人的母亲跟这一支有些什么关系。这是同一个时期发生的两件事，除非整个情节从头到尾完全出于捏造。反正他简直疲倦极了。

“我并不想向你告帮，”他继续说下去，“但我庄严地发誓，天主晓得我身上一文不名啦。”

“明后天你就能找到饭碗啦，”斯蒂芬告诉他，“去多基的一家男校当上一名代课教师。加勒特•迪希[24]先生。试试看。你可以提我的名字。”

“啊，天哪，”科利回答说，“我可绝不是当教师的材料，老兄。我从来也不是像你们这样的秀才，”他半笑着补充一句，“我在基督教兄弟会[25]的初级班里留过两次级呢。”

“我自己也没地方睡，”斯蒂芬告诉他。

科利立即猜想，斯蒂芬是因为从大街上把一名烂婊子带进了公寓，才被轰出来的。马尔巴勒街上倒是有一家马洛尼太太经营的尔客栈，可那不过是个六便士一宿的破地方，挤满了不三不四的人。然而麦科纳奇告诉他，在酒店街的黄铜头（听者依稀联想到了修士培根[26]），只消花上一先令就能舒舒服服地住上一夜。他正饿着肚子，却只字未提。

尽管这类事情每隔一夜（或者几乎是如此）就能遇上一次，斯蒂芬还是为之怦然心动。他晓得科利方才那套新近胡乱编造的话照例是不大可信的，然而，正如拉丁诗人所说：“我对不幸遭遇并非一无所知，故深知拯救处于厄运中者。”[27] 况且刚巧赶上月中的十六日，他领了薪水，不过这笔款项实际上已花掉不少。最令人啼笑皆非的是，科利一门心思认定斯蒂芬生活富裕，成天无所事事，到处施舍。其实呢。不管怎样，他把手伸进兜儿里，倒不是想在那儿找到什么吃的，而是打算借给科利一两先令，这样他就可以努把力，挣钱好歹糊上口。但是结果扑了个空！使他懊恼的是，他发觉自己的钱不翼而飞了，只找到几块饼干渣子。这时，他搜索枯肠去回忆究竟是把钱丢失了呢，还是遗忘在哪儿了--因为这种可能也是有的。这一意外事件非但不容乐观，老实说，还真令人懊丧。他试图追想模模糊糊留在记忆中的饼干的事，但已精疲力竭，无从透彻地弄明白。确切他说，到底是谁给他的呢，又是在哪儿给的呢，要么，难道是他买的吗、不管怎样，在另一个兜儿里他倒是找到了--在一片黑暗中，他以为那是几枚便士，却搞错了。

“是几枚半克朗硬币哩，老兄，”科利纠正他说。

果不其然。斯蒂芬借了一枚给他。

“谢谢喽，”科利回答说，“你是一位君子。迟早我会还给你的。跟你在一道的那个人是谁呀，我在卡姆登街的血马酒吧瞧见过他几回，跟贴广告的博伊兰在一起。你替我说个情，让他们雇用我好不好，我想当个广告人[28]，但是办公室里的那个女孩子[29]告诉我，今后三个星期内部已经排满了。老兄。天哪，你得预先登记，老兄，简直让人觉得是为了观赏卡尔•罗莎[30]哩。哪怕能混上个清扫人行横道的活儿做做，我都满不在乎。”

这样，两先令六便士既然到了手，他也就没那么沮丧了。于是他告诉斯蒂芬，在富拉姆船具店当帐房的那个叫作巴格斯•科米斯基的--他说是斯蒂芬的一个熟人，这家伙和奥马拉以及名叫泰伊的小个儿结巴颏子，是内格尔酒吧单间儿里的常客。反正前天晚上他喝得烂醉，撒酒疯来着。警察要带他走，他又抗拒。结果被抓了去，并罚款十先令。

这当儿，布卢姆先生躲在一旁，在离市政府守夜人的岗亭前面那盆炭火不远的一大堆鹅卵石左近踅来踅去。那位守夜人显然是个忠于职守的人，可此刻，既然整个都柏林都已入睡，看来也正自顾自地悄悄打起盹儿来了。他还不时地朝斯蒂芬那个无论如何也说不上是衣着整洁的谈话对手投以异样的目光，觉得他好像在什么地方见过那位“贵族”，但又说不清究竟是在哪儿见的。至于是什么时候，那就更一点都想不起来了。布卢姆先生是个头脑冷静的人，观察敏锐，轻易不落人后。从破旧的帽子和浑身上下的衣着邋遢，他看穿了那是个患慢性缺钱症的人。他大概就是揩斯蒂芬的油的家伙之一。说到揩油，此人对左邻右舍无不进行欺诈，越陷越深，可谓更深的深处[31]。说起来，街头的这种流浪汉万一站到法庭的被告席上，不管被判以能用或不能用罚款来代替的徒刑，都还算是很难得的[32]呢。反正在夜间，或者不如说是凌晨，像这样路上拦住人，脸皮也真够厚的了。手段确实让人难以容忍。

两个人分了手，斯蒂芬重新和布卢姆先生结伴。布卢姆先生那双饱经世事的眼睛立即看出，那个寄生虫凭着一番花言巧语已令斯蒂芬上了当。他--也就是说，斯蒂芬--笑着这么提到适才那番邂逅：

“那家伙可潦倒啦。他要我拜托你去向贴广告的博伊兰说说情，让博伊兰雇用他去当个广告人。”

布卢姆先生脸上露出对此事漠不关心的神色，茫然地朝着那艘陈旧的挖泥船--它被取了艾布拉那[33] 这一雅号，看来已无法修理了--的方向望了半秒钟光景，于是就闪烁其词他说：

“俗话说得好，每个人都有份内的造化。经你这么一提，我倒想起跟他挺面熟的。这个且不去谈它了，”接着，他又问道，“你究竟给了他多少钱呢？请原谅我这么刨根问底。”

“半克朗，”斯蒂芬回答说，“我认为，要找个地方睡觉的话，他得需要这么多钱。”

“需要！”布卢姆先生听了这话，丝毫也不曾表示惊奇，他突然叫嚷道，“我完全相信你的话，我敢担保他无论如何需要这钱。每个人都根据自己的需要或按照自己的行径而活着。然而，说句家常话，”他笑吟吟地加了一句，“你自己究竟打算睡在哪儿呢？走回到沙湾是根本不可能了。而且即使你这么做了，在韦斯特兰横街车站发生了那么一档子事之后，你也进不去啦[34]。白白地弄得筋疲力尽。我一点儿也不想对你指手划脚，可你为什么要离开你父亲的家呢？”

斯蒂芬的回答是：“去寻求厄运。”

“最近我刚巧见到了令尊大人，”布卢姆先生回了他一句外交辞令，“其实就在今天，或者说得更确切一些，是昨天。他目前住在哪儿？从谈话中我听出，他已经搬了家。”

“我相信他住在都柏林的什么地方，”斯蒂芬漫不经心地回答说，“你为什么问这个？”

“他是个有天分的人，”关于老迪达勒斯先生，布卢姆先生这么说，”不只在一个方面。他比谁都檀长讲故事[35]。他非常以你为骄傲，这也是理所当然的事。你也许可以回家去。”他委婉地说，心里却仍回顾着在韦斯特兰终点站的不愉快场面：另外两个家伙--即穆利根和他那英国旅伴，就好像那座讨厌的车站属于他们似的，显然试图趁乱把斯蒂芬甩掉，并终于让他们的第三个伙伴上了当。

然而，他这建议并没有得到回应。这是由于斯蒂芬正忙于在心目中重温他最后一次与家人团聚的景象。披长发的迪丽坐在炉边等候着巴满煤烟的壶里那稀薄的特立尼达可可豆[36]煮沸，好和代替牛奶的燕麦水一道喝。那是星期五[37]，他们刚吃完一便士两条的鲱鱼，另外让玛吉、布律和凯蒂每人都各吃了一个鸡蛋。那天正赶上四季大斋或是什么日子，根据教会在指定的日子守斋并节制的第三戒律，猫儿也正在轧液机底下吞食着一方块褐色纸上的那簇蛋壳和鱼头鱼骨。

“可不是嘛，”布卢姆先生又重复了一遍，“要是处在你的地位，我个人是不大信任你那位以向导、哲学家和朋友的身分提供笑料的穆利根大夫。他大概从来也没尝过揭不开锅的滋味，然而只要涉及自己的利益，他可精明到家啦。当然喽，你注意到的没有我多，然而，倘若有人告诉我，他出于某种动机，往你的饮料里投放一撮烟草或什么麻醉剂，我一点儿也不感到惊奇。”

根据他过去所听说的一切，他晓得穆利根大夫是个全能的多面手，绝不仅仅局限在医学方面。他在本行中迅速地出人头地。倘使所传属实的话，在不久的将来他就会成为一位走红的医生，诊疗费滚滚而来。除了职业上的这一身分，他还在斯凯利或马拉海德[38]用人工呼吸和所谓急救措旋使一个差点儿溺毙的人起死回生。必须承认这是一种怎样称赞也不过分的无比勇敢的行为。他对穆利根所感到的厌恶倘若不是纯粹出于恶意或嫉妒，骨子里究竟又有什么理由，就实在难以捉摸了。

“归根结蒂，他干脆就是大家所的偷你的思维那号人，”他试着步这么说。

眼下斯蒂芬愁眉苦脸。他出于友谊，就对斯蒂芬投以关怀与好奇交加的谨慎目光。然而未能弄明问题，确实一点儿也没能弄明。从斯蒂芬所吐露的意气消沉的三言两语来看，这个青年到底是被狠狠地捉弄了一番呢，还是截然相反：尽管已经看穿事情的本质，出于只有他自己才最明白的理由，却多少加以默认。这是赤贫必然导致的后果，完全可以理解。尽管斯蒂芬作为教师有着很高的才分，为了使收支相抵，他也吃尽了苦头。

他瞧见有辆冰淇淋车停在男子公共小便池附近。车子周围估计是一群意大利人，相互之间有点龃龉，正在操着他们那生气勃勃的语言，口若悬河，格外激烈地展开着舌战。

“圣母玛利亚的婊子，该给俺钱的是他哩！你敢说个不字吗？他妈的！”

“咱们把帐清一清。再添半金镑……”

“反正他不就是这么说的嘛！”

“恶棍！他祖宗缺了德！”[39]

布卢姆先生和斯蒂芬走进了马车夫棚，那是一座简陋的木结构房屋，以前他轻易下曾进去过。关于那里的老板--一那位一度以“剥山羊皮”[40]闻名的，也就是说，“常胜军”菲茨哈里斯--他事先悄悄地对斯蒂芬讲了几句。当然，老板本人并不承认确有其事，而且很可能完全是无稽之谈。几秒钟后，我们这两位梦游病患者就在一个不显眼的角落里安然坐了下来。先来的那些人正吃吃喝喝，海阔天空地闲扯着，显然都是些杂七杂八、胡乱凑在一起的流浪者、二流子以及其他不三不四的人[41]中标本。这时，就用凝视来迎接他们。在那帮人眼里，他们像是极能引起好奇心的对象。

“现在喝杯咖啡吧，”布卢姆先生试图打破沉寂，就委婉地这样倡议道，“我觉得你应该吃点硬食，比方说，一个面包卷之类的东西。”

因此，他的第一个行动就是以他独特的冷静[42]安详地点了这些吃食。二轮马车的车把式或搬运工人以及其他各类下等人都朝他们匆促地审视了一番，显然大失所望，就把视线移开了。可是，有个头发已花白了的红胡子酒鬼（也许是个水手）继续朝他们目不转晴地盯了好半晌，才把热切的视线移到地板上。

说实在的，布卢姆先生尽管对我要[43]的发音感到困惑，却多少懂得一些正在用来争辩的那种语言。于是，就行使言论自由的权利，针对仍在户外开展着的激烈舌战，对自己的被保护者大声说：

“美丽的语言。我是指用来唱歌的时候。你为什么不用这种语言来写诗呢、美丽的希[44]！音调多么优美响亮。美丽的女忍。我要。”

斯蒂芬百无聊赖，竭力想打个哈欠，回答说：

“让母象去听吧。他们在讨价还价哪。”

“是吗？”布卢姆先生问道。他边暗自想着，本来是绝不需要这么多种语言的，边接下去说：“让人觉得好听，也许仅仅是周围那南国魅力的关系。”

他们正促膝谈心[45]时，马车夫棚老板将一杯热气腾腾、几乎漫出来的美其名为咖啡的高级混合饮料摆在桌上，还有一个小圆面包--毋宁说是远古时代的品种，或者看上去是这样。随后他又回到柜台那儿去了。布卢姆先生打定主意呆会儿要仔细端详他一番，可又不能让他有所察觉……为此，他边以目示意，要斯蒂芬接着说下去，边悄悄地把那杯暂时可能叫作咖啡的玩艺儿慢慢往斯蒂芬跟前推去。

“声音是富于欺骗性的，”斯蒂芬沉吟了半晌，说，“就拿姓名来说吧。西塞罗、帕德摩尔。拿破仑，古德巴迪先生。耶稣，多伊尔先生。[46]莎士比亚这个姓与墨菲同样平凡。姓名有什么意义？[47]”

“是啊，当然喽，”布卢姆先生直率地表示赞同，“可不是嘛。我家的姓也变了。[48]他一边补充说，一边把那所谓的面包卷推过去。

红胡子水手一直用那双饱经世故、时刻警惕着的眼睛打量新来者，对斯蒂芬更是格外留意。这时就直截了当地向斯蒂芬问道：

“你究竟姓啥？”

这一瞬间，布卢姆先生轻轻地碰了一下伙伴的长统靴子，但是斯蒂芬显然不曾理睬来自意想不到的方向的温和的压力，回答说：

“迪达勒斯。”

水手用那双昏昏欲睡、松弛下垂的眼睛迟钝地瞪着斯蒂芬。由于贪杯痛饮，尤其是兑水荷兰杜松子酒喝得过了头，水手的眼泡都肿了。

“你认得西蒙•迪达勒斯吗？”过了半晌，他问道。

“我听说过，”斯蒂芬说。

布卢姆先生发觉其他人明显地也在偷听，一时感到茫然。

“他是个爱尔兰人，”那海员依然瞪着两眼，并且点点头，斩钉截铁他说，“地地道道的爱尔兰人。”

“爱尔兰得过了头，”斯蒂芬搭腔道。

至于布卢姆先生，他对整个这番谈话简直不摸头脑。他正暗自琢磨这一问一答究竟有什么联系时，水手自发地转向呆在棚子里的其他人们，说：

”我曾看见过他从肩膀上把摆在五十英码开外的瓶子上的两个鸡蛋射下来。左撇子，可他百发百中。”

尽管他不时地有些结巴，因而话就略顿一下，手势也拙笨得很，然而他还是尽力解释得一清二楚。

“喏，瓶子就在那边，相距足足五十英码。瓶子上放着鸡蛋。把枪托在肩上，扣扳机。瞄准。”

他把身子侧过来，紧紧阖上右眼，脸稍微歪扭着，然后以令人不愉快的表情瞪着夜晚的黑暗。

“砰！”于是他这么嚷了一声。

听众全都等候着，期待另一声枪响，因为还有一只鸡蛋呢。

“砰！”果然他又嚷了一声。

第二个鸡蛋显然也被击破了[49]，他点点头，眨眨眼，凶狠狠他说：

水牛比尔杀人魔，

百发百中神枪手。

接着是一阵沉寂。布卢姆先生出于礼貌，觉得理应问问他，是不是打算参加像在比斯利[50]举行的那种射击比赛呢？

“对不起，你说啥？”水手说。

“是老早以前的事了吧？”布卢姆先生刻不容缓地追问。

“喏，”水手回答说，这种硬碰硬的语言交锋倒产生了一定程度上的缓和，“约莫十年前吧。他跟着亨格勒皇家马戏团[51]周游世界作巡回演出。俺在斯德哥尔摩见过他表演这一手。”

“奇妙的巧合，”布卢姆先生含蓄地跟斯蒂芬打耳喳说。

“俺姓墨菲，”水手接下去说，“叫作w. B. 墨菲，是卡利加勒[52]人。你晓得它在哪儿吗？”

“王后镇的港口，”斯蒂芬回答说。

“说得对，”水手说，”卡姆登要塞和卡莱尔要塞[53]。俺就是那儿出生的。俺的小娘儿们就在那儿。她等着俺哪。俺晓得哩。为了英国，为了家园和丽人。[54]她不折不扣是俺自个儿的老婆。俺老是在海上转悠，已经有七年没见着她啦。”

布卢姆先生能够毫不费力地设想他出现的场面：逃出海妖[55] 的掌心之后，回到路边的水手家园---座窝棚里。那是酝酿着一场雨的夜晚，一轮月亮昏昏暗暗的[56]。为了老婆，横跨过世界。有不少关于艾丽斯•卡•博尔特[57]这一特定题材的故事。伊诺克•阿登[58]和端普•凡•温格尔。这里可有人记得盲人奥利里[59] 吗？顺便提一下，那是可怜的约翰•凯西[60]所写的深受欢迎却又令人心酸、音调铿锵的作品，结构完美的小小诗篇。做老婆的不论曾经多么忠实于外出者，一旦跟人跑了，就再也不会回来了。窗口的那张脸！想想看，好不容易才回到家，晓得了关于爱妻的可怕真相，感情触了礁，这时该是多么令人心碎啊！你再也没想到我会回来，然而我要住下来，重新打鼓另开张。守活寡的老婆还像从前那样坐在同一座炉边。她相信我已经死掉了，到海底深处坐摇篮[61]去了。傻瓜叔叔，要么就是“王冠与锚”酒馆老板汤姆金斯叔叔，身上只随随便便穿了件衬衫，大嚼着牛腿扒配葱头。没有椅子给爹坐。呸！刮风啦！她抱在腿上的是刚生下的娃娃，一个遗腹儿[62]。高啊高！兰迪，噢！我那乘风破浪的丹迪，哦[63]！这是躲不开的，只能屈从，苦笑着逆来顺受呗。我将永永远远热烈地爱着你，你那心碎了的丈夫，w. B. 墨菲。

那位水手几乎不像是个都柏林居民，他转过身来朝着一名马车夫央求说：

“你身上带没带着富余的烟草?”

被招呼的车夫不巧没带着，可是老板却从挂在钉子上的一件考究的茄克衫里掏出一块骰子大小的板烟，就由顾客们把它传递到他手里。

“谢谢你，”水手说。

他往嘴里塞进一口，边嚼边慢腾腾地稍微结巴着说下去：

“俺们是今天上午十一点钟进港的。就是那艘从布里奇沃特运砖来的三桅纵帆船罗斯韦思号[64]。俺是为了到这儿来才搭上那条船的。今儿下午发了工钱，就被解雇了。你们瞧，这是俺的解雇证书。一级水手w. B. 墨菲。”

为了证实这番话，他从内兜里掏出一份看上去不大干净的、折叠起来的证书，递给在他身旁的那位。

“你的见识一定很广喽，”老板倚着柜台说。

“可不，”水手回答说，“回想起来，自打乘上船以来，俺也环绕地球航行过一些地方。俺到过红海。俺去过中国和北美和南美。俺见过好多冰山，还有小冰山哪。俺到过斯多哥尔摩、黑海和达达尼尔海峡[65]。俺在多尔顿手下干过活，他可是个天下无双的沉船能手啊。俺见过俄国。葛斯波第•波米露依。俄国人就是这么祷告的。”

“不消说，你准见过不少稀奇古怪的东西喽，”一个马车夫插嘴道。

“当然喽，”水手把他那嚼了一半的板烟挪了挪位置，“俺也瞧见过古怪玩艺儿，有趣儿的和可怕的。俺看见过鳄鱼啃锚钩，就像俺嚼这块烟草一样。”

他从嘴里掏出那块嚼软了的板烟，把它塞到牙缝里，狠狠地咬了一口。

“嘎吱！就像这样。俺还在秘鲁瞧见过吃死尸和马肝的食人族。瞧这个。这就是他们。是俺的一个朋友寄给俺的。”

他从好像充作一种仓库的内兜里胡乱摸索一番，掏出一张带图的明信片，从桌面上推过来。上面印有：玻利维亚国贝尼，印第安人的茅棚。[66]

大家都把注意力集中在出示给他们的图片上：一群未开化的妇女腰间缠着条纹布，蹲在柳条编成的原始窝棚前面，在成群的娃娃（足有二十来个）簇拥下，边眨巴眼睛，让娃娃叼着乳房，边皱起眉头，打着盹儿。

“她们成天嚼着古柯叶，”饶舌的水手补充说，“她们的胃囊就跟粉碎机一样。再也生不出娃娃后，就把乳房割掉。俺瞧见过这帮人一丝不挂地正生吃一条死马的肝脏哪。”

足有几分钟，他的明信片成为这些没开过眼界的先生们注意的中心。

“你们知道咋能把他们轰跑吗？”他向大家[67]问道。

没有一个吱声的。于是他眨巴了一下眼睛，说：

“镜子。那会叫他们吓破了胆。镜子。”

布卢姆先生并未露出吃惊的神色。他只悄悄地把明信片翻过去，辨认那一部分已模糊不清的地址和邮戳。是这么写的：邮政明信片。A. 布丁先生收，智利国圣地亚哥市贝赤游廊。[68]他特别留意到明信片上显然一句话也没写。[69]

尽管他并不轻信适才所讲的那种可怕的故事（还有击落鸡蛋之举，不过，倒也有威廉•退尔的故事，以及《玛丽塔娜》[70]中所描述的拉扎利洛与堂塞萨尔•德•巴桑事件。在那次事件中，前者的子弹穿透了后者的帽子）。他看穿了水手的名字（假定他果真就是所自称的那个人，而不是在某地悄悄地使船调换方向，挂上别国国旗航行的话）与明信片上的收信人姓名有出入，再加上那个编造的发信地址，使他颇为怀疑我们这位朋友诚实[71]与否。然而看了这张明信片，他便不知怎地想起了在心里酝酿了好久、迟早打算实现的一个计划：星期三或星期六乘船远航到伦敦。尽管他从未远游过，骨子里却是个冒险家；只是由于命运的捉弄，迄今没出过海--除非你把霍利黑德[72] 之行也算作航海的话。那是他生平最远的一次旅行了。马丁•坎宁翰常说他要拜托伊根给布卢姆弄张免费船票，然而每一次总是好事多磨，泡了汤。即便立刻支付得出那笔必要的款子，让博伊德伤伤心[73]，只要囊中并不羞涩，其实数目也不大大，最多不过是两三基尼；而他指望着要去的穆林加尔的往返旅费，估计要五先令六便士。由于空气爽朗新鲜，旅行有益于健康，从各方面来说都舒适之至。对肝脏有病的人就更是这样。沿途可以看到普利茅斯、法尔茅斯、南安普敦[74]等形形色色的地方。这次富于教育意义的游览的高潮是观赏大都会（我们时代的巴比伦）的景物。毫无疑问，他会在这里再一次看到大加修缮的塔和教堂，富丽堂皇的公园街[75]。忽然间他还兴起另一个挺不坏的念头：何不筹组一次包括最著名的游乐胜地的夏季演奏旅行，前往各地漫游：马盖待[76]的男女混浴场、第一流的矿泉和温泉疗养地，伊斯特本，斯卡伯勒[77]马盖特等；还有景色优美的伯恩茅斯，海峡群岛[78]以及诸如此类小巧精致的地方。说不定还大有赚头呢。班子当然不是鬼头鬼脑临时东拼西凑的，更不会雇用C. P. 麦科伊太太那种类型的本地歌女--借我用用你的手提箱，我就寄张免费船票给你。才不是呢，而是最高级的，是爱尔兰首屈一指的名角会演，由特威迪- 弗罗尔大型歌剧团团长的正式夫人担任主角，足以和埃尔斯特•格莱姆斯[79]与穆迪- 曼纳斯[80]一比高低。这是十分简单的事，他对此举的成功充满自信。关键在于得有个能够在背后操持料理的家伙，能让当地的报纸给大吹大擂一番。这样，就既可盈利又能饱览风光了。然而，由谁来承担此职呢？嗯，难就难在这儿[81]。

此外，虽然不到具体实施的程度，他脑子里还浮现出一个想法：为了与时代步调一致，应开拓新天地，开辟新航路。恰当的例子就是菲什加德- 罗斯莱尔航路[82]。人们纷纷说，经交通省提出后，照例由于衙门冗繁的文牍主义，因循姑息，吊儿郎当，净是蠢才，至今仍在反复审议中[83]。为了满足一般庶民大众旅行的需要，这里确实给布朗- 鲁宾逊公司等提供了一个积极开展事业的大好机会。

正当普通市民确实需要加强体质的时候，由于舍不得区区两三英镑，就不去看看自己所生活在其中的大千世界。这位老古板自从娶了老婆，就一直关在家里。真是令人遗憾，一望可知是很荒唐的事，这在相当程度上要归罪于我们这个自负的社会，不管怎么说，真是岂有此理。他们每年要过上不止十一个月单调无聊的日子，在城市生活中受尽折磨后，夏季理应随心所欲地彻底换换环境。在这个季节里，自然女神打扮得格外花枝招展，一切有生之物无不复苏。在故乡的岛屿度假的人们也有同样的良机。这里有令人赏心悦目、有助于恢复青春的森林地带，都柏林市内外以及风光绮丽的近郊，不仅富于无上魅力，而且还能促进身体健康。有一条蒸气火车铁轨一直铺设到噗啦呋咔瀑布。还有威克洛那越发远离尘嚣[84]、对“爱尔兰庭园”[85]这一称谓当之无愧的所在。只要不下雨，那一带是供年长的人们骑自行车的理想田园，再有就是多尼戈尔的荒野，倘若传闻属实，景色[86]也极为壮观。不过，由于最后提到的这一地区交通不便，尽管此行可获益匪浅，前往的游客毕竟有限，收入也微不足道。相形之下，霍斯山凭借绢骑士托马斯、格蕾斯•奥马利和乔治四世留下的遗迹，以及遍布于海拔数百英尺高处的杜鹃花，使它成为男女老少不分贫富，人人爱去的地方。由纳尔逊纪念柱[87]乘车前往，只消三刻钟就可到达。尤其是在春季，小伙子们异想天开，故意地或偶然失足从崖顶上栽了下去，从而交纳了死亡的通行税。顺便提一下，通常他们总是踩空左脚。当然由于现代化的观光旅行尚处在幼年期，设备大有改善的余地。出于纯粹质朴的好奇心，他饶有兴趣地猜测着：究竟是交通造成路的呢，还是路造成交通的，抑或二者其实是相辅相成的呢、他把带图的明信片翻过来，朝斯蒂芬递过去。

“有一回俺瞧见过中国人，”那个勇猛的讲述者说，“他有一些看上去像是油灰的小药丸。他把药丸往水里一放，就绽开了，个个都不一样，一个变成船，另一个变成房子，还有一朵花儿。给你炖老鼠汤喝，”他馋涎欲滴地补充了一句，“中国人连这都会。”

也许是看出了大家面泛着将信将疑的神色，这位环球旅行家执着地继续讲他的奇遇。

“俺还在的里雅斯特瞅见一个人被意大利佬杀死了。从背后捅了一刀。就像这样的一把刀子。”

他边说边掏出一把跟他的性格十分般配、令人看了毛骨悚然的折叠式刀子，并且摆出刺杀的架势，抡了起来。

“在一家窑子里。是两个做走私生意的家伙你欺我诈惹起来的。那家伙就藏在门后边，从他背后凑了过去。像这样。‘准备见你的天主去吧！’[88]他说。哧啦一声捅进了他的背，只剩刀把露在外面。”

他耷拉着眼皮困倦地环睨着大家。看来在座的人们即便还有意问点什么，也会被他顶回去了。“这可是好钢啊，”他又重复了一遍，一边端详着那把令人生畏的短刀[ 89] 。

这一骇人听闻的结尾[90]足以把胆子最大的人也吓坏了。随后，他啪的一声插刀入鞘，将这把利器收进他那恐怖室[91]（也即是衣兜）里。

“那些家伙使起刀来可不含糊，”某位显然完全不谙内情的人[92]为了替大家解围，说道，“因此，由于‘常胜军’在公园里干的那档子凶杀案使用的是刀子，当局原以为是外国人下的手哩。”

此话一听就是本着无知乃至福[93]的精神讲的，布卢姆先生和斯蒂芬以各自的方式本能地相互交换了一下意味深长的眼色，然而是在虔诚而讳莫如深[94]的沉默中；他们随即把视线朝“剥山羊皮”--也就是店老板一一的方向投去。他正在那儿从开水壶里往外倒滚沸的液体。他那张令人莫测高深的脸确实是件艺术品。它本身就完全是一门可供研究的课题，非笔墨所能形容。他仿佛丝毫也不了解正在发生着的事。真是滑稽！

随后沉默了好半晌。有个人不时地读上一会儿满是咖啡污迹的晚报，另一个瞧着那张印有土著窝棚[95]的明信片，还有一个在看水手的解雇证书。至于布卢姆先生本人，则正在沉思默想。他清清楚楚地记起刚才被提及的那档子事，犹如昨天才发生的那么真切。那是二十来年前的事啦，打个比喻来说，是土地纠纷像风暴般席卷文明世界的年头；是八十年代初，说得准确些，八一年，那时他才十五岁。

“嘿，老板，”水手打破了沉寂，“把证件还给俺。”

这个要求照办了，他用指尖把证件拢在一起。

“你看见过直布罗陀岩石吗？”布卢姆先生问道。

水手边嚼烟草边颦蹙起鼻子眼，露出模棱两可的神色。

“啊，那儿你也到过啦，”布卢姆先生说，“那可是欧洲的顶端哩。”他认为这个漂泊者是去过的，并希望他可能想起什么来。对方并未使他如愿以偿，只是往锯末里啐了口唾沫，死样活气地摇了摇头。

“那大概是哪一年的事儿呢？”布卢姆先生插了句嘴，“还能回想起是哪些船吗？”

我们这位自封的[96]水手贪馋地大口大口嚼了一通烟草才作答。

“俺对海里的暗礁[97]腻烦透啦，”他说，“还有那大大小小的船只。整天价吃腌牛肉。”

他面呈倦容，闭上了嘴。发问者看出，从这样一个狡猾的老家伙嘴里是打听不出什么来的，就开始呆呆地驰想着环绕地球的浩渺水域的事。放眼望一下地图就能明白，海洋竟占地球的四分之三。因此，他完全了解：统治海洋意味着什么。说到这里就足够了。不只一次--起码有十二次--他曾在多利蒙特的北布尔附近留意到一个被淘汰下来的老水手。此人显然无依无靠，惯常坐在堤岸边上，靠近并不一定会引起美好联想的大海，十分明显地和大海相互瞪着眼，梦想着生气勃勃的森林和鲜嫩的牧场[98]，就像某人在某处歌唱过的那样。这使他纳闷老人为什么要这样。说不定老人曾试图亲自探索一下海洋的奥秘[99]，于是就从地球的一端拆腾到另一端，从海面闯荡到海底--喏，说海底并不大确切--就这样撞着运气。实际上，其中绝对没有任何秘密。尽管如此，即使不细微地[100] 进行调查，大海依然光辉灿烂地存在着这一雄辩的事实终归是无法否定的。一般总会有人大胆地违悖天意，继续航行。不过，这也仅仅表示人们通常是怎样挖空心思把此类重担转嫁给旁人。比方说，地狱这个观念也罢，彩票和保险也罢，都是同一性质的，因此，单凭这个理由，“救生艇星期日”[101]这一组织也是值得嘉许的。广大公众不论住在内地还是海边，一旦清楚地了解了，就应该感谢水上警察署长和沿岸警备队克尽职责。因为不论什么季节，爱尔兰期待每人今天各尽自己的职责[102] 等等。冬季有时天气恶劣，也非出发不可。他们得安排人去管缆绳，不要忘了那些爱尔兰灯船，基什[103]的，还有旁的。随时都有可能翻船。有一次他带着女儿乘船绕过它航行。虽然还说不上是狂风暴雨的天气，倒也饱尝了恶浪翻滚的滋味。

“有个伙伴跟俺一道搭乘‘漂泊者’号航海来着，”这位本人就是个漂泊者的水手接下去说，“他上了岸，找到了个伺候达官贵人的舒服差事。每个月能挣六英镑。俺身上穿的就是他的裤子，还给了俺一块油布和那把大折刀。干的是刮刮脸，刷刷衣服那样的活儿，俺也干得来。俺厌恶到处漂泊。眼下就拿俺儿子达尼来说吧。有一回他逃到海上去啦，他妈把他找回来，送他到科克的一家布庄去混口饭吃，不费力气就能挣上钱。”

“他多大啦？”一个听者问道。从侧面望去，这个人长得有点儿像市公所秘书长亨利•坎贝尔[104] ，给人以刚从办公室的操劳中逃出来的感觉。他当然没洗过澡，衣衫褴褛，酒糟鼻子一眼就看得出。 “唔，”水手有些为难似的慢吞吞他说，“俺儿子达尼吗？俺估摸着现在该有十八岁了吧？”

于是，斯基贝林出身的这位父亲[105] 用双手扯开他那件灰色的--要么就是脏成发灰的衬衫，满胸脯乱挠一气，看得出上面是用中国黥墨刺的一片锚状花纹。

“布里奇沃特那张床上有虱子，”他说，“没错儿！明后天俺可得去洗个澡。俺最讨厌那帮黑小子啦。俺恨那些坏蛋。它们把你的血都吸干了，它们就是这么样。”

他留意到大家都在瞧自己的胸脯，就爽快地把衬衫整个儿敞开来。这下子，在水手那古老的希望与安宁之象征上端，大家一眼就望到16[106]这一数字和一个小伙子微露嗔色的侧脸。

“这是文身，”展示者向他们解释道，“俺们由达尔顿船长领着出航，遇上风暴，是船停在黑海的敖德萨海面上的时候刺的。一个名叫安东尼奥的小子给俺刺的。这就是他自个儿：一个希腊人。”

“搞这玩艺儿很疼吧？”有人问水手。

然而这位仁兄不知怎地正忙于捏起自家的皮肤。就那样用指头夹住或是……

“瞧瞧这儿，”他边说边展示着安东尼奥，“他正在咒骂着伙伴呢。这会儿他又那样了，”他补充说。同一个人，明摆着只要用手指凭着一种特别的窍门儿把皮肤一拽，那张脸上就露出听了奇谈大笑着的神情啦。

其实，那个名叫安东尼奥的小伙子的苍白脸上倒真像是露出了不自然的微笑，这一奇怪现象博得了在场的每一个人充分的赞赏，其中包括“剥山羊皮”。这时，他正从柜台上探过身来。

“哎，哎，”水手低头望着自己那富于男子气概的胸脯，叹了口气，“他也走啦。后来被鲨鱼吃掉啦。哎，哎。”

他撒开了皮肤，刺上去的侧脸就恢复了原先那副普通的表情。

“刺得蛮精巧嘛，”一个码头搬运工人说。

“这数目字是干啥的？”第二个流浪者问道。

“是活着给吃掉的吗？”第三个向水手打听。

“哎，哎，”后者又叹了气，这一回稍微鼓起了点劲头，朝着那个询问数目字的人一瞬间露出一丝微笑，“他可是个希腊人哪。”

接着，关于他本人所诉说的安东尼奥之死，他以凄惨的幽默这么补充道：

他坏得像老安东尼奥，

撇下了我孤苦伶仃！[107]

一个戴着黑色草帽，面容憔悴，好像涂了层釉料一般的妓女从马车夫棚门口探进头来，斜眼望着。她显然是在替自己来巡风，目的不外乎是多捞几个进项。布卢姆先生简直不晓得往哪儿瞧才好。他惊慌失措，却又佯装出冷静。他马上移开视线，从桌上拿起一张出租马车车夫模样的人丢下的阿贝街报那张粉色的纸页[108] 。他拾起报纸，端详着纸页的粉色。可又自问为什么是粉色的呢？他之所以这么做，是因为这时他认出站在门口的就是头天下午在奥蒙德码头上瞥见的同一张脸。换句话说，也就是小巷子里那个半白痴的女人。她认得跟你在一起的那位穿棕色衣衫的太太（布太太），并且问有没有衣服让她洗。而且，为什么又要提洗衣服的事儿呢？这一点好像有些含糊[109] 。

你那些要洗的衣服。然而，为人坦率的他不得不承认，住在霍利斯街的时候，他曾为老婆洗过穿脏了的贴身衣裤，女人们要是真爱一个男人的话，也会愿意并且动手替他洗那些同样用比尤利- 德雷珀[110] 制造的不褪色墨水写上姓名首字（她的就是用这个牌子的墨水写的）的衣服。也就是说，爱我的话，就连我的脏衣服也爱吧。但是眼下他正感到焦虑不安。与其让这女人陪伴他，他更希望她离开。所以，当老板做了个粗鲁的手势打发她离开时，他由衷地松了口气。他隔着《电讯晚报》上端瞥了一眼她那张出现在门边的脸。她呆滞地龇牙咧嘴笑着，说明她有些心不在焉。她饶有兴趣地打量着围观船老大墨菲那特有的水手胸脯的人们，接着，她就消失了踪影。

“叫花子妓女，”老板说。

“这可叫我吃惊，”布卢姆先生悄悄地对斯蒂芬说，“从医学上说，那样一个由花柳病医院里出来的浑身散发着病臭的烂婊子怎么能厚着脸皮去拉客，而任何一个头脑清醒的男人，只要稍微爱惜自己的健康，又怎么会……倒媚的女人！当然喽，我猜想，她之所以落到这步田地，归根结蒂必是某个男人造成的。然而，不管原因何在……”

斯蒂芬并没留意方才那个女人，他耸耸肩，只说了这么一段话：

“在这个国家里，某些人卖出去的东西远比她所曾卖过的要多，而且还大有赚头。不用怕那些出售肉体、没有力量收买灵魂的人们。[111] 她可不擅长做生意。她贵买贱卖。”

那个年长的人尽管并不是个老处女或假正经，却说道：这号女人（在这个问题上，他丝毫不曾囿于老处女式的洁癖）是无法避免的危害，可是有关当局既不发给她们执照，又不要求她们做体检，真是可耻极了，必须即刻[112] 加以纠正。说实在的，关于这一问题，自己作为一家之父[113] ，从一开始就坚决主张这么做。他说，谁要是制定了这样一个方针，并彻底地诉之于舆论，就必然会使一切有关的人都受惠无穷。

“你作为一个好天主教徒，”他把话题转到灵魂与肉体上来，说，“是相信灵魂的。要么，你指的是不是才智和脑力等等，有别于任何外在事物，比方说，桌子或那只杯子？我本人是相信这一点的，因为有识之士已经诠释说，那是脑灰质沟回[114]。不然的话，我们就决不会有例如爱克斯射线这种发明啦。你也这样认为吗？”

被这么追问后，斯蒂芬在发表自己的意见之前就不得不让记忆力做一番超过常人的努力，试图聚精会神地回顾一番：

“他们根据最高的权威告诉我们说，灵魂是单一的实体，因而是不灭的。按照我的理解，倘非有可能被它的第一原因--也就是神--毁灭掉，它原本是可以不朽的。但据我所听说的，神是十分可能把毁灭灵魂也加在他那一桩桩恶作剧当中去的；而灵魂的自发的堕落和偶发的堕落早已被文雅的礼节排斥在外了[115]。

尽管就世俗的布卢姆先生而言，这番带有神秘韵味的妙论是多少过于深奥了些，然而他对这种思路的要旨还是完全默认了。不过，他觉得有义务对“单一”这个词提出异议。于是，就立即答腔道：

“‘单一’[116] ？我不认为这是个恰当的字眼。当然喽，我勉强承认，人们极偶然地会遇上一个单纯的灵魂。但是我迫切地想举的是这样一个例子：伦琴所发明的射线，或是像爱迪生那样发明望远镜；不，我相信比他还早，我指的那个人是伽利略。那样一种发明可了不起呀。比方说，同样的话也适用于像电这样范围很广的自然现象的法则。但是倘若你相信超自然的天主的存在，那就完全是另一码事啦。”

“啊，这个嘛，”斯蒂芬告诫说，“已经由《圣经》里几段最广为人知的段落确凿地证明了。间接证据就且不去谈了。”

然而由于两个人不论在教育程度还是其他各方面都像两极一样相距甚远，再加上年龄悬殊，双方的见解便在这一棘手的论点上发生了冲突。

“已经证明了吗？”两个人中间经验较丰富的那位固执己见，反驳道，“我就不大相信这一点。这是大家都有争论余地的问题；其中的宗派方面就不去牵涉了，请容许我跟你持截然相反[ 117] 的看法。坦率他说句老实话，我相信，这些鸡零狗碎多半都是僧侣们所捏造出来的。最大的可能性就是把有关我们那位国民诗人的大问题重新提出来，诸如培根乃是《哈姆莱特》的作者，那些剧本归根结蒂是谁执笔的等疑问。当然喽，你对你的莎士比亚远比我熟悉多了，我也就无需告诉你什么啦。顺便问一句：这咖啡你喝得下去吗？我替你搅和一下。再吃一片甜面包。这就像是咱们的船老大运来的砖伪装的。不过，谁也拿不出他根本没有的东西。尝一点儿吧。”

“不行，”斯蒂芬好容易才挤出这么两个字来，当时他的心灵器官拒绝说更多的话。

俗谚说得好：吹毛求疵是不道德的。布卢姆先生寻思，还不如去搅和或试图搅和那凝在杯底儿的糖疙瘩呢。他抱着近似刻薄的态度琢磨着咖啡宫[118] 以及它所从事的戒酒（而且利润很大的）生意。其目的确实是合理合法的，无可争议，禆益良多。他们目前所在的这种马车夫棚也是本着戒酒这一方针经营的，并且在夜间特为流浪者们开业。这跟有资格的人士为下层庶民所举办的音乐会、戏剧晚会、有益的讲演（免费入场）是同一性质的。另一方面，他怀着痛楚清清楚楚地回忆起，当年咖啡宫对他的妻子玛莉恩。特威迪夫人的钢琴演奏所付的报酬是何等微薄，而有个时期她对咖啡宫的营业起过举足轻重的作用。他深深相信，咖啡宫的宗旨本来就是行善盈利两不误，何况它并没有什么值得一提的竞争对手。他记得曾读过一篇报道，说某处一家廉价饮食店的干豌豆是用有毒的硫酸铜SO4[ 119] 或是什么东西染过的。然而想不起时间和地点了。不管怎样，看来对一切食品都必须进行检查，卫生检查乃是当务之急。蒂比尔博士的“维牌可可”之所以成了抢手货，多半还是由于它附有医学分析表呢。“现在喝一口吧，”他把咖啡搅和完了，就试着步说。

在好歹尝一尝的劝说下，斯蒂芬就攥着沉甸甸的大杯子的柄，从碰洒了一大滩的褐色液体当中举起了它，并呷了一口那难以下咽的饮料。

“不过，这仍不失为固体食品，”对他有好影响的这个人劝告说，“我是固体食品的信奉者。一点儿也不贪吃，独一无二的理由是：不论从事任何脑力还是体力的正常劳动，这都是不可缺少的条件[120] 。你应该多吃些固体食品。你就会感觉自己换了个人。”

“流质食品我倒是能吃，”斯蒂芬说，“可是劳驾把那把刀子挪开吧。我一看刀尖就受不了。它使我想起罗马史[ 121] 。”

布卢姆先生马上照他的指点做了，把那受指责的刀子拿开了。那是一把钝头、角质柄、普普通通的刀子，最不起眼的是刀尖，在一般人眼中，完全不会特别引起关于罗马时代或古代的联想。

“我们共同的朋友[122] 的故事就跟他本人一样，”布卢姆先生从刀子又顺便低声对他的心腹朋友说，“你认为那些是真实的吗？他可以通宵达旦一连几个钟头地编造那些奇谈，谎话连篇。瞧他那个样儿！”

尽管睡眠不足，海风又把那个人的眼睛吹肿了，然而生活中是充满了无数可怕的事件和巧合的。乍一听，他是信口开河，插科打诨，不大可能像福音书那样准确无误，但是那也有可能并非从头到尾都是瞎编的。

在这期间，布卢姆正审视着眼前这个人。自从盯上他后，布卢姆一直对他做着歇洛克•福尔摩斯式的侦察。此人虽然已经有点儿歇顶了，却保养有方，精力充沛；但是神情有些诡谲，令人想到会不会是个刑满出狱者。用不着费多大脑筋就能把这样一个看来怪诞不经的人物跟拆麻絮或踏车[123] 联系起来。说不定杀死那个对手的就是他本人哩。假定他讲的就是他本人的案子，谈起来却仿佛是旁人的事一般。换句话说，他自己把那个人杀掉了，将四五个年头的大好时光消磨在讨厌的狱中。关于用上文中所描述过的那种戏剧性的方式赎了自己罪愆的安东尼奥这个人物（这与我们的国民诗人笔下的同名剧中人物[124] 毫无关系），就不去提了。另一方面，他或许只不过是在那里瞎吹一通。如果是这样，倒还情有可原，因为任何一个老水手要是曾经跨越大洋航行过，一旦遇上地地道道的傻瓜，即都柏林居民，就像那些等着听外国奇闻的马车夫，都会情不自禁地吹起牛来，说什么“赫斯佩勒斯”号[ 125] 三桅纵帆船啦，等等。归根结蒂，一个人关于自己所说的瞎话，同旁人对他所编造的弥天大谎相比之下，恐怕就算不上什么了。

“你听着，我并非说那一切都纯粹是虚构的，”他继续说，“那样的场面虽然并不常见，偶尔还是会遇到的。巨人极为罕见，难得地碰上一次。还有侏儒女工玛塞拉。被叫作阿兹特克人的，我倒是在亨利街的蜡像馆里亲眼看见过几个。他们蜷着腿坐在那儿。你即便给他们钱，他们也伸不直腿，因为这儿的腱--你瞧，”他为伙伴简单地比划了一下，“或者你随便怎么叫吧，反正是在右膝关节后边--完全不灵啦。这都是被当作神来崇拜，长年那样蜷腿坐着造成的。这儿又是个单纯的灵魂的例子喽。”

然而布卢姆先生又把话题扯回到朋友辛伯达[ 126] 那可怕的历险上去。（辛伯达使他多少联想到路德维希--别名莱德维希。当迈克尔•冈恩经营欢乐剧场时，路德维希主演《漂泊的荷兰人》[127] 获得巨大成功，爱慕他的观众蜂拥而至，个个都只是为了听听他的声音。尽管不论是不是幽灵船，一旦搬上舞台，就跟火车一样，通常会变得有点儿单调了。）他承认那位水手所讲的本质上没有什么相互矛盾的地方。相反地，从背后捅一刀倒颇像是意大利佬的手法。不过，他仍然愿意坦率地承认，库姆街附近的小意大利[ 128]那些卖各种炸土豆片的自不用说，还有卖冰淇淋的和卖炸鱼的，也都不喝酒，是些勤勤恳恳、省吃俭用的人们。不过，他们也许太喜欢趁着夜间随手乱逮属于旁人的有益无害的猫[129] 族了。还把他或者她那不可或缺的[130] 大蒜抄了来，好在第二天人不知鬼不晓地饱餐一顿带汁的佳肴，并且还说：“来得真便宜。”

“就拿西班牙人来说吧，”他接下去说，“他们容易感情用事，像魔鬼一样急躁，动辄就用私刑，拔出下腹部所佩尖刀嗖的一下就清算你的一生[131] 。这都是那炎热的气候所造成的。说起来，我内人就是个西班牙人，那就是说，有一半西班牙血统。实际上，只要她愿意，她眼下就能够取得西班牙国籍，因为她出生于西班牙（就法律而言），即直布罗陀。她是西班牙型的。肤色浅黑，头发是通常那种黑色，眼珠子乌黑。我确实相信人的性格决定于气候。所以我才问，你是不是曾用意大利语写过诗。”

“门外头那帮暴躁的家伙，”斯蒂芬插嘴道，“为了十先令发起火来了。罗伯特偷了他的东西[132] 。”

“可不是嘛，”布卢姆先生表示同意。

“而且，”斯蒂芬直勾勾地望着，对自己或不知在哪儿的某个听着的人说，“我们还有但丁的急性子和与之形成等腰三角形的他所爱上的波蒂纳利[133] 小姐，还有伦纳德[134] 和托马索•马斯蒂诺[135] 。”

“这是血统的关系，”布卢姆先生紧接着说，“一切都受到太阳之血的洗涤。真是个巧合，就在咱们今天相遇--假若那说得上是相遇的话--之前，我刚好在基尔代尔街博物馆观看那儿的古代雕像来着。臀部啦，胸脯啦，都匀称极啦。在此地你简直碰不见那样的女人。兴许这儿那儿，偶尔有个例外。标致，对，你会发现她在某一点上好看，然而我指的是女人的整个体态。除此而外，她们大多对服装都没有什么审美力。不论谁怎么说，反正服装是能大大增加女人的天生丽质的。皱皱巴巴的长统袜--这也许是我的弱点，反正我最厌恶的就是这个。”

然而座中人的兴趣开始淡了下来，其他人就聊起海上的事故来，诸如船在雾中失踪或撞到冰山上等等。当然喽，船老大也有其独特话题。他说：他曾多次绕过好望角[136]，在中国海上还战胜过一种风--季节风。他说，在海上遇到所有那些危险时，他始终得到了一样东西的保护（他用的或诗是类似的字眼）：一枚避灾徽章，使他幸存下来。

随后，话题又转到船只因触到当特暗礁遭难的事件[ 137] 上去了。失事的是那艘倒媚的挪威三桅帆船--一时谁都记不起它的名字了。那个长得确实像亨利•坎贝尔的水手终于想起来了，船名“凡尔默”号，是在布特尔斯汤岸滩触的礁，成了当年全城人的话题--艾伯特•威廉•奎尔还以此为题替《爱尔兰时报》写了一首富于独创性的极出色的佳作。碎浪花冲刷着船身，成群的人们聚在海岸上，一片混乱，一个个吓得呆立在那里。又有人提起，闷热潮湿的一天，天鹅海港的“凯恩斯夫人”号轮船被同一航线上迎面驶来的“莫纳”号撞沉，谁也不曾给他们任何援助，全体船员丧生。“莫纳”号船长说，他担心自己这艘船的缓冲舱壁会垮掉。底层仓里好像并没进水[138]。

这时出了一件事。水手需要扬帆了，便离开了自己的坐位。

“伙计，让俺从你的船头横过去，”他对旁边那个正安详地悄悄打着盹儿的人说。

他拖着沉重的脚步，拙笨地慢慢走向门口，迈下马车棚外只有一磴的台阶，朝左边拐去。当他刚站起来时，布卢姆先生曾注意到，他两边兜里各露出一瓶看来是水手们喝的那种朗姆酒，为的是暗地里灌进他那灼热的胃。布卢姆先生瞧见他这会儿正四下里打量，并从兜里掏出一只瓶子，拔开或是拧开塞子，将瓶口对准嘴唇，咕嘟咕嘟地痛饮了一通，津津有味。布卢姆简直克制不住自己了。他机警地怀疑，这个老手兴许是被女人这一对抗物所吸引而出去做了一番军事演习的。然而这时那个女人实际上早已消失得无影无踪了。他定睛一看，才勉强辨认出那个灌了一肚子朗姆酒、精神随之而振的水手，正毋宁说是出神地仰望着环行线的陆桥桥墩和纵梁。当然自从他最后一次踏访，这里已大大地改建，面目一新了。看不见形影的某人或某些人把男子小便池指给他看，那是卫生委员会为了卫生而到处盖起来的。但是，过了一阵短暂的寂静之后，显然是对小便池敬而远之的水手，竟就近方便起来。他那泡舱底污水撒了好一阵子，看来迸溅到地上的声音随即惊醒了拴在那排待雇马车中一辆车上的一匹马[139] 。

醒过来后，一只马蹄好歹找到新的立足点，挽具丁零当啷直响。岗亭里，跟前正燃着一盆焦炭的那位市政府守夜人被吵着了。他衰弱已极，眼看就要垮了。他不是别人，原来就是前面曾提到过的冈穆利。如今他实际上是靠教区的救济金过日子。过去认识他的帕特•托宾[140]，十之八九是出于人道的动机，安排他在这儿当上个临时工。他在岗亭里翻来复去，来回改变姿势，最后才把四肢安顿在睡神的怀抱之中。他现在的境遇无比恶劣，真是令人惊异。他本有着最体面的亲戚，生来习惯于优裕舒适的家庭环境，一度曾挣过一百英镑年薪。当然喽，这个双料傻瓜竟把钱挥霍殆尽。多次狂欢作乐，如今是穷途末路，一文不名了。不用说，他是个酒徒，假若--不过，这可是个大大的“假若”--他能设法戒掉这一特殊嗜好的话，他蛮可以在一项巨大事业上获得成功呢。这又是一个教训。

这当儿，在座的人们都高声为爱尔兰海运业的一蹶不振而表示痛惜。不论沿岸航线还是外国航线都一样，二者是一而二，二而一。帕尔格雷夫- 墨菲的一艘船从亚历山德拉船坞的下水台被送了出去，而那是今年唯一新造的船[141]。果不其然，港口比比皆是，遗憾的是入港的船却一艘也没有。

老板说，这是由于船接连失事的关系。他显然是个知情人[142] 。

他所要弄清楚的是：为什么那艘船竟撞在戈尔韦湾内唯一的岩礁上了呢？而一个姓沃辛顿[143]还是什么的先生，不是刚刚提出戈尔韦港计划吗？他建议他们去问一下那艘船的船长--利弗航线的约翰。利弗船长[144] ，为了那天的工作，英国政府究竟给了他多少贿赂。

“我说得对吗，船老大？”他向那个悄悄地喝了一通，并另外干了点什么之后正走回来的水手问道。

那位大人物正把传入耳中那歌词的只言片语荒腔走调地低吼成水手起锚的调调。虽然整个旋律的音程都偏离了一两个音，可劲头却来得十足。布卢姆先生耳朵尖，此刻听见他好像正在把板烟（确实是板烟）吐出去。那么，当他喝酒啦解小手啦的时候，想必是把它攥在手心里的。灌下那流质火焰后，嘴里有点发酸。不管怎样，他总算成功地放水兼[145]注水了一通，然后又滚了进来，把酒宴的气氛带到夜会中，像个真正的船上厨师[146]的儿子那样吵吵闹闹地唱道：

饼干硬得赛黄铜，

牛肉咸得像罗得老婆的屁股。

哦，约翰尼•利弗！

约翰尼•利弗，哦！

为此感叹了一番之后，这位不容轻视的人物就登场了，回到自己的席位，与其说是坐，毋宁说是重重地沉落到为自己安排的坐位上。
“剥山羊皮”——假定就是那位老板——显然是别有用心。他以色厉内荏的申斥口吻，就爱尔兰的天然资源问题什么的，发泄了一通牢骚。他在一席冗长的论说中描述爱尔兰是天主的地球上无与伦比的富饶国家，远远超过英国，煤炭产量丰富，每年出口的猪肉价值六百万英镑，黄油和鸡蛋则共达一千万英镑。但是英国却向爱尔兰的穷苦人民横征暴敛，强迫他们付出惊人的巨款，并把市场上最好的肉掠夺一空。另外还说了不少诸如此类夸张的话。[147]接着，他们的谈话就转到一般的话题上，大家一致同意这是事实。“任何东西都能在爱尔兰的土壤里生长出来，”他说，“在纳文[148]”，埃弗拉德上校还栽培出烟草来呢。难道在任何地方能找到比得上爱尔兰所产的熏猪肉吗？但是靠犯罪行为取得的不义之财不论多么庞大，”他用渐强音[149] 蛮有把握地说——并垄断了座中的谈话——“强大的英国总有一天必然会遭到报应。破灭的日子终会到来，而且那将是有史以来最大的破灭。他断言德国人和日本佬也会俟机而动[ 150]。布尔人造成了结局的开端[151] 。英国徒有其表，已经摇摇欲坠了，最后会崩溃在爱尔兰手里。爱尔兰将是它的‘阿戏留的脚踵’。”他又就希腊英雄阿戏留那易受伤害的部位为他们做了一番解释[152]。由于他隔着靴子指了指腱在哪儿，就完全吸引了听众的注意，从而大家也立即恍然大悟了。他奉劝每个爱尔兰人说：留在你出生的地方，为爱尔兰而工作，为爱尔兰而生活。巴涅尔说过：爱尔兰连她的一个儿子也舍不得撒手。

周围的沉默标志着他的终曲。那位冷漠的航海者听了这些悲惨的信息，泰然自若。

“可没那么容易呀，”方才这番老生常谈显然多少惹恼了这位粗鲁朴直的汉子，他就回了这么一句。

老板被泼了一盆冷水，在崩溃等等问题上让了步，但依然坚持他的基本见解。

“陆军里最优秀的部队是哪几支？”头发灰白的老兵愤愤地问道，“跳得最高最远和跑得最快的呢？还有最优秀的海军上将和陆军上将呢？告诉俺呀。”

“要选就选爱尔兰人呗，”除了脸上的一些缺点，长得挺像坎贝尔的马车夫说。

“说得对，”老水手证实道，“笃信天主教的爱尔兰农民。那是咱们帝国的栋梁。你认识吉姆•马林斯[153] 吗？”

老板像对每一个人一样，随他去发表个人的意见，然而他又补充说，他对任何帝国都毫无好感，不管是我们的也罢，他的也罢。他并且还认为，没有一个为帝国服务的爱尔兰人不是吃白饭的。接着他们又恶语相加，火气越来越大。不消说，双方都争取听众站在自己这一边。但是只要他们两个人还没有互骂，以致大打出手，听者就都只是饶有兴味地观望这场舌战而已。

根据经年累月的内幕消息，布卢姆先生颇倾向于把上述见解看作是荒谬透顶的胡言乱语，嗤之以鼻；因为姑且不论他是否衷心企盼那样一种结局[154] ，对这一事实他总是了如指掌：除非海峡对岸的那些邻人远比他所设想的还要愚蠢，否则与其认为他们在显示实力，毋宁说是藏而不露。这种见解就跟一部分人所持的那种再过一亿年，爱尔兰岛的姊妹岛不列颠岛的煤层就将被挖掘一空这一堂吉诃德式的看法如出一辙。随着时间的推移，即便形势的发展果如所料，关于这个问题他个人至多也只能说：在这之前会接连发生无数偶然事件，对于引发这一结局将同样有着关连；尽管两国之间的分歧大得简直是南辕北辙，眼下总还是以竭力相互利用为宜。另外一个有趣的小问题（打个通俗的比方，犹如妓女和扫烟囱小伙子相好）就是爱尔兰兵替英国打仗的次数和与英国敌对的次数一样多，老实说，前者还更多一些。事到如今，又何苦来呢？这两个人，一方领有特准卖酒的执照，据传说是（或曾经是）有名的“常胜军”菲茨哈里斯；另一方显而易见是个冒牌货。双方的这场吵闹，尽管旁人丝毫并未察觉其中的花招，然而他作为一名旁观者，又身为人类心理的研究家，不由得强烈地感到，如果这是预先安排好的话，那就与好计没有什么两样了。至于这个承租人也罢，店老板也罢，多半压根儿就不是另外那个人[155]，他（布卢姆）理所当然地不禁感到，除非你是个地地道道的头号大笨蛋，否则就绝不要去理睬这号人。在私生活中订下一条金科玉律，绝不跟他们打任何交道，更不要牵涉到其阴谋诡计中去。因为总会有偶尔冒出个达尼曼[156] 前来行骗的可能性，像丹尼斯或彼得•凯里[157]那样，在女王——不，现在是国王——的法庭上供出对同犯不利的证据。这种事单是想想就令人厌恶。此外，他从原则上就讨厌那种为非作歹、罪恶累累的生涯。犯罪倾向从来不曾以任何形状或形式在他内心里萌生过（尽管仍不改初衷），然而对这个基于政治信念，真正拿出勇气举刀——白晃晃的刀——的人，他的确还是怀着一腔敬慕之情，但是就他个人而言，他是决不愿意参与进去的，这跟他不愿意被卷进南国那种由于情爱而引起的族间仇杀案中去是一样的。要么拥有她，要么就为她而上绞架——这种时候，通常都是丈夫为了妻子跟那个幸运男子之间的关系（丈夫曾派人监视那两个人的行动），跟她争吵了几句。他所膜拜的人儿竟在婚后与人私通[158] ，结果，他用刀子把她砍伤致死。这时他忽然想起绰号“剥山羊皮”的菲茨，只不过曾经替伤害事件的真凶赶过一辆马车而已。倘若他所听到的话属实，菲茨并没有实际参加那场伏击。事实上，司法界一位权威就是这么替他辩护的，从而救了他一命。不管怎样，而今这已成了古老的故事，至于我们这位冒牌的“什么皮”，显然活得太长，早已不再为世人所垂青了。他本该寿终正寝，或者上高高的绞刑架[159]呢。就像女演员一样，老说这是告别演出——绝对是最后一场——接着又笑眯眯地重新登台。这当然是天性喽，落落大方得过了头，完全不懂得节制什么的，总是扑过去咬骨头影儿[160] 。同样地，他极其机敏地猜到约翰尼•利弗在码头一带徘徊的时候，想必在“老爱尔兰”酒店的融洽气氛下唱起《回到爱琳来》等曲调，散了些财。至于另外一些人，不久之前他还曾听见其中的一个说起那句隐语来着，他告诉斯蒂芬，自己是怎样简捷而有效地让那个出口不逊的人闭上嘴巴。

“那傢伙不知怎么一来被惹恼了，”这位感情上虽受了严重伤害，但大体上性情还是那么平和的先生说，“是我说走了嘴，他喊我作犹太佬，口气激烈，态度傲慢无礼。于是，我就丝毫也没有背离事实，率直地告诉他说，他的天主，我指的是基督，也是个犹太人。他一家子都是，就跟我一样，其实我并不是。这话可把他难住了。温和的回答平息怒气[ 161] 。人人都看到，这么一来堵得他哑口无言。我说得对吧？”

关于自己口气温和地提出责难一事，他暗自怯生生地感到骄傲，把视线转到斯蒂芬身上，凝视了他好半晌。似乎表示：你的看法才错了呢。他的目光又包含着恳求，因为他觉得那也并不尽然。

“他们是族长们的子孙，”斯蒂芬用模棱两可的的腔调说，他们的两只或四只眼睛相互望着，“按照身世说，基督也罢，叫布卢姆也罢，或是不论叫什么名字，跟他们同族。[162]”

“当然喽，”布卢姆先生开始把话挑明了，“你得看问题的两面。关于善与恶，很难规定出严格而绝对的标准，各个方面的确有改良的余地。不过，人们说，每一个国家都有它该有的政府[163]包括咱们这个饱经忧患的国家[164]。但是在各方面多拿出点善意来该有多好。相互炫耀各自的优越性固然很好，可是谈不谈相互平等呢？对于任何形式或方式的暴力或不宽容，我都一概憎恨。那样做什么目的也达不到，什么反抗也阻止不了。革命必须按照预定计划分几个阶段进行。说起来，只因为有些人住在旁处并且操另一种语言就憎恨他们，那真是荒谬透顶。”

“值得纪念的血泊桥[165] 之战和七分钟战役[166] ，斯蒂芬支持他的看法，“斯金纳巷子为一方，奥蒙德市场[167] 为另一方。”

“是呀，”布卢姆先生表示完全赞成。他毫无保留地同意此话，认为讲得千真万确，而世界上到处都充满了这样的事。

“你把已经到我嘴边的话全给说出去啦，”他说，“彼此举出互不相容的证据，一片胡言乱语。老实说，闹得你几乎不可能……”

据他的愚见，所有那些会激起敌意的无聊的争吵都意味着代表斗志的乳突[168]或某种内分泌腺在作怪。人们错误地以为这就是为名誉啦国旗之类的细枝末节——其实，闹的主要是隐在一切事物背后的金钱问题：也就是贪婪与妒忌，人们永远也不懂得及时善罢甘休。

“他们把一切都归罪于……”他不禁说出声来。

他掉过身去，因为他们很可能……于是挨近了些，好不让其他人……万一他们……

“犹太人，”他像是道着旁白般地小声对斯蒂芬说，“被指控造成了毁灭。我有充分把握说，这完全不符合事实。历史——你听了这话，会不会吃惊呢？——彻底证明了当宗教法庭把犹太人从西班牙驱逐出境之后[169] ，那个国家就衰落了。而克伦威尔这个极其精明强干的恶棍，尽管在其他方面有不少过失，但当他让犹太人入境之后，英国就繁荣起来了[170] 。这是怎么回事呢？因为他们讲求实际，而且这一点已经得到了检验。我不愿意放开来谈……因为你读过关于这个问题的权威之作，况且你是个正统派……撇开宗教不谈，仅就经济领域而言，神父总是招致贫困。再说到西班牙。你已经从那场战争[170] 中看到了，并且跟充满活力的美国作了比较。至于土耳其人，那就是教义的问题啦。因为倘若不是相信死后能够直接升天堂的话，他们就更会惜命了——至少我是这么看。这是教区神父耍的花招，以便假借名义来筹款。反正我，”他怀着充满戏剧性的激情说，“就跟开头我告诉过你的那个鲁莽汉子一样，是个地地道道的爱尔兰人，而且我巴望看到每一个人，”他下结论道，“不分宗教信仰和阶级，都相应地[172] 拥有可观的收入，能够过得舒舒服服——而且不能小里小气地，每年的进项总在三百英镑左右吧。这是个关键问题，而且不难办到，那样就可以促使人与人之间更友好地往来。不管对不对，反正这就是我对爱国的看法。咱们在母校[173]上古典课的时候，不是一知半解地学过点儿吗？祖国所在地，日子过得好。[174] 意思是说，只要你工作，就能在那儿过上好日子。”

斯蒂芬一边喝着那杯毫无味道的所谓咖啡，一边听着这番老生常谈，目光不曾特别盯视什么。自然他听得出各种词句在变换色调，就像早晨他在林森德瞧见的那些螃蟹一样，它们飞快地钻进同一片沙滩上那呈现出各种不同颜色的沙子里[175] 。它们的窝就在沙子底下的什么地方，或者好像是那样。随后他抬头望见了说这话的那双眼睛，也许并没说，不过他听见了“只要你工作”这句话。

“把我免了吧，”他好不容易才说出这么一句，指的是工作。

话音刚落，对方那双眼睛吃了一惊，因为正如他，即现在暂时

拥有这双眼睛的人所说，或者不如说是他的嗓音所说：人人都应该工作，必须工作，大家一道。

“我指的当然是，”对方赶紧明确指出，“最广义的工作，其中包括文笔工作，那也不光是为了博得名声。如今为报刊写稿是最便当的渠道了。那也是工作呀，而且是重要的工作。归根结蒂，仅就我对你略有所了解的那一点点来说，既然你在教育上已经花了那么多钱，你就有权利提出报酬的数目，以得到补偿。你完全可以边研究你那哲学，边靠笔耕来糊口，就像农民一样。对吧？你们都属于爱尔兰，脑力也罢，体力也罢。两者都同样重要。，，

“按照你的想法，”斯蒂芬半笑着说，“由于我属于圣帕特里克郊区[176] ，简称爱尔兰，所以我才重要吧？”

“我认为还可以说得更深一些，”布卢姆先生含蓄地说。

“但是我觉得，”斯蒂芬打断他的话说，“爱尔兰之所以重要，谅必是因为它属于我。”

“什么属于？”布卢姆先生以为自己或许误会了，就探过身去问，“请原谅。很遗憾，后半句我没听清楚。什么属于你？……”

斯蒂芬明显地面带愠色，重复了一遍，把那一大杯说不上是咖啡还是什么玩艺儿毫不客气地往旁边一推，又说了一句：

“反正咱们不能变换自己的祖国，那么就换个话题吧。”

在这个妥贴的建议之下，布卢姆先生为了换换话题，就低下头去，然而大惑不解。因为他简直不晓得该怎样恰如其分地解释“属于”这个词，听上去毋宁说是有些模模糊糊。要是旁的什么谴责都会更清楚一些。不消说，由于刚才那阵狂饮，带有奇妙的辛辣味的酒气明显地上了脸，而清醒的时候他是从来也没这样过的。布卢姆先生把家庭生活看得无比重要，然而这个青年也许并没能从中完全得到满足，要么就是未能跟正经人交往的关系。身旁的青年使他感到些许不安。于是，就怀着几分惊愕悄悄地端详着这个青年，想起他刚从巴黎回来不久，尤其是那双眼睛，令人强烈地联想到他的父亲和妹妹。但这也没能解决什么问题。不管怎样，他想起几个颇有教养者的事例，纵然前程似锦，却过早地凋谢，刚萌芽就夭折了。除了他们本人，谁也怪不得。就以奥卡拉汉[ 177］为例吧，他是个半疯狂的怪人，他家道虽不算殷实，却有不少体面的亲戚。他胡作非为过了头，在种种放荡行为中，还包括喝醉酒后骚扰周围的人，穿起一身用褐色纸张做成的衣服（确有其事）来招摇过市。当他疯狂地游荡够了之后，通常就以陷入困境收场[178] 。然后只好在几个朋友的帮助下躲藏起来。下都柏林堡警察厅的约翰•马伦曾露骨地暗示要对他睁一只眼闭一只眼，以避免根据刑法改正条例第二条[179] 对他进行惩罚。被传讯者的名字照例是要提交给当局的，然而却不予公布，个中原因任何人只要稍微动动脑筋就明白了。简而言之，要是把几件事联系起来想的话，例如他断然未予理睬的6啦，16啦，安东尼奥又怎么啦，还有赛马骑师和唯美主义者以及刺青[180] 。七十年代左右，甚至在上议院刺青都曾风行一时。因为当今在位的皇上早年还当太子的时候，十分之一的上层阶级[181]以及其他达官显贵都一味地仿效君主。他回顾着那些声名狼藉者和头戴王冠者所犯下的一桩桩背离道德的罪过。就拿多年前发生的康沃尔事件[182]来说吧。尽管巧妙地掩饰起来，那简直是违反自然之举。恪守法律的善良的格伦迪太太[183] 曾对此狠狠地加以怒斥，不过，个中缘由跟他们自己所想的不大相同。妇道人家除外，她们相互间关心的总是一些无聊琐事，不外乎穿戴等等。喜欢穿有特色的紧身衣裤的太太们自不用说，每一个服饰讲究的男人也都必须通过间接的暗示来突出两性之间的差别。为了越发真正地刺激双方间的不道德行为，她就为他解开钮扣，他则替她解衣宽带，连对一根饰针也都不忽略。而那些连背荫处的气温都高达华氏九十度的荒岛上未开化的种族，对这种事一丁点儿也不在乎。话又说回来了。另一方面，也有依靠自己的能力从社会底层硬是闯进上层的呢。那凭的是天生的禀赋。先生，靠的是头脑。

由于这一点和进一步的理由，他觉得等在此地来利用这意料之外的机会是有益的，也有义务这样做，尽管他不能确切他说出究竟是为什么。其实，他已经为此闹了几先令的亏空，还是听任自己陷了进去。不过，交上这样一位见多识广、不同凡响的朋友，所得到的报偿可谓绰绰有余了。他觉得，头脑不时地受到这样的刺激是对精神的一种最高级的滋补。再加上他们萍水相逢，一道谈论，跳舞，争吵，同这些行踪不定的老水手，夜间的流浪者们，令人眼花缭乱的一连串事件都凑在一起，构成了我们所生活的这个世界的雏形浮雕。尤其是近来对“十分之一的底层阶级”[ 184]，也就是煤矿工人、潜水员、清道夫等等的生活，正做着精密的调查。他寻思，如果利用这段大好时光[185] 把这一切见闻都记录下来，是否也能交上菲利普•博福伊先生那样的好运呢？假定他能以每栏一基尼的稿酬写点儿不落寞臼（正如他所企图的那样）的东西的话。题目就叫《我在马车夫棚里的……》——对，《体验》吧。

刚巧他时边就摆着一份谎言连篇的《电讯晚报》粉色版体育特辑。他重新百思不得其解地琢磨着“属于他的国家”以及在这之前的字谜：那艘船是从布里奇沃特驶来的，而明信片可又是寄给A. 布丁的，要问船长究竟有多大年纪。他边动脑子边漫无目标地扫视着属于他那专业范围的一些栏目。“我等包罗万相之父，我等望尔，今日与我，当日报纸[186] 。”起初他有点吃惊，原来不过是有关一个名叫H. 德•拉博伊斯的打字机代理商或什么商人的报道。激战，东京[187] 。爱尔兰式的调情，付赔偿金二百英镑[ 188] 。戈登•贝纳特奖杯[189] 。移民诈骗案[190] 。大主教阁下威廉十来函[ 191] 。“丢掉”在阿斯科特赛马会上获胜，令人联想到在一八九二年的德比马赛上，马歇尔上尉[192] 那匹实力不明的“黑马”“雨果爵士”怎样以绝对优势一举夺标。纽约的一场灾难。一千人丧命[193]。口蹄疫。已故帕特里克•迪格纳穆先生的丧礼。

为了换个话题，他开始读关于永眠了的迪格纳穆的报道。他回想起那着实是一桩凄凉的送葬。

“今晨（这当然是海因斯写的喽）已故帕特里克•迪格纳穆之遗体已由沙丘纽布里奇大街九号住所移至葛拉斯涅文安葬。死者生前在本市素手众望，为人温厚，今患急病谢世，各界市民无不震惊，痛切哀悼。葬礼系由坐落于北斯特兰德街一六四号之H. J．奥尼尔父子殡仪馆所办理（这肯定是海因斯在科尼•凯莱赫的授意下写的），死者之亲朋好友咸往参加，送葬者包括：帕特里克•迪格纳穆（嗣子）、伯纳德•科里根（内弟）、律师约翰•亨利•门顿、马丁。坎宁翰、约翰•鲍尔eatondph 1/8 adordor douradora [194]（准是为了凯斯那条广告的事儿把蒙克斯叫了去才排错的）、托马斯。卡南、西蒙•迪达勒斯、文学士［斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯］[195]、爱德华•J．兰伯特、科尼利厄斯•T.凯莱赫、约瑟夫•麦克•海因斯、利.布姆、查•P.麦科伊、穿胶布雨衣的人以及其他数人。

利．布姆（姑且照误排的拼法）以及整个一行排得一团糟的活字固然令人十分懊恼，同时查•P.麦科伊和文学士斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯正因为缺席，格外引人注目，这是用不着说的了（穿胶布雨衣的人的事暂且不提）。此事可把利•布姆逗乐了，并指给那位文学士看，也没忘记告诉他，报纸上经常出现的那些荒唐可笑的错误。这时，那位伙伴正半神经质地试图憋回另一个哈欠。

“第一封《希伯来书》登出来了吗？”下颚刚一能够活动，他就问道，“经句：张开汝口，将汝脚伸进去[196]。”

“可不是登出来了吗，”布卢姆先生说。（不过，起初他以为青年指的是大主教，可接着又提到脚和口，这就与大主教不可能有任何关联了。）他总算使青年的心情安定下来，因而欣喜万分；迈耶斯•克劳福德终于处理这档子事的方式，又使他感到有点愕然。瞧！

当对方读着第二版时，布姆（姑且就用他这个排错了的新姓氏吧）为了解闷，时而隔三跳四地读上一段第三版所载阿斯科特赛马会上第三场比赛的消息。除了副奖一千金镑，对未阉割的小公马和小母马，还外加正币三千金镑整。第一名为F. 亚历山大先生所拥有的纯种马“丢掉”；它出自“即刻”的血统，五岁，九斯通[197] 四磅，斯莱尔产（骑手w. 莱恩）。第二名为霍华德•德•沃尔登所拥有的“馨芳葡萄酒”（骑手M. 坎农），第三名为w. 巴斯先生所拥有的“ 权杖”。在“馨芳葡萄酒”身上所下赌注为以五博四，“丢掉”为以二十博一（最高数）。“丢掉”和“馨芳葡萄酒”并肩而驰，难以预料哪匹马会赢。随后这匹没有获胜希望的“黑马”竟冲向前去，遥遥领先；在二英里半的赛程中，击败了霍华德•德•沃尔登勋爵的栗色公马和w. 巴斯先生的赤褐毛小母马。优胜马的调马师是布雷恩。这么看来，利内翰对此次马赛的估计就纯属无稽之谈了，有把握地担保说是以一马身的距离赢的，多么聪明啊。除了一千英镑，还外加正币三千英镑[198] 整。参赛的还有J．德•布雷蒙德的马克西穆姆二世（班塔姆•莱昂斯热衷于打听这匹法国马的情况，至今它还没赢过，可是随时都可能获胜）。可以通过各种途径取得成功。调情的赔偿金。然而莱昂斯这个楞头楞脑的家伙，过于急躁，忽然改变了主意，最后赔个精光[199] 。当然，赌博显然容易发生这样的事态。结果出来后，可怜的傻子没有多少理由来庆幸自己的选择。那原是孤注一掷。最终不过是瞎猜一气而已。

“所有的迹象都表明，到头来他们是会这样的，”布卢姆先生说。

“谁呀？”另一位说。顺便提一句，他的手受伤了。

一天早晨打开报纸一看，马车夫蛮有把握他说，上面会登着《巴涅尔回国》这么一篇报道。他们愿意拿什么跟他赌都成。一天晚上，有个都柏林步兵连队的士兵到这个棚子里来了，说他曾经在南非看到过巴涅尔。他的命就葬送在自尊心上了。出了第十五号委员室那档子事[200] 之后，他本该要么自杀，要么就去隐蔽一个时期，直到恢复正常，再也没有人能够指责他为止。等他一旦恢复了理智，他们个个就都会前来在他跟前下跪，央求他复职。他并没有死。只不过是潜伏在什么地方呢。他们运来的灵柩[201] 装满了石头。他改名换姓，成了布尔将军德威特。他跟教会的僧侣们斗[202] ，那是失策了，等等。

不管怎样，布卢姆（还是用他的正式姓氏吧）对他们这些回忆感到相当吃惊，因为十之八九都是些用成桶的焦油泄愤的问题[203] ，况且不只一桩，而是好几千起，又过了二十多年[ 204]，早已经遗忘殆尽。至于“石头”的说法，那当然更是捕风捉影了。即便有这么回事，考虑到各方面的情况，他也绝不会认为回国是妥善之举。巴涅尔之死显然使他们悲愤不已。要么是因为正当他的各种政治计划臻于完成的节骨眼儿上，却因患急性肺炎而一命呜呼；要么就是因为像大家所风闻的，他浑身淋得精湿之后疏忽了，没有换靴子和衣服，因而患了感冒。他又没请专科医生诊治，却把自己关在屋里，终于不出两周就在世人的惋惜中死去了。要么也十分有可能是由于他们发现这么一来自己手中的工作就被剥夺了，因而灰心丧气。当然，就连他在这之前的活动也无人知晓，关于他的行踪，丝毫没有线索。即使在他开始使用福克斯啦、斯图尔特[205]等等化名之前，就已完全是“艾丽斯，你在那里？”[206]式的了。因此，他的马车夫朋友所散布的那些话，也未尝不可能哩。毫无疑问，他天生是位领袖人材，回国的念头自自然然地会折磨着他。他仪表堂堂，身高六英尺……脱了鞋起码也还有五英尺十或十一英寸。而某人以及某某人等[208] 不但跟这样一位前任比起来有云泥之差，而在旁的方面又无可弥补，却飞扬跋扈。他们这位偶像的脚是泥土做的[209] ，实在是个痛切的教训。从此，原来在他周围的那七十二名忠实的支持者就互相诬蔑诽谤起来，所使用的手法与凶手没有两样。请你务必回来——萦绕心头的思乡之情在吸引着你——并让那些临时替角看看正角的演技吧。就在他们砸毁《不可压制报）——也许是《爱尔兰联合报》[210] 吧——的活字盘那个场合，布卢姆曾交了个好运：见到过巴涅尔一次。他衷心感谢自己有此荣幸。事实是，当巴涅尔的大礼帽被击落后，布卢姆把它捡起，递了过去。尽管上述小小灾难使巴涅尔功亏一篑[211] ，他依旧神色坦然；不过，内心无疑是激动的，还是说了声。“谢谢你”——这是出于渗透到他骨子里的习性。至于回国嘛，要是你刚一回来他们没有马上嗾使骾狗跟踪你，你就算幸运了。接着，照例会发生一连串纠缠不清的事儿：诸如汤姆赞成你而迪克和哈里反对你之类。于是，首先就得对付目前的财产占有者，必须拿出自己的各种身分证件，就像蒂奇伯恩案中的被告那样。名字叫罗杰. 查尔斯•蒂奇伯恩。据他所知，嗣子所乘的那艘沉船名叫“贝拉”号，后来也得到了证实；身上还有黥墨呢，贝柳勋爵，对吗[212]？这位原告很容易就能从同船的哪个伙伴口中东拼西凑地打听出些细节。一旦做到能自圆其说，不至于露出破绽，就自我介绍说“对不起，我名叫某某”，或是这类套话。“更谨慎的做法是，”布卢姆先生对身旁那个人说，他喜怒哀乐不形于色，事实上挺像他们所正议论着的那位显赫人物，“首先得摸清事物的来龙去脉。”

“都是那条母狗，那个英国婊子[213]要了他的命，”偷卖漏税酒的店老板说，“是她把第一颗钉子钉进他的棺材的。”

“不管怎样，反正是个漂亮的大块头，”这位自封的市公所秘书长亨利•坎贝尔[214]说，“而且丰满得很。俺在一家理发馆瞧见过她的照片。她丈夫是个上尉，总归是个军官。”

“可不是嘛，”“剥山羊皮”凑趣地补充了一句，“他是，而且还是个装腔作势的。”

这样一个滑稽人物无端地冒到话题中来，四下里[215]引起一片哄笑声。至于布卢姆，他连一丝笑意也没有。他只是定晴望着门口，回忆着当时曾唤起不同寻常的好奇心的那桩历史事件。连双方交换的那些通篇是甜蜜空话的一封封情书也被公诸于世，以致使事态更加恶化[216]。 起初他们的确是纯精神的恋爱，后来出于生理本能，二人就发生了关系，逐渐达到高潮，成为街头巷尾的话题。最后就是那个致命打击的到来。对于为数不少的居心险恶、执意要使他垮台的人们来说，那可是个求之不得的消息。此事一直是个公开的秘密，然而并没有达到后来渲染成的那样耸人听闻的程度。既然他们二人的名字已经连结在一起，既然她已经公开承认他是她的心上人，还有什么必要从房顶上来向民众宣布呢？这里指的是他和她同床共寝过的事。当这件事在证人席上经过宣誓被公布出来时，座无虚席的法庭上是一片紧张气氛，所有在场的人都为之震动了。证人们宣誓后说，他们曾目睹他在某月某日身穿睡衣靠一把梯子从楼上一间屋子里爬了出来，他是用同一方式爬进去的。此事张扬出去之后，使几家周刊着实发了一笔横财。其实这案情很简单，不过是做丈夫的未能尽到责任。他们夫妻之间除却名义之外，别无任何共同点。这时，走来一个真正的男子汉，强壮得几乎成了其弱点。此人为妖妇的魅力所迷惑，就忘记了家庭的羁绊[217]。通常的结局是：沐浴在所爱之人的微笑中。不消说，永远存在于夫妇生活中的那个问题就出现了。倘若插进了一个第三者，夫妻之间还能有真正的爱情吗？［难题。][218]然而要是这个男子在一股痴情的推动下对她怀起满腔爱情，又与公众何干？与另外那个预备役陆军军官（即轻骑兵，说得确切些，第十八骑兵队的一员；是“再见吧，我豪侠的上尉”[219]那样一种极其平庸的类型）相形之下，他确实是位男子大丈夫中的杰出楷模，加以禀赋极高，更是相得益彰。毫无疑问，他（这里指的是已垮台的领袖，而不是另外那个人）有着独特的火暴性子，而她作为一个女人，当然一眼就看得出，并认为惟其如此，他才名扬天下。正当大功即将告成之际，全体司铎、牧师[220] ，往昔那些坚定可靠的拥护者，以及他所爱护过的被剥夺了土地的佃户们——他曾在本国乡村以超过其任何乐观期望的劲头替这些佃户辩护，勇往直前为之效劳，而这些人却为了婚姻问题一举把他搞垮，犹如把炭火堆在他的头上，简直就像寓言中那头被踢上一脚的驴[221]而今回顾一下往事，追想事情的整个经过，一切都恍如一场梦。至于回来，那更是你毕生最大的失策，因为那样你自然会感到事过境迁，形势起了变化。布卢姆先生回忆，自从他搬到北边去住，看来爱尔兰区岸滩这一带好像有些不同了。北也罢，南也罢，纯粹是那曾经引起激情的案子使形势大大逆转。那个女的也是西班牙人，或有一半西班牙血统；也是那种一不做二不休的人，一味听任南国的热情肆意奔放，一切脸面礼仪统统弃之不顾。这刚好证实了他正说着的话。

“刚好证实了我正说着的话，”他心里热乎乎地对斯蒂芬说，“要是我没弄错的话，她也是个西班牙人哩。”

“西班牙国王的女儿[ 222] ，”斯蒂芬回答说，又乱七八糟地补充了几句：什么“西班牙葱头们，你们好，再见”，“第一片国土叫作‘空酒瓶’”，“从拉姆岬角到锡利有多少”什么的[223]。

“她是吗？”布卢姆叫了一声，并未感到震惊，只不过出其不意而已。“我可从来没听说过这个传闻。不过有可能，尤其是她在那儿住过[224] 嘛。这就是西班牙。”

他小心翼翼地藏着那本《……的快乐》[225]，从而联想起卡佩尔图书馆那本已过了期限的书。他掏出皮夹子，匆匆翻着里面装的各种东西；终于……

“顺便问一声，你认为，”他细心地选出一幅褪色的照片，撂在桌子上，“这是西班亚型的吗？”

经对方这么明确地一说，斯蒂芬就低头端详起照片来。那是个高大丰腴的女人，风华正茂，充分散发出肉体的魅力。她身着夜礼服，炫耀般地将脖领儿开得低低的，尽量突出那对轮廓鲜明的乳房。饱满的嘴唇是张着的，露出几颗皎齿，显得蛮庄重地伫立在钢琴旁边。乐谱架上摆着挺好听的民歌《在古老的马德里》[226]的乐谱，当时正流行的。她（那位夫人）一双又黑又大的眼睛望着斯蒂芬，而他呢，面对着这么个值得赞美的尤物，快要笑逐颜开了。这幅供审美家欣赏的杰作是出自都柏林首屈一指的摄影艺术家、西莫兰街的拉斐特[227]之手。

“这是我的妻子，布卢姆太太。首席女歌手[228]玛莉恩•特威迪夫人，”布卢姆解释道，“还是几年前照的呢。大约是一八九六年。这幅照照得很像当年的她本人。”

他挨着这位青年，一道审视这位如今已成为他的正式妻子的女人的照片，并且坦率地告诉他说：她是布赖恩•特威迪鼓手长的女儿，很有教养，从小就对声乐有非凡的素质，刚刚芳龄二八[229] 就登台同听众见面。至于容貌，照片上倒是把表情照得栩栩如生，只是身姿方面却委屈了她。平素她是极为引人注目的，但是这样一装扮，她的身段就没有充分显示出来。他说，那一次她要是拍幅全身照，就更上相了，丰满的曲线[230]自不在话下。他除了本行之外，对艺术也沾点边，有时从发展方面看妇女的体态，因为头天下午，他在国立博物馆刚巧看到了作为完美艺术作品的希腊雕像。可以用大理石把原物如实地再现出来；肩膀，背，整个形体的匀称美。其余的一切呢，是啊，就像清教徒那么拘谨。大理石就是这样的。凭着至尊的圣若瑟发誓……然而那是任何照片也无法做到的，因为一句话，那根本不是艺术。

他在兴头儿上，颇想学学水手的好榜样，借口要……把照片稍微撂上几分钟，听任它发挥魅力，那么对方就可以独自陶醉于对美人儿的欣赏中了。尽管照相机丝毫未能充分再现她的舞台形象，然而说实在的，就它本身而言，也颇足以饱观赏者的眼福了。但是作为一个文化人，这会儿离座简直不符合礼节，今天晚上舒适暖和，然而就季节而论，又十分凉爽，因为一场暴雨之后，阳光……这当儿他感到一种需求，好像有个内在的声音，要他学着样儿出去走动走动，满足一下可能的欲望。尽管如此，他依然端坐在那里，瞅着那张丰满的曲线起了皱折、稍带点污迹的照片，然而它并未由于陈旧而变得逊色。为了不至于进一步增添对方在掂掇她那隆起的丰腴[231] 胸脯的匀称美时可能感到的窘迫，他体贴入微地把视线移开了。事实上，那一点点污迹反而添加了魅力，就像稍微脏了一点的亚麻布就跟崭新的一样好，不，由于上面那层浆没有了，毋宁说是比新的还强得多。倘若他……的时候她出去了呢？“我在找那盏灯，她告诉我说”，这句歌词[232] 浮现到他的脑际。但这个念头只是一闪而过，因为此刻他又回想起早晨那张凌乱的床铺等等，以及写着“遇见了他尖头胶皮管”[233]（原话）的那本关于鲁碧的书[234]。 它恰好掉在卧室用尿盆旁边了，对原书作者林德利•穆雷，可说是不恭之至[235]。

他呆在这青年身边，的确感到高兴。受过教育，风度高雅，[236]而且还容易感情用事，是他们那群人当中的尖子。不过，你不会想到他有这方面的……不，你是会想到的。何况他还说照片蛮好看。不论谁怎么说，就是好看，尽管现在她明显地发福了。可那又有什么不好呢？关于那类事件，流传着大量莫须有的胡说八道，给当事人的一生带来污名。报纸上硬说某某高尔夫球职业选手或新近在舞台上红起来的明星有什么暧昧行为。对夫妻间司空见惯的纠纷，不是公正诚实地报道其真相，却照例添枝加叶、耸人听闻地渲染一番：他们怎样命中注定相遇的，又怎样相爱上的，从而使两人的名字在公众心目中被联系起来。连他们的信件都拿到法庭上去宣读，满纸都是通常那些感伤的、有失体面的语句，使他们没有开脱的余地。说明了他们在一家著名的海滨旅馆每周公开同居两三次，按正常趋势他们的关系越来越亲密了。随后就是非绝对的[237]离婚判决，代诉人试图提出反对的理由，但未能推翻原判，非绝对的遂成为绝对的。至于那两个行为不端者就彼此沉溺在爱恋中，漠然无视这一判决。最后此案被交到事务律师手里，他代理受到不利的判决的当事者按照程序递上一份诉状。当他（布）[238] 沐浴在挨近爱琳的无冕之王这一光荣中时，这一事件和那桩历史性骚动同时发生了。那位垮了台的领袖——众所周知，即便在被加上通奸的污名之后，他也依然坚守阵地，绝未退让；直到（领袖的）十名或十二名，也许更多的忠实支持者闯进《不可压制报》，不，是《爱尔兰联合报》（顺便说一句，这决不能说是个恰切的名称[239]）的印刷车间，用铁锤还是什么家伙把活字盘砸毁了。这完全是由于一向以诬蔑诽谤为能事的奥布赖恩[240]派的蹩脚记者摇着轻浮的笔杆编了那些下流谗言，对他们原先的民众领袖的私人品德任意进行诋毁中伤所造成的。尽管一眼就看得出他简直完全换了个人，可依然保持着凛然的气概。衣着虽然还像往日那样随随便便，他的眼神却显示出坚定的意志，使那些优柔寡断者感受很深。他们把他捧上宝座后，才发现他们的偶像那双脚是泥土做的，从而大为狼狈。反正她是头一个发觉这一点的。那是到处发生骚动，情绪格外激烈的时期，布卢姆被卷进聚集在那里的人群。有个家伙用肘部狠狠地戳了他的心窝一下，幸而不严重。他（巴涅尔）的帽子冷不防被碰掉了，看到这副情景并在混乱中拾起帽子以便还给他的正是布卢姆（而且飞快地递还给他了）。这是确凿的历史事实。巴涅尔气喘吁吁，光着头，当时他的心已飞到距帽子不知多少英里以外。敢情，这位先生生来就是注定要为祖国豁出命去干的。说实在的，首先就是为了荣誉而献身干事业的。他幼小时在妈妈腿上被灌输的周全礼节已渗透到他骨子里，这当儿突然显示出来。他转过身去，朝递给他帽子的那位十分镇定[241] 地说了声：“谢谢你，先生。”当天早晨布卢姆也曾经提醒过律师界一位名流[242] ，他头上的帽子瘪了。巴涅尔的声调可跟那人大不一样。历史本身重复着，但反应并不尽同。那是在他们参加一位共同朋友的葬礼，完成了把他的遗体埋入墓穴这桩可怕的任务，并让他孤零零地留在荣光中[243] 之后。

另一方面，他在内心深处更感到愤慨的是出租马车夫之流恬不知耻地开的玩笑。他们把整个事件当成笑料，肆无忌惮地放声大笑，装作对事情的来龙去脉了如指掌，其实他们心里糊里糊涂。这本来纯粹是两个当事人的问题，除非那位合法的丈夫收到密探的一封匿名信，说是就在那两人相互亲昵地紧紧搂抱着的关键时刻，给他撞上了，从而就促使那位丈夫去留意他们那暖昧关系，导致家庭骚乱。犯了过错的妇人跪下来向当家的告饶，只要这位受了损害的丈夫肯对此事抱宽恕态度，既往不咎，她就答应今后与那人断绝关系，再也不接受他的访问。她热泪盈眶，然而兴许长着一张标致脸蛋儿的她，同时还偷偷吐舌头呢，因为很可能还有旁的好几位哩。他这个人是有怀疑癖的，他相信，并且毫不犹豫地断言：天下即便有贤妻，而夫妻间又处得十分融洽，也仍会有一个或几个男人，总是依次守候在她周围，缠住不放。而一旦她怠慢了自己的本分，对婚姻生活感到厌倦，就会心生邪念，骚动不宁起来，于是她卖弄风情，招惹男人们，到头来就会移情于旁人。于是，年近四十而风韵犹存的有夫之妇与年纪比自己轻的男子之间就艳闻[244] 频传了，毫无疑问，好几起有名的女子痴情事例都证实了这一点。

万分遗憾的是，那些头脑有幸生得灵敏的年轻人（坐在他身边的显然就是其中的一位），竟然把宝贵的光阴浪费在淫荡女人身上，说不定她还会赠给他一份足够他享用一辈子的梅毒哩。这位幸运的单身汉有朝一日遇上相般配的小姐，就会娶她作妻子。到那时为止，与女人交往倒也是个不可或缺的条件[245] 。他丝毫不想为弗格森[246]小姐（促使他凌晨来到爱尔兰区的，极可能就是这位特定的“北极星”哩）的事盘问斯蒂芬什么。尽管他十分怀疑斯蒂芬能够从诸如此类的事中得到由衷的满足：沉湎于少男少女式的谈情说爱啦，同只会嘻嘻嘻地傻笑、身上一文不名的小姐每周幽会上两三次啦，照老一套的程序相互恭维，外出散步，又是鲜花又是巧克力地走上亲密的情侣之路。考虑到他既没有棲身之所，又没有亲人，钱财都被一个比任何后妈都更歹毒的房东大娘榨骗了去；以他这个年龄而言，确实糟糕透了。他抽冷子脱口而出的那些奇谈怪论牵动着比他年长若干岁或几乎可以做他父亲的布卢姆的心。然而他的确应该吃点儿富于营养的东西：在牛奶这一母亲般的纯粹滋补品中搀上鸡蛋，做成蛋酒，要不就吃家常的白水煮鸡蛋也好嘛。

“你是几点钟吃的饭？”他向那个身材细挑的青年问道。青年脸上虽没有皱纹，却满是倦容。

“昨天的什么时候，”斯蒂芬说。

“昨天，”布卢姆大声说，后来想起这已经是明天——星期五了，“啊，你的意思是说，现在已经过了十二点！”“那就是前天吧，”斯蒂芬纠正了自己的话。这个消息简直使布卢姆感到惊愕，他陷入沉思。虽然他们并不是对样样事情意见都一致，两人不知怎地却有个共同点，好像两颗心行驶在同一条思考的轨道上。大约二十年前，就在小伙子这个年龄上，他也曾一头扎进过政治。当鹿弹福斯特[247] 在台上的年月里，他对议员这一显赫职务抱着近似向往的态度。他还记起，自己也曾对那些同样的过激思想暗自怀有敬意（这本身就是巨大的满足的源泉）。比方说，佃户被迫退租的问题当时刚刚冒头，引起民众极大的关注。不用说，他本人连分文也不曾捐赠给这一运动，而且其纲领也并非完全没有漏洞。他不能把信念绝对地寄托在上面。他认为佃户拥有耕作权符合当代舆论的趋势，起初作为一种主义他全面地赞成；及至发现弄错了，就部分地纠正了自己的偏见。由于他竟然比到处游说耕者应有其田的迈克尔•达维特[248]的过激意见甚至还进了一步，从而遭到嘲笑。正因为如此，当这帮人聚在巴尼•基尔南酒馆露骨地讽刺他时，他才那么强烈地感到愤慨。尽管他经常遭到严重的误解，再重复一遍，他仍不失为最不喜欢吵架的人。然而他却一反平素的习惯，（打个比喻来说）朝着对方的肚子给了一拳。就政治而言，他对双方相互充满敌意的宣传与招摇所必然导致的伤害事件及其不可避免的结果——主要是给优秀青年带来不幸与苦恼——一句话，对适者灭亡[249]的原则理解得再透彻不过

不管怎样，既然已快到凌晨一点了，权衡利弊，早该回家睡觉了。难题在于把他带回家去多少要冒点风险（某人[250] 有时会发脾气），可能闹得一团糟，就像他一时冒失，把一条狗（品种不详）带回翁塔利奥高台街去的那个晚上一样。记得非常清楚，因为刚好在场。狗的一只前爪破了（倒不是说二者情况相同或不同，尽管这位青年也有一只手受了伤）。另一方面，如果建议他到沙丘或沙湾去呢，那又太远，时间也太迟了。二者之间究竟该选哪个，他倒有点儿无所适从了。经过全盘考虑之后，得出的结论是：对他来说，就应该充分利用这个机会。斯蒂芬给他的最初印象是对他有点儿冷淡，不大吐露心迹，但是不知怎地，他越来越被对方所吸引了。举例来说，当你向这个青年提个什么打算时，他决不会欣然接受，而使布卢姆焦虑的是，即使自己有个建议，也不晓得该怎样把话题转到那上面，或怎样确切地措词，诸如：倘若容许自己在据认为适当的时候为对方贴补点儿零用钱或在穿着方面帮对方一把的话，他会感到莫大的快乐。不管怎样，他打定主意这样了结此事：为了避免重蹈那只瘦狗的覆辙，当夜姑且让他喝上一杯埃普可可[251]，临时打个地铺，再给他一两条围毯盖盖，把大氅折叠起来当枕头。起码让这个青年处在能够保障他的安全的人手里，就跟台架[252]上的烤面包片那样暖烘烘的。他看不出这么做能有多大害处，只要确保决不会发生任何骚乱就行。该离开了，因为这位让老婆守活寡的快活的人儿[253]好像被胶膘在这里了，他一点儿也不急于回到他那颇可怀念、眷恋的王后镇家中去。今后几天内，要是想知道这个形迹可疑的家伙的下落，老鸨搜罗几名年老色衰的佳人儿在下谢里夫街那边开起来的窑子倒是可以提供最可靠的线索。他忽而讲了一通发生在热带附近的六响左轮枪奇闻，打算把她们（人鱼们）吓得毛骨悚然，忽而又对她们那大块头的魅力加以苛刻的挑赐，其间还大杯大杯地畅饮私造的威士忌酒，兴致勃勃地胡乱开一阵心。到头来照例是自我吹嘘，说什么实际上我究竟是何许人也？正如代数先生到处[254]所写的那样，让XX等于我的真名实姓与地址吧。就在这当儿，布卢姆想起自己曾怎样随机应变、巧妙地回击那个天主的血和伤痕[255]的家伙，指出他的天主是个犹太人，于是大家就暗笑起来。人们要是被狼咬了，还能忍受，然而一旦被羊咬了一口，那就真正会被激怒。和善的阿戏留的最大弱点也是怕被人指出：你的天主是个犹太人。因为世人好像通常相信，天主来自香农河畔卡利克或斯莱戈郡[256] 的什么地方。

“我仔细考虑了一下，”我们的主人公终于提议道，同时小心翼翼地把老婆的照片往兜里揣，“这里太闷热了，你干脆到我家去，一道聊聊吧。我就住在附近。这玩艺儿你可喝不得。［你喜欢喝可可吧？][257]等一等，我来付帐。”

离开这里显然是上策，随后就顺利了。他一边谨慎地往兜里收起照片，一边向棚屋老板招手，老板却好像没有……

“对，这样做最好不过啦，”他对斯蒂芬担保说；然而对斯蒂芬来说，黄铜头饭店[258]也罢，他的家也罢，或任何旁的地方，都或多或少地……

各种乌托邦计划都从他的（布卢姆的）不停地转着念头的头脑中闪过。教育（真正的项目），文学，新闻，《珍闻》的悬赏小说[259]，最新式的海报，到挤满剧场的英国海滨疗养地去做豪华的旅游，水疗、演出两不误，用意大利语表演二重唱等等，发音十分纯正地道。当然，无须乎向世人和老婆广泛宣传此事，说自己怎样交了点好运。需要的是早日动起手来。他已觉察出这个青年继承了乃父的嗓子，于是就把希望寄托在这一点上，认为一定能成功。所以只消把话碴儿引到那特定的方向去就成，反正也碍不着什么事，为的是……

马车夫看着手里的报纸，大声念了一段前任总督卡多根伯爵在伦敦某地主持马车夫协会晚餐会的消息[260] 。听了这条激动人心的报道之后是一片沉寂，随着是一两个哈欠。接着，坐在角落里的那个仿佛还剩有几分活力的怪老头[261] 读道：安东尼•麦克唐奈爵士从尤斯顿车站出发，前往次官官邸，或诸如此类的消息。人们对这条饶有兴味的消息的反应是同一声“为什么”。

“老爷爷，让咱瞅一眼那份报，”老水手略微显示出天生的急脾气，插嘴道。

“好的，”被招呼的老人回答说。

水手从随身携带的眼镜盒里取出一副发绿色的眼镜，慢悠悠地架在鼻子和双耳上。

“你眼神儿不好吗？”长得像市公所秘书长的那个人怀着满腔同情地问道。

“唔，”蓄着一副花白胡子的航海人回答说。这家伙略识几个字，就好像是正隔着海绿色舱窗向外眺望似的。“俺读啥的时候就戴眼镜儿。是红海里的沙子教俺养成的习惯。说起来，俺从前连在暗处都能看书。俺最爱读《一千零一夜》[262] 啦，《她红得像玫瑰》[263]也不赖。”

于是，他用粗笨的手摊开报纸，用心读起天晓得什么玩艺儿：发现了溺尸啦；柳木王的丰功伟绩啦；艾尔芒格为诺丁独得一百多分，在第二场比赛中无一出局啦[264] 。这当儿，老板（丝毫不理会艾尔的事）正专心致志地试图把那双分不出新旧、显然穿着太紧的靴子弄松一点，并咒骂那个卖靴子的人。从那帮人的面部表情可以辨认得出，他们是醒着的，也就是说，要么是愁眉苦脸的，要么就讲上句无聊的话。

长话短说。布卢姆看明事态之后，生怕呆得太长，招人讨厌，就头一个站了起来。他信守了自己要为这次聚会掏腰包的诺言，趁没人注意就机警地朝我们这位老板作了个几乎觉察不到的告别手势，示意马上就付钞，总计四便士（并且不引人注目地付了四枚铜币，那诚然是“最后的莫希干人”[265] 了）。他事先瞧见了对面墙上的价目表上印得清清楚楚的数字，让人一看就读得出来[266]：咖啡二便士，点心同上。正如韦瑟厄普[267] 过去常说的，货真价实，供应的东西有时竟值两倍的价钱哩。

“来吧，”他建议结束这场集会[268]。

他们看到计策奏效，时机成熟，就一道离开了那座马车夫歇脚的棚屋或下等酒馆，告别了聚在那里的、身着防水服的名流[269] 人士。除非闹场地震，这帮人是决不会从这种什么也不干是美妙的[270] 境界中脱身的。斯蒂芬承认他还是不舒服，筋疲力竭，并在门口伫立了片刻。

“有一件事我一直不明白，”他心血来潮，说了句意想不到的话，“为什么在咖啡店里，晚上他们总是把桌子翻过来？我的意思是说，把椅子翻过来放在桌上。”

永远难不倒的布卢姆对这句抽冷子提出的问题毫不迟疑地回答说：

“早晨好扫地呀。”

这么说着，他出于体贴就矫健地蹿到伙伴的右侧，并且真心实意地为自己这一习惯表示歉意，因为照古典的说法，右边是他像阿戏留那样易受损伤的部位。尽管斯蒂芬的腿有些发软，眼下夜晚的空气确实令人觉得爽快。

“那（指空气）对你会有好处的，”布卢姆说，一时指的也包含散步。“只要散散步，你就会觉得换了个人似的。不远啦。靠在我身上吧。”

于是，他用左臂挽着斯蒂芬的右臂，就这样领着他前行。

斯蒂芬含含糊糊地“唔”了一声，因为他感到一个陌生而软塌塌、颤巍巍的肉身挨近了他。

不管怎样，他们从摆有石头和火钵等的岗亭前面走过。那里，当年的冈穆利——如今落魄成市政府的临时工——正如谚语所说的，依然被搂抱在睡神怀里，睡得正香，沉浸在绿色田野与新牧场[271] 的梦中。说到塞满石头的棺材，这个比拟是蛮不错的。因为他确实是被人用石头砸死的。闹分裂的时候，八十几名议员中竟有七十二个倒了戈[272] 。主要是他曾经大捧特捧的农民阶级，大概就是被剥夺了佃耕权后，他替他们收回来的那些佃户哩。

这样，二人就挽着臂，穿过贝雷斯福德广场，一路上布卢姆闲聊起自己无比热爱可又纯粹是个外行的艺术形式——音乐。瓦格纳尽管自有其众所公认的雄伟气魄，然而对布卢姆来说，却有点太沉闷了，一开始就难以理解。但是他简直迷上了梅尔卡丹特的《胡格诺派教徒》、梅那贝尔的《最后的七句话》[273]和莫扎特的《第十二弥撒曲》。他认为后者的《荣耀颂》[274]乃是第一流音乐中的登峰造极之作，真正能使其他一切音乐黯然失色。他非常喜爱天主教宗教音乐，那远远超过其竞争对手在这方面所能提供的穆迪与桑基圣诗[275] 或“嘱我活下去，我就做个新教徒”[276] 。他对罗西尼的《站立的圣母》[277]的称赞也绝不落在任何人后面。这确实是一首充满了不朽的节奏的乐曲。有一次在上加德纳街耶稣会教堂举行的演奏会上，他的妻子玛莉恩•特威迪夫人就演唱过它并博得好评，真正引起了轰动。他可以把握十足地说，在她已享有的声誉上，更增添了光采，使所有其他演唱者均黯然失色。为了聆听夹在演唱家或毋宁说名手[ 280]当中的她的演唱，听众甚至把教堂门口都挤满了。大家一致认为没人赛得过她。在平时唱诵圣乐的礼拜堂里，人们普遍发出“再唱一遍”的呼声，这就足以证明她受欢迎的程度了。总之，他爱听莫扎特的《唐乔万尼》[281] 那样的轻歌剧，而《玛尔塔》[282]是这方面的珠玉之作。尽管他对门德尔松这样严格的古典派只具有点皮毛的知识，却也怀着强烈的爱好[283] 。说到这里，斯蒂芬想必是知道那些大家所爱唱的歌曲的，他特地举了莱昂内尔在《玛尔塔》中演唱的插曲《爱情如今》[284]为例。说也真巧，昨天他听到这支歌曲，说得更确切些，是无意中传到他耳中的，他觉得十分荣幸。尤其令他感到高兴的是演唱者正是斯蒂芬的父亲大人。音色圆润，技巧完美，对作品的诠释的确使其他一切人甘拜下风。对于这非常文雅的提问，斯蒂芬回答说“他并没有”[285]，却开始赞美起莎士比亚的——至少也是那个时代及其先后时期的歌谣来了。又谈起住在费特小巷、离植物学家杰勒德不远的古琵琶演奏家道兰德；我成年弹奏，道兰德[286] 。他怎样打算从阿诺德•多尔梅什那儿买一把古琵琶[287] ，价钱是六十五基尼。这个名字布卢姆听上去确实挺耳熟，只是记不大清楚了。还有在对位法的先导主题与应答主题上下过功夫的法纳比父子[288] 。此外就是伯德（威廉）。斯蒂芬说，此人不论是在女王小教堂或任何其他地方，只要看到了维金纳琴就非弹上一通不可[289] 。还有个姓汤姆金斯[290] 的，作过诙谐的或庄重的歌曲。再就是约翰•布尔[291]了。

他们边聊边穿过广场，走近车行道。只见链栏后面有一匹马拉着扫除器正沿着铺石路走来，一路扫拢着长长的一条泥泞。一片噪音，布卢姆简直闹不清关于六十五基尼和约翰•布尔的引喻自己是否听真切了。他觉得有这么两个完全一样的姓名是个惊人的巧合，就问了声那指的是否那位同名同姓的政界名人约翰牛[ 292] 。

马在链栏那儿慢慢掉过头去拐弯。布卢姆照例是留神提防着的，看到马这样，就轻轻拽了拽斯蒂芬的袖子，用诙谐口吻说：

“今天夜里咱们有性命危险。可得小心蒸气碾路机呕。”

于是他们停下了脚步。布卢姆凝视着那匹马的脸，怎么也看不出它能值六十五基尼。由于是在黑暗中突然出现在挨得很近的地方，它就好像是个由骨骼甚至肉组成的与马迎然不同的新奇的东西了。这显然是一匹后腿朝前迈，一路倒退着的四肢不协调的马，半边屁股略低，臀部是黑的[293] ，甩着尾巴，耷拉着头。这当儿，牲口的主人正坐在驭者座上，忙于想心事。这是一头多么善良懦弱的牲口啊，可惜他身上没带着糖块儿，然而他又明智地仔细想道，人生在世，总不能对所有可能突然发生的事都做好准备呀。它只不过是一匹大块头、笨拙而神经质的傻马罢了，活在世上无忧无虑，他又寻思，甚至于狗，比方说，巴尼•基尔南酒馆那头杂种的吧，要是个头也有这匹马这么大，碰上它可就够吓人的了。然而它长成那个样子可不能怪它呀。就拿骆驼（那是沙漠上的船）来说吧，在它的驼峰里可以把葡萄酿成酒。动物中十之八九可以关进栏里，或加以驯服。除了蜜蜂而外[294]，再也没有人类这么心灵手巧的了。对鲸要使用标枪上的夹叉，对短鼻鳄鱼只要挠挠腰部，它就会懂得开玩笑的滋味了。在雄鸡周围用粉笔画个圈儿[295] 。老虎呢，我那老鹰一般锐利的目光[ 296] 。尽管斯蒂芬的话使布卢姆多少分了神，正当这艘马儿船在街上活跃的时候，他脑子里却满是关于野地走兽[297]的正合时机的考虑。斯蒂芬依然继续谈着饶有趣味的往事。

“我刚才说什么来着？哦，对啦！我老婆，”他直截了当地[298] 说，“她要是能够结识你，会非常高兴的。因为她对所有的音乐都是倾心的。”

他从旁边亲切地望着斯蒂芬的侧脸：他长得活脱儿像他母亲，然而丝毫也没有通常那种必然会使女人着迷的小白脸儿恶少气，兴许他生来就不是那号人。

可是假若斯蒂芬继承了他父亲的天赋（布卢姆相信是这样），这就在布卢姆心中展开了新的前景：例如参加芬格尔夫人为了开发爱尔兰工业而于本周的星期一举办的那种音乐会[299] 啦，出入于一般上流社会什么的。

此刻那个青年正在讲解着以《这里青春已到尽头》为主调的精采的变奏曲。这出自简•皮特尔宗•斯韦林克[300] 之手。他是一个出生于荡妇的产地阿姆斯特丹的荷兰人。他更喜欢约翰内斯•吉普[301]那首德国的古老民谣，它描绘晴朗的海，赛仑——那些杀男人的美丽凶手——的歌喉。布卢姆听了，有点儿吃惊：

赛仑蛊惑人心，

诗人如此吟诵。[302]

他唱完开头一节，就当场[303] 译了出来。布卢姆点点头说，他完全懂了，央求斯蒂芬尽管唱下去。他就照办了。

他那男高音的音色极其纯美，表现出罕见的才华。布卢姆刚听了第一个音调就加以赞赏。倘若他能得到像巴勒克拉夫[304]那样一位公认的发声法权威的适当指导，再学会读乐谱，既然男中音已多得烂了市，他就不难随意为自己标价。那样一来，不久的将来，这位幸福的美声歌唱家就有机会出入于[305] 经营大企业的财界巨头和有头衔者那坐落在最高级住宅区的时髦府邸。不论他拥有的文学士学位（那本身就是堂哉皇哉的广告），还是他那绅士派头，都足以为本来就美好的印象更加锦上添花，这样就会万无一失地取得不同凡响的成功。何况他既有头脑，又能够用来达到此目的并满足其他需求。倘若他再注意一下服装的考究，那就更能慢慢博得高雅人士的垂顾。对于社交界在服装剪裁等方面的讲究他是个乳臭未干的新手，简直不明白那样一些区区小节怎么会成为绊脚石。事实上，再过上几个月他就可以预见到斯蒂芬在欢度圣诞节期间，怎样有所选择地参加他们所举行的有关音乐艺术的恳谈会[ 306]了，从而在淑女们的鸽棚里掀起轻微的波澜[307] ，在寻求刺激的太太小姐们当中引起一番轰动。据他所知，这种事儿以前也记载过好几档子。从前，只要他有意，蛮可以不露马脚、不费吹灰之力地就能……当然喽，除了学费而外，同时还有决不可等闲视之的金钱报酬。他附带说明一下：其实并不一定图几个臭钱就作为一种职业积年累月地站在乐坛上。毋宁说，那是朝着必然的方向迈进的一步，不论是从金钱上还是精神上，都丝毫无损于尊严。当你手头急需钱的时候，有人递过一张支票来，也不无小补。况且尽管近来人们对于音乐的鉴赏力每况愈下，可是不落俗套的那种富于独创性的音乐还是很快地就会风靡一时。正值伊凡•圣奥斯特尔和希尔顿•圣贾斯特以及所有这号人[308] 把投合时好的男高音独唱偷偷塞给轻信的观众并照例掀起陈腐的流行之后，斯蒂芬的演唱无疑地会给都柏林的音乐界带来一股新风。是呀。毫无疑问，他是做得到的，他必然稳操胜券。这是博取名声、赢得全市尊敬的大好机会。他会成为台柱子，会有人同他签订演出合同，也会为国王街剧场[309]那些捧他的听众举行一场大规模演奏会的。还得有个后台，也就是说，倘若——这个“倘若”可非同小可——有人愿意出力硬把他推上去，凭着这股势头来防止那种不可避免的因循萎靡。凡是那些被老好人当作贵公子般娇纵坏了的红角儿，都容易陷进这样的状态。干这行当丝毫也不会损害另外的事。他可以我行我素，只要自己愿意，有的是余暇来自修文学。文学进修是个人的问题，完全不会妨碍或有损于歌手这一行当。说实在的，球就在他脚下，正因为如此，另外那个嗅觉异常敏锐、任何苗头都绝逃不过的家伙[310]才缠住他不放。

就在这当儿，马……过了一会儿，他（即布卢姆）在适当时机，本着“傻子迈进天使……之处”[311] 的原则，在完全不去追问斯蒂芬私事的情况下劝他跟某某即将开业的医生断绝往来。他留意到，此人倾向于瞧不起斯蒂芬。当斯蒂芬本人不在场时，甚至借着开玩笑来贬低他几句，或者随便怎么说吧，反正据布卢姆的拙见，就是在一个人的品格的某个侧面上投下讨厌的阴影——这里他要讲的绝不是什么双关的俏皮话。

那匹马走到绷得紧紧的缰绳尽端（姑且这么说），停了下来，高高地甩起高傲而毛茸茸的尾巴。为了在即将被刷净打磨光的路面添加上自己的一份，就拉了三泡冒热气的粪便。它从肥大的屁股里慢吞吞、一团团地、分三次拉下屎来。车把式坐在他那装有长柄大镰刀的车[312] 里，善心而有耐性地等待着他（或她）拉完。

幸而发生了这一事故[313] ，布卢姆和斯蒂芬才肩并肩地从那被直柱隔开来的栏链的空隙爬过去，迈过一溜儿泥泞，朝着下加德纳街横跨过去。斯蒂芬虽然没有放开嗓门，却用更加激越的声调唱完了那首歌谣：

所有的船只搭成了一座桥。[314]

不管是好话、坏话还是不好不坏的话，反正车把式一言也未发。他坐在低靠背的车[315]上，只是目送这两个都穿着黑衣服的身影一—一胖一瘦——朝着铁道桥走去，由马尔神父给成婚。[ 316] 他们走一程又停下脚步，随后又走起来，继续交头接耳地谈着（车把式当然被排除在外）。内容包括男人的理智之敌赛仑，还夹杂着同一类型的一系列其他话题，篡夺者啦，类似的历史事件什么的。这当儿坐在清扫车——或者可以称之为卧车[317]——里的那个人无论如何也是听不见的，因为他们离得太远了。他只是在挨近下加德纳街尽头处坐在自己的坐位上，目送着他们那辆低靠背的车。[318] 
Chapter 17 Ithaca
WHAT PARALLEL COURSES DID BLOOM AND STEPHEN FOLLOW REturning? 
Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left, Gardiner's place by an inadvertance as far as the farther corner of Temple street, north: then at reduced pace with interruptions of halt, bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place. Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the circus before George's church diametrically, the chord in any circle being less than the arc which it subtends. 

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Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary? 

Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman, prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and glow-lamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church, ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers, the study of medicine, the past day, the male-cent influence of the presabbath, Stephen's collapse. 

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Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their respective like and unlike reactions to experience? 

Both were sensitive to artistic impressions musical in preference to plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence. Both indurated by early domestic training and an inherited tenacity of heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in many orthodox religious, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both admitted the alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual magnetism. 

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Were their views on some points divergent? 

Stephen dissented openly from Bloom's view on the importance of dietary and civic self help while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen's views on the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature. Bloom assented covertly to Stephen's rectification of the anachronism involved in assigning the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of Potitus, son of Odyssus, sent by pope Celestine I in the year 432 in the reign of Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac MacArt (266 A.D.) suffocated by imperfect deglutition of aliment at Sletty and interred at Rossnaree. The collapse which Bloom ascribed to gastric inanition and certain chemical compounds of varying degrees of adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by mental exertion and the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing atmosphere, Stephen attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud (perceived by both from two different points of observation, Sandycove and Dublin) at first no bigger than a woman's hand. 

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Was there one point on which their views were equal and negative? 

The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees. 

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Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambulations in the past? 

In 1884 with Ower Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night on public thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and Leonard's corner and Leonard's corner and Synge street and Synge street and Bloomfield avenue. In 1885 with Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against the wall between Gibraltar villa and Bloomfield house in Crumlin, barony of Uppercross. In 1886 occasionally with casual acquaintances and prospective purchasers on doorsteps, in front parlours, in third class railway carriages of suburban lines. In 1888 frequently with major Brian Tweedy and his daughter Miss Marion Tweedy, together and separately on the lounge in Matthew Dillon's house in Roundtown. Once in 1892 and once in 1893 with Julius Mastiansky, on both occasions in the parlour of his (Bloom's) house in Lombard street, west. 

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What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885, 1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Bloom make before their arrival at their destination? 

He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual development and experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction of the converse domain of interindividual relations. 

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As in what ways? 

From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received: existence with existence he was with any as any with any: from existence to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived. 

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What action did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination? 

At the housesteps of the 4th of the equidifferent uneven numbers, number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey. 

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Was it there? 

It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on the day but one preceding. 

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Why was he doubly irritated? 

Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded himself twice not to forget. 

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What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly (respectively) and inadvertently, keyless couple? 

To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock. 

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Bloom's decision? 

A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the area railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at the lower union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its length of five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten inches of the area pavement, and allowed his body to move freely in space by separating himself from the railings and crouching in preparation for the impact of the fall. 

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Did he fall? 

By his body's known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine for periodical selfweighing in the premises of Francis Fraedman, pharmaceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street, north, on the last feast of the Ascension, to wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissextile year one thousand nine hundred and four of the Christian era (jewish era five thousand six hundred and sixtyfour, mohammedan era one thousand three hundred and twentytwo), golden number $, epact 13, solar cycle 9, dominical letters C B, Roman indication 2, Julian period 6617, MXMIV. 

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Did he rise uninjured by concussion? 

Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its fulcrum gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent scullery, ignited a Lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal gas by turning on the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and lit finally a portable candle. 

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What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile perceive? 

Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the transparent kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 C P, a man lighting a candle, a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man leaving the kitchen holding a candle of ICP. 

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Did the man reappear elsewhere? 

Alter a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open space of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his candle. 

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Did Stephen obey his sign? 

Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and followed softly along the hallway the man's back and listed feet and lighted candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and carefully down a turning staircase of more than five steps into the kitchen of Bloom's house. 

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What did Bloom do? 

He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Stephen with its back to the area window, the other for himself when necessary, knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and M'Donald of 14 D'Olier street, kindled it at three projecting points of paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air. 

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Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think? 

Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two, had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county of Kildare: of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15 Usher's Island: of his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of number twelve North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint Francis-Xavier 1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the physics' theatre of university College, 16 Stephen's green, north: of his sister Dilly (Delia) in his father's house in Cabra. 

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What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from the fire towards the opposite wall? 

Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope, stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs folded unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies' grey hose with lisle suspendertops and feet in their habitual position clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer extremities and the third at their point of junction. 

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What did Bloom see on the range? 

On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left (larger) hob a black iron kettle. 

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What did Bloom do at the range? 

He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it flow. 

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Did it flow? 

Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of 2,400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant cost of #5 per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of the Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary at Eustace bridge, upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and daily supply of 12 1/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the sill of the overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and waterworks engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C.E., on the instructions of the waterworks committee, had prohibited the use of municipal water for purposes other than those of consumption (envisaging the possibility of recourse being had to the importable water of the Grand and Royal canals as in 1893) particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding their ration of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied through a 6 inch meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons per night by a reading of their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the corporation, Mr Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the detriment of another section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers, solvent, sound. 

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What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier returning to the range, admire? 

Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its umplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8,000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: Its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including billions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents: gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs, and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe) numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90% of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon. 

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Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did he return to the stillflowing tap? 

To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of Barrington's lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered (bought thirteen hours previously for fourpence and still unpaid for), in fresh cold neverchanging everchanging water and dry them, face and hands, in a long redbordered holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller. 

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What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom's offer? 

That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by submersion in cold water (his last bath having taken place in the month of October of the preceding year), disliking the aqueous substances of glass and crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and language. 

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What impeded Bloom from giving Stephen counsels of hygiene and prophylactic to which should be added suggestions concerning a preliminary wetting of the head and contraction of the muscles with rapid splashing of the face and neck and thoracic and epigastric region in case of sea or river bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most sensitive to cold being the nape, stomach, and thenar or sole of foot? 

The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius. 


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What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress? 

Dietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the lastnamed and the abundance of the latter in the firstnamed. 

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Which seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest? 

Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment and recuperation. 

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What concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid by the agency of fire? 

The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught of ventilation between the kitchen and the chimneyflue, ignition was communicated from the faggots of precombustible fuel to polyhedral masses of bituminous coal, containing in compressed mineral form the foliated fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn derived their vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of heat (radiant), transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diathermanous ether. Heat (convected), a mode of motion developed by such combustion, was constantly and increasingly conveyed from the source of calorification to the liquid contained in the vessel, being radiated through the uneven unpolished dark surface of the metal iron, in part reflected, in part absorbed, in part transmitted, gradually raising the temperature of the water from normal to boiling point, a rise in temperature expressible as the result of an expenditure of 72 thermal units needed to raise I pound of water from 50 to 212 Fahrenheit. 

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What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature? 

A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid at both sides simultaneously. 

For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the water so boiled? 

To shave himself. 

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What advantages attended shaving by night? 

A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours: quiet reflections upon the course of the day: a cleaner sensation when awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions and perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a postman's double knock, a paper read, reread while lathering, relathering the same spot, a shock, a shoot, with thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought might cause a faster rate of shaving and a nick on which incision plaster with precision cut and humected and applied adhered which was to be done. 

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Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noises 

Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine feminine passive active hand. 

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What quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting influence? 

The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed human blood even when the end justified the means, preferring in their natural order, heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic surgery. 

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What lay under exposure on the lower middle and upper shelves of the kitchen dresser opened by Bloom? 

On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a moustachecup, uninverted, and saucer of Crown Derby, four white goldrimmed eggcups, and open shammy purse displaying coins, mostly copper, and a phial of aromatic violet comfits. On the middle shelf a chipped eggcup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four conglomerated black olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of Plumtree's potted meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing one Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and Co's white invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe of coralpink tissue paper, a packet of Epps's soluble cocoa, five ounces of Anne Lynch's choice tea at 2/- per lb. in a crinkled leadpaper bag, a cylindrical canister containing the best crystallised lump sugar, two onions, one the larger, Spanish, entire, the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with augmented surface and more redolent, a jar of Irish Model Dairy's cream, a jug of brown crockery containing a noggin and a quarter of soured adulterated milk, converted by heat into water, acidulous serum and semisolidified curds, which added to the quantity subtracted for Mr Bloom's and Mrs Fleming's breakfasts made one imperial pint, the total quantity originally delivered, two cloves, a halfpenny and a small dish containing a slice of fresh ribsteak. On the upper shelf a battery of jamjars of various sizes and proveniences. 

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What attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser? 

Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets, numbered 887, 886. 

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What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow? 

Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction, preindicative of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official and definitive result of which he had read in the Evening Telegraph, late pink edition, in the cabman's shelter, at Butt bridge. 

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Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected, been received by him? 

In Bernard Kiernan's licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street: in David Byrne's licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in O'Connell street lower, outside Graham Lemon's when a dark man had placed in his hand a throwaway (subsequently thrown away), advertising Elijah, restorer of the church in Zion: in Lincoln place outside the premises of F. W. Sweny and Co (Limited) dispensing chemists, when, when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and successively requested, perused and restituted the copy of the current issue of the Freeman's Journal and National Press which he had been about to throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded towards the oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 11 Leinster street, with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language of prediction. 

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What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations? 

The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the electrical discharge and of counterestimating against an actual loss by failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding originally from a successful interpretation. 

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His mood? 

He hid not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he was satisfied. 

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What satisfied him? 

To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to others. Light to the gentiles. 

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How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile? 

He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps's soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed on the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the prescribed ingredients for diffusion in the manner and in the quantity prescribed. 

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What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show his guest? 

Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation Crown Derby presented to him by his only daughter, Millicent (Milly), he substituted a cup identical with that of his guest and served extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to himself the viscous cream ordinarily reserved for the breakfast of his wife Marion (Molly). 

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Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of hospitality? 

His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely and he accepted them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps's massproduct, the creature cocoa. 

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Were there marks of hospitality which he contemplated but suppressed, reserving them for another and for himself on future occasions to complete the act begun? 

The reparation of a fissure of the length of 1 1/2 inches in the right side of his guest's jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four lady's handkerchiefs, if and when ascertained to be in a presentable condition. 

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Who drank more quickly? 

Bloom, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation ad taking, from the concave surface of a spoon along the handle of which a steady flow of heat was conducted, three sips to his opponent's one, six to two, nine to three. 

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What cerebration accompanied his frequentative act? 

Concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life. 

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Had he found their solution? 

In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages, aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text, the answers not bearing on all points. 

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What lines concluded his first piece of original verse written by him, potential poet, at the age of 11 in 1877 on the occasion of the offering of three prizes at 10/-, 5/- and 2/6 respectively by the Shamrock, a weekly newspaper? 

An ambition to squint 
At my verses in print 
Makes me hope that for these you'll find room. 
If you so condescend 
Then please place at the end 
The name of yours truly, L. Bloom.

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Did he find four separating forces between his temporary guest and him? 

Name, age, race, creed. 

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What anagrams had he made on his name in youth? 

Leopold Bloom 

Ellpodbomool 

Molldopeloob. 

Bollo edoom 

Old Ollebo, M. P. 

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What acrostic upon the abbreviation of his first name had he (kinetic poet) sent to Miss Marion Tweedy on the 14 February 1888? 

Poets oft have sung in rhyme 
Of music sweet their praise divine. 
Let them hymn it nine times nine. 
Bearer far than song or wine, 
You are mine. The world is mine.

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What had prevented him from completing a topical song (music by R. G. Johnston) on the events of the past, or fixtures for the actual years, entitled If Brian Boru could but come back and see old Dublin now, commissioned by Michael Gunn, lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street, and to be introduced into the sixth scene, the valley of diamonds, of the second edition (30 January 1893) of the grand annual Christmas pantomime Sinbad the Sailor (written by Greenleaf Whittier, scenery by George A. Jackson and Cecil Hicks, costumes by Mrs and Miss Whelan, produced by R. Shelton 26 December 1892 under the personal supervision of Mrs Michael Gunn, ballets by Jessie Noir, harlequinade by Thomas Otto) and sung by Nelly Bouverist principal girl? 

Firstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local interest, the anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria (born 1820, acceded 1837) and the posticipated opening of the new municipal fish market: secondly, apprehension of opposition from extreme circles on the questions of the respective visits of Their Royal Highnesses, the duke and duchess of York (real), and of His Majesty King Brian Boru (imaginary); thirdly, a conflict between professional etiquette and professional emulation concerning the recent erections of the Grand Lyric Hall on Burgh Quay and the Theatre Royal in Hawkins street: fourthly, distraction resultant from compassion for Nelly Bouverist's non-intellectual, non-political, nontopical expression of countenance and concupiscence caused by Nelly Bouverist's revelations of white articles of nonintellectual, non-political, non-topical underclothing while she (Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles: fifthly, the difficulties of the selection of appropriate music and humorous allusions from Everybody's Book of Jokes (1,000 pages and a laugh in every one); sixthly, the rhymes homophonous and cacophonous, associated with the names of the new lord mayor, Daniel Tallon, the new high sheriff, Thomas Pile and the new solicitorgeneral, Dunbar Plunket Barton. 

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What relation existed between their ages? 

16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen's present age Stephen was 6.16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of Bloom's present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C. 

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What events might nullify these calculations? 

The cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration of a new era or calendar, the annihilation of the world and consequent extermination of the human species, inevitable but impredictable. 

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How many previous encounters proved their preexisting acquaintance? 

Two. The first in the lilacgarden of Matthew Dillon's house, Medina Villa, Kimmage road, Roundtown, in 1887, in the company of Stephen's mother, Stephen being then of the age of 5 and reluctant to give his hand in salutation. The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin's hotel on a rainy Sunday in the January of 1892, in the company of Stephen's father and Stephen's granduncle, Stephen being then 5 years older. 

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Did Bloom accept the invitation to dinner given then by the son and afterwards seconded by the father? 

Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined. 

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Did their conversation on the subject of these reminiscences reveal a third connecting link between them? 

Mrs Riordan, a widow of independent means, had resided in the house of Stephen's parents from 1 September 1888 to 29 December 1891 and had also resided during the years 1892, 1893 and 1894 in the City Arms Hotel owned by Elizabeth O'Dowd of 54 Prussia street where during parts of the years 1893 and 1894 she had been a constant informant of Bloom who resided also in the same hotel, being at that time a clerk in the employment of Joseph Cuffe of 5 Smithfield for the superintendence of sales in the adjacent Dublin Cattle market on the North Circular road. 

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Had he performed any special corporal work of mercy for her? 

He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer evenings, an infirm widow of independent, if limited means, in her convalescent bathchair with slow revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the North Circular road opposite Mr Gavin Low's place of business where she had remained for a certain time scanning through his onelensed binocular fieldglasses unrecognisable citizens on tramcars, roadster bicycles, equipped with inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney carriages, tandems, private and hired landaus, dogcarts, ponytraps and brakes passing from the city to the Phoenix Park and vice versa. 

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Why could he then support that his vigil with the greater equanimity? 

Because in middle youth he had often sat observing through a rondel of bossed glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle offered with continual changes of the thoroughfare without, pedestrians, quadrupeds, velocipedes, vehicles, passing slowly, quickly, evenly, round and round and round the rim of a round precipitous globe. 

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What distinct different memories had each of her now eight years deceased? 

The older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, her suppositions wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient catarrhal deafness: the younger, her lamp of colza oil before the statue of the Immaculate Conception, her green and maroon brushes for Charles Stewart Parnell and for Michael Davitt, her tissue papers. 

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Were there no means still remaining to him to achieve the rejuvenation which these reminiscences divulged to a younger companion rendered the more desirable? 

The indoor exercises, formerly intermittently practised, subsequently abandoned, prescribed in Eugen Sandow's Physical Strength and How To Obtain It which, designed particularly for commercial men engaged in sedentary occupations, were to be made with mental concentration in front of a mirror so as to bring into play the various families of muscles and produce successively a pleasant relaxation and the most pleasant repristination of juvenile agility. 

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Had any special agility been his in earlier youth? 

Though ringweight lifting had been beyond his strength and the full circle gyration beyond his courage yet as a High School scholar he had excelled in his table and protracted execution of the half lever movement on the parallel bars in consequence of his abnormally developed abdominal muscles. 

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Did either openly allude to their racial difference? 

Neither. 

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What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom and Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom's thoughts about Stephen? 

He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not. 

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What, the enclosures of reticence removed, were their respective parentages? 

Bloom, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag (subsequently Rudolf Bloom) of Szombathely, Vienna, Budapest, Milan, London and Dublin and of Ellen Higgins, second daughter of Julius Higgins (born Karoly) and Fanny Higgins (born Hegarty); Stephen, eldest surviving male consubstantial heir of Simon Dedalus of Cork and Dublin and of Mary, daughter of Richard and Christina Goulding (born Grier). 

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Had Bloom and Stephen been baptised, and where and by whom, cleric or layman? 

Bloom (three times) by the reverend Mr Gilmer Johnston M. A. alone in the protestant church of Saint Nicolas Without, Coombe; by James O'Connor, Philip Gilligan and James Fitzpatrick, together, under a pump in the village of Swords; and by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., in the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar. Stephen (once) by the reverend Charles Malone, C. C., alone, in the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar. 

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Did they find their educational careers similar? 

Substituting Stephen for Bloom Stoom would have passed successively through a dame's school and the high school. Substituting Bloom for Stephen Blephen would have passed successively through the preparatory, junior, middle and senior grades of the intermediate and through the matriculation, first arts, second arts and arts degree course of the royal university. 

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Why did Bloom refrain from stating that he had frequented the university of life? 

Because of his fluctuating incertitude as to whether this observation had or had not been already made by him to Stephen or by Stephen to him. 

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What two temperaments did they individually represent? 

The scientific. The artistic. 

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What proofs did Bloom adduce to prove that his tendency was towards applied, rather than towards pure, science? 

Certain possible inventions of which he had cogitated when reclining in a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once revolutionary for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water siphon, the canal lock with winch and sluice, the suction pump. 

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Were these inventions principally intended for an improved scheme of kindergarten? 

Yes, rendering obsolete popguns, elastic airbladders, games of hazard, catapults. They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibiting the twelve constellations of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, miniature mechanical orreries, arithmetical gelatine lozenges, geometrical to correspond with zoological biscuits, globemap playingballs, historically costumed dolls. 

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What also stimulated him in his cogitations? 

The financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and Charles A. James, the former by his 1d. bazaar at 42 George's street, South, the latter at his 6 1/2d. shop and world's fancy fair and waxwork exhibition at 30 Henry street, admission 2d., children 1d.; and the infinite possibilities hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed in triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility (divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to convince, to decide. 

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Such as? 

K. 11. Kino's 111- Trousers. 

House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes. 

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Such as not? 

Look at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and you receive gratis I pair of our special non-compo boots, guaranteed I candle power. Address: Barclay and Cook, 18 Talbot Street. 

Bacilikil (Insect Powder). 

Veribest (Boot Blacking). 

Uwantit (Combined pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew, nailfile and pipecleaner). 

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Such as never? 

What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat? 

Incomplete. 

With it an abode of bliss. 

Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants' quay, Dublin, put up in 4 oz. pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti, M. P., Rotunda Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and anniversaries of deceases. The name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree is a meatpot, registered trade mark. Beware of imitations. Peatmot. Trumplee. Montpat. Plamtroo. 

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Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that originality, though producing its own reward, does not invariably conduce to success? 

His own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn by a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be seated engaged in writing. 

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What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen? 

Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads. Solitary 

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What? 

In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen's hotel, Queen's hotel, Queen's Ho... 

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What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom? 

The Queen's Hotel, Ennis, County, Glare, where Rudolph Bloom (Rudolf Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated, in consequence of an overdose of monkshood (aconite) selfadministered in the form of a neuralgic liniment, composed of 2 parts of aconite liniment to 1 of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at 10.20 a.m. on the morning of 27 June 1886 at the medical hall of Francis Dennehy, 17 Church street, Ennis) after having, though not in consequence of having, purchased at 3.15 p.m. on the afternoon of 27 June 1886 a new boater straw hat, extra smart (after having, though not in consequence of having, purchased at the hour and in the place aforesaid, the toxin aforesaid), at the general drapery store of James Cullen, 4 Main street, Ennis. 

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Did he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence or intuition? 

Coincidence. 

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Did he depict the scene verbally for his guest to see? 

He preferred himself to see another's face and listen to another's words by which potential narration was realised and kinetic temperament relieved. 

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Did he see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated to him, described by the narrator as A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The Parable of the Plums? 

It, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated but existent by implication, to which add essays on various subjects or moral apothegms (e.g. My Favourite Hero or Procrastination is the Thief of Time) composed during schoolyears, seemed to him to contain in itself and in conjunction with the personal equation certain possibilities of financial, social, personal and sexual success, whether specially collected and selected as model pedagogic themes (of cent per cent merit) for the use of preparatory and junior grade students or contributed in printed form, following the precedent of Philip Beaufoy or Doctor Dick or Heblon's Studies in Blue, to a publication of certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally as intellectual stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of successful narrative and confidently augurative of successful achievement, during the increasingly longer nights gradually following the summer solstice on the day but three following, videlict, Tuesday, 21 June (S. Aloysius Gonzaga), sunrise 3.33 a.m., sunset 8.29 p.m. 

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Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other frequently engaged his mind? 

What to do with our wives. 

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What had been his hypothetical singular solutions? 

Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spillikins, cup and ball, nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts, chess or backgammon): embroidery, darning or knitting for the policeaided clothing society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar, piano and flute, guitar and piano: legal scrivenery or envelope addressing: biweekly visits to variety entertainments: commercial activity as pleasantly commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress proprietress in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine satisfaction of erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state inspected and medically controlled: social visits, at regular infrequent prevented intervals and with regular frequent preventive superintendence, to and from female acquaintances of recognised respectability in the vicinity: courses of evening instruction specially designed to render liberal instruction agreeable. 

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What instances of deficient mental development in his wife inclined him in favour of the lastmentioned (ninth) solution? 

In disoccupied moments she had more than once covered a sheet of paper with signs and hieroglyphics which she stated were Greek and Irish and Hebrew characters. She had interrogated constantly at varying intervals as to the correct method of writing the capital initial of the name of a city in Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political complications, internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment exposed to the corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by false analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him pike hoses), alias (a mendacious person mentioned in sacred Scripture). 

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What compensated in the false balance of her intelligence for these and such deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, places and things? 

The false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of all balances, proved true by construction. The counterbalance of her proficiency of judgment regarding one person, proved true by experiment. 

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How had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative ignorance? 

Variously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open at a certain page: by assuming in her, when alluding explanatorily, latent knowledge: by open ridicule in her presence of some absent other's ignorant lapse. 

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With what success had he attempted direct instruction? 

She followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention with interest, comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater difficulty remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving reremembered, rerepeated with error. 

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What system had proved more effective? 

Indirect suggestion implicating self-interest. 

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Example? 

She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, she disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat, he bought new hat with rain, she carried umbrella with new hat. 

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Accepting the analogy implied in his guest's parable which examples of postexilic eminence did he adduce? 

Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, author of More Neubkim (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendelssohn of such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn) there arose none like Moses (Maimonides). 

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What statement was made, under correction, by Bloom concerning a fourth seeker of pure truth, by name Aristotle, mentioned, with permission, by Stephen? 

That the seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical philosopher, name uncertain. 

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Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a selected or rejected race mentioned? 

Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza (philosopher), Mendoza (pugilist), Ferdinand Lassalle (reformer, duellist). 

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What fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish languages were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts by guest to host and by host to guest? 

By Stephen: suil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus, suil go cuin (walk, walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care). 

By Bloom: Kifeloch, harimon rakatejch m'baad l'zamatejch (thy temple amid thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate). 

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How was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of both languages made in substantiation of the oral comparison? 

On the penultimate blank page of a book of inferior literary style, entitled Sweets of Sin (produced by Bloom and so manipulated that its front cover came in contact with the surface of the table) with a pencil (supplied by Stephen) Stephen wrote the Irish characters for gee, eh, dee, em, simple and modified, and Bloom in turn wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and (in the absence of mem) a substituted goph, explaining their arithmetical values as ordinal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1,4 and 100. 

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Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical? 

Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary. 

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What points of contact existed between these languages and between the peoples who spoke them? 

The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been taught on the plain of Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the seminary instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor of Israel, and ascendant of Heber and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland: their archeological, genealogical, hagiographical, exegetical, homilectic, toponomastic, historical and religious literatures comprising the works of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and Ghemara) Massor, Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote, Garland of Howth, Book of Kells: their dispersal, persecution, survival and revival: the isolation of their synagogical and ecclesiastical rites in ghetto (S. Mary's Abbey) and masshouse (Adam and Eve's tavern): the proscription of their national costumes in penal laws and Jewish dress acts: the restoration in Chanan David of Zion and the possibility of Irish political autonomy or devolution. 

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What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of that multiple, ethnically irreductible consummation? 

Kolod balejwaw pnimali 
Nefesch, jehudi, homijah.
Why was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich? 
In consequence of defective mnemotechnic. 

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How did the chanter compensate for this deficiency? By a periphrastic version of the general text. 

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In what common study did their mutual reflections merge? 

The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic). 

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Did the guest comply with his host's request? 

Doubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman characters. 

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What was Stephen's auditive sensation? 

He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation of the past. 

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What was Bloom's visual sensation? 

He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a future. 

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What were Stephen's and Bloom's quasisimultaneous volitional quasisensations of concealed identities? 

Visually, Stephen's: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair. 

Auditively, Bloom's: The traditional accent of the ecstasy of catastrophe. 

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What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and with what exemplars? 

In the church, Roman, Anglican, or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very reverend John Conmee S.J., the reverend T. Salmon, D.D., provost of Trinity college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish: exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K.C., Rufus Isaacs, K.C. On the stage, modern or Shakespearean exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian, Osmond Tearle (1901), exponent of Shakespeare. 

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Did the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated voice a strange legend on an allied theme? 

Reassuringly, their place where none could hear them talk being secluded, reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing for subsolid residual sediment of a mechanical mixture, water plus sugar plus cream plus cocoa, having been consumed. 

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Recite the first (major) part of this chanted legend? 

d Little Harry Hughes and his schoolfellows all Went out for to play ball 
And the very first ball little Harry Hughes played 
He drove it o'er the jew's garden wall. 
And the very second ball little Harry Hughes played 
He broke the jew's windows all.
How did the son of Rudolph receive this first part? 
With unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew, he heard with pleasure and saw the unbroken kitchen window. 

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Recite the second part (minor) of the legend. 

Then out there came the jew's daughter 
And she all dressed in green. 
`Come back, come back, you pretty little boy, 
And play your ball again.' 
`I can't come back and I won't come back 
Without my schoolfellows all, 
For if my master he did hear 
He'd make it a sorry ball.' 

She took him by the lilywhite hand 
And led him along the hall 
Until she led him to a room 
Where none could hear him call. 

She took a penknife out of her pocket 
And cut off his little head, 
And now he'll play his ball no more 
For he lies among the dead.

How did the father of Millicent receive this second part? 
With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew's daughter, all dressed in green. 

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Condense Stephen's commentary. 
One of all, the least of all, is the victim predestined. Once by inadvertence, twice by design he challenges his destiny. It comes when he is abandoned and challenges him reluctant and, as an apparition of hope and youth holds him unresisting. It leads him to a strange habitation, to a secret infidel apartment, and there, implacable, immolates him, consenting. 

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Why was the host (victim predestined) sad? 

He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him should by him not be told. 

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Why was the host (reluctant, unresisting) still? 

In accordance with the law of the conservation of energy. 

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Why was the host (secret infidel) silent? 

He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder: the incitation of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism. 

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From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not totally immune? 

From hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his sleeping apartment: more than once, waking, he had been for an indefinite time incapable of moving or uttering sounds. From somnambulism: once, sleeping, his body had risen, crouched and crawled in the direction of a heatless fire and, having attained its destination, there, curled, unheated in night attire had lain, sleeping. 

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Had this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself in any member of his family? 

Twice, in Holles street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter Millicent (Milly) at the ages of 6 and 8 years had uttered in sleep an exclamation of terror and had replied to the interrogations of two figures in night attire with a vacant mute expression. 

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What other infantile memories had he of her? 

15 June 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks her moneybox: counted his three free moneypenny buttons one, tloo, tlee: a doll, a boy, a sailor she cast away: blond, born of two dark, she had blond ancestry, remote, a violation, Herr Hauptmann Hainau, Austrian army, proximate, a hallucination, lieutenant Mulvey, British navy. 

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What endemic characteristics were present? 

Conversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in a direct line of lineage which, though interrupted, would continue at distant intervals to its most distant intervals. 

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What memories had he of her adolescence? 

She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On the duke's lawn entreated by an English visitor, she declined to permit him to make and take away her photographic image (objection not stated). On the South Circular road in the company of Elsa Potter, followed by an individual of sinister aspect, she went half way down Stamer street and turned abruptly back (reason of change not stated). On the vigil of the 15th anniversary of her birth she wrote a letter from Mullingar, county Westmeath, making a brief allusion to a local student (faculty and year not stated). 

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Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict him? 

Less than he had imagined, more than he had hoped. 

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What second departure was contemporaneously perceived by him similarly if differently? 

A temporary departure of his cat. 

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Why similarly, why differently? 

Similarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest of a new male (Mullingar student) or of a healing herb (valerian). Differently, because of different possible returns to the inhabitants or to the habitation. 

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In other respects were their differences similar? 

In passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in unexpectedness. 

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As? 

Inasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him to ribbon it for her (cf. neckarching cat). Moreover, on the free surface of the lake in Stephen's green amid inverted reflections of trees her uncommented spit, describing concentric circles of waterrings, indicated by the constancy of its permanence the locus of a somnolent prostrate fish (cf. mousewatching cat). Again, in order to remember the date, combatants, issue and consequences of a famous military engagement she pulled a plait of her hair (cf. earwashing cat). Furthermore, silly Milly, she dreamed of having had an unspoken unremembered conversation with a horse whose name had been Joseph to whom (which) she had offered a tumblerful of lemonade which it (he) had appeared to have accepted (cf. hearthdreaming cat). Hence in passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in unexpectedness, their differences were similar. 

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In what way had he utilised gifts 1) an owl, 2) a clock, given as matrimonial auguries, to interest and to instruct her? 

As object lessons to explain: 1) the nature and habits of oviparous animals, the possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities of vision, the secular process of imbalsamation: 2) the principle of the pendulum, exemplified in bob, wheelgear and regulator, the translation in terms of human or social regulation of the various positions clockwise of movable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of the recurrence per hour of an instant in each hour, when the longer and the shorter indicator were at the same angle of inclination, videlicet, 5 5/11 minutes past each hour per hour in arithmetical progression. 

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In what manners did she reciprocate? 

She remembered: on the 27th anniversary of his birth she presented to him a breakfast moustachecup of imitation crown Derby porcelain ware. She provided: at quarter day or thereabouts if or when purchases had been made by him not for her she showed herself attentive to his necessities, anticipating his desires. She admired: a natural phenomenon having been explained by him not for her she expressed the immediate desire to possess without gradual acquisition a fraction of his science, the moiety, the quarter, a thousandth part. 

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What proposal did Bloom, diambulist, father of Milly, somnambulist, make to Stephen, noctambulist? 

To pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday (proper) and Friday (normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment immediately above the kitchen and immediately adjacent to the sleeping apartment of his host and hostess. 

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What various advantages would or might have resulted from a prolongation of such extemporisation? 

For the guest: security of domicile and seclusion of study. For the host: rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. For the hostess: disintegration of obsession, acquisition of correct Italian pronunciation. 

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Why might these several provisional contingencies between a guest and a hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent eventuality of reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew's daughter? 

Because the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother through daughter. 

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To what inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did the guest return a monosyllabic negative answer? 

If he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at Sydney Parade railway station, 14 October 1903. 

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What inchoate corollary statement was consequently suppressed by the host? 

A statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of the interment of Mrs Mary Dedalus, born Goulding, 26 June 1903, vigil of the anniversary of the decease of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag). 

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Was the proposal of asylum accepted? 

Promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was declined. 

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What exchange of money took place between host and guest? 

The former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum of money (?1.7s.0.), one pound seven shillings, advanced by the latter to the former. 

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What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modified, declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed? 

To inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, place the residence of the instructed. To inaugurate a course of vocal instruction, place the residence of the instructress. To inaugurate a series of static, semistatic and peripatetic intellectual dialogues, places the residence of both speakers (if both speakers were resident in the same place), the Ship hotel and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street (W. and E. Connery, proprietors), the National Library of Ireland, 10 Kildare street, the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, a public garden, the vicinity of a place of worship, a conjunction of two or more public thoroughfares, the point of bisection of a right line drawn between their residences (if both speakers were resident in different places). 

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What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of these mutually selfexcluding propositions? 

The irreparability of the past: once at a performance of Albert Hengler's circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive particoloured clown in quest of paternity had penetrated from the ring to a place in the auditorium where Bloom, solitary, was seated and had publicly declared to an exhilarated audience that he (Bloom) was his (the clown's) papa. The imprevidibility of the future: once in the summer of 1898 he (Bloom) had marked a florin (2s.) with three notches on the milled edge and tendered it in payment of an account due to and received by J. and T. Davy, family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand Canal, for circulation on the waters of civic finance, for possible, circuitous or direct, return. 

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Was the clown Bloom's son? 

No. 

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Had Bloom's coin returned? 

Never. 

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Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him? 

Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and international animosity. 

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He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminating these conditions? 

There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and death: the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) human females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres of which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis from infancy through maturity to decay. 

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Why did he desist from speculation? 

Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other more acceptable phenomena in place of the less acceptable phenomena to be removed. 

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Did Stephen participate in his dejection? 

He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational reagent between a micro- and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void. 

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Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom? 

Not verbally. Substantially. 

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What comforted his misapprehension? 

That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void. 

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I n what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the exodus from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation effected? 

Lighted Candle in Stick borne by 
BLOOM. 
Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by 
STEPHEN.

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With what intonation secreto of what commemorative psalm? 

The 113th, modus peregrinus: In exitu Isra?l de Egypto: domus Jacob de populo barbaro. 

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What did each do at the door of egress? 

Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his head. 

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For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress? 

For a cat. 

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What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden? 

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit. 

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With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his companion of various constellations? 

Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipent lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Major) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity. 

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Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast? 

Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached. 

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Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result? 

Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of the quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence of a number computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude and of so many places, e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that, the result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would have to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers. 

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Did he find the problem of the inhabitability of the planets and their satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution? 

Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism, normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons, when elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere suffered with arithmetical progression of intensity, according as the line of demarcation between troposphere and stratosphere was approximated, from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo, when proposing this problem for solution he had conjectured as a working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible that a more adaptable and differently anatomically constructed race of beings might subsist otherwise under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian, Neptunian or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms with finite differences resulting similar to the whole and to one another would probably there as here remain inalterably and inalienably attached to vanities, to vanities of vanities and all that is vanity. 

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And the problem of possible redemption? 
The minor was proved by the major.

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Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered? 

The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white, yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy: their magnitudes revealed up to and including the 7th: their positions: the waggoner's star: Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular cinctures of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the interdependent gyrations of double suns: the independent synchronous discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel, Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin of meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the birth of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric showers about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence (martyr, 10 August): the monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon in her arms: the posited influence of celestial on human bodies: the appearance of a star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating by night and day (a new luminous sun generated by the collision and amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about the period of the birth of William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent neversetting constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of similar origin but lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of the Corona Septentrionalis about the period of the birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars of (presumably) similar origin which had (effectively or presumably) appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of Andromeda about the period of the birth of Stephen Dedalus, and in and from the constellation of Auriga some years after the birth and death of Rudolph Bloom, junior, and in and from other constellations some years before or after the birth or death of other persons: the attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings. 

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His (Bloom's) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and allowing for possible error? 

That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the known to the unknown: an infinity, renderable equally finite by the suppositions probable apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its future spectators had entered actual present existence. 

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Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle? 

Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the satellite of their planet. 

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Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological influences upon sublunary disasters? 

It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity. 

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What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman? 

Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising, and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible. 

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What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom's, who attracted Stephen's gaze? 

In the second storey (rere) of his (Bloom's) house the light of a paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller blind supplied by Frank O'Hara, window blind, curtain pole and revolving shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier street. 

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How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible person, his wife Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp? 

With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with subdued affection and admiration: with description: with impediment: with suggestion. 

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Boa then were silent? 

Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces. 

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Were they indefinitely inactive? 

At Stephen's suggestion, at Bloom's instigation both, first Stephen, then Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs of micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumposition, their gazes, first Bloom's, then Stephen's, elevated to the projected luminous and semiluminous shadow. 

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Similarly? 

The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations were dissimilar: Bloom's longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter who in his ultimate year at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of greatest altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the institution, 210 scholars: Stephen's higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic consumption an insistent vesical pressure. 

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What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the invisible audible collateral organ of the other? 

To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, reactivity, dimension, sanitariness, pelosity. To Stephen: the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised (1st January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain from unnecessary servile work) and the problem as to whether the divine prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy Roman catholic apostolic church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of such divine excrescences as hair and toenails. 

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What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed? 

A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup of the Tress of Berenice towards the zodiacal sign of Leo. 

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How did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal departer? 

By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its staple, pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and revealing an aperture for free egress and free ingress. 

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How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation? 

Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and forming any angle less than the sum of two right angles. 

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What sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion of their (respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands? 

The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the bells in the church of Saint George. 

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What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard? 

By Stephen: 

Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet. 
Iubilantium te virginum. Chorus excipiat.
By Bloom: 
Heigho, heigho, 
Heigho, heigho.
Where were the several members of the company which with Bloom that day at the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandymount in the south to Glasnevin in the north? 
Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon Dedalus (in bed), Tom Kernan (in bed), Ned Lambert (in bed), Joe Hynes (in bed), John Henry Menton (in bed), Bernard Corrigan (in bed), Patsy Dignam (in bed), Paddy Dignam (in the grave). 

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Alone, what did Bloom hear? 

The double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn earth, the double vibration of a jew's harp in the resonant lane. 

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Alone, what did Bloom feel? 

The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Réaumur: the incipient intimations of proximate dawn. 

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Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind him? 

Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct: Percy Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan (phthisis, Jervis Street hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin Bay), Philip Moisel (pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart (phthisis, Mater Misericordi&Aelig; hospital), Patrick Dignam (apoplexy, Sandymount). 

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What prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain? 

The disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of day-break, the apparition of a new solar disk. 

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Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena? 

Once, in 1887 after a protracted performance of charades in the house of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of the diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the direction of Mizrach, the east. 

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He remembered the initial paraphenomena? 

More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at various points, avine music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer, the visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body, the first golden limb of the resurgent sun perceptible low on the horizon. 

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Did he remain? 

With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the garden, reentering the passage, reclosing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed the candle, reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front room, hallfloor, and reentered. 

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What suddenly arrested his ingress? 

The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came into contact with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later, a painful sensation was located in consequence of antecedent sensations transmitted and registered. 

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Describe the alterations effected in the disposition of the articles of furnitures? 

A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from opposite the door to the ingleside near the compactly furled union Jack (an alteration which he had frequently intended to execute): the blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table had been placed opposite the door in the place vacated by the prune plush sofa: the walnut sideboard (a projecting angle of which had momentarily arrested his ingress) had been moved from its position beside the door to a more advantageous but more perilous position in front of the door: two chairs had been moved from right and left of the ingleside to the position originally occupied by the blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table. 

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Describe them. 

One: a squat stuffed easychair with stout arms extended and back slanted to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an irregular fringe of a rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply upholstered seat a centralised diffusing and diminishing discolouration. The other: a slender splayfoot chair of glossy cane curves, placed directly opposite the former, its frame from top to seat and from seat to base being varnished dark brown, its seat being a bright circle of white plaited rush. 

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What significances attached to these two chairs? 

Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of circumstantial evidence, of testimonial supermanence. 

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What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard? 

A vertical piano (Cadby) with exposed keyboard, its closed coffin supporting a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves and an emerald ashtray containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two discoloured ends of cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music in the key of G natural for voice and piano of Love's Old Sweet Song (words by G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by Madam Antoinette Sterling) open at the last page with the final indications ad libitum, forte, pedal, animato, sustained, pedal, ritirando, close. 

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With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation these objects? 

With strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on his right temple a contused tumescence: with attention, focusing his gaze on a large dull passive and slender bright active: with solicitation, bending and downturning the upturned rugfringe: with amusement, remembering Dr Malachi Mulligan's scheme of colour containing the gradation of green: with pleasure, repeating the words and antecedent act and perceiving through various channels of internal sensibility the consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion of gradual discolouration. 

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His next proceeding? 

From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on a small tin plate, placed his candlestick on the right corner of the mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat a folded page of prospectus (illustrated) entitled Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined it superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the latter reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin of the candlestick disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to facilitate total combustion. 

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What followed this operation? 

That truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted a vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense. 

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What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the mantelpiece? 

A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of 4.46 a.m. on the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift of Matthew Dillon: a dwarf tree of glacial arborescence under a transparent bellshade, matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle: an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper. 

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What interchanges of looks took place between these three objects and Bloom? 

In the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of the dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before the mirror the matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper with a clear melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom while Bloom with obscure tranquil profound motionless compassionated gaze regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle. 

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What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted his attention? 

The image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man. 

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Why solitary (ipsorelative)? 

Brothers and sisters had he none, 
Yet that man's father was his grandfather's son.

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Why mutable (aliorelative)? 

From infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal procreatrix. From maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his paternal creator. 

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What final visual impression was communicated to him by the mirror? 

The optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly arranged and not in the order of their common letters with scintillating titles on the two bookshelves opposite. 

Catalogue these books. 
Thorn's Dublin Post Office Directory, 1886. 

Denis Florence M'Carthy's Poetical Works (copper beechleaf bookmark at p. 5). 

Shakespeare's Works (dark crimson morocco, goldtooled). 

The Useful Ready Reckoner (brown cloth). 

The Secret History of the Court of Charles II (red cloth, tooled binding). 

The Child's Guide (blue cloth). 

When We Were Boys by William O'Brien M.P. (green cloth, slightly faded, envelope bookmark at p. 217). 

Thoughts from Spinoza (maroon leather). 

The Story of the Heavens by Sir Robert Ball (blue cloth). 

Ellis's Three Trips to Madagascar (brown cloth, title obliterated). 

The Stark-Munro Letters by A. Conan Doyle, property of the City of Dublin Public Library, 106 Capel Street, lent 21 May (Whitsun Eve) 1904, due 4 June 1904, 13 days overdue (black cloth binding, bearing white letternumber ticket). 

Voyages in China by `Viator' (recovered with brown paper, red ink title). 

Philosophy of the Talmud (sewn pamphlet). 

Lockhart's Life of Napoleon (cover wanting, marginal an notations, minimising victories, aggrandising defeats of the protagonist). 

Soll und Haben by Gustav Freytag (black boards, Gothic characters, cigarette coupon bookmark at p. 24). 

Hozier's History of the Russo-Turkish War (brown cloth, 2 volumes, with gummed label, Garrison Library, Governor's Parade, Gibraltar, on verso of cover). 

Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland by William Allingham (second edition, green cloth, gilt trefoil design, previous owner's name on recto of flyleaf erased). 

A Handbook of Astronomy (cover, brown leather, detached, 5 plates, antique letterpress long primer, author's footnotes nonpareil, marginal clues brevier, captions small pica). 

The Hidden Life of Christ (black boards). 

In the Track of the Sun (yellow cloth, titlepage missing, recurrent title intestation). 

Physical Strength and How to Obtain It by Eugene Sandow (red cloth). 

Short but yet Plain Elements of Geometry written in French by F. Ignat. Pardies and rendered into Englifh by John Harris D. D. London, printed for R. Knaplock at the Bifhop's Head MDCCXI, with dedicatory epiftle to his worthy friend Charles Cox, efquire, Member of Parliament for the burgh of Southwark and having ink calligraphed statement on the flyleaf certifying that the book was the property of Michael Gallagher, dated this 10th day of May 1822 and requefting the perfon who should find it, if the book should be loft or go aftray, to reftore it to Michael Gallagher, carpenter, Dufery Gate, Ennifcorthy, county Wicklow, the fineft place in the world.


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What reflections occupied his mind during the process of reversion of the inverted volumes? 

The necessity of order, a place for everything and everything in its place: the deficient appreciation of literature possessed by females: the incongruity of an apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella inclined in a closestool: the insecurity of hiding any secret document behind, beneath or between the pages of a book. 

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Which volume was the largest in bulk? 

Hozier's History of the Russo - Turkish War. 

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What among other data did the second volume of the work In question contain? 

The name of a decisive battle (forgotten), frequently remembered by a decisive officer, major Brian Cooper Tweedy (remembered). 

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Why, firstly and secondly, did he not consult the work in question? 

Firstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic: secondly, because after an interval of amnesia, when seated at the central table, about to consult the work in question, he remembered by mnemotechnic the name of the military engagement, Plevna. 

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What caused him consolation in his sitting posture? 

The candour, nudity, pose, tranquillity, youth, grace, sex, counsel of a statue erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus purchased by auction from P. A. Wren, 9 Bachelor's Walk. 

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What caused him irritation in his sitting posture? 

Inhibitory pressure of collar (size 17) and waistcoat (5 buttons), two articles of clothing superfluous in the costume of mature males and inelastic to alterations of mass by expansion. 

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How was the irritation allayed? 

He removed his collar, with contained black necktie and collapsible stud, from his neck to a position on the left of the table. He unbuttoned successively in reversed direction waistcoat, trousers, shirt and vest along the medial line of irregular incrispated black hair extending in triangular convergence from the pelvic basin over the circumference of the abdomen and umbilicular fossicle along the medial line of nodes to the intersection of the sixth pectoral vertebr&Aelig;, thence produced both ways at right angles and terminating in circles described about two equidistant points, right and left, on the summits of the mammary prominences. He unbraced successively each of six minus one braced trouser buttons, arranged in pairs, of which one incomplete. 

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What involuntary actions followed? 

He compressed between 2 fingers the flesh circumjacent to a cicatrice in the left infracostal region below the diaphragm resulting from a sting inflicted 2 weeks and 3 days previously (23 May 1904) by a bee. He scratched imprecisely with his right hand, though insensible of prurition, various points and surfaces of his partly exposed, wholly abluted skin. He inserted his left hand into the left lower pocket of his waistcoat and extracted and replaced a silver coin (1 shilling), placed there (presumably) on the occasion (17 October 1903) of the interment of Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade. 

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Compile the budget for 16 June 1904. 

#. s. d. #. s. d. 
1 Pork kidney 0. 0. 3 Cash in hand 0.4.9 

2 Copy Freeman's Journal 0.0.2 Commission recd. Freeman's Journal 

1 Bath and gratification 0. 1.6 2.7.6 

Tramfare 0. 0. 2 Loan (Stephen Dedalus) 1.7.0 

2 In Memoriam Patrick 

Dignam 0.5.0 

2 Banbury cakes 0.0.1 
2 Lunch 0.0.7 
1 Rental fee for book 0.1.0 
2 Packet notepaper and 
envelopes 0.0.2 
2 Dinner and gratification 0.2.0 
2 Postal order and stamp 0.2.8 
Tramfare 0.0.1 
1 Pig's Foot 0.0.4 
1 Sheep's Trotter 0.0.3 
2 Cake Fry's plain choco 
late 0.0. 
1 Square soda bread 0.0.4 
1 Coffee and bun 0.0.4 
Loan (Stephen Dedalus) 
refunded 2.7.0 

BALANCE 0.27.5 

#.2.29. 3 #.2.19.3


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Did the process of divestiture continue? 

Sensible of a benignant persistent ache in his footsoles he extended his foot to one side and observed the creases, protuberances and salient points caused by foot pressure in the course of walking repeatedly in several different directions, then, inclined, he disnoded the laceknots, unhooked and loosened the laces, took off each of his two boots for the second time, detached the partially moistened right sock through the fore part of which the nail of his great toe had again effracted, raised his right foot and, having unhooked a purple elastic sock suspender, took off his right sock, placed his unclothed right foot on the margin of the seat of his chair, picked at and gently lacerated the protruding part of the great toenail, raised the part lacerated to his nostrils and inhaled the odour of the quick, then with satisfaction threw away the lacerated unguinal fragment. 

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Why with satisfaction? 

Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other unguinal fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs Ellis's juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of brief genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation. 

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In what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive ambitions now coalesced? 

Not to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough English, or possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne of a sufficient number of acres, roods and perches, statute land measure (valuation #42), of grazing turbary surrounding a baronial hall with gatelodge and carriage drive nor, on the other hand, a terracehouse or semidetached villa, described as Rus in Urbe or Qui si Sana, but to purchase by private treaty in fee simple a thatched bungalowshaped 2 storey dwellinghouse of southerly aspect, surmounted by vane and lightning conductor, connected with the earth, with porch covered by parasitic plants (ivy or Virginia creeper), halldoor, olive green, with smart carriage finish and neat doorbrasses, stucco front with gilt tracery at eaves and gable, rising, if possible, upon a gentle eminence with agreeable prospect from balcony with stone pillar parapet over unoccupied and unoccupyable interjacent pastures and standing in 5 or 6 acres of its own ground, at such a distance from the nearest public thoroughfare as to render its houselights visible at night above and through a quickset hornbeam hedge of topiary cutting, situate at a given point not less than 1 statute mile from the periphery of the metropolis, within a time limit of not more than 5 minutes from tram or train line (e.g., Dundrum, south, or Sutton, north, both localities equally reported by trial to resemble the terrestrial poles in being favourable climates for phthisical subjects), the premises to be held under feefarmgrant, lease 999 years, the message to consist of 1 drawingroom with baywindow (2 lancets), thermometer affixed, 1 sittingroom, 4 bedrooms, 2 servants rooms, tiled kitchen with close range and scullery, lounge hall fitted with linen wallpresses, fumed oak sectional bookcase containing the Encyclopaedia Britannica and New century Dictionary, transverse obsolete medieval and oriental weapons, dinner gong, alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, vulcanite automatic telephone receiver with adjacent directory, handtufted Axminster carpet with cream ground and trellis border, loo table with pillar and claw legs, hearth with massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel chronometer clock, guaranteed timekeeper with cathedral chime, barometer with hygrographic chart, comfortable lounge settees and corner fitments, upholstered in ruby plush with good springing and sunk centre, three banner Japanese screen and cuspidors (club style, rich wine-coloured leather, gloss renewable with a minimum of labour by use of linseed oil and vinegar) and pyramidically prismatic central chandelier lustre, bentwood perch with a fingertame parrot (expurgated language), embossed mural paper at 10/-per dozen with transverse swags of carmine floral design and top crown frieze, staircase, three continuous flights at successive right angles, of varnished cleargrained oak, treads and risers, newel, balusters and handrail, with stepped-up panel dado, dressed with camphorated wax, bathroom, hot and cold supply, reclining and shower: water closet on mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane oblong window, tipup seat, bracket lamp, brass tierod brace, armrests, footstool and artistic oleograph on inner face of door: ditto, plain: servant's apartments with separate sanitary and hygienic necessaries for cook, general and betweenmaid (salary, rising by biennial unearned increments of #2, with comprehensive fidelity insurance annual bonus (#1), and retiring allowance (based on the 65 system) after 30 years service), pantry, buttery, larder, refrigerator, outoffices, coal and wood cellarage with winebin (still and sparkling vintages) for distinguished guests, if entertained to dinner (evening dress), carbon monoxide gas supply throughout. 

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What additional attractions might the grounds contain? 

As addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a glass summerhouse with tropical palms, equipped in the best botanical manner a rockery with waterspray, a beehive arranged on humane principles, oval flowerbeds in rectangular grassplots set with eccentric ellipses of scarlet and chrome tulips, blue scillas, crocuses, polyanthus, sweet William, sweat pea, lily of the valley (bulbs obtainable from sir James W. Mackey (Limited) (wholesale and retail) seed and bulb merchant and nurseryman, agent for chemical manures, 23 Sackville street, upper), an orchard, kitchen garden and vinery, protected against illegal trespassers by glasstopped mural enclosures, a lumbershed with padlock for various inventoried implements. 

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As? 

Eeltraps, lobsterpots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone, clodcrusher, swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 10 tooth rake, washing clogs, haytedder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot, brush, hoe and so on. 

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What improvements might be subsequently introduced? 

A rabbitry and fowlrun, a dovecote, a botanical conservatory, 2 hammocks (lady's and gentleman's), a sundial shaded and sheltered by laburnum or lilac trees, an exotically harmonically accorded Japanese tinkle gatebell affixed to left lateral gatepost, a capacious waterbutt, a lawnmower with side delivery and grassbox, a lawnsprinkler with hydraulic hose. 

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What facilities of transit were desirable? 

When citybound frequent connection by train or tram from their respective intermediate station or terminal. When countrybound velocipedes, a chainless freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar attached, or draught conveyance, a donkey with wicker trap or smart phaeton with good working solidungular cob (roan gelding, 14h). 

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What might be the name of this erigible or erected residence? 

Bloom Cottage. Saint Leopold's. Flowerville. 

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Could Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresee Bloom of Flowerville? 

In loose allwool garments with Harris tweed cap, price 8/6, and useful garden boots with elastic gussets and wateringcan, planting aligned young firtrees, syringing, pruning, staking, sowing hayseed, trundling a weedladen wheelbarrow without excessive fatigue at sunset amid the scent of newmown hay, ameliorating the soil, multiplying wisdom, achieving longevity. 

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What syllabus of intellectual pursuits was simultaneously possible? 

Snapshot photography, comparative study of religions, folklore relative to various amatory and superstitious practices, contemplation of the celestial constellations. 

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What lighter recreations? 

Outdoor: garden and fieldwork, cycling on level macadamised causeways, ascents of moderately high hills, natation in secluded fresh water and unmolested river boating in secure wherry or light curricle with kedge anchor on reaches free from weirs and rapids (period of estivation), vespertinal perambulation or equestrian circumprocession with inspection of sterile landscape and contrastingly agreeable cottagers' fires of smoking peat turves (period of hibernation). Indoor discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical and criminal problems: lecture of unexpurgated exotic erotic masterpieces: house carpentry with toolbox containing hammer, awl, nails, screws, tintacks, gimlet, tweezers, bullnose plane and turnscrew. 

Might he become a gentleman farmer of field produce and live stock? 

Not impossibly, with 1 or 2 stripper cows, 1 pike of upland hay and requisite farming implements, e.g., an end-to-end churn, a turnip pulper etc. 

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What would be his civic functions and social status among the county families and landed gentry? 

Arranged successively in ascending powers of hierarchical order, that of gardener, groundsman, cultivator, breeder, and at the zenith of his career, resident magistrate or justice of the peace with a family crest and coat of arms and appropriate classical motto (Semper paratus), duly recorded in the court directory (Bloom, Leopold P., M. P., P. C., K. P., L. L. D. honoris cause, Bloomville, Dundrum) and mentioned in court and fashionable intelligence (Mr and Mrs Leopold Bloom have left Kingstown for England). 

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What course of action did he outline for himself in such capacity? 

A course that lay between undue clemency and excessive rigour: the dispensation in a heterogeneous society of arbitrary classes, incessantly rearranged in terms of greater and lesser social inequality of unbiassed homogeneous indisputable justice, tempered with mitigants of the widest possible latitude but exactable to the uttermost farthing with confiscation of estate, real and personal, to the crown. Loyal to the highest constituted power in the land, actuated by an innate love of rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance of public order, the repression of many abuses though not of all simultaneously (every measure of reform or retrenchment being a preliminary solution to be contained by fluxion in the final solution), the upholding of the letter of the law (common, statute and law merchant) against all traversers in covin and trespassers acting in contravention of bylaws and regulations, all resuscitators (by trespass and petty larceny of kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by desuetude, all orotund instigators of international persecution, all perpetuators of international animosities, all menial molestors of domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic connubiality. 

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Prove that he had loved rectitude from his earliest youth. 

To master Percy Apjohn at High School in 1880 he had divulged his disbelief in the tenets of the Irish (protestant) church (to which his father Rudolf Virag, later Rudolph Bloom, had been converted from the Israelitic faith and communion in 1865 by the Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews) subsequently abjured by him in favour of Roman catholicism at the epoch of and with a view to his matrimony in 1888. To Daniel Magrane and Francis Wade in 1882 during a juvenile friendship (terminated by the premature emigration of the former) he had advocated during nocturnal perambulations the political theory of colonial (e.g. Canadian) expansion and the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, expounded in The Descent of Man and The Origin of Species. In 1885 he had publicly expressed his adherence to the collective and national economic programme advocated by James Fintan Lalor, John Fisher Murray, John Mitchel, J. F. X. O'Brien and others, the agrarian policy of Michael Davitt, the constitutional agitation of Charles Stewart Parnell (M. P. for Cork City), the programme of peace, retrenchment and reform of William Ewart Gladstone (M. P. for Midlothian, N. B.) and, in support of his political convictions, had climbed up into a secure position amid the ramifications of a tree on Northumberland road to see the entrance (2 February 1888) into the capital of a demonstrative torchlight procession of 20,000, divided into 120 trade corporations, bearing 2,000 torches in escort of the marquess of Ripon and John Morley. 

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How much and how did he propose to pay for this country residence? 

As per prospectus of the Industrious Foreign Acclimatised Nationalised Friendly Stateaided Building Society (incorporated 1874), a maximum of #60 per annum, being 116th of an assured income, derived from giltedged securities, representing at 5% simple interest on capital of #1,200 (estimate of price at 20 years purchase) of which 1/3rd to be paid on acquisition and the balance in the form of annual rent, viz. #800 plus 2 1/2% interest on the same, repayable quarterly in equal annual instalments until extinction by amortisation of loan advanced for purchase within a period of 20 years, amounting to an annual rental of #64, headrent included, the titledeeds to remain in possession of the lender or lenders with a saving clause envisaging forced sale, foreclosure and mutual compensation in the event of protracted failure to pay the terms assigned, otherwise the messuage to become the absolute property of the tenant occupier upon expiry of the period of years stipulated. 

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What rapid but insecure means to opulence might facilitate immediate purchase? 

A private wireless telegraph which would transmit by dot and dash system the result of a national equine handicap (flat or steeplechase) of 1 or more miles and furlongs won by an outsider at odds of 50 to 1 at 3 hr. 8 m. p.m. at Ascot (Greenwich time) the message being received and available for betting purposes in Dublin at 2.59 p.m. (Dunsink time). The unexpected discovery of an object of great monetary value: precious stone, valuable adhesive or impressed postage stamps (7-shilling, mauve, imperforate, Hamburg, 1866: 4 pence, rose, blue paper perforate, Great Britain, 1866: 1 franc, stone, official, rouletted, diagonal surcharge, Luxembourg, 1878): antique dynastical ring, unique relic in unusual repositories or by unusual means: from the air (dropped by an eagle in flight), by fire (amid the carbonised remains of an incendiated edifice), in the sea (amid flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict), on earth (in the gizzard of a comestible fowl). A Spanish prisoner's donation of a distant treasure of valuables or specie or bullion lodged with a solvent banking corporation 100 years previously at 5% compound interest of the collective worth of #5,000,000 stg (five million pounds sterling). A contract with an inconsiderate contractee for the delivery of 32 consignments of some given commodity in consideration of cash payment on delivery at the initial rate of 1/4d. to be increased constantly in the geometrical progression of 2 (1/4d., 1/2d., 1d., 2d., 4d., 8d., 1s. 4d., 2s. 8d. to 32 terms). A prepared scheme based on a study of the laws of probability to break the bank at Monte Carlo. A solution of the secular problem of the quadrature of the circle, government premium #1,000,000 sterling. 

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Was vast wealth acquirable through industrial channels? 

The reclamation of dunams of waste arenary soil, proposed in the prospectus of Agendath Netaim, Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.15 by the cultivation of orange plantations and melonfields and reafforestation. The utilisation of waste paper, fells of sewer rodents, human excrement possessing chemical properties, in view of the vast production of the first, vast number of the second and immense quantity of the third, every normal human being of average vitality and appetite producing annually, cancelling byproducts of water, a sum total of 80 lbs. (mixed animal and vegetable diet), to be multiplied by 4,386,035 the total population of Ireland according to the census returns of 1901. 

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Were there schemes of wider scope? 

A scheme to be formulated and submitted for approval to the harbour commissioners for the exploitation of white coal (hydraulic power), obtained by hydroelectric plant at peak of tide at Dublin bar or at head of water at Poulaphouca or Powerscourt or catchment basins of main streams for the economic production of 500,000 W. H. P. of electricity. A scheme to enclose the peninsular delta of the North Bull at Dollymount and erect on the space of the foreland, used for golf links and rifle ranges, an asphalted esplanade with casinos, booths, shooting galleries, hotels, boardinghouses, readingrooms, establishments for mixed bathing. A scheme for the use of dogvans and goatvans for the delivery of early morning milk. A scheme for the development of Irish tourist traffic in and around Dublin by means of petrolpropelled riverboats, plying in the fluvial fairway between island bridge and Ringsend, charabancs, narrow gauge local railways, and pleasure steamers for coastwise navigation (10/- per person per day, guide (trilingual) included). A scheme for the repristination of passenger and goods traffics over Irish waterways, when freed from weedbeds. A scheme to connect by tramline the Cattle Market (North Circular road and Prussia street) with the quays (Sheriff street, lower, and East Wall), parallel with the Link line railway laid (in conjunction with the Great Southern and Western railway line) between the cattle park, Liffey junction, and terminus of Midland Great Western railway 43 to 45 North Wall, in proximity to the terminal stations or Dublin branches of Great Central Railway, Midland Railway of England, City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, Lancashire Yorkshire Railway Company, Dublin and Glasgow Steam Packet Company, Glasgow Dublin and Londonderry Steam Packet Company (Laird line), British and Irish Steam Packet Company, Dublin and Morecambe Steamers, London and North Western Railway Company, Dublin Port and Docks Board Landing Sheds and transit sheds of Palgrave, Murphy and Company, steamship owners, agents for steamers from Mediterranean, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Holland and for animal transport and of additional mileage operated by the Dublin United Tramways Company, limited, to be covered by graziers' fees. 

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Positing what protasis would the contraction for such several schemes become a natural and necessary apodosis? 

Given a guarantee equal to the sum sought, the support, by deed of gift and transfer vouchers during donor's lifetime or by bequest after donor's painless extinction, of eminent financiery (Blum Pasha, Rothschild, Guggenheim, Hirsch, Montefiore, Morgan, Rockefeller) possessing fortunes in 6 figures, amassed during a successful life, and joining capital with opportunity the thing required was done. 

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What eventually would render him independent of such wealth? 

The independent discovery of a goldseam of inexhaustible ore. 

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For what reason did he meditate on schemes so difficult of realisation? 

It was one or his axioms that similar meditations or the automatic relation to himself of a narrative concerning himself or tranquil recollection of the past when practised habitually before retiring for the night alleviated fatigue and produced as a result sound repose and renovated vitality. 

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His justifications? 

As a physicist he had learned that of the 70 years of complete human life at least 2/7ths, viz., 20 years passed in sleep. As a philosopher he knew that at the termination of any allotted life only an infinitesimal part of any person's desires has been realised. As a physiologist he believed in the artificial placation of malignant agencies chiefly operative during somnolence. 

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What did he fear? 

The committal of homicide or suicide during sleep by an aberration of the light of reason, the incommensurable categorical intelligence situated in the cerebral convolutions. 

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What were habitually his final meditations? 

Of some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded, reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life. 

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What did the first drawer unlocked contain? 

A Vere Foster's handwriting copybook, property of Milly (Millicent) Bloom, certain pages of which bore diagram drawings marked Papli, which showed a large globular head with 5 hairs erect, 2 eyes in profile, the trunk full front with 3 large buttons, 1 triangular foot: 2 fading photographs of queen Alexandra of England and of Maud Branscombe, actress and professional beauty: a Yuletide card, bearing on it a pictorial representation of a parasitic plant, the legend Mizpah, the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders, from Mr and Mrs M. Comerford, the versicle: May this Yuletide bring to thee, Joy and peace and welcome glee: a butt of red partly liquefied sealing wax, obtained from the stores department of Messrs Hely's, Ltd., 89, 90 and 91 Dame street: a box containing the remainder of a gross of gilt `J' pennibs, obtained from same department of same firm: an old sandglass which rolled containing sand which rolled: a sealed prophecy (never unsealed) written by Leopold Bloom in 1886 concerning the consequences of the passing into law of William Ewart Gladstone's Home Rule bill of 1886 (never passed into law): a bazaar ticket No 2004, of S. Kevin's Charity Fair, price 6d. 100 prizes: an infantile epistle, dated, small em monday, reading: capital pee Papli comma capital aitch How are you note of interrogation capital eye I am very well full stop new paragraph signature with flourishes capital em Milly no stop: a cameo brooch, property of Ellen Bloom (born Higgins), deceased: 3 typewritten letters, addressee, Henry Flower, c/o P. O. Westland Row, addresser, Martha Clifford, c/o P. O. Dolphin's Barn: the transliterated name and address of the addresser of the 3 letters in reserved alphabetic boustrophedontic punctated quadrilinear cryptogram (vowels suppressed) N. IGS./WI.UU. OX/W. OKS. MH/Y. IM: a press cutting from an English weekly periodical Modern Society, subject corporal chastisement in girls' schools: a pink ribbon which had festooned an Easter egg in the year 1899: two partly uncoiled rubber preservatives with reserve pockets, purchased by post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London, W.C.: 1 pack of 1 dozen creamlaid envelopes and faintruled notepaper, watermarked, now reduced by 3: some assorted Austrian-Hungarian coins: 2 coupons of the Royal and Privileged Hungarian Lottery: a lowpower magnifying glass: 2 erotic photocards showing: a) buccal coition between nude senorita (rere presentation, superior position) and nude torero (fore presentation, inferior position): b) anal violation by male religious (fully clothed, eyes abject) of female religious (partly clothed, eyes direct), purchased by post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London, W.C.: a press cutting of recipe for renovation of old tan boots: a 1d. adhesive stamp, lavender, of the reign of Queen Victoria: a chart of measurements of Leopold Bloom compiled before, during and after 2 months of consecutive use of Sandow-Whiteley's pulley exerciser (men's 15/-, athlete's 20/-) viz., chest 28 in. and 29 1/2 in., biceps 9 in. and 10 in., forearm 8 1/2 and 9 in., thigh 10 in. and 12 in., calf 11 in. and 12 in.: 1 prospectus of the Wonderworker, the world's greatest remedy for rectal complaints direct from Wonderworker, Coventry House, South Place, London E. C., addressed to Mrs L. Bloom with brief accompanying note commencing: Dear Madam. 

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Quote the textual terms in which the prospectus claimed advantages for this thaumaturgic remedy. 

It heals and soothes while you sleep, in case of trouble in breaking wind, assists nature in the most formidable way, insuring instant relief in discharge of gases, keeping parts clean and free natural action, an initial outlay of 7/6 making anew man of you and life worth living. Ladies find Wonderworker especially useful, a pleasant surprise when they note delightful result like a cool drink of fresh spring water on a sultry summer's day. Recommend it to your lady and gentlemen friends, lasts a lifetime. Insert long round end. Wonderworker. 

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Were there testimonials? 

Numerous. From clergyman, British naval officer, wellknown author, city man, hospital nurse, lady, mother of five, absentminded beggar. 

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How did absentminded beggar's concluding testimonial conclude? 

What a pity the government did not supply our men with wonderworkers during the South African campaign! What a relief it would have been! 

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What object did Bloom add to this collection of objects? 

A 4th typewritten letter received by Henry Flower (let H. F. be L. B.) from Martha Clifford (find M. C.). 

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What pleasant reflection accompanied this action? 

The reflection that, apart from the letter in question, his magnetic face, form and address had been favourably received during the course of the preceding day by a wife (Mrs Josephine Breen, born Josie Powell); a nurse, Miss Calian (Christian name unknown), a maid, Gertrude (Gerty, family name unknown). 

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What possibility suggested itself? 

The possibility of exercising virile power of fascination in the most immediate future after an expensive repast in a private apartment in the company of an elegant courtesan, of corporal beauty, moderately mercenary, variously instructed, a lady by origin. 

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What did the and drawer contain? 

Documents: the birth certificate of Leopold Paula Bloom: an endowment assurance policy of #500 in the Scottish Widows' Assurance Society intestated Millicent (Milly) Bloom, coming into force at 25 years as with profit policy of #430, #462--10--0 and #500 at 60 years or death, 65 years or death and death, respectively, or with profit policy (paidup) of #299--10--0 together with cash payment of #133--10--0, at option: a bank passbook issued by the Ulster Bank, College Green branch showing statement of a/c for half year ending 31 December 1903, balance in depositor's favour: #18--14--6 (eighteen pounds, fourteen shillings and six pence, sterling), net personalty: certificate of possession of #900 Canadian 4% (inscribed) government stock (free of stamp duty): dockets of the Catholic Cemeteries' (Glasnevin) Committee, relative to a graveplot purchased: a local press cutting concerning change of name by deedpoll. 

Quote the textual terms of this notice. 

I, Rudolph Virag, now resident at no 52 Clanbrassil street, Dublin, formerly of Szombathely in the kingdom of Hungary, hereby give notice that I have assumed and intend henceforth upon all occasions and at all times to be known by the name of Rudolph Bloom. 

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What other objects relative to Rudolph Bloom (born Virag) were in the 2nd drawer? 

An indistinct daguerreotype of Rudolph Virag and his father Leopold Virag executed in the year 1852 in the portrait atelier of their (respectively) 1st and 2nd cousin, Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar, Hungary. An ancient hagadah book in which a pair of hornrimmed convex spectacles inserted marked the passage of thanksgiving in the ritual prayers for Pessach (Passover): a photocard of the Queen's Hotel, Ennis, proprietor, Rudolph Bloom: an envelope addressed To my Dear Son Leopold. 

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What fractions of phrases did the lecture of those five whole words evoke? 

Tomorrow will be a week that I received... it is no use Leopold to be... with your dear mother... that is not more to stand... to her... all for me is out... be kind to Athos, Leopold... my dear son... always... of me... das Herr... Gott... dein... 

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What reminiscences of a human subject suffering from progressive melancholia did these objects evoke in Bloom? 

An old man widower, unkempt hair, in bed, with head covered, sighing: an infirm dog, Athos: aconite, resorted to by increasing doses of grains and scruples as a palliative of recrudescent neuralgia: the face in death of a septuagenarian suicide by poison. 

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Why did Bloom experience a sentiment of remorse? 

Because in immature impatience he had treated with disrespect certain beliefs and practices. 

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As? 

The prohibition of the use of fleshmeat and milk at one meal, the hebdomadary symposium of incoordinately abstract, perfervidly concrete mercantile coexreligionist excompatriots: the circumcision of male infants: the supernatural character of Judaic scripture: the ineffability of the tetragrammaron: the sanctity of the sabbath. 

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How did these beliefs and practices now appear to him? 

Not more rational than they had then appeared, not less rational than other beliefs and practices now appeared. 

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What first reminiscence had he of Rudolph Bloom (deceased)? 

Rudolph Bloom (deceased) narrated to his son Leopold Bloom (aged 6) a retrospective arrangement of migrations and settlements in and between Dublin, London, Florence, Milan, Vienna, Budapest, Szombathely, with statements of satisfaction (his grandfather having seen Maria Theresa, empress of Austria, queen of Hungary), with commercial advice (having taken care of pence, the pounds having taken care of themselves). Leopold Bloom (aged 6) had accompanied these narrations by constant consultation of a geographical map of Europe (political) and by suggestions for the establishment of affiliated business premises in the various centres mentioned. 

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Had time equally but differently obliterated the memory of these migrations in narrator and listener? 

In narrator by the access of years and in consequence of the use of narcotic toxin: in listener by the access of years and in consequence of the action of distraction upon vicarious experiences. 

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What idiosyncrasies of the narrator were concomitant product$ of amnesia? 

Occasionally he ate without having previously removed his hat. Occasionally he drank voraciously the juice of gooseberry fool from an inclined plate. Occasionally he removed from his lips the traces of food by means of a lacerated envelope or other accessible fragment of paper. 


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What two phenomena of senescence were more frequent? 

The myopic digital calculation of coins, eructation consequent upon repletion. 

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What object offered partial consolation for these reminiscences? 

The endowment policy, the bank passbook, the certificate of the possession of scrip. 

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Reduce Bloom by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune, from which these supports protected him, and by elimination of all positive values to a negligible negative irrational unreal quantity. 

Successively, in descending helotic order: Poverty: that of the outdoor hawker of imitation jewellery, the dun for the recovery of bad and doubtful debts, the poor rate and deputy cess collector. Mendicancy: that of the fraudulent bankrupt with negligible assets paying 1s. 4d. in the #, sandwichman, distributor of throwaways, nocturnal vagrant, insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind stripling, superannuated bailiff's man, marfeast, lickplate, spoilsport, pickthank, eccentric public laughingstock seated on bench of public park under discarded perforated umbrella. Destitution: the inmate of Old Man's House (Royal Hospital), Kilmainham, the inmate of Simpson's Hospital for reduced but respectable men permanently disabled by gout or want of sight. Nadir of misery: the aged impotent disfranchised ratesupported moribund lunatic pauper. 

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With which attendant indignities? 

The unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females, the contempt of muscular males, the acceptance of fragments of bread, the simulated ignorance of casual acquaintances, the latration of illegitimate unlicensed vagabond dogs, the infantile discharge of decomposed vegetable missiles, worth little or nothing or less than nothing. 

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By what could such a situation be precluded? 

By decease (change of state), by departure (change of place). 

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Which preferably? 

The latter, by the line of least resistance. 

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What considerations rendered it not entirely undesirable? 

Constant cohabitation impeding mutual toleration of personal defects. The habit of independent purchase increasingly cultivated. The necessity to counteract by impermanent sojourn the permanence of arrest. 

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What considerations rendered it not irrational? 

The parties concerned, uniting, had increased and multiplied, which being done, offspring produced and educed to maturity, the parties, if now disunited were obliged to reunite for increase and multiplication, which was absurd, to form by reunion the original couple of uniting parties, which was impossible. 

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What considerations rendered it desirable? 

The attractive character of certain localities in Ireland and abroad, as represented in general geographical maps of polychrome design or in special ordnance survey charts by employment of scale numerals and hachures. 

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In Ireland? 

The cliffs of Moher, the windy wilds of Connemara, lough Neagh with submerged petrified city, the Giant's Causeway, Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary, the islands of Aran, the pastures of royal Meath, Brigid's elm in Kildare, the Queen's Island shipyard in Belfast, the Salmon Leap, the lakes of Killarney. 

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Abroad? 

Ceylon (with spicegardens supplying tea to Thomas Kernan, agent for Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 2 Mincing lane, London, E. C., 5 Dame street, Dublin), Jerusalem, the holy city (with mosque of Omar and gate of Damascus, goal of aspiration), the straits of Gibraltar (the unique birthplace of Marion Tweedy), the Parthenon (containing statues, nude Grecian divinities), the Wall street money market (which controlled international finance), the Plaza de Toros at La Linea, Spain (where O'Hara of the camerons had slain the bull), Niagara (over which no human being had passed with impunity), the land of the Eskimos (eaters of soap), the forbidden country of Thibet (from which no traveller returns), the bay of Naples (to see which was to die), the Dead Sea. 

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Under what guidance, following what signs? 

At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point of intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Major produced and divided externally at omega and the hypotenuse of the rightangled triangle formed by the line alpha omega so produced and the line alpha delta of Ursa Major. On land, meridional, a bispherical moon, revealed in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the posterior interstice of the imperfectly occluded skirt of a carnose negligent perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud by day. 

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What public advertisement would divulge the occultation of the departed? 

#5 reward lost, stolen or strayed from his residence 7 Eccles street, missing gent about 40, answering to the name of Bloom, Leopold (Poldy), height 5 ft 9 1/2 inches, full build, olive complexion, may have since grown a beard, when last seen was wearing a black suit. Above sum will be paid for information leading to his discovery. 

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What universal binomial denominations would be his as entity and nonentity? 

Assumed by any or known to none. Everyman or Noman. 

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What tributes his? 

Honour and gifts of strangers, the friends of Everyman. A nymph immortal, beauty, the bride of Noman. 

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Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear? 

Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events. Somewhere imperceptibly he would hear and somehow reluctantly, suncompelled, obey the summons of recall. Whence, disappearing from the constellation of the Northern Crown he would somehow reappear reborn above delta in the constellation of Cassiopeia and after incalculable eons of peregrination return an estranged avenger, a wreaker of justice on malefactors, a dark crusader, a sleeper awakened, with financial resources (by supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or of the silver King. 

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What would render such return irrational? 

An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time through reversible space and an exodus and return in space through irreversible time. 

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What play of forces, inducing inertia, rendered departure undesirable? 

The lateness of the hour, rendering procrastinatory: the obscurity of the night, rendering invisible: the uncertainty of thoroughfares, rendering perilous: the necessity for repose, obviating movement: the proximity of an occupied bed, obviating research: the anticipation of warmth (human) tempered with coolness (linen), obviating desire and rendering desirable: the statue of Narcissus, sound without echo, desired desire. 

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What advantages were possessed by an occupied, as distinct from an unoccupied bed? 

The removal of nocturnal solitude, the superior quality of human (mature female) to inhuman (hotwaterjar) calefaction, the stimulation of matutinal contact, the economy of mangling done on the premises in the case of trousers accurately folded and placed lengthwise between the spring mattress (striped) and the woollen mattress (biscuit section). 

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What past consecutive causes, before rising preapprehended, of accumulated fatigue did Bloom, before rising, silently recapitulate? 

The preparation of breakfast (burnt offering): intestinal congestion and premeditative defecation (holy of holies): the bath (rite of John): the funeral (rite of Samuel): the advertisement of Alexander Keyes (Urim and Thummin): the unsubstantial lunch (rite of Melchizedek): the visit to museum and national library (holy place): the bookhunt along Bedford row, Merchants' Arch, Wellington Quay (Simchath Torah): the music in the Ormond Hotel (Shira Shirim): the altercation with a truculent troglodyte in Bernard Kiernan's premises (holocaust): a blank period of time including a cardrive, a visit to a house of mourning, a leavetaking (wilderness): the eroticism produced by feminine exhibitionism (rite of Onan): the prolonged delivery of Mrs Mina Purefoy (heave offering): the visit to the disorderly house of Mrs Bella Cohen, 82 Tyrone street, lower, and subsequent brawl and chance medley in Beaver street (Armageddon): nocturnal perambulation to and from the cabman's shelter, Butt Bridge (atonement). 

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What selfimposed enigma did Bloom about to rise in order to go so as to conclude lest he should not conclude involuntarily apprehend? 

The cause of a brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack emitted by the insentient material of a strainveined timber table. 

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What selfinvolved enigma did Bloom risen, going, gathering multicoloured multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily apprehending, not comprehend? 

Who was M'Intosh? 

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What selfevident enigma pondered with desultory constancy during 30 years did Bloom now, having effected natural obscurity by the extinction of artificial light, silently suddenly comprehend? 

Where was Moses when the candle went out? 

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What imperfections in a perfect day did Bloom, walking, silently, successively, enumerate? 

A provisional failure to obtain renewal of an advertisement, to obtain a certain quantity of tea from Thomas Kernan (agent for Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 5 Dame street, Dublin, and 2 Mincing lane, London, E. C.), to certify the presence or absence of posterior rectal orifice in the case of Hellenic female divinities, to obtain admission (gratuitous or paid) to the performance of Leah by Mrs Bandman Palmer at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49, South King street. 

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What impression of an absent face did Bloom, arrested, silently recall? 

The face of her father, the late Major Brian Cooper Tweedy, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, of Gibraltar and Rehoboth, Dolphin's Barn. 

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What recurrent impressions of the same were possible by the hypothesis? 

Retreating, at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens street, with constant uniform acceleration, along parallel lines meeting at infinity, if produced: along parallel lines, reproduced from infinity, with constant uniform retardation, at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens street, returning. 

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What miscellaneous effects of female personal wearing apparel were perceived by him? 

A pair of new inodorous halfsilk black ladies' hose, a pair of new violet garters, a pair of outsize ladies' drawers of India mull, cut on generous lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine and Muratti's Turkish cigarettes and containing a long bright steel safety pin, folded curvilinear, a camisole of baptiste with thin lace border, an accordion underskirt of blue silk moirette, all these objects being disposed irregularly on the top of a rectangular trunk, quadruple battened, having capped corners, with multicoloured labels, initialled on its fore side in white lettering B. C. T. (Brian Cooper Tweedy). 

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What impersonal objects were perceived? 

A commode, one leg fractured, totally covered by square cretonne cutting, apple design, on which rested a lady's black straw hat. Orangekeyed ware, bought of Henry Price, basket, fancy goods, chinaware and ironmongery manufacturer, 21, 22, 23 Moore street, disposed irregularly on the washstand and floor, and consisting of basin, soapdish and brushtray (on the washstand, together), pitcher and night article (on the floor, separate). 

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Bloom's acts? 

He deposited the articles of clothing on a chair, removed his remaining articles of clothing, took from beneath the bolster at the head of the bed a folded long white nightshirt, inserted his head and arms into the proper apertures of the nightshirt, removed a pillow from the head to the foot of the bed, prepared the bedlinen accordingly and entered the bed. 

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How? 

With circumspection, as invariably when entering an abode (his own or not his own): with solicitude, the snakespiral springs of the mattress being old, the brass quoits and pendent viper radii loose and tremulous under stress and strain: prudently, as entering a lair or ambush of lust or adder: lightly, the less to disturb: reverently, the bed of conception and of birth, of consummation of marriage and of breach of marriage, of sleep and of death. 

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What did his limbs, when gradually extended, encounter? 

New clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a human form, female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, some crumbs, some flakes of potted meat, recooked, which he removed. 

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If he had smiled why would he have smiled? 

To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone, whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating In and repeated to infinity. 

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What preceding series? 

Assuming Mulvey to be the first term of his series, Penrose, Bartell d'Arcy, professor Goodwin, Julius Mastiansky, John Henry Menton, Father Bernard Corrigan, a farmer at the Royal Dublin Society's Horse Show, Maggot O'Reilly, Matthew Dillon, Valentine Blake Dillon (Lord Mayor of Dublin), Christopher Callinan, Lenehan, an Italian organgrinder, an unknown gentleman in the Gaiety Theatre, Benjamin Dollard, Simon Dedalus, Andrew (Pisser) Burke, Joseph Cuffe, Wisdom Hely, Alderman John Hooper, Dr Francis Brady, Father Sebastian of Mount Argus, a bootblack at the General Post Office, Hugh E. (Blazes) Boylan and so each and so on to nolast term. 

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What were his reflections concerning the last member of this series and late occupant of the bed? 

Reflections on his vigour (a bounder), corporal proportion (a billsticker), commercial ability (a bester), impressionability (a boaster). 

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Why for the observer impressionability in addition to vigour, corporal proportion and commercial ability? 

Because he had observed with augmenting frequency in the preceding members of the same series the same concupiscence, inflammably transmitted first with alarm, then with understanding, then with desire, finally with fatigue, with alternating symptoms of epicene comprehension and apprehension. 

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With what antagonistic sentiments were his subsequent reflections affected? 

Envy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity. 

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Envy? 

Of a bodily and mental male organism specially adapted for the superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation and energetic piston and cylinder movement necessary for the complete satisfaction of a constant but not acute concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental female organism, passive but not obtuse. 

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Jealousy? 

Because a nature full and volatile in its free state, was alternately the agent and reagent of attraction. Because action between agents and reagents at all instants varied, with inverse proportion of increase and decrease, with incessant circular extension and radial reentrance. Because the controlled contemplation of the fluctuation of attraction produced, if desired, a fluctuation of pleasure. 

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Abnegation? 

In virtue of a) acquaintance initiated in September 1903 in the establishment of George Mesias, merchant tailor and outfitter, 5 Eden Quay, b) hospitality extended and received in kind, reciprocated and reappropriated in person, c) comparative youth subject to impulses of ambition and magnanimity, colleagual altruism and amorous egoism, d) extraracial attraction, intraracial inhibition, supraracial prerogative, e) an imminent provincial musical tour, common current expenses, net proceeds divided. 

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Equanimity? 

As natural as any and every natural act of a nature expressed or understood executed in natured nature by natural creatures in accordance with his, her and their natured natures, of dissimilar similarity. As not as calamitous as a cataclysmic annihilation of the planet in consequence of collision with a dark sun. As less reprehensible than theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. As not more abnormal than all other altered processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence, resulting in a reciprocal equilibrium between the bodily organism and its attendant circumstances, foods, beverages, acquired habits, indulged inclinations, significant disease. As more than inevitable, irreparable. 

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Why more abnegation than jealousy, less envy than equanimity? 

From outrage (matrimony) to outrage (adultery) there arose nought but outrage (copulation) yet the matrimonial violator of the matrimonially violated had not been outraged by the adulterous violator of the adulterously violated. 

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What retribution, if any? 

Assassination, never, as two wrongs did not make one right. Duel by combat, no. Divorce, not now. Exposure by mechanical artifice (automatic bed) or individual testimony (concealed ocular witness), not yet. Suit for damages by legal influence or simulation of assault with evidence of injuries sustained (selfinflicted), not impossibly. If any, positively, connivance, introduction of emulation (material, a prosperous rival agency of publicity: moral, a successful rival agent of intimacy), depreciation, alienation, humiliation, separation protecting the one separated from the other, protecting separator from both. 

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By what reflections did he, a conscious reactor against the void incertitude, justify to himself his sentiments? 

The preordained frangibility of the hymen, the presupposed intangibility of the thing in itself: the incongruity and disproportion between the selfprolonging tension of the thing proposed to be done and the self abbreviating relaxation of the thing done: the fallaciously inferred debility of the female, the muscularity of the male: the variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopic past participle with complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice: the continued product of seminators by generation: the continual production of semen by distillation: the futility of triumph or protest or vindication: the inanity of extolled virtue: the lethargy of nescient matter: the apathy of the stars. 

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In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge? 

Satisfaction at the ubiquity in eastern and western terrestrial hemispheres, in all habitable lands and islands explored or unexplored (the land of the midnight sun, the islands of the blessed, the isles of Greece, the land of promise) of adipose posterior female hemispheres, redolent of milk and honey and of excretory sanguine and seminal warmth, reminiscent of secular families of curves of amplitude, insusceptible of moods of impression or of contrarieties of expression, expressive of mute immutable mature animality. 

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The visible signs of antesatisfaction? 

An approximate erection: a solicitous adversion: a gradual elevation: a tentative revelation; a silent contemplation. 

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Then? 

He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation. 

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The visible signs of postsatisfaction? 

A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitous aversion: a proximate erection. 

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What followed this silent action? 

Somnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient excitation, catechetical interrogation. 

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With what modifications did the narrator reply to this interrogation? 

Negative: he omitted to mention the clandestine correspondence between Martha Clifford and Henry Flower, the public altercation at, in and in the vicinity of the licensed premises of Bernard Kiernan and Co, Limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street, the erotic provocation and response thereto caused by the exhibitionism of Gertrude (Gerty), surname unknown. Positive: he included mention of a performance by Mrs Bandman Palmer of Leah at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street, an invitation to supper at Wynn's (Murphy's) Hotel, 35, 36, and 37 Lower Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous pornographical tendency entitled Sweets of Sin, anonymous, author a gentleman of fashion, a temporary concussion caused by a falsely calculated movement in the course of postcenal gymnastic display, the victim (since completely recovered) being Stephen Dedalus, professor and author, eldest surviving son of Simon Dedalus, of no fixed occupation, an aeronautical feat executed by him (narrator) in the presence of a witness, the professor and author aforesaid, with promptitude of decision and gymnastic flexibility. 

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Was the narration otherwise unaltered by modifications? 

Absolutely. 

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Which event or person emerged as the salient point of his narration? 

Stephen Dedalus, professor and author. 

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What limitations of activity and inhibitions of conjugal rights were perceived by listener and narrator concerning themselves during the course of this intermittent and increasingly more laconic narration? 

By the listener a limitation of fertility inasmuch as marriage had been celebrated 1 calendar month after the 18th anniversary of her birth (8 September 1870), viz. 8 October, and consummated on the same date with female issue born 15 June 1889, having been anticipatorily consummated on the 10 September of the same year and complete carnal intercourse, with ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ, having last taken place 5 weeks previous, viz. 27 November 1893, to the birth on 29 December 1893 of second (and only male) issue, deceased 9 January 1894, aged 11 days, there remained a period of 10 years, 5 months and 18 days during which carnal intercourse had been incomplete, without ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ. By the narrator a limitation of activity, mental and corporal, inasmuch as complete mental intercourse between himself and the listener had not taken place since the consummation of puberty, indicated by catamenic hemorrhage, of the female issue of narrator and listener, 15 September 1903, there remained a period of 9 months and 1 day during which in consequence of a preestablished natural comprehension in incomprehension between the consummated females (listener and issue), complete corporal liberty of action had been circumscribed. 

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How? 

By various reiterated feminine interrogation concerning the masculine destination whither, the place where, the time at which, the duration for which, the object with which in the case of temporary absences, projected or effected. 

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What moved visibly above the listener's and the narrator's invisible thoughts? 

The upcast reflection of a lamp and shade, an inconstant series of concentric circles of varying gradations of light and shadow. 

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In what directions did listener and narrator lie? 

Listener, S. E. by E.; Narrator, N. W. by W.: on the 53rd parallel of latitude, N. and 6th meridian of longitude, W.: at an angle of 45? to the terrestrial equator. 

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In what state of rest or motion? 

At rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being each and both carried westward, forward and rereward respectively, by the proper perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of neverchanging space. 

In what posture? 

Listener: reclined semilaterally, left, left hand under head, right leg extended in a straight line and resting on left leg, flexed, in the attitude of Gea-Tellus, fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed. Narrator: reclined laterally, left, with right and left legs flexed, the indexfinger and thumb of the right hand resting on the bridge of the nose, in the attitude depicted on a snapshot photograph made by Percy Apjohn, the childman weary, the manchild in the womb. 

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Womb? Weary? 

He rests. He has travelled. 

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With? 

Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer. 

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When? 

Going to a dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler. 

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Where? 


归途，布卢姆和斯蒂芬肩并肩走的是哪条路线？

他们都是用正常的步行速度从贝雷斯福德广场出发，按照下、中加德纳街的顺序走到蒙乔伊广场西端。随后放慢步伐一道向左拐，漫不经心地来到加德纳广场尽头，这里是通向北边坦普尔街的交叉口。随后朝右拐，时而停下脚步，缓慢地沿着但普尔街往北走去，一直来到哈德威克街[1] 。他们迈着悠闲的步子先后挨近了圣乔治教堂前的圆形广场，然后迳直穿过去。说起来，任何一个圆，其弦都比弧要短。

一路上，二巨头究竟讨论了些什么？

音乐，文学，爱尔兰，都柏林，巴黎，友情，女人，卖淫，营养，煤气灯、弧光灯以及白炽灯的光线对附近那些避日性树木的成长所产生的影响[ 2] ，市政府临时所设不加盖的垃圾箱，罗马天主教堂，圣职者的独身生活，爱尔兰国民，耶稣会的教育，职业，学医，刚度过的这一天，安息日[3] 前一天的不祥气氛，斯蒂芬晕倒一事。

布卢姆可曾就他们二人各自对经验之反应的相同与不同之处发现类似的共同点？

两个人都对艺术印象敏感，对音乐印象比对造型艺术或绘画艺术更要敏感。两人都对大陆的生活方式比对岛国的有所偏爱，又都情愿住在大西洋这边，并不愿住到大西洋彼岸去。早年的家庭教育与血统里带来的对异教的执拗反抗，使得二人态度顽强，对宗教、国家、社会、伦理等许许多多正统教义都抱有怀疑。两个人都认为异性吸引力具有相互刺激与抑制的作用。

他们两人的见解在什么上头有些分歧呢？

斯蒂芬毫不隐瞒他对布卢姆关于营养和市民自救行为的重要性持有异议；布卢姆则对斯蒂芬关于人类精神通过文学得到永恒的肯定这一见解，暗自表示不以为然。布卢姆倒是不动声色地同意了斯蒂芬所指出的爱尔兰国民放弃对德鲁伊特[4]的信仰而皈依基督教的时期在年份上的错误。应把李尔利王统治下，教皇切莱斯廷一世派遣帕特里克（奥德修斯之子波提图斯之子卡尔波努斯之子）前来的公元四三二年，更正为科麦克•麦克阿尔特（殁于公元二六六年）统治下的二六0 年或约莫那个时期，而科麦克是因被食物卡住而噎死于斯莱提，并埋葬在罗斯纳利的。布卢姆暗自同意斯蒂芬的论点。布卢姆认为斯蒂芬之所以晕倒乃是因为他胃囊里空空如也，以及搀水量与酒精度数各不相同的化合物在作怪。这是始而精神紧张，继而又在松弛的气氛下疾迅地旋转这一剧烈的运动所造成的。斯蒂芬却把它归因于起初还没有女人的巴掌那么大的晨云再次出现（他们二人曾从不同的地点--沙丘与都柏林，目击到那片云彩）[ 5] 。

他们两个人可曾在某一点上持同样否定的见解？

在煤气灯或电灯的光线对附近那些避日性树木的成长所产生的影响这一点上。

过去夜间闲荡时，布卢姆可曾议论过同样一些问题？

一八八四年，夜间他与欧文•戈德堡[6] 和塞西尔•特恩布尔一道沿着这几条大马路边走边谈：从朗伍德大街走到伦纳德街角，又从伦纳德街角走到辛格街，然后从辛格街走到布卢姆菲尔德大街。一八八五年的一个傍晚，他又与珀西•阿普约翰一道倚着厄珀克罗斯区克鲁姆林的直布罗陀庄与布卢姆菲尔德公馆之间的墙，交谈过几次。一八八六年，他与偶然结识者以及可能成为主顾的人

1034在门口的台阶上、前客厅里和郊区铁路线的三等车厢里谈过。一八八八年，他经常与布赖恩•特威迪鼓手长和他的女儿玛莉恩•特威迪小姐，有时同父女一道，有时单独同其中的一个交谈，地点就在圆镇的马修•狄龙[7] 家的娱乐室里。一八九二年与朱利叶斯•马斯添斯基[ 8] 谈过一次，一八九三年又谈过一次，都是在西伦巴德街的（布卢姆）自己家的客厅里。

在到达他们的目的地之前，关于一八八四、一八八五、一八八六、一八八八、一八九二、一八九三、一九0 四这一不规则的连续，布卢姆有过些什么样的反思？

他反思道，个人的成长与经验积累的范围越是不断在扩大，伴随而来的就必然是各个人相互间交流范围缩小这一退步现象。

例如在哪些方面？

从不存在到存在。他出现在很多人面前，作为一个存在，被接受下来。就存在与存在的关系而言，他就像任何存在对任何存在那样对待任何存在。他即将从存在而消失到不存在中去，从而被所有的人看作是不存在的。

他们抵达目的地之后，布卢姆采取了什么行动[9]？

在等差奇数的第四位，也就是埃克尔斯街七号门口的台阶那儿，他把手机械地伸进长裤后兜里去掏他那把弹簧锁钥匙。

在那儿吗？

钥匙是在他仅仅一天之前穿过的那条长裤的同一位置的兜里。

他为什么倍加气恼？

因为他忘记了，而且又想起曾两次提醒过自己：可不要忘记。

那么这两个（分别）故意地或粗心大意地未带钥匙的人，面临着什么样的选择呢？

进去还是不进去。敲门还是不敲门[ 10] 。

布卢姆是怎么决定的？

一条计策。他把两只脚迈上矮墙，跨过地下室前那块空地的栏杆，将帽子紧紧扣在头上，摸住栅栏下部的两个格子，将他那具五英尺九英寸半的身躯徐徐地落下来，一直落到距地面不足两英尺十英寸的地方。然后撒开攥着栅栏的手，让身子在空中自由摇荡。为了减缓坠落时的冲击，他还把身子蜷缩起来。

他坠落了吗？

他是凭着常衡制十一斯通零六磅的体重坠落的。他所使用的是弗雷德里克街北区十九号的药剂师弗朗西斯•弗罗德曼的店铺内那台供定期测量体重的有刻度的自动磅秤。日期是耶稣升天的最后节日[11]，即闰年基督教公元一九0 四年（犹太历公元五六六四年，伊斯兰历公元一三二二年）五月十二日。金号码[12]五，闰余[13]十三，太阳活动周[14]九，主日字母[ 15]CB，罗马十五年历[ 16] 二，儒略周期[17]六六一七年，MCMIV[ 18] 。

他没有受震伤就站起来了吗？

他重新获得了稳定均衡，尽管因猛烈撞击而受震荡，却没有负外伤就站了起来。他使劲扳院门搭扣的那个活动金属片，凭着加在这一支轴上的初级杠杆的作用，把搭扣摘开，穿过紧挨着厨房地下的碗碟洗涤槽，绕道走进厨房。他擦着了一根安全火柴，转动煤气开关，放出可燃性的煤气。他调节那燃旺了的火焰，捻小成发白的文火为止。最后，点上一支便于携带的蜡烛。

这当儿，斯蒂芬瞧见了哪些忽隐忽现的影象？

他倚着地下室前那块空地的栅栏，隔着厨房里的透明窗玻璃，瞧见一个男人在调节十四烛光的煤气火焰，一个男人点燃一烛光的蜡烛，一个男人轮流脱着一双靴子，一个男人拿着蜡烛正在从厨房里走出来。

那个男人先前可曾在别处出现过？

过了四分钟，隔着厅门上端那半透明的扇形气窗，他那忽隐忽现的烛光映入眼帘。厅门徐徐地随着铰链转动着。那个男人手持蜡烛，没戴帽子，重新出现在空荡荡的门道里。

斯蒂芬听他用手势来指挥了吗？

是的，他静悄悄地走了进去，帮助把门关严，挂上链子，静悄悄地跟在那个男子背后，脚上跋拉着用布边做的拖鞋，手待点燃的蜡烛，打左边那扇从缝儿里露出灯光来的门前经过，小心翼翼地走下不只五个阶磴的螺旋梯，来到布卢姆家的厨房。

布卢姆做了些什么？

他猛地朝火苗吹去，把蜡烛熄灭。将两把匙形木椅拖到炉边，一把是给斯蒂芬准备的，椅背朝着面临院子的窗户，一把是自己坐的。他单膝着地，往炉格子里放了些粘着树脂的枝条和五颜六色的纸张，以及从坐落于多利埃街十四号的弗罗尔与麦唐纳公司的堆置场以每吨二十一先令的代价买来的优质阿布拉莫木炭。他把这些都十字交叉地堆成不规则的多角形，划了一根安全火柴，在纸张的三个角落点上火。这样，燃料里的碳和氢这两种元素就与空气中的氧气自由化合，散发出潜在的能量。

斯蒂芬的头脑里浮现出什么样类似的幻影呢？

他联想到旁的时候在旁的地方跪着单膝或双膝曾经替他生火的其他那些人；迈克尔修士，在坐落于基尔代尔郡塞林斯的耶稣会克朗戈伍斯公学校医院的病房里[19]。他父亲西蒙•迪达勒斯，在菲茨吉本街门牌十五号那间没有家具等设备的屋子里[ 20]，而那是他在都柏林的头一个住所。他的教母凯特•莫坎小姐--住在厄谢尔岛她那奄奄一息的姐姐朱莉姬•莫坎小姐家[ 21]里。他的舅妈萨拉--里奇（理查德）•古尔丁的妻子，在他们那坐落于克兰布拉西尔街门牌六十二号寓所的厨房里。他的母亲玛丽--西蒙•迪达勒斯的妻子，那是在北里奇蒙街门牌十二号的厨房里，时间是一八九八年圣方济各•沙勿略节日的早晨[22]。副教导主任巴特神父，在“斯蒂芬草地”北区门牌十六号的大学物理实验室[23]里。他的妹妹迪丽（迪丽姬），在他父亲那坐落于卡布拉的家里[24]。

斯蒂芬把视线从壁炉往上移到对面墙上一码高的地方。他望到了什么？那是一排五个家用螺形弹簧按铃，下面，在烟囱那凹进去的间壁两侧的两个钩子之间，弯弯地横系着一根绳子，上面挂着四块对折的小方手绢：一块挨着一块，彼此并不重叠，呈长方形。另外还有一双灰色长统女袜，袜帮是用莱尔棉线[ 25] 织的，脚脖子以下是通常的样式。两端各用一个木制直夹子夹起，第三个夹子则夹在胯间重叠的部分。

布卢姆在铁灶上瞧见了什么？

右边（较小）的锅架上摆着个带柄的蓝色搪瓷小平底锅，左边较大）的壶架上是黑色的铁壶。

布卢姆在铁灶上做些什么？

他把平底锅挪到左边的壶架上，站起来，又将铁壶送到洗涤槽那儿去。这样，扭开自来水龙头就可以放水灌壶了。

水流出来了吗？

流了。从威克洛郡的容积二十四亿加仑的朗德伍德水库，流经达格尔河、拉思唐、唐斯峡谷和卡洛希尔，流进坐落于斯蒂尔奥根那二十六英亩的水库，中间的距离是二十二法定英里。这条有着过滤装置的第一期施工的单管及复管地下引水渠，根据合同直线每码的铺设费为五英镑。再由一批水堰进行调节，以二百五十英尺的坡度在上利森街的尤斯塔斯桥流到本市界内。但是由于夏季久旱，再加上每天供水一千二百五十万加仑，水位已降到低于排水口。都市监察官兼水道局技官、土木工程师斯潘塞•哈蒂奉水道局的指示（鉴于有可能会像一八九三年那样被迫利用大运河和皇家运河那不宜饮用的水），除了饮用外，下令一律禁止使用市里供应的自来水。尤其是南都柏林济贫院，尽管限定用六英寸的计量器，每个贫民每日配给十五加仑水，然而在市政府法律顾问、辩护律师伊格内修斯•赖斯的监督下，经查表证实，每夜要浪费两万加仑水，从而使院外的社会各阶层（也就是自费并有支付能力的纳税者们）蒙受损害。

回到铁灶后，这位爱水、放水、运水的布卢姆，赞美了水的哪些属性？

它的普遍性，它的民主的平等性，以及保持着它自身求平的本质。用墨卡托投影法[26]在地图上所标示出的浩淼的海洋；太平洋中巽他海沟那超过八千噚[27]的不可测的深度；永不消停、后浪推前浪地冲刷着海岸线每一部位的波涛以及水面上的微粒子；水的单位粒子的独立性；海洋变幻莫测；根据液体静力学，风平浪静时它纹丝不动；根据液体动力学，小潮大潮时它便涨了起来。暴风雨后一片沉寂；北极圈与南极圈冰冠地带的不毛性以及对气候及贸易的影响；跟地球上的陆地相比占三对一优势；它在亚赤道带南回归线以南的整个区域延伸无数平方海里的绝对权威；其在原始海盆里数千万年以来所保持的稳定性；它那橙红色海床；它那把包括数百万吨贵金属在内的可溶解物质加以溶解，并使之保持在溶解状态的性能；它对半岛和有下陷趋势的岬角所产生的缓慢的浸蚀作用；其冲积层；其重量、容积与浓度；它在咸水湖、高山湖里的静谧；其色调因热带、温带和寒带而变为或浓或淡；与陆上的湖泊、溪流及支流汇合后注入海洋的河川，还有横跨大洋的潮流所构成的运输网。沿着赤道下面的水路自北向南的湾流；海震、水龙卷、自流井、喷泉、湍流、漩涡、河水暴涨、倾盆大雨、海啸、流域、分水岭、间歇泉、大瀑布、漩流、海漩、洪水、泛滥、暴雨等滥施淫威；环绕陆地的上层土壤那漫长的曲线；源泉的奥秘可用探矿杖来占卜或用湿度测定器来揭示；阿什汤大门的墙壁上的洞[28]、空气的饱和与露水的蒸发能够证明那潜在的湿度；水的成分单纯，是氢二、氧一的化合物；水的疗效；水的死海里的浮力；它在小溪、涧谷、水坝的缝隙、船舷的裂口所显示的顽强的浸透性；它那清除污垢、解渴、灭火、滋养植物的性能；作为模范和典型，它的可靠性；它变化多端：雾、霭、云、雨、麦、雪、雹；并在坚固的消防龙头上发挥出压力；而且千姿百态：湖泊、湖岔、内海、海湾、海岬、环礁湖、环状珊瑚岛、多岛海、海峡、峡江、明奇[29]、潮汐港湾、港湾；冰河、冰山、浮动冰原显示出它是何等坚硬；在运转水车、水轮机、发电机、发电厂、漂白作坊、鞣皮厂、打麻厂时，它又是那样驯顺；它在运河、可航行的河川、浮船坞和干船坞所起的作用；潮汐的动力化或利用水路的落差使它得以发挥潜力；海底那些成群的动物和植物（无听觉，怕光）虽然并非名副其实地栖息在地球上，论数目却占地球上生物的一大半；水无所不在，占人体的百分之九十；在沼泽地、闹瘟疫的湿地、馊了的花露水[30]以及月亏期[31]那淤积污浊的水塘子，水所散发的恶臭充满了毒气。

他把灌了半下子水的壶放在燃旺了的煤火上之后，为什么又折回到还在哗哗流着水的自来水龙头那儿去呢？

为了把那块已用掉一部分、还粘着包装纸、散发着柠檬气味的巴灵顿[32]牌肥皂（价值四便士，是十二个钟头以前赊购的）涂在脏手上，在新鲜冰凉、永恒不变而又不断变化的水里洗净，用那条套在旋转式木棍子上的红边长麻布揩拭脸和双手。

斯蒂芬是以什么理由来拒绝接受布卢姆的提议的？

他说自己患有恐水病，不论是局部浸入也罢，还是全身泡进去也罢，讨厌与冷水接触。（他是头年十月问最后一次洗澡的）；不喜欢玻璃和水晶这样的水状物质，对思维与语言的流动性也疑惑重重。

布卢姆原想对斯蒂芬做一些有关卫生和预防方面的劝告，并且想告诉他，在进行海水浴或河水浴之前，应该先把头部弄湿，还往面庞、颈背、胸部与上腹部猛然浇水，禆使筋肉收缩，因为人体对低温最敏感的部位乃是后颈、胃部和脚心。然而他为什么又放弃了这个念头呢？

因为水的特性与天才那乖僻的独创性是互不相容的。

另外他还同样抑制住了什么带有说教意味的劝告呢？

营养食谱：关于熏猪肉、腌鳕鱼和黄油中所含有的蛋白质与热量的百分比。黄油缺乏前者，熏猪肉富于后者。

在东道主眼中，客人最显著的长处是什么？

自信，有着自我放任和自我恢复这两种同等的而又相反的能力。

由于火的作用，水容器里发生了何等伴随而至的现象？

沸腾现象。自厨房至烟囱的孔道，不断地向上通风，灼热的火被它煽得从成束的易燃柴禾延烧到多面体烟煤堆上。这种煤炭含有原始森林的落叶堆积后凝缩而成的矿物状化石；森林之发育生长靠的是热（辐射性）源--太阳，而热又是由那普遍存在、传光并透热的能媒[33]传导的。燃烧所引起的运动形式之一--热（对流传热），不断地、加速度地从热源体传导给容器中的液体，由那凹凸不平、未经打磨的黑色铸铁面把热向周围发散出去；一部分反射回来，一部分被吸收，另一部分被传导，使水的温度从常温逐渐升到沸点。这种温度的上升可作为消费结果标志如下：将一磅水从华氏五十度加热到二百十二度，需耗七十二热量单位。

温度上升完毕是怎样显示出来的？

从壶盖下面同时向两侧喷出两股镰刀形状的水蒸气。

布卢姆能用这样煮沸的水办些什么个人的事？

剃自己的胡子。

夜里剃胡子有什么好处？

胡子柔软一些。如果剃完胡子后，故意把刷子浸泡在浓肥皂液里，下次用的时候，刷子就会柔软一些了。万一于意外的时刻在远处同相识的女人邂逅，皮肤还是光滑的好。一边剃胡子，一边还安详地回顾当天的事情。能够睡得更清爽一些，一觉醒来，感到更洁净利落。因为一到早晨就有种种噪音，心里又悬念不安，牛奶罐咣当咣当响，邮递员连敲了两遍门。读了份报纸，一边重读一边涂肥皂液，在同一个地方又涂上肥皂液；把一些微不足道的事想成了不起。于是受一次冲击，挨一个打击，就加快了剃刀的速度，割了个口子，这时就铰下一块不大不小的橡皮膏，润湿后贴上去。只好这么样。

为什么缺乏光线不像噪音的存在那么使他烦恼？

因为他这双既结实又肥胖、既是男性的又是女性的、既被动又主动的手，有着准确的触感。

它（他的手）具有什么特性，然而又伴随着什么抵消作用？

它具有动外科手术的特性，然而即便在目的足以证明手段是正当的情况下，他也决不愿意让人流血，而更喜欢顺应自然法则的日光疗法、心理生理疗法以及整骨外科手术。

布卢姆打开厨房碗柜：下、中、上层都露出些什么？

下层竖立着五个早餐用的盘子，平放着六个早餐用的垫盘，盘子上各扣着一只早餐用的杯子，还有一只并非扣放着的搪须杯[34]和德比制造的有着王冠图案的垫盘[35]，四只金边白色蛋杯，一个敞着口的岩羚羊皮包，里面露出些硬币，大多是铜市。还有一个小玻璃瓶，里面装着加了芳香剂的糖果（紫罗兰色的）。中层放着一只盛了胡椒粉的有缺口的蛋杯，饭桌上还摆着那种鼓状食盐瓶，用油纸包着的四颗粘成一团的黑色橄榄，一听李树商标肉罐头[36]的空罐儿，垫着纤丝的椭圆形柳条筐里是一只泽西[37]梨，喝剩下的半瓶威廉•吉尔比公司[ 38] 釀造的药用白葡萄酒（裹在瓶子上的粉珊瑚色薄绘纸已剥掉了一半），一包埃普斯公司制造的速溶可可；一只绉锡纸袋里装着安妮•林奇公司[39]出品的五英两特级茶叶，每磅二先令；一只圆筒形罐子，盛着优质结晶角沙糖；两颗葱头，较大的那颗西班牙种的是完整的，较小的那颗爱尔兰种的已经切成两瓣儿，面积扩大了，气味也更冲鼻了；一罐爱尔兰模范奶场的奶酪，一只褐色陶罐，盛着四分之一品脱零四分之一兑了水并变酸了的牛奶（由于炎热，它已化为水、酸性乳浆与半固体凝乳，再加上布卢姆先生和弗莱明大妈[40]作为早餐消费掉的部分，就足够一英品脱了，相当于原先送来的总量）；两朵丁香花蕾，一枚半便士硬币和盛有一片新鲜排骨肉的一个小碟子。上层是大小和产地各不相同的一排果酱罐[41]。

撂在碗柜檐板[42]上的什么东西引起了他的注意？

两张撕成了四块多角形碎片的深红色赛马券[43]，号码是：887，886。

由于想起了什么，他一时皱起眉来？

他想起了金质奖杯平地障碍赛的结果曾怎样通过一连串巧合预示了出来。事实真是比虚构还要奇妙：他是在巴特桥的马车夫棚里，在《电讯晚报》的粉色最终版上读到这场赛马正式的确切结果的。

他是在哪里客观地或主观地接受关于胜败结果的预告的？

在坐落于小不列颠街八、九、十号的伯纳德•基尔南那特准卖酒的店家[44]里；在公爵街十四号戴维•伯恩那特准卖酒的店家里；在下奥康内尔街格雷厄姆•莱蒙那家店铺外面，当时一个阴沉沉的人曾把一张传单[45]塞到他手里（后来被他丢掉了），而那是给锡安教会的重建者以利亚做的广告；在林肯广场上，药剂师们开的F•W•斯威尼公司（股份有限）外面，他正要把当天的《自由人报与国民报》丢掉（后来还是被他丢掉了）时，弗雷德里克•M.（班塔姆）莱昂斯迫不及待地连声向他把报讨了去，读罢，又还给了他；接着他就朝着坐落在兰斯特尔街十一号的土耳其蒸汽浴那东方式建筑踱去。在灵感的照耀下，他容光焕发，双臂搂着胜负的秘密[46]，那是用预言镌刻下来的。

什么样的缓解的考虑减轻了他心神的不安？

事件发生后，它所带来的结局各有不同，正如放电后传来的音响那样难以解释。即使原来做的是获胜的解释，由于对万一输了时的损失总额不能正确地加以估价，究竟对现实的损害可能有多大，心中是没有谱儿的。

他的心境如何？

他没有冒险，无所期待，不曾失望，心满意足。

什么使他心满意足？

他没有蒙受实质上的损失。使旁人获得了实质上的利益。外邦人的光[47]。

布卢姆是怎样为那个外邦人准备夜宵儿的？

他往两个茶杯里各舀了满满二平调羹--统共四调羹埃普斯牌速溶可可，根据商标上所印用法说明，给它充分的时间去溶化，再把指定的添味料按照规定的分量和方法兑进去，让它散开来。

东道主对客人额外表示了什么特别殷勤的款待？

他没有使用其独生女米莉森特（米莉）送给他的有着王冠图案仿造德比的搪须杯，而这是他作为东道主理应享受的权利。他用的是跟客人一佯的茶碗，还给客人放了大量平素留给玛莉恩（摩莉）早餐时吃的浓奶油，自己却只适度地放了一点。

客人可曾意识到招待得这样亲切，并表示了感谢？

他的东道主用打趣的口吻提醒他注意一下自己尽的这番心意，他一本正经地领了情。这当儿他们正半庄半谐、一声不响地喝着埃普斯公司大量生产的保健滋补的可可。

东道主是不是还有苗头想要在其他方面尽点心意，却抑制住了，留待日后由另一个人或者由自己来完成今天开始的行动？

他的客人身上那件上衣右侧有个一英寸半的裂口，得给缝上。只要弄清那四条女用手绢中的哪一条拿得出手，就把它送给客人。

谁喝得快一些？

布卢姆。他比客人早喝了十秒钟，从不断地传热的调羹柄下端的凹面啜可可的速度是：对方每啜一口，他啜三口；对方每啜两口，他啜六口；对方每啜三口，他就啜九口。

他这种反复的行为引起了什么思考活动？

他根据观察误以为默默无言的伙伴正在打腹稿。他想道，使自己得到乐趣的与其说是娱乐性的文学，毋宁说是教诲性的文学。为了解答想像中或现实生活中的疑难问题，他本人就曾不只一次地向威廉•莎士比亚的作品请教过。

他从中得到解答了吗？

尽管借助于一部词汇辞典，他曾仔细反复阅读过某些经典篇章，然而总也未能在每一点上都获得妥切的解答，所以他从原著中只得到了不充分的信念。

一八七七年，满十一岁可能成为诗人的布卢姆，为参加《三叶苜蓿》[48]周刊征文比赛（奖金分别为十先令、五先令、二先令半）而作的第一首诗的最后一节是怎么写的？

心怀奢望盼一睹，

小诗排印成铅字，

倘蒙不弃予采录，

但愿赐之以篇幅，

末端乞将敝名署，

我名叫利•布卢姆。

他曾否发现有四种要素在使自己和这位不速之客之间产生隔阂？

姓名，年龄，种族，信仰。

少年时代，他根据自己的姓名编过哪些字谜？

利奥波德•布卢姆Leopold Bloom

艾尔波德勃姆尔 Ellpodbomool[49]

莫尔德皮卢布 Molldopeloob

勃罗皮杜姆 Bollopedoom

下议院议员老奥列勃 Old Ollebo，M.P.

一八八八年二月十四日，他（动态诗人[50]）用自己的教名首字写成怎样一首藏头诗（[51]，寄给了玛莉恩（摩莉）•特威迪？

诗人频用韵文写，

神妙赞歌圣音乐，

九九八十一重叠，

胜似诗酒情切切，

咸属我卿与世界。

是什么阻止他去完成那首题名《要是布赖恩•勃鲁[52]如今回来看到了老都柏林》的主题歌（并由R.G. 约翰逊配乐）的呢？那本是坐落于南国王街门牌四十六、四十七、四十八、四十九号的欢乐剧场的承租人迈克尔•冈恩[ 53] 约他编写的。该歌原来预定插在照例于圣诞节期间公演的大型哑剧《水手辛伯达》第六场《钻石谷》（一八九三年第二版，作者：格林利夫•惠蒂尔[54]，舞台装置：乔治•A•杰克逊和塞西尔•希克斯；服装：惠兰太太与惠兰小姐；导演：R. 谢尔顿；一八九二年十二月二十六日在迈克尔•冈恩夫人亲自监督下演出，芭蕾舞女演员为杰西•诺亚，丑角为托马斯•奥托）中，是由女主角内莉•布弗里斯特[55]演唱的。

首先，有关皇室与当地的两档子事，歌中究竟写哪一桩，令人难以做出抉择。要么是提前描写维多利亚女王（一八二0 年出生，一八三七年即位）的六十周年大庆[56]；要么是将新修建的市营鱼市开张典礼的日期[ 57] 移后。第二，深恐皇族约克公爵和公爵夫人[58] （实有其人）以及布赖恩•勃鲁国王陛下（虚构的人物）分别前来访问一事，会招致来自左右两方面的反对。第三，新峻工的伯格码头区的大歌剧厅和霍金斯街的皇家剧场[ 59] ，存在着职业的礼仪与职业的竞争之间的矛盾。第四，由于内莉•布弗里斯特的那种非理性、非政治、不时兴的容貌会引起观众的同情；内莉•布弗里斯特身穿非理性、非政治、不时兴的白色衬衣，当她（内莉•布弗里斯特）表演时一旦将衬衣袒露出来，会撩拨观众的情欲，令人担心会使观众神魂颠倒。第五，不论是挑选适当的乐曲还是从《笑话共赏集》（共一千页，每个笑话都令人捧腹）里选一些滑稽的隐喻都是困难的。第六，这首主题歌不论谐不谐音，都与新任市长大人丹尼尔•塔仑、新任行政司法长官托马斯•派尔以及新任副检察长邓巴•普伦凯特•巴顿[60]的姓名有联系。

他们的年龄之间有什么关系？

十六年前的一八八八年，当布卢姆在眼下的斯蒂芬这个年龄时，斯蒂芬是六岁。十六年后的一九二0年，当斯蒂芬到了布卢姆那个年龄时，布卢姆已经交五十四岁了。到一九三六年布卢姆年届七十、斯蒂芬交五十四岁时，他们二人的年龄比率就由原来的十六比零变成十七点五比十三点五。将来随着彼此年龄的任意增长，比率会越来越大，差距则越来越小。因为倘若一八八三年存在的那个比率有可能一成不变地延续下去，那么一九0 四年，当斯蒂芬二十二岁时，布卢姆就应该是三百七十四岁了；而到了一九二0 年，当斯蒂芬三十八岁（也就是布卢姆现在这个年龄）时，布卢姆就应该是六百四十六岁了；而一九五二年，当斯蒂芬活到大洪水之后的最高年龄七十岁[61]时，布卢姆就已交一千一百九十岁，生年为七一四年[62]；比大洪水之前的最长寿者，也就是活到九百六十九岁的玛土撒拉[63]还要多二百二十一岁。倘若斯蒂芬继续活下去，在公元三0 七二年达到这个岁数，布卢姆就已经是八万三千三百岁了，而他的生年按说是纪元前八一三九六年[ 64] 。

什么事会使这些计算归于无效呢？

双方或其中一方停止生存；制定出一种新纪元或历法，或世界的灭亡所导致的不可避免而又难以预料的人类之灭绝。

他们以前遇见过几次，从而能够证明彼此是老相识？

两次。第一次是一八八七年，在圆镇基玛吉路，通称梅迪纳别墅的马特。狄龙家的丁香园里；同席的还有斯蒂芬的母亲。当时斯蒂芬才五岁，不喜欢伸出手去跟人打招呼[65]。第二次是一八九二年一月，一个下雨的星期日，在布雷斯林饭店的咖啡室里。同室的有斯蒂芬的父亲和叔祖父，当时斯蒂芬又长了五岁。

由那个做儿子的提出来、做父亲的后来也表示赞同的那次赴家宴的邀请，布卢姆接受了吗？

他十分领情，非常感谢，由衷地领情感谢，并且深抱遗憾地加以谢绝。

他们围绕这些回忆而谈着的话中，可曾透露出双方之间还有第三个联系？

一八八八年九月一日至一八九一年十二月二十九日，一位手头有点积蓄的寡妇赖尔登太太[66]（丹特）曾住在斯蒂芬的父母家里。一八九二、九三和九四年间，她曾住在普鲁西亚街五十四号的市徽饭店[ 67] ，是伊丽莎白•奥多德开的。一八九三年至一八九四年问，布卢姆也在同一家饭店住过一个时期，那阵子她经常为布卢姆做耳报神。当时布卢姆在史密斯菲尔德五号的约瑟夫•卡夫手下当雇员，在附近的北环路都柏林牲畜市场担任贩卖监督。

在体力方面，他可曾对她有过什么善举？

有时在温暖的夏日傍晚，布卢姆把这位多少拥有一些资产足以自立的病孀扶到康复期患者坐的轮椅上，慢慢地将她推到北环路拐角处加文•洛[ 68] 先生的牲畜交易场所对面。她在那儿逗留上半晌，隔着他那架单镜头双筒望远镜眺望那些难以辨认的市民们：他们搭乘电车、气胎打得鼓鼓的自行车、出租马车、双驾马车、自家用或租来的四轮马车、单马拉的双轮马车、轻便小马车和大型四轮游览马车，在市区与凤凰公园之间穿梭着。

他何以对这样的看护工作如此安之若素？

因为他在青壮年时，经常坐在屋里，隔着那嵌有浮凸饰的五彩圆玻璃窗子，观察外界大街上千变万化的景物：步行者、四足动物、脚踏车、车辆，或急匆匆或慢悠悠或不紧不慢地经过，沿着垂直的圆球面的边缘滴溜溜、滴溜溜、滴溜溜地旋转。对于八年前去世的她，他们二人各自有着什么样截然不同的记忆？

年长的那位记得她那比齐克牌戏[69]和筹码，她那只斯凯骾狗[70]，她所冒充的富有，她对事物怎样缺乏反应，她所患的初期卡他性耳聋。年轻的那位则记得她那盏供在无染原罪圣母玛利亚雕像前的菜油灯，她用来象征查理•斯图尔特。巴涅尔和迈克尔，达维特的绿色刷子和绦紫色刷子，她的薄绉纸[ 71] 。

通过对年轻的朋友所透露的这些回忆，他更巴不得能恢复青春了，然而他还有没有办法来实现呢？

室内健身操。尤今•桑道[72]所著《体力与健身术》中规定了如何操练。以前，他时断时续地练过，后来干脆放弃了。这种健身操是特地为坐着工作的商人所编排的，必须照着镜子聚精会神地操练，活动一下身上各个部位的筋肉，依次一张一弛地做令人心旷神怡的运动，以便恢复能给人带来莫大愉悦的青春活力。

青少年时代他可曾显示过特殊的机敏，

尽管在举重比赛方面他的体力不够，对于空中旋转，勇气又不足，然而念高中时，多亏腹部肌肉异常发达，他有本领在双杠上两臂垂直，双腿向前抬起，与身子成直角，长时间稳定地保持平衡。

二人之中有哪个直率地提到种族不同的问题吗？

谁都没有提。

布卢姆对斯蒂芬关于布卢姆的看法到底怎么想法？而且，布卢姆对斯蒂芬究竟怎样看待布卢姆关于斯蒂芬的看法又有何想法？如果把这些想法用最简单的相互形式扼要地表达出来，究竟是怎

样的？

他［布卢姆］认为，他［斯蒂芬]在想他［布卢姆]是个犹太人；同时他［布卢姆]知道，他［斯蒂芬］晓得他［布卢姆］明白他嘶蒂芬]

并不是个犹太人[73]。

冲破了沉默的樊篱后，他们弄清彼此的父母是什么人了吗？

布卢姆是经过松博特海伊[74]、维也纳、布达佩斯、米兰、伦敦而来到都柏林的鲁道尔夫•维拉格（后改名为鲁道尔夫•布卢姆）和艾琳。希金斯之间所生的唯一的男子继承人，而艾琳是朱利叶斯。希金斯（原姓卡罗利）和范妮•希金斯（旧姓赫加蒂）之次女。斯蒂芬是自科克来到都柏林的西蒙•迪达勒斯与玛丽之间所生的孩子当中尚健在的共同的男子继承人中最年长的，而玛丽则是理查[75]与克里斯蒂娜•古尔丁（原姓格里尔）之女。

布卢姆和斯蒂芬都领洗了吗？在哪儿？ 洗礼是由谁给施行的？

是由神职人员还是在俗人员？

布卢姆（领过三次洗）：在库姆的耶稣教圣尼古拉斯•威思奥特教堂，由可敬的文学士吉尔默•约翰斯顿独自为他施洗；在索兹

村[76]的水泵下，由詹姆斯•奥康纳•菲利普•吉利根和詹姆斯•

菲茨杰拉德共同为他施洗；在拉思加尔的三位主保圣人教堂由那位可敬的天主教神父查理•马洛尼[77]独自为他施洗。斯蒂芬（领过一次洗）：在拉思加尔的三位主保圣人教堂由那位可敬的天主教神父查理•马洛尼独自为他施洗。

他们二人可曾发现彼此有相似的学历？

倘若斯蒂芬与布卢姆换个位置，斯图姆[78]就会顺序从幼儿学校起念完高中。倘若布卢姆与斯蒂芬换个位置，布利芬[79]就会顺序读完中等教育的预备科、初级、中级、高级课程，通过王家大学的入学考试，依次读完文科一、二年级，继而修完文学士课程。

为什么布卢姆抑制住自己，不曾说他进过人生这所大学？

因为他拿不准自己是否已对斯蒂芬说过此话，或者斯蒂芬是否曾对他这么说过。

他们二人分别代表哪两种气质：

科学气质。艺术气质。

布卢姆所提出的哪些例证足以证明，他的个性与其说是倾向于理论科学，毋宁说是倾向于应用科学。

当吃饱后，为了助消化而仰卧着时，他曾思考过几项发明的可能性。这是由于认识到如今虽已司空见惯、当初却曾是巨大革新的那些发明的重要性，从而受到刺激：比方说，航空降落伞、反射望远镜、螺丝锥、别针、瓶装矿泉水、运河那有着绞车与泄水道的闸门装置、抽水机。

他这些发明主要是用来推动幼儿园改良计划的吗？

是的。就是要把纸枪、橡胶浮囊、掷骰子游戏和弹弓排斥出去；其中包括展示白羊宫乃至双鱼宫这十二宫星座的天体万花筒、小型机械装置的太阳系仪、算术用菱形果子冻、相当于动物饼干的几何图形饼干、游戏用地球仪皮球、身穿历史服装的玩偶。

另外还有哪些因素在激发着他去开动脑筋？

伊弗雷姆•马克斯和查尔斯•奥•詹姆斯在金融上取得的成功。前者是在南乔治街四十二号举办一便士展销会，后者在亨利街三十号开了一爿六便士半店铺并举办世界小商品市场和蜡制品展览会，门票：成人两便士，儿童一便士。还有近代广告术方面迄未开拓的无限可能性。如果压缩成三字母单一观念[80]的记号，那就是：竖着，能够最大限度地看到（察觉）；横着，能够最大限度地读到（辨认），还有着不知不觉地吸引人的注意力，产生兴趣，使之信服并采取行动的催眠般功效。

好的例子呢？

吉•ll。吉诺批发店 11 裤子[81]。

钥匙议院。亚历山大•杰•凯斯。

不好的例子呢？

瞧瞧这支长蜡烛。你要是猜中了它什么时候能燃尽，就免费赠送一双本店特制真皮靴子，保证足有一烛光的光泽。地址：巴克利与库克，塔尔博特街十八号[82]。

杆菌[83]牌（杀虫剂）。

最佳[84]牌（鞋油）。

你要[85]牌（与螺丝锥、指甲挫和烟斗通条合并在一起的双刃折叠小刀）。

最糟糕的呢？

倘若你家里没有：李树牌的肉罐头，

那就是美中不足，

有它才算幸福窝[86]。

都柏林商人码头二十三号乔治•普勒姆垂制造，每听装四英两。这则广告是市政委员、下院议员约瑟夫•岶•南尼蒂（哈德威克街十九号圆形建筑小区）给插到讣吿和忌日通告栏下面的[87]。商标是李树。注册的商标是李树肉罐头。谨防冒牌货：皮特莫特、特拉姆普利、莫特帕特、普拉姆特鲁[88]。

他举出哪个例证来诱使斯蒂芬去推断，独创性尽管能产生各自的报酬，但未必总能导致成功呢？

他本人曾想出个主意：让牲口拉一辆有照明装置的陈列车，由两个衣着时髦的姑娘坐在里面正埋头写着什么。然而这个建议没被采纳[89]。

在此建议的启迪下，当时斯蒂芬在脑中构成了怎样一幅情景？

山径里的一座孤零零的客栈。秋日。暮色苍茫。壁炉里燃着火。一个小伙子坐在昏暗的角落里。一个年轻的女人走了进来。心绪怔忡不安。孤单单的。她坐下。她踱到窗口。她站起来。她坐下。暮色苍茫。她思索。她坐在孤零零的客栈里在纸上写着。她沉吟。她写。她叹气。车轮和马蹄声。她赶忙走出去。他从昏暗角落里踱过来。他摸住那张孤零零的纸。他迎着火光举起信。暮色苍茫。他读信。孤单单的。

哦？

用斜体、直体和左斜体字写着：王后饭店，王后饭店，王后饭店，王后饭……

这一启迪使布卢姆重新想起了什么情景？

克莱尔郡恩尼斯的王后饭店。一八八六年六月十七日傍晚，鲁道尔夫•布卢姆（鲁道尔夫•维拉格）因服用过量的乌头（附子），在此故去，时间不详。他服的是按附子搽剂二、氯仿搽剂一（系他于一八八六年六月二十七日上午十点二十分在恩尼斯教会街十七号弗朗西斯•登内希药房所购），按比例亲自配制的神经痛搽剂。尽管并非由于此举，然而在此举之前，一八八六年六月二十七日下午三点十五分，他曾从恩尼斯的通衢大道四号詹姆斯•卡伦普通服装店购买了一顶崭新而时髦的特级硬壳平顶草帽（尽管并非由于此举，然而在此举之前，他于前文中所述的时刻与地点，购买了前边提到的毒剂）。

他把这种同名异物[90]归因于从别人那里获知，或属巧合，要么是出自直觉？

巧合。

他可曾绘声绘色地口头描述给客人听？

他宁愿注视对方的脸，倾听对方的话，这下子一个潜在的故事就生动他讲出来了，从而使他心头的忐忑不安[91]也可得到缓解。

他可曾从叙述者向他讲的第二个情景（不论是《登比斯迦山眺望巴勒斯但》还是《李子寓言》[92]）中，仅仅发现了第二个“巧合”？

与第一个情景以及虽未讲出来却寓在其中的其他一些情景相联系，再加上学生时代关于种种问题和道德格言所写的散文（诸如我热爱的英雄》[93]）或《怠惰乃时间之窃贼》），他认为文章本身，又结合着人与人之间的差别，总是包含着在经济、社会、个人以及性方面获得成功之可能性。不论是作为模范的教育题材（百分之百地有益）特别选拔出来收入全集或选集，供预科及初级班的学生使用；要么就仿效菲利普•博福伊[94]、迪克博士[95]或是赫布仑的《蓝色研究》[96]的先例，把稿子投给销路和槁酬都有保证的杂志，排印出来；要么就迎着四天后到来的夏至（日出为凌晨三点三十三分，日没为下午八点二十九分），即六月二十一日（星期二，圣阿洛伊苏斯•贡萨加[97] ，利用那以后徐徐来到、逐渐漫长起来的夜晚，使用口头语言诉诸富于同情心的听众，他们对高明的叙述技巧默加赞赏，对杰出的成就满怀信心地事先祝贺，并在理智方面给予激励。

什么样的家庭问题，即使不会超过其他问题，起码也不相上下地频频使他操心？

该怎么应付咱们的老婆。

他所设想的独特的解决方案是什么样的？

室内游戏（多米诺骨牌，希腊跳棋[98]，挑圆片[99]），抽杆游戏，杯球[100] ，纳普[101] ，抢五墩牌，比齐克，二十五墩[102] ，“抢光我的邻居”[103] ，跳棋，国际象棋或十五子棋戏[104] ）；为警察署资助的服装协会[105] 做刺绣、缝补或编织等活计；音乐二重奏：曼陀林和吉他，钢琴和长笛，吉他和钢琴；法律文件的抄写或代填信封上的地址；每隔一周去看一次杂耍演出；从事一些商业活动：一位老板娘在凉爽的牛奶房或暖和的香烟店里愉快地使唤着，愉快地被服从着；在由国家监督、并加以医药管理的男妓院里，暗自从淫欲刺激中得到的满足；与住在附近的一些被公认为品行端正的女友们进行社交活动，需要有不频繁的定期预防性间隔以及频繁的定期预防性监督；为了讲授合适的交往礼仪而专门举办一套夜间讲座。

他的妻子在智力发展方面的缺陷，有哪些事例促使他倾向于采取前边提到的（第九项）解决方案？

当她没事可干的时候，她不只一次地在一张纸上胡乱写满了符号和象形文字，并说那是希腊字、爱尔兰字和希伯来字。隔一阵子她就总是问上一遍：加拿大一座叫魁北克的城市那个大写的头一个字母是什么？她几乎不理解国内复杂的政治情势；国际上的势力均衡。在加算帐单时，她往往要借助于手指头。写完一篇书简体短文后，她就把书写用具丢在蜡画颜料里，任其暴露在硫酸亚铁、绿矾和五倍子中去腐蚀[106]。对那些没有听惯的多音节外来语，她总是根据语音或模拟类推，或将二者折衷，牵强附会：例如把“轮回”说成是“遇见了他尖头胶皮管[107]”，把“别名”一词说成是“《圣经》里提到的一个撤谎的人[108]”。

要靠什么来弥补那由于理智失去平衡而在这些方面以及对人物、地点与事物所缺乏的判断呢？

一切天平的一切垂直杠杆，均凭借其结构来证实表面上的平衡中的谬误。她对一个人的精确的判断，要靠实验来证明是正确的，从而取得平衡。

为了补救这种相对的无知状态，他做过哪些尝试？

种种尝试：将特定的一本书放在醒目的地方，把特定的一页翻开来；委婉地做些说明，并假定她头脑里对此有着潜在的知识；当着她的面公然挖苦不在场的某人如何由于无知而失态。

他这样直接教育的尝试，取得了什么效果？

她没有全听懂，只听懂了其中一部分。兴致勃勃地留神，惊奇地理解，细心地复诵，吃力地记下来，很容易地就忘掉，没有把握地重新记起，重复时错误百出。

哪种方法证明更有效果？

涉及个人利害关系的间接指点暗示。

有什么例子？

下雨时她讨厌打伞，而他喜欢打着雨伞的女人；她讨厌下雨时戴新帽子，而他喜欢女人戴新帽子；下雨时他买了顶新帽子，她戴着新帽子，手持雨伞。

接受了客人那个寓言里所包含的类比之后，他举出哪些被囚虏[109] 过的大人物作为范例？

三位纯粹真理的探求者：埃及的摩西、著有《迷途指津》的摩西。迈蒙尼德以及摩西•门德尔松[110]。他们都那么显赫，从摩西（埃及的）到摩西（门德尔松），从来没有像摩西（迈蒙尼德）那样的人物[111] 。

斯蒂芬说声“对不起”，提出了第四个纯粹真理的探求者的名字：亚理斯多德。布卢姆答以“请原谅，也许我错了”，接着说了些什么？

这位探求者是个犹太法学博士（姓名不详）的弟子。

另外还提到了哪些足以凭信、享有盛名的法律界的儿子们--被迸选而又受排斥的种族的子孙？

费利克斯•巴托尔迪•门德尔松（作曲家），巴鲁克。斯宾诺莎（哲学家）[112]，门多萨（拳击家），费迪南德•拉萨尔（社会改革家、决斗者）[113] 。

客人对主人以及主人对客人，曾将古希伯来文和古爱尔兰文哪些诗句的片断，抑扬顿挫地并附以原词的译文，加以引用了？

斯蒂芬引用的是：suil，suil，suil arun， suil go siocair agus suilgo cuin[114] （走，走，走你的路，平安地走，谨慎地走）。

布卢姆引用的是kifeloch， harimon rakatejch m'baad l'zamatejch[115]（你的鬓角遮在头发里，如同一片石榴）。

为了把口腔发声的比较加以具体化，他们对两种语言的音符怎样做了象形的比较[116]？

在用低俗文学体裁写的一本题名《偷情的快乐》的书（是布卢姆掏出来的，他摆得很巧妙，使封面和桌面接触）那底封前倒数第二张空白衬页上，斯蒂芬用一管铅笔（斯蒂芬提供的）以简略体与装饰体写下相当于g、a、d、m的爱尔兰语字母[117]。布卢姆则写下希伯来字母ghimel、aleph、daleth和qoph（这是用来代替所缺的mem的）。他还说明，这些字母作为序数及基数的算数值，各自代表三、一、四及一百[118] 。

两个人对这两种业已衰亡或复兴起来的语言所具有的知识，究竟是理论方面的还是实际方面的？

理论方面的，只局限于词形变化以及句法结构方面的一些语法规则，实际上并不包括语汇知识。

这两种语言之间以及使用这两种语言的两个民族之间，存在过哪些接触点？

两种语言都有喉音、区分的气音、增音以及附属性的字母。两种都是古老的语言，大洪水后二四二年，费尼乌斯•法赛在西纳尔平原[119]所创办的学院就开了这两种语言的课程。他是以色列民族的祖先挪亚的后裔；又是爱尔兰民族的祖先埃贝尔与赫里蒙的始祖[120]。用这两种语言写成的考古学的、系谱学的、圣徒传记学的、注释学的、布道术的、地名研究的、历史的以及宗教方面的著作，其中包括犹太法学博士和神仆团[ 121] 团员的著述：托拉、《塔木德》（《密西拿》和革马拉）[122]、马所拉本、《五经》[123] 、《牛皮书》、《巴利莫特书》[124]、《霍斯饰本》、《凯尔斯书》[125]，记述这两个民族的离散：[126]，受迫害，幸存，复兴。他们在犹太人区（圣玛丽亚修道院）[127]和弥撒馆（亚当与夏娃客栈）[ 128] 孤零零地举行犹大教或基督教仪式。根据惩戒法及犹太人服装令[ 129] ，两个民族均被禁止穿民族服装。复兴锡安的大卫王国[ 130]以及爱尔兰的政治自治或主权转移的可能性。

布卢姆对这种错综复杂、种族上不可分割的终极状态抱着期待，唱了哪一节颂歌呢？

犹太魂坚定激荡，

由衷呐喊音铿锵[ 131]。

唱完第一个对句后，歌声何以中断？

那是由于在记忆方法上有缺陷的结果。

歌手是如何弥补这一缺陷的呢？

他对原文大致做了一番冗长的口译。

他们二人彼此的见解，在哪一研究范畴内融为一体？

从埃及碑铭的象形文字到希腊、罗马字母，足以追踪出逐渐变得单纯的迹象；还有楔形碑文（闪米特语[ 132] ）和斜线号五肋骨形欧甘文字[133] （凯尔特语），具有近代速记术与电报符号之先驱的性质。

客人照主人的要求去做了吗？

他用爱尔兰文字和罗马文字补上了签名，从而加倍地从命了。

斯蒂芬在听觉上的反应如何？

从那深沉苍老、充满阳刚之气而又生疏的旋律中，他听到了过去的累积。

布卢姆在视觉上的反应如何？

从那机警年轻、充满阳刚之气而又熟悉的身姿，他看到了未来的命运。

斯蒂芬和布卢姆的隐蔽的本体那大致同时的、出于本人意志的大致感觉是怎样的？

斯蒂芬是从视觉方面：有着传统的神人合一的基督[ 134]那种身姿。就像大马士革的约翰、罗马的伦图卢斯和隐修士伊皮凡尼乌斯所描述的那样，患了白癜风般的皮肤，一英尺半高的个儿，葡萄紫的头发。

布卢姆是从听觉方面：令人销魂的浩劫那传统的声调[135] 。

过去，布卢姆有过哪些将来可能从事的职业？能举出哪些典范？

教会方面，罗马天主教会、英国圣公会或不从国教派[136]。典范为：耶稣会会长、十分可敬的约翰•康米神父、可敬的三一学院院长T•萨蒙神学博士、亚历山大•约•道维博士[137]。英国或爱尔兰律师业典范为：英国王室法律顾问西摩•布希，英国王室法律顾问鲁弗斯•伊塞克斯[ 138] 。剧坛，现代剧或莎士比亚戏剧。典范为：高雅的喜剧演员查理•温德姆，演莎士比亚戏剧的奥斯蒙•蒂尔利（卒于1901年）[139] 。

主人可曾鼓励客人低声吟诵一段类似主题的奇妙传说？

再三地鼓励了。因为他们呆在隐蔽的地方，谁都听不见他们说话的声音。并且煮好的饮料，除了水加糖加奶油加可可这种人工混合的准固体残存沉淀物之外，均已喝光。

朗诵一下他所唱的故事诗第一部（大调的）：

哈里•休斯和学伴，

到外面去把球玩，

小哈里扔头一球，

飞越犹太家围墙，

小哈里扔第二球，

窗玻璃砸个精光。

鲁道尔夫的儿子听了第一部，感觉怎样？

他的感觉是单纯的。他这个犹太人面泛微笑高兴地倾听着，并望着厨房里那没有砸碎的窗玻璃。

把故事诗第二部（小调的）朗诵一遍：

犹太闰女出来了，

浑身穿着绿衣裳，

“小俊哥儿你回来，

再把球扔上一趟。”

我不能也不愿去，

除非学伴都在场，

要是老师知道了，

我会遭殃在球上。

雪白的手牵着他，

把他引到大厅里，

最后步入一间房，

无人听见他叫嚷。

她从兜里掏出刀，

把他小脑袋割掉，

他再不能把球踢，

因已躺到尸堆里[140]。

米莉森特的父亲听了第二部，有怎样的反响？

他的感情是复杂的。他板着面孔，惊异地听见并看见一个犹太人的闺女，浑身穿着绿衣裳。

将斯蒂芬的评论概述一下。

大家当中的一个，大家当中最渺小的一个，命中注定成为牺牲者。第一次是出于疏忽，第二次是故意地，他向命运挑战。当他孤零零的时候，宿命来临，向并不情愿的他进行挑战。作为希望与青春的化身，抓住他使他无法抵抗。命运把他领到一座奇异的住所，一间隐秘的背教者之居室，把顺从的他毫不留情地当作祭品宰杀。

主人（命中注定的牺牲者）为什么闷闷不乐？

他希望关于一个行为的故事，并非他本人之所为，不应由他[141] 讲出来。

为什么主人（并不情愿，也并不抵抗）一动也不动？

这是按照保存精力的法则。

主人（隐秘的背教者）为什么一声不响？

他在衡量着赞成和反对杀人祭神的可能的证据：神职人员的煽动以及民众的迷信；随着谣言的传播，致使真实性逐渐减少。对财富的嫉妒，复仇的影响，隔代遗传造成的不法行为的突发性再犯。有量情余地的狂信，催眠术的暗示和梦游病症状。

这些精神上或肉体上的毛病（倘若有的话）中，哪样是他无法完全能够免除的？

催眠术的暗示：有一次，他睡醒之后认不出自己的卧室了。不只一次，乍一睡醒，好半晌的工夫他既不能挪动身子也发不出声音。梦游者的恍惚状态：有一次在睡眠中，他起身低头弯腰去爬向没有热气的壁炉。爬到之后，他蜷缩着身子，在没有炉火取暖的情况下，穿着睡衣倒在那里睡了。

后一种或同类的症候，可曾出现在他的哪个家族身上？

曾经发生过两次，在霍利斯街和翁塔利奥高台街[142] 。当他的女儿米莉森特（米莉）六岁和八岁时，曾在睡眠中吓得喊叫起来。两个穿睡衣的身影问她怎么啦？她却茫然地答以沉默表情。

关于她的幼年，另外他还记得些什么？

一八八九年六月十五日。一个刚刚呱呱落地的脾气暴躁的女婴，哭哭啼啼，既导致又舒散充血性征候。这娃娃的外号叫“帕德尼•软鞋”[ 143] ，她咣当咣当地摇着攒钱罐，并数着父亲那三颗备用的便士硬币型纽扣：一呀，二呀，三。她把穿水手装的男小囝木偶丢掉了。尽管爹妈的头发都是深色的，她却继承了先辈的金发血统。古老的往昔，曾被诱奷，海瑙上尉[144] 先生，奥地利陆军；近因则是个幻觉，英国海军中的马尔维中尉。

存在着哪些地域性的特色？

反之，鼻子和前额的构造却继承了尽管中断过然而逐渐隔着更大的乃至最大的间歇遗传下来的直系血统。

关于她的青春期，他记得一些什么？

她把自己的铁环和跳绳藏到隐蔽的地方。在公爵草坪上，当一个英国旅游者央求她准许为她摄影留念时，她拒绝了（未说明反对的理由）。有一次她和埃尔莎•波特一道在南环路步行时，被一个面目狰狞的家伙跟踪上了。于是走到斯塔默街半途，她就蓦地折了回去（也没说明为什么要改变方向）。在过十五岁生日的前夕，她从韦斯特米思郡穆林加尔市写来一封信，简单地提了一下当地的一个学生（未说明他是哪一系和哪年级的）。

成为第二次分手之预兆的第一次分手，使他感到苦恼了吗？

比他所想象的要少，比他所希望的要多。

这一瞬间，他目击到了什么样的第二次出走，尽管有差异，却又有类似之处？

他的猫暂时出走了。

何以会类似，又何以会有差异？

类似点是，二者都是由某种隐秘的目的所驱使：寻觅一名新男子（穆林加尔市的学生）或药草（拔地麻）。差异在于，回到住户或住处来的可能性有所不同。

在其他方面，二者之间的差异有类似之处吗？

在被动性，节俭，传统的本能和唐突方面。

例如？

比方说，她依偎着他，托起金发，让他为她扎上缎带（与弓起脖子的猫比较一下）。而且，她连招呼也没打一声就朝着“斯蒂芬草地”那浩森的湖面[145]上啐了一口，唾沫浮在一棵棵树的倒影之间，划下一圈圈同心圆的波纹，持久而凝然不动，以一条人睡般平卧着的鱼为记号（与守候老鼠的猫相比）。而且，为了把一次著名战役的日期、双方作战部队的番号、战局以及战果都铭记心头，她拽自己的一条辫子来着（与舔耳朵的猫相比）。再者，傻米莉还梦见她和一匹马进行了一番无言的对谈，内容已记不得了。那匹马名叫约瑟夫，她捧给他（它）满满一大杯柠檬汽水，它（他）好像喝下去了（与在炉边做梦的猫相比）。因此，在被动性、节俭、因循的本能、唐突等方面，他们之间的差异是类似的。

他曾怎样利用人们为了图个吉祥而送给他们的祝贺新婚的礼物： （1）一只猫头鹰和（2）一座钟，供她玩赏，并使她蒙受教益？

他把它们作为实物教材，用以说明：（1）卵生动物的本性与习性，空中飞行的可能性，一种异常的视觉器官，世俗界用防腐药物保存尸体的方式。（2）体现于摆锤、齿轮与整时器上的钟摆的原理； 不动的针盘上那可移动的正转的长短指针在各个位置作为人或社会规范所包含的意义； 长针和短针每小时在同一倾斜度相遇的那一瞬间，也就是说，按照算术级数， 每小时超过5 5/11分的那一瞬间，每小时重复一次的精确性[146]。

她是用什么方式回报他的呢？

她都记在心里了：当他过二十七岁生日的时候，她送给他一只早餐用的搪须杯，上面有着王冠图案，是仿照德比的瓷器[147]。她照料着。四季结帐日[148] 或这先后，倘若他并非为了她而去购买什么东西，她就对他的需要表示关心，并能预料到他的希望。她钦佩他。当他为了她[149]而对自然现象做了说明时，她立即表示一种期望：不经过逐渐掌握就获得他那科学知识的一鳞半爪，二分之一，四分之一，千分之一。

梦游病患者米莉之父--昼游病患者布卢姆，向夜游病患者斯蒂芬提出了什么建议？

建议他在厨房楼上，紧挨着男主人与女主人的卧室那临时隔开的斗室里安歇，度过介于星期四（通称）、星期五（实名）之间的这几个小时。

这样的临时措施的期间如果拖长了，能够产生或估计能产生哪些好处呢？

对客人来说，能有个安定的住处和僻静的用功场所。对男主人来说，有助于才智的年轻化，替身能给他带来满足[150]。对女主人来说，能摆脱胡思乱想， 学到正确的意大利发音。

何以一位客人与女主人之间可能有的几度机缘，并不排除一个同学和一个犹太人的女儿[151] 最终有可能永久地和睦结合，而且也不会被这种结合所排除？

因为通往女儿的路要经过母亲，而通往母亲的路要经过女儿。

对男主人的哪一句有一搭没一搭的多音节的询问，客人做了单音节的否定的答复？

他认不认识已故埃米莉•辛尼柯太太[152]？ 一九0三年十月十四日，她因车祸死于悉尼广场车站。

主人把刚要开口提到的什么有关事由终于又咽了回去？

对于一九0三年六月二十六日他未能出席玛丽•迪达勒斯（原姓古尔丁）的葬礼的事由做了一番解释。因为那天正好碰上鲁道尔夫•布卢姆（原姓维拉格）忌日的前夕。

提供暂时栖身之所的建议被接受了吗？

未加解释，十分感激，友好地当即谢绝了。

主客之间在金钱方面打了些什么交道？

前者还给后者一笔钱（一英镑七先令整），未付利息。那是后者借给前者的。

彼此之间相互提出了些什么建议，接受了，又加以修改，被拒绝了，换个说法复述一遍，重新被接受，被认可，再次确认？

根据预先安排，开始讲习意大利语课程。地点在受教者的住所。开始声乐讲习课程，地点在女教师的住所。开始一系列静止的、半静止的、逍遥的、理性的对话，在对谈者双方家中（倘若对谈者双方住在同一处）；位于下阿贝街六号的“船记”饭店兼酒馆（经营者为W和E.康纳里），基尔代尔街十一号的爱尔兰国立图书馆、霍利斯街二十九、三十与三十一号的国立妇产医院，一座公共花园，礼拜堂附近，两条或更多的街道交叉点，连接双方住宅的直线的中点（倘若交谈者各住一处）。

使布卢姆感到这些相互排斥的建议难以实现的理由是什么？

过去的事是已经不可挽回的了。有一回艾伯特•亨格勒马戏团在都柏林市拉特兰广场的圆形建筑[153]里演出，一名富于机智的小丑身穿色彩斑驳的服装， 为了寻找乃父，竟走出马戏场，钻进观众席中，来到孤零零地坐着的布卢姆跟前，在大庭广众之下，向兴奋不已的观众公开宣称：他（布卢姆）是他（小丑）的爸爸。未来是不可预测的。一八九八年夏天，有一次他（布卢姆）在一枚弗洛林银币（值二先令）周围的饰纹上刻下三条道道，付给大运河查利蒙特林荫路一号的J与T. 戴维父子食品店，以便试验一下该货币经过市民钱财交易的流通过程，直接或间接地回到自己手中的可能性。

那个小丑是布卢姆的儿子吗？

不是。

那枚银市又回到布卢姆手里来了吗？

再也没有回来。

接连遭到的挫折何以越发使他闷闷不乐？

因为在人类生活关键性的转折时刻，他渴望改善种种社会情况，而那是不平等、贪欲和国与国之间抗争的产物。

那么他是否相信，消除了这些条件后，人的生活就能无限地接近完美无缺呢？

截然不同于人为的法则，这里依然存在着按照自然的法则作为对维持整个人类的生存不可分割的部分加诸于人的生物学之基本条件。为了获得有营养的食品，就不得不进行破坏性的杀戮。孤立的个人生存中终极机能那充满了苦恼的性质。生与死的痛苦。类人猿和（尤其是）人类女性那单调的月经，自初潮期一直延续到闭经期。海洋上、矿山和工厂里那些不可避免的事故；某些非常痛苦的疾病以及伴随而来的外科手术；生来的疯颠，先天性犯罪癖；导致人口大批死亡的传染病；在人类心灵深处种下恐怖种子的灾难性特大洪水；震中位于人口密集地区的大地震；历经剧烈变形，自幼年经过成熟期进入衰退期的生命成长的事实。

他为什么打消了推断猜想的念头？

因为摆在不同凡响的智者面前的课题就是排除不大适宜接受的现象，而代之以更适宜接受的现象。

对他这样气馁，斯蒂芬表示共鸣了吗？

他强调了自己作为有意识、有理性的动物，从已知的世界演绎地向未知的世界前进的意义，以及作为有意识、有理性的反应者，介于不可避免地建立在不安定的虚空之上的大宇宙与小宇宙[ 154] 之间的意义。

布卢姆理解他强调的是什么吗？

不是照字面上，而是从实质上理解的。

对理解不足这一点，他是用什么来安慰自己的？

作为一个没有钥匙却有能力的市民，他通过不安定的虚空，从未知的世界精力充沛地朝着已知的世界前进。

他们是以怎样的先后顺序离开“为奴之家”[155] ，来到无人居住的旷野的，并举行了什么样的仪式呢？

把点燃的蜡烛插在烛台上

持者为

布卢姆

把助祭帽挑在梣木手杖上

持者为

斯蒂芬

念诵的是《诗篇》哪一纪念性篇章？是用哪段默祷[156] 作起句的？

第一一三篇，旅途：以色列人一离开埃及，雅各的子孙一离开异族的土地……[157]

他们各自在出口做了些什么？

布卢姆把烛台放在地板上。斯蒂芬把帽子戴在头上。

对什么动物来说，出口就是人口？

猫。

当主人领先，客人随后，两个黑魆魆的身姿默默地穿过房后昏暗的雨道，步入半明半暗的庭园中时，他们面对的是什么样的景物？

天树上坠满了湿漉漉的夜蓝色的累累星果。

布卢姆一边对伙伴指点着形形色色的星座，一边向他表达了哪些冥想？

关于宇宙日益扩大进化的冥想：新月期的月亮，即使在近地点[158] 也看不见。从地表向地轴挖掘纵深五千英尺的圆筒状垂直轴，一个观察者呆在轴底儿上，就连白昼也辨认得出那漫无止境、网络状、亮光闪闪、非凝结性的银河[159]。 天狼（大犬座阿尔法）距地球十光年（五七、000、000、000、000英里）；体积大于地球九百倍；大角[160] ；岁差运动[161] ；有着“猎户”腰带、六倍于太阳的“伐二”以及星云的猎户座，星云中能容纳我们的一百个太阳系[162] ；死去的和新生的星宿，例如一九0 一年的那颗“新星”[163] 我们的太阳系正朝着武仙座冲去[164] ；所谓恒星的视差或视差移动[165] ，也就是说，实际上恒星是在不断地从无限遥远的太古朝无限遥远的未来移动着。相形之下，人的寿命充其量才七十年，不过是无限短暂的一段插曲而已。
另外还有关于反过来逐渐缩小退化的冥想吗？

在地球的层理[166] 留下记录的太古以来的地质时代。隐藏在大地的洞穴里和能移动的石头底下、蜂巢和土墩子中那无数微小的昆虫类的有机生物：微生物、病菌、细菌、杆菌、精子；凭着分子的亲和之凝聚力而粘在一根针尖上那几万几亿几兆个多不胜数、肉眼看不到的微小颗粒；人类的血浆是一个宇宙，群集着白血球和红血球，每个血球又各自形成一个空虚的宇宙空间，群集着其他球体；各个球体连续性地也是由可分割的构成体形成的宇宙，各个构成体又可以分割成为几个能够进一步分割的构成体。就这样，分子与分母实际上在并未分割的情况下就不断地减少了。如果这个过程延续到一定时候，就永远在任何地方也不会达到零。

他为什么不精心计算出更准确的结果？

因为几年前在一八八六年，当他埋头于探讨面积等于一个圆的正方形[167] 的问题时，他发现了一个数值的存在：倘若精确地计算到某种程度， 就能达到比方说九九乘九乘这样庞大的量值和位数[168] 。所得数字要用细字密密匝匝地印刷成三十三卷，每卷一千页。为了统统印刷完毕，就需要购入无数刀、无数令印度纸，整数值的位数便是一、十、百、千、万、十万、百万、千万、亿、十亿，一切级数的一切数字作为星云的核心，以简明的形式所包含的累乘的可能性推到了极限地、能动地开展的一切乘方的一切幂级数。

他可曾发现分为几个种族的人类在其他行星及其卫星上居住的可能性，以及由一位救世主从社会上、伦理上拯救人类的可能性；那样一来问题会不会就更容易得到解决？

他认为那是另一范畴的难题。人体组织通常能够抗得住十九吨的气压[ 169] ，可是一旦在地球的大气层里上升到相当的高度，越是接近对流层与平流层的境界线，鼻孔出血、吸呼困难以及眩晕，随着算术级数就越发严重起来。他晓得这一点，寻求解答时就设想出这样一个难以证明是不可能的行之有效的假定：倘若换个更富于适应性，解剖学上的构造也有所不同的种族，说不定就能在火星、水星、金星、木星、土星、海王星或天王星那充足而相同的条件下生存下来。然而那个远地点[170] 的人类种族，尽管在构造方面与地球上的人类有着一定限度的不同之处，整个来说彼此却有着相似的种种形态。他们恐怕也和地球上的人类一样，会不肯舍弃那一成不变、无法分割的属性，也就是对空虚，对空虚的空虚，一切都是空虚[ 171]的执着。

至于拯救的可能性呢？

小前提已经被大前提所证明了。

接着他又依次对各个星座的哪些形形色色的特征进行了考虑呢？

显示出不同程度之生命力的缤纷色彩（白、浅黄、深红、朱红、银朱）；诸星之亮度；一直包括到七等星、以等级标志的诸星之大小；诸星的位置；御夫座；沃尔辛厄姆路[172] ；大卫的战车[ 173] ；土星光环；螺旋星云凝固后形成有卫星的恒星群；两重大阳相互依存的旋转运动；伽利略、西蒙•马里乌斯[174] 、皮亚齐[175] 、勒威耶、赫歇耳、加勒[176] 等人各自独立地同时所做的发现；波得和开普勒所尝试的距离的立方与回转次数的平方的体系化[177] ；多毛的众彗星[178] 那几殆无限的被压缩性，以及自近日点至远日点那广漠的远心的重返大气层的椭圆轨道；陨石的恒星之起源；年纪较轻的天体观测者诞生的那个时期火星上所出现的“暗波”现象[ 179] ；每年在圣劳伦斯节（殉教者，八月十日）前后降落的陨石雨；每月都发生的所谓“新月抱旧月”现象[180] ；关于天体对人体的影响的假定；威廉•莎士比亚出生的时期，在斜倚却永不没落的仙后座那三角形上端，一颗不分昼夜散发着极亮光彩的星辰（一等星）出现了[ 181] （这是两个无光、死灭了的太阳因相撞并汞合为白热体而形成的灿烂的新太阳）；大约在利奥波德•布卢姆出生时，出现在七星花冠星座里而后又消失了的一颗同一起源、亮度却稍逊的星宿（二等星）[ 182] ；还有约于斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯出生时，出现在仙女座中之后又消失，小鲁道尔夫•布卢姆出生与夭折数年后出现于御夫座后又消失，以及另外一些人出生或去世前前后后出现在许许多多其他星座中而又消失了的、（假定是）同一起源的（实际存在或假定存在的）星斗[ 183] 。日蚀及月蚀自隐蔽至复现的各种伴随现象：诸如风势减弱，影子推移，有翼者沉默下来，夜行或暮行动物的出现，冥界的光持续不减，地上的江河溪流之幽暗，人类之苍白。

对情况进行了估量并考虑过产生错误的可能性之后，他（布卢姆）得出过什么样的合乎逻辑的结论呢？

那既不是天树、天洞，也不是天兽、天人。那是个乌托邦，那里不存在自己知到未知的既知之路。那是无限的。假定各个天体有可能并存，那么也能把它看作是有限的。天体的数目是一个还是一个以上都无所谓，体积相同或不同也无所谓。那是一团能活动的幻觉形态，是在空间里已固定下来的东西，借着空气又重新活动起来。它是过去，未来的观察者们作为现在实际存在之前，它或许已不再作为现在而存在了。

关于这一光景的美的价值，他更加深信不疑了吗？

毫无疑问。因为有这样一些先例：诗人们往往在狂热的恋慕导致的谵妄状态下，要么就是在失恋的屈辱中，向热情而持好感的诸星座或围着地球转的冷漠的卫星呼吁。

那么他曾否把占星术对地上灾害的影响这一理论当作信条接受下来了呢？

据他看来，对这一点提出论证和反证的可能性是一样大的。月面图中所使用的梦沼、雨海、湿海、丰富海等学术用语既可以归之于直观的产物，也可以归之于谬误的类推。

他认为月亮和妇女之间有什么特殊的近似之处？

她历史悠久：地球上连绵不断的世世代代存在之前她就存在，并将继续存在下去。她在夜间的优势。她作为卫星的依存性。她反射光的性能；起落盈亏，运行有常，恒久不变。她的容貌注定永不改变。她对不明确的讯问，都给以暧昧的答复。她能够支配潮汐涨落。她具有使人迷恋，心碎，赋予美，逼人发疯[184] ，煽动并助长人们为非作歹的种种本事。她的表情那么安详而秘不可测。她孑然一身，居高临下，毫不留情，光彩夺目，令人望而生畏，不敢挨近。她预示着暴风雨或天朗气清。她焕发出的光芒，她那一举一动与存在都给人以刺激。她的喷火口，她那枯竭的海，她的沉默，在在都发出警告。看得见时，她是何等光辉灿烂，看不见时，她又是何等富于魅力。

哪一样看得见的明亮标志映入了布卢姆的眼帘，他又提醒斯蒂芬去注视了呢？

在他（布卢姆）家的二楼（后身），点起了一盏煤油灯，一个倾斜的人影投到卷式百叶帘上；那是在安吉尔街十六号开业的百叶窗、帘杆、卷式帘制造商弗兰克•奥哈拉供应的。

关于由看得见的明亮标志（一盏灯）所映照出来的那位看不见的富于魅力的人儿，也就是说，他的妻子玛莉恩（摩莉）•布卢姆之谜，他是怎样阐明的呢？

直接间接口头暗示或明确地表达。用那抑制着的挚爱和赞美之情。加以描绘。结结巴巴地。凭着暗示。

接着，两个人都沉默下去了吗？

沉默下去了。他们相互用自己肉身的镜子照着伙伴的脸。彼此在镜中照见的是对方的，而不是自己的脸。

他们一直毫无动静吗？

经斯蒂芬提议，并在布卢姆的鼓动下，先由斯蒂芬带头，布卢姆紧接着，双双在幽暗中各撤了一泡尿。他们肩并肩，彼此用手圈着自己的排尿器官，以便挡住对方的视线。随后由布卢姆带头，斯蒂芬紧接着，双双抬头抑望起那明亮的和半明亮的投影。

相似吗？

他们二人那起初有先有后，继而同时撤出去的尿的轨道并不相似。布卢姆的较长，滋得没那么冲，形状有点像那分叉的倒数第二个字母[185] ，却又有所不同。敢情，他念高中最后一年（一八八0） 的时候，曾有本事对抗全校二百十名学生拧成的那股力量，尿撒得比谁都高。斯蒂芬的尿滋得更冲，咝咝响得更欢势。由于头天最后几个钟头他喝了利尿物，膀胱持续地受到压迫。

对方那个看不见却听得见的附属器官，使两个人各自联想到了什么不同的问题？

布卢姆：过敏性、勃起、变硬挺直、松弛、大小、卫生、阴毛等等问题。斯蒂芬：受割礼的耶稣作为圣职者是否毫无缺陷的问题（一月一日乃是圣日，应该望弥撒，不得从事不必要的世俗劳动）[186] 。还有如何对待保存在卡尔卡塔的神圣罗马天主教使徒教会的肉体结婚戒指——神圣的包皮问题。应仅仅向它致以对圣母的最高崇敬呢，抑或该把它作为毛发、脚趾甲那样从神体上割下来的赘生物，对它致以第四级最高膜拜[187] ？

他们两人同时观测到了什么样的天象？

一颗星星从天顶上天琴座“织女一”越过后发星座[188] 的星群，明显地以高速度朝着黄道十二宫的狮子宫[189] 直冲过去。

向心的滞留者是怎样为离心的出发者提供出口的？

他将生锈粗涩的男性型钥匙轴捅进反复无常的女性型锁孔里，把劲头使在钥匙环上，自右至左地转动钥匙的齿凹，将锁簧送回到锁环里，痉挛般地把那扇铰链都掉了的旧门朝里面拽过来，露出可以任意出进的门口。

临分手时，他们是怎样彼此道别的？

他们直直地站在同一道门坎的两侧，告别时两只胳膊的曲线在某一点上随便相碰，形成小于二直角之和这样一个角度。

伴随着他们那相接触的手的结合，他们（各自）那离心的和向心的手的分离，传来了什么响声？

圣乔治教堂那组钟鸣报起深夜的时辰，响彻着谐和的音调。

他们各自都听到了钟声，分别有什么样的回音？

斯蒂芬听见的是：

饰以百合的光明的司铎群来伴尔，

极乐圣童贞之群高唱赞歌来迎尔[ 190]。

布卢姆听见的是：

叮当！叮当！

叮当！叮当[191]！

那一天随着钟声的呼唤跟布卢姆结伴从南边的沙丘前往北边的葛拉斯涅文的一行人，而今都在何处？

马丁•坎宁翰（在床上），杰克•鲍尔（在床上），西蒙•迪达勒斯（在床上），内德•兰伯特（在床上），汤姆•克南（在床上），乔•海因斯（在床上），约翰•亨利•门顿（在床上），伯纳德•利里根[ 192] （在床上），帕齐•迪格纳穆（在床上），帕狄•迪格纳穆（在墓中）。

只剩下布卢姆一个人之后，他听到了什么？

沿着上天所生的大地退去的脚步声发出来的双重回荡，以及犹大人所奏的竖琴在余音缭绕的小径上引起的双重反响[193]。

只剩下布卢姆一个人了，他有什么感觉？

星际空间的寒冷，冰点以下几千度或华氏、摄氏或列氏的绝对零度[194] ，即将迎来黎明的最早兆头。

音调谐和的钟声、手的感触、脚步声和孤独寒冷使他联想起了什么？

在各种情况下，在不同的地方如今已经故去的伙伴们：珀西•阿普约翰（阵亡，在莫德尔河[195] ）、菲利普•吉利根[196] （肺结核，殁于杰维斯街医院），马修•F. 凯恩[197]（不慎淹死在都柏林港湾），菲利普•莫依塞尔[198] （脓血症，死在海蒂斯勃利街），迈克尔•哈特[199]（肺结核，殁于仁慈圣母医院），帕特里克•迪格纳穆（脑溢血，殁于沙丘）。

是何种现象的何种前景促使他留在原地？

最后三颗星的消失，曙光四射，一轮新的盘状太阳喷薄欲出[200] 。

以前他可曾目击过这样的现象?

一八八七年，有一次在基玛吉[210] 的卢克•多伊尔家玩猜哑剧字谜，时间拖得很长。这之后，他坐在一堵墙上，注视着东方——米兹拉赤[202] ，耐心地等待黎明景象的出现。

他想起最初的种种现象了吗？

空气越发充满了勃勃生机：远处，公鸡在报晓，各座教堂的敲钟声，鸟类的音乐，早起的行人那孤零零的脚步声，看不见的光体所射出的看得见的光，复活了的太阳那低低地崭露在地平线上的、依稀可辨的最初一抹金晖。

他在那儿滞留下去了吗？

在强烈灵感的触发下，他折了回去，再一次跨过园子，返回门道，重新关上门。一声短叹，他再度拿起烛台，又一次登上楼梯，重新朝那挨着一楼门厅的屋子踱过去，走回原来的地方。

是什么乍然拦住了他正往里走的脚步呢？

他的天灵盖右颞叶碰着了坚硬的木材犄角，在微乎其微却能有所察觉的几分之一秒后，产生了疼痛感。这是一刹那之前传达因而觉察到的结果。

描述一下在室内陈设方面所做的变更。

一把深紫红色长毛绒面沙发从门对面被搬到炉边那面卷得紧紧的英国国旗近旁（这是他曾多次打算要做的变动）。那张嵌有篮白棋盘格子花纹的马略尔卡[203]瓷面桌子，被安放在深紫红色长毛绒面沙发腾出后的空处。胡桃木餐具柜（是它那凸出来的犄角一时挡住了他往里走着的脚步）从门旁的位置被挪到更便当却更危险、正对着门的位置去了。两把椅子从壁炉左右两侧被搬到嵌有蓝白棋盘格子花纹的马略尔卡瓷面桌子原先所占的位置去。

描述一下那两把椅子。

一把低矮，是填了稻草的安乐椅。结实的扶手伸向前，靠背朝后边倾斜着。方才把它往后推的时候，长方形地毯那不整齐的边儿给掀了起来。罩着宽大面子的坐位，中间的颜色褪得厉害，越靠近边沿，越没怎么变色。与它相对的另一把细细溜溜、撇着两双八字脚的藤椅是由有光泽的曲线构成的。椅架从顶部到坐位，又从坐位到底部，整个儿都涂着暗褐色清漆，坐位则用白色灯心草鲜明地盘成圆形。

这两把椅子有着什么意义？

表示着类似、姿势、象征、间接证据和永久不变的证言等等意义[204] 。

原先放餐具柜的地方，如今摆着什么？

一架立式钢琴（凯德拜牌[205] ），键盘露在外面。上顶盖关得严严实实，摆着一双淡黄色妇女用长手套，一只鲜绿色烟灰缸里是四根燃尽了的火柴，一根吸过一截的香烟，还有两截变了色的烟蒂。谱架上斜搭着一本《古老甜蜜的情歌》（G.克利夫顿•宾厄姆作词，詹•莱•莫洛伊配曲，安托瓦内特•斯特林[206]夫人演唱）G大调歌曲

1080伴奏谱，在摊开来的最后一页上可以看到演奏的终指示：随意地，响亮地，持续音，活泼地，要延长的持续音，渐慢[207]，终止。

布卢姆是抱着何等激情依次打量这些物件的？

他心情紧张地举着烛台，感到疼痛伸手摸了摸肿胀起来的右颞叶撞伤处。他全神贯注地凝视着那庞大笨重被动的和那细溜活泼主动的，又殷勤地弯下身去，把掀起来的地毯边儿舒展成原样。他兴致勃勃地记起玛拉基•穆利根博士的色彩计划，其中包括深浅有致的绿色[208] 。他又心怀喜悦之情重复着当时相互间的话语和动作，并通过内部种种感官，领悟着逐渐褪色所导致的温吞快感的舒散。

他的下一个行动是什么？

他从马略尔卡瓷面桌子上的一个敞着的盒子里取出个一英寸高、又小又黑的松果，将其圆底儿放在小小的锡盘上。然后把他的烛台摆在壁炉台右角上，从背心里掏出一张卷起来的简介（附有插图），题名“阿根达斯•内泰穆”[209] 。打开来，大致浏览了一下，又将它卷成细长的圆筒，在烛火上引燃了。于是，圆筒的火苗伸到松果尖端，直到后者发出红色火光；并将纸筒撂在烛台托子上，让剩下的那部分燃烧殆尽。

这一行动之后，又发生了什么？

从小小火山那烧掉了尖儿的圆锥型火口，一股令人联想到东方香烟的垂直的蛇状熏烟袅袅上升[210] 。

除了烛台，壁炉台上还摆了些什么类似的物件？

还有竖纹的康尼马拉大理石[211] 做的座钟。这是马修•狄龙送的结婚礼物，它停在一八九六年三月二十一日上午四点四十六分上[212] 。透明的钟形罩子里是冰状结晶矮树盆景，那是卢克和卡罗琳•多伊尔[213] 送的结婚礼物。一只制成标本的猫头鹰，是市政委员约翰•胡珀[214] 送的结婚礼物。

这三样东西和布卢姆是怎样相互望着的？

在镶金边的穿衣镜里，矮树那未装饰的背望着制成标本的猫头鹰那直直的脊背。在镜子前面，市政委员约翰•胡珀送的结婚礼物以清澈忧郁、聪慧明亮、一动不动、体恤同情的视线盯着布卢姆，布卢姆则以模糊安详、意味深长、一动不动、富于恻隐之心的视线，瞅着卢克和卡罗琳•多伊尔所赠结婚礼物。

映在镜中的什么混合的不对称的影象这时引起了他的注意？

一个（就自己而言）落落寡合，（对别人）反复无常的人的影象。

为什么落落寡合（就自己而言）？

他一个兄弟姐妹都没有，

但他爹仍是爷爷的儿子。

为什么反复无常（对别人）？

自襁褓时期到壮年，他与母系的骨肉至亲相像。自壮年到衰老期，他会越来越与父系的骨肉至亲相像。

镜子传达给他的最终视觉印象是什么？

由于光学反射，可以看到映在镜中的对面那两个书架上颠倒放着若干册书。它们不是按照字母顺序排列着的，而是胡乱放的。标题闪闪发光。

为这些书编个目录。

《汤姆的都柏林邮政局人名录》，一八八六年版。

丹尼斯•弗洛伦斯•麦卡锡[215] ：《诗集》（第五页夹着古铜色椈叶状书签）。

莎士比亚：《作品集》（深红色摩洛哥山羊皮，烫金封面）。

《实用计算便览》（褐色布面精装）。

《查理二世宫廷秘史》（红色布面精装，本色压印装帧）[ 216] 。

《儿童便览》（蓝色布面精装）[ 217]。

《我们的少年时代》，下议院议员威廉•奥布赖恩[218] 著（绿布面精装，有点褪了色，第217页夹了个信封以代替书签）。

《斯宾诺莎哲学钞》（酱紫色皮面精装）。

《天空的故事》[219]，罗伯特•鲍尔爵士著（蓝色布面精装）。

埃利斯：《三游马达加斯加》[220]（褐色布面精装，书名磨损，无法辨认）。

《斯塔克•芒罗书信集》，阿•柯南道尔著[221]。这是卡佩尔街一0 六号的都柏林市立公共图书馆藏书，一九0 四年五月二十一日

（圣灵降临节前夕）借出，还书期限为一九0 四年六月四日，故已过期十三天（黑色布面精装，贴有白色的编码标签）。

《中国纪行》[222] ，“旅人”著（用褐色纸包了书皮，书名是用红墨水写的）。

《< 塔木德>[223]的哲学>(小册子合订本）。

洛克哈特著《拿破仑传》（缺封面，加有脚注，贬低首领取得的胜利，夸大其败绩）。

《借方和贷方》[224] ，古斯塔夫•弗赖塔格著（黑色纸面精装，哥特字体[225] ，第二十四页夹了个香烟赠券，以代替书签）。

霍齐尔著《俄土战争史》（褐色布面精装，两卷集，封底贴有直布罗陀市总督步道要塞图书馆的标签[ 226] ）。

《劳伦斯•布卢姆菲尔德在爱尔兰》，威廉•阿林厄姆著（第二版，绿色布面精装，烫金三叶图案。此书原先的所有者在扉页正面所署姓名已被涂掉）。

《天文学指南》（褐色封面已脱落，附有五幅另纸印的插图，正文用老五号黑体字，作者脚注用六点活字，旁注用八点活字，标题用十二点活字[227] ）。

《基督秘史》（黑色纸面精装）。

《沿着太阳的轨道前进》[228] （淡黄色布面精装，缺内封，每一页上端都印有标题）。

《体力与健身术》（伦敦，1897），尤金•桑道[229] 著（红色布面精装）。

《简明几何学初步》，原著系由伊格内•帕迪斯用法语所写，伦敦神学博士约翰•哈利斯译为英语，由R. 纳普洛克印制，一七一一年出版于毕晓普斯•海德。内收有致译者之畏友查理•考克斯先生萨瑟克自治市所推选出来的下院议员）的书信体献辞。衬页上用刚健有力的钢笔字写明：此系迈克尔•加拉赫之藏书，日期为一八二二年五月十日，倘若遗失或下落不明，凡发现该书者，恳请将它退还给举世无双之美丽土地威克洛郡恩尼斯科西[230]达费里门的木工迈克尔•加拉赫为荷。

当他把上下颠倒的书重新调整过来的时候，心里有些什么感想？

需要秩序。一切东西都应各有个位置，并且应该各就各位。女性对文学的鉴赏力之不足。苹果塞在玻璃酒杯里，或雨伞斜搭在马桶里，均不协调。把任何秘密文件放在书籍后面、下面或夹在书页间，都是不安全的。

体积最大的是哪本书？

霍齐尔的《俄土战争史》。

在这部著作第二部的其他事项中，还包括些什么内容？

一次关键性战役的名字（他已忘记），一位念念不忘该战役的关键性军官，即布赖恩•库帕•特威迪鼓手长（他铭记心头）。

由于第一和第二个什么缘故，他并不曾查阅这部著作?

第一、为了锻炼记忆术。第二、因为犯了一阵健忘症之后，当他对着中央的桌子而坐，正要去查阅那部著作时，凭着记忆术他回想起了那次战斗的名称：普列文[231] 。

他端坐着时，何物给他带来了慰藉？

竖立在桌子中央的一座雕像那率真，裸体，姿势，安详，青春，优雅，性，劝告。这座纳希素斯像[232] 是从巴切勒步道九号的P. A. 雷恩拍卖行买来的。

他端坐着时，何物令他心头焦躁？

硬领（十六英寸型）和背心（有五颗纽扣）紧得使他感到压力。这两样东西对成年男子的服装来说是多余的，而对人体的膨胀所引起的容积变更却又缺乏弹性。

心头的焦躁是怎样平息下来的？

他从脖间摘下硬领、黑领带和折叠式饰钮，放在桌子左角。然后又反过来自下而上地依次解开背心、长裤、衬衫和内衣纽扣。他那双手的轨迹从参差不齐、卷缩起皱的黑色体毛的中心线——也就是自骨盆底到下腹部肚脐眼周围那一簇簇体毛，又沿着节结的中心线进而延伸到第六胸脊椎的交叉点，从这里又向两侧丛生，构成直角形，在左右等距离的两个点，即环绕乳头顶端形成的三角形收敛图形的中心线——穿行。长裤的背带上钉着成双的六颗纽扣（其中缺了一颗），他依次解开那六颗（其中少了一颗）纽扣。

接着，他又不由自主地做了什么？

他用两个手指捏起两星期零三天前（一九0 四年五月二十三日）横膈膜下左侧腹那因挨蜜蜂蛰而留下的伤痕周围的肉。尽管并不觉得痒，他却用左手这儿那儿地胡乱挠了挠全部洗净、只裸露出一部分的皮肤的点和面。他把左手伸进背心的左下兜，掏出一枚银币（一先令），又放了回去。（大概是）参加悉尼广场的埃米莉•辛尼柯太太[233] 的葬礼（一九0 三年十月十六日）时放进去的。

制订一九0 四年六月十六日的收支表。

支出 收入

镑 先令 便士 现金 镑 先令 便士

猪腰子（一副） 0 0 3 0 4 9

《自由人报》（一份） 0 0 1 《自由人报》 1 7 6

广告手续费

入浴及小费（一份） 0 1 6电车票 0 0 1 借款（斯蒂芬. 1 7 0

迪达勒斯） 

为帕特里克•迪格纳穆出奠仪（一份） 0 5 0 

班伯里点心（两块） 0 0 1午饭 0 0 7续租书费（一本） 0 1 0一小包信纸信封（一份） 0 0 1 正餐和小费（一份） 0 2 0邮汇和邮票（一份） 0 2 8电车票 0 0 1猪脚（一只） 0 0 4羊蹄（一只） 0 0 3弗莱糕点铺的普 通巧克力（一片） 0 1 0 [234] 苏打方面包（一个） 0 0 4咖啡和圆面包（一份）0 0 4偿还借款（斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯） 1 7 0 结算余额 0 17 5 

2 19 3 2 19 3

脱衣的行为继续下去了吗？

他感到脚心一个劲儿地隐隐作痛，就把脚伸到一旁，端详着脚由于一趟趟地朝不同的方向走来走去，受到挤压而磨出的皱皮、硬块和疖子。随后他弯下身去，解起打成结子的靴带：先掰搭钩，松开靴带，再一次一只只地脱下靴子[235]。右边那只短袜湿了一部分，大脚趾甲又把前面捅破并伸了出去，这下于便跟靴子分开了。他抬起右脚，摘下紫色的松紧袜带后，扒下右面那只袜子，将赤着的右脚放在椅屉儿上，用手指去撕扯长得挺长的大拇脚趾甲，并轻轻地把它拽掉，还举至到鼻子那儿， 嗅嗅自己肉体的气味，然后就心满意足地丢掉从趾甲上扯下来的这一碎片。

为什么感到心满意足？

因为他嗅到的这股气味，跟他当年作为布卢姆公子在埃利斯太太的幼儿学校[236]做学生的时候所嗅到的另外一些趾甲碎片的气味相似。那是他每晚跪在那儿，一边做短短的晚祷并沉浸在野心勃勃的冥想中，一边耐心地撕扯并拽下来的。

同时连续地产生的所有那些野心，如今合并成为怎样一种终极的野心呢？

他并不想根据长子继承制、男子平分继承制或末子继承制[237] ，把那幢有着门房和马车道的男爵宅邪及其周围那一大片辽阔的英亩、路得和平方杆[238]法定土地面积单位，（估价为四十二英镑[239]的泥炭质牧场地，或者那座被描述为“都会中的田园[240]” 或“健康庄[242]”的有阳台的房子或一侧与邻屋相接的别墅，继承下来并永久占有。他只巴望根据私人合同购买一所继承人身分不受限制的不动产：要坐北朝南的一座草屋顶、有凉台的双层住宅，房顶上装起风向标以及与地面相接的避雷针，门廊上要爬满寄生植物（常春藤或五叶地锦），橄榄绿色的正门最后一道工序漆得漂漂亮亮，赛得过马车。门上有着精巧的黄铜装饰。房屋正面是灰泥墁的，屋檐和山墙涂着金色网眼花纹。尽可能让房子耸立在坡度不大的高台上，从那圈着石柱栏杆的阳台上，隔着现在空着、将来也不得占用的牧场地，可以聎望四周的一片好景致。单是自己的庭园，就有五、六英亩之谱。它与最近的公路的距离适度：夜晚从修剪得整整齐齐的鹅耳枥树篱上端和缝隙间，可以瞥见室内的灯光，从首都边界的任何地点丈量，与这所房子相距至少也有法定一英里。不出十五分钟[242] 就可以轰“电车或火车铁道沿线。（例如往南去登德鲁姆或往北去萨顿[243]，就像是南北两极。经过验证，据说这两处气候都适合肺结核患者。）凭着继承人身分不受限制的不动产转让证拥有房屋和地基，租借期限为九百九十九年[244]。宅邸里包括一间有着凸窗（两扇尖头窗）的客厅（装有寒暑表），一间起居室，四间卧室，两间仆役室。砌了瓷砖的厨房里还安装了多用途的铁灶和洗涤台，休息厅里备有放亚麻布床单衬衫用的壁橱，分成几层的氨熏橡木书柜，放着《大英百科全书》和《新世纪辞典），横陈着一把把中世纪或东洋的古老刀剑；还有通知开饭的锣，雪花石膏做的灯，悬垂着的饰钵，附有电话号码簿的胶木自动电话听筒；手织的阿克斯明斯特地毯[245]，是奶油色质地，周围镶着棋盘图案。有着兽爪形柱脚的牌桌。壁炉装着大型黄铜格栅，炉台上摆着精密的镀金计时表，准确无误地发出大教堂那样的钟声，附有湿度计的晴雨表，蒙着鲜红色长毛绒面子、装着上等弹簧、中心部位富于弹性的舒适的长靠椅和放在角落里的备用椅，日本式三扇屏风，痰盂（俱乐部里摆的那种，用深紫红色皮革制成，只要用亚麻子油和醋一擦，不费吹灰之力就能发出光泽，焕然一新。）室中央悬挂一盏金字塔式枝形吊灯，射出灿烂的光辉。一截弯木上栖着一只驯顺得能停在手指上的鹦鹉（它吐字文雅），墙上糊着每打价为十先令的压花壁纸，印着胭脂红色垂花横纹图案，顶端是带状装饰；一连三段栎木楼梯，接连两次拐成直角，都用清漆涂出清晰的木纹，梯级、登板、起柱、栏杆和扶手，一律用护板来加固并涂上含樟脑的蜡；浴室里有冷热水管，盆汤、淋浴，设备俱全。位于平台[246]上的厕所里，长方形窗子上嵌着一块毛玻璃，带盖的坐式抽水马桶，壁灯，黄铜拉链和把手，两侧各放着凭肘几和脚凳，门内侧还挂有艺术气息浓厚的油画式石版画。另外还有一间普通的厕所；厨师、打杂的女仆和兼做些细活的女佣的下房里也分别装有保健卫生设备（仆役的工钱每两年递增两英镑，并根据一般忠诚勤劳保险，每年年底发奖金一英镑，对工龄满三十年者，按照六十五岁退职的规定，发退职金）；餐具室、配膳室、食品库、冷藏库、主楼外的厨房及贮藏室等、堆煤柴用的地窨子里还有个葡萄酒窖（不起泡、亮光闪闪的葡萄酒），这是为宴请贵宾吃正餐（身穿夜礼服）时预备的。对整座楼房都供应一氧化碳瓦斯。

在这片地基上还可能增添些什么具有吸引力的设备？

可以增添一个网球兼手球场，一片灌木丛，用植物学上最佳办法设置一座热带椰子科植物的玻璃凉亭，有喷泉装置的假山石，按照人道的原则设计的蜂窝。在矩形的草坪上布置一座座椭圆形花坛，将深红和淡黄两色的郁金香、蓝色的天蒜、报春花、西樱草、美洲石竹、香豌豆花和欧钤兰都栽培成别致的卵形（球根购自詹姆斯•W•马凯伊爵士[247]的股份有限公司，他是个种籽与球根批发兼零售商，苗木培养工，化学肥料代理商，住在上萨克维尔街二十三号）。果树园、蔬菜园和葡萄园各一座。为了防备非法人侵者，围墙上插满碎玻璃片。一间挂了锁的杂物棚，放置形形色色登记入册的用具。

例如？捕鳗笼、捕虾器、钓鱼竿、手斧、杆秤、磨石、碎土器、翻谷机、暖足袋[248]、折叠式梯子、十齿耙、洗衣用木靴、干草撒散机、旋转耙、钩镰、颜料钵、刷子、灰耙等等。

设备还能进一步做何改善？

一座养兔场和养鸡场，一座鸽棚，植物的温室，一对吊床（太太用的和先生用的），金链花树或丁香花树遮荫并掩蔽下的日晷，装在左边大门柱上的日本门铃奏着异国情调的悦耳玎玲声，巨大的雨水桶，侧面有着排出孔和接草箱的刈草机，附有胶皮管的草坪洒水器。

希望使用什么样的交通工具？

进城的时候，就从最合适的中间站或终点站搭乘频频往返的火车或电车。下乡的时候，就骑老式脚踏车，挂有柳条编的车斗的无链飞轮跑车，要么就是牲口拉的车，柳条车身的二轮轻便驴车或是脚步矫健飞快的短腿壮马（骗过的灰斑栗毛马，身高十四掌尺[ 249] ）所拉的时髦的四轮轻便马车。

这栋可望建造的或已建成的住房如何命名呢？

布卢姆庄。圣利奥波得[250] 府。弗罗尔公馆。

住在埃克尔斯街七号的布卢姆能够预见到弗罗尔公馆里的布卢姆如何情景吗？

他身穿宽松纯毛衣服，头戴值八先令六便士的哈里斯花呢帽。在园子里脚上穿着实用长筒胶靴（里面衬了一层松紧布用以加固），手提喷水壶，培植着一排冷杉苗木。浇水，剪枝，用桩撑起，播种牧草种籽。日暮时分，在新割牧草的一片清香弥漫中，在不过分劳累下，推着那堆满了杂草的低矮的独轮车，改良着土壤，不断丰富着知识，获得长寿。

同时还有可能从事哪几项智力方面的追求？

摄影方面的抓拍技术，比较宗教学，有关色欲及迷信方面五花八门的习俗的民俗学，观察天空中的星座，沉思默想。

从事哪些轻松的娱乐？

户外：园艺和农活，在碎石铺成的平坦的人行道上骑车，攀登不太高的小山，在僻静的淡水里游泳，要么就划着安全的单人平底小船或带锚的柳条艇[251]在没有堰坝和激流的水域里自由自在地泛舟消夏。边观赏荒凉的景物和与之相映照的农家那令人心旷神怡的泥炭火冒出来的袅袅炊烟，边在傍晚漫步，或骑马巡行（以上为越冬期）。室内：在一片温煦的安宁中，探讨种种迄今尚未解决的历史方面或犯罪学方面的问题；讲解外国未经删节的色情名著；做家庭木工，工具箱里装着铁锤、锥子、铁钉、螺钉、图钉、螺丝锥、镊子、刨子和改锥。

他能成为一位拥有农作物和牲畜的乡绅吗？

并非不可能。有上一两头挤不出奶的母牛，一垛高地牧草和必要的农具，例如直流式搅乳桶和芜青搅碎机等等。

在郡内的名门和乡绅当中，他拥有什么样的公民职能和社会地位？按照越往上权利越大的等级制度顺序，他曾经是园丁、庄稼人、耕作者、牲畜繁殖家；仕途的高峰是地方长官或治安推事。他拥有家徽和盾形纹章以及与之相称的拉丁文家训（时刻准备着），他的名字正式记载于宫廷人名录[252]中（布卢姆，利奥波德•保，下院议员，枢密顾问官，圣巴特里克勋级爵士[253]，名誉法学博士。登德鲁姆村布卢姆庄），在报纸上的宫廷及社交界栏中也被提及（例如：“利奥波德•布卢姆先生偕夫人自国王镇动身前往英国”云云）。拥有这样的地位，他打算采取什么样的行动方针呢？方针要介乎过分的宽大与过于苛刻之间。在这个有着不自然的等级制度、社会上的不平等不断地或增或减、变动不已、参差不齐的社会里，要实行公平、一视同仁、无可争辩的正义，也就是说，一方面尽可能广泛地采取宽大政策，另一方面又为王国政府锱铢必较地横征暴敛，包括没收动产及不动产。在对本国的最高宪法所规定的国家最高权力的一片忠诚和与生俱来的正义感的驱使之下，他所追求的目标就是严格地维护社会秩序，扫除各种弊端，然而并非齐头并进（每一项改革或紧缩措施都是初步的解决，经过融化吸收，导致最后的解决）。对一切串通起来进行抗辩者，一切条例和规章的违反者，一切试图恢复已废止并失效的文维尔权[254]者（如非法越界并盗伐柴禾），国际间一切迫害的高声煽动者，国际间一切仇恨的鼓吹者，一切对家庭欢聚的卑鄙的破坏者，一切对夫妻关系死不悔改的亵渎者，要严格执行一切法律（习惯法、成文法、商法）条文。

证明一下他自幼就酷爱正直。

一八八0年在高中就读时，他曾向少年珀西•阿普约翰吐露自己对爱尔兰（新教）教会的教义所持的怀疑。一八六五年，他父亲鲁道尔夫•维拉格（后改名鲁道尔夫•布卢姆）在“向犹大人传布基督教协会”的劝告下，放弃了对犹太教的信仰，脱离了该教派，改信新教。一八八八年为了能够结成婚，他又放弃了新教，皈依罗马天主教。一八八二年，他和丹尼尔•马格雷恩与弗朗西斯•韦德之间结下了青春时期的友谊（由于前者过早地移居外国而告终）。晚间散步时，他曾向那两人表示拥护开拓殖民地（例如加拿大）的政治理论，并赞成查尔斯•达尔文在《人类的由来》[255]和《物种起源》中所阐述的进化论。一八八五年，他公开表示支持詹姆斯•芬坦•拉勒、约翰•费希尔，默里、约翰•米哈伊、詹•弗•泽•奥布赖恩[256]以及其他人所倡导的集体的国民经济计划，迈克尔•达维特的农业方针，查理•斯图尔特。巴涅尔（科克市选出的下院议员）那符合宪法程序的煽动[257]威廉•尤尔特•格莱斯顿（北不列颠米德洛锡安[258]所选出的下院议员）的和平、紧缩与改革的方案。为了拥护其政治信念，他爬上诺桑勃兰德公路旁的一棵树，呆在杈桠间一个安全所在，观看了由两万名持火把者组成的游行队伍。游行者分作一百二十个同业公会，其中两千个持火把者护送着里彭侯爵[259]与约翰•莫利[260] （于一八八八年二月二日[261]）进入首都。

他打算为这座庄园支付多少钱，用什么方式？

根据勤劳外籍人员同化归化友好国家补助建筑协会（一八七四年成立）的章程，每年按最高额分期付款六十英镑，条件是不得超过能够从金边证券获得的可靠年收入的六分之一。此款相当于一千二百英镑（分二十年付款的房屋估价）本钱的五分单利。房屋到手后，同时付总价的三分之一，余额——也就是八百英镑外加二分五厘利息——每年分四季按同额偿付，二十年内全部还清。年额连本带利，相当于六十四英镑的房租钱。不动产权利书上还附加着条款：如上述款项逾期不交，则强制售出、执行抵押权或相互赔偿等。房地契由一至二、三个债权者保存，如无滞交情况，该座宅院届期即成为租房者的绝对所有财产。

为了获得立即购买的财力，有什么迅速然而不安全的办法？

在阿斯科特举办的全国障碍赛马（平地或越野赛）一英里或数英里英浪[262]的比赛中，下午三点八分（格林威治标准时间），一匹“黑马”以五十博一获胜。这一比赛结果由私设的无线电信机用一点一划相间的莫尔斯电码发报，下午两点五十九分（邓辛克[263]标准时间）在都柏林收到电文，根据这一情报可从事赌博。意外地发现一样非常值钱的东西：宝石，贵重的带胶邮票或盖了戳的邮票（七先令，淡紫色，无齿孔，汉堡，一八六六[264]；四便士，玫瑰色，蓝地上有齿孔，英国，一八五五[265]； 一法郎，黄褐色，官方印制，刻有骑缝孔的，斜着盖有加价印记，卢森堡，一八七八[266] 。古代王朝的戒指，稀世遗宝，在不同寻常的地方或以不同寻常的方式出现：从天而降（飞鹰丢下的），借着一场火（在焚毁成焦炭的大厦灰烬当中，大海里（在漂流物、失事船只的丢弃物、系上浮标投下水的货物以及无主物当中），在地面上（在食用禽的胗里）。接受一位西班牙囚犯所赠的遗产：那是一百年前从远方带来的财宝或硬币或金银块，以年五分的复利存入有偿付能力的银行后，总额连本带利己达英币五百万镑正。与一个粗心的订约者签订一份商业合同：作为三十二件商品的运送费，第一件只收四分之一便士，自第二件起，以二的几何级数递增（四分之一便士，二分之一便士，一便士，二便士，四便士，八便士，一先令四便士，二先令八便士，一直递增到第三十二件[ 267] ）。根据概率法则的研究而运用周密的赌博技术，足以使蒙特卡洛的赌场主破产[268] 。解决世上自古以来留下的难题：作与圆等积的正方形，并赢得政府颁发的一百万英镑奖金[269] 。

通过工业渠道能发大财吗？

靠桔园和瓜地的栽培以及重新造林来开发多少狄纳穆[270] 荒芜的砂质土地，参看柏林西十五区布莱布特留的移民垦殖公司的说明书。有效地利用废纸、水老鼠的毛皮、人粪中所包含的各种化学成分。值得注意的是第一样东西产量极大，第二样数量庞大，第三样无穷无尽，因为有着一般体力与食欲的正常人即使刨掉液体副产物，每个人每年排泄的总量也仍达八十磅（动物性及植物性食品相混杂），乘以4，386，035[271] 即可（根据一九0一年所做的普查表统计的爱尔兰人口总数）。

有没有规模更大的计划？

有个建造水力发电厂的计划：利用都柏林沙洲的满潮、噗啦呋咔[ 272] 或鲍尔斯考特瀑布[273] 的水位差、主要河流的流域来开发白煤（水力发电），经济生产五十万水马力的电力。拟好后，将提交港湾委员会，以便获得批准。筑一道堤坝，把多利山的北公牛那半岛状三角洲圈起[274]，用来修高尔夫球场和步枪打靶场，前面那片地上铺一条柏油散步路，两侧是赌博场、货摊、射击练习室、旅馆、公寓、阅览室和男女混合浴池。清晨计划使用狗车和山羊车送牛奶。为了发展都柏林市内和左近的爱尔兰旅游交通，计划建造一批内河汽轮，行驶于岛桥与林森德之间。大型游览汽车，窄轨地方铁道以及沿岸游览汽船（每人每日十先令，包括一位能操三国语言的导游）。为了恢复爱尔兰各条水路的旅客及货运，订立疏浚海底海藻计划。另计划铺一条电车道把牲畜市场（北环路和普鲁士街）和码头（下谢里夫街和东堤坝）连接起来[275]。这条电车道和（作为大南部与大西部铁道线的延长）将从利菲联轨点的牲畜牧地铺设到北堤坝四十三至四十五号大西部中区铁路终点站与连接线是平行的。附近有大中央铁路、英国中部铁路、都柏林市班轮公司、兰开夏[276]- 约克郡铁道公司、都柏林-格拉斯哥班轮船公司、格拉斯哥-都柏林- 敦德里[277]班轮公司（莱尔德航线）、英国-爱尔兰班轮公司、都柏林-莫克姆轮船[278]、伦敦-西北铁道公司等的终点站或都柏林分店；都柏林港码头管理处卸货棚，帕尔格雷夫-墨菲公司的船主们和来自地中海、西班牙、葡萄牙、法国、比利时和荷兰的轮船公司那些代理人的临时堆栈，还有利物浦海上保险协会的临时堆栈。运输牲畜所需全部车辆[279]以及额外里程由都柏林市联合电车（股份有限）公司经营管理，费用由畜牧业者负担。

假定一个什么样的条件从句，这几种计划的缩约辞，就会成为自然而必然的结论句？

靠那几位在成功的生涯中积累了六个位数的巨富的著名金融家（布鲁姆•帕夏[280]、罗思柴尔德[281]、古根海姆、希尔施、蒙特斐奥雷[282]、摩根、洛克菲勒）的赞助。捐款者在世的话，就凭着赠与契约或转让证书，无疾而终后则凭着遗嘱来馈赠。可以保证拿到与所需款项同额的钱，抓住机会，善用资本则事必有所成。

什么样的偶然事件能使他不必去指靠这样的财富呢？

独自发现一座取之不尽用之不竭的金矿脉。

他何以要去构思一项实现起来如此之困难的计划呢？

他所持的原则之一是：如果在就寝前经常反复思考类似的事，或自动地对自己谈谈关于自己的问题，抑或安详地回忆一下过去，这样就能减轻疲劳，睡得香，并使精力倍增。

论据何在？

作为一个物理学家，他得以知道一个人七十年的整个生涯，至少有七分之二，也就是二十年，是在睡眠中度过的。作为一个哲学家，他晓得不论何人，在大限临头的时候，自己的欲望只实现了极其微小的一部分。作为一个生理学家，他相信，主要在睡眠状态中活跃着的各种邪恶的念头是能够人为地平息下去的。

他害怕什么？

因位于大脑沟回中的不能按同一标准衡量的绝对理智——理性之光产生错乱，在睡眠中犯下杀人或自杀的行为。

他惯常最后冥想的是什么？

独一无二、无与伦比的广告，会使行人惊异地停下脚步。一张新颖的招贴，排除了一切不必要的附加物，简约到最单纯最富于效果的词句，一目了然，适合于现代生活的速度。

开锁之后，头一个抽屉里装着什么？

维尔•福斯特[ 283]的习字帖一册，系米莉（米莉森特）的所有物，其中几页上画着题为“爹爹”的图形。画面上是一颗球状大脑袋，竖着五根头发，侧脸上有一双眼睛。胴体则朝着正面，有三颗大纽扣，长着一只三角形的脚。两张褪色的照片：英国的亚历山德拉王后[ 284]和莫德•布兰斯科姆[285] ，女演员和职业性美人。一张圣诞节贺片[ 286]，上面是一棵寄生植物[287]的图，米斯巴的传说[288] ，日期为一八九二年的圣诞节，寄贺片者为M•科默福德先生暨夫人[289] 。短诗是：“愿圣诞节带给你，快乐、平安与喜庆。”一小截快融化了的红色火漆，是从戴姆街八十九、九十和九十一号[290] 希利先生股份有限公司的门市部买的。从同一商店的同一门市部买来的十二打J 牌镀金粗钢笔尖[291]，盒子里装着用剩下的部分。旧沙钟[292] 一架，随着边旋转边往下漏的沙子而转动。利奥波德•布卢姆写于一八八六年的一份火漆封印的预言（从未拆封），是关于威廉•尤尔特•格莱斯顿[293]于一八八六年提出的自治法案（从未获得通过）通过后的前景的。在圣凯文举行的慈善义卖会[294] 入场券，第二00四号，价格六便士，为中彩者备有一百个奖品。幼儿写的一封信，写明了日期，星期一（首字小写），内容如下：“爹爹”（首字大写），逗点，“你好吗”（首字大写），问号。“我”（大写）“很好”。句点。另起段。署名：“米莉”（首字是花体大写），未加句点。贝制饰针一枚，上有浮雕。本属于爱琳•布卢姆（原姓希金斯），已故[295] 。三封打字信，收信人为：亨利•弗罗尔，韦斯特兰横街邮政局转交；发信人为：玛莎•克利弗德，海豚仓巷邮政局收转。三信的发信人住址姓名被改写为字母交互逆缀式、附有句号、分作四行的密码（元音字母略之）如下：N•IGS•/WI•UU•OX／W•OKS•MH／Y•IM•[296]英国周刊《现代社会》[297]的一张剪报：《论女学校中的体罚》。一截粉红色缎带，这是一八九九年系在一颗复活节彩蛋上的。从伦敦市内西区查林十字路邮政局三十二号信箱邮购来的两只有些松软的橡胶保险套，附有备用袋。一叠有着奶油色直纹的信封，配以带淡格子线的水印信笺，原是一打，已少了三份。几枚成套的奥一匈硬币。两张匈牙利皇家特许彩票[298]。一架低倍数的放大镜。两张色情照片卡。上面印有：（甲）裸体小姐[299]（背面，上位）与裸体斗牛士（正面，下位）之间的口唇性交图。（乙）男修士（衣裤齐全，两眼俯视）对修女（半裸体，正视）进行鸡奸图。从伦敦市内西区查林十字路邮政局三十二号信箱邮购来的。一张剪报：将旧黄皮靴整旧如新的诀窍。一张一便士的带胶邮票，淡紫色，维多利亚女王时代的[300] 。利奥波德•布卢姆的体格检查表一张。他曾连日使用桑道[301]一惠特利式拉力健身器（成人用十五先令，运动员用二十先令）达两个月之久。这是便用之前、使用期间以及使用之后记录下来的。分别为：胸围二十八英寸和二十九英寸半，上臂围九英寸和十英寸，下臂围八英寸半和九英寸，大腿十英寸和十二英寸，腿肚子十一英寸和十二英寸。“神奇露”的功效说明书一张。是关于世界首屈一指的直肠病特效药“神奇露”的，该药由坐落在伦敦东部中央区南广场考文垂馆内的神奇露社直接办理邮购。收信人的姓名[302] 是“利•布卢姆太太”，同封的短笺上，抬头写的是：“亲爱的夫人”。

照原文引用一下功效说明书上所宣传的“神奇露”的效验。

放屁有困难的时候，本品能在您的睡眠中起到镇定、治疗作用。在自然机能的促进方面发挥绝大威力，使您借着放出沆瀣之气立即解除痛苦，确保局部的清洁与排泄机能畅通无阻。花费仅七先令六便士，您即可换了个人，并能饱享人生幸福。太太们尤宜使用“神奇露”，其爽快的效果，犹如在闷热的盛夏饮用清凉的泉水。请推荐给您的男女贵友，它将会成为终身的伴侣。把长而圆的那头插进去。“神奇露”。

有证明灵验的感谢信吗？

多得很。来自神职人员、英国海军军官、知名作家、实业家、医院的护士、贵夫人、五个孩子的母亲及心神恍惚的乞丐[303] 。

心神恍惚的乞丐那封归纳性的感谢信，结尾是怎么写的？

在南非战役[304]中政府不曾发给我军官兵“神奇露”，是何等恨事！倘若发了，原可减轻莫大痛苦！

布卢姆在这批收集品中又添了些什么物品？

玛莎•克利弗德（查明玛•克是堆）寄给亨利•弗罗尔（亨•弗即指利•布）的第四封打字信。

伴随着这一动作，有何愉快的回忆？

他回忆着，姑且不去说所提到的这封信本身，他那充满魅力的容貌、风采和谈吐，在过去的一天内曾赢得一位有夫之妇（约瑟芬•布林太太，原名乔西•鲍威尔）[305]、一位护士——卡伦[306]小姐（教名不详）和一个少女——格楚德（格蒂，姓氏不明）的青睐。

什么样的可能性浮现到他的头脑里了？

最近的将来在一位体面的高等妓女（富于肉体美、对金钱较淡薄、有着种种教养、原是出身名门的淑女）的内室里共进一顿丰盛的饭菜，然后发挥男性魅力的可能性。

第二个抽屉里装着什么？

文件：利奥波德•保拉[307] •布卢姆的出生证。苏格兰遗孀基金人寿保险公司[308] 的养老保险单一纸，受保险人米莉森特（米莉）•布卢姆年满二十五岁时生效；根据受益证书，年届六十或死亡，付四百三十英镑；年届六十五或死亡，付四百六十二英镑十先令；更年长时死亡，则付五百英镑。也可根据选择，接受二百九十九英镑十先令的受益证书（款额付讫）以及一百三十三英镑十先令的现金。厄尔斯特银行学院草地分行[309] 的储蓄存折一本，记载着一九0三年十二月三十一日截止的下半期结算存款余额，即帐户的现金余额为十八英镑十四先令六便士，个人动产全额。持有加拿大政府所发行年利率四分（记名）的九百英镑国库债券（豁免印花税）的证书。天主教墓地（葛拉斯涅文）委员会的购买茔地的收据。刊登在地方报纸上的启事的剪报，系有关变更姓氏的单方盖章生效的证书。

引用一下这份启事。

我，鲁道尔夫•维拉格，现住都柏林克兰布拉西尔街五十二号，原籍匈牙利王国松博特海伊市。兹刊登改姓启事，今后在任何场合，任何时候，均使用鲁道尔夫•布卢姆这一姓名。

第二个抽屉里还有些什么与鲁道尔夫•布卢姆（原姓维拉格）有关的东西？

鲁道尔夫•维拉格与他父亲利奥波德•维拉格的一帧模糊的合影，是一八五二年于匈牙利塞斯白堡在斯蒂芬•维拉格（分别为他们的第一代嫡堂兄弟和第二代隔房堂兄弟[310] 的银板照相室里拍摄的。）一部古老的《哈加达》书[311] ，逾越节的礼拜祭文中感谢经那一页夹着一副玳瑁架老花眼镜。一张照片明信片，画面上是鲁道尔夫•布卢姆所开的恩尼斯镇皇后饭店[312] 。一个信封，收信人是：我亲爱的儿子利奥波德[313] 启。

拜读了这五个完整的单词，唤起他对哪些片言只语的回忆？

自从我收到……明天就是一个星期了……利奥波德，那是徒劳无益的……跟你亲爱的母亲……再也忍受不下去了……到她那里去……对我来说，一切都完啦……利奥波德，要爱护阿索斯[314] ……我亲爱的儿子……永远……关于我……心……天主……你的[ 315] ……

关于身患进行性忧郁症的一个人的主体，这些客体在布卢姆心里唤起了什么样的回忆？

一个老鳏夫，头发蓬乱，戴着睡帽，躺在床上唉声叹气；一只病狗，阿索斯；作为发作性神经痛的镇痛剂，逐渐加量服用的附子；一位七十岁上服毒自杀者的遗容。

布卢姆何以经受了一番悔恨之情？

因为他出于幼稚的焦躁，曾轻蔑地对待某些教义和教规。

例如？

跟原来笃信同一宗教、又属于同一国度的那些极端抽象而又无比具体、重商主义的人们举行周会[316] 后，禁止在会餐的席间同时食用兽肉和奶；为男婴行割礼；犹太经典的超自然特性；应当避讳的四个神圣的字母[317] ；安息日的神圣。

如今他怎样看待这些教义和教规呢？

虽并不比当年他觉得的更为合理，却也不比他心目中的其他教义和教规更为不合理。

他对鲁道尔夫•布卢姆（已故）的最早的回忆是什么？

鲁道尔夫•布卢姆（已故）在对其子利奥波德•布卢姆（时年六岁）回顾着自己过去怎样为了依次在都柏林、伦敦、佛罗伦萨、米兰、维也纳、布达佩斯、松博特海伊之间搬迁并定居所做的种种安排；还做了些踌躇满志的陈述（他的祖父拜见过奥地利女皇、匈牙利女王玛丽亚•特蕾莎）并插进一些生意经（只要懂得爱惜便士，英镑自会源源而来）。利奥波德•布卢姆（时年六岁）一边听着这些故事，一边不断地参看欧洲（政治）地图，并建议在上述各个中心城市设立营业所。

岁月是否同样地、却又以不同的方式抹去了讲者与听者对这些迁移的记忆？

讲者是因岁数增长以及服用麻醉剂的结果。听者则因岁数增长以及设想着身临其境的感受用以自娱的结果。

随着讲者的健忘症，产生了什么样的特殊反应？

他有时不摘帽子就吃起饭来。他有时翘起盘子贪婪地吮着醋栗果酱的汁液。他有时随手用撕开的信封或身边其他纸片来揩拭沾在嘴唇上的食物痕迹。

更频频出现的两种衰老的迹象是什么？

凭着一双近视眼用手指数硬币。因吃得过饱而打嗝。

什么东西对这些回忆多少给与了慰藉？

养老保险单，银行存折，股票的临时单据。

把布卢姆凭借这些证券所避免受到的厄运相乘，并除去一切正数值，将他换算成可忽略的量、负量、无理性的量和虚量。

依次下降到奴隶阶级的最底层。贫困方面：做沿街叫卖的人造宝石小贩，讨倒账、荒帐的，济贫税、地方税代理收税员。行乞方面：欺诈成性的破产者，对每一英磅的欠款只有一先令四便士的微乎其微的偿还能力者，广告人，撒传单的，夜间的流浪汉，巴结求宠的谄媚者，缺胳膊短腿的水手，双目失明的青年，为法警跑腿的老朽[318]，宴会乞丐，舔盘子的，专扫人兴的，马屁精，撑着一把捡来的、净是窟窿的伞，坐在公园的长凳上，成为公众笑料的怪人。潦倒方面：位于基尔曼哈姆[319] 的养老院（皇家医院）的住院患者。住在辛普森医院的病人：因患痛风症及失明永远丧失生活能力的落魄而有身份者。悲惨的最下层：老迈、无能、丧失了公民权、靠救济金维持生活[320] 、奄奄一息、精神错乱的贫民。

伴随而来的是怎样的屈辱？

原先和蔼可亲的女人们，如今既不同情又冷淡；壮健的男人抱以轻蔑态度；接受面包碎屑，偶然结识的熟人们佯装素昧平生；来历不明、没有挂牌子的野狗狂叫着；顽童们把价值很小或毫无价值，毫无价值或根本谈不到价值的烂白菜当作飞弹来进攻。

怎样才能杜绝这样的境遇？

借着死亡（状况的变化）；借着别离（地点的变化）。

哪一种更可取？

后者，因为最省力气。

何种考虑使离别未必不合乎心意？

经常的同居生活正妨碍着对个人缺点的相互宽容。日益助长的自作主张地购买东西的习惯。借短期的旅居来消解一下永久之束缚的必要性。

出于哪些考虑，离别不会令人觉得不合情理？

这对男女结合后，增加并繁殖[321] ，从而生养了后代，并已长大成人。双方如果不分离，势必为了增加并繁殖而重新结合，这是荒谬的，借着重新结合来形成原先结合的那一对配偶，那是不可能的。

出于何种考虑使离别合乎心意？

爱尔兰和外国一些地区那引人入胜的特色，如见之于通常那种彩色地图或使用缩尺数字和蓑状线的特殊的陆军军用地图测绘图表。

在爱尔兰呢？

莫霍尔的断崖[322] ，康尼马拉那多风的荒野[ 323] ，淹没了一座化石城市的拉夫•尼格湖[324] ，巨人堤道[325]，卡姆登要塞和卡莱尔要塞[326] ，蒂珀雷里的黄金峡谷[327] ，阿伦群岛[ 328] ，王家米斯郡[329] ，布里奇特那棵基尔代尔的榆树[330] ，贝尔法斯特的皇后岛造船厂[331]，蛙鱼飞跃[332] 和基拉尼的湖区[ 333] 。

海外呢？

锡兰（有着香料园，向伦敦市内东区明欣巷二号的帕尔布卢克- 罗伯逊公司的代理店、都柏林市戴姆街五号的托马斯•克南供应红茶），圣城耶路撒冷（有着莪默清真寺和大马士革门——众心所向往的目的地）[334] ，直布罗陀海峡（玛莉恩•特威迪的无与伦比的出生地），帕台农神庙[335] （供奉着希腊神明的裸体塑像），华尔街金融市场（支配着世界金融），西班牙拉利内阿的托罗斯广场（卡梅隆的约翰•奥哈拉在这里打死过一头公牛）[336]，尼亚加拉瀑布（没有人曾安然无恙地跨过它）[337] ，爱斯基摩人（食肥皂者）的土地，被禁之国西藏（从来没有一个旅人回来过）[ 338] ，那布勒斯海湾（去看它就等于去送命）[339]，死海。

在什么的引导下，跟随着什么标志？

海上，朝着北方，夜间以北极星为标志。将大熊星座的“贝塔——阿尔法”这一直线延长至星座外的“奥墨伽”，北极星便位于“阿尔法——奥墨伽”这道外部区分线与大熊星座内的“阿尔法——德尔塔”这一直线所形成的直角三角形斜边的交点上[340]。陆地上，朝着南方，以双球体的月亮为标志：一个正徜徉着的丰腴、邋遢女人那没有完全遮住的裙子后面，从裂缝里露出太阴月那不完整、起着变化的月相。白天，用云柱指示方向[341]。

用什么样的广告把离去者失踪一事公诸于世？

寻人启事，奖赏五英镑。姓名利奥波德（波尔迪）•布卢姆、年约四十的绅士，从埃克尔斯街七号的自己家中失踪、被拐骗或走失。身高五英尺九英寸半，体态丰满，橄榄色皮肤，后来有可能蓄起胡子。最后一次被人看到时，身穿黑服。凡提供有助于发现他的线索者，酬金照付不误。

作为存在者和不存在者，他会有个什么样的普遍使用的双名，

人人通用或无人知晓。“普通人”或是“无人”[342]。

给他献了哪些贡品？

“普通人”的朋友们，素昧平生的人们所给予的荣誉和礼物。永生的宁芙，一个美女，“无人”的新娘子[343] 。

在任何地方，任何情况下，这位离去者[344] 也永远不会重新出现了吗？

他会迫使自己朝着他的替星轨道之极限永远流浪，越过诸恒星、一颗颗变光的星和只有用望远镜才能看到的诸行星以及那些天文学上的漂泊者和迷路者从众多民族当中穿过，经历各种事件，从一个国家走到另一个国家，奔向空间尽头的边界。不知在什么地方，他依稀听见了召唤他回去的声音。于是，就有点儿不大情愿地、在恒星的强制下服从了。这样，他从北冕星座那儿消失了踪影，不知怎么一来，他再生了，并重新出现在仙后星座的“德尔塔”[345]上空。在无限世纪的漫游之后，成为一个从异邦返回的复仇者，秉公惩戒歹徒者，怀着阴暗心情的十字军战士[346] ，甦醒了的沉睡者[347] ，其拥有的财富超过罗斯柴尔德[348]或白银国王[349] （假定如此）。

是什么使这样的返回成为不合情理？

在可逆转的空间内，时间方面的出发与返回以及在不可逆转的时间内，空间方面的出发与返回，二者之间有着不能令人满意的误差。

由于什么力量起作用而产生了惰性，使离别并不合乎心意？

时间迟晏，使人犹豫拖延；夜间太黑，遮住视线；大街上不安定，充满危险；休息的需要，阻碍了行动；睡着人的床就近在咫尺，用不着去寻觅；对那被（衬衣被单）的冰凉缓解了的（人的）温暖的期待，排除了某种欲望，又挑起另一种欲望；纳希素斯的雕像，没有“回音”的音响[350] ，渴求的欲望。

跟没人睡着的床比起来，有人睡着的床显然有哪些优点？

消除了夜晚的孤寂，人（成熟的女性）的温暖胜过非人（“汤壶”）的热气以及早晨的接触给予的刺激；把长裤叠齐，竖着夹在弹簧床垫（带条纹的）和羊毛垫子（黄褐色方格花纹）之间，就能节省熨烫之劳了。

布卢姆起身之前便预感到了积劳，而他在起身之前又怎样默默地概括了过去那一连串的原因呢？

准备早餐（燔祭）[351] ，肠内装满以及预先想到的排便（至圣所）[352] ，洗澡（约翰的仪式）[353] ，葬礼（撒姆耳的仪式）[ 354] ，亚历山大•凯斯的广告（火与真理）[355] ，不丰盛的午餐（麦基洗德）[ 356] ，访问博物馆和国立图书馆（神圣的地方）[357] ，沿着贝德福德路、商贾拱廊[358] ，韦林顿码头搜购书籍（喜哉法典）[359] ，奥蒙德饭店里的音乐（歌中之歌[360] ）。在伯纳德•卡南的酒吧里与横蛮无理的穴居人[361] 吵嘴（燔祭）。包括一段空白时间：乘马车到办丧事的家[362]去以及一次诀别（旷野）[363] 。女人的裸露癖所引起的性冲动（俄南[364] ）。米娜•普里福伊那时间拖得很长的分娩（奉献祭物的礼拜式[365] ）。造访下蒂龙街八十三号贝拉•科恩太太开的妓院，随后在比弗街争吵起来，又有一场偶然发生的混战（大决战[366] ）。夜间漫步到巴特桥的马车夫棚，又走了回来（赎罪）[ 367] 。

由于怕总也下不了决心，为了让事情有个结局而刚要站起来走去的时候，布卢姆对自己出的什么隐谜不由自主地恍然大悟？

纹理歪斜的桌子那毫无感觉的木材会突然发出短促而尖锐、只能听到而看不到、高亢而寂寥的喀嚓声的来由[368] 。

布卢姆站起来，抱着五颜六色、各种各样、为数众多的衣服正要走的时候，对自告奋勇去破的什么隐谜自发地有所领悟，然而却又未能理解？

那个穿胶布雨衣的人[369] 是谁？

此刻，熄灭了人工的照明并实现了自然的黑暗，布卢姆怎样默默地忽然悟出那个三十年来偶尔漫不经心地思索过的不言而喻的隐谜呢？

烛火熄灭时摩西在哪里[370] ？

布卢姆一边走着[371] ，一边默默地一桩桩历数在完整的一天当中未能完成的哪些事情？

一时的失败：没能拿到续订广告的契约，没能从托马斯•克南食品店（伦敦市东中区明欣巷二号帕尔布卢克- 鲁宾逊公司驻都柏林市戴姆街五号的代理店）里买些茶叶，没能搞清楚希腊女神后身有无直肠口，没能弄到一张班德曼•帕默夫人在欢乐剧场（国王南街四十六、四十七、四十八、四十九号）公演《丽亚》[372]的门票（赠送或购买）。

布卢姆停下脚步，默地追忆起一位故人怎样的印象？

她父亲——已故布赖恩•库珀•特威迪鼓手长的面影，他属于驻直布罗陀的都柏林近卫步兵连队，住在海豚仓的雷霍博特路。

有可能假定这一面影的什么样的印象反复地忽隐忽现？

从大北铁路阿缅街终点站，不停地以标准加速度正沿着那如果延长、会在无限彼方相遇的平行线逐渐离去。沿着那重新出现在无限彼方的平行线，不断地以标准减速度，正朝着大北铁路阿缅街终点站折回来。

女子贴身穿的哪些各种各样的衣物映入了他的眼帘？

一双崭新、没有气味、半丝质的黑色女长筒袜，一副紫罗兰色新袜带，一条印度细软薄棉布做的大号女衬裤，剪裁宽松，散发着苦树脂、素馨香水和穆拉蒂牌土耳其香烟的气味，还别着一根锃亮的钢质长别针，折叠成曲线状。一件镶着薄花边的短袖麻纱衬衣，一条蓝纹绸百褶衬裙。这些衣物都胡乱放在一只长方形箱盖上：四边用板条钉牢，四角是双层的，贴着五颜六色的标签，正面用白字写有首字B. C. T（布赖恩•库珀•特威迪）。

看见了哪些贴身衣物之外的东西？

断了一条腿的五斗柜，整个儿用剪裁成四角形的苹果花纹印花装饰布蒙起来，上面摆着一顶黑色女用草帽。一批布满回纹的陶器，是从穆尔街二十一、二十二、二十三号的亨利•普赖斯那儿买来的，他是制造篮子、花哨的小工艺品、瓷器、五金制品的厂商。这些陶器包括脸盆、肥皂钵和刷子缸（一道放在洗脸架上）带柄的大水罐和尿盆（分别撂在地板上）。

布卢姆如何行动？

他把几件衣服放在椅子上，脱掉剩下的几样。从床头的长枕下面抽出折叠好的白色长睡衣，将头和双臂套入睡衣的适当部位，把一只枕头从床头移到床脚，床单也相应地整理了一番。然后就上了。床。

怎么个上法？

谨慎地，就像每一次进入一座房子（他自己的或并非他自己的）的时候那样，小心翼翼地，因为床垫子那蛇状螺旋弹簧已经陈旧了，黄铜环和蝰蛇状拱形挡头也松松垮垮的，一用力过头就颤悠；顾虑周到地，就好像进入肉欲或毒蛇的巢穴或隐身之处似的；轻轻地，省得惊动她；虔诚地，因为那是妊娠与分娩之床，合卺与失贞之床，睡眠与死亡之床。

他的四肢逐渐伸开的时候，碰到了什么？

簇新而干净的床单，新添的好几种气味。一个人体的存在：女性的，她的；一个人体留下的痕迹，男性的，不是他的。一些面包碎屑，薄薄的几片回过锅的罐头肉，他给掸掉了。

倘若他微笑了，他为什么会微笑呢？

他仔细一想，每一个进入者都认为自己是头一个进去的，其实，他总是一连串先行者的后继者，即便他是一连串后继者的第一个。每个人都自以为是头一个，最后一个，唯一的和独一无二的，其实在那源于无限，又无限地重复下去的一连串当中，他既不是头一个，也不是最后一个，既不是唯一的，也不是独一无二的。

先行者都有哪一些？

假定马尔维[373]是那一连串当中的头一个，接着是彭罗斯、巴特尔•达西[374] 、古德温教授[375] 、马斯添斯基[376] 、约翰、亨利•门顿[377]、伯纳德•科里根神父[378] 、皇家都柏林协会马匹展示会上的那位农场主[379］、马戈特•奥里利［380]、马修•狄龙[381] 、瓦伦丁•布莱克•狄龙[ 382]（都柏林市市长）、克里斯托弗•卡里南[383] 、利内翰[384] 、某意大利轮擦提琴手[ 385] 、欢乐剧场里的那位素昧平生的绅士[386] 、本杰明•多拉德[ 387]、西蒙•迪达勒斯、安德鲁（精明鬼）•伯克[388] 、约瑟夫•卡夫[389]、威兹德姆•希利[390] 、市政委员约翰•胡珀[391] 、弗朗西斯•布雷迪大夫[392]、阿古斯山的塞巴斯蒂安神父[393] 、邮政总局的某擦鞋匠[ 394] 、休•E.（布莱泽斯）•博伊兰以及其他等等，直到无限[395] 。

关于这一连串中的最后一名，新近占有此床者，他有何想法？

他想到那个人精力旺盛（莽汉），身材匀称（贴广告的），生财有道（骗子），印象强烈（牛皮大王）。

除了精力旺盛，身材匀称，生财有道之外，那个人何以还给观察者强烈印象呢？

因为他曾愈益频繁地目击到，上述那一连串先行者曾沉浸于同一淫荡之情，将越来越旺的欲火延烧过去，先伴随着不安，继而有了默契，春心大动，最后带来了疲劳，交替显示出相互理解与惊恐的征兆。

随后他的思绪被哪些互不相容的感情所左右？

羡慕，妬忌，克制，沉着。

何以羡慕？

那肉体的、精神的男性器官特别适合于在精力充沛地交媾时自上而下、精力充沛地进行活塞在气缸中的那种往复运动。而为了使那肉体的、精神的（被动而并不迟钝的）女性器官所具备的持久而不剧烈的情欲充分得到满足，这是不可或缺的。

何以妒忌？

因为丰满的肉体摆脱了束缚，就会发挥出快活的特性，交替地起着吸引或被吸引的作用。因为起作用者和被起作用者之间的吸引力无时无刻不在发生着变化，而这又与持续不断的环状扩张和放射再突入的增减形成反比例。由于对吸引力增减的有节制的冥想，也能够调节快感的消长。

何以克制？

鉴于那是：（甲）一九0 三年九月在伊登码头五号的兼营服饰用品业的裁缝乔治•梅西雅斯[396] 的店里结识以来的熟人；（乙）当事人献了殷勤，接受下来了，并报以同样的殷勤，对方也亲自接受了；（丙）年纪较轻，容易野心勃勃或宽宏大量，同行间的利他行为或出于爱恋的利己之举。（丁）不同种族之间的吸引，同一种族之间的相互抑制，超种族的特权；（戊）即将到外省去举行一次巡回音乐会。挑费平摊，纯收益平分。

何以镇定？

因为这跟相异又相似的自然生物，按照雄性、雌性或两性的天赋本性，并顺应天赋本性，主动地或被动地贯彻执行自然界任何及所有那些自然行为一样地自然。这一灾难还不像行星与隐蔽的恒星相撞时所发生的毁灭性剧变那样大。比起盗窃、拦路抢劫，虐待儿童与动物，诈骗金钱，制造伪币，侵吞挪用公款，背叛公众的信任，装病旷工，故意伤害致残，腐蚀未成年人，恶毒诽谤，敲诈，藐视法庭，纵火，叛逆，罪上加罪，侵害公海，非法侵入，夜盗，越狱，鸡奷，临阵脱逃，做伪证，偷猎，放高利贷，间谍行为，冒充，殴打，故意杀人与谋杀，罪责并没那么严重。它并不比使人体组织和随之而来的情况（食物、饮料、后天的习惯、嗜好上了瘾，重病）保持平衡，为了适应各种生活条件的变化而改变的其他一切过程更为不正常。这不仅是不可避免的，甚至是无法补救的。

何以节制多于妒忌，羡慕少于沉着？

从暴行（婚姻）到暴行（通奸），除了暴行（交媾），什么也没发生；然而婚姻受到凌辱的那位凭着婚姻施暴行者并没有遭到那个施通奸这一暴行者凭着通奸进行凌辱者的暴行。

如果可能的话，怎样复仇？

暗杀是绝对不可行的，因为以恶报恶是得不出善的。持武器来决斗，要不得。离婚嘛，现在时机未到。用机械装置（自动床）[397]，或个人的证言（隐伏的目击者）予以暴露，那还不到时候。靠法律的力量控诉，要求赔偿损害，也就是说，自称被袭击甚至受到伤害（自伤），从而做伪证，这都并非不可能[398] 。倘若可能，断然予以默许，并准备与之抗争（物质上，对手是兴隆的广告代理商；精神上，对手是成功的私通代理商），轻视，疏远，屈辱以至分居（一方面保护仳离者，同时又从双方手下保护那个仳离仲裁者）。

他这个对茫茫空虚性有意识地做出反应者，是借着哪些思考才对自己证明这些情感是正当的呢？

处女膜先天的脆弱性，物体本身预先假定的不可触性。为了达到目的而自我延长的那份紧张以及完成之后的自我缩短与松弛，这二者之间既不调和也不均衡。女性之虚弱及男性之强韧乃基于谬误的臆测。道德的准则是可变的。自然的语法转换：在不引起意思变动的情况下，由主动语态不定过去式命题（从语法上分析：男性主语，单音节拟声及物动词，女性直接宾语）转位到相关的被动语态不定过去式命题：3”）（从语法上分析：女性主语，助动词与准单音节拟声过去分词，男性主动补语）。借着生殖，不断地生产播种者们。借着酿造来连续地生产精液。胜利也罢，抗议也罢，复仇也罢，都是徒劳的。对贞操的颂扬煞是无聊。无知觉的物质毫无生气。星辰之情感淡漠[400]。

还原为最简单形式的这些互不相容的感情和思考，收敛成怎样一种最后的满足呢？

地球的东西两半球所有已勘探或未勘探过的那些适于居住的陆地及岛屿（午夜的太阳之国[401] 、幸福岛[402] 、希腊的各个岛屿[403]、被应许的土地[404]上，到处都是脂肪质女性臀部后半球；散发出奶与蜜以及分泌性血液与精液的温暖香气，令人联想到古老血统的丰满曲线，既不喜怒无常，也不故意闹别扭，显示出沉默而永远不变的成熟的动物性。这一切所激起的满足感。

满足之前有何显著特征？

即将勃起，渴望的注目，逐渐地挺立，试探性的露出，无言的静观。

然后呢？

他吻着她臀部那一对丰满熟软、淡黄馨香的瓜，与丰腴的瓜那

两个半球，以及那烂熟淡黄的垄沟，接了个微妙、富于挑逗性而散

发着瓜香的长长的吻。

满足之后有何显著迹象，

无言的沉思，暂时的隐蔽，逐渐地自贬，焦心的嫌恶，即将勃

起。

这一沉默的动作之后呢？

在嗜眠中呼吁，恍恍惚惚地认出，初期的兴奋，教义问答式的

详细讯问。

回答讯问时，讲者做了哪些修饰？

消极方面，他故意不提玛莎•克利弗德与亨利•弗罗尔之间秘

密通信事；在位于小不列颠街八、九、十号、特准卖酒的伯纳德•基尔南股份有限公司内部和附近当众吵嘴的事，以及由于格楚德（格蒂，姓氏不详）裸露下体，进行色情的挑逗所引起的反应。积极方面，他谈到班德曼•帕默夫人在位于南国王街四十六、四十七、四十八、四十九号的欢乐剧场扮演丽亚这一角色[405]事；接到将在下阿贝街三十五、三十六和三十七号的怀恩（墨菲）饭店举行的晚餐会请帖；由一位匿名的时下名流所作的一本题名《偷情的快乐》、具有淫秽色情倾向的书；宴会后表演体操，因某个动作失误而造成暂时的脑震荡，受伤者（现已痊愈）为教师兼作家斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯，他乃无固定职业的西蒙•迪达勒斯仍健在的长子；当着一位目击者，即该教师兼作家的面，他（讲者）以机敏果断和体操的弹性表演了空中特技。

讲述没有另外用修饰加工改动吗？

绝对没有。

哪一件事或哪一个人在他谈话中最是突出？

教师兼作家斯蒂芬•迪达勒斯。

在时断时续、愈益简短的讲述中，听者与讲者察觉了他们二人在行使或抑制结婚的权利方面，受到了哪些限制，

就听者而言，在生育上受到了限制。因为结婚仪式是她过了十八岁生日（一八七0 年九月八日）一个月之后，即十月八日举行的，当天同衾；其实同年九月十日二人己提前发生完全的肉体关系，包括往女性天然器官内射精[406] ；一八八九年六月十五日生下一女。最后一次同房是一八九三年十一月二十六日，那是第二胎（唯一的子嗣）于一八九三年十二月二十九日出生的五周前，而此婴生后十一天即夭折。以后的十年五个月十八天期间，一直未发生完全的肉体关系，再也未往女性天然的器官内射精。就讲者而言，身心两方面的活动力均受到了限制。因为自从一九①三年九月十五日讲者与听者之间所生女儿初次来了月经，标志着青春期的到来，夫妻之间即未再有精神上的完全的交往。从此，两个成熟的女子（听者与女儿）之间，在本人并不理解的情况下，先天地自然地建立了相互理解。其结果，九个月零一天的时间里，在讲者与听者之间的完全的肉体行动自由受到了限制。

受到怎样的限制？

当男方计划或将短期离家时，女方便反复盘问前往何处、所去场所、所需时间和外出目的等等。

在听者与讲者看不见的思维上方，有什么看得见的东西正在移动？

带罩子的灯投到顶棚上的反影，重重叠叠的光和影构成一个个浓淡不等的同心圆。

听者与讲者朝哪个方向躺着？

听者朝东南偏东方，讲者朝西北偏西方；地点为北纬五十三度，西经六度；在地球上与赤道形成四十五度角。

处在何等静止或活动状态？

就二人本身及相互的关系而言，是处于静止状态。由于永远不变的空间不断起着变化的轨道上那地球固有的不断的运动，一个人朝前方，一个人朝后方，双方都处于被送往西方的运动状态。

姿势如何？

听者：半朝左横卧着，左手托头，右腿伸直，架在蟋起来的左腿上，那姿势活像是该亚- 忒耳斯[407] ，饱满而慵懒，大腹便便，孕育着种子。讲者：朝左横卧着，双腿蜷曲，右手的食指与拇指按着鼻梁，恰似珀西•阿普约翰所抓拍的一张快照上那个疲倦的娃娃人——子宫内的娃娃人的姿势。

子宫内？疲倦吗？

他正在休息。他曾经旅行过。

跟谁？

水手辛伯达[408] 、裁缝廷伯达[409] 、狱卒金伯达、捕鲸者浑伯达、制钉工人宁伯达、失败者芬伯达、掏船肚水者宾伯达[410]、桶匠频伯达[411] 、邮寄者明伯达、欢呼者欣伯达、咒骂者林伯达、菜食主义者丁伯达[412] 、畏惧者温伯达[413] 、赛马赌徒凌伯达、水手兴伯达。

什么时候？

到黑暗的床上去的时候，有一颗水手辛伯达那神鹰[ 414] 的方圆形海雀[415] 蛋。那是亮昼男暗伯达所有那些神鹰的海雀们的夜晚之床。

在哪里？
Chapter 18 Penelope
YES BECAUSE HE NEVER DID A THING LIKE THAT BEFORE AS ASK To get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting to that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathing-suits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her to wear I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice I hope I'll never be like her a wonder she didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was glad to get shut of her and her dog smelling my fur and always edging to get up under my petticoats especially then still I like that in him polite to old women like that and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of nothing but not always if ever he got anything really serious the matter with him its much better for them go into a hospital where everything is clean but I suppose Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying there till they throw him out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has shes as much a nun as Im not yes because theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think it was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular when he sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf Mountain the day I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old ones she could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a mans bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he was dying on account of her to never see thy face again though he looked more like a man with his beard a bit grown in the bed father was the same besides I hate bandaging and dosing when he cut his toe with the razor paring his corns afraid hed get blood poisoning but if it was a thing I was sick then wed see what attention only of course the woman hides it not to give all the trouble they do yes he came somewhere Im sure by his appetite anyway love its not or hed be off his feed thinking of her so either it was one of those night women if it was down there he was really and the hotel story he made up a pack of lies to hide it planning it Hynes kept me who did I meet ah yes I met do you remember Menton and who else who let me see that big babbyface I saw him and he not long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles Myriorama and turned my back on him when he slinked out looking quite conscious what harm but he had the impudence to make up to me one time well done to him mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I ever met and thats called a solicitor only for I hate having a long wrangle in bed or else if its not that its some little bitch or other he got in with somewhere or picked up on the sly if they only knew him as well as I do yes because the day before yesterday he was scribbling something a letter when I came into the front room for the matches to show him Dignams death in the paper as if something told me and he covered it up with the blottingpaper pretending to be thinking about business so very probably that was it to somebody who thinks she has a softy in him because all men get a bit like that at his age especially getting on to forty he is now so as to wheedle any money she can out of him no fool like an old fool and then the usual kissing my bottom was to hide it not that I care two straws who he does it with or knew before that way though Id like to find out so long as I dont have the two of them under my nose all the time like that slut that Mary we had in Ontario terrace padding out her false bottom to excite him bad enough to get the smell of those painted women off him once or twice I had a suspicion by getting him to come near me when I found the long hair on his coat without that one when I went into the kitchen pretending he was drinking water I woman is not enough for them it was all his fault of course ruining servants then proposing that she could eat at our table on Christmas if you please O no thank you not in my house stealing my potatoes and the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her aunt if you please common robbery so it was but I was sure he had something on with that one it takes me to find out a thing like that he said you have no proof it was her proof O yes her aunt was very fond of oysters but I told her what I thought of her suggesting me to go out to be alone with her I wouldnt lower myself to spy on them the garters I found in her room the Friday she was out that was enough for me a little bit too much I saw too that her face swelled up on her with temper when I gave her her weeks notice better do without them altogether do out the rooms myself quicker only for the damn cooking and throwing out the dirt I gave it to him anyhow either she or me leaves the house I couldnt even touch him if I thought he was with a dirty barefaced liar and sloven like that one denying it up to my face and singing about the place in the W C too because she knew she was too well off yes because he couldnt possibly do without it that long so he must do it somewhere and the last time he came on my bottom when was it the night Boylan gave my hand a great squeeze going along by the Tolka in my hand there steals another I just pressed the back of his like that with my thumb to squeeze back singing the young May Moon shes beaming love because he has an idea about him and me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out and going to the Gaiety though Im not going to give him the satisfaction in any case God knows hes change in a way not to be always and ever wearing the same old hat unless] paid some nicelooking boy to do it since I cant do it myself a young boy would like me Id confuse him a little alone with him if we were Id let him see my garters the new ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce him I know what boys feel with that down on their cheek doing that frigging drawing out the thing by the hour question and answer would you do this that and the other with the coalman yes with a bishop yes I would because I told him about some Dean or Bishop was sitting beside me in the jews Temples gardens when I was knitting that woollen thing a stranger to Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and he tired me out with statues encouraging him making him worse than he is who is in your mind now tell me who are you thinking of who is it tell me his name who tell me who the German Emperor is it yes imagine Im him think of him can you feel him trying to make a whore of me what he never will he ought to give it up now at this age of his life simply ruination for any woman and no satisfaction in it pretending to like it till ( he comes and then finish it off myself anyway and it makes your lips pale anyhow its done now once and for all with all the talk of the world about it people make its only the first time after that its just the ordinary do it and think no more about it why cant you kiss a man without going and marrying him first you sometimes love to wildly when you feel that way so nice all over you you cant help yourself I wish some man or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot down to your soul almost paralyses you then I hate that confession when I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put it I forget no father and I always think of the real father what did he want to know for when I already confessed it to God he had a nice fat hand the palm moist always I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he Id say by the bullneck in his horsecollar I wonder did he know me in the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of course hed never turn or let on still his eyes were red when his father died theyre lost for a woman of course must be terrible when a man cries let alone them Id like to be embraced by one in his vestments and the smell of incense off him like the pope besides theres no danger with a priest if youre married hes too careful about himself then give something to H H the pope for a penance I wonder was he satisfied with me one thing I didnt like his slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall though I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose he was thinking of his father I wonder is he awake thinking of me or dreaming am I in it who gave him that flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of drink not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they stick their bills up with some liquor Id like to sip those richlooking green and yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with the opera hats I tasted one with my finger dipped out of that American that had the squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time we took the port and potted meat it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt lovely and tired myself and fell asleep as sound as a top the moment I popped straight into bed till that thunder woke me up as if the world was coming to an end God be merciful to us I thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish when I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary like those awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar and they come and tell you theres no God what could you do if it was running and rushing about nothing only make an act of contrition the candle I lit that evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of May see it brought its luck though hed scoff if he heard because he never goes to church mass or meeting he says your soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he doesnt know what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp yes because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the vein or whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst though his nose is not so big after I took off all my things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and perfuming and combing it like iron or some kind of a thick crowbar standing all the time he must have eaten oysters I think a few dozen he was in great singing voice no I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel full up he must have eaten a whole sheep after whats the idea making us like that with a big hole in the middle of us like a Stallion driving it up into you because thats all they want out of you with that determined vicious look in his eye I had to halfshut my eyes still he hasnt such a tremendous amount of spunk in him when I made him pull it out and do it on me considering how big it is so much the better in case any of it wasnt washed out properly the last time I let him finish it in me nice invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if someone gave them a touch of it themselves theyd know what I went through with Milly nobody would believe cutting her teeth too and Mina Purefoys husband give us a swing out of your whiskers filling her up with a child or twins once a year as regular as the clock always with a smell of children off her the one they called budgers or something like a nigger with a shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the last time I was there a squad of them falling over one another and bawling you couldnt hear your ear supposed to be healthy not satisfied till they have us swollen out like elephants or I dont know what supposing I risked having another not off him though still if he was married I m sure hed have a fine strong child but I dont know Poldy has more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly I suppose it was meeting Josie Powell and the funeral and thinking about me and Boylan set him off well he can think what he likes now if thatll do him any good I know they were spooning a bit when I came on the scene he was dancing and sitting out with her the night of Georgina Simpsons housewarming and then he wanted to ram it down my neck on account of not liking to see her a wallflower that was why we had the standup row over politics he began it not me when he said about Our Lord being a carpenter at last he made me cry of course a woman is so sensitive about everything I was fuming with myself after for giving in only for I knew he was gone on me and the first socialist he said He was he annoyed me so much I couldnt put him into a temper still he knows a lot of mixed up things especially about the body and the insides I often wanted to study up that myself what we have inside us in that family physician I could always hear his voice talking when the room was crowded and watch him after that I pretended I had on a coolness with her over him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side whenever he asked who are you going to and I aid over to Floey and he made me the present of lord Byrons poems and the three pairs of gloves so that finished that I could quite easily get him to make it up any time I know how Id even supposing he got in with her again and was going out to see her somewhere Id know if he refused to eat the onions I know plenty of ways ask him to tuck down the collar of my blouse or touch him with my veil and gloves on going out 1 kiss then would send them all spinning however alright well seen then let him go to her she of course would only be too delighted to pretend shes mad in love with him that I wouldnt so much mind Id just go to her and ask her do you love him and look her square in the eyes she couldnt fool me but he might imagine he was and make a declaration with his plabbery kind of a manner to her like he did to me though I had the devils own job to get it out of him though I liked him for that it showed he could hold in and wasnt to be got for the asking he was on the pop of asking me too the night in the kitchen I was rolling the potato cake theres something I want to say to you only for I put him off letting on I was in a temper with my hands and arms full of pasty flour in any case I let out too much the night before talking of dreams so I didnt want to let him know more than was good for him she used to be always embracing me Josie whenever he was there meaning him of course glauming me over and when I said I washed up and down as far as possible asking me did you wash possible the women are always egging on to that putting it on thick when hes there they know by his sly eye blinking a bit putting on the indifferent when they come out with something the kind he is what spoils him I dont wonder in the least because he was very handsome at that time trying to look like lord Byron I said I liked though he was too beautiful for a man and he was a little before we got engaged afterwards though she didnt like it so much the day I was in fits of laughing with the giggles I couldnt stop about all my hairpins falling one after another with the mass of hair I had youre always in great humour she said yes because it grigged her because she knew what it meant because I used to tell her a good bit of what went on between us not all but just enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my fault she didnt darken the door much after we were married I wonder what shes got like now after living with that dotty husband of hers she had her face beginning to look drawn and run down the last time I saw her she must have been just after a row with him because I saw on the moment she was edging to draw down a conversation about husbands and talk about him to run him down what was it she told me O yes that sometimes he used to go to bed with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes him just imagine having to get into bed with a thing like that that might murder you any moment what a man well its not the one way everyone goes mad Poldy anyway whatever he does always wipes his feet on the mat when he comes in wet or shine and always blacks his own boots too and he always takes off his hat when he comes up in the street like that and now hes going about in his slippers to look for #10000 for a postcard up up O Sweetheart May wouldnt a thing like that simply bore you stiff to extinction actually too stupid even to take his boots off now what could you make of a man like that Id rather die 20 times over than marry another of their sex of course hed never find another woman like me to put up with him the way I do know me come sleep with me yes and he knows that too at the bottom of his heart take that Mrs Maybrick that poisoned her husband for what I wonder in love with some other man yet it was found out on her wasnt she the downright villain to go and do a thing like that of course some men can be dreadfully aggravating drive you mad and always the worst word in the world what do they ask us to marry them for if were so bad as all that comes to yes because they cant get on without us white Arsenic she put in his tea off flypaper wasnt it I wonder why they call it that if I asked him hed say its from the Greek leave us as wise as we were before she must have been madly in love with the other fellow to run the chance of being hanged O she didnt care if that was her nature what could she do besides theyre not brutes enough to go and hang a woman surely are they 
theyre all so different Boylan talking about the shape of my foot he noticed at once even before he was introduced when I was in the D B C with Poldy laughing and trying to listen I was waggling my foot we both ordered 2 teas and plain bread and butter I saw him looking with his two old maids of sisters when I stood up and asked the girl where it was what do I care with it dropping out of me and that black closed breeches he made me buy takes you half an hour to let them down wetting all myself always with some brandnew fad every other week such a long one I did I forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind that I never got after some robber of a woman and he wanted me to put it in the Irish Times lost in the ladies lavatory D B C Dame street finder return to Mrs Marion Bloom and I saw his eyes on my feet going out through the turning door he was looking when I looked back and I went there for tea 2 days after in the hope but he wasnt now how did that excite him because I was crossing them when we were in the other room first he meant the shoes that are too tight to walk in my hand is nice like that if I only had a ring with the stone for my month a nice aquamarine Ill stick him for one and a gold bracelet I dont like my foot so much still I made him spend once with my foot the night after Goodwins botchup of a concert so cold and windy it was well we had that rum in the house to mull and the fire wasnt black out when he asked to take off my stockings lying on the hearthrug in Lombard street well and another time it was my muddy boots hed like me to walk in all the horses dung I could find but of course hes not natural like the rest of the world that I what did he say I could give 9 points in 10 to Katty Lanner and beat her what does that mean I asked him I forget what he said because the stoppress edition just passed and the man with the curly hair in the Lucan dairy thats so polite I think I saw his face before somewhere I noticed him when I was tasting the butter so I took my time Bartell dArcy too that he used to make fun of when he commenced kissing me on the choir stairs after I sang Gounods Ave Maria what are we waiting for O my heart kiss me straight on the brow and part which is my brown part he was pretty hot for all his tinny voice too my low notes he was always raving about if you can believe him I liked the way he used his mouth singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do that there in a place like that I dont see anything so terrible about it Ill tell him about that some day not now and surprise him ay and Ill take him there and show him the very place too we did it so now there you are like it or lump it he thinks nothing can happen without him knowing he hadnt an idea about my mother till we were engaged otherwise hed never have got me so cheap as he did he was 10 times worse himself anyhow begging me to give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers that was the evening coming along Kenilworth square he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had to take it off asking me questions is it permitted to inquire the shape of my bedroom so I let him keep it as if I forgot it to think of me when I saw him slip it into his pocket of course hes mad on the subject of drawers thats plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced things on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels even when Milly and I were out with him at the open air fete that one in the cream muslin standing right against the sun so he could see every atom she had on when he saw me from behind following in the rain I saw him before he saw me however standing at the corner of the Harolds cross road with a new raincoat on him with the muffler in the Zingari colours to show off his complexion-and the brown hat looking slyboots as usual what was he doing there where hed no business they can go and get whatever they like from anything at all with a skirt on it and were not to ask any questions but they want to know where were you where are you going I could feel him coming along skulking after me his eyes on my neck he had been keeping away from the house he felt it was getting too warm for him so I half turned and stopped then he pestered me to say yes till I took off my glove slowly watching him he said my openwork sleeves were too cold for the rain anything for an excuse to put his hand anear me drawers drawers the whole blessed time till I promised to give him the pair off my doll to carry about in his waistcoat pocket O Maria santissima he did look a big fool dreeping in the rain splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry to look at them and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I had on with sunray pleats that there was nobody he Said hed kneel down in the wet if I didnt so persevering he would too and ruin his new raincoat you never know what freak theyd take alone with you theyre so savage for it if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched his trousers outside the way I used to Gardner after with my ring hand to keep him from doing worse where it was too public I was dying to find out was he circumcised he was shaking like a jelly all over they want to do everything too quick take all the pleasure out if it and father waiting all the time for his dinner he told me to say I left my purse in the butchers and had to go back for it what a Deceiver then he wrote me that letter with all those words in it how could he have the face to any woman after his company manners making it so awkward after when we met asking me have I offended you with my eyelids down of course he saw I wasnt he had a few brains not like that other fool Henry Doyle he was always breaking or tearing something in the charades I hate an unlucky man and if I knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form sake dont understand you I said and wasnt it natural so it is of course it used to be written up with a picture of a womans on that wall in Gibraltar with that word I couldnt find anywhere only for children seeing it too young then writing a letter every morning sometimes twice a day I liked the way he made love then he knew the way to take a woman when he sent me the 8 big poppies because mine was the 8th then I wrote the night he kissed my heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe it simply it makes you feel like nothing on earth but he never knew how to embrace well like Gardner I hope hell come on Monday as he said at the same time four I hate people who come at all hours answer the door you think its the vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old frostyface Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard street and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed with boiling old stew dont look at me professor I had to say Im a fright yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was impossible to be more respectful nobody to say youre out you have to peep out through the blind like the messengerboy today I thought it was a putoff first him sending the port and the peaches first and I was just beginning to yawn with nerves thinking he was trying to make a fool of me when I knew his tattarrattat at the door he must have been a bit late because it was 1/4 after 3 when I saw the 2 Dedalus girls coming from school I never know the time even that watch he gave me never seems to go properly Id want to get it looked after when I threw the penny to that lame sailor for England home and beauty when I was whistling there is a charming girl I love and I hadnt even put on my clean shift or powdered myself or a thing then this day week were to go to Belfast just as well he has to go to Ennis his fathers anniversary the 27th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did suppose our rooms at the hotel were beside each other and any fooling went on in the new bed I couldnt tell him to stop and not bother me with him in the next room or perhaps some protestant clergyman with a cough knocking on the wall then he wouldnt believe next day we didnt do something its all very well a husband but you cant fool a lover after me telling him we never did anything of course he didnt believe me no its better hes going where he is besides something always happens with him the time going to the Mallow Concert at Maryborough ordering boiling soup for the two of us then the bell rang out he walks down the platform with the soup splashing about taking spoonfuls of it hadnt he the nerve and the waiter after him making a holy show of us screeching and confusion for the engine to start but he wouldnt pay till he finished it the two gentlemen in the 3rd class Carriage said he was quite right so he was too hes so pigheaded sometimes when he gets a thing into his head a good job he was able to open the carriage door with his knife or theyd have taken us on to Cork I suppose that was done out of revenge on him O I love jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft cushions I wonder will he take a 1st class for me he might want to do it in the train by tipping the guard well O I suppose therell be the usual idiots of men gaping at us with their eyes as stupid as ever they can possibly be that was an exceptional man that common workman that left us alone in the carriage that day going to Howth Id like to find out something about him 1 or 2 tunnels perhaps then you have to look out of the window all the nicer then coming back suppose I never came back what would they say eloped with him that gets you on on the stage the last concert I sang at where its over a year ago when was it St Teresas hall Clarendon St little chits of missies they have now singing Kathleen Kearney and her like on account of father being in the army and my singing the absentminded beggar and wearing a brooch for lord Roberts when I had the map of it all and Poldy not Irish enough was it him managed it this time I wouldnt put it past him like he got me on to sing in the Stabat Mater by going around saying he was putting Lead Kindly Light to music I put him up to that till the jesuits found out he was a freemason thumping the piano lead Thou me on copied from some old opera yes and he was going about with some of them Sinner Fein lately or whatever they call themselves talking his usual trash and nonsense he says that little man he showed me without the neck is very intelligent the coming man Griffith is he well he doesnt look it thats all I can say still it must have been him he knew there was a boycott I hate the mention of politics after the war that Pretoria and Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where Gardner Lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd East Lancs Rgt of enteric fever he was a lovely fellow in khaki and just the right height over me Im sure he was brave too he said I was lovely the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal lock my Irish beauty he was pale with excitement about going away or wed be seen from the road he couldnt stand properly and I so hot as I never felt they could have made their peace in the beginning or old oom Paul and the rest of the old Krugers go and fight it out between them instead of dragging on for years killing any finelooking men there were with their fever if he was even decently shot it wouldnt have been so bad I love to see a regiment pass in review the first time I saw the Spanish cavalry at La Roque it was lovely after looking across the bay from Algeciras all the lights of the rock like fireflies or those sham battles on the 15 acres the Black Watch with their kilts in time at the march past the 10th hussars the prince of Wales own or the lancers O the lancers theyre grand or the Dublins that won Tugela his father made his money over selling the horses for the cavalry well he could buy me a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave theyve lovely linen up there or one of those nice kimono things I must buy a mothball like I had before to keep in the drawer with them it would be exciting going around with him shopping buying those things in a new city better leave this ring behind want to keep turning and turning to get it over the knuckle there or they might bell it round the town in their papers or tell the police on me but theyd think were married O let them all go and smother themselves for the fat lot I care he has plenty of money and hes not a marrying man so somebody better get it out of him if I could find out whether he likes me I looked a bit washy of course when I looked close in the handglass powdering a mirror never gives you the expression besides scrooching down on me like that all the time with his big hipbones hes heavy too with his hairy chest for this heat always having to lie down for them better for him put it into me from behind the way Mrs Mastiansky told me her husband made her like the dogs do it and stick out her tongue as far as ever she could and he so quiet and mild with his tingating either can you ever be up to men the way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue suit he had on and stylish tie and socks with the skyblue silk things on them hes certainly welloff I know by the cut his clothes have and his heavy watch but he was like a perfect devil for a few minutes after he came back with the stop press tearing up the tickets and swearing blazes because he lost 20 quid he said he lost over that outsider that won and half he put on for me on account of Lenehans tip cursing him to the lowest pits that sponger he was making free with me after the Glencree dinner coming back that long joult over the featherbed mountain after the lord Mayor looking at me with his dirty eyes Val Dillon that big heathen I first noticed him at dessert when I was cracking the nuts with my teeth I wished I could have picked every morsel of that chicken out of my fingers it was so tasty and browned and as tender as anything only for I didnt want to eat everything on my plate those forks and fishslicers were hallmarked silver too I wish I had some I could easily have slipped a couple into my muff when I was playing with them then always hanging out of them for money in a restaurant for the bit you put down your throat we have to be thankful for our mangy cup of tea itself as a great compliment to be noticed the way the world is divided in any case if its going to go on I want at least two other good chemises for one thing and but I dont know what kind of drawers he likes none at all I think didnt he say yes and half the girls in Gibraltar never wore them either naked as God made them that Andalusian singing her Manola she didnt make much secret of what she hadnt yes and the second pair of silkette stockings is laddered after one days wear I could have brought them back to Lewers this morning and kick up a row and made that one change them only not to upset myself and run the risk of walking into him and ruining the whole thing and one of those kidfitting corsets Id want advertised cheap in the Gentlewoman with elastic gores on the hips he saved the one I have but thats no good what did they say they give a delightful figure line 11/6 obviating that unsightly broad appearance across the lower back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit too big Ill have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his money easy Larry they call him the old mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a cottage cake and a bottle of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret that he couldnt get anyone to drink God spare his spit for fear hed die of the drouth or I must do a few breathing exercises I wonder is that antifat any good might overdo it thin ones are not so much the fashion now garters that much I have the violet pair I wore today thats all he bought me out of the cheque he got on the first O no there was the face lotion I finished the last of yesterday that made my skin like new I told him over and over again get that made up in the same place and dont forget it God only knows whether he did after all I said to him Ill know by the bottle anyway if not I suppose Ill only have to wash in my piss like beeftea or chickensoup with some of that opoponax and violet I thought it was beginning to look coarse or old a bit the skin underneath is much finer where it peeled off there on my finger after the burn its a pity it isnt all like that and the four paltry handkerchiefs about 6/- in all sure you cant get on in this world without style all going in food and rent when I get it Ill lash it around I tell you in fine style I always want to throw a handful of tea into the pot measuring and mincing if I buy a pair of old brogues itself do you like those new shoes yes how much were they Ive no clothes at all the brown costume and the skirt and jacket and the one at the cleaners 3 whats that for any woman cutting up this old hat and patching up the other the men wont look at you and women try to walk on you because they know youve no man then with all the things getting dearer every day for the 4 years more I have of life up to 35 no Im what am I at all Ill be 33 in September will I what O well look at that Mrs Galbraith shes much older than me I saw her when I was out last week her beautys on the wane she was a lovely woman magnificent head of hair on her down to her waist tossing it back like that like Kitty OShea in Grantham street 1st thing I did every morning to look across see her combing it as if she loved it and was full of it pity I only got to know her the day before we left and that Mrs Langtry the Jersey Lily the prince of Wales was in love with I suppose hes like the first man going the roads only for the name of a king theyre all made the one way only a black mans Id like to try a beauty up to what was she 45 there was some funny story about the jealous old husband what was it all and an oyster knife he went no he made her wear a kind of a tin thing around her and the prince of Wales yes he had the oyster knife cant be true a thing like that like some of those books he brings me the works of Master Francois somebody supposed to be a priest about a child born out of her ear because her bumgut fell out a nice word for any priest to write and her a-e as if any fool wouldnt know what that meant I hate that pretending of all things with the old blackguards face on him anybody can see its not true and that Ruby and Fair Tyrants he brought me that twice I remember when I came to page 50 the part about where she hangs him up out of a hook with a cord flagellate sure theres nothing for a woman in that all invention made up about he drinking the champagne out of her slipper after the ball was over like the infant Jesus In the crib at Inchicore in the Blessed Virgins arms sure no woman could have a child that big taken out of her and I thought first it came out of her side because how could she go to the chamber when she wanted to and she a rich lady of course she felt honoured H. R. H. he was in Gibraltar the year I gas born I bet he found lilies there too where he planted the tree he planted more than that in his time he might have planted me too if hed come a bit sooner then I wouldnt be here as I am he ought to chuck that Freeman with the paltry few shillings he knocks out of it and go into an office or something where hed get regular pay or a bank where they could put him up on a throne to count the money all the day of course he prefers plottering about the house so you cant stir with him any side whats your programme today I wish hed even smoke a pipe like father to get the smell of a man or pretending to be mooching about for advertisements when he could have been in Mr Cuffes still only for what he did then sending me to try and patch it up I could have got him promoted there to be the manager he gave me a great mirada once or twice first he was as stiff as the mischief really and truly Mrs Bloom only I felt rotten simply with the old rubbishy dress that I lost the leads out of the tails with no cut in it but theyre coming into fashion again I bought it simply to please him I knew it was no good by the finish pity I changed my mind of going to Todd and Burns as I said and not Lees it was just like the shop itself rummage sale a lot of trash I hate those rich shops get on your nerves nothing kills me altogether only he thinks he knows a great lot about a womans dress and cooking mathering everything he can scour off the shelves into it if I went by his advices every blessed hat I put on does that suit me yes take that thats alright the one like a wedding cake standing up miles off my head he said suited me or the dishcover one coming down on my backside on pins and needles about the shop girl in that place in Grafton street I had the misfortune to bring him into and she as insolent as ever she could be with her smirk saying Im afraid were giving you too much trouble whats she there for but I stared it out of her yes he was awfully stiff and no wonder but he changed the second time he looked Poldy pigheaded as usual like the soup but I could see him looking very hard at my chest when he stood up to open the door for me it was nice of him to show me out in any case Im extremely sorry Mrs Bloom believe me without making it too marked the first time after him being insulted and me being supposed to be his wife I just half smiled I know my chest was out that way at the door when he said Im extremely sorry and Im sure you were 

yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like that so long be made me thirsty titties he calls them I had to laugh yes this one anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the least thing Ill get him to keep that up and Ill take those eggs beaten up with marsala fatten them out for him what are all those veins and things curious the way its made 2 the same in case of twins theyre supposed to represent beauty placed up there like those statues in the museum one of them pretending to hide it with her hand are they so beautiful of course compared with what a man looks like with his two bags full and his other thing hanging down out of him or sticking up at you like a hatrack no wonder they hide it with a cabbageleaf the woman is beauty of course thats admitted when he said I could pose for a picture naked to some rich fellow in Holles street when he lost the job in Helys and I was selling the clothes and strumming in the coffee palace would I be like that bath of the nymph with my hair down yes only shes younger or Im a little like that dirty bitch in that Spanish photo he has the nymphs used they go about like that I asked him that disgusting Cameron highlander behind the meat market or that other wretch with the red head behind the tree where the statue of the fish used to be when I was passing pretending he was pissing standing out for me to see it with his babyclothes up to one side the Queens own they were a nice lot its well the Surreys relieved them theyre always trying to show it to you every time nearly I passed outside the mens greenhouse near the Harcourt street station just to try some fellow or other trying to catch my eye or if it was 1 of the 7 wonders of the world O and the stink of those rotten places the night coming home with Poldy after the Comerfords party oranges and lemonade to make you feel nice and watery I went into 1 of them it was so biting cold I couldnt keep it when was that 93 the canal was frozen yes it was a few months after a pity a couple of the Camerons werent there to see me squatting in the mens place meadero I tried to draw a picture of it before I tore it up like a sausage or something I wonder theyre not afraid going about of getting a kick or a bang or something there and that word met something with hoses in it and he came out with some jawbreakers about the incarnation he never can explain a thing simply the way a body can understand then he goes and burns the bottom out of the pan all for his Kidney this one not so much theres the mark of his teeth still where he tried to bite the nipple I had to scream out arent they fearful trying to hurt you I had a great breast of milk with Milly enough for two what was the reason of that he said I could have got a pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled out the morning that delicate looking student that stopped in No 28 with the Citrons Penrose nearly caught me washing through the window only for I snapped up the towel to my face that was his studenting hurt me they used to weaning her till he got doctor Brady to give me the Belladonna prescription I had to get him to suck them they were so hard he said it was sweeter and thicker than cows then he wanted to milk me into the tea well hes beyond everything I declare somebody ought to put him in the budget if I only could remember the one half of the things and write a book out of it the works of Master Poldy yes and its so much smoother the skin much an hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like some kind of a big infant I had at me they want everything in their mouth all the pleasure those men get out of a woman I can feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch myself I wished he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream it when he made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind with his finger I was coming for about 5 minutes with my legs round him I had to hug him after O Lord I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything at all only not to look ugly or those lines from the strain who knows the way hed take it you want to feel your way with a man theyre not all like him thank God some of them want you to be so nice about it I noticed the contrast he does it and doesnt talk I gave my eyes that look with my hair a bit loose from the tumbling and my tongue between my lips up to him the savage brute Thursday Friday one Saturday two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday 

frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweet synnnng the poor men that have to be out all the night from their wives and families in those roasting engines stifling it was today Im glad I burned the half of those old Freemans and Photo bits leaving things like that lying around hes getting very careless and threw the rest of them up in the W C Ill get him to cut them tomorrow for me instead of having them there for the next year to get a few pence for them have him asking wheres last Januarys paper and all those old overcoats I bundled out of the hall making the place hotter than it is the rain was lovely just after my beauty sleep I thought it was going to get like Gibraltar my goodness the heat there before the levanter came on black as night and the glare of the rock standing up in it like a big giant compared with their 3 Rock mountain they think is so great with the red sentries here and there the poplars and they all whitehot and the mosquito nets and the smell of the rainwater in those tanks watching the sun all the time weltering down on you faded all that lovely frock fathers friend Mrs Stanhope sent me from the B Marche Paris what a shame my dearest Doggerina she wrote on what she was very nice whats this her other name was just a P C to tell you I sent the little present have just had a jolly warm bath and feel a very clean dog now enjoyed it wogger she called him wogger wd give anything to be back in Gib and hear you sing in old Madrid or Waiting Concone is the name of those exercises he bought me one of those new some word Icouldn't make out shawls amusing things but tear for the least thing still theyre lovely I think dont you will always think of the lovely teas we had together scrumptious currant scones and raspberry wafers I adore well now dearest Doggerina be sure and write soon kind she left out regards to your father also Captain Grove with love yrs affly x x x x x she didnt look a bit married just like a girl he was years older than her wogger he was awfully fond of me when he held down the wire with his foot for me to step over at the bullfight at La Linea when that matador Gomez was given the bulls ear clothes we have to wear whoever invented them expecting you to walk up Killiney hill then for example at that picnic all staysed up you cant do a blessed thing in them in a crowd run or jump out of the way thats why I was afraid when that other ferocious old Bull began to charge the banderillos with the sashes and the 2 things in their hats and the brutes of men shouting bravo toro sure the women were as bad in their nice white mantillas ripping all the whole insides out of those poor horses I never heard of such a thing in all my life yes he used to break his heart at me taking off the dog barking in bell lane poor brute and it sick what became of them ever I suppose theyre dead long ago the 2 of them its like all through a mist makes you feel so old I made the scones of course I had everything all to myself then a girl Hester we used to compare our hair mine was thicker than hers she showed me how to settle it at the back when I put it up and whats this else how to make a knot on a thread with the one hand we were like cousins what age was I then the night of the storm I slept in her bed she had her arms round me then we were fighting in the morning with the pillow what fun he was watching me whenever he got an opportunity at the band on the Alameda esplanade when I was with father and Captain Grove I looked up at the church first and then at the windows then down and our eyes met I felt something go through me like all needles my eyes were dancing I remember after when I looked at myself in the glass hardly recognised myself the change I had a splendid skin from the sun and the excitement like a rose I didn't get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been nice on account of her but I could have stopped it in time she gave me the Moonstone to read that was the first I read of Wilkie Collins East Lynne I read and the shadow of Ashlydyat Mrs Henry Wood Henry Dunbar by that other woman I lent him afterwards with Mulveys photo in it so as he see I wasnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram Molly bawn she gave me by Mrs Hungerford on account of the name I dont like books with a Molly in them like that one he brought me about the one from Flanders a whore always shoplifting anything she could cloth and stuff and yards of it this blanket is too heavy on me thats better I havent even one decent nightdress this thing gets all rolled up under me besides him and his fooling thats better I used to be weltering then in the heat my shift drenched with the sweat stuck in the cheeks of my bottom on the chair when I stood up they were so fattish and firm when I got up on the sofa cushions to see with my clothes up and the bugs tons of them at night and the mosquito nets I couldnt read a line Lord how long ago it seems centuries of course they never come back and she didnt put her address right on it either she may have noticed her wogger people were always going away and we never I remember that day with the waves and the boats with their high heads rocking and the swell of the ship those Officers uniforms on shore leave made me seasick he didnt say anything he was very serious I had the high buttoned boots on and my skirt was blowing she kissed me six or seven times didnt I cry yes I believe I did or near it my lips were taittering when I said goodbye she had a Gorgeous wrap of some special kind of blue colour on her for the voyage made very peculiarly to one side like and it was extremely pretty it got as dull as the devil after they went I was almost planning to run away mad out of it somewhere were never easy where we are father or aunt or marriage waiting always waiting to guiiiide him toooo me waiting nor speeeed his flying feet their damn guns bursting and booming all over the shop especially the Queens birthday and throwing everything down in all directions if you didnt open the windows when general Ulysses Grant whoever he was or did supposed to be some great fellow landed off the ship and old Sprague the consul that was there from before the flood dressed up poor man and he in mourning for the son then the same old reveille in the morning and drums rolling and the unfortunate poor devils of soldiers walking about with messtins smelling the place more than the old longbearded jews in their jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and gunfire for the men to cross the lines and the warden marching with his keys to lock the gates and the bagpipes and only Captain Groves and father talking about Rorkes drift and Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at Khartoum lighting their pipes for them everytime they went out drunken old devil with his grog on the windowsill catch him leaving any of it picking his nose trying to think of some other dirty story to tell up in a corner but he never forgot himself when I was there sending me out of the room on some blind excuse paying his compliments the Bushmills whisky talking of course but hed do the same to the next woman that came along I supposed he died of galloping drink ages ago the days like years not a letter from a living soul except the odd few I posted to myself with bits of paper in them so bored sometimes I could fight with my nails listening to that old Arab with the one eye and his heass of an instrument singing his heah heah aheah all my compriments on your hotchapotch of your heass as bad as now with the hands hanging off me looking out of the window if there was a nice fellow even in the opposite house that medical in Holles street the nurse was after when I put on my gloves and hat at the window to show I was going out not a notion what I meant arent they thick never understand what you say even youd want to print it up on a big poster for them not even if you shake hands twice with the left he didnt recognise me either when I half frowned at him outside Westland row chapel where does their great intelligence come in Id like to know grey matter they have it all in their tail if you ask me those country gougers up in the City Arms intelligence they had a damn sight less than the bulls and cows they were selling the meat and the coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying to swindle me with the wrong bill he took out of his hat what a pair of paws and pots and pans and kettles to mend any broken bottles for a poor man today and no visitors or post ever except his cheques or some advertisement like that wonderworker they sent him addressed dear Madam only his letter and the card from Milly this morning see she wrote a letter to him who did I get the last letter from O Mrs Dwenn now whatever possessed her to write after so many years to know the recipe I had for pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote to say she was married to a very rich architect if Im to believe all I hear with a villa and eight rooms her father was an awfully nice man he was near seventy always good humour well now Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie theres the pyannyer that was a solid silver coffee service he had too on the mahogany sideboard then dying so far away I hate people that have always their poor story to tell everybody has their own troubles that poor Nancy Blake died a month ago of acute pneumonia well I didnt know her so well as all that she was Floeys friend more than mine its a bother having to answer he always tells me the wrong things and no stops to say like making a speech your sad bereavement sympathy I always make that mistake and newphew with 2 double yous in I hope hell write me a longer letter the next time if its a thing he really likes me O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chances at all in this place like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me a love-letter his wasnt much and I told him he could write what he liked yours ever Hugh Boylan in Old Madrid silly women believe love is sighing I am dying still if he wrote it I suppose thered be some truth in it true or no it fills up your whole day and life always something to think about every moment and see it all around you like a new world I could write the answer in bed to let him imagine me short just a few words not those long crossed letters Atty Dillon used to write to the fellow that was something in the four courts that jilted her after out of the ladies letterwriter when I told her to say a few simple words he could twist how he liked not acting with precipit precipitancy with equal candour the greatest earthly happiness answer to a gentlemans proposal affirmatively my goodness theres nothing else its all very fine for them but as for being a woman as soon as youre old they might as well throw you out in the bottom of the ash pit. 

Mulveys was the first when I was in bed that morning and Mrs Rubio brought it in with the coffee she stood there standing when I asked her to hand me and I pointing at them I couldnt think of the word a hairpin to open it with ah horquilla disobliging old thing and it staring her in the face with her switch of false hair on her and vain about her appearance ugly as she was near 80 or a 100 her face a mass of wrinkles with all her religion domineering because she never could get over the Atlantic fleet coming in half the ships of the world and the union Jack flying with all her carabineros because 4 drunken English sailors took all the rock from them and because I didnt run into mass often enough in Santa Maria to please her with her shawl up on her except when there was a marriage on with all her miracles of the saints and her black blessed virgin with the silver dress and the sun dancing 3 times on Easter Sunday morning and when the priest was going by with the bell bringing the vatican to the dying blessing herself for his Majestad an admirer he signed it I near jumped out of my skin I wanted to pick him up when I saw him following me along the Calle Real in the shop window then he tipped me just in passing I never thought hed write making an appointment I had it inside my petticoat bodice all day reading it up in every hole and corner while father was up at the drill instructing to find out by the handwriting or the language of stamps singing I remember shall I wear a white rose and I wanted to put on the old stupid clock to near the time he was the first man kissed me under the Moorish wall my sweetheart when a boy it never entered my head what kissing meant till he put his tongue in my mouth his mouth was sweetlike young I put my knee up to him a few times to learn the way what did I tell him I was engaged for fun to the son of a Spanish nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora and he believed that I was to be married to him in 3 years time theres many a true word spoken in jest there is a flower that bloometh a few things I told him true about myself just for him to be imagining the Spanish girls he didnt like I suppose one of them wouldnt have him I got him excited he crushed all the flowers on my bosom he brought me he couldnt count the pesetas and the perragordas till I taught him Cappoquin he came from he said on the Blackwater but it was too short then the day before he left May yes it was May when the infant king of Spain was born Im always like that in the spring Id like a new fellow every year up on the tiptop under the rockgun near OHaras tower I told him it was struck by lightning and all about the old Barbary apes they sent to Clapham without a tail careering all over the show on each others back Mrs Rubio said she was a regular old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of Inces farm and throw stones at you if you went anear he was looking at me I had that white blouse on open at the front to encourage him as much as I could without too openly they were just beginning to be plump I said I was tired we lay over the firtree cove a wild place I suppose it must be the highest rock in existence the galleries and casemates and those frightful rocks and Saint Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever they call them hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching my boots Im sure thats the way down the monkeys go under the sea to Africa when they die the ships out far like chips that was the Malta boat passing Yes the sea and the sky you could do what you liked lie there for ever he caressed them outside they love doing that its the roundness there I was leaning over him with my white ricestraw hat to take the newness out of it the left side of my face the best my blouse open for his last day transparent kind of shirt he had I could see his chest pink he wanted to touch mine with his for a moment but I wouldn't let him he was awfully put out first for fear you never know consumption or leave me with a child embarazada that old servant Ines told me that one drop even if it got into you at all after I tried with the Banana but I was afraid it might break and get lost up in me somewhere yes because they once took something down out of a woman that was up there for years covered with limesalts theyre all mad to get in there where they come out of youd think they could never get far enough up and then theyre done with you in a way till the next time yes because theres a wonderful feeling there all the time so tender how did we finish it off yes O yes I pulled him off into my handkerchief pretending not to be excited but I opened my legs I wouldnt let him touch me inside my petticoat I had a skirt opening up the side I tortured the life out of him first tickling him I loved rousing that dog in the hotel rrrsssst awokwokawok his eyes shut and a bird flying below us he was shy all the same I liked him like that morning I made him blush a little when I got over him that way when I unbuttoned him and took his out and drew back the skin it had a kind of eye in it theyre all Buttons men down the middle on the wrong side of them Molly darling he called me what was his name Jack Joe Harry Mulvey was it yes I think a lieutenant he was rather fair he had a laughing kind of a voice so I went around to the whatyoucallit everything was whatyoucallit moustache had he he said hed come back Lord its just like yesterday to me and if I was married hed do it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him block me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a Captain or admiral its nearly 20 years if I said firtree cove he would if he came up behind me and put his hands over my eyes to guess who I might recognise him hes young still about 40 perhaps hes married some girl on the black water and is quite changed they all do they havent half the character a woman has she little knows what I did with her beloved husband before he ever dreamt of her in broad daylight too in the sight of the whole world you might say they could have put an article about it in the Chronicle I was a bit wild after when I blew out the old bag the biscuits were in from Benady Bros and exploded it Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and pigeons screaming coming back the same way that we went over middle hill round by the old guardhouse and the jews burial place pretending to read out the Hebrew on them I wanted to fire his pistol he said he hadnt one he didnt know what to make of me with his peaked cap on that he always wore crooked as often as I settled it straight H M S Calypso swinging my hat that old Bishop that spoke off the altar his long preach about womans higher functions about girls now riding the bicycle and wearing peak caps and the new woman bloomers God send him sense and me more money I suppose theyre called after him I never thought that would be my name Bloom when I used to write it in print to see how it looked on a visiting card or practising for the butcher and oblige M Bloom youre looking blooming Josie used to say after I married him well its better than Breen or Briggs does brig or those awful names with bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom or some other kind of a bottom Mulvey I wouldnt go mad about either or suppose I divorced him Mrs Boylan my mother whoever she was might have given me a nicer name the Lord knows after the lovely one she had Lunita Laredo the fun we had running along Willis road to Europa point twisting in and out all round the other side of Jersey they were shaking and dancing about in my blouse like Millys little ones now when she runs up the stairs I loved looking down at them I was jumping up at the pepper trees and the white poplars pulling the leaves off and throwing them at him he went to India he was to write the voyages those men have to make to the ends of the world and back its the least they might get a squeeze or two at a woman while they can going out to be drowned or blown up somewhere I went up windmill hill to the flats that Sunday morning with Captain Rubios that was dead spyglass like the sentry had he said hed have one or two from on board I wore that frock from the B Marche Paris and the coral necklace the straits shining I could see over to Morocco almost the bay of Tangierwhite and the At!as mountain with snow on it and the straits like a river so clear Harry Molly Darling I was thinking of him on the sea all the time after at mass when my petticoat began to slip down at the elevation weeks and weeks I kept the handkerchief under my pillow for the smell of him there was no decent perfume to be got in that Gibraltar only that cheap peau despagne that faded and left a stink on you more than anything else I wanted to give him a memento he gave me that clumsy Claddagh ring for luck that I gave Gardner going to South Africa where those Boers killed him with their war and fever but they were well beaten all the same as if it brought its bad luck with it like an opal or pearl must have been pure 16 carat gold because it was very heavy I can see his face clean shaven Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train again weeping tone once in the dear deaead days beyond recall close my eyes breath my lips forward kiss sad look eyes open piano ere oer the world the mists began I hate that istsbeg comes loves sweet ssooooooong Ill let that out full when I get in front of the footlights again Kathleen Kearney and her lot of squealers Miss This Miss That Miss Theother lot of sparrowfarts skitting around talking about politics they know as much about as my backside anything in the world to make themselves someway interesting Irish homemade beauties soldiers daughter am ay and whose are you bootmakers and publicans I beg your pardon coach I thought you were a wheelbarrow theyd die down dead off their feet if ever they got a chance of walking down the Alameda on an officers arm like me on the bandnight my eyes flash my bust that they havent passion God help their poor head I knew more about men and life when I was 15 than theyll all know at 50 they dont know how to sing a song like that Gardner said no man could look at my mouth and teeth smiling like that end not think of it I was afraid he mightnt like my accent first he so English all father left me in spite of his stamps Ive my mothers eyes and figure anyhow he always said theyre so snotty about themselves some of those cads he wasnt a bit like that he was dead gone on my lips let them get a husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like mine or see if they can excite a swell with money that can pick and choose whoever he wants like Boylan to do it 4 or 5 times locked in each others arms or the voice either I could have been a prima donna only I married him comes loooves old deep down chin back not too much make it double My Ladys Bower is too long for an encore about the moated grange at twilight and vaulted rooms yes Ill sing Winds that blow from the south that he gave after the choirstairs performance Ill change that lace on my black dress to show off my bubs and Ill yes by God Ill get that big fan mended make them burst with envy my hole is itching me always when I think of him I feel I want to I feel some wind in me better go easy not wake him have him at it again slobbering after washing every bit of myself back belly and sides if we had even a bath itself or my own room anyway I wish hed sleep in some bed by himself with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart God or do the least thing better yes hold them like that a bit on my side piano quietly sweeeee theres that train far away pianissimo eeeeeeee one more song that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go free who knows if that pork chop I took with my cup of tea after was quite good with the heat I couldnt smell anything off it Im sure that queerlooking man in the porkbutchers is a great rogue I hope that lamp is not smoking fill my nose up with smuts better than having him leaving the gas on all night I couldnt rest easy in my bed in Gibraltar even getting up to see why am I so damned nervous about that though I like it in the winter its more company O Lord it was rotten cold too that winter when I was only about ten was I yes I had the big doll with all the funny clothes dressing her up and undressing that icy wind skeeting across from those mountains the something Nevada sierra nevada standing at the fire with the little bit of a short shift I had up to heat myself I loved dancing about in it then make a race back into bed Im sure that fellow opposite used to be there the whole time watching with the lights out in the summer and I in my skin hopping around I used to love myself then stripped at the washstand dabbing and creaming only when it came to the chamber performance I put out the light too so then there were 2 of us Goodbye to my sleep for this night anyhow I hope hes not going to get in with those medicals leading him astray to imagine hes young again coming in at 4 in the morning it must be if not more still he had the manners not to wake me what do they find to gabber about all night squandering money and getting drunker and drunker couldnt they drink water then he starts giving us his orders for eggs and tea Findon haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well have him sitting up like the king of the country pumping the wrong end of the spoon up and down in his egg wherever he learned that from and I love to hear him falling up the stairs of a morning with the cups rattling on the tray and then play with the cat she rubs up against you for her own sake I wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman always licking and lecking but I hate their claws I wonder do they see anything that we cant staring like that when she sits at the top of the stairs so long and listening as I wait always what a robber too that lovely fresh plaice I bought I think Ill get a bit of fish tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will with some blancmange with black currant jam like long ago not those 2 lb pots of mixed plum and apple from the London and Newcastle Williams and Woods goes twice as far only for the bones I hate those eels cod yes Ill get a nice piece of cod Im always getting enough for 3 forgetting anyway Im sick of that everlasting butchers meat from Buckleys loin chops and leg beef and rib steak and scrag of mutton and calfs pluck the very name is enough or a picnic suppose we all gave 5/- each and or let him pay and invite some other woman for him who Mrs Fleming and drive out to the furry glen or the strawberry beds wed have him examining all the horses toenails first like he does with the letters no not with Boylan there yes with some cold veal and ham mixed sandwiches there are little houses down at the bottom of the banks there on purpose but its as hot as blazes he says not a bank holiday anyhow I hate those ruck of Mary Ann coalboxes out for the day Whit Monday is a cursed day too no wonder that bee bit him better the seaside but Id never again in this life get into a boat with him after him at Bray telling the boatmen he knew how to row if anyone asked could he ride the steeplechase for the gold cup hed say yes then it came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and the weight all down my side telling me to pull the right reins now pull the left and the tide all swamping in floods in through through the bottom and his oar slipping out of the stirrupits a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of course me no theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in his flannel trousers Id like to have tattered them down off him before all the people and give him what that one calls flagellate till he was black and blue do him all the good in the world only for that longnosed chap I dont know who he is with that other beauty Burke out of the City Arms hotel was there spying around as usual on the slip always where he wasnt wanted if there was a row on you vomit a better face there was no love lost between us thats I consolation I wonder what kind is that book he brought me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other Mr de Kock I suppose the people gave him that nickname going about with his tube from one woman to another I couldnt even change my new white shoes all ruined with the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather all blowy and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because the smell of the sea excited me of course the sardines and the bream in Catalan bay round the back of the rock they were fine all silver in the fishermens baskets old Luigi near a hundred they said came from Genoa and the tall old chap with the earrings I dont like a man you have to climb up to go get at I suppose theyre all dead and rotten long ago besides I dont like being alone in this big barracks of a place at night I suppose Ill have to put up with it I never brought a bit of salt in even when we moved in the confusion musical academy he was going to make on the first floor drawingroom with a brassplate or Blooms private hotel he suggested go and ruin himself altogether the way his father did down in Ennis like all the things he told father he was going to do and me but I saw through him telling me all the lovely places we could go for the honeymoon Venice by moonlight with the gondolas and the lake of Como he had a picture cut out of some paper of and mandolines and lanterns O how nice I said whatever I liked he was going to do immediately if not sooner will you be my man will you carry my can he ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim for all the plans he invents then leaving us here all day you never know what old beggar at the door for a crust with his long story might be a tramp and put his foot in the way to prevent me shutting it like that picture of that hardened criminal he was called in Lloyds Weekly News 20 years in jail then he comes out and murders an old woman for her mofley imagine his poor wife or mother or whoever she is such a face youd run miles away from I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors and windows to make sure but its worse again being locked up like in a prison or a madhouse they ought to be all shot or the cat of nine tails a big brute like that that would attack a poor old woman to murder her in her bed Id cut them off so I would not that hed be much use still better than nothing the night I was sure I heard burglars in the kitchen and he went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker as if he was looking for a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out of his wits making as much noise as he possibly could for the burglars benefit there isnt much to steal indeed the Lord knows still its the feeling especially now with Milly away such an idea for him to send the girl down there to learn to take photographs on account of his grandfather instead of sending her to Skerrys academy where shed have to learn not like me getting all at school only hed do a thing like that all the same on account of me and Boylan thats why he did it Im certain the way he plots and plans everything out I couldnt turn round with her in the place lately unless I bolted the door first gave me the fidgets coming in without knocking first when I put the chair against the door just as I was washing myself there below with the glove get on your nerves then doing the loglady all day put her in a glasscase with two at a time to look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off that little gimcrack statue with her roughness and carelessness before she left that I got that little Italian boy to mend so that you cant see the join for 2 shillings wouldnt even teem the potatoes for you of course shes right not to ruin her hands I noticed he was always talking to her lately at the table explaining things in the paper and she pretending to understand sly of course that comes from his side of the house and helping her into her coat but if there was anything wrong with her its me shed tell not him he Cant say I pretend things can he Im too honest as a matter of fact I suppose he thinks Im finished out and laid on the shelf well Im not no nor anything like it well see well see now shes well on for flirting too with Tom Devans two sons imitating me whistling with those romps of Murray girls calling for her can Milly come out please shes in great demand to pick what they can out of her round in Nelson street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its as well he sent her where she is she was just getting out of bounds wanting to go on the skatingrink and smoking their cigarettes through their nose I smelt it off her dress when I was biting off the thread of the button I sewed on to the bottom of her jacket she couldnt hide much from me I tell you only I oughtnt to have stitched it and it on her it brings a parting and the last plumpudding too split in 2 halves see it comes out no matter what they say her tongue is a bit too long for my taste your blouse is open too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle blackbottom and I had to tell her no! to cock her legs up like that on show on the windowsill before all the people passing they all look at her like me when I was her age of course any old rag looks well on you then a great touchmenot too in her own way at the Only Way in the Theatre royal take your foot away out of that I hate people touching me afraid of her life Id crush her skirt with the pleats a lot of that touching must go on in theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always trying to wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the pit at the Gaiety for Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the last time Ill ever go there to be squashed like that for any Trilby or her barebum every two minutes tipping me there and looking away hes a bit daft I think I saw him after trying to get near two stylish dressed ladies outside Switzers window at the same little game I recognised him on the moment the face and everything but he didn't remember me and she didnt even want me to kiss her at the Broadstone going away well I hope shell get someone to dance attendance on her the way I did when she was down with the mumps her glands swollen wheres this and wheres that of course she cant feel anything deep yet I never came properly till I was what 22 or so it went into the wrong place always only the usual girls nonsense and giggling that Conny Connolly writing to her in white ink on black paper sealed with sealingwax though she clapped when the curtain came down because he looked so handsome then we had Martin Harvey for breakfast dinner and supper I thought to myself afterwards it must be real love if a man gives up his life for her that way for nothing I suppose there are few men like that left its hard to believe in it though unless it really happened to me the majority of them with not a particle of love in their natures to find two people like that nowadays full up of each other that would feel the same way as you do theyre usually a bit foolish in the head his father must have been a bit queer to go and poison himself after her still poor old man I suppose he felt lost always making love to my things too the few old rags I have wanting to put her hair up at 15 my powder too only ruin her skin on her shes time enough for that all her life after of course shes restless knowing shes pretty with her lips so red a pity they wont stay that way I was too but theres no use going to the fair with the thing answering me like a fishwoman when I asked to go for a half a stone of potatoes the day we met Mrs Joe Gallaher at the trottingmatches and she pretended not to see us in her trap with Friery the solicitor we werent grand enough till I gave her 2 damn fine cracks across the ear for herself take that now for answering me like that and that for your impudence she had me that exasperated of course contradicting I was badtempered too because how was it there was a weed in the tea or I didnt sleep the night before cheese I ate was it and I told her over and over again not to leave knives crossed like that because she has nobody to command her as she said herself well if he doesnt correct her faith I will that was the last time she turned on the teartap I was just like that myself they darent order me about the place its his fault of course having the two of us slaving here instead of getting in a woman long ago am I ever going to have a proper servant again of course then shed see him coming Id have to let her know or shed revenge it arent they a nuisance that old Mrs Fleming you have to be walking round after her putting the things into her hands sneezing and farting into the pots well of course shes old she cant help it a good job I found that rotten old smelly dishcloth that got lost behind the dresser I knew there was something and opened the window to let out the smell bringing in his friends to entertain them like the night he walked home with a dog if you please that might have been mad especially Simon Dedalus son his father such a criticiser with his glasses up with his tall hat on him at the cricket match and a great big hole in his sock one thing laughing at the other and his son that got all those prizes for whatever he won them in the intermediate imagine climbing over the railings if anybody saw him that knew us wonder he didnt tear a big hole in his grand funeral trousers as if the one nature gave wasnt enough for anybody hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen now is he right in his head I ask pity it wasn't washing day my old pair of drawers might have been hanging up too on the line on exhibition for all hed ever care with the ironmould mark the stupid old bundle burned on them he might think was something else and she never even rendered down the fat I told her and now shes going such as she was on account of her paralysed husband getting worse theres always something wrong with them disease or they have to go under an operation or if its not that its drink and he beats her Ill have to hunt around again for someone every day I get up theres some new thing on sweet God sweet God well when Im stretched out dead in my grave I suppose Ill have some peace I want to get up a minute if Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has come on me yes now wouldnt that afflict you of course all the poking and rooting and ploughing he had up in me now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt that pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some men do God knows theres always something wrong with us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual monthly auction isnt it simply sickening that night it came on me like that the one and only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn gave him to see Mrs Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety something he did about insurance for him Drimmies I was fit to be tied though I wouldnt give in with that gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his glasses and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and his soul thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled the best I could all in a swamp leaning forward as if I was interested having to sit it out then to the last tag I wont forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry supposed to be a fast play about adultery that idiot in the gallery hissing the woman adulteress he shouted I suppose he went and had a woman in the next lane running round all the back ways after to make up for it I wish he had what I had then hed boo I bet the cat itself is better off than us have we too much blood up in us or what O patience above its pouring out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me pregnant as big as he is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets the clean linen I wore brought it on too damn it damn it and they always want to see a stain on the bed to know youre a virgin for them all thats troubling them theyre such fools too you could be a widow or divorced 40 times over a daub of red ink would do or blackberry juice no thats too purply O Jamesy let me up out of this pooh sweets of sin whoever suggested that business for women what between clothes and cooking and children this damned old bed too jingling like the dickens I suppose they could hear us away over the other side of the park till I suggested to put the quilt on the floor with the pillow under my bottom I wonder is it nicer in the day I think it is easy I think Ill cut all this hair off me there scalding me I might look like a young girl wouldnt he get the great suckin the next time he turned up my clothes on me Id give anything to see his face wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a holy horror of its breaking under me after that old commode I wonder was I too heavy sitting on his knee I made him sit on the easychair purposely when I took off only my blouse and skirt first in the other room he was so busy where he oughtnt to be he never felt me I hope my breath was sweet after those kissing comfits easy God I remember one time I could scout it out straight whistling like a man almost easy O Lord how noisy I hope theyre bubbles on it for a wad of money from some fellow Ill have to perfume it in the morning dont forget I bet he never saw a better pair of thighs than that look how white they are the smoothest place is right there between this bit here how soft like a peach easy God I wouldnt mind being a man and get up on a lovely woman O Lord what a row youre making like the jersey lily easy O how the waters come down at Lahore 

who knows is there anything the matter with my insides or have I something growing in me getting that thing like that every week when was it last I Whit Monday yes its only about 3 weeks I ought to go to the doctor only it would be like before I married him when I had that white thing coming from me and Floey made me go to that dry old stick Dr Collins for womens diseases on Pembroke road your vagina he called it I suppose thats how he got all the gilt mirrors and carpets getting round those rich ones off Stephens green running up to him for every little fiddlefaddle her vagina and her cochinchina theyve money of course so theyre all right I wouldnt marry him not if he was the last man in the world besides there something queer about their children always smelling around those filthy bitches all sides asking me if what I did had an offensive odour what did he want me to do but the one thing gold maybe what a question if I smathered it all over his wrinkly old face for him with all my compriment I suppose hed know then and could you pass it easily pass what I thought he was talking about the rock of Gibraltar the way he puts it thats a very nice invention too by the way only I like letting myself down after in the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull the chain then to flush it nice cool pins and needles still theres something in it I suppose I always used to know by Millys when she was a child whether she had worms or not still all the same paying him for that how much is that doctor one guinea please and asking me had I frequent omissions where do those old fellows get all the words they have omissions with his shortsighted eyes on me cocked sideways I wouldnt trust him too far to give me chloroform or God knows what else still I liked him when he sat down to write the thing out frowning so severe his nose intelligent like that you be damned you lying strap O anything no matter who except an idiot he was clever enough to spot that of course that was all thinking of him and his mad crazy letters my Precious one everything connected with your glorious Body everything underlined that comes from it is a thing of beauty and of joy for ever something he got out of some nonsensical book that he had me always at myself 4 or 5 times a day sometimes and I said I hadnt are you sure O yes I said I am quite sure in a way that shut him up I knew what was coming next only natural weakness it was he excited me I dont know how the first night ever we met when I was living in Rehoboth terrace we stood staring at one another for about 10 minutes as if we met somewhere I suppose on account of my being jewess looking after my mother he used to amuse me the things he said with the half sloothering smile on him and all the Doyles said he was going to stand for a member of Parliament O wasnt I the born fool to believe all his blather about home rule and the land league sending me that long strool of a song out of the Huguenots to sing in French to be more classy O beau pays de la Touraine that I never even sang once explaining and rigmaroling about religion and persecution he wont let you enjoy anything naturally then might he as a great favour the very 1st opportunity he got a chance in Brighton square running into my bedroom pretending the ink got on his hands to wash it off with the Albion milk and sulphur soap I used to use and the gelatine still round it O I laughed myself sick at him that day Id better not make an all night sitting on this affair they ought to make chambers a natural size so that a woman could sit on it properly he kneels down to do it I suppose there isnt in all creation another man with the habits he has look at the way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed how can he without a hard bolster its well he doesnt kick or he might knock out all my teeth breathing with his hand on his nose like that Indian god he took me to show one wet Sunday in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a pinafore lying on his side on his hand with his ten toes sticking out that he said was a bigger religion than the jews and Our Lords both put together all over Asia imitating him ashes always imitating everybody I suppose he used to sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big square feet up in his wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway wheres this those napkins are ah yes I know I hope the old press doesnt creak ah I knew it would hes sleeping hard had a good time somewhere still she must have given him great value for his money of course he has to pay for it from her O this nuisance of a thing I hope theyll have something better for us in the other world tying ourselves up God help us thats all right for tonight now the lumpy old jingly bed always reminds me of old Cohen I suppose he scratched himself in it often enough and he thinks father bought it from Lord Napier that I used to admire when I was a little girl because I told him easy piano O I like my bed God here we are as bad as ever after 16 years how many houses were we in at all Raymond Terrace and Ontario terrace and Lombard street and Holles street and he goes about whistling every time were on the run again his huguenots or the frogs march pretending to help the men with our 4 sticks of furniture and then the City Arms hotel worse and worse says Warden Daly that charming place on the landing always somebody inside praying then leaving all their stinks after them always know who was in there last every time were just getting on right something happens or he puts his big foot in it Thoms and Helys and Mr Cuffes and Drimmies either hes going to be run into prison over his old lottery tickets that was to be all our salvations or he goes and gives impudence well have him coming home with the sack soon out of the Freeman too like the rest on account of those Sinner Fein or the Freemasons then well see if the little man he showed me dribbling along in the wet all by himself round by Coadys lane will give him much consolation that he says is so capable and sincerely Irish he is indeed judging by the sincerity of the trousers I saw on him wait theres Georges church bells wait 3 quarters the hour wait 2 oclock well thats a nice hour of the night for him to be coming home at to anybody climbing down into the area if anybody saw him Ill knock him off that little habit tomorrow first Ill look at his shirt to see or Ill see if he has that French letter still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I dont know deceitful men all their 20 pockets arent enough for their lies then why should we tell them even if its the truth they dont believe you then tucked up in bed like those babies in the Aristocrats Masterpiece he brought me another time as if we hadnt enough of that in real life without some old Aristocrat or whatever his name is disgusting you more with those rotten pictures children with two heads and no legs thats the kind of villainy theyre always dreaming about with not another thing in their empty heads they ought to get slow poison the half of them then tea and toast for him buttered on both sides and newlaid eggs I suppose Im nothing any more when I wouldnt let him lick me in Holles street one night man man tyrant as ever for the one thing he slept on the floor half the night naked the way the jews used when somebody dies belonged to them and wouldnt eat any breakfast or speak a word wanting to be petted so I thought I stood out enough for one time and let him he does it all wrong too thinking only of his own pleasure his tongue is too flat or I dont know what he forgets that we then I dont Ill make him do it again if he doesnt mind himself and lock him down to sleep in the coalcellar with the blackbeetles I wonder was it her Josie off her head with my castoffs hes such a born liar too no hed never have the courage with a married woman thats why he wants me and Boylan though as for her Denis as she calls him that forlornlooking spectacle you couldn't call him a husband yes its some little bitch hes got in with even when I was with him with Milly at the College races that Hornblower with the childs bonnet on the top on his nob let us into by the back way he was throwing his sheeps eyes at those two doing skirt duty up and down I tried to wink at him first no use of course and thats the way his money goes this is the fruits of Mr Paddy Dignam yes they were all in great style at the grand funeral in the paper Boylan brought in if they saw a real officers funeral thatd be something reversed arms muffled drums the poor horse walking behind in black L Bloom and Tom Kernan that drunken little barrelly man that bit his tongue off falling down the mens W C drunk in some place or other and Martin Cunningham and the two Dedaluses and Fanny MCoys husband white head of cabbage skinny thing with a turn in her eye trying to sing my songs shed want to be born all over again and her old green dress with the lowneck as she cant attract them any other way like dabbling on a rainy day I see it all now plainly and they call that friendship killing and then burying one another and they all with their wives and families at home more especially Jack Power keeping that barmaid he does of course his wife always sick or going to be sick or just getting better of it and hes a good-looking man still though hes getting a bit grey over the ears theyre a nice lot all of them well theyre not going to get my husband again into their clutches if I can help it making fun of him then behind his back I know well when he goes on with his idiotics because he has sense enough not to squander every penny piece he earns down their gullets and looks after his wife and family goodfornothings poor Paddy Dignam all the same Im sorry in a way for him what are his wife and 5 children going to do unless he was insured comical little teetotum always stuck up in some pub corner and her or her son waiting Bill Bailey wont you please come home her widows weeds wont improve her appearance theyre awfully becoming though if youre goodlooking what men wasn't he yes he was at the Glencree dinner and Ben Dollard base barreltone the night he borrowed the swallowtail to sing out of in Holles street squeezed and squashed into them and grinning all over his big Dolly face like a wellwhipped childs botty didnt he look a balmy ballocks sure enough that must have been a spectacle on the stage imagine paying 5/- in the preserved seats for that to see him and Simon Dedalus too he was always turning up half screwed singing the second verse first the old love is the new was one of his so sweetly sang the maiden on the hawthorn bough he was always on for flirtyfying too when I sang Maritana with him at Freddy Mayers private opera he had a delicious glorious voice Phbe dearest goodbye sweetheart he always sang it not like Bartell dArcy sweet tart goodbye of course he had the gift of the voice so there was no art in it all over you like a warm showerbath O Maritana wildwood flower we sang splendidly though it was a bit too high for my register even transposed and he was married at the time to May Goulding but then hed say or do something to knock the good out of it hes a widower now I wonder what sort is his son he says hes an author and going to be a university professor of Italian and Im to take lessons what is he driving at now showing him my photo its not good of me I ought to have got it taken in drapery that never looks out of fashion still I look young in it I wonder he didnt make him a present of it altogether and me too after all why not I saw him driving down to the Kingsbridge station with his father and mother I was in mourning thats 11 years ago now yes hed be 11 though what was the good in going into mourning for what was neither one thing nor the other of course he insisted hed go into mourning for the cat I suppose hes a man now by this time he was an innocent boy then and a darling little fellow in his lord Fauntleroy suit and curly hair like a prince on the stage when I saw him at Mat Dillons he liked me too I remember they all do wait by God yes wait yes hold on he was on the cards this morning when I laid out the deck union with a young stranger neither dark nor fair you met before I thought it meant him but hes no chicken nor a stranger either besides my face was turned the other way what was the 7th card after that the 10 of spaces for a Journey by land then there was a letter on its way and scandals too the 3 queens and the 8 of diamonds for a rise in society yes wait it all came out and 2 red 8s for new garments look at that and didnt I dream something too yes there was something about poetry in it I hope he hasnt long greasy hair hanging into his eyes or standing up like a red Indian what do they go about like that for only getting themselves and their poetry laughed at I always liked poetry when I was a girl first I thought he was a poet like Byron and not an ounce of it in his composition I thought he was quite different I wonder is he too young hes about wait 88 I was married 88 Milly is 15 yesterday 89 what age was he then at Dillons 5 or 6 about 88 I suppose hes 20 or more Im not too old for him if hes 23 or 24 I hope hes not that stuck up university student sort no otherwise he wouldnt go sitting down in the old kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and taking of course he pretended to understand it all probably he told him he was out of Trinity college hes very young to be a professor I hope hes not a professor like Goodwin was he was a patent professor of John Jameson they all write about some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont find many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining so beautifully coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the lighthouse at Europa point the guitar that fellow played was so expressive will I never go back there again all new faces two glancing eyes a lattice hid Ill sing that for him theyre my eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes as darkly bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves young star itll be a change the Lord knows to have an intelligent person to talk to about yourself not always listening to him and Billy Prescotts ad and Keyess ad and Tom the Devils ad then, if anything goes wrong in their business we have to suffer Im sure hes very distinguished Id like to meet a man like that God not those other ruck besides hes young those fine young men I could see down in Margate strand bathing place from the side of the rock standing up in the sun naked like a God or something and then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that lovely little statue he bought I could look at him all-day long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for you to listen theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also his lovely young cock there so simply I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so clean and white he looked with his boyish face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down what its only like gruel or the dew theres no danger besides hed be so clean compared with those pigs of men I suppose never dream of washing it from 1 years end to the other the most of them only thats what gives the women the moustaches Im sure itll be grand if I can only get in with a handsome young poet at my age Ill throw them the 1st thing in the morning till I see if the wishcard comes out or Ill try pairing the lady herself and see if he comes out Ill read and study all I can find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew who he likes so he wont think me stupid if he thinks all women are the same and I can teach him the other part Ill make him feel all over him till he half faints under me then hell write about me lover and mistress publicly too with our 2 photographs in all the papers when he becomes famous O but then what am I going to do about him though 

no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor no nothing in his nature slapping us behind like that on my bottom because I didn't call him Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a cabbage thats what you get for notkeeping them in their proper place pulling off his shoes and trousers there on the chair before me so barefaced without even asking permission and standing out that vulgar way in the half of a shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a butcher or those old hypocrites in the time of Julius Caesar of course hes right enough in his way to pass the time as a joke sure you might as well be in bed with what with a lion God Im sure hed have something better to say for himself an old Lion would O well I suppose its because they were so plump and tempting in my short petticoat he couldnt resist they excite myself sometimes its well for men all the amount of pleasure they get off a womans body were so round and white for them always I wished I was one myself for a change just to try with that thing they have swelling upon you so hard and at the same time so soft when you touch it my uncle John has a thing long I heard those cornerboys saying passing the corner of Marrowbone lane my aunt Mary has a thing hairy because it was dark and they knew a girl was passing it didnt make me blush why should it either its only nature and he puts his thing long into my aunt Marys hairy etcetera and turns out to be you put the handle in a sweepingbrush men again all over they can pick and choose what they please a married woman or a fast widow or a girl for their different tastes like those houses round behind Irish street no but were to be always chained up theyre not going to be chaining me up no damn fear once I start I tell you for stupid husbands jealousy why cant we all remain friends over it instead of quarrelling her husband found it out what they did together well naturally and if he did can he undo it hes coronado anyway whatever he does and then he going to the other mad extreme about the wife in Fair Tyrants of course the man never even casts a 2nd thought on the husband or wife either its the woman he wants and he gets her what else were we given all those desires for Id like to know I cant help it if Im young still can I its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my time living with him so cold never embracing me except sometimes when hes asleep the wrong end of me not knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a womans bottom Id throw my hat at him after that hed kiss anything unnatural where we havent 1 atom of any kind of expression in us all of us the same 2 lumps of lard before ever I do that to a man pfooh the dirty brutes the mere thought is enough I kiss the feet of you senorita theres some sense in that didnt he kiss our halldoor yes he did what a madman nobody understands his cracked ideas but me still of course a woman wants to be embraced 20 times a day almost to make her look young no matter by who so long as to be in love or loved by somebody if the fellow you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God I was thinking would I go around by the quays there some dark evening where nobodyd know me and pick up a sailor off the sea thatd be hot on for it and not care a pin whose I was only to do it off up in a gate somewhere or one of those wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp pitched near the Bloomfield laundry to try and steal our things if they could I only sent mine there a few times for the name model laundry sending me back over and over some old ones old stockings that blackguardlooking fellow with the fine eyes peeling a switch attack me in the dark and ride me up against the wall without a word or a murderer anybody what they do themselves the fine gentlemen in their silk hats that K C lives up somewhere this way coming out of Hardwicke lane the night he gave us the fish supper on account of winning over the boxing match of course it was for me he gave it I knew him by his gaiters and the walk and when I turned round a minute after just to see there was a woman after coming out of it too some filthy prostitute then he goes home to his wife after that only I suppose the half of those sailors are rotten again with disease O move over your big carcass out of that for the love of Mike listen to him the winds that waft my sighs to thee so well he may sleep and sigh the great Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he knew how he came out on the cards this morning hed have something to sigh for a dark man in some perplexity between 2 7s too in prison for Lord knows what he does that I dont know and Im to be slooching around down in the kitchen to get his lordship his breakfast while hes rolled up like a mummy will I indeed did you ever see me running Id just like to see myself at it show them attention and they treat you like dirt I dont care what anybody says itd be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it you wouldnt see women going and killing one another and slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it on horses yes because a woman whatever she does she knows where to stop sure they wouldn't be in the world at all only for us they dont know what it is to be a woman and a mother how could they where would they all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look after them what I never had thats why I suppose hes running wild now out at night away from his books and studies and not living at home on account of the usual rowdy house I suppose well its a poor case that those that have a fine son like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was watching the two dogs up in her behind in the middle of the naked street that disheartened me altogether I suppose I oughtnt to have buried him in that little woolly jacket I knitted crying as was but give it to some poor child but I knew well Id never have another our 1st death too it was we were never the same since O Im not going to think myself into the glooms about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt stay the night I felt all the time it was somebody strange he brought in instead of roving around the city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if she was alive ruining himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour so silent I used to love coming home after dances the air of the night they have friends they can talk to weve none either he wants what he wont get or its some woman ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in women no wonder they treat us the way they do we are a dreadful lot of bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have makes us so snappy Im not like that he could easy have slept in there on the sofa in the other room suppose he was as shy as a boy he being so young hardly 20 of me in the next room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah what harm Dedalus I wonder its like those names in Gibraltar Delapaz Delagracia they had the devils queer names there father Vial plana of Santa Maria that gave me the rosary Rosales y OReilly in the Calle las Siete Revueltas and Pisimbo and Mrs Opisso in Governor street O what a name Id go and drown myself in the first river if I had a name like her O my and all the bits of streets Paradise ramp and Bedlam ramp and Rodgers ramp and Crutchetts ramp and the devils gap steps well small blame to me if I am a harumscarum I know I am a bit I declare to God I dont feel a day older than then I wonder could I get my tongue round any of the Spanish como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I haven't forgotten it all I thought I had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any person place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera with the questions in it all upside down the two ways I always knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead tired and wanted a good sleep badly I could have brought him in his breakfast in bed with a bit of toast so long as I didnt do it on the knife for bad luck or if the woman was going her rounds with the watercress and something nice and tasty there are a few olives in the kitchen he might like I never could bear the look of them in Abrines I could do the criada the room looks all right since I changed it the other way you see something was telling me all the time Id have to introduce myself not knowing me from Adam very funny wouldnt it Im his wife or pretend we were in Spain with him half awake without a Gods notion where he is dos huevos estrellados senor Lord the cracked things come into my head sometimes itd be great fun supposing he stayed with us why not theres the room upstairs empty and Millys bed in the back room he could do his writing and studies at the table in there for all the scribbling he does at it and if he wants to read in bed in the morning like me as hes making the breakfast for I he can make it for 2 Im sure Im not going to take in lodgers off the street for him if he takes a gesabo of a house like this Id love to have a long talk with an intelligent well-educated person Id have to get a nice pair of red slippers like those Turks with the fez used to sell or yellow and a nice semitransparent morning gown that I badly want or a peachblossom dressing jacket like the one long ago in Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6 Ill just give him one more chance Ill get up early in the morning Im sick of Cohens old bed in any case I might go over to the markets to see all the vegetables and cabbages and tomatoes and carrots and all kinds of splendid fruits all coming in lovely and fresh who knows whod be the 1st man Id meet theyre out looking for it in the morning Mamy Dillon used to say they are and the night too that was her massgoing Id love a big juicy pear now to melt in your mouth like when I used to be in the longing way then Ill throw him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave him to make his mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream too I know what Ill do Ill go about rather gay not too much singing a bit now and then mi fa pieti Masetto then Ill start dressing myself to go out presto non son pill forte Ill put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good eyeful out of that to make his micky stand for him Ill let him know if thats what he wanted that his wife is fucked yes and damn well fucked too up to my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning theres the mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to even iron it out that ought to satisfy him if you dont believe me feel my belly unless I made him stand there and put him into me Ive a mind to tell him every scrap and make him do it in front of me serve him right its all his own fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the gallery said O much about it if thats all the harm ever we did in this vale of tears God knows its not much doesnt everybody only they hide it I suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there for or He wouldnt have made us the way He did so attractive to men then if he wants to kiss my bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it right out in his face as large as life he can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes there my brown part then Ill tell him I want #1 or perhaps 30/- Ill tell him I want to buy underclothes then if he gives me that well he wont be too bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like other women do I could often have written out a fine cheque for myself and write his name on it for a couple of pounds a few times he forgot to lock it up besides he wont spend it Ill let him do it off on me behind provided he doesnt smear all my good drawers O I suppose that cant be helped Ill do the indifferent I or 2 questions Ill know by the answers when hes like that he cant keep a thing back I know every turn in him Ill tighten my bottom well and let out a few smutty words smellrump or lick my shit or the first mad thing comes into my head then Ill suggest about yes O wait now sonny my turn is coming Ill be quite gay and friendly over it O but I was forgetting this bloody pest of a thing pfooh you wouldn't know which to laugh or cry were such a mixture of plum and apple no Ill have to wear the old things so much the better itll be more pointed hell never know whether he did it nor not there thats good enough for you any old thing at all then Ill wipe him off me just like a business his omission then Ill go out Ill have him eyeing up at the ceiling where is she gone now make him want me thats the only way a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can dose off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get up early Ill go to Lambes there beside Findlaters and get them to send us some flowers to put about the place in case he brings him home tomorrow today I mean no no Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place up someway the dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then we can have music and cigarettes I can accompany him first I must clean the keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I wear a white rose or those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 71/2d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky sugar lid a couple of lbs of course a nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharans and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down Jo me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. 


* 对啦[1] 

因为他从来也没那么做过 

让把带两个鸡蛋的早餐送到他床头去吃 

自打在市徽饭店就没这么过 

那阵子他常在床上装病 

嗓音病病囊囊摆出一副亲王派头

好赢得那个干瘪老太婆赖尔登[2]的欢心 

他自以为老太婆会听他摆布呢

可她一个铜板也没给咱留下 

全都献给了弥撒 

为她自己和她的灵魂

简直是天底下头一号抠门鬼

连为自己喝的那杯搀了木精的酒都怕掏四便士 

净对我讲她害的这个病那个病 

没完没了地絮叨她那套政治啦

地震啦世界末日[3]啦 

咱们找点儿乐子不好吗

唉要是全世界的女人都像她那样可够呛 

把游泳衣和袒胸夜礼服都给骂苦了 

当然喽 

谁也不会要她去穿这样的衣服

想必正因为没有一个男人会对她多看上一眼

她信教才信得那么虔诚 

但愿我永远不会变得像她那样 

奇怪的是她倒没要求我们把脸蒙起来 

话又说回来啦 

她的确是个受过良好教育的女人

她就是唠唠叨叨地三句话不离赖尔登先生叨

我觉得他摆脱了她才叫高兴哩

还有她那只狗 

总嗅我的毛皮衣服 

老是往我的衬裙里面钻 

尤其是身上来了的时候 

不过我还是喜欢他[4]对那样的老太婆有礼貌 

不论对端盘子的还是对叫花子 

他都是这样 

向来也不摆空架子但也不会老是这个样儿 

要是他真有什么严重的毛病 

住院要好得多 

那儿什么都那么干净 

可我想我得催上他一个月他才肯答应 

对 

可医院里又会出现个护士

他会赖着不肯出院 

一直到被他们赶了出来 

兴许那护士还是个修女

就像他身上带着的那张下流相片上的 

不过那女的跟我一样才不是什么修女呢 

对 

因为男人们一生病就软弱起来

净说些没出息的话 

要是没有个女人照料就好不了 

要是他流了鼻血 

那可就不得了啦 

那回在糖锥山参加合唱团的野餐会 

他在离南环路不远的地方扭伤了脚 

他脸上那神情活像是快要呜呼哀哉似的

那天我穿的是那件衣服[5] 

斯塔克小姐给他送来了花儿 

是她在筐底儿上所能找到的最蹩脚的蔫花儿

她死乞白赖非要钻进男人的卧室不可 

用她那姑娘嗓门儿说话 

仿佛他都快为她的缘故死啦

那么一来就再也看不到你的脸啦 

他躺在床上 

胡子长长了一些 

更像个男子汉啦 

爹也曾是这样的我就讨厌给缠绷带啦喂药唔的 

当他用剃胡刀去割鸡眼大趾出血的时候

我直害怕他会害上败血症

假若害病的是我 

倒想瞧瞧能得到什么样的照料 

不过当

然喽 

妇道人家总是隐瞒自己的病情 

省得给人添所有那些麻烦 

她们就是这

样的

对啦 

他到什么地方去过 

从他的食欲来看 

这我是有把握的 

不管

怎样总不会是在搞恋爱 

不然的话净想娘儿们就吃不下东西啦 

要不就是半夜里

在街上拉客的窑姐儿 

要是他真到那儿去过 

那么说什么去了饭店就左不过是他

存心蒙骗编出的一套谎话喽[6] 

海因斯把我留住啦 

我碰见谁来着 

啊 

对啦 

我碰见了门顿 

你记得吗

另外还有谁来着 

让我想想看 

我想起他那

张大娃娃脸了

他刚结婚没多久就在普尔万景画会[7]

上跟个小妞儿调起情来啦 

我就把背掉了过去

他偷偷儿地溜掉啦 

看上去怪害臊的 

这又碍着什么事儿啦 

可有一回竟然冒冒失失地向我讨起好来了 

亏得他干得出 

自以为了不起 

大嘴巴肿眼泡儿 

是我见过的天底下头号笨蛋 

大家还喊他作律师呢 

我可不

愿意在床上那么长篇大论的 

不然的话那就是他[8]

在什么地方结交的 

要不就

是偷偷搞到手的小婊子 

要是她们跟我一样了解他的话 

对啦 

前天我去前屋

取火柴并且把报纸上迪格纳穆的讣告拿给他看的时候

他正刷刷刷地写着什么信

哪 

他用吸墨纸把它盖住 

假装在想什么生意上的事 

那很可能就是写给某人的 

那个女的必定认为他是个冤大头 

因为所有的男人到了他这把年纪多少就会变成这样 

尤其他现在已经快四十岁啦 

所以女的就甜言蜜语尽量骗他的钱 

再也没有比老傻瓜更傻的啦 

接着又为了遮掩

就像往常那样吻我屁股 

他究

竟跟谁干着这名堂或是老早就相好了

我一点儿也不在乎 

尽管我还是想弄清楚 

只要他们俩别总是在我鼻子底下 

就像我们在翁塔利奥高台街的时候雇的那个浪

娘儿们玛丽[9]似的 

为了教他上劲儿就垫了个假屁股 

从他身上闻到了那些搽

了脂粉的娘儿们的气味 

真恶心 

有一两回我倒是真起了疑心 

把他叫过来的


他们走来走去的难道不怕在那个部位被踢上一脚或咚地挨一下打吗[154]

女人当然意味着美

谁都知道这一点

当我们住在霍利斯街的时候

他被希利那家店解雇啦

我靠卖衣服

并且在咖啡宫胡乱弹奏[155]过活

他说我蛮可以替什么阔佬当裸体模特儿 我要是把头发披散下来

就会像那个出水的宁芙[156]吗 只不过她更年轻一些罢了

要么我就有点儿像是他收藏的那张西班牙相片上的烂婊子[157]

我曾问过他[158]

难道宁芙就老是那么着[159] 四处走动吗

我还问他

碰上了里面有着胶皮管的什么玩艺儿[160]那个词儿

他却搬出那个关于化身[161]的绕口令

他永远也不会把一件事解释得简单一些好让人家明白 接着他又去把锅底儿都给烧坏啦[162] 而这又全都是为了煎他那份腰子

这边儿的倒还没什么

他[163]总想咬住那边儿的奶头

还留着牙印儿哪

我忍不住喊起来了 他们多可怕呀

老是想伤害你

生米莉那回我的奶水真足

够喂两个娃娃的啦

那到底是怎么回事呢 他说什么我要是去给人家当奶妈每星期能挣上一英镑哩

一到早晨简直就胀得鼓鼓的

溢出来啦

寄住在二十八号的西特伦[164]家那个看上去挺文弱的学生彭罗斯[165]隔着窗户差点儿瞅见我正在那儿洗呢 不过我赶紧抓条毛巾蒙住了脸

这就是他用的功喽

让她断奶的时候

它们[166]可让我受够了罪

直到他请布雷迪大夫[167]给我开一副颠茄药才算了结 我只好叫他替我嘬一嘬 他说它们硬得很

可是比母牛的还甜还浓哪 后来他想要我把奶水挤到茶里去

他可真能胡来我敢说应该有人把他写到新闻专栏里去

我要是能记住种种事情的一半儿的话就能写成一本书

就叫它作波尔迪公子作品集吧对啦

这边儿的皮肤变得光滑多啦 他足足嘬了它们[168]一个多种头

没错儿

我看钟来着 我就像是有了个大娃娃似的 他们什么都往嘴里塞 

这些男人总要从女人身上得到一切快乐

直到现在我还在感受着他那嘴巴的嘬劲儿

哦 天哪 

我可得把身子摊开来

我巴不得他在这儿

要么就是旁的什么人

好叫我那么一遍又一遍地丢啊丢的 我觉得身子里面全是火

或者要是我能梦见当时他是怎么第二遍使我丢的就好了 他从后面用手指挠着我

我把两条腿盘在他身上

一连丢了有五分钟 事后我禁不住紧紧搂住他

噢 天哪 

我恨不得大声喊出各种话来

操吧

拉屎啦

或随便说点儿什么

可就是别露出一副丑相

耗尽了精力脸上布满皱纹

谁晓得他心里是怎么想的呢 你可得琢磨男人的心情 谢天谢地 男人们并不都像他这样 有的人喜欢女人在搞的时候斯斯文文的

我注意到了他们的差别

他搞的时候一声不吭 我抬起眼睛那样看着他

颠鸾倒凤 头发有点儿乱啦

我从嘴唇里吐出舌头朝这个野蛮畜生伸了过去

星期四

星期五一天

星期六

两天 星期日

三天

哦

老天爷 我哪里等得到星期一呢

呋噜嘶咿咿咿咿咿咿咿呋喽嗯嗯嗯嗯

火车在什么地方拉鼻儿哪 那些火车头劲儿可真足

就像是大个儿的巨人

浑身上下翻滚着水

向四面八方迸溅 仿佛是古老甜蜜依依的情歌哦哦哦[169]的结尾

那些可怜的男人不得不整宵整宵地离开老婆和家人 呆在烟薰火燎的火车头里

今儿个天闷得透不过气儿来 幸而我把那些过期的自由人报和摄影点滴[170]烧掉了一半儿

他越来越马虎得厉害 

到处撂着这类东西

剩下的我都给丢到茅房里去了

明天我就叫他替我裁出来 不然的话 把它们留到明年也不过卖个几便士罢咧 也省得他问去年一月份的报纸在哪儿所有那些旧大衣搁在那儿净添热

我也给捆起来弄到门厅外面去啦

那场雨下得 真好 感到爽快

是我美美地睡了一觉后下起来的 我觉得这儿越来越像直布罗陀啦 好家伙

那地方多热呀紧接着 地中海那猛烈的东风一刮 黑压压地像夜晚一般 闪闪发光的岩石[171]耸立在中间

跟他们认为了不起的三岩山比起来仿佛是个又高又大的巨人

东一处西一处是红色的岗亭 还有白杨树丛

统统都炎热得冒烟儿 再就是一顶顶蚊帐[172]

和一座座水槽里那雨水蒸发的气味 由于成天望着太阳

被晒得发晕

爹的朋友斯坦厄普夫人[173]送给我的那件巴黎的便宜商场[174]的漂亮衣裳整个捎色儿啦 多糟糕哇

她在上面还写着我最亲爱的狗小姐她人真好 她叫什么名字来着 上面写着 只发张明信片告诉你一声

我寄了份小小的礼物 刚洗了个痛快的热水澡感到仿佛成了一只非常干净的狗

中东佬[175]也享受了一通 她管他叫中东佬 我们非回趟直布[176]不可 好去听你唱等待和在古老的马德里[177] 他给我买的练习曲集子叫作康科恩[178] 还给我买了一条新披肩 那名词儿我叫不上来 倒是挺可心的 只不过稍微一怎么着就撕破了

可我觉得还是蛮漂亮的

你是不是老想着咱们一道吃过的美味茶点呢 我很喜欢那香甜的葡萄干烤饼和山莓薄脆

喏 我最心爱的狗小姐务必及早给我写封亲切的回信 她忘记写上对你父亲和格罗夫上尉的问候啦 怀着深深的情意

衷心爱你的赫斯特XXXXX[179]

她一点儿也不像是个已结了婚的 简直就像个姑娘 他的岁数比她大多了 这位中东佬可疼我啦 在拉利内亚[180]看斗牛的那回 

他用脚踩着铁丝好让我迈过去

那回斗牛士戈麦斯[181]得了一对牛耳朵[182]

我们得穿这些衣服 到底是谁发明的呀 还指望你能走上吉利尼山[183]呢就拿那回郊游来说吧 我给胸衣箍得紧紧的 在一群人当中简直既不能跑也不能跳到一边去

所以当另外那头凶猛的老公牛开始向系着腰带前且帽子上又镶着两道装饰的斗牛士扑去的时候 我就觉得害怕啦

那些野兽般的男人们喊着

斗牛士万岁[184]

穿着漂亮的白色小披风的女人们嗓门儿也一样大

那些可怜的马儿就被撕裂开[185]

内脏都露出来啦

我一辈子也没听说过这样的事儿

对啦 当我摹仿铃巷[186]那边狗叫的时候

他总是伤心地对着我

可那条狗病了

他们后来怎样了呢

估摸着早就死啦 双双都死啦

这一切就好像罩在一层雾里 叫你感到那么苍老

那甜饼是我烤的 当然我自个儿统统吃掉啦

还有个叫作赫斯特的姑娘 我们常常比头发 我的比她的浓密

当我梳头的时候

她教我怎样将它拢到后面去

怎样一只手用一根线打个结子

我们就像堂姐妹一样

那时候我十几岁来着

刮大风的那个晚上我睡到她的床上

她用胳膊搂着我 到了早晨

我们抢起枕头来了

多有趣儿呀

当我跟着爹和格罗夫上尉到阿拉梅达散步场去听乐队演奏的时候

一有机会他就死盯着我 我最初望着教堂 

接着又瞧着那一扇扇窗户

我往下一瞅

我们俩的目光碰上啦 我觉得就像一根根的针串遍全身

两眼发花

我记得事后一照镜子简直都认不出自己来啦[187] 太阳把我的皮肤晒得光艳艳的兴奋得像一朵玫瑰似的

我整宵连眼也没闭 都是由于她的缘故[188] 这并不好

然而我原是能够半截儿就打住的 她给我一本月亮宝石[189]要我读 那是我所读到的第一本威尔基科林斯的书

我还读了亨利伍德夫人的伊斯特林恩[190]和阿什利迪阿特的阴影

另一个女人写的亨利邓巴 后来我把这本书借给他了

里边还夹了张马尔维的照片 好让他明白我并不是没有[191]

她还送给了我利顿勋爵的尤金阿拉姆[192] 亨格福德夫人的美丽的摩莉[193] 我不喜欢有摩莉的那些书

就拿他[194]替我借来的那本来说吧 写的是从佛兰德来的一个女人

是个婊子[195] 她总是能偷到什么就偷什么

衣裳啦 成码的料子啦

哦 这条毛毯压在我身上太重啦 这下子就好啦

我连件像样儿的睡衣都不趁

他睡在旁边的时候都卷成了团儿

而且他还老耍着玩儿

这下子可好啦

那阵子天儿一热我就来回翻身 坐在椅子上汗水就把内衣湿透啦

粘在屁股蛋儿上

站起来身上又肥实又硬邦 再往沙发靠垫上一坐

撩起衣服一瞧 晚上足有好几吨臭虫

挂上蚊帐我连一行书都读不成

天啊

这是多咱的事呢 一晃儿好像过了好几百年啦、他们当然再也没有回来 再说她也没把地址写对 兴许她对自己那位中东佬留了点心眼儿 人们总是走掉

我们可不我还记得那天海上起着浪 一只只小船那高高的船头摆上摆下还有船上散发出的那股子气味

放假上岸的军官们一身制服我都晕船啦

他什么也没说[196]

他一本正经

我穿的是有一排纽扣的长统靴子 我的裙子给风刮得掀了起来 她吻了我六七遍 我哭了没有呢

对啦 我准是哭啦 

要么就是差点儿哭了出来

当我说再见的时候 我的嘴唇直发颤 她披着为了航海才定做的一种特别讲究的蓝色披肩 有一边儿做得挺新奇的 

漂亮极啦

他们走掉了以后 无聊得像鬼一样 我几乎琢磨着要逃走啦寂寞得发疯

不论呆在哪儿 怎么也安定不下心来 

爹啦 姑妈啦

婚姻啦

等候[197]着 总是等候着

把他引引引到我哦哦哦这里

等候着 没法加啊啊啊快他那飞速的步伐 

该死的大炮开火啦[198]

在铺子上空轰隆隆地响 尤其是在女王的寿辰 

要是你不把窗户打开 就会震得什么都朝四面八方往下掉 不管尤利西斯格兰特将军[199]是谁 总归被认为是个大人物 当他下船登岸的时候 打从闹大洪水之前就在那儿担任领事的老斯普拉格[200]穿上了大礼服

可怜的人哪 其实他正为儿子服丧呢早晨就照例吹起床号

鼓声隆隆

于是那些可怜倒楣的士兵们拿着饭盒走来走去

这地方散发出一股气味

比那些穿着带兜帽的长外套前来参加利未人[201]集会的长胡子老犹太人散发的还要难闻 一遍遍的军号命令炮兵擦炮准备战斗

鸣炮 归营

携带着钥匙的卫兵开正步走来

城门上锁 还有那风笛 只有格罗夫上尉和爹在聊着洛克滩和普列文[202]

加尼特吴士礼爵士[203]和喀土穆的戈登[204] 

每回他们[205]出门我都替他们点上烟斗 

那个老酒鬼总是把他那搀了水的烈酒摆在窗台上

休想看到他剩下一滴酒 

他抠着鼻孔 苦思冥想着旁的一些下流故事

到什么角落去讲

可我在场的时候他从来也没大意过

总找个蹩脚的借口把我从屋子里打发出去

还一个劲儿地恭维着

当然都是仗着布什密尔威士忌[206]的酒兴 

可要是再来了一个女人

他也会照样说上一遍

我猜他已经把命送在马不停蹄地喝酒上头啦 过了多少年啦

真是度日如年啊

没有人给我写封信 除了我给自己塞了几张纸片寄出去的那几封 我腻烦透啦 

有时候恨不得仗着我的指甲打上一场架 我竖起耳朵听那个独眼老阿拉伯人边奏着公驴般的乐器

边唏啊唏啊 

啊唏啊地唱着 

向你那公驴般的杂乱无章的玩艺儿致以我的全部敬意 糟糕透啦

如今我垂着双手

隔着窗户往外望 就在对面那座房子里有没有个英俊男人呢 

护士们追着的霍利斯街的医科学生 我站在窗口戴上手套和帽子

表示我这就要出门啦

对方却一点儿也不懂得我的用意 

他们多么迟钝啊 

永远也不明白你说的话 你甚至想把要说的话印在一张大海报上让他们瞧

我竟然用左手跟他握了两次手[207]

我在韦斯特兰横街小教堂外面稍稍皱起眉头的时候他都没理会我 我倒纳闷他们那了不起的智慧是打哪儿来的

他们的脑灰质[208]全都在他们的尾巴里哪 

你要是问我市徽饭店里的那些乡下骗子手们[209]的智力

他们简直糟透啦

还抵不过他们宰了卖肉的公牛和母牛呢 还有送煤的铃挡声

那个吵吵闹闹的坏蛋

总想用一张从他的帽子里掏出来的旁人的帐单来骗我

瞧他那双爪子 

还有那吃喝着修理锅壶罐儿的 又有人来问今儿个有没有给穷人的破瓶子 

没有客人上门

也没有邮件 

除了寄给他的支票[210]和致亲爱的夫人的神奇露的广告

就只有今天早晨他那封信[211]和米莉的明信片

是啊 

她给他[212]写了封信

我最近收到的一封信是谁寄来的呢 哦 是德汶太太写来的 

喏 她一阵心血来潮 

相隔这么多年从加拿大写信来 

向我讨西红柿红胡椒[213]这道菜谱弗洛伊狄龙[214]从打写信告诉我她嫁给了一位很阔的建筑师以来就再没音信啦 要是我听到的都可信的话 他们还有所八间屋子的别墅

她父亲[215]是个非常善良的人

当时他已经快七十岁啦

总是那么好脾气

说什么

喏您呀特威迪小姐 

要么就是吉莱斯皮小姐 这儿有架钢亲[216]哩 

他还有全套纯银的咖啡用具装在红木餐具柜里

可却死在那么遥远的地方

我讨厌那种总是向人诉苦的人

每个人都有自己的苦恼 可怜的南希布莱克上个月去世啦

害的是急性肺炎

喏 

我跟她并不怎么熟 与其说她是我的朋友

倒不如说是弗洛伊的

真麻烦 还得写回信 

他说的[217]总不对头

又没个句号 

就像是在讲演似的

不幸仙逝深表哀悼啦 

我老写错字

把侄子写成桎子什么的

但愿他下回[218]给我写一封长一点儿的信 假若他真正爱我的话 

哦 

谢谢老天爷

我找到了这样一个人

他把我非常需要的东西给了我让我鼓起劲头 

在这个地方你已经没有老早以前有过的那样的机会啦 

我希望有谁给我来封情书

他那封写得可并不怎么样而且我还跟他说爱怎么写就怎么写

此颂台安

休博伊兰敬启在古老的马德里[219]那一套

傻女人们相信 

爱正在叹气 

我即将死去 

不过 要是他这么写了

我猜想其中总有几分真实

管它真假

反正会叫你一整天都有个奔头

生活中时时刻刻老是有点儿什么可想望的 

四下里一望仿佛是个新世界 

我可以躺在床上写回信 好让他想象着我 

回信短短的 

只写上几个字儿 

不像阿蒂狄龙[220]常常给都柏林法院的一个家伙写的那种长信 

上面加了XXX的记号 

那是从淑女尺牍大全[221]上抄下来的 

最后他还是把她一脚踹开啦

当时我就跟她说过 

信里只写上几句简单的话就成啦

随他琢磨去 

其实就是提醒她 

做事不要太轻率

对男方的求婚 

要以同样的坦率答应下来

这样就可以得到世上最大的幸福 

天哪 

没有旁的办法 

对他们来说 

什么都蛮好

可女人呢 

刚一上了岁数就会被他们丢到灰坑底儿上去啦。 

第一封是马尔维给我的 

那天早晨我还躺在床上哪

鲁维奥大娘[222]把它和咖啡一道送来啦 

她呆呆地站在那儿

我想用发夹来拆信 

并用手指着它们[223] 

可怎么也想不起赫尔奇拉这个字儿啦

好个倔巴巴的老家伙 那发夹不是正瞪着她的脸吗 

戴着她那副假发 

真是个丑八怪 

还怪臭美呢 都快要八十或者一百岁啦

满脸皱纹

尽管虔诚

可什么都得听她说了算 有件事她怎么也想不通 

尽管有那么多国境警备兵[224]

可占全世界军舰半数的大西洋舰队竟然还开了来 

英国国旗飘扬着 

因为四个喝醉了酒的英国水手就把整个儿岩石从他们手里夺了去

又因为除非有结婚仪式

我陪着围起披肩的她跑到圣母玛利亚教堂[225]去望弥撒的次数不够勤 

她就不高兴 

她净讲圣人和穿银色衣服的黑发圣母玛利亚所显示的那些奇迹 

还说在复活节的星期日早晨 

太阳跳跃过三回[226]

当神父随着铃声给快要咽气的人送梵蒂冈[227]一路走过去的时候

她为圣体划了个十字

他[228]署名一个仰慕者 

我高兴得几乎跳了起来 

我从卡尔里尔[229]的橱窗里看见他在紧紧跟随着我

我就有心跟他吊上

他走过去的时候轻轻地挨了我一下 

可是我再也没有想到他会写信来跟我定约会我把这封信在衬裙的乳褡里塞了一整天

当爹出去操练的时候见幽暗的地方和旮旯儿就躲起来读着

一心想从笔迹和邮票上的语言[230]中发现点儿什么 

记得一直在唱着

我戴一朵白玫瑰好呢[231] 

我甚至想把那座老掉牙的笨钟拨快一点儿

他是头一个亲我的男人

在摩尔墙脚下[232] 

我的情人儿 年少的时候[233]我还从来也没想过亲嘴儿是怎么回事呢

直到他把舌头伸到我嘴里

他的嘴是那么甜那么年轻

我把膝盖朝他凑上去几回

好学会怎么亲嘴儿 

我对他说什么来着 

我告诉他 

为了好玩儿

我已经跟一个西班牙贵族的儿子订婚啦 

名叫堂米格尔德拉弗罗拉[234] 

而且他还信以为真啦 还说不出三年我就要跟那个人结婚 

开玩笑往往会说出不少真话来

有一朵盛开的花[235]

关于我自己我倒是对他说了几句老实话 

好让他去想象 

他并不喜欢那些西班牙姑娘

大概她们当中有一位甩了他 

我让他兴奋起来他把他带给我的花儿在我的胸前统统给压碎啦

他不会数比塞塔和佩拉葛达[236] 

还是我教会他的呢 

他说他出身于卡波奎因[237]

在黑水边儿上

可是日子过得大快啦 

他走的前一天五月

对啦 

是五月

西班牙的娃娃皇上[238]诞生的月份 

一到春天我就总是那样儿

我巴不得每年都有一个新的人儿

高高地爬到奥哈拉塔[239]附近的岩炮底下

我告诉他那给雷劈啦 

还有关于他们给送到克拉珀姆去的老叟猴[240]的所有那些故事

猴子们没有尾巴 

相互驮在背上飞快地跑来跑去给人家看

鲁维奥大娘说

有一只直布罗陀土生土长的老母猴儿 

从英塞斯农场[241]把小鸡儿抓走 

你一靠近 

它就朝你扔石头 他正朝我[242]望着为了尽量鼓励他 

但又做得不至于太露骨 

我穿的是那件敞着前胸的白罩衫 

它们变得丰满起来 

我说我累啦我们就在冷杉坳[243]上边躺下来了

那是个荒凉的地方

我想那准是天底下最高的岩石

有坑道和隐蔽炮台[244] 

还有那些可怕的岩礁和圣迈克尔岩洞[245]

倒挂着冰柱 或者随他们怎么去叫吧 

还架着梯子[246]

我的长统靴溅满了泥点子 

那些猴子死的时候准就是沿着这条路穿过海底去非洲的[247] 

远处海面上的船就像薄薄的木片儿

开过去的是马耳他船[248]

对啦

海洋和天空 

你简直可以永远躺在那儿 爱干什么干什么 

他隔着衣服[249]温存地抚摩着 他们就爱这么做 

冲的就是那圆鼓鼓的劲儿

我从上面偎依着他 

为了把我那顶白稻秸帽儿弄旧一点儿

把它戴在头上 

我的左半边脸最好看

由于这是他的最后一天

我的罩衫是敞着的

他穿的是一种透明的衬衫 

我瞧得见他粉嘟噜儿的皮肤 

他求我让他的那个稍微碰我的一下

可我没答应

起初他挺恼火 我害怕呀 

谁知道会不会传染上肺病 

要么让我怀上孕[250] 给我留下个娃娃呢 

那个老女佣伊内丝告诉我

哪怕只掉进那么一滴去也够呛 

后来我用一只香蕉试了试 

但是我又担心它会折在我身子里面 

找不到啦

对啦 因为有一回他们从一个女人身子里取出一块什么

已经在那儿呆了好几年 

上头巴满了石灰盐 

他们全都发了疯似地想钻进自己原先出来的那个地方

你总以为决不至于进得那么深 

他们也不知怎么一来就已经跟你干完了 

只等下一回吧

对啦

因为有那么一种美妙的感觉

始终是那么温存

我们是怎么完事儿的来着

对啦

哦 

对啦 

我把他那个拽到我的手绢儿里

假装作不那么兴奋的样儿

可我还是把两条腿叉开啦 

我不许他摸我的衬裙里面 因为我那条裙子是侧面开衩儿的

我可把他折磨得没了魂儿

先挑动他

我就爱挑逗饭店里的那条狗

噜嘶特啊喔克喔克啊喔克

他闭着眼睛 

一只鸟儿在我们下面飞着

他羞答答的 

可我就是喜欢那天早晨他那副样子

当我像那么样伏在他身上

解开他的纽扣儿

掏出他那个并且把皮往后拽了拽的时候

我弄得他稍微涨红了脸 

那物儿像是长着眼睛

男人们下半身统统都是纽扣儿

他管我叫摩莉我的乖[251]

他叫什么名字[252]来着

杰克 乔 是哈里马尔维吧

对啦

我估计他是个中尉

白白净净的

他有一副乐呵呵的嗓音于是我就把那物儿整个儿抚摩了一遍 

那物儿就是一切的一切他还留着口髭哩

说他会回来的

天哪

对我来说简直就像是昨天的事儿哩 

还说 即便我已经结了婚 

他也还会跟我干那个的

我曾答应他说

好吧[253]

一定的 现在我会让他[254]飞快地操我一通

也许他已经死掉了 

要么阵亡啦 要么就当上了一名上尉或者海军上将

快二十年啦

我要是说声冷杉坳

他马上就会[255]

要是他从背后走过来

用手蒙住我的眼睛让我猜

我会觉察得出那就是他

他还年轻着哪

四十来岁

也许娶了个黑水河边上的姑娘

并且完全变样儿啦

男人们都是那个德行

男人们连女人的一半儿个性都没有 她一点儿也不会晓得我跟她那位亲爱的丈夫都干过些什么

那时候他连做梦也没想到过她呢

而且又是在光天化日之下

说是当着全世界的面儿也未尝不可以足够让他们写成一篇文章登在新闻报[256]上的了

事后我有点撒野啦

我把贝纳迪兄弟[257]那个装过饼干的旧纸袋吹得鼓鼓的把它拍裂啦 

天哪

砰的一声好响啊

山鹬和鸽子全都尖叫起来我们沿着原路走回去

翻过中间那座山 绕过从前的卫兵房和犹太人坟地

还假装念着希伯来文的墓志铭

我想用他的手枪开上一枪

他说他没带在身上

他简直捉摸不透我

不论我替他扶正多少遍

他总歪戴着那顶有遮檐的便帽

HMS卡吕蒲索[258]摇晃着我的帽子

那位老主教[259]从祭坛 

上长篇大论地讲着道妇女应尽的更高职责啦

如今姑娘们骑起自行车来 

还戴上尖儿帽

穿什么时新的布卢姆尔套装啦

天主啊 请赐给他理智并且赐给我更多的金钱吧

我猜想那是跟着他起的名儿[260]

我再也没想到布卢姆会成为我的姓

我曾一遍遍地把它写成印刷字体看看要是印成名片是什么样子

或是向肉铺订货的时候练练笔摩布卢姆敬具

我跟他[261]结婚后

乔西[262]常说

你好像一朵正在盛开的花儿[263]

哦

总比布林或偷东西[264]的布里格斯强

要么就是那些带着屁股这个词儿的讨厌的姓

拉姆斯巴托姆[265]太太或其他一种巴托姆

我也不会迷恋上马尔维这个姓

或者假若我跟他[266]离了婚

那我就会当上博伊兰太太啦

不论我妈是个什么人 既然她自己有露妮塔拉蕾多这么个可爱的名字

老天爷也总该给我取个好一点的名字嘛 

我们拐来拐去

绕过杰赛后身

沿着威利斯路跑向欧罗巴岬[267] 像米莉身上那样的一对小东西[268]在我的罩衫下面晃啊跳啊的

如今当她跑上楼梯的时候我就爱低头看着它们 

我朝着胡椒树和白杨树往上一蹿

拽下一片片叶子朝他扔过去

他到印度去啦[269] 

说是要给我来信告诉我航海的事 这些男人要在地球上来回转 

趁着他们还能做到

起码也应搂抱一两下女人 一出发不定在什么地方就淹死或给炸飞啦 

那个星期天早晨我跟如今死了的鲁维奥斯上尉爬到风车山那块平地上去啦 

他那架小型望远镜就像是哨兵携带的那种 他要从船上弄一两架来

我穿的是巴黎的便宜商场[270]那件衣裳

戴着那串珊瑚项链儿 

海峡一闪闪地发亮 

我隔着它一直能望到摩洛哥 

并且几乎能眺望到白色的丹吉尔湾和蒙着雪的阿特拉斯山[271]

海峡就像条河一样

那么清澈 哈里 

摩莉我的乖[272] 

打那以后我总想念着在海上的他[273]

望弥撒举扬圣体的时候 

我的衬裙开始滑溜下来了

我把那块手绢儿在我的枕头底下保存了好几个星期 

为的是闻他身上那股气味[273]

在直布罗陀买不到像样儿的香水儿 

只有一种便宜的西班牙皮肤[274] 

很快就走了味儿啦 

反倒会留下一股臭气 

我想给他一件念物 

为了图个吉利 

他给了我一只做工粗俗的克拉达戒指[275]

加德纳到南非去的时候 

我把那戒指送给了他

那儿的布尔人用战争和热病要了他的命

可他们还是照样打败了

它就像是蛋白石或珍珠似的带来了厄运 

那准是十八凯[276]的纯金 

因为重得很哪[277]我可以看到他那刮得光滑的脸 

呋噜嘶咿咿咿咿咿呋啷 

那列火车又发出了哭腔 可怀恋的往昔哟 岁月一去不复唔

返[278]

我闭上眼睛

呼吸

嘴唇朝前凑 

亲嘴儿 

一副悲伤的神情睁开眼睛 

微弱地

当雾降落人世前[279]

我就讨厌雾降这个地方 

传来了甜蜜的情歌[280]

哦哦哦哦哦 

我下回再站在脚灯前的时候 要放开嗓子唱这一段 

凯思琳卡尼[281]和她那帮尖嗓门儿的这位小姐那位小姐另一位小姐 

一群麻雀屁咭咭喳喳地傻笑着 

扯着一点儿都不懂的政治 

显得她们多么有趣儿

爱尔兰土产的美人儿

我是军人的闺女 你们的爹又是啥人呢 靴匠和酒馆老板

请原谅

你乘的原来是四轮马车呀

我还只当是独轮手推车呢[282]

那些娘儿们要是哪天有机会像我那样

在演奏会晚上挎着军官的胳膊在阿拉梅达散步

腿一软就会跌在地上送了命我的两眼发光

还有我那胸脯 她们缺乏那股热呼劲儿

天主可怜她们那傻脑筋吧

我十五岁的时候对男人和人生所懂得的比她们所有这些人五十岁时才知道的还要多

她们不晓得该咋唱那样一首歌

加德纳[283]说

随便哪个男人只要看见了我的嘴和牙齿还有我那种笑容 

就非联想到那个不可

起初我直担心他会不喜欢[284]我的发音

他是那么地道的英国味儿

这是爹留给我的一切

尽管还有那些邮票 

反正我的眼睛和身材赶妈妈

他老是说

他们是多么神气

有些人就是下流

他一点也不是那样

他确实迷上了我的嘴唇

让她们先去找个像样儿的丈夫吧 

再养个像我女儿那样的闺女 

然后再瞧瞧她们能不能教博伊兰那样一个对任何女人都能够挑挑拣拣的时髦阔少上起劲儿来

紧紧搂抱丢它个四五回

要么就拿嗓子来说吧 要不是嫁给了他[285]

我本来蛮可以当上首席女歌手的

传来了古老甜 低沉的声音

收拢下巴 

可别收得太紧 

免得出现双下巴

我太太的闺房[286]太长啦 

观众不会要求你重唱 

关于黎明时分围着壕沟的庄园和有着拱顶的房间 对啦

我要唱南方刮来的风[287] 

他是在通往合唱队席位的台阶上干了那档子事后唱的

我要把那件黑罩衫上的花边儿换一下

好让奶头更显眼些 

我还要 对啦 

我得把那个大扇子修理好了

让那帮人眼红得要命 

只要一想到他[288］ 我那个眼儿就总是发痒 

我憋不住啦

觉得里面有股气儿

还是放掉的好

不要吵醒他[289]

省得他再来那一套 

我已经把肚子后背和侧腹都洗干净啦

可别让他把我弄得浑身是口水

哪怕我们有个洗澡间也好哇

或是我自己能单独有个房间 

不管怎样 我希望他自个儿能睡一张床

那样就不至于把他那双冰冷的脚丫子压在我身上啦

天主啊 

哪怕给我们一块能够放屁的地方呢 要么稍微放松动点儿 

对啦 

像这样憋着 稍微侧着身子 

微弱地[290]

悄悄地

嘶喂咿咿咿咿咿 

这是远处的火车 

极弱地[291]咿咿咿咿咿 

再来一支歌儿

这下子可松快啦

不论你呆在哪里 

放屁尽随你的意[292]难道是干完了之后我就着一杯茶吃下去的猪排在作怪吗

由于天气热不怎么新鲜了吧 

我倒是一点也没闻出什么来 

我敢说猪肉铺那个长得古里古怪的家伙[293]是个大骗子 我希望那盏灯没冒烟儿

那会叫我的鼻子堵满煤烟子

可也总比他整宵点着煤气灯强

在直布罗陀的时候我躺在床上总是睡不消停 

就是得爬起来瞧个分明 关于这一点 

我怎么会敏感得这么历害呢 

不过一到冬天

我就喜爱上它啦 觉得有个伴儿 

哦 

老天爷

那年冬天可冷得蝎虎

那时候我才十来岁

是吗 

对啦

我有个大娃娃一会儿把那些稀奇古怪的衣服都给它穿上

一会儿又一件件地扒下来 

冰冷的风从山上飕飕地刮过来

什么内华达来着

希拉内华达[294] 我穿着一小件短汗衫 

站在炉火跟前

是爬起来取暖的

我就爱穿着汗衫满屋子跳舞

后来又飞快地跑回床上

夏天的时候对面那所房子里那个家伙准是把灯熄啦 

经常一直守在那儿

我呢 

赤条条地跳来跳去 我常常喜欢站在脸盆架跟前

脱光了衣服轻轻地拍一拍

要么就抹点儿雪花膏 不过使用便器的时候我也总会把灯灭了

我们俩曾这么躺来着

这一夜我就甭打算睡啦

不管怎样 

我希望他[295]可别跟那帮医科学生打得火热他们会教他走上邪路

让他以为自己又年轻起来啦

早晨四点钟才回家 

准是四点 

要不是更晚的话

不过

他总算还懂得规矩

没把我吵醒

亏得他们能找到那么多话题 

絮絮叨叨居然聊上一宵

乱花钱

喝得越来越醉

难道他们就不能喝白水吗

然后他就对咱点起菜来啦

要吃鸡蛋喝茶

还要芬顿黑线鳕和烤得热热的面包抹黄油

我想他会像一国之王似的在床上欠起身来倒提着调羹对着鸡蛋使劲儿地抡上抡下

这一套到底是从哪儿学来的呢

我就爱听他早晨端着托盘

那一个个杯子咯嗒咯嗒响成一片

跌跌撞撞地爬上楼梯

还有他逗猫的声音

猫儿是为了图自个儿舒坦才往你身上蹭啊蹭的 

不晓得它身上长没长跳蚤

猫儿简直跟女人一样坏 

老是舔啊舔的都给弄湿啦

可我讨厌它们那爪子 我倒想知道它们是不是能瞧见咱们瞧不见的东西呢

它总是在楼梯顶儿上一坐就是好长时间 

瞪大了眼睛听着 

而我还在等着它呢

一向总是这样的 

可它又是能干的强盗

偷了我买的那条漂亮新鲜的比目鱼[296]

我想明天买点儿鱼 要么今天就去买

是星期五吧 

对啦 

这就么着吧 

添上点儿牛奶冻

加上乌梅果酱 像老早以前那样

那种李子苹果混合的两磅重的果酱罐头可不行 就是伦敦和纽卡斯尔的威廉斯一伍兹[297]那家店买的

能保存一倍时间 

只因为有骨头

我就讨厌那些鳝鱼

鳕鱼对啦

我要去买一段新鲜鳕鱼

我总是买够三个人吃的

净忘记[298]

反正我对巴克利[299]肉店那一成不变的肉已经感到腻味啦牛肋肉和腿肉 

牛排和羊脖子和小牛内脏

只要一听这名儿就够啦 要不要组织一次郊游呢 

假定我们大家每人摊五先令

或者叫他出钱[300]

还为他请上另外什么女人

请谁呢

弗莱明大妈[301]吧 

我们坐马车到荆豆谷或草莓园[302]去

先得叫他把[303]所有的马蹄铁都检查一遍

就像他检查信件一样 

不 

可别请博伊兰到那儿去啦

对啦 带上些夹着冷小牛肉和火腿的什锦三明治 

那儿的河堤脚下特地盖起了一座座小房子[304]

但是他[305]说那简直热得像火焰一样 

反正银行假日[306]可出不得门

我就讨厌杂耍演员那样打扮的俗气娘儿们赶在这一天成群地拥来

圣灵降临节的第二天也是个倒楣的日子 难怪蜜蜂要蜇他[307]哪

还是到海边儿去的好 

可是我这辈子再也不跟他一块儿坐船啦 

上回跟着他去了一趟布莱[308] 

他对船老大[309]说

他会划船 要是有人问他能不能参加获得金质奖杯的越野赛马

他也会说

能呀然后海上起了风浪

那个老掉了牙的家伙[310]就七扭八歪起来

份量整个儿偏到我这边儿来啦 

[311]忽而要我把身子往右边儿靠 

忽而又要我朝左边儿靠 

潮水从船底儿上哗啦哗啦往里灌他划着的[312]桨也从链子上脱落下来啦 

亏得我们还没统统淹死他当然会游泳喽 我可不会

他穿了条法兰绒长裤 

说是啥危险也没有 要我放镇静点儿

我恨不得当着所有人的面儿 

把那条裤子从他身上扒下来 撕个稀巴烂

给他一顿常说的鞭刑

打得他浑身又黑又蓝

这对他好处可大着哪 

可惜我不认识那个鼻子挺长的家伙 

还带了个美人儿

从市徽饭店来的伯克[313]照例呆在码头上

四下里偷看着 

他总是跑到用不着他去的地方 

想瞧瞧有没有打架的 

要是给啐上一口 那脸蛋儿也许会变得好看一些哩

我们俩已经没有爱情啦

早就消失啦 

这总算是个安慰他[314]给我带回来的是本什么书呢 

偷情的快乐[315] 是位时髦绅士写的

还有一个德科克先生

我猜想他总是带着他的管子挨着个儿找女人

大家才给他取了这么个外号[316]

我甚至没能换一下我那双崭新的白鞋

完全给咸水泡坏啦 我戴的那顶插着羽毛的帽子整个儿被风吹得翘了起来

在我头上摆来摆去

多么让人厌烦冒火啊 

一闻海水的气味我就兴奋起来啦

当然喽

卡塔兰湾[317]的沙丁鱼啦

大头鱼啦 在岩石后面那一带

它们可好看哩 在渔夫的篓子里统统发着银光

他们说老鲁依吉眼看就一百岁啦 是从热那亚来的 

还有那个戴着耳环的高个子老头儿我可不喜欢那种你非爬上去才够得着的男人 

我猜想那号人老早就死光啦

而且烂掉啦 

再说我决不愿意晚上一个人呆在这个兵营般的地方 

我看也只好凑合呗 我们刚搬来的时候 

一片混乱我甚至忘记带点儿盐来[318] 

他打算在二楼的客厅开所音乐学校

还挂起一块黄铜招牌

他还提议经营起一家布卢姆私人旅馆那样一来就会像他爹在恩尼斯那样 

把自己毁掉拉倒 

就跟他对爹说的所有那些他要做的事情一样 对我也是这么说的 可我已经把他看穿啦 他还对我说过我们能够去度蜜月的一切可爱的地方

月光下在威尼斯划着贡多拉[319] 

他还有一张科莫湖[320]的剪报 又是什么曼陀林啦 

灯笼啦

哦

我说

可好啦 不论我 喜欢什么 

他都马上着手去办 要多快有多快 

你要做我的丈夫吗

你肯替我拎罐儿吗[321] 就凭他所编造的种种计划

也该奖给他一枚镶着油灰边的皮制微功勋章 

把咱成天家撇在这儿

你万也想不到站在门口乞讨面包皮并且罗哩罗嗦诉说身世的老叫化子

兴许就是个流浪汉

他伸过一只脚来让我关不上门

就像劳埃德新闻周刊[322]上登过照片的那个老惯犯似的

他坐了二十年的牢

刚一放出来就又图财谋害了一位老太太

替他那可怜的老婆妈妈或家里旁的女人想想吧

冲他那个长相你见了就得一溜烟儿跑开好几英里

不把所有的门窗都牢牢地上了闩我是不能安心睡下的 

可这下子就更糟啦

简直像是关在监狱或疯人院里似的应该把那些家伙一古脑儿给枪毙掉 

要么就用九尾鞭来抽打这么一个大块头畜生居然去向一位可怜的老太太动手把她残杀在床上 

要是我的话 

就把他[323]那物儿割下来 

非这么做不可他这个人顶不了多大事儿 

不过总比没有强 那天晚上我肯定听见厨房里进了一帮贼

他只穿着件衬衫就下楼去啦

手里拿着蜡烛和拨火棍儿

就像是去逮老鼠似的

魂儿都吓掉啦

脸色刷白

做出的声音要多大有多大

那帮贼倒是得了济哩

天晓得家里其实没多少可偷的

不过 尤其是因为如今米莉也走啦

那滋味儿不好受

由于他爷爷的那点因缘[324] 他竟心血来潮

打发闺女到那儿去学照相啦

可没把她送到斯克利斯学院[325]去念书 

她不像我

她在国立学校的时候

可门门都考头一名哩 

不过

由于我和博伊兰的缘故

他不得不做那样一档子事儿

正因为如此

他才这么[326]做的

对于他怎样设计和策划一切 

我心里是一清二楚的 

近来只要她在家 除非先把门上了闩

我简直连动也不能动

她从来也不先敲一下门就闯进来 弄得我总是提心吊胆

得先用椅子把门顶住

才能戴上手套洗下身

这样会使神经受刺激的

要么就让她成天像个木头小姐似的

干脆把她装在玻璃匣子里 我们俩一道看着她好啦

她离开家以前

由于笨手笨脚

大大咧咧

竟把那座中看不中用的小雕像的手给弄断啦

我花上两先令才让那个意大利小男孩给修理好的

如今一点也看不出接缝儿来啦 

要是给他[327]知道了呢

她甚至不肯替你把煮土豆的水倒掉

当然喽

她也是对的

省得把手弄粗啦

我留意近来他在饭桌上老是跟她讲这讲那

讲解着报纸上的事情

她呢

就假装听懂啦 当然挺狡猾啦

这可是从他那边的血统来的还帮助她穿上大衣

可她要是觉得哪儿不舒服就会告诉我

而不告诉他

他不能说我装模作样

他能吗

我的确太老实啦

我估摸着他以为我已经没戏啦

再也不会有人理睬啦 

喔

我才不会呢 

不 

决不会那样

喔

等着瞧吧 

喔 

等着瞧吧

如今晚儿她也和汤姆德万斯[328]的两个儿子调起情来啦

都是跟我学的还跟来喊她的默里[329]家的野丫头们一道吹口哨

米莉

请你出来吧

她红得很哪 

大家都尽量地向她打听这打听那

天都黑啦 

还在纳尔逊街[330]骑着哈里德万斯的自行车兜圈子

他把她送到现在这个地方去也有好处 

她刚巧变得约束不住了

老想去溜冰场 

跟大伙儿一起从鼻孔里喷出纸烟圈儿

当我替她在上衣下摆上钉纽扣儿 把线咬断的时候

从她衣服上闻出气味来啦她什么也瞒不住我

真的

只怪我不该在她还穿在身上的时候就替她缝

这会造成离别的[331]

而且前一回做的李子布丁竟裂成两瓣儿啦[332]

不管人家怎么说 

瞧 这不就应验了吗 

从我的趣味来说 

她未免太爱饶舌啦

她对我说

你这件衬衫的脖领儿开得太低啦 

这就好比是锅对壶说

你的底儿大黑啦我还得告诉她 可不要当着一个个行人的面儿 

把你的两条腿那么显眼地在窗台上翘着

人家全都在瞧着她

就像瞧我一样 

当然喽

我指的是我在她这个年龄的时候

想当年

不论穿什么旧衣烂衫都显眼 

在皇家剧院看唯一的路[333]那回 

她傲慢地摆出一副谁也不许碰我的架势 

说什么把你的脚闪开 

我就讨厌人家碰我 

她怕得要死 

惟恐我会把她那条百褶裙给压坏啦

在剧院里黑咕隆咚的 

趁着拥挤可没少碰碰撞撞的 那帮家伙总是想方设法扭到你跟前儿来 

上回我们在欢乐剧场后座站着看比尔博姆特里[334]公演软毡帽的时候

就有那么一个该下地狱[335]的家伙

不管是为软毡帽也罢 或者为她的屁股[336]也罢

反正我再也不到那儿去给人挤来挤去啦 

每隔两分钟那家伙就戳我那个部位一下

然后朝一旁望去

我认为他有点儿半吊子

后来我又见过他

正在想法儿靠近呆在斯威策[337]的橱窗外面那两位衣着时髦的太太呢好耍他那套花招儿

从他那副长相和旁的一切 

我马上就认出他来

他可不记得我啦[338]

在布罗德斯通[339]临动身的时候

她甚至于不愿意我跟她亲一下嘴儿

喔

我希望她会找到个对她献殷勤的人

就像我当年那样

她得了流行性腮腺炎

那些腺都肿胀起来

病倒了的当儿总是问这问那 

当然她还不能有什么深的感触 

我约莫二十二岁以前从来也没正正经经搞过 老是弄错了地方

只不过是女孩儿家通常那种瞎胡闹

吃吃地傻笑罢咧

一个叫科尼康诺利的

曾经在黑纸上用白墨水给我写了一封信

还涂上火漆封了印 不过落幕的时候她鼓了掌

因为他看上去那么英俊

接着

马丁哈维[340]就每天三顿饭都到我们家来吃啦

后来我暗地里想

要是一个男人什么也不图

就那么为了她而送掉自个儿的命

那必定就是真正的爱情啦

这样的男人恐怕剩不下几个啦

不过这是难以相信的

除非这种事儿确实发生在我身上大多数男人生来一丁点儿爱情也没有

如今晚儿到哪儿去找像你们两个这样心心相印的

样样都想到一块儿去啦

这种人通常就是脑袋瓜儿有点儿笨

他[341]爹准就有点儿怪

所以她死了以后

他跟着也服毒自杀啦

但是好可怜的老人家啊

我估计他没着落啦

她[342]一直喜欢我的东西

十五岁的时候就想用我的旧布条把头发扎起来

还要搽我的粉哪

只不过会弄粗她的皮肤她这辈子还有的是时间去打扮呢

她知道自己长得俊

嘴唇儿那么红 

可惜不会老是这样 

我当年不也是那样的吗

可是把这丫头带到集市上去也是白搭 

当我叫她去买半斯通[343]土豆的时候她回答我的口气活像个渔婆儿

那天我们在小马驾车赛[344]上碰见了乔加拉赫太太[345]

她跟律师弗赖尔利[346]一道坐在她那辆双轮轻便马车里 居然假装没瞧见我们 

因为我们不够气派的呗后来我狠狠地给了她[347]两个大耳刮子

一巴掌是因为你回嘴另一巴掌是因为你没规矩

当然是她这样顶撞惹我生的气

可我本来就在气头上

因为茶里不知怎么会进了一根野草

要么就是由于吃下去的奶酪不对头

夜里没睡好觉

而且我对她说过多少遍 

别把刀子交叉着放[348]

因为正像她自己说的 

谁都不能指挥她

喔 

假若他不管教她 就得由我来管啦

那是她最后一回哭鼻子 

当年我自个儿也是那样 

没人敢叫我做这做那 

没有老早就雇个女人

却让我们两个当牛作马 

这当然是他的过错喽什么时候我才能再有个像样儿的女仆呢

当然喽

那么一来他[349]就会动手动脚的啦

我得让她知道一下

不过

这下子兴许她会报复哩

她们真够讨厌的

那个弗莱明老大娘[350]你就得跟在她后面转悠

往她手里放这放那 她净打喷嚏 

要么就往尿盆[351]里放屁

喔 

她老啦 

当然管不住自己喽 幸亏我从厨桌后面找到了那块丢失了的旧抹布

又脏又臭

我就知道有点什么玩艺儿

打开窗户 

放一放气味

他把朋友们带回来款待 

就拿那天晚上来说吧 

居然领着条狗走回家来啦 

你看多奇怪

没准儿还是条疯狗哪

尤其是西蒙迪达勒斯的儿子

他爹什么事都挑剔得很

看板球比赛的时候

他举着望远镜

戴着大礼帽

短袜上可破了个大窟窿

真叫人恶心

他儿子在期中考试时门门功课都得了奖[352] 想想看

他竟然从栏干上爬了过来[353] 要是给我们的熟人瞧见了可怎么好

他那条送葬时才穿的讲究的长裤会不会给刮破个大口子呢 

就好像生下来就有的窟窿还不够似的

居然把他领进又脏又旧的厨房里

他的脑袋瓜儿难道有毛病了吗可惜这不是洗衣裳的日子

我那条旧衬裤也许还搭在绳子上给大伙儿看哪 

可他呢[354]

一点儿也不在乎

那个笨婆子还给烫糊了一块 

说不定他会以为是别的什么东西呢 

她甚至也没按照我吩咐她的那样把油渍去掉

如今她也就这么下去了

因为她那个中了风的丈夫越来越糟啦

他们[355]总是在闹着什么毛病

不是生病就是开刀

不然的话他就酗酒 动手揍她 

我又得到处去寻摸个什么人[356]啦 

每天我一起床就总有点新鲜事儿 天哪

天哪

喏

我料想等我抻了腿儿 

躺在坟地里

才能安安神儿 我想起来一下

也许尿出来啦

等一等

哦 

老天爷

等一等

对啦

我身上来了那玩艺儿啦

对啦

这不让你受罪吗

敢情都是由于他[357]在我里头戳来戳去 

连根儿都给耕到啦

如今我可怎么办呢

星期五

星期六

星期日 那会把人给折磨得魂儿都出壳儿啦

除非他喜欢这手

有的男人就喜欢

咱们女人家总是不那么顺当

每隔三四个星期就得来一回月经

一拖就是五天

那天晚上我身上就来了

真是讨厌透啦

迈克尔冈恩[358]前前后后就请我们在欢乐剧场的包厢里看过一回肯德尔夫人和她丈夫[359]他在德里米[360]的时候曾经为人寿保险的事儿替他出过点儿力我只得用带子扎住

可那位衣着时髦的绅士从上面直用望远镜盯着我

而他呢[361]坐在我另一边 


大谈什么斯宾诺莎[362]啦 还有他那我猜想几百万年前就死掉了的灵魂啦

我简直就像是陷进了沼泽里似的 可我还是尽量露着笑容

仿佛挺感兴趣一般向前探着身子

总得一直坐到听完最后的收场白呀

斯卡里的那个妻子我可是不会轻易忘掉的

顶层楼座的那个白痴把它看成是一出关于通奸的淫戏[363]啦

就朝着那个女人嘘了起来 

喊她作淫妇散戏之后 

我猜想他准会到旁边那条巷子去找个女人

沿着所有那些偏僻的小路追来追去 

让她做出补偿 

但愿被他逮住的是跟当时的我同样状况[364]的女人

那他就活该啦 

我敢打赌

连那猫儿都比我们强

难道女人身子里的血大多啦还是咋的

哦憋不住啦 

它就像海水似的从我身子里冒了出来

不管怎样尽管他的那么大

却没使我怀上孕

我不愿意把那些干净褥单糟踏了这都是我穿上件干净的亚麻衬衫招来的[365]

该死

该死

他们总是想看到床上的血印儿 好知道你是个处女

他们个个对这一点老是放心不下

他们都是些大傻瓜 哪怕你是个寡妇或者离过四十次婚 

只要胡乱涂上点儿红墨水不就行啦

要么就是黑莓汁子 

不 

那又太紫糊糊的啦

老天爷

请救我一把 

摆脱这种事儿吧 

呸 

偷情的快乐[366]

究竟是谁替女人想到这么一档子事儿的呢

并且把它穿插到缝衣做饭养育孩子当中去

这张该死的旧床丁零当啷乱响 

真是的 我猜他们从公园的那一头都能听见我们[367]啦

后来我想出了个主意

把鸭绒被铺在地板上

我屁股底下垫个枕头

白天干是不是更有趣儿呢

我倒觉得挺自在的 

我想把这些毛毛儿全铰掉

刺挠得慌 

兴许看上去会像个年轻姑娘哩 下回他[368]把我的衣服撩起来 

会不会觉得上了大当呢 

只要能看到他那张脸蛋儿 

让我干什么都可以

尿盆儿哪儿去啦

慢慢儿的[369]

自从那个旧便器坏掉以后 

我总是生怕把这个压碎

我觉得坐在他腿上也许太重啦

所以故意让他坐在圈儿椅上

这当儿我先在另一间屋里脱下罩衫和裙子

还不到点子上他就忙乎开啦

他从来也没好好儿摸过我

我预先吃了吻香糖 

但愿我的气儿是甜丝丝的慢慢儿的

天哪

记得当年我几乎能够像男人那么直直地哗哗地撒出来

哦

老天爷

多响啊

我希望上面起泡儿

那样一来就能从什么人手里弄到一大笔钱[370]

可别忘了早晨我还得往尿里撒上点儿香料

我敢打赌他从来也没见过这么漂亮的一双大腿

瞧

它们有多白啊

顶光滑的就是当中间儿这一小块地方

多嫩哇

就像一只桃子似的慢慢儿的

我倒想当个男人

跨在一个漂亮女孩儿身上

哦 

你做出的声音多大啊

就像是泽西百合[371] 慢慢儿的

慢慢儿的

哦

水是怎样从拉合尔冲下来的[372]

难道我身子里头有什么毛病了吗

要么就是长了什么东西所以每星期都排泄出那样的玩艺儿

上回我身上是什么时候来的呢

圣灵降临节的第二天

对啦 才过了三个来星期

我得去瞧瞧大夫

也不过是像我跟他结婚以前那一次罢咧 当时我有白带

弗洛伊教我去找彭布罗克路的那个干巴巴木头木脑的老妇科大夫科林斯[373]给瞧瞧

他管那个叫你的阴道

我猜想他就是靠这套手法

从“斯蒂芬草地”[374]一带的阔主儿身上弄到一面面框上镀了金字的镜子和一块块地毯的

她们只要有一星半点儿的小毛病就跑来找他

她的阴道啦

她的小腿象皮病啦

她们有的是钱喽

所以她们什么都好

即便世界上只剩下了他这么一个[375]男人

我也不会嫁给他

再说

那些女人的娃娃们老是有点儿不舒服 经常对着[376]那些臭婊子闻来闻去

居然还问起我那白带有没有讨厌的气味 他究竟想让我干什么呀

唯一想要的也许是金钱呗

哪里有提这种问题的 

要是我怀着全部敬意 

把那玩艺儿统统抹遍了他那张满是皱纹的老脸孔

上我猜想他就准会明白啦 

他还问我

你那个容易通[377]吗

通什么呀

听他那口气 我还以为他指的是直布罗陀岩石呢

这倒也是个非常巧妙的发明说起来

我就喜欢事后把下身尽量挤进到马桶的坑里

接着拉一下链子

冲洗一番

又舒但又凉爽 

简直都发麻啦 

可我总觉得身子里面还留着点儿什么

米莉小的时候 我常检查她排泄出来的

好知道她有没有虫子

不管怎么着

照样得付钱给他 大夫 

多少钱啊

请交一基尼 

他居然问起我 

遗漏出来[378]的多不多 这些老家伙是打哪儿弄到这些词儿的呢 

边说什么它们遗漏出来 边斜愣着那双近视眼 

朝我使眼色 

我不大信任他 

决不让他给我施麻醉剂 

或者天晓得还有什么旁的玩艺儿

可我还是喜欢他坐下来写那东西时候的样儿 

绷着脸皱起眉头 

鼻子显得挺聪明的 

好像在说

你这混蛋

你这瞎话流星的轻桃娘儿们哦 随你爱怎么说就怎么说吧 

没关系

只要别说是白痴就成他也够聪明的[379] 看出了这一点

当然喽 

他绞尽脑汁才给我写了一封封狂热痴情的信 

我的宝贝儿 

什么都离不开你那光辉的玉体

还在一切这个字下面划了线

都永远是美好的 

给人快乐的

这些都是他从手头一本无聊的书里抄下来的 

我自个儿有时候一天要搞四五回

可我说我没搞 

真的吗

啊

对啦 

我说这一点儿不假

这么一来他就不吭声啦

我晓得底下会怎么样

这不过是娘胎里带来的弱点罢咧

我们头回见面的那个晚上也不知道怎样一来

他就教我兴奋起来啦 当时我住在里霍勃斯

高台街

我们站着

直勾勾地相互盯着看了十来分钟 就好像在哪儿见过似的

我猜想那是由于我赶母亲

有着犹太女人的容貌

他脸上露着有点儿懒散的微笑

常常东拉西扯地哄我开心

多伊尔[380]一家人全都说他会竞选下议院议员

噢

我可是个地地道道的傻瓜

居然把他关于自治运动和土地同盟[381]吹的那些牛皮都当真啦 

他还把胡格诺派教徒[382]里那首又长又乱的歌儿给我送了来 

说是用法国话唱就更古雅 

哦 

德拉图赖讷的美丽国土[383] 

这只歌儿我连一回也没唱过 

他又大讲起宗教和迫害来啦 

乱七八糟的

什么事儿他总也不教你自自然然地享受一番然后他就像是[384]对你开个大恩似的 

在布赖顿广场逮住头一个机会就赶紧跑进我的卧室来

了假装手上沾了墨水

要用我经常使的含着阿尔比安[385]奶和琉磺的肥皂

可那肥皂还裹着包装的蜡纸呢

哦

那天我直笑他

简直笑破了肚皮

我还是别整宿坐在这玩艺儿上头啦

他们应该按照普通的尺寸来造尿盆儿

女人家也就能够舒舒服服地坐在上面啦 

他竟然跪下去解手 

我估摸着天底下再也找不到第二个男人有他这种习惯的啦

瞧他在床脚那个睡法儿

连个硬枕头都没有 

怎么能睡呢

亏得他倒不踢踢踹踹的

不然的话

我满嘴牙都会被他踢掉啦 

一只手摁着鼻子呼吸 活脱儿像那位印度神 一个下雨的星期天

他领我到基尔代尔街博物馆去让我看过 

浑身裹了件长坎肩儿 

侧着躺在手上[386] 

十个脚趾扎煞开来 他说[387]

那个宗教比犹大教和咱们天主教加在一块儿还大呢 

整个儿亚洲都在模仿他

正像他总在模仿每一个人

我猜想他也一向都睡在床脚那一头

还把他那双大方脚丫子伸到他老婆嘴里去 

这腥臭的劳什子 

不管怎样

那些布片儿哪儿去啦

啊 

对啦

我知道啦但愿那只旧衣橱可别吱吱嘎嘎地响

啊 我就知道它会响的

他睡得好香啊[388] 

准是在什么地方寻欢作乐来着

不过 她给他的倒也完全值得他出这笔钱

他当然得在她身上花钱喽 

噢

这劳什子真讨厌

我巴不得下辈子我们女人能过得自在一点儿

别再这么把自己捆绑起来 老天爷 

可怜可怜我们吧

这一宿这样就能对付啦

这张老掉了牙叮零当啷响的笨床 

总是教我想起老科恩[389] 

我猜他躺在这床上可没少挠自个儿

他呢 却还以为爹是从我还是个小妞儿的时候就曾经崇拜过的那个内皮尔勋爵[390]手里买下的呢

因为我就是这么告诉他的[391]

慢慢儿地

轻轻儿地

哦 

我爱我这张床

天哪 

如今都十六年啦 

我们这份日子过得还是跟以前一样紧巴巴的 

我们统共搬过多少回家呀

隆巴德高台街跟翁塔利奥高台街跟伦巴德街跟霍利斯街 

每回他都吊儿郎当地吹着口哨

不是胡格诺教徒这个曲子就是青蛙进行曲[392]

还装模作样儿地帮那些脚夫去搬运我们那四佯简陋的家具呢

后来又住进了市徽饭店

连看门的戴利都说是越来越差啦

总有人呆在楼梯平台那儿的可爱的地方祷告[393] 

把他们的臭气全留下来啦 

一闻就知道在你之前进去的是谁

每回刚刚顺当了

就又会出点儿什么事

要么就是他惹出什么麻烦来 汤姆也罢

希利也罢

卡夫先生也罢

德里米也罢[394]

要么就是为了那些旧彩票[395]的事儿差点儿蹲监狱

本来还指望全家人都靠它来得济哪

不然的话他也会因为态度狂妄

很快就把自由人报[396]这个饭碗给砸啦就像旁的那几个差事一样

都是由于罪人芬[397]或是共济会[398]的缘故 

那么就瞧瞧他指给咱看的那个下雨天淋得精湿独自在科迪巷转悠的小个儿[399]到底会给他多大安慰吧 他说那个人非常能干

浑身是纯粹的爱尔兰劲儿 从我看到的他身上那条长裤的纯粹劲儿来判断 

他的确是这样的

哦

乔治教堂的钟声响啦

哦两点过三刻啦[400]

深更半夜的 

他真是挑了个好时候回的家 

凑到人家跟前儿来啦 而且是跨过栏干跳到空地上的 

要是给什么人撞见了呢

明天我就得狠狠地把他这个小毛病改一改

头一桩

查查他的衬衫 

要么就翻看那个法国信[401]是不是还在他的皮夹子里

依我看他还只当我蒙在鼓里呢 

这些男人就喜欢捣鬼 他们就是有二十个兜儿 

也装不下他们那些瞎话 

即便是真话他们也不会相信 那么又何必去说 

呢然后就蜷起身子往床上一倒

活像是有一回他给我捎来的贵族[402]那本杰作里的娃娃直好像我们在现实生活里见到的例子还不够似的 

管他叫老贵族还是叫什么名字呢 

何苦拿那些长着两个脑袋的缺腿儿娃娃的破相片来恶心你

这就是他们成天梦想着干的罪恶勾当 

他们那空洞洞的脑袋瓜儿里 什么旁的也没有装

他们当中有一半人就欠吃慢性毒药啦

还得给他[403]预备茶和两面都涂了黄油的烤面包片

要新下的蛋

我想我这个人已经不算数啦 在霍利斯街的时候 

有一个晚上我不许他舔我 

男人啊男人

在这一点上总是个暴君 

他光着身子在地板上睡了半宿

就像是亲属死了以后犹太人所做的那样[404]

一口早饭也不肯吃 

一句话都不说

我觉得他就是想让我对他亲热亲热 我坚持够了以后就让他随意去干他只想着自个儿乐和 搞得完全不对头 

他的舌头可不够圆滚要么就是我也闹不清是怎么回事 

他忘记了那个

可我呢

一点儿都不

假若他本人不在乎 

我就教他再搞上一遍

然后把他锁在煤窖里 

让他跟蟑螂一块儿睡觉去 

我倒是想知道哪个女人迷上了我甩掉的这个男人

难道就是乔西[405]吗

他可是个天生的谎屁流儿 

不 

他永远不会有胆量去勾搭一个有夫之妇 

所以他才让我跟博伊兰

至于她叫作她的丹尼斯的那个垂头丧气的可怜虫

他[406]算个什么丈夫呢 

对啦

他在跟什么小婊子打得火热

上回我跟他带上米莉去看学院里的运动会 

那个脑袋上扣了顶娃娃帽的霍恩布洛尔[407]放我们从后门进去的

他竟然向走来走去执行裙子任务[408]的那两个女人飞起眼儿来

起初我试着朝他眨巴眼

但是白搭 

当然喽

他的钱都这么花掉啦 

这全是帕狄迪格纳穆先生的葬礼造成的

对啦

博伊兰带来的报纸上说 葬礼还挺隆重 

大家都很有派头

倒是该让他们瞧瞧真正的军官的葬礼 

那才叫了不起呢 

枪托子朝上的枪啦

蒙起来的吊鼓啦死者宠爱的马披着黑纱走在后面 

利布姆[409]和汤姆克南[410]

有一回那个酒桶般的小酒鬼不知在什么地方喝醉啦 

一头栽到男厕所里

咬掉了自己的舌头 

还有马丁坎宁翰和迪达勒斯爷儿俩

再就是范妮麦科伊[411] 的丈夫

她那脑袋白得像棵白菜 

皮包骨 斗鸡眼儿

还想唱我那些歌儿呢

那她可得重新投胎才成

她穿了件开领儿挺低的旧绿衣裳 反正再也没有旁的法儿来吸引男人了

她那嗓门儿活像下雨天儿啪嚓啪嚓趟水的声音

我现在把什么都看透啦

他们所说的什么友谊只不过是你杀我我杀你

然后一埋拉倒 

可每个人家里还都有老婆和眷属哪 

尤其是杰克鲍尔

把那个酒馆女招待包下来啦 

当然喽 

他老婆老是生着病不是快要病倒啦 

就是刚缓过来

他倒是个蛮英俊的男人哩

尽管鬓角儿已经有点儿灰白了 他们这帮人可真够呛

喔

只要我能做得到 

他们就休想再把我丈夫抓在手里 背地里还拿他取笑[412] 

我全都知道 

喔

这是因为他干那些愚蠢勾当的时候还有足够的理智

不肯把自己挣下的每个便士都挥霍到他们肚子里去

他总还要照顾老婆和家眷嘛 

简直是一帮废物点心

可怜的帕迪狄格纳穆也是这样

我有点儿替他感到[413]难过

除非他上了保险 

要不他那老婆和五个娃娃可咋办哪 

活脱凡是个逗乐儿的小陀螺

总是摽在哪家酒吧的旮旯儿里

要么老婆要么就是儿子等在那里

比尔贝利 

请你回家去好不好[414]

寡妇的丧服也不能使她好看多少 可你要是长得漂亮

穿上丧服就格外显眼

啥人没去呢 

他吗 

对啦 

他参加了格伦克里的午餐会[415]还有那下贱的桶音本多拉德

为了当场演唱 

头天晚上他到霍利斯街来借燕尾服

好歹把身子塞进衣裤

他那张宽大的娃娃脸上满是笑容

活像是挨足了揍的小孩儿屁股

他看上去活像一对呆睾丸[416]

一点儿也不差

在舞台上想必丢尽了脸 

想想看

花上五先令 坐在包厢里 

难道就是为了瞧他吗

西蒙迪达勒斯也是一样

他在台上总是醉醺醺 的先从第二段歌词唱起来 

旧日恋情是新恋[417]是他的一个拿手节目 他唱起山楂枝上的女郎来

那嗓音多么圆润啊

而且他还总爱调情

当我跟他在弗雷迪迈那斯家里一块儿唱歌剧玛丽塔娜[418]的时候 

他的歌声又优美又豪放 菲比 

最亲爱的[419]

再见 

宝贝儿[420]

他总是这么唱 

宝贝儿

不像巴特尔达西那样把它唱成宝婊儿[421]

当然喽

他生就一副好嗓子 

一点儿也不做作

听了就像是冲个热腾腾的淋浴似的 教你整个儿沉浸在里面 

哦 玛丽塔娜 

荒林的花儿[422] 

我们唱得很出色

对我的音域来说

就是变一下调 

也还是高了点儿

那时候他已经跟梅古尔丁[423]结婚啦 

可那时他说的做的 

都会把好事儿给破坏啦 

如今他成了老光棍儿啦 他儿子到底是个什么样儿的人呢 

他说 他是个[424]作家

都快要当上大学里的意大利语教授啦 还要教我呢

他把我的相片拿给他看

究竟安的是什么心呢

那一张照得不好 我应该穿件满是褶裥的衣裳就好啦

那就永远不会显得过时了 

不过 

在那张相片上我显得还是挺年轻 

他是不是连相片带我这个人都送给他了呢[425] 

那也没关系反正我见过他跟着他爹妈

坐马车到王桥车站去 当时我还穿着丧服 那是十一年前的事嘞

对啦他[426]要是活下来 

就该十一岁啦 

可是替这样一个对我们来说根本不算数的娃娃服丧 

又有什么用呢[427] 

当然喽 

是他非要[428]服丧不可 

我猜想

就连那只猫要是死了 

他也会的

如今他[429]该已经长成个男子汉了吧 

当年他可是个天真烂漫的男孩儿 

一个惹人爱的小宝宝 穿的是方特勒罗伊小爵爷的套服[430]

一头鬈发 

活像是位舞台上的王子

我在马特狄龙家看到他[431]的时候

他也喜欢我来着

我记得他们都喜欢我的 等一等

天哪

对啦

等一等

对啦

沉住气

今天早晨我洗纸牌占卜婚姻的时候

出现了个发色不深不浅的年轻陌生人

是从前见过的

我还只当指的是他[432]呢 

可他并不是个年轻小伙子也不是个不熟悉的人

而且我的脸是掉过去的

第七张牌是什么来着

随后是象征一次陆地旅行的黑桃10 

后来还有已经寄出来的一封信和一件丑闻

三张王后和方块8表示会出人头地

对啦 等一等

全都应验啦

两张红8代表新衣裳

瞧啊 

我不是还梦见过什么吗 对啦

梦里出现了关于诗的什么

我希望他[432]可别留着油乎乎的长头发 一直耷拉到眼睛里

要么就像红印第安人那样倒竖着

他们为什么要弄成那副样子到处转悠呢 

只不过是让人对他们自个儿和他们的诗嘲笑罢咧 

我还是个小妞儿的时候可喜欢诗啦

起初我还以为他[433]是拜伦勋爵那样的诗人呢

其实他连一丁点儿诗人的素质也没有

我认为他[434]可完全不一样

我不知道他是不是太年轻啦

他大约是

等一等八八年

我是八八年结的婚

米莉昨天十五啦 八九年

那么他到底多大呢

在狄龙家那回才五六岁吧

那是约莫八八年的事我猜想他已经二十要么二十出头啦

他要是二十三四岁的话

对他来说 

我还不算大老

我但愿他不是那种自以为了不起的大学生

不会的

不然的话

他也不会跟他一道[435]坐在那间破旧的厨房里喝埃普斯可可[436]啦

还聊着天儿 他当然[437]假装统统都听懂啦

大概他还告诉他[438]

自个儿是三一学院毕业的呢 

作为教授他可大年轻啦

我希望他不是古德温[439]那样的教授 

论约翰詹姆森[440]

他倒是个有权威的教授哩

他们全都在诗里写什么女人啦 

喏 我认为他[441]找不到多少像我这样的女人 那里有爱的微叹

吉他的轻弹[442] 空气里弥漫着诗 

蓝色的海洋和月亮闪闪发光 

多么美丽 

乘夜船从塔里法[443]回来

欧罗巴岬角的灯台[444] 

那个人弹奏的吉他的旋律扣人心弦 

我会不会还有机会回到那儿去呢 

一张张从来没见过的脸

窗格后藏着一双明媚的流盼[445] 

我要把这唱给他听[446] 

哪怕他有一星半点儿诗人的气质 

也该能明白那就是我的眼睛

两只眼犹如爱星

乌黑又灿烂[447]

年轻的爱心 词儿有多么美好哇

跟一个聪明人谈你自己

而不是老听他[448]讲比利普雷斯科特的广告[449]和凯斯的广告[450]还有精力绝伦的汤姆的广告

要是他们的生意出了什么毛病 

咱们就得跟着受罪

我相信他[451]准是个非常了不起的人 我就是想遇见这么个人

天哪

而不是旁的那些人渣子而且他又那么年轻

从岩石旁边我可以瞧见下面马盖特海滨浴场[452]的那些英俊小伙子

一个个赤条条地站在太阳底下

就像是神仙还是什么的 接着嗖的一下就跳到海里去了

为什么所有的男人不能都长成这样儿呢 那样的话 

一个女人还能多少得到点儿安慰 

就像他买的那座可爱的小雕像[453] 

我可以成天望着他 

长长的鬈发 还有他那肩膀 

为了让你注意去听而举起的指头

那才是为你的真正的美和诗哪 我常常感到恨不得把他浑身上下都吻遍了 

包括他那招人爱的小鸡鸡儿 

多么纯朴

要是没人看眷

我恨不得把它含在嘴里

它多么干净白皙呀

就像是祈求你嘬它似的

他仰起那张稚气的脸蛋儿望着你 

我会这么做的

不出半分钟就完啦

哪怕我咽下了一丁点儿什么

那也没啥只不过像是麦片粥或露水罢咧 不会有害处的

何况他还那么干净

比那帮猪一样的男人可强多啦

我猜想他们大部分人一年到头也决不会想到要把那物儿洗上一洗 

所以女人才会长出口髭来 

在我这个岁数 

要是能够交上一个年轻俊俏的诗人 那才神气哪

早晨我头一桩儿就出纸牌

好看看那张愿望牌[454]究竟会不会出来

要么我就给王后配对儿

看看他到底出不出来[455]

凡是能找得到的

我都要读一读 

学一学 

还要背会一点儿

可也得等先晓得了他[456]喜欢谁再说

这么一来 他就不至于嫌我愚蠢啦

假若他认为天下的女人都是一样的话

我倒得教他明白未必是这样的 

我要把他弄得神魂颠倒 

直到他在我底下差不多昏迷过去

然后他就写起我来啦

情人啦

情妇啦而且是公开地 

当他出名以后 

所有的报纸上都登出我们两人的照片

哦

可那时候我拿他[457]咋办呢

不行 

他这个人[458]简直无可救药

他天生就不懂礼貌

不文雅

啥都不会

因为我不肯称他作休 

就从背后像那样拍我的屁股

是个连诗和白菜都分不清楚的蠢才

都怪你不教他们放规矩点儿才对你这样的

脸皮真厚

甚至都没问一声可不可以

当着我的面儿就在那把椅子上将鞋和裤子扒下来啦

上半身儿光剩件衬衫楞头楞脑地站在那儿

还指望着人家像神父啦

屠夫啦要么就是尤利乌斯恺撒时代的老伪善者[459]那么仰慕哪

当然喽 

他这只不过是一种开开玩笑消磨光阴的办法 

倒也情有可原 

说实在的

饶这么着 

还不如跟一头狮子[460]一块儿睡觉呢

我敢说一头老狮子倒还能说出点儿更像样儿的话来哪 哦

喔

我想它们[461]是因为罩在这条短衬裙里面才越发显得丰满动人

他简直忍不住啦

有时候它们把我自个儿也弄得兴奋起来啦

这些男人倒好

从女人身上得到的快乐可老鼻子啦 

对男人来说

那永远是那么圆那么白

我但愿能变换变换

让我自个儿当上个男人

用他们那物儿来试一试

当它胀得鼓鼓的朝你戳过来的时候 

你一摸 

是那么硬棒 

同时又那么软和

我从髓骨巷[462]拐角那儿经过的当儿

听见那些二流子在说什么

我的约翰舅舅有个长长的物儿 

我的舅妈玛丽有个带毛的物儿

因为天都黑了 

而且他们知道有个姑娘正打那儿经过

可我并没有脸红 

为啥要脸红呢 

何必呢 

这不过是天性嘛 他把他那长长的物儿戳进我的玛丽舅妈那带毛的啥 

其实是给扫帚装上个长把儿 到哪儿去都是男人吃香

他们可以随便挑自家喜欢的有夫之妇啦 

浪荡寡妇啦 黄花女儿啦

反正各有各的风味儿

就像爱尔兰街[463]背荫地儿的一座座房子里 

可不是老用链儿把女人拴起来 

他们可休想把我拴起来

不 

妈的 

我才不怕呢

我要是干开了头

也就不管傻瓜丈夫吃不吃醋啦 

就是露了馅儿啦 又何必吵架呢 

难道就不能继续做朋友了吗

她丈夫发现了他们[464]一道干了点儿啥

喏

不用说

就算他发现了

他又咋能收回覆水呢 

不论他做啥 反正他也已经剃度[465]啦 

再就是像对美丽的暴君[466]里的那个妻子似的 男人走到另一个疯狂的极端

当然喽 

男人嘛连一丁点儿也不会替做丈夫的或者做老婆的考虑一下 

他要的就是娘儿们 

并且把她搞到手 

我倒是想知道

要不是为了这个干吗要让我们有七情六欲呢 

我简直按捺不住啦 

我还年轻哪又咋耐得住呢 

跟他[467]这么个冷冰冰的人一道过日子

我居然没有未老先衰

变成个干瘪老妖婆倒真是个奇迹哩 

他从来也没抱过我 

除非是睡着了以后有时候从不对头的那一端搂过来

我猜想他根本不知道我是谁

难道竟有亲女人屁股的男人吗

我恨

不得跟他吵一架哩

打那以后 

哪儿不自然他就亲哪儿

在那些部位

我们连一丁点儿也动不了情

我们个个都有两团儿同样的肥油 

我随便跟哪个男人搞以前

呸 

这帮脏畜生

光是想一想就够啦

小姐 

我亲亲您的脚[468]

这活倒还有几分意思 

他亲没亲我们门厅的门呢 亲啦 

好个疯子

除了我以外 

谁都不理解他那些疯疯颠颠的念头 

当然喽 一个女人巴不得每天都能给抱个二十来遍 

这样才能显得年轻 

不论对方是谁都行

只要自个儿爱上了那个人

或者被啥人爱上了就成

要是你想望的那个主儿不在 老天爷

我就想挑个黑咕隆咚的晚上

到谁都不认识我的码头上去转悠 

随便找个刚上岸急煎煎的水手 

他才一点儿也不管我是啥人呢

反正随便找个地方 闪进一扇门去干上一通就成 

要么就找个有着一张野性面孔的拉斯法纳姆[469]的吉卜赛人

他们在布卢姆菲尔德洗衣坊[470]附近扎帐篷

变着法儿偷我们的东西

我冲着模范洗衣坊这个招牌

就送去了几样我的衣物 

可回回退给我的是旧玩艺儿 

一样一只长袜子唔的

那个眼睛挺水灵却长着一副流氓相的家伙 把那嫩枝剥得光光的 

黑咕隆咚地朝着我猛扑过来

一声不响地跨在我身上 把我往墙上顶要么就是个杀人犯

随便啥人

也不管他们自个儿是干啥的

哪怕是头戴大礼帽的体面绅士

要么就是住在附近的那位英国王室法律顾问[471] 有一回我瞧见他从哈德威克巷走了出来 

那是他请我们吃鱼宴的晚上

他说是因为在拳击赛中赢了

可他当然是 

为了我才请的客喽 

我是凭着他那鞋罩和走路那个劲儿认出他来

的

过了一分钟

我刚一回头

就瞧见一个女人也跟在后面从那

条巷子里溜出来啦

是哪个臭婊子啊

他干完那档子事儿以后 就回家到他老婆那儿去啦

不过 

我猜想那些水手有一半都害病

不中用啦 哦

你这大块头

求求您啦

往那边儿挪一挪吧 

听

听他这个

风把我的叹息飘送给你[472]

喏 

大方案家[473]堂波尔

多德拉弗罗拉[474]

他蛮可以[475]睡着觉叹气哩

要是他知道今儿

个早晨他是咋样出现在纸牌上的话

他就真有得可叹气的啦

夹在两张7当中不知道咋办才好的一个深头发男人 还被关进了监狱

天晓得他干了啥

我也不摸头脑 

而我呢 

还得下厨房 踢拉塌拉转悠

给他这位老爷准备早饭 

这当儿他可像具木乃伊似地[476]弯着身于睡在那儿

我真会这么做吗

难道你瞧见过我跑腿不成

我倒是想看看我自个儿跑跑颠颠的那副样子

只要关怀他们一下

他们就会把你当成垃圾 

我才不管别人说三道四呢要是由女人来统治天下

那该有多好哇

你不会看到女人你杀我我杀你 

大批地屠杀人

你啥时候瞧见过女人像他们那么喝得烂醉

到处滚来滚去 

赌钱输个精光

要么就连老本都赔在赛马上 

对啦 

因为一个女人家不论做啥

她都懂得到时候就该收场真的 

要不是多亏了女人

世界上就压根儿不会有男人

他们不知道做一个女人

做一位妈妈

意味着啥 

要不是有个妈妈拉扯着他们 

他们都咋活呀

这会子都在哪儿呢

我就从来没得到过这方面的济[477]

估计正因为是这样

如今他[478]才跑野啦

离开书本和学习 

晚上到外面荡来荡去

大概是因为一家人净吵吵闹闹的 

所以他不住在家里啦 

喏

这可真是个不幸的事儿

他们有这么个好儿子

还不知足

我呢 没有儿子

难道是他[479]就没有生儿子的精力吗

那可不是我的过错

当我在光秃秃的当街瞧见了两条狗

公的从后面跟母的干上的时候

我们也到了一块儿 那档子事儿[48…]教我伤透了心

我估摸埋葬他的时候不该给他穿上我边哭边编织成的那件小羊毛线衣

应该把那件衣服给随便哪个穷娃娃穿

可是我心里很清楚 

我再也不会生养啦 

那又是我们家头一回死人 

可不是嘛

打那以后我们跟过去就完全不一样啦

哦 

不要再想下去啦

我可不能想着想着就垂头垂气起来

我一直觉得他[481]带回家来的是个古怪的人

我纳闷他为啥[482]不肯留下来过夜呢

也省得这么满城流浪 

万一碰上啥人

盗贼啦 扒手唔的

他那位可怜的妈妈要是在世的话

决不会喜欢这种事儿的

兴许还把他这辈子毁掉呐 

不过 

这可是个可爱的时辰哩

那么安静 

我一向就喜欢舞会散了以后回家来 

夜晚那空气啊

男人有着可以交谈的朋友

我们可一个都没有他[483]想要的是他自个儿得不到手的

要么就是随时可以捅上你一刀的女人

我就恨女人的这些方面 

也难怪男人会那么对待我们喽

我们是一帮可怕的婊子

我猜想 正是我们的种种麻烦才使我们变得这么泼辣

我可不是那种人

他蛮可以[484]舒舒坦坦地睡在另一间屋子的沙发上

他还那么年轻嘛 

刚刚二十来岁我猜他对我就像个少年人那样害羞

呆在隔壁屋

他听得见我往尿盆里撒的声音

真的[485] 

这又有啥关系呢

迪达勒斯

我觉得这倒有点儿像直布罗陀的那些姓 德拉帕斯啦 德拉格拉西亚[486]唔的

那儿的人们有着怪里怪气的姓

给过我一串念珠的圣玛利亚的比拉普拉纳神父[487]

住在七道湾街的罗萨利斯伊奥赖利[488] 

还有住在总督街的皮希姆勃和奥皮索太太[489]

哦

这叫啥姓呀 

我要是有她这么个姓

就干脆跳河去算啦

哎呀

再就是所有那些斜坡 

天堂斜街[490]啦

疯人院斜街[491]啦 

罗杰斯斜街[492]啦 

还有克鲁切兹斜街[493]和鬼峡梯阶[494] 

喏

即便我是个冒失鬼也不该怎么怪我

我知道自个儿是有点儿粗心大意我敢向老天爷起誓 

跟当时比起来

我并不觉得自个儿长大了多少 我倒纳闷自个儿还会不会叽哩咕噜说点儿西班牙话呢

你好吗

很好

谢谢你 你呢[495]瞧

我还没有像我所想的那样忘干净哪

文法可就不行啦

名词是任何人或地方或东西的名字

可惜呀

我从来也没试着去读一读那个坏脾气的鲁维奥太太借给我的那本巴莱拉[496]的小说

书上的问号统统都是颠倒过来的[497]有两样嘛[497] 

我晓得到头来我们总会走掉的 

我可以教他[498]西班牙话 他呢 

教我意大利话

那么一来他就能明白我还不是那么饭桶 

他没留下来过夜

太可惜啦

我敢说可怜的小伙子一定累得要死

非常需要好好儿地睡上一觉 我蛮可以替他把早餐送到床上去吃

还得添上点儿烤面包片儿

只要别把刀子叉上去就行

因为那样就会倒媚的[499] 

要么就是假若那个女人挨家挨户送来了水田芹跟旁的啥香甜可口的吃的 厨房里还有几颗橄榄哪 

我的力气已渐衰

我要换上我那套最好的衬衣汗裤

让他[514]看个够 

那么一来他那物儿就竖起来啦

要是他想知道的话

我就告诉他 

他老婆给人操啦

对啦 被狠狠地操了一通 

都快操到头儿啦 

可不是他 

接连丢了五六回 

这条干净床单上还留着他那劲头[515]的印儿哪

我干脆不想用烙铁把那印儿熨掉

这就该让他[516]知足啦 

你要是不相信我的话就摸摸我的肚子看

除非我能让他那物儿竖起来

搁到我里头去

我就打算把每一个细节都说给他听一听

教他当着我的面儿干一通

假若我是个淫妇 

正像顶层楼座的那个家伙[517]所说的那样 他这是活该 

一切都怪他自个儿嘛

哦 

假若这就是我们女人在泪谷[518]所干下的全部坏事儿

那又算得了啥呢 

老天爷知道这算不了啥

难道不是人人都 只不过他们偷偷摸摸地干罢咧 

我看恐怕就是为了这个才有女人的

不然的话 上主就不会把我们造得对男人那么有吸引力啦 

要是他想亲我的屁股 

我就拉开我的汗裤裆 

肥滚滚地戳到他面前 不缺零件儿

他蛮可以把舌头往我的窟窿里伸进七英里长去

因为他就贴着我的褐色部位哪 然后我就对他说我要一英镑要么就是三十先令 

告诉他我打算买身内衣裤 

要是他给了我

喏 他倒也不赖 

我并不想学旁的女人那样把他敲榨光啦 

我常常有机会给自个儿开上一张有信用的支票

签上他的名字 

弄上两三英镑 有好几回他都忘记上锁啦

而且他也不花嘛

我要让他从背后搞

只要别把我那些好内裤都弄脏了就行噢

我想 

那总是难免的

我要装出一副满不在乎的样儿 

问上他一两个问题 

从他的回答我就知道啦

他那股劲儿一上来是瞒不住我的 

他的心情有啥变化 

我都一清二楚

我要把屁股绷得紧紧的

说几句浪话 

闻闻我屁股啦 

舔舔我的屎啦 

要么就是闪过脑子的头一个疯疯癫癫的念头 然后我就暗示那档子事儿对啦 

啊 

别急

宝宝

这会儿该轮到我啦 

搞的时候我会是十分快活 

亲亲热热的 哦 

可我忘记了这血淋淋的祸害啦 

唉你不知道究竟是该笑还是该哭 好啦 简直是李子和苹果[519]的大杂伴儿

不 

我得系上那条旧的[520] 

这就好多啦

更服贴一些

他永远也闹不清究竟是不是他弄的

喏 

不论是多么旧的玩艺儿

对你来说也就蛮好啦 

然后我就像平时那样把他遗漏[521]的从我身上抹掉 

接着我就出门啦 

让他望着天花板嘀咕 这会儿她到哪儿去了呢 教他急着要我 

几点过一刻啦

可真不是个时候 

我猜想在中国 

人们这会儿准正在起来梳辫子哪 

好开始当天的生活

喏

修女们[522]快要敲晨祷钟啦 没有人会进去吵醒她们

除非有个把修士去做夜课[523]啦 

要么就是隔壁人家的闹钟

就像鸡叫似的咔嗒咔嗒地响 都快把自个儿的脑子震出来啦

看看能不能打个盹儿 

一二三四五

他们设计的这些算是啥花儿啊 

就像星星一样 隆巴德街的墙纸可好看多啦 

他给我的那条围裙上的花样儿就有点儿像

不过我只用过两回

最好把这灯弄低一些

再试着睡一下

好能早点儿起床

我要到兰贝斯[524]去

它就在芬勒特[525]旁边 

叫他们送些花儿来 

好把屋子点缀点缀

万一明天 

我的意思是说今天

他把他[526]带回家来呢不 

不 

星期五可是个不吉利的日子[527]

头一桩

我先得把这屋子拾掇拾掇

我寻思灰尘准是在我睡觉的当儿

不知咋地就长出来啦 

然后我们可以来点儿音乐 抽抽香烟 

我可以替他伴奏

我得先用牛奶把钢琴的键擦擦

我穿啥好呢

要不要戴一朵白玫瑰[528]

要么就来点儿利普顿[529]仙女蛋糕

我就爱闻阔气的大店铺的香味儿

每磅七便士半

不然就是另外那种樱桃馅挂着粉色糖霜的 两磅十一便士

桌子当中间儿还得摆上一盆花草 

在哪儿才能买到便宜的呢 喔

前不久我在哪儿瞧见过

我真爱花儿呀

恨不得让这房子整个儿都漂在玫瑰花海上 天上的造物主啊

啥也比不上大自然

蛮荒的山啦

大海啦

滚滚的波浪啦

再就是美丽的田野

一片片庄稼地里长着燕麦啦

小麦啦

各种各样的东西

一群群肥实的牛走来走去

看着心里好舒坦呀

河流湖泊鲜花 啥样形状香味颜色的都有

连沟儿里都绽出了报春花和紫罗兰

这就是大自然 至于那些人说啥天主不存在啦

甭瞧他们一肚子学问

还不配我用两个指头打个榧子哪

他们为啥不自个儿跑去创造点儿啥名堂出来呢

我常常问他[530]这句话 无神论者也罢 

不论他们管自个儿叫啥名堂也罢 

总得先把自个儿身上的污点[531]洗净呀 

等到他们快死啦 

又该嚎陶大哭着去找神父啦 

为啥呢 为啥呢 

因为他们做了亏心事 

生怕下地狱啊 

对啦 

我把他们琢磨透啦 谁是开天辟地第一个人呢 

又是谁在啥都不存在以前

创造了万物呢

是谁呢 哎 

这他们也不晓得 我也不晓得

这不就结了吗

他们倒不如试着去挡住太阳让它明儿个别升上来呢

他[532]说过

太阳是为你照耀的

那天我们正躺在霍斯岬角的杜鹃花丛里

他穿的是一身灰色花呢衣裤 

戴着那顶草帽

就在那天 我使得他向我求婚

对啦

起先我把自个儿嘴里的香籽糕往他嘴里递送了一丁点儿[533]

那是个闰年[534]

跟今年一样

对啦

十六年过去啦

我的天哪 

那么长长的一个吻

我差点儿都没气儿啦

对啦

他说我是山里的一朵花儿

对啦

我们都是花儿

女人的身子

对啦 

这是他这辈子[535]所说的一句真话 还有那句今天太阳是为你照耀的 

对啦这么一来我才喜欢上了他 因为我看出他懂得要么就是感觉到了女人是啥

而且我晓得

我啥时候都能够随便摆布他

我就尽量教他快活 

就一步步地引着他

直到他要我答应他 

可我呢起先不肯答应 

只是放眼望着大海和天空[536]

我在想着那么多他所不知道的事儿

马尔维啦

斯坦厄普先生啦

赫斯特啦

爹爹啦

老格罗夫斯上尉啦

水手们在玩众鸟飞[537]啦

我说弯腰[538]啦

要么就是他们在码头上所说的洗碟子 

还有总督府前的哨兵

白盔上镶着一道边儿[539]

可怜的家伙 都快给晒得熟透啦

西班牙姑娘们披着披肩

头上插着高高的梳子

正笑着再就是早晨的拍卖[540]

希腊人啦

犹大人啦 

阿拉伯人啦 

鬼知道还有旁的啥人

反正都是从欧洲所有最边远的地方来的

再加上公爵街[541]和家禽市场

统统都在拉比沙伦[542]外面嘎嘎乱叫一头头可怜的驴净打瞌睡

差点儿滑跤

阴暗的台阶上

睡着一个个裹着大氅的模模糊糊的身影

还有运公牛的车子[543]那好

大的轱辘

还有几千年的古堡[544]

对啦

还有那些漂亮的摩尔人

全都像国王那样穿着一身白

缠着头巾

请你到他们那小小

店铺里去坐一坐

还有龙达[545]

客栈[546]那一扇扇古老的窗户

窗格后藏着一双明媚的流盼[547]

好让她的情人亲那铁丝格子[548]

还有夜里半掩着门的酒店啦

响板啦

那天晚上我们在阿尔赫

西拉斯误了那班轮渡

打更的拎着灯转悠

平安无事啊

哎唷

深处那可怕的急流

哦

大海有时候大海是深红色的就像火似的

还有那壮丽的落日

再就是阿拉梅达园里的无花果树

对 

啦 

还有那一条条奇妙的小街 

一座座桃红天蓝淡黄的房子 

还有玫瑰园啦莱莉花啦天竺葵啦仙人掌啦 

在直布罗陀作姑娘的时候我可是那儿的一朵山花儿 

对啦 

当时我在头发上插了朵玫瑰 

像安达卢西亚姑娘们常做的那样 

要么我就还是戴朵红玫瑰 

吧[549] 

好吧 

在摩尔墙脚下他[550]曾咋佯地亲我呀 

于是我想 

喏 

他也不比[551]旁的啥人差呀于是我递个眼色教他再向我 

求一回 

于是他问我愿意吗 

对啦 

说声好吧我的山花 

于是 

我先伸出胳膊搂住他 

对啦 

并且把他往下拽

让他紧贴着我 

这样他就能感触到我那对香气袭人的乳房啦

对啦 

他那颗心啊如醉如狂 

于是我说 

好吧 

我愿意 

好吧。 

的里雅斯特——苏黎世——巴黎，1914-1921