Ulysses: Chapter 15 Circe

Description

• Author: James Joyce

　

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.) L

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1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. Ulysses: Chapter 18 Penelope
3. Ulysses: Chapter 6 Hades
4. Ulysses: Chapter 8 Lestrygonians
5. Ulysses: Chapter 16 Eumaeus
6. Ulysses: Chapter 7 Aeolus
7. Ulysses: Chapter 3 Proteus
8. Ulysses: Chapter 17 Ithaca
9. Ulysses: Chapter 1 Telemachus
10. Ulysses: Chapter 14 Oxen of the Sun
11. Ulysses: Chapter 2 Nestor
12. Ulysses: Chapter 4 Calypso
13. Ulysses: Chapter 13 Nausicca
14. Ulysses: Chapter 11 Sirens
15. Ulysses: Chapter 12 Cyclops
16. Ulysses: Chapter 9 Scylla and Charybdis