Complete Works of James Joyce (109 page)

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 undoubted 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 hairoil 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 moonblue 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 fill 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 trapdoor. 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 tramlines, 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), 50 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), Loveletters 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 fit 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 Roschaschana 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’MOLLOY: 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. nux vom.,
5 minims

    
Extr. taraxel. iiq.,
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 eightday 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 language with universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free rent, 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!