JAMES JOYCE - ULYSSES

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

( in amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermilion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided 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 Phoenix 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 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. Pigdog 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 huntingcrop 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, ringletted, 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 wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and 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 jerkin 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 grappling 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 chimpanzee. ( breathlessly ) Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. ( overcome with emotion ) I left the precincts. ( he turns to a figure in the crowd, appealing ) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more …..

HYNES

( coldly ) You are a perfect stranger.

SECOND WATCH

( points to the corner ) The bomb is here.

FIRST WATCH

Infernal machine with a time fuse.

BLOOM

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

FIRST WATCH

( draws his truncheon ) Liar!

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

PADDY DIGNAM

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