Ulysses Part 112

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 G.o.d, 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 m.u.f.f and quizzing-gla.s.ses 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 s.h.i.+very! 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: _(Unb.u.t.toning 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, pa.s.ses 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 bra.s.s 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)_ a.r.s.e over tip. Hundred s.h.i.+llings to five.

THE JURORS: _(All their heads lowered in a.s.sent)_ 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 a.s.sizes 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 ap.r.o.n, 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, k.n.o.bbed 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 s...o...b..tic 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 p.r.o.nounced life extinct when I succ.u.mbed 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.