Ulysses Part 114

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 bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom s.h.i.+p of finance...

AN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief magistrate!

_(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.)_

THE TORCHBEARERS: 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, loc.u.m tenens.

They nod vigorously in agreement.)_

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: _(In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large white silk scarf)_ That alderman 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: _(Impa.s.sionedly)_ These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their upholstered p.o.o.p, casting dice, what reck they?

Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic l.u.s.ts upon our prost.i.tuted labour. The poor man starves while they are gra.s.sing 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 Mile 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 King's own Scottish Borderers, 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, his lords.h.i.+p the lord mayor of Cork, their wors.h.i.+ps the mayors of Limerick, Galway, Sligo and Waterford, 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. After them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canva.s.sers, law scriveners, ma.s.seurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, Italian warehous.e.m.e.n, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, a.s.sessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bedchamber, Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the master of horse, 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.

Beefeaters 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 horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden headstall. 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 G.o.d! 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 n.o.bLEWOMAN: _(n.o.bly)_ All that man has seen!

A FEMINIST: _(Masculinely)_ And done!

A BELLHANGER: A cla.s.sic 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. G.o.d save Leopold the First!

ALL: G.o.d 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 t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, 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 a.s.sumes 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 wors.h.i.+p.

_(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)_ Ill.u.s.trious 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 cus.h.i.+on, 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'Intos.h.!.+

_(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, b.u.t.ter scotch, pineapple rock,_ billets doux _in the form of c.o.c.ked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in the hole, bottles of Jeyes' Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days'