MAJOR TWEEDY
(growls gruffly) Rorke’s Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahar shalal hashbaz.
THE CITIZEN
Erin go bragh!
(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Both salute with fierce hostility.)
PRIVATE CARR
I’ll do him in.
PRIVATE COMPTON
(moves the crowd back) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher’s shop of the bugger.
(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the king.)
CISSY CAFFREY
They’re going to fight. For me!
CUNTY KATE
The brave and the fair.
BIDDY THE CLAP
Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.
CUNTY KATE
(blushing deeply) Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry saint George for me!
STEPHEN
The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave Old Ireland’s windingsheet.
PRIVATE CARR
(loosening his belt, shouts) I’ll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.
BLOOM
(shakes Cissy Caffrey’s shoulders) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver!
CISSY CAFFREY
(alarmed, seizes Private Carr’s sleeve) Amn’t I with you? Amn’t I your girl? Cissy’s your girl. (she cries) Police!
STEPHEN
(ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey)
White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES
Police!
DISTANT VOICES
Dublin’s burning! Dublin’s burning! On fire, on fire!
(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey, winging from the sea, rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The midnight sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless yawn. Tom Rochford, winner, in athlete’s singlet and breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves. Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on broomsticks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragons’ teeth. Armed heroes spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of knights of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O’Brien against Daniel O’Connell, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M‘Carthy against Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O’Leary against Lear O’Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The O’Donoghue of The Glens against The Glens of The O’Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the fieldaltar of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns. From the high barbacans of the tower two shafts of light fall on the smokepalled altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father Malachi O’Flynn in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to the front, celebrates camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C Haines Love M. A. in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and collar back to the front, holds over the celebrant’s head an open umbrella.)
FATHER MALACHI O’FLYNN
Introibo ad altare diaboli.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE
To the devil which hath made glad my young days.
FATHER MALACHI O’FLYNN
(takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host) Corpus meum.
THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE
(raises high behind the celebrant’s petticoat, revealing his grey bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck) My body.
THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED
Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI
Dooooooooooog!
THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED
Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!
(From on high the voice of Adonai calls.)
ADONAI
Goooooooooood!
(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)
PRIVATE CARR
(with ferocious articulation) I’ll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I’ll wring the bastard fucker’s bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!
(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.)
BLOOM
(runs to Lynch) Can’t you get him away?
LYNCH
He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (to Bloom) Get him away, you. He won’t listen to me.
(He drags Kitty away.)
STEPHEN
(points) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit.
BLOOM
(runs to Stephen) Come along with me now before worse happens. Here’s your stick.
STEPHEN
Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.
OLD GUMMY GRANNY
(thrusts a dagger towards Stephen’s hand) Remove him, acushla. At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. (she prays) O good God, take him!
CISSY CAFFREY
(pulling Private Carr) Come on, you’re boosed. He insulted me but I forgive him. (shouting in his ear) I forgive him for insulting me.
BLOOM
(over Stephen’s shoulder) Yes, go. You see he’s incapable.
PRIVATE CARR
(breaks loose) I’ll insult him.
(He rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. He lies prone, his face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and picks it up.)
MAJOR TWEEDY
(loudly) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!
THE RETRIEVER
(barking furiously) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.
THE CROWD
Let him up! Don’t strike him when he’s down! Air! Who? The soldier hit him. He’s a professor. Is he hurted? Don’t manhandle him! He’s fainted!
A HAG
What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!
THE BAWD
Listen to who’s talking! Hasn’t the soldier a right to go with his girl? He gave him the coward’s blow.
(They grab at each other’s hair, claw at each other and spit.)
THE RETRIEVER
(barking) Wow wow wow.
BLOOM
(shoves them back, loudly) Get back, stand back!
PRIVATE COMPTON
(tugging his comrade) Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here’s the cops!
(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)
FIRST WATCH
What’s wrong here?
PRIVATE COMPTON
We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And assaulted my chum. (the retriever barks) Who owns the bleeding tyke?
CISSY CAFFREY
(with expectation) Is he bleeding!
A MAN
(rising from his knees) No. Gone off. He’ll come to all right.
BLOOM
(glances sharply at the man) Leave him to me. I can easily …..
SECOND WATCH
Who are you? Do you know him?
PRIVATE CARR
(lurches towards the watch) He insulted my lady friend.