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PADDY DIGNAM: (With pricked up ears, winces) 

Overtones.  (He wriggles forward and places an ear to the 

ground) My master’s voice! 

JOHN O’CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. 

P. eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen. House of Keys. 

Plot, one hundred and one. 

(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail 

stiffpointcd, his ears cocked.) 

PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul. 

(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing 

its tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese 

grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. 

Dignam’s voice, muffled, is heard baying under ground: 

Dignam’s dead and gone below. Tom Rochford, 

robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his 

twocolumned machine.) 

TOM ROCHFORD: (A hand to his breastbone, bows) 

Reuben J. A florin I find him. (He fixes the manhole with a 

resolute stare) My turn now on. Follow me up to Carlow. 

(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed 

in the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. 

All recedes. Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. 

Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog a piano sounds. He stands before 

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a lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers 

fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.) 

THE KISSES: (Warbling) Leo! (Twittering) Icky licky 

micky sticky for Leo! (Cooing) Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, 

Womwom! 

(Warbling) Big comebig! Pirouette! 

Leopopold! (Twittering) Leeolee! (Warbling) O Leo! 

(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy 

flecks, silvery sequins.) 

BLOOM: A man’s touch. Sad music. Church music. 

Perhaps here. 

(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with 

three bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, 

nods, trips down the steps and accosts him.) 

ZOE: Are you looking for someone? He’s inside with 

his friend. 

BLOOM: Is this Mrs Mack’s? 

ZOE: No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen’s. You might go 

farther and fare worse. Mother Slipperslapper. (Familiarly) 

She’s on the job herself tonight with the vet her tipster 

that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in 

Oxford. Working overtime but her luck’s turned today. 

(Suspiciously) You’re not his father, are you? 

BLOOM: Not I! 

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ZOE: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles 

tonight? 

(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides 

over his left thigh.) 

ZOE: How’s the nuts? 

BLOOM: Off side. Curiously they are on the right. 

Heavier, I suppose. One in a million my tailor, Mesias, 

says. 

ZOE: (In sudden alarm) You’ve a hard chancre. 

BLOOM: Not likely. 

ZOE: I feel it. 

(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a 

hard black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb 

moist lips.) 

BLOOM: A talisman. Heirloom. 

ZOE: For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh? 

(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm, 

cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, 

note by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny 

crystal of her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.) 

ZOE: You’ll know me the next time. 

BLOOM: (Forlornly) I never loved a dear gazelle but it 

was sure to ... 

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(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are 

lakes. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. 

Aroma rises, a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a 

sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies 

the womancity nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain 

murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet 

winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely 

murmuring.) 

ZOE: (Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips 

lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach 

ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim. 

BLOOM:  (Fascinated) I thought you were of good 

stock by your accent. 

ZOE: And you know what thought did? 

(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending 

on him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, 

disclose a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering 

bones.) 

BLOOM: (Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub 

with a flat awkward hand) Are you a Dublin girl? 

ZOE:  (Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil) 

No bloody fear. I’m English. Have you a swaggerroot? 

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