Complete Works of James Joyce (107 page)

J. J. O’MOLLOY:
(In barrister’s grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of pained protest)
This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my client’s native place, the land of the Pharaoh.
Prima facie
, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I would deal in especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client’s family. If the accused could speak he could a tale unfold — one of the strangest that have ever been narrated between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler’s weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact.

BLOOM:
(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar’s vest and trousers, apologetic toes turned in, opens his tiny mole’s eyes and looks about him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead. Then he hitches his belt sailor fashion and with a shrug of oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one thumb heavenward.)
Him makee velly muchee fine night.
(He begins to lilt simply)

    
Li li poo lil chile

    
Blingee pigfoot evly night

    
Payee two shilly...

(He is howled down.)

J. J. O’MOLLOY:
(Hotly to the populace)
This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically, without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered with. The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter.
(Bloom takes J. J. O’Molloy’s hand and raises it to his lips.)
I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be shown.
(To Bloom)
I suggest that you will do the handsome thing.

BLOOM: A penny in the pound.

(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping in silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, ferreteyed albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.)

DLUGACZ:
(Hoarsely)
Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13.

(J. J. O’Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel of his coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded, with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones of John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.)

J.J.O’MOLLOY:
(Almost voicelessly)
Excuse me. I am suffering from a severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words.
(He assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.)
When the angel’s book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the doubt.
(A paper with something written on it is handed into court.
)

BLOOM:
(In court dress)
Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman. Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest... Queens of Dublin society.
(Carelessly)
I was just chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the levee. Sir Bob, I said...

MRS YELVERTON BARRY:
(In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a comb of brilliants and panache of osprey in her hair)
Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the
Theatre Royal
at a command performance of
La Cigale
. I deeply inflamed him, he said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled
The Girl with the Three Pairs of Stays
.

MRS BELLINGHAM:
(In cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out of her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff)
Also to me. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker’s one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and the ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information that it was ablossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!

(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward)

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS:
(Screaming)
Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!

SECOND WATCH:
(Produces handcuffs)
Here are the darbies.

MRS BELLINGHAM: He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck’s head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He urged me (stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me) to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.

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 señorita, 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.)