Circe (4–7 pm)

“ … for the theatre as we understand it today three things are necessary1: actors2 … an element of conflict conveyed in dialogue3 and an audience emotionally involved in the action but not taking part in it.”4

– Phyllis Hartnoll

[INSERT PROLOGUE5 Blind Basil Kiernan slumped in a vinyl armchair by the gaming machines in his smutty white suit rolling a Craven “A” between freckled fingers until the last tendons of tobacco had been worked inside the semi-transparent lingerie of a damp Tally-Ho. He spat a lank ginger tassel out of a sunk eye-socket. A distracted smile played upon his face. He pursed thin pink lips as he recalled some slight sycophancy towards a giant of a man (AKA a very large dramatist), causing his imagination to spool down Darling Street spankingly in a fresh Carmen Ghia back in the Nineteen-Seventies when all the bright-cheeked Turks in new cowboy boots brandished contracts from Wilde & Woolley and ate cold pork pies with Hot English Mustard and soothed their throats with schooners of Flag Ale from the sunny front deck of the London Hotel. A smoker’s yellow smile fissured through. He drew back, sucktinna and exhaled indeterminately. His grey eyelids batted. He surveyed the assembled dignitaries.6 Tenured fags flustered in orbit.7 He allowed exaggerated white lashes to touch. Shift to present tense. A barmaid is wiping down the service area with quicksilver slashes. Grey-gazing Able Goldstein’s green moccasins bustle over the carmine carpet of the banquet hall bearing an aluminium tray with four inverted and stacked middy glasses, one jug of Resch’s draught beer, a large bag of salted crisps (unopened), a quiver, one carafe of house red and two wine glasses.8 A gold molar twinkles amongst his false teeth. Medical Dick + Medical Davy are ploughing through sacramental hand-steadiers prior to nightshift.9 A television projector reels black and white documentary film footage.]

ANNOUNCER

On the nineteenth of February 1942, war came to the Australian mainland with the first devastating surprise attack on Darwin.10 [FX: Droning airplanes. Bombs falling]
A formation of two hundred Japanese bombers made their dreadful approach across clear skies. And, as the bombs were falling, the town sirens finally sounded. [FX: Belated sirens. Portentous tone] Much too late for many.11

NARRATOR

Joyce uses personification and anthropomorphism throughout this episode.

ULAN

[Speaking in discrete linguistic units. In tongues] He produced Circe in the spirit of the Georgian playhouse. It was his decisive struggle with Shakespeare. Joyce was a Regency dramatist at heart. Bloom’s dream/trial represents Joyce’s resolution of Lear’s madness in pathos, not death. His reconciliation with Molly at closure is a clinamen of the death of Hamlet Senior. Shakespeare operated in the magic hiatus of dynamic and ferocious Elizabethan crowds.

[A bartender in tight leather trousers and a fishnet singlet rises onto a high stool to manually change channels on the television by clicking a large silver dial. West Indians pace bowlers hammer their own batsmen in the training nets]

M.D. COSTELLO

[Animated] First Test is always played in Brisbane. Been played there since 1928. Bradman’s debut, for fucks sake!12 But not this time. Oh no! Our boys are going to get sent
into bat tomorrow on the fastest pitch in world cricket13 against the greatest pace bowling attack in history14 on Day One of a new test series.15 It’s nuts!

M.D. LYNCH

Fromelles Part Two, mate.16

M.D. COSTELLO

Most lopsided match-up since 1975.17

JABBER LADIESMAN

When Chang shot his fit in the roll.18

MILKMAID

A modern arena tragedy. See Patroclus and Hector. See Achilles hobbling from the battlefield. See coma. See death.

ARISTOPHONES

Mocking gulls assailed him.

HOMER

But they would not touch the solitary drunk lying washed up on the beach.

DON CANE

I met Richie on holidays at Bantayan Island. [Romantically]19 I was feeding the carp when the weeds parted for a moment and her squat form came into view. 20

MOTHER BLOT

[Kicking her prostrate husband] Take up your crutch and walk.

DRAMATIC FORM

Blot raises himself from the canvas groggily as the referee’s counts SIX.

BLOT

[Slumping] I can’t. Me tendons’ bung. I think they cuttem.

M.D.’s

[In unison. Banging empty vessels on the bench.] Change the blooming channel!

[The barman obliges. Footage of Graham Langlands hobbling in back play. The camera zooms onto his footwear]21

WHITE BOOTS22

[In unison] Don’t blame us! It was still only five-nil at half time!

M.D. COSTELLO

They’ll roll us for a hundred tomorrow.

M.D. LYNCH

Correct. [Exclamatory] Beecawsehgotnorunsinem!23 [He drains dregs of ale from his tankard] I mean Henry Lawson’s batting eight. Ahead of Neilson, O’Dowd and Praed. He’s a glorified number nine at best.24

NAMELESS RETIRED MILITARY FIGURE25

We only had a few ack-acks and some Hudson bombers that got strafed on the runway.26

NARRATOR

He said gesturing at the screen.

MILDLING

[Entering the pub. Sagely. In error] Like Sergei Lermontov with a duelling pistol.

CHOC WHEATON

Shot in the dark.

DON CANE

I gave one to your plump white ewe out in the black paddock.

CHOC WHEATON

Outside the perimeter wire.

CHAUCER

Ful fetisly ydight with herbes swoote.27

DON CANE

They burrowed up to our positions through the jungle and threw themselves in human waves onto the wire.

HELEN

We turned our faces.

DON CANE

Hoping Penny wouldn’t appear at the flyscreen door.28

HELEN

Hoping she would.

DON CANE

[Urgently] Because it made me harder.

HELEN

It made him hotter.29

DON CANE

I heard her call my name.30

PENELOPE CANE

[Heavily pregnant] Are you out there, Donny?

[A kettle whistles]31

DON CANE

[Ejaculating] I’m done!

COLERIDGE

“A mighty fountain momentarily forced.”32

STEPHEN DEDALUS

Ad deam qui laetificat juventutem meam.33

MILKMAID

“A scream in Lilith’s church.”34

[Penny turns to the dim interior of the palace. The doorway is vacant. A drape twists at the threshold. A tin whistle expires]

DON CANE

I thought I pulled out in time.

HELEN:

[Heavily pregnant] NO YOU DIDN’T.

CAPRI

Drip-drip-drip like Uranus’ ballsack.

MACRITIS

Or Mussolini’s head.

MILDLING

Zeus leaking Athena.

NEWS READER

A miraculous escape for a construction worker in America today. He was impaled in an industrial accident by a steel rebar, which shot through his body and exited through his open mouth. He was rushed to hospital where doctors performed a ten-hour operation to save him.

M.D. LYNCH

[Speaking at a press conference] The angle of entry and exit is what saved him. [Cut to x-ray] The spina bifida missed his heart and other vital organs then proceeded up his throat and out his maw like Botticelli’s Chloris. It’s incredible he’s alive, let alone upright.

NEWS READER:

[Over heroic music from 1940s newsreel] Doctors are amazed that, despite the severity of his injuries, young Master Chaim is already up-and-about on his new set of stainless steel crutches.

LEON DANIEL

[Riding a motorised wheelchair onstage] Here! A gift for you, son. One fit for Lord Byron.35

CHOC WHEATON

[With clipboard. Pen poised] Kill Ratio?

DON CANE

One dead son. Two living.36

LEON DANIEL

Unholy Trinities.37

STEPHEN DEDALUS

Elizabeth, Chaim and HIV.

MULLIGAN

Three stumps with the bails off like Peter Abelard.

CAPRI

Father, me and Tom.

JOYCE

Earwicker, Shem and Shaun.

TOM HALLEM

Les, me and my real father.

PENELOPE HALLEM

Me, Les and Dick of Dick Stone meats.

JOYCE

Bloom, Stephen and Simon Dedalus.

NARRATOR

John Joyce, James Joyce and any one of your choice out of Stanislaus, George, Nora, Lucia or William Shakespeare.

JOYCE

Molly, Bloom and Blazes Boylan.

Goldstein

Professor Krafter and her twin Alex’s.

ROSIE PROBERT

[Wistfully. Folding washing] A Pope and a hope.38

KRAFTER

Poor dead Jimmy.39

RICHIE

Pieta.40

ELIZABETH ARCHER

You lived a day and a night then died, Chaim.41

LEON DANIEL

Once only, with one hand, your mother, in farewell, touched you.

DON CANE

Nobody’s fault but mine … and General Westmoreland and Robert McNamara, Harold Holt and good ole L-B-J.

CHOC

Nape, Purple Grape and sweet hot Orange Crush.42

HALLEM

Elizabeth, Leon and I.

Barbour

Gertrude, Claudius and young Hamlet.

ILKS

Hamlet’s status is uncertain. The death of his father has reduced him to the level of a blood supplicant. He lacks legitimacy.

STEPHEN DEDALUS

The character of Hamlet is Shakespeare recalling his youth with Anne Hathaway.

O

Joyce made Stephen obsessed with Hamlet. It was the cold case which could make him famous if he could only crack it. It had never been solved.

ILKS

Unlike Ibsen.

[Don starts the car radio]

JAMES CARR

[Singing] Hiding in shadows … where we don’t belong …43

ULAN

“Circe” is the most musical episode in Ulysses. It is full of lyrics from popular tunes and operas – often ironically employed – to indicate that Joyce wanted music to work like a film soundtrack for his novel.

[FX: David McComb in the role of Tom Hallem sits at a table in London and writes ‘Consider the Lilies of the Fields’ on the spine of a piece of paper which he folds and places inside a cassette case]44

JOYCE

London’s Burning – Follow me up to Carlow – Shule Aroon – Un Poco Il Cuore (I am Don Giovanni, Manny Others as Zerlina) – Love’s Old Sweet Song – Garryowen – Jim Bludso hold her nozzle – La Cigale – Dignam’s Dead and Gone Below. [In a fine tenor voice] “… He knocked the old woman who stole from his Punch.”

PATER

All art aspires to the condition of music.45

Barbour

Joyce called his technique in Circe “hallucination.”46

ULAN

It is a moot point with critics whether he was alluding to George Berkeley.

ULAN

In the Odyssey, Circe casts a spell over Odysseus’ crew turning them into pigs. He is protected by chewing on Moly.

O

This episode is inundated with porcine references. Joyce is clearly playing with the capacity of symbols to withstand over-utilisation. He gorges on them.47

PERSIAN JONES

If you want to dispose of a human body, the best way is to feed it to pigs.

O

The connection with the Circe episode is that unleashed sexuality turns human beings into swine.

[Billy Capri enters the Shakespeare Hotel. He circumnavigates the bar. Professor Milkmaid is sunk in a deep lounge picking at wounds on his paperback hand. He reaches out to his younger self-image.]

MILKMAID48

William, sit down with me a while.

CAPRI

[He sits] You’re alone, Professor.

NARRATOR

“Adrian is buying a round of drinks,” Milkmaid said pointing at the congested bar.

SCRIBBLER

This device inserts NOW into the chronology of events set down in the opening stage directions.

CAPRI

He’ll be a while yet.

MILKMAID

[Amused] Yes. Big crowd here tonight to celebrate your success.49 I enjoyed your paper. It wilfully eschewed … [long pause] compliance.50

CAPRI

Like your lectures.

MILKMAID

They’re just greasepaint etudes, Billy.51

CAPRI

You were a leading critic once.

MILKMAID

That was 20 years ago.

NARRATOR

What happened, asked Billy Capri mildly.

MILKMAID

I was sidelined by The Leavisites. I had a family to support like Shanghai Dog. I barely hung onto my job.

CITIZEN

Anderson’s elves. Occam’s razor gang. Knife fights with Matthew Arnold down The Push.

CAPRI

Why did you stop writing?

MILKMAID

[Holding Capri’s face with gaze] I’ve never stopped writing, son.52

NARRATOR

The text pivots at this moment from a forlorn silence (two seconds in real time) to a sudden eructation.53

[A man in a tweed jacket climbs onto the bar. Insert internal monologue: “poetry once possessed a communal, frequently oral and performative dimension in Australia that has now largely disappeared.” A chestnut strand wipes the piece of paper he is reviewing. He blows it away and clears his throat. Scattered applause.]54

MULLIGAN

Some say that I’m a great big fucking ’furter

I prefer Antipodean Goethe

I’m six foot eight so I’m no runt

Just a cliché-addled, sanctimonious cunt

With symbols as big as my big flat feet

Bestriding the macrobiotic shops on Darling Street

In a giant kaftan like the Dalai Lama

Making pencil notes for a topical new drama.

I take the bogus ideology of hippie-flips in Balmain

And grind them through my lobotomised left-wing brain

Then I intellectually wank while holding forth

That gob I call The Club; this one Travelling North.

Nothing against Malouf and his libretto

But he should set it in an urban, koori ghetto

With sensitive young social workers

And wise elders seeing truth despite trachoma’s

Tugging on the Meth to stop the pain

Of bruvvas selling smack down Redfern lanes.

But poor Dave’s obsessed with Greek homo-aesthetics

I tell him, “mayte, write about diabetics.

No one’s ever taken up their plight.

It’s a sure-fire hit, all you got to do is write.”

As for me, well, I’ll just go on working.

After all, to me, it’s just like … jerking.

[Cheers. Calls for encore. Capri and Milkmaid shift attention to the Bloomsbury Set]

CAPRI

Everybody’s in good cheer.

MILKMAID

[Bitterly] The Australia Council grants were announced today. They’re all celebrating.

CAPRI

Who got one?

MILKMAID

Adam Aitken for poetry. Jennifer Maiden. All the tyros over there. The senior fellowships went to the usual suspects: Drewe, Foster, Hall, Hospital, Koch, Tranter.

JABBER

[Loudly] My new book will be called Life is Such-a.55 The hero is a guy called Nosey Tom. He walked into an Evinrude outboard motor when he was a kid. Left a gaping hole in his face. This enables him to snort massive quantities of speed. Calls it his “blowhole.” He goes blind fixing smack behind his eyeball.

ULAN

Oedipus with a stick injury.

O

[Disdainfully] More slapstick splatter.

FLIGHT-FALCONHURST

I’m writing an erotic diary called Peeps.

LABIAMEISTER

My work-in-progress is provisionally titled, Twin Tailles of Eurydice La Change, Seventeenth-Century Hermaphrodite.

MACRITIS

My last novel was praised as a powerful indictment of the capitalist system by Socialist Worker. My new work takes on the CIA coup against the Whitlam Government … head-on.

MILKMAID

[Internal monologue] Unpublished works. Rejected essays. My opus. Prometheus Rebound. A trope of disillusionment. To be published privately by my executor after my death. After spending some time on earth amongst the human race, the Titan implores Jupiter to chain him back up on the rock.

[Jabber rises from his stool. Shanghai Dog and Xiao Fang enter Time Passage Bar on Caojiayan Lu. Two expatriates are watching a business show on a small TV perched upon the spirits shelf. A waitress in a white plastic boob tube, white plastic mini-skirt and white plastic

thigh-high boots leans against the filthy bar. She is wearing a green sash advertising HEINEKEN. A heater presses warm air at her feet. She is playing on a smartphone.]

NEWS PRESENTER

In Washington DC, the IMF has forecast a sustained global recession. This announcement comes on the back of today’s dramatic cuts in interest rates in all OECD economies.56

BARFLY 1

Another pint of Paulaner, Elvis. Same for Uncle Roy.

NARRATOR

The Chinese barman collects two tankards and begins to tap loose draft.

SHANGHAI DOG

[Gesturing at screen] Looks bad, fellas.

BARFLY 1

I just got told to pack up the family and head home to the States.

[He forces dregs down his throat and slams down the glass. An email notification purrs. SD takes a Blackberry handset from a black pouch on his belt. He scrolls the wheel and clicks]

INBOX/OPEN

Merrill’s gone. NAB wobbly. Shinhan still OK. But won’t lead. Need co-investors. Need new cornerstones. Chinese options?

REPORTER

Carnage at Bourses all over the world today, Mishal.

[Shanghai Dog commences typing.]

FINGERS

[Typing] I’ll try Ping An. Also, China Life. BTW BOC A/C under 300. Please t/fer Q3 funds.

[Xiao Fang touches his arm]

XIAO FANG

What’s wrong?

SHANGHAI DOG

[Shrugging] Just work stuff.

[Three sonar blips announce the arrival of a new email. Shanghai Dog reads the screen]

SCREEN

No more funds until we raise fresh capital.

[Tom Hallem enters the bar from King Street. A man rushes towards him.]57

LEER

Tommy! Come over here, lad. Give me a cuddle. Let me buy you a drink. Grandpater! Off yer arse, you old goose. Get the yung fella a beer. Here. Take my mug.

GRANDPATER

Hey?

LEER

[Leaning through beer slops. Dropping twenty-dollar note on table. Loudly] Go get yun TOBBY ERA scuba Reschs!58

MILKMAID

Keatzes charr-med cup.

[Coins taplap the laminated table. A dog reaches towards a discarded take-away wrapper in the trough. Leer lifts his bar stool emphatically]

LEER

Empty!! Owta that, you grub!

[He slaps dog]

ELLMANN

James Joyce had two phobias – dogs … and thunder.59

JAMES JOYCE

[Contentedly] Corpse of a bloated dog.60 [Smiling] Splendid!

[He pushes his walking stick at the Citizen’s red setter]61

GARRYOWEN

Jumpstickatchstickruncango!

[The dog grabs the tip of Joyce’s cane. It turns into a stick of dynamite]62

JIM

Watch out, he’s making for the fire!

[The group of prospectors abandon the campsite]

ANDY

He’s chasing us!

JIM

Thinks it’s a bluddy game!

[Jim dives down an abandoned shaft. Andy jumps behind a log. The dog rushes past them. Empty chases it hard and grabs the other end of the stick of dynamite. The dogs wrestle. It explodes]

JAMES JOYCE

[Gleefully] Like Tchaikovsky!

[Odysseus enters disguised as a beggar. Argos sniffs his foot and dies. The corpses of Argos, Empty and Garryowen are dragged from the stage by a retinue of INSERT.63 Canned laughter]

[Satisfied] It’s equal to the climax of King Lear.

[He raises a glass of white wine and toasts his father’s portrait]

RUDOLPH VIRAG

[Seated at a desk. A vial of monkshood beside the ink well.] Son, please care of dear Athos.64

BUSINESS REPORTER

In New York, the Dow Jones plummeted 4.6 percent, nearly matching Wednesday’s 480-point slide.65

[Shanghai Dog continues typing]

COMPOSE EMAIL

Will try Clearwater. Also, CKI + Nanfung in HK. What about SING? Not GIC or Temasek. Any family offices? [Hits ‘Send’]

BUSINESS REPORTER

Toyota has slashed its annual profit forecast, Mishal.

PRESENTER

Shares were down another 10 per cent today ahead of an earnings announcement.

BUSINESS REPORTER

The market is now expecting job cuts in the tens of thousands right across the car sector.

TSUTOMU YAMADA

This is a real shock, Mishal. I don’t think anyone expected such a large correction.

MILKMAID

I’ve been reworking the same text for twenty years.

DAVID WILLIAMSON

I could have written … twenty plays in that time.

PETER CAREY

Four novels.

JAMES JOYCE

Finnegans Wake.

THE CRADLE

Have you got a mental condition?

[O rises onto the bar. She leans back to read from a scrap of foolscap paper]

O

Tom Keneally, you’ve got no rivals

But I can’t understand your titles.

Why can’t you be more like Franz Kafka,

And name your books for existential factors?

All that stuff about larks, heroes, paracletes and Aurora’s victim

For books about the harshness of nature and the convict system

Or the demise of ordinary but nonetheless heroic guys

Like Erzberger, who worked on the Treaty of Versailles.

Sometimes you remind me of Patrick White

With his penchant for o’er-strained poetic flight

And partiality to sensationalised plots

Which test the patience of your avid Lord and Lady Read-a-Lots.

Jimmie Blacksmith with his bifurcated ethics

Was a better subject than Joan of Arc’s hysterics

While Marshall Tito’s heroic partisans

Seem just like a Baltic spin-off from The Sullivans’.

But at least, dear Tom, your pretensions are confined

To the cover, the Manly Sea Eagles66 and the spine.67

[She bows. Crowd whoops. Jabber lays his gear on a toilet lid. The Cradle has been suspended beneath. He boots.]

MISHAL HUSAIN

Banks worldwide have taken seven hundred billion dollars in write-downs and losses since the start of 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

[Grandpater places glasses on the table with a shaky grip.]

LEER

Gubb on yer, Grabpater. Here you go, Tom.

[Billy Capri observes Tom Hallem across the bar. Suddenly, he rips off Milkmaid’s head68 and strides towards his brother. Rumbold plunges his hand into the gaping belly of the whale and extracts a head clotted with coiled entrails.]

RUMBOLD

God Save the King!

NARRATOR

He cried. Meanwhile, Billy Capri reached his brother.

[Holding Mím’s mouth against Tom’s ear]

CAPRI

Listen, brother!

MíM/MILKMAID

See your blood father falling to earth. See wooden cow. Elizabeth will sire your only child. But you will never provide a roof for your daughter. You kill a friend and die alone. On your back. Wild at heart like blind Oedipus.

LEON

[Wearing a dentist’s outfit. He rips away a white sheet to unveil his latest invention] Look, I built this fine beast for you, my darling. It possesses a cunning flap for anonymous intercourse.

[Elizabeth enters the machine. Her bare backside emerges. Absalom kisses it. Poseidon fucks her. She retires with her husband’s aid. He is dressed as Joseph. Her belly distends. She enters labour. Albert assists her into the stirrups.]69

ALBERT THE GOOD

Just hang onto these straps.

ELIZABETH

For God’s sake, give me an epidural!

CIRCE

[Taking vial from purse] Drink!

[Elizabeth swallows the potion. She gives birth to Minotaur]70

AUCTIONEER

This champion foal was bred at Widden Stud. Sired by Cane out of Pasiphae. Examine the fine lines of her transformation. A perfect segue. Renaissance construct. Consigned to the Inglis Sales Yard. Bidding starts at twenty ducats.

TOM

[Waving a big cigar] It’s a … it’s a … girl!

CAPRI

Entelechy!

MIM/MILKMAID

The male line ends.

PLAYER QUEEN

None weds the second but who killed the first.

ELIZABETH

Weedafirstingkillthesecondeurs.

Mím/MILKMAID

Inverted pervert. Infamy of Blasphemy. Aegisthus was made from rape. Christened the “male goat.”71 Killer of Atreus. With Clytemnestra, killer of Agamemnon. Cousin kills cousin. Orestes killing his mother. Murdering Aegisthus’ son. Mating with his enemy’s daughter. Bit off his own finger.

ELIZABETH, LEON

[As Chorus] After his sperm we got.

Mím/MILKMAID

The queen lay with a prize bull.

ELIZABETH, LEON

[As Chorus] We shall name him Minos.

[A pagan ceremony ensues. Tom achieves orgasm]

Mím/MILKMAID

The bull has been milked.

TOM, BILLY

[As a Chorus] You must decide which child is at the head and which at the tail.72

DON CANE

[Pontificating] All are equal in my sight.73

Mím/MILKMAID

Two heads, two tails—

JOYCE

Entelechy of entelechies.

Mím/MILKMAID

The son must repeat the journey of the father.

TOM HALLEM

Head of a bull, tail of a bull, body of a man.

WEASEL BOB

Yung mulebludd.

Mím/MILKMAID

From his forehead arise mosaic horns. [Rolling his eyes dramatically]

HALLEM

[Stabbing Mím/Milkmaid with a commando knife] Death, fiend!

Mím/MILKMAID

[Dying] Ah! Brutus comes with a warm wet blade.

CASSIUS

Rome holds your name in high regard, sire.

CASCA

And fears Caesar’s ambition.

CASSIUS

He would make himself King.74

BRUTUS

Why should his name be sounded more than mine?75

EDGAR

Mine is as fair.

CONSPIRATORS

[Stabbing Caesar multiple times with used syringes] Let us all share the same blood with Caesar.76

TOM HALLEM

Carve him as a dish. [Showing syringe to Billy Capri] And you, brother?

CAPRI

Hold fast.77

[Barman changes channel. Slow-motion replay of a photo-finish]

ANNOUNCER

Master jockey Roy Higgins78 had already won the Cup on Light Fingers and Red Handed in consecutive years. He might have made it three in a row but his mount – short-priced favourite Big Philou – was scratched at the barrier.

LEER

Doped by the bookies.

GRANDPATER

Hit him up with Danthron.79

LEER

They would have taken a bath on the Cups Double.80

GRANDPATER

Nobbled eight horses that day.

SHAUN

Left nothing to chance.

LEER

Rain Lover won by a long-neck.

GRANDPATER

Mick Robins never found a horse that good again.

BRUCE MCAVENEY

For many punters, he became the Steve Bradbury of racing.

Barbour

Sensations replace time in Joyce’s teleology.

MILDLING

Mulligan was a true dandy.

STEPHEN DEDALUS

At the House of AEIOU.81

Goldstein

He wore yellow kid gloves like Young Bob Browning.

MILDLING

Also, a dark cloak with a blue velvet collar.

Barbour

He hymself as sweete as is the roote of lycorys or any cetewale.82

Goldstein

Browning’s submissiveness in matters of the heart is redolent of Leopold Bloote.

MILDING

Not weaned properly.

Goldstein

Both Joyce and Browning tried to represent the slow and minute progress of life.

Barbour

They both erected narrative monuments that seemed calculated to outwit the ingenuity and perseverance of even the most acute reader.

Goldstein

A hyper-extension of both Romanticism and Realism.

MILDING

Hieratic poeticisms in highly-erratic prosceniums.

FLIGHT-FALCONHURST

Slogans from men’s magazines.

O

Leopold Bloom paying out the brothel mistress for a smashed chandelier.

CAPRI

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.

JAMES JOYCE

Unheavenly body. Obscene matter. A fool’s cap.83 Shem the penman.84

LEOPOLD BLOOM

No love is true but that from far beneath.85

CAPRI

Chidley’s code compresses a system of significations into a series of acronyms. His writing is metaphorical not literal. A metonymy of its own signification. A crumpled shirt is seen as a source of synecdoche. Part for the whole. Furrowing of the brow becomes corrugation. It is evidence of self-abuse and moral abasement.86

O

He corrugates the system.

Goldstein

What did Samuel Beckett say about Sordello at the end of Malone Dies?

MILDLING

That Sordello had backed his way into the title like Lawrence of Arabia.

Barbour

Perched on the footpath with an ivory cane in his Eton suit wearing glass slippers holding Stephen’s ash plant while he puked in the gutter.

JAMES JOYCE

A nose in the street.

STEPHEN DEDALUS

Down on my kneecaps prostrate before an altar with my ashrod erect.

JAMES JOYCE

His shadow lay over the rocks.

STEPHEN DEDALUS

[Purging last contents of his stomach] Bile and flecks of breakfast in the mode of Cassiopeia.

TOM HALLEM

The green and the gold.

ELIZABETH

Spissfields.

NARRATOR

Mucid wattle.

ELIZABETH

An emblem of Australia.

ROD MARSH

Under the Southern Cross, I stand.

HENRY LAWSON

Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!87 

NARRATOR

“Think of it as a memento,” said Elizabeth rising. A handkerchief floated to the floorboards.

HENRY LAWSON

Beg not of England the right to preserve ourselves!88

Mím/MILKMAID

A dead man’s head shifting slightly on the slab.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

A rush of black liquid.

JAMES JOYCE

Green rill of bile.

[Elizabeth in labour]

M.D. COSTELLO

Her waters have burst.

M.D. LYNCH

Breach delivery, Sister.

Mím/MILKMAID

Arse-first like Saint Peter.

LEON

[Emaciated with AIDS. Placing a hand under his testicles] Kol Nidre!

M.D. LYNCH

[Presenting a minotaur to the mother] Twins!

NURSE

[Tearing a chiton into rags] Apply them to the wound quickly.

DEIANIRA

Yes, Sister. [She hands some strips to the attendants including Tom Hallem] Take some.

TOM HALLEM

You’re still hot from the stage lights.

ANA LAFEI

Yes.

TOM HALLEM

Swab your brow.

[He hands a rag to Ana. She mops her forehead, cheeks and neck]89

GERTRUDE

[Wiping Hamlet’s death mask] Don’t hate me, son.

NARRATOR

Insert other fatal mothers.90

TOM HALLEM

Could a son hate a mother?

NARRATOR

He asks himself.

DON CANE

My boys!

NARRATOR

Says Don Cane opening his arms for two invisible children to enter.91

LEER

A pot of good double beer, Tom. Drink, and fear not!92

[Leer fills their glasses from a jug]

GRANDPATER

Where’d yer get all the cash, Kenneth?

LEER

Randwick trifecta, Gran’pater.93

GRANDPATER

How much?

LEER

A full brick.

GRANDPATER

Numbers?94

LEER

Seven, four and three in descending order.

GRANDPATER

Not me own lucky ones.

XIAO FANG

How many houses do you own in Australia, Billy?

SHANGHAI DOG

[Counting on fingers] One in Sydney.

JACK LANG

A modest brick bungalow.95

SHANGHAI DOG

There’s my investment property on the Gold Coast.

BLOOM

Stay at my place tonight.

STEPHEN

No, thanks. I’m going home.

SHANGHAI DOG

And the farm at Bulahdelah.

THE BULLETIN

He counted his fortune by the total number of water closets in his possession.

SHANGHAI DOG

That’s ten in total.

MULLIGAN

Give me your key, Kinch.

BLOOM

[Incredulously] You’re g’ack to your father’s place?

STEPHEN

Yes.

BLOOM

[Patting his shoulder. Wistfully] You’re a good lad really.96

[Exeunt Stephen Dedalus. Waitress returns to table]

XIAO FANG

Tell me about your castle, Billy.

SHANGHAI DOG

I can do better than that. I’ll show you a picture. [He scrolls to the Pictures Folder of his Blackberry] You can see the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House from the piazza.97

[He passes the phone]

XIAO FANG

[Laughing, Shocked] Is that it? But it looks so old! I think a new apartment is much better.

WAITRESS

[Grabbing handset] Let me see. [Chuckling] Ah! It looks like an old farmhouse.

XIAO FANG

[Excitedly] Yes. It looks like my grandfather’s farmhouse in Anhui!

SHANGHAI DOG

[Disgruntled] That house is worth thirty million kuai.

WAITRESS

That old dump?

XIAO FANG

How much does a new apartment cost in Sydney?

SHANGHAI DOG

Five million.

XIAO FANG

You could sell that old farmhouse and buy six apartments.

WAITRESS

Yes. An apartment on the twentieth level of a new building in Pudong is beautiful.

SHANGHAI DOG

It’s got … charm.

WAITRESS

Charm?! Charm means old dump. Only foreigners like “charm.” I wish they would pull down all the charming old buildings in Shanghai and build some tall towers for people. Get rid of all the dirty buildings and alleys. Make the roads wider.

XIAO FANG

Those old buildings remind us of bad times.

WAITRESS

Yes. They depict our century of national humiliation.

TV NARRATOR

The magnificent avenues and villas of the French Concession are now seen as emblems of Foreign Imperialism by the Shanghai City Government.

DOCTOR GU

It all started with your Opium War. The British East India Company forced Chinese people to buy drugs. They got everyone addicted.

[A street-walker enters the hotel. She tugs on the arm of Jabber’s denim jacket]

CUNTY

Can we go home to bed yet?

JABBER

[Adjusting his bianzi] No way. Here. Chug on a pipe, Candy. Chill out. You can go back out later.

DOCTOR GU

The British devils were losing all their silver buying Chinese tea. So, they stole our tea plants. Stuck them up their god-frocks. Smuggled them to India.

MAX WEBER

You wouldn’t have the city of Shanghai without British initiative.98

JAMES JOYCE

Tell me why you think I ought to change the conditions that gave Ireland and me a shape and a destiny?99

DOCTOR GU

[Turning off English language television] How can you say that? Is that what you told the Aboriginals? Chinese people built Shanghai. Chinese people did all the work. They did all the work inside the buildings as well. You just took the profits. That money was rightfully ours. We would have still built places like Shanghai without you. Look at Shenzhen.

WAITRESS

[Picking up Billy’s tankard] Would you like another beer … nongmin tongshi?100

SHANGHAI DOG

[Irritably] No, thank you.

WAITRESS

You probably like brown wine best.101

[The waitress turns on her heel breezily. Xiao FANG is scanning her phone. Shanghai Dog checks his handset. The television screen plays an advertisement]

BLOOM

[Holding up a cardboard packet to the screen] Conversation trouble? Try one of my fast-acting tropes. [He inserts a golden lozenge into Billy’s mouth] Sweets are for the sweet!

XIAO FANG

My moon cake is full of jelly.102

BLOOM

Anytime is the right time for Waddington’s sponge!

[1920s Chinese model in a red qi pao raises an ivory opium pipe to the camera. A Filipino bar band commences sound-check. They start to play “Cocaine” by JJ Cale. Shanghai Dog and Xiao Fang leave the bar]

HALLEM

Can you fix me up?

LEER

Let’s go into my office.

[Tom follows Leer to the bathroom. Leer stands at the urinal with a smoke in his mouth. He drops his zipper]

BENNETT’S DISEMBODIED FINGERS

[Wagging] You can’t stand up here. It’s reserved for clergy.

LEER

[To Tom] Just ignore them. [To Fingers] You don’t have any status in here. You don’t even constitute a full set.

BENNETT’S DISEMBODIED FINGERS

But I’m a war hero.

LEER

Rubbish. They fell off.

PRIVATE COMPTON

He doesn’t half want a thick ear, the blighter.

PRIVATE CARR

[To Cissy] Was he insulting the U.J. whilst we was piddling, Ma’am?

[Leer tidies his clothing and beckons Hallem into a cubicle. He locks the door and raises the toilet lid to dispose of the cigarette butt. Excrement is suspended on a matrix of toilet paper]103

NARRATOR

How do you even do that, asked Tom incredulously.

INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST

The Cradle was the unique faecal calling card of an anonymous individual in hotel washrooms across inner Sydney during the New Wave era.

POE

Who painted it nobody knows.

W. Y. TINDALL

[Closing the lid violently. To an approaching Policeman] Officer! My wife’s bird is under that hat. Can you watch it while I get a cage?

JOYCE

Hey Shitbreeches, are you doing the hat-trick?104

LEER

The third one is always called “the charm.”

JASON

A golden fleece.

ATHENA

A gold cap.

ULAN

There are numerous descriptions of hats in Ulysses.

BLOOM’S CHAPEAU

The style of headwear chosen by a man is a mark of character.

BELLA

A hat is a condom that men pull down over their brains.

BERKELEY

Fashioned from the finest immaterial.

LEER

Clamping cockjaws!

BLOOM’S CHAPEAU

It will always betray the true personality of its owner.

ULAN

Bloom wore a black bowler. Boylan had a light straw boater in contrast.

ILKS

[Gravely] There is symbolism in this comparison.

BANTAM LYONS

Bloom’s got a hot tip for the Gold Cup.

ULAN

He was a dark horse like Throwaway.

BOYLAN

I was the front runner against Molly’s front. I was beaten by a short half-head.105 [He stands at the threshold of 8 Eccles Street. The door opens. He enters. It closes. No occupant is seen. Cut to inside shot of hall. He propels his boater across the room and it lands over a moose antler] But not before I hanged my hat on Bloom’s cuckold horn.

STAGE DIRECTION

A card falls from a leather headband and lands on the floor.

ULAN

Both Joyce and Homer left their texts hanging at closure as if they were planning blockbuster sequels.

[Leer shuts the lid. He flushes the cistern. He opens the lid. The Cradle remains]

LEER

Impressive—

NARRATOR

he says.

HALLEM

Even if we had a stick, it would just create a different kind of problem.

[Leer closes the lid again. He flushes the toilet again. He opens the lid. The cradle is still present. Leer closes the lid and sits down]

LEER

[Laconically] Must be a sign. Now what do you want?

HALLEM

A score for a friend.

LEER

Cool. I’m loaded. Got a new supplier at Cabra. But make sure you cut it down. It’s hot stuff. 106

HALLEM

Great. How much?

LEER

Twenty for you.

HALLEM

Can I take it on credit?

LEER

Sure. But I ain’t got the product here. You’ll have to come back to my place.

HALLEM

How far?

LEER

Down the hill. Fifteen-minute walk.

HALLEM

Fine. When can we leave?

LEER

Now.

[They leave the washroom. A female enters stage right. She moves towards Leer with conviction]

LEER

Ah! If it ain’t Sweet Alison!107

ALISON

[Slaps his ear] You said you was coming at four.

LEER

Can only plead damnable pisstness, my love. Come. Sit down on my lap. Let me rub your adorable globes.108

ALISON

I’m staying right here, thank you. Get me a Bourbon and Coke.

[Leer exits to the bar. Tom Hallem grasps his lemman harde by the haunchebones to rage and pleye as hir housbande is away at Osenebar. Thomas seys he’ll spille109 withouten. Alison responds with lickerous [e]ye. They cement a bond. Leer returns with a tray of drinks, catches his back foot on frayed carpet and stumbles. Liquid floods the bench]

ALISON

Yew’ve spilled it all over me!

TOM HALLEM

A flood! A flood!

[Leer plants a wet kiss on her cheek]

LEER

Against her lips I bob and on her withered dewlap pour my ale. Sit down, dear.

ALISON

Look at my boob-tube!

LEER

I can’t stop looking, believe me. I’ll suck on it if you wish.

NEWS READER

The Australian dollar traded weaker today on the back of worse economic news.

LEER

We should never have floated the currency.

GRANDPATER

It was pound for pound before Britain left the Gold Standard.

ALISON

Call themselves Labor. They’re worse than bloody Thatcher.

BLOT

Worse than Scullin.

PAUL KEATING

Lang was the only one that stood up to them.110 He was a hero to working people.111

JACK LANG

Lackeys of Niemeyer all.

TV DOCUMENTARY

Australia has never had a violent revolution like America or Russia.112

STAN WELLES

The further you move to the Left, the deeper the snout goes down in the trough.

ALISON

Moneygrubber’s pushing them.

GRANDPATER

Branded with a hot coulter.113

NARRATOR

Nicholas races around the room fanning his burning hind.

JOHN THE CARPENTER

Cut loose the vessels!

BLOT

Is that my signal?

MOTHER BLOT

No, Blot. Not yet.

[Jack Lang stands on a soapbox in the Domain in the robes of Hamlet Senior]

JACK LANG

I will reinstate the jobs of the victims of the Great Strike and restore the 44 hour working week.114

KEATING115

The Big Fella was our political Ned Kelly.

JOHN JOYCE

Your very own Parnell.

JACK LANG

This depression is the work of bankers and industrialists.

MENZIES

It would be better for Australia to die of starvation than repudiate British debts.116

HAINES

[Holding a saucer] The problem lies with the Australian character. [Turning to an old scullery maid. Presenting his tea cup. Loudly] Ba mhaith liom bainne.117

MOTHER GROGAN

[To Haines] Are you some kind of wog?118

BLOOM

[Speaking in tongues]119 Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.120

MOLLY BLOOM

Where’d you learn that? Off a soap label?

JAMES JOYCE

It’s an ancient charm.

BLOOM

[Opening a large paper bag of confectionery for the assembled characters] Here. Suck on this ju-jube. It’ll fix you.

JAMES JOYCE

[Taking a selection of sweets] Dog red, Davitt orange and snot green jellies.

GRANDPATER

We should have learned Ireland’s harsh lesson.121

JACK LANG

The same capitalists who wasted our sons at Fromelles now demand “bank blood.”

PADRAIG PEARSE

You’ll get nowhere negotiating with the English. You need to apply Physical Force.122

NED KELLY

[Dictating to Joe Byrne]123 All of true blood, bone and beauty that was not murdered on their own soil, or had fled to America or other countries, were doomed to Port Macquarie, Toongabbie, Norfolk Island and Emu Plains, and in those places of tyranny and condemnation, many a blooming Irishman, rather than subdue to Saxon yoke, was flogged to death and bravely died in servile chains, true to the shamrock and a credit to Paddy’s Land.

MANNIX

It is less than a decade since Australian Catholics stood fast while their brothers in Ireland were crushed by the British army.

DAVITT

Tear up the New Departure!

PARNELL

Two Land Bills defeated. Constitutional means have failed.

NED KELLY

Fitzpatrick will cause greater slaughter to the Union Jack than Saint Patrick did to the snakes and toads of Ireland.

YEATS

Learn your own language. Start a mass movement. Establish a national press. Rediscover Ossian poetry. I believe your name should be O’Malley.

DR JOHNSON

Gaelic is the rude speech of a barbarous people.

DONALD HORNE

Australians are anonymous, featureless, nothing-men.

A.A. PHILLIPS

Cultural cringe is a disease of the Australian mind.

A.D. HOPE

Without songs, architecture, history.

JOSEPH FURPHY

Know me hereafter as Seosamh Ó Foirbhilhe.

MILKMAID

Our Laurence Sterne in Shepparton.

A.A. PHILLIPS

Confronted by Furphy, Australians grow uncertain. We fail to comprehend the original structure of his great novel.124

NED KELLY

What would England do if America declared war, as it is all Irishmen that has got command of her armies. Even her beef tasters are Irish.

JOHCU125

We feel therefore in view of services the A.I.F. have rendered in the Middle East that we have every right to expect them to be returned as soon as possible to the defence of Australia.

ROOSEVELT

The fall of Burma would place Australia in extreme peril.

CHURCHILL

India is under threat. The Australian convoy will be diverted to Burma. I will inform the Australian Prime Minister.

JOHCU

In view of superior Japanese sea and air power it is a matter of some doubt as to whether this division can even be landed in Burma.

STEPHEN DEDALUS

[Nervous, friendly, pulling himself from the gutter, his mouth bleeding] I understand your point-of-view. You die for your country. I die for your cuntery. Let my country die too.

BRITISH GOVERNOR, BURMA

The Australians would have died in useless defence at Rangoon.

PRIVATE CARR

I’ll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against my king.

BLOOM

We fought for you in South Africa. Irish missile troops. Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by your monarch. Does that count for nothing?

CHURCHILL

While I was breaking out of a Boer prison camp, Curtin was making anti-war diatribes in Melbourne.

NED KELLY

Would they fight her for the sake of the colour they dare not wear (GREEN) and to reinstate it and raise old Erins isle once more from the tyrannism of the English yoke, which has kept it in poverty and starvation and caused them to wear the enemy’s coat (RED/WHITE)?

JOHCU

[Radio broadcast] Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

CHURCHILL

Melodrama by design.

ROOSEVELT

Smacks of panic.

CHURCHILL

Mummery even.

BOB HAWKE

[Cut to television] We have eliminated much of the confrontation and bitterness that was tearing Australia apart just 20 months ago.

ALISON

He is presiding over the death of the trade union movement.126

BLOT

Kelty is selling-out historic worker’s rights.

MOTHER BLOT

Hawke was their creation.

Barbour

Frankenstein’s monster.

ALISON

Enough of his calumny. I’m going to the loo.

[Bloom follows her expectantly. He is transformed into a female]

MíM/Milkmaid

[Seated on a three-legged stool] Deformitisation. Spina bifida births. Heracles’ brood as beastly murk. Ophelia face-down in swampaste. Desdemona’s moist pillowspit. Young Edward betrothed to a foetus. Rough wooing.

Footman

Prince William Duke of Gloucester.127

DR MOREAU

How does he fair on Hakim’s triad?

FRANKENSTEIN

Poorly. We must pierce the head and draw off fluid.

M.D. Costello

An acute case of Hydrocephalus.

[A helicopter passes overhead]

BELLA

Flim-flum-flum-flum-flum-flum-flum.128

CHOC

[Excitedly] Incoming!

DON CANE

Must be a dust-off up.

M.D. LYNCH

[A buzzer reverberates in his white medical coat. He speaks earnestly] Emergency ward.

M.D. COSTELLO

Another crashpara?

DON CANE

[Completing forms] North-west of Quang Ngai. Half an hour into flight. A loud bang rocked the fuselage. The helicopter started auto-rotating. We hit the ground hard. It was a dry paddy about the size of a football field. There was a village surrounded by tall bamboo about 500 metres off. We knew it was a Viet Minh stronghold. Shots snapped over our heads. Two columns of troops rushed towards us. I had a pistol but I was still out of range. Choc ripped a machine gun out of its socket on the Huey and let rip. The first burst took out the grass roof of the temple. I held it down with my body while Choc directed fire on the enemy. Hot grease spattered our skin. The noise was deafening.

RICHIE

Did you kill men?

DON CANE

Probably eight or ten that day alone.

RICHIE

[Taking hold of his palms] But they seem so harmless.

DON CANE

[Laughing] What did you expect? Claws?

RICHIE

[Stroking them] Harsher skin. A chill touch. [She looks at him] And later?

ODYSSEUS

I fought in Troy for ten years. You couldn’t help but kill men. We did it at close range and long range. We directed artillery right on top of us. Called in air support. Laid mines. It was war.

JAMES JOYCE

I’ve put enough booby traps in Ulysses to keep academics busy for 3,000 years.

NARRATOR

By what faculty am I able to transmit these facts and figures?129

Mím/MILKMAID

Strange power of prophecy.

JAMES JOYCE

Narrative invention.

CHURCHILL

Enigma machine.

TELEVISION SET

Cut transmission.

SHANGHAI DOG

There must be a guy in Beijing who hears the words “unrest in China” and pulls a great big bloody plug out of the wall.

EXIT THE DARK TOWER

LEER

[Suddenly] I’m sick of this shit. I’m off. [To Hallem] You coming?

HALLEM

What about Alison?

LEER

She can find her own way home.

HALLEM

I’ve got an exhibition opening later tonight.

LEER

When?

HALLEM

Seven o’clock.

LEER

Plenty of time. Do you want that fix for your girlfriend or not? Come on. We’ll have some fun on the way. Don’t worry. It’s all on my tab.

[Leer and Hallem depart the Shakespeare Hotel. Dinnertime carcrawl. Unctuous art deco signage of the Marlborough Hotel. Beta House ahead like a squat brick pillbox. Hallem dimly perceives an old couple huddled against the breeze down a dunny cart lane. A stooped male comes to a halt. A female figure shuffles beside him. Shanghai Dog and Xiao Fang leave Time Passage Bar. They enter Xing Guo Lu. The trees have been pruned bare. Everything is grey. They proceed alongside the high brick wall of the Radisson Hotel. Shanghai Dog pulls Xiao FANG under his arm. A passing pedestrian hisses softly]

SHANGHAI DOG

Did you hear that?

XIAO FANG

Yes.

SHANGHAI DOG

What did she say?

XIAO FANG

It doesn’t matter.

SHANGHAI DOG

Does it bother you?

[They approach the compound. Two guards are talking to local residents at the gate. Xiao
Fang lets go of Billy’s arm. The guards greet him. Her gaze remains fixed on the ground. They proceed onto the grounds]

XIAO FANG

It would be better to arrive in the car park in a taxi.

SHANGHAI DOG

Why?

XIAO FANG

They hate me. I’m a xiaojie.

SHANGHAI DOG

Forget them. Let’s get inside.

XIAO FANG

You don’t understand.

A VISION OF THE THRONE OF GOD AND OF THE LAMB

[Leer scampers across King Street between stubborn vehicles. He lunges into a shop. Hallem leans against a light pole. He looks into Beta House. His former apartment space is dim. Light leaks from the upmost floors. The garage door has buckled. A temporary barricade has been erected over an exposed section. Leer returns with fresh cigarettes. Missus Brennan appears at the door and waves. They proceed between horizontal bars of a steel-piping fence. Hallem steps aside a headless bird crunched flat against laneway asphalt. Its grey feathers are scattered in a bloody plume. A lone cat is huddled against a telegraph pole in a soft round lump. Its head rears sleepily and drops back into fine warm fur. Leer pushes a swollen wooden gate. They enter a backyard. Both sides of its broken concrete path are smattered with debris. A cement staircase leads to a red door illuminated by a single red light. They rise. Leer knocks. It opens. They pass along a corridor lit by spirit lamps. The back of a female wearing veils evaporates before them. Their bodies cast discordant rainbows on the plush velvet wallpaper.]

NARRATOR

Mabbot Street is the entrance to Nighttown. Stephen and Lynch stagger in drunk.130 They are mocked by locals. Bloom follows obediescently. Events and characters stimulate his guilt.131 The text becomes the scene of visions. Bloom speaks with a street worker, Zoe Higgins, who knows Stephen’s location. She stimulates scenes of an imaginary legal triumph.132 Bloom becomes an exemplar of the “new womanly man,” gives birth, and is denounced as a charlatan and whore in this episode. He finds Stephen in the music room of the bordello carousing. He thinks about past lovers. In a discussion on theology, Stephen metamorphoses into a Cardinal. Bella Cohen appears. She and Bloom reverse gender. Ritual sado-masochistic humiliations ensue. Stephen, in his drunkenness, tries to settle the bill. Bloom ensures he isn’t cheated. The ghost of Stephen’s mother appears. He breaks a chandelier, and they end up thrown onto the street. A fight with some English soldiers leaves Stephen prone on the pavement. The police appear. Corny Kelleher and Bloom smooth things over. Bloom persists in trying to take Stephen home. He gazes at the unconscious Stephen and experiences a vision of his dead son Rudy.133 END

WILL THE CIRC(L)E BE UNBROKEN?

[A spotlight smashes the floor. A human form enters. Its identity is concealed by two enormous Japanese fans. Brilliant sequins tap sensual flecks of Morse on the hem of an evening gown]

THE FANS

Say the password and you shall see our treasures, Aladdin.134

LEER

[Aggressively] I must find out what’s behind the veil.

FAN

[Withdrawing] Not yet – soon – but no – wait. Patience, dear.

LEER

[Pulling the fans open] You!

Meillon

Ftt-fit-fitt-fatt-fa-fa-FATHER!

BELLA

My word! I’m all of a mucksweat.

[Her eyes rest on Leer]

LEER

Look!

[He discloses a wad of bank notes. Coins cascade to the floor]

THE FAN

[Flirting] Married, I see.

BLOOM, SHANGHAI DOG, LEER

No. Not Yet. Yes. No longer. Partly …

LEER

[Cowed] Exuberant female. Enormously I desire your services. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young, mashing syntax and grammar,135 inserting blandishments, also making insipid pig metaphors and blunt references to my hat and umbrella as phallic icons, which is all hubris, I am consumed with insecurities, lastly remembering my father and sons.

BELLA

One hundred for an hour. Extra fifty for Greek.

LEER

We’ll have the works!

[Leer extracts three hundred dollars and hands it to the brothel manager]

BELLA

You had some luck today.

LEER

Miracle in Melbourne, they call it. A Black Knight tupped your white Chagemar.136

BELLA

What did it pay?

LEER

Enough, Psychopomps. Enough.

BLOOM

[Reaching for the cash] Let me count it out for you. I will save it. Let me store it here in my pocket with a cake of lemon-scented soap for Molly.137

BELLA

After you, gentleman. [Taking Hallem by the elbow] I’ve got new girls and boys.138

[Bella and Tom proceed along the passage together. Leer wanders behind them. He peels a silver strip of gum and commences chewing. Shanghai Dog and Xiao Fang proceed into his apartment. A bank of LEDs illuminates his lounge room madly. Xiao Fang kisses him aggressively]

XIAO FANG

Have you forgotten me yet?

SHANGHAI DOG

No.

[He looks at their bodies in a mirror. She pulls back a fan from her face to reveal Judy]

XIAO FANG

Make love with me.

SHANGHAI DOG

[Withdrawing] Not like this.

XIAO FANG

Yes, like this.

SHANGHAI DOG

I can’t.

XIAO FANG

Then you don’t really want me anymore.139

COURTING RITUALS IN THE TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH

[Leer and Hallem are escorted to the dock. Three prostitutes are slumped across a dirty velvet sofa. An incense burner on the mantelpiece produces the scent of heliotrope and citron. They rise on black stilettos adjusting loose lingerie]

LEER

Good evening ladies.

BELLA

Do you remember Baron de Charlus, girls?

CANDY, SOLANGE, BIDDY THE CLAP

Yes. Greetings, my Lord!

LEER

This is my cousin Keith, ladies. Keith, this is Miss Candy. Mistress Clap. And Miss Solange.

[They pull Tom Hallem onto the settee]

BELLA

I’ll get some drinks.

[She draws Leer aside]

CANDY

[To Tom Hallem] Did you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you.

SOLANGE

O, Kinch, thou art in peril.

BIDDY THE CLAP

Get thee a breechpad.

[Cut to Bella and Leer]

OF MATTERS DIONYSIAN

BELLA

What’s your pleasure?

LEER

Threesome.

BELLA

For yourself?

LEER

No. One girl, me and the lad.

BELLA

No boys?

LEER

Not tonight. I’ve got him.140

BELLA

Suit yourself. Price is the same. [She raises her voice] Excuse me, gentlemen. Ladies, a word.

[She draws the women together and opens her fans]

BELLA

Who’s up for a three-way?

NARRATOR

Not I, said Solange. She exits. Biddy indicates weariness.

CANDY

Depends.

[She runs her fingers through peroxide hair. Some brittle ends snap adhering to her fingers. She shakes them to the floor awkwardly]

BELLA

[Gesturing at Leer] Well, we both know he’s tiny.

CANDY

But what about his mate?

BELLA

Doesn’t look like a monster.

CANDY

I’ll do it for a ton.

BELLA

Thanks love.

[Bella grasps Peroxide Girl’s forearm. She feels a trail of old scars and scabs. They return. Bella whispers to Leer. He nods. All rise.]

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

[They walk down a long hall. Bella opens the door to Room Seven. They enter]141

LEER

[To Tom] Your turn. Hop up on the operating table.

THE CISTERN CONTAINS

LEER

Lie down on your back. [To Candy] You ride.

[Candy takes a blast of amyl nitrate from a hazel vial then straddles Tom Hallem. Leer gets up on the bench. He penetrates as well]

CANDY

Slow down.

[She gasps. Leer ignores her]142

LEER

[Looking straight down on Tom Hallem’s face] Can you feel me?

TOM

[Gulping] Yes.143

THE FOUNTAIN OVERFLOWS

LEER

[Grunting] Together.

[Leer presses Candy harder. She squeezes Tom’s nipples. Leer ejaculates loudly. Tom makes no sound. Leer withdraws rapidly. He rips off the condom. A long ribbon of sperm laces Tom’s thigh. Cunty dismounts. Tom Hallem rolls into a foetal position]

LANCE HORNER

Missy lay on her side burning and murmuring with pride.

[Cut to a car passing under the gateway to the Westside Motel in Ashfield. It parks in front of the rooms. A woman emerges. She walks towards a ground floor door which is slightly ajar]

PENELOPE HALLEM

Sorry I’m late.

DICK STONE

[Propped against the bedhead. Naked. Legs splayed] No problem.

PENELOPE HALLEM

I’ve been playing catch-up at work all day after I took my son home.

DICK

How is he?

PENELOPE HALLEM

Useless as ever.

TELEMACHUS

What chance did I have?

DICK STONE

How was the function?

PENELOPE HALLEM

I got a couple of fresh leads.

MENELAUS

A coward is always eager to sleep in a brave man’s bed.

TELEMACHUS

The goods of my father’s house were being consumed by the suitors. Our palace was full of enemies. The farmlands ruined.

SERVIUS

It was said that Penelope copulated with all one-hundred-and-eight suitors then gave birth to the great God Pan.

NARRATOR

In Time Regained, the participants in Charlus’ orgy conduct a casual, good-natured post-mortem. This prolongs the sexual fantasies of the victims. It also enables the boys to earn extra fees.

BELLA

Stay.

TOM

I’m cold.

BELLA

Put this on.

[Bella gives him the bloodstained gown of Hydra. It tightens over his shoulders, tearing his skin away and exposing bare bones]

LEER

Time to leave.

BELLA

[Romantically] It doesn’t have to end like this.

LEER

How do you want it to end?

Elizabeth

Logically.

BELLA

Profitably.

ELIZABETH

Yes. Both!

Mím/MILKMAID

The hero can’t control the myth.

Barbour

That is the logic of all Classical tropes.

LEER

[Drunkenly. Hugging Bella] Let’s part as friends.

[Tom Hallem rolls onto his back and stares at a pallid light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Leer staggers towards the door. A child skips gaily down the hallway of a stark Modernist apartment. She vaults over the prone form of HH-1970. Sandals click on polished concrete as she regains her lope. Tom Hallem reaches towards the aquarium wall. He presses his mouth against the glass to yell a single two-syllable word. The girl approaches the tank inquisitively, presses her own lips against the glass then withdraws, turns and runs away]

BLOOM

[Bringing his mouth near an unmoving face] Rudy!

LEON DANIEL

Chaim!

DON CANE

Robert!

TOM HALLEM

Father! [Despairing] A name you call.

JAMES JOYCE

My father was an original fellow with a grand wit and voice who gifted to me an ineffable quality which is really the source of what talent I have.144

STANISLAUS JOYCE

I was always perplexed by Jim’s loyalty.

A LETTER

[In Joyce’s hand-writing] “I feel that a poor heart which was true and faithful to me is no more.”

[T.S. Eliot lays down the paper on his desk, removes his spectacles, wipes his eyes and winces]

STANISLAUS JOYCE

Justice towards the characters of his own creation became an artistic principle of my brother.

LEOPOLD BLOOM

Wore out his wife, now sings.

STANLISLAUS JOYCE

He made a vague attempt to strangle our mother.

JOHN JOYCE

Her grave is over there, Jack.

JAMES JOYCE

Mary Dedalus fixes her son with bluecircircled eyesockettes and opens a toothless mouth to utter a silent word.145

MARY DEDALUS

I am dead.

STANISLAUS JOYCE

Pappie has been drunk the last three days. I am sick of it, sick of it.

DILLY DEDALUS

Give it up, father.

NARRATOR

Circe ends in a parody of knightly combat.146

ULAN

The quarrel with the British soldiers, Carr and Compton, is the low point of Circe. Stephen’s erudition seems utterly pretentious in this exchange.

JAMES JOYCE

[Writing in margin of galley proof] REPRISE IDIOTS, CHILDREN, PISSING WHORES, BROKEN-DOWN DRUNKS, MORE SURREAL FIGURES.147

[A flash of smoke. They are gone. Tom Hallem has been deposited on King Street. Leer is kneeling on his haunches]

CONSTABLE RAFTOS

[To Tom Hallem] Your mate there looks a little skew-whiff.

HALLEM

He had a big win on the Cup, officer. He’s had a few too many ales. Doesn’t know what he’s saying. Complete wanker when he’s drunk, actually. I’ll take him home. I know his family. Very well-respected around town. 148

CONSTABLE RAFTOS

I don’t give a fuck who he is.

PRIVATE COMPTON

Stick one in his knackers, Jemmy.

CONSTABLE RAFTOS

Can’t be assed. [To Tom] You pick him up and get him home.

HALLEM

I will, sir. Come on, Ernie. [Raising Leer]

BLOOM

[To Stephen] Come home with me, lad. You’ll get into trouble out here on your own.149

[Leer and Hallem hurry along King Street]

NARRATOR

The use of dramatic form in the “Circe” episode can be explained in part by Joyce’s humanism. He always wanted to render HUMAN BEINGS sympathetically through proximity to speech as a material record. This gave average lives power. Drama is the best mode for this task. It creates a reality TV show. But there are some things you can’t depict in a play such as Molly’s physicality in Ithaca, which would have reduced any script to slapstick. It appears that Joyce had already written parts of Circe separate to the rest of Ulysses by 1916. He wrote Exiles just before commencing the novel. He continued trying to become a popular dramatist up to the time when Ulysses made him famous. The entrance to Nighttown evokes the slice-of-life sets of Dubliners. Its fantastic style owes much to Joyce’s exposure to Dadaism in Zurich and his Agon with Freud. Bloom is made to lie down on Joyce’s couch and dream. Joyce always fancied himself as an actor. He could have played the part of his own hero or the psychoanalyst or both. The stage enthralled him. I am the same with radio-plays. He was always a popular partner in charades at the Sheehy household where he excelled at dumbshow. He played Captain Hawtree in Margaret Sheehy’s production of Caste. Then there was Ibsen. Henrik Ibsen was Joyce’s first and most sustained literary passion. He read the plays in text form initially, beginning with the Master Builder in William Archer’s translation for Heinemann in 1898. Stanislaus refers to it as a slim yellow volume that his brother stayed-up all night re-reading. His first prominent review was “Ibsen’s New Drama.” He was only eighteen years old when he wrote it. It was published in the prestigious Fortnightly Review. He began a correspondence with the famous playwright, who was then aged seventy. His brother notes that Joyce found in Ibsen what he subsequently cultivated in his own work: WONDERFUL CALM, STAYING ABOVE THE FRAY, NO CONFLICTING VOICES, FINE PITY FOR MEN and DEEP SYMPATHY WITH LIFE’S CROSS-PURPOSES. Of course, Joyce was particularly influenced by Ibsen’s replacement of epic heroes with ‘average lives.’150 His brother wrote that “no writer in English since Sterne has exploited the minute, unpromising material of his immediate experience so thoroughly” (52). Joyce also liked the way that action in Ibsen’s dramas remained subdued, with the plot slowly disclosing ‘some great ideal conflict’ as the Nolan said. [INSERT FOOTNOTE]. These factors were crystallised in his lecture, “Drama and Life,” at University College Dublin in 1900. Like most of his generation, Joyce was a theatre addict. He travelled to London to watch Duse in D’Annunzio’s La Gioconda and La Citee Morta. INSERT MORE in FOOTNOTE. He loved the flow of movement and voice on the stage, uninterrupted by footnotes and qualifications. He could never be bothered ‘drawing’ characters like most novelists. They were immediately defined visually when put on stage. The appearance of a play could be changed in every new production, giving the director and players the kind of sweeping creative freedom of interpretation that fiction denied. It is therefore ironic that Joyce’s fiction resisted this liberty for its readers by virtue of its intense and obscure Gaelicism, intellectual inserts and parochial settings. It would be impossible for any of Joyce’s works to be transferred to, say, a nameless totalitarian state in Eastern Europe as with Shakespeare’s historical dramas. Ulysses can only exist in one place. Inversely, Joyce was able to imbue fiction with features that he was never able to bring to DRAMA. Exiles is his major dramatic legacy. Like Swinburne’s aborted novel, Lesbia Brandon,151 it accelerates and expands Joyce’s principle interests and style152 until it produces a distortion of the true machine.153 Exiles is set in Dublin in 1912. It is based on “The Dead” in Dubliners. This lodges it firmly in the mainstream of Joyce’s oeuvre. Joyce described the play as “three cat and mouse acts.” It is less than that. John MacNicholas wrote, “it is generally agreed, perhaps especially among Joyceans, that Exiles is a bad play, opaque to both reader and viewer.” It is really the turgid public confession of Joyce’s mania for sexual jealousy. This mood overflowed in letters to his wife. Some critics think that Exiles is the failure that Joyce had to write in order to commit himself to fiction once and for all. The language is stilted. The characters contrived. He learned what didn’t work in dramatic writing which he then corrected in Circe.154 Critics list the following reasons for the let-down of Exiles: Joyce just couldn’t write in any received form; he didn’t create enough distance from Ibsen;155 he was too autobiographical; the script was stiffly reasoned and lacked spark; it was a hiatus between PAYM and Ulysses where Joyce let his hair down.156 The plot revolves around the ordeals of Richard Rowan, an emerging author. He has moved back to Dublin from Rome with his common law wife Bertha. They pretty much represent Joyce and Nora. In this regard, Joyce probably wanted the play to act as a direct message to his wife as she sat bored in the audience.157 They are joined on stage by Robert Hand and Beatrice Justice.158 Both men are former lovers of Beatrice. Plot development revolves around the renewed intimacy of Hand and Bertha. This stimulates Richard’s desire for pain and degradation.159 He actively seeks to be betrayed. He refuses to provide counsel or opinions when his wife confesses to Robert’s advances. He wants a liaison to happen “secretly, meanly and craftily.” He encourages Bertha to keep an assignation. This is an active version of Bloom’s passive delight in contemplating Molly’s adultery with Boylan. Robert also tells Bertha that her husband wants to be betrayed as it will ‘liberate’ him into a state of perpetual doubt once and for all160 and disqualify him from false adherence to social conventions forever.161 Joyce’s character naming is not subtle. The men’s first names are virtually interchangeable, like some satirical Wildevice. Beatrice was Dante’s great romantic obsession. Bertha is a plod. Her name was associated with abnormally large weaponry in Joyce’s time. Unlike Hedda Gabler, she has no skill in intrigue. There is no vital force within.162 She is “like a sea mist.” She becomes a predictable female romance figure bifurcated by dominant men.163 Beatrice’s surname, Justice, was the same as Joyce’s cherished cousin, Elizabeth, who died in 1912. In Celtic mythology, the Rowan tree is known as the Tree of Life and symbolises courage, wisdom and protection.164 Robert Hand is a prototype for Mulligan. Joyce draws on both Oliver St. John Gogarty and Vincent Cosgrave for characterisation.165 Power, influence and argument are used to try to extract sexual favours. But the outcome is left unclear.166 The play is static. It has a dianoetic structure. Richard’s dilemma is whether to accept an appointment as a university lecturer in languages and stay in Ireland … or return to an unknown future on the Continent. It is not resolved at closure. He and his wife are left stranded and immobilised by events.167 Exiles is less emphatic than any of Joyce’s fiction. What it does do is draw attention to Joyce’s own life-choice, which had been to escape from Ireland in 1904. In this regard, the play is an act of self-justification. Joyce was not a famous writer at the time of writing Exiles.168 He could have ended-up as a middle-ranked author of the Edwardian era. Exiles dramatises his insecurity.169 In fact, it contains far more self-serving epic afflatus than any play by Ibsen or any other work by Joyce. He may have been enduring retrospective doubts about spurning a solid career in Dublin at this time, given the hardship of life in Trieste during wartime.170 Exiles was rejected by numerous companies in England, Ireland and America including The Abbey Theatre.171 This forced publication. It got bad reviews as a script. It was finally produced at Munich in 1919.172 A brief second production was mounted in London in 1926. The first significant staging was directed by Harold Pinter at the Mermaid Theatre, London in 1970. The best that can be said for Exiles is that its plot craved to live life in some kind of awkward freedom like the chorus of a Leonard Cohen song.

SUPERVISOR

How is Circe better than Exiles?

NARRATOR

Circe is successful because it inverts the style and structure of Exiles.

SUPERVISOR

How do they differ?

NARRATOR

One is all reason, overtly autobiographical and tight. Yet it ends in abeyance. The other is loose, free and associative. Yet it ends with hope. One contains blunt, ponderous symbols. The other is informed by symbolism from psychoanalytical readings. One is confined. The other freewheeling. They both challenge moral customs. Exiles does it in a bourgeois setting where there is individual choice about sexuality.173 Circe resides in a slum where sexual usufruction represents the only option. Edna O’Brien has listed relevant images from Joyce’s notes about Nora, sexuality and women which found their place in Exiles. The same kind of fragments were not collected for Molly Bloom.174

SUPERVISOR

Explain the function of the Circe episode in Ulysses.

NARRATOR

Bloom and Stephen share this episode. It is their point of convergence in the novel like Telemachus and Odysseus at the swineherd’s farm. Joyce acts as Circe. The text is his bestiary. The past comes forward. Use of Hallucination as a theatricalising device. There have been many excellent expositions of Bloom’s hallucinations,175 madness, Fall, guilt and redemption in Circe.176 However, they are generally too pious. They miss the fact that Bloom’s ‘falls’ are generally petty and trivial. They are the average falls of an average person, which should elicit low levels of guilt and restitution. The principle narrative objective in Circe is to show that Bloom suffers an exaggerated sense of blame177 as well as to mock the Catholic Church’s hyperbolic judgments about sin and the Fall. To be clear, Joyce was an atheist and church-hater. He did not suffer any residual pangs of self-reproach as a result of his religious upbringing.178 He was committed to freedom of thought and action. He lived this creed himself. He was a true Libertarian. It makes no sense for him to simply transfer Catholic notions of guilt to his leading character without any critique or alternative vision that mocks and even cancels religion. It is pretty clear that Joyce deliberately over-dramatised Bloom’s angst in Circe as part of an extended parody. The long sequence of symbolic citations of his Fall are inconsequential and strained. Joyce uses numerology bluntly. The mathematical speed of a falling object is 32 feet per second. The number 32 recurs five times in Circe. Bloom falls upstairs and is saved by Zoe. This flip in religious spatial projection is a comic reference to the prospect of Bloom’s accidental entry into heaven-as-whorehouse. Indeed, Bloom trips harmlessly throughout the novel in a physical parallel to his ethical lapses. He also carries a scar on his wrist close to Christ’s stigmata. This is such a ponderous analogy that it could only be seen as sardonic narratorial judgment by Joyce on his character’s crucifixion complex. Finally, the supposed moral deprivation and salvation of Stephen in Nighttown is really just another bourgeois affectation. All Bloom really does is stop Stephen losing the rest of his salary in a brothel then getting beaten up by the filth.179 This does not mean that Bloom’s redemption at the end of Circe is not authentic. Joyce creates really HIGH VALUE moral and emotional power via a sequence of blood images. Bloom’s true sense of personal responsibility doesn’t come from obviating everyday sins relating to sexuality. It comes from an opening-out and transcendence of repressed duties. This bursts forth at the end of Circe in the image of his dead son Rudy, memories of his father and a renewed need for tenderness with his wife. This is a HEROIC denouement at the end of a long sequence of trivialities. Joyce is saying that all Bloom’s foibles are irrelevant. It is his spiritual tone that is ESSENTIAL. In evaluating Circe as a vehicle for Bloom’s fall and redemption, critics often point to Joyce’s statement in PAYM that the artist needed to drop into sin to develop the necessary skills for true creativity. This is clichéd drivel that self-justifies bad behaviour. Anyway, Bloom is NOT AN ARTIST. He is an average guy feeling bad on this day about the past, probably because he went to a funeral, had a lot on his plate and feels exhausted at midnight. Other critics argue that Bloom has ALREADY fallen.180 This is a bit rich. It’s not as if Bloom killed anyone. He didn’t have a REAL FALL. He isn’t POST-LAPSARIAN. He doesn’t resemble a tragic hero.181 This misreading of Circe is exacerbated by the presumption that Stephen Dedalus becomes a substitute son for Bloom, acting as the agent for cosmic harmonisation between Bloom and Rudy. As noted, an alternative interpretation of the exit of Stephen Dedalus from the novel is based on the premise that he returns to the home of his biological father that night. This is MUCH MORE CONGRUOUS with Bloom’s reconciliation with Rudy at the end of Circe than Stephen becoming a surrogate son. The telepathy and fusion between Bloom and Stephen in Circe is all based on ALIGNMENT. NOT CONFLUENCE. Bloom as father WANTS Stephen as son to be reconciled with his TRUE father, no matter how flawed. Bloom wants to be reconciled with his REAL SON, not find a substitute in Stephen Dedalus. Other people’s kids never smell right. This ethical consistency creates the potential for true closure of Ulysses, which is Bloom being able to emotionally reconnect with his wife. He can only do this by REALLY OWNING THE FATE OF RUDY. Rudy Bloom is the grandson of Rudolf Virag. They share the same chosen name. Likewise, SD is the son of SD. They share initials and family name. Sticking SD into Rudy would only make a blasphemy of reconciliation, especially as Bloom has already conjured an adulterous vision of Stephen with his wife. Continuing this trope suggests that the ultimate blasphemy for Bloom-as-Severin is creating fertile ground for incest. That is definitely not Joyce’s intention. He has used Circe to purge Bloom of this type of BDSM fantasy. Bloom is purified at the end of Circe. Human values displace aesthetic purposes at last. The omniscient narrator entwines the sub-conscious realms of Bloom/Stephen. No new content is provided. There is hyperbolic reprise. Pivotal events get blurred by a seer’s tongue. Metafecundity of style is offered. Unwinding reality. A clock starts going backwards towards Jung. Now Joyce must come out from behind the harlequin masks of his myriad characters to make a full disclosure of his own presence. Extreme metaphors mirror the exigencies of this extreme technical quest. Bloom suddenly displays knowledge of Stephen’s reading (Nebrakada!). There are Circean transformations. Their min(e)d data becomes interchangeable.182 It is made clear to the reader that all characters have sprung from the imagination of James Augustine Aloysius Joyce. Bloom and Stephen share the same vision of Shakespeare by narratorial telepathy. Stephen said Mr WS saw his birth star just after he had finished fucking Anne Hathaway in a field. Don on Helen. Hamlet’s father wafts over battlements. Silhouette of Bob Capri taking out the garbage as seen from a child’s bed. Severin/Bloom. Gerty clomping onto the stage in a leg brace. A bawd offers a virgin for sex. Stephen/Lynch fade into black. But they are not far. Bloom wanders behind them. Billy Capri is surrounded by peers yet he cannot make spiritual contact. This is an emblem of his isolation. It is time for him to depart Australia like Joyce in 1904. Kickstart his own Telemachiad. He tries to visualise his birth-father. Bloom encounters his deceased father and mother in a dream. My father is dead to all intents and purposes. My mother comes back as Bella the brothel keeper. Costume change. Soap symbol of Molly. She is whore and angel. Standard dichotomy. Insert list of past female conquests. Bloom’s first trial. Dublin Don Juan in the Dock! S&M fancies. Kingpin Leop. Policy platform of mild prosperity. Attack on sexual abnormalities from the pullypit. Hidden rind. Bloom transforms into a woman who gives birth to eight babies like a bloated sow. Mister WS as a commercial traveller. Bloom and Stephen are flipsides of the same coin. The spinner launches his kip. Stephen sees Shakespeare-as-person in all his characters. Metempsychosis. Stephen’s artistic father is not Leobard Ploom. Bloom’s trinity is thus: father’s suicide; son’s death; wife’s adultery. Haines’ Black Panther equals God. Barry Kiernan wearing Rudy’s unseeing eyes like some cauterised Yeats. Fergus lives in a painless palace. Bring him back across Lethe. Bella Cohen waits on the bank vault. Invert gender. Become Bello the sex tyrant acting tough like Jupiter. Bloom watches over the whorehouse. His masochism relieved. As a sex slave he is auctioned. Taunted as Molly’s cuck. Signs his own death warrant. Mourned by passing Jews. You’ve got to die to get resurrected. This fulfils his Jesus trope. Enter Nymph. Poulahouca waterfall. Wanking in a forest. Molly needed sex after watching dogs fuck. Don is not spraying his seed efficiently. Bloom breaks the spell with a potato. Circe/Bella charm. An Irish vegement. Blowback on Zoe’s thigh like hot Hephaestus. Athena’s airish ligament. Prostitutes and lovers dance to their favourite songs. Poor pretty girls just out to make money for their families back home in Anhui. Shanghai Dog talking to a girl from Heilongjiang in a Qing theme-room. Debased Shakespearean references. Green eyes. Pigging out on the Bard. ALISOUN: “Oh not another porcine reference!” Bloom almost watched Boylan fuck once. Second-best bed. Strawberry pillcase. Propensity for the word DOG. Adulterated Shakespeare wearing reindeer horns. E-I-E-I-a-gogo. Beardless youth and cuckolded man both see the Bard in their own way. Holding a mirror up to Nature is weird. Barry Capri watched Don Cane and Helen McFadden go at it like beasts in the back paddock at Campsie. Don in the form of a steer mounted a milky white box. Watch yourself in a ceiling mirror. Salome in gold bikini standing in the fish tank on Huaihai Lu. Dances of death. Full of quick steps. Stephen’s mother beastly dead. Countess Cathleen. A whore fucked in Kelp. Stephen smashing a chandelier. Glass everywhere. Beta House nocturne. Samson’s Darkness. Failing masonic tools. Time’s last fling. Precursor of renewal. Bloom’s wallet. Couple of British Privates. Call them Tennyson and Ed. Bloom sort of saves Stephen. Hound chasing a fox. Lame pet. Explosive stick. Tortoise and hare trope. Joyce’s Jew was called Hunter in real life. Irony piled on irony. Joyce needed saving himself in Dublin, Trieste, France and Switzerland. Stephen in the shape of a foetus passed out in muck. Suddenly stretching stiff like a waking baby. His exposed spine leaked lymph-flecked blood. Tom Hallem stirs. His eyelids part. A whitewashed ceiling looms over his groggy gaze announcing entrance into the awakened realm. Rats scurry below. The last dramatic cue in Circe is the father seeing dead Rudy Bloom as an adult dandy with a slight Jesus slant. My father had a living child but chose to not inspire that vision. Onec upno tiem (n)ever (n)ever.

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