Part 118 (1/2)

_Jetez la gourme. Faut que jeunesse se pa.s.se. (He stops, points at Lynch's cap, smiles, laughs)_ Which side is your knowledge b.u.mp?

THE CAP: _(With saturnine spleen)_ Bah! It is because it is. Woman's reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Bah!

STEPHEN: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes.

How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!

THE CAP: Bah!

STEPHEN: Here's another for you. _(He frowns)_ The reason is because the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible interval which...

THE CAP: Which? Finish. You can't.

STEPHEN: _(With an effort)_ Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.

THE CAP: Which?

_(Outside the gramophone begins to blare_ The Holy City.)

STEPHEN: _(Abruptly)_ What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not itself, G.o.d, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. d.a.m.n that fellow's noise in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. _Ecco!_

LYNCH: _(With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe Higgins)_ What a learned speech, eh?

ZOE: _(Briskly)_ G.o.d help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten.

_(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)_

FLORRY: They say the last day is coming this summer.

KITTY: No!

ZOE: _(Explodes in laughter)_ Great unjust G.o.d!

FLORRY: _(Offended)_ Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my foot's tickling.

_(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, yelling.)_

THE NEWSBOYS: Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal ca.n.a.l. Safe arrival of Antichrist.

_(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)_

STEPHEN: A time, times and half a time.

_(Reuben I Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on his spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which the sodden huddled ma.s.s of his only son, saved from Liffey waters, hangs from the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin in the image of Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering darkness.)_

ALL: What?

THE HOBGOBLIN: _(His jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking, kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs) Il vient! C'est moi! L'homme qui rit! L'homme primigene! (He whirls round and round with dervish howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos jeux! (He crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his hands.) Les jeux sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks) Rien va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.)_

FLORRY: _(Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly)_ The end of the world!

_(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity occupies s.p.a.ce. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone blares over coughs and feetshuffling.)_

THE GRAMOPHONE: Jerusalem!