Page 958 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

SIMON: Think of your mother’s people!
STEPHEN: Dance of death.
(Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey’s bell, horse, nag, steer,

piglings, Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in
cockboat armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through
and through. Baraabum! On nags hogs bellhorses Gadarene
swine Corny in coffin Steel shark stone onehandled nelson two
trickies Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram filling bawling
gum he’s a champion. Fuseblue peer from barrel rev. evensong
Love on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly
with snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last switchback
lumbering up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine
relish for tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!)
(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls
back. Eyes closed he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all
around suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls. He
stops dead.)
STEPHEN: Ho!
(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in
leper grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn bridal
veil, her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. Her hair
is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on
Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. A
choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)

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