CISSY CAFFREY:
I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago retorts.)
THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.
CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. (She sings)
I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly,
The leg of the duck,
The leg of the duck.
(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the redcoats.)
PRIVATE COMPTON: (Jerks his finger) Way for the parson.
PRIVATE CARR: (Turns and calls) What ho, parson!
CISSY CAFFREY: (Her voice soaring higher)
She has it, she got it,
Wherever she put it,
The leg of the duck.
(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow, attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)
STEPHEN: Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.
(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway.)
THE BAWD: (Her voice whispering huskily) Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead inside. Sst!
STEPHEN: (Altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista.
THE BAWD: (Spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.
(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)
EDY BOARDMAN: (Bickering) And says the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That’s not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is! Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant.
STEPHEN: (Ttriumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt.
(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)
LYNCH: So that?
STEPHEN: (Looks behind) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.
LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!
STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.
LYNCH: Ba!
STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold my stick.
LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?
STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam.
(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands, his head going back till
