Part 207

LYNCH: Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake. (To Zoe.) Who taught you palmistry?

ZOE: (Turns.) Ask my ballocks that I haven’t got. (To Stephen.) I see it in your face. The eye, like that. (She frowns with lowered head.)

LYNCH: (Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice.) Like that. Pandybat.

(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies open, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan springs up.)

FATHER DOLAN: Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye.

(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John Conmee rises from the pianola coffin.)

DON JOHN CONMEE: Now, Father Dolan! Now. I’m sure that Stephen is a very good little boy!

ZOE: (Examining Stephen’s palm.) Woman’s hand.

STEPHEN: (Murmurs.) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.

ZOE: What day were you born?

STEPHEN: Thursday. Today.

ZOE: Thursday’s child has far to go. (She traces lines on his hand.) Line of fate. Influential friends.

FLORRY: (Pointing.) Imagination.

ZOE: Mount of the moon. You’ll meet with a... (She peers at his hands abruptly.) I won’t tell you what’s not good for you. Or do you want to know?

BLOOM: (Detaches her fingers and offers his palm.) More harm than good. Here. Read mine.

BELLA: Show. (She turns up Bloom’s hand.) I thought so. Knobby knuckles for the women.

ZOE: (Peering at Bloom’s palm.) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry money.

BLOOM: Wrong.

ZOE: (Quickly.) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?

(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises, stretches her wings and clucks.)

BLACK LIZ: Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook.

(She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off.)

BLOOM: (Points to his hand.) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.

ZOE: I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.

STEPHEN: See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (He winces.) Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money?

(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.)

FLORRY: What?

(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy gaze.)