A girl in Graham Lemon's shovelled creams for a school treat, and a young man from the Y.M.C.A. put a throwaway into Bloom's hand. He read it walking towards the river. Are you saved? Elijah is coming, Dr John Alexander Dowie, restorer of the church in Zion. On O'Connell bridge the gulls wheeled between the quaywalls, hungry. He threw the crumpled throwaway down. Not one bird bothered. The paper bobbed away. He bought two Banbury cakes for a penny, broke them, and threw the pieces. Then they swooped, and every morsel was gone. They did not so much as caw. A rowboat carried an advertisement for trousers, and under it a thought stood up that he would not finish. If he. No. He wouldn't surely. He walked on. The timeball was down. Parallax, he had never exactly understood it, and Molly had called it met him pike hoses until he told her. Big words for ordinary things, on account of the sound. Sandwichmen came along the gutter spelling Hely's on their hats, and the last of them munched bread as he walked, three bob a day, skin and bone. Bloom was well out of that firm. He had suggested a showcart with girls writing in it, and an inkbottle with a false black stain, and Hely would not take what he had not thought of himself. Plumtree's potted meat went under the obituaries. Crossing the street he counted years back to the Glencree dinner and Molly in an elephantgrey dress, people looking after her. Happy. Happier then. A sheet of her music had blown out of his hand against the High school railings on a windy night, and a small thing like that could spoil a night.
Mrs Breen stopped him in the reek from Harrison's, mockturtle and jampuffs, a barefoot boy breathing the steam off the grating to deaden his hunger. Molly was in the pink, he said, and Milly was in a photographer's in Mullingar. The black clothes were Dignam's funeral, that morning, heart, quite sudden. She had her own trouble. Denis was in his lawbooks hunting the law of libel. She made Bloom read a card: U. p: up. Someone taking a rise, and Denis was off to Menton's office to sue for ten thousand pounds. She was Josie Powell that was, shabby now, a year or so older than Molly. To change the subject he asked after Mina Purefoy. Three days bad in Holles street, a stiff birth, a houseful of children at home. While they talked, Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell strode the edge of the pavement outside the lampposts. Mrs Breen ran off after Denis, who had shuffled out hugging two heavy books, and called back that Bloom should remember her to Molly. Bloom walked on, hungry, and decided against a sixpenny lunch. An eightpenny in the Burton was on his way. The labour went with him, three days of it, Molly lucky to have got off lightly. Pigeons flew in front of the old parliament, and police squads marched out fed and marched back to be fed. He remembered a horsepoliceman clattering after a crowd the day Chamberlain was given his degree, and himself diving into Manning's. This was the worst hour of the day. He felt as if he had been eaten and spewed. One born every second, another dying, Dignam carted off, Mrs Purefoy groaning. No one was anything. John Howard Parnell passed, the brother's haunted face. Then beard and bicycle, a woman listening: A. E., come from the vegetarian, talking of a twoheaded octopus. Bloom had tried that food. It kept you running. At Yeates and Son he priced fieldglasses and could not see the watch he meant to test them by. He held out his hand. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun. He would never understand it. Waste of time. Worlds spinning, then a cold shell, like the pineapple rock.
Mrs Breen had said there must be a new moon, and the full had been the night by the Tolka, Sunday fortnight. Molly humming, The young May moon, and a man on her other side, fingers asking, answer yes. Stop. If it was, it was. Grafton street poured silk and bloodhued poplin over him, harnesses jingling, everything for a woman, and with hungered flesh he craved to adore. He turned into the Burton to eat and feel better. The stink of meatjuice met him. Men wolfed stew and soup, eyes bulging, one spitting gristle back onto the plate for want of teeth. Am I like that? His gorge rose. He backed out. Eat or be eaten. He was hungry. Davy Byrne's would do, a moral pub, and the man himself was not one to chat. He asked for burgundy and a Gorgonzola sandwich. Nosey Flynn, from his nook, asked if the wife was singing. She was engaged for a tour at the end of the month. Who was getting it up? Bloom cut the sandwich into strips and put mustard under them. The mustard caught at his heart. Wasn't Blazes Boylan mixed up in it? The clock said two, five minutes fast. Not yet. Yes, Bloom said. Boylan was the organiser. No fear, and no brains. Flynn had Boylan's luck over a boxing match, a hairy chap who could keep his man in training a month. Davy Byrne would not tip a horse. The wine soothed the cheese, and six o'clock stood up in Bloom's head and would not stay a number. She. He had felt off colour, and the wine was what he wanted. Then Howth, under the ferns, the bay sleeping, her hair on his coat, the seedcake warm from her mouth into his. Joy: he ate it: joy. Me. And me now. He thought of the stone goddesses in the museum and drained his glass and went out to the yard. Behind him Flynn told Byrne what the man was. Not insurance, not any more. Canvassing for the Freeman. In the craft, the ancient order, a safe man who slips off when the fun gets too hot, and who will never put anything in black and white.
Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons and Tom Rochford came in as Bloom raised three fingers and left. Lyons whispered that this was the man who had given him the tip for the Gold cup. Leonard scorned it and ordered whiskey. Bloom walked towards Dawson street. A terrier choked up a cud onto the cobbles and ate it again. He hummed a scrap of Don Giovanni, a supper invitation, and wondered what the word for tonight was, and did not think about today. A blind stripling tapped the kerb with his cane, wanting South Frederick street. Bloom took the limp hand, told him of a van that was not moving, and saw him across, the cane kept clear of the horse. Thanks, sir. The young man went on feeling the way. Bloom walked behind, thought how smell and touch must stand in for a street, and felt the fold of his own belly under his waistcoat. Sir Frederick Falkiner was going into the freemasons' hall. A placard offered the Mirus bazaar. Kildare street, and first the library. Then a straw hat in sunlight, tan shoes, turned-up trousers. It is. It is. His heart quopped. He swerved right, towards the museum and the goddesses, and would not look back. Wine in his face. The walk he knew. Long steps to the gate, telling himself he had not been seen. His hand hunted through his pockets, the Freeman, the potato, the purse, and found the soap stuck to its paper in the hip pocket. The gate. He got through with the soap in his hand, the wine already dying out of him, and the straw hat still bright in the street he had left.
