, O list! BLOOM: The voice is the voice of Esau. SECOND WATCH: (Blesses himself) How is that possible? FIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism. PADDY DIGNAM: By metempsychosis. Spooks. A VOICE: O rocks. PADDY DIGNAM: (Earnestly) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry. (He looks round him) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That buttermilk didn't agree with me. (The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.) FATHER COFFEY: (Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs. Vobiscuits. Amen. JOHN O'CONNELL: (Foghorns stormily through his megaphone) Dignam, Patrick T, deceased. PADDY DIGNAM: (With pricked up ears, winces) Overtones. (He wriggles forward and places an ear to the ground) My master's voice! JOHN O'CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand. Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one. (Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail stiffpointcd, his ears cocked.) PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul. (He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice, muffled, is heard baying under ground: Dignam's dead and gone below. Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his twocolumned machine.) TOM ROCHFORD: (A hand to his breastbone, bows) Reuben J. A florin I find him. (He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare) My turn now on. Follow me up to Carlow. (He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. All recedes. Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog a piano sounds. He stands before a lighted house