Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new sockets. ( U44)

Movement forward brings the hydrophobe Stephen dangerously close to the realm of the drowned man; a cessation of movement causes him to sink downward into the sand.

The Stephen of Proteus, acknowledging "I am not a strong swimmer" ( U5), has moved close to the edge of the briny deep, endangering himself like Hippolytus ("Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks"-- U49), or like Lycidas ("Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor"-- U50), and is lulled into thinking of his own demise by water as a "Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to man" ( U50). To teach "Lycidas" in the safe bounds of a schoolhouse in Dalkey is now translated into experiencing Lycidas's seadeath where the drowned man has had his demise, and is now a "Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine" ( U50). Even the recollection of a bowl of still water proves discomfiting (as had the "bowl of white china" [ U5] in which his dying mother had vomited): "When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly!" ( U45). His reflection in the basin draws him into himself, as he had realized with Mulligan's cracked lookingglass, making him vulnerable from without.  

Bloom's wanderings in Lotus Eaters eventually lead him to the lulling baths, the ablutions prior to the Dignam burial. He meanders (purposely? purposeless?) through the southeastern quarter of Dublin, perhaps throwing off anyone who might be tailing him, claiming Martha's letter at the Westland Row post office and buying soap at Sweny's, temporarily arrested by M'Coy and Lyons. (As Clive Hart has noticed, his peregrinations form a pair of interrogation marks on the map of the city.) His thoughts appear aimless, but not particularly troubled as yet: his destination in time is the 11 A.M. funeral, in space the baths on Tara Street. The establishment had already connoted an element of escape for Bloom, even before he set out on his mysterious trek: in Calypso he thinks, "Wonder have I time for a bath this morning. Tara Street. Chap in the paybox there got away James Stephens they say. O'Brien" ( U68). (That the cashier at the baths may have been involved in the prison break of the Fenian head-centre parallels speculation that the counter man at the cabman's shelter drove the decoy cab for the Invincibles after the Phoenix Park murders.) Despite his announced intentions Bloom does not frequent the Tara Street baths, but goes to the ones on Leinster Street instead. In a chapter that specializes in deflected movements (the longest way to Westland Row is through Tara Street; in the back door of All Hallows, out the front), anyone looking for Bloom in the Tara Street baths will be disappointed.

As a pedestrian Bloom takes his tentative stroll in Calypso, around the corner to Dorset Street for a pork kidney, veering toward the west (bright) side of Eccles, past the barely friendly sentinel on the corner ( Larry O'Rourke), and into the haven offered by Dlugacz the pork butcher. There he is tempted by an even friendlier haven, a return to a Palestinian homeland advertised as Agendath Netaim, but a siren in the form of the nextdoor maid almost leads him astray ("To catch up and walk behind her if she went slowly"-U59). Not only does she go off in the opposite direction (she "sauntered lazily to the right"-- U59), but once he is outside Bloom cannot find her ("No sign. Gone. What matter?"), and he walks "back along Dorset Street" ( U60), where he encounters the menace of a dark cloud; now neither side of the street is bright. The excursion to the jakes--a tight enclosure within the outer enclosure of his garden wall, with the door left comfortingly ajar--provides a few moments of solace for him.

The respite in All Hallows, and presumably the wallowing in the public bath, are Bloom's most secure moments in Lotus Eaters, while the encapsulation in the carriage contrasts with public exposure at Glasnevin cemetery. Although slighted both on entering and leaving the carriage (the last one in and the last out), he seems to feel nicely contained: he can spot Stephen even when Simon Dedalus does not, and he can ignore Boylan by gazing at his nails; he can retreat inside himself when the painful subject of suicide is discussed, and although he fails to tell the Reuben J. Dodd anecdote very well, he is unconcerned when it is taken away from him by Cunningham. After all, it was only a dodge to deflect away from his difference from the others, Bloom never having recourse to moneylenders. At Glasnevin, however, the open terrain again leaves Bloom vulnerable, and the other three can now discuss him behind his back. Even solicitation proves uncomfortable when Tom Kernan attaches himself to him, Bloom being neither a good enough Catholic or Protestant to deal readily with the situation. And Menton's snub caps the discomforts of the occasion.

An aspect of survival for Bloom has been the ability to control the doors that are his means of ingress and egress, not just the "crazy door of the jakes" ( U68), but his front door as well. Keyless throughout the day, his first ploy when going out to the butcher's is to manipulate the appearance of his house door: "He pulled the halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back anyhow" ( U57). In Aeolus, however, doors operate outside of Bloom's volition; in this chapter, movement is governed by cross-current winds ("They always build one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out"-- U117), a process inherent in the printing machines that move relentlessly in and out, forward and back: "The machines clanked in threefour time. . . . Now if he got paralysed there and no one knew how to stop them they'd clank on and on the same, print it over and over and up and back" ( U119). The rhythmic language of Aeolus follows the same self-reflexive/ self-retractive action ("Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores"-- U116). Although Bloom is particularly sensitive to the mechanical movement, he is nonetheless subject to its laws. As he analyzes the process: "Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forwards its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt" ( U121). Bloom's manipulation of doors breaks down in Aeolus, despite his ability to "speak their language," and venturing into the Evening Telegraph office to use the telephone places him in a tight box ("The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door was pushed in"-- U124). This collision with J. J. O'Molloy is duplicated when Bloom comes through a door and bumps against Lenehan: "--My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt?" ( U129).

Although the newspaper offices are Bloom's familiar working areas, he is buffeted about in a series of closed boxes, rooms in which doors are mysterious and dangerous. In the streets of Dublin he can guide Josie Breen clear of Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitsmaurice Tisdall Farrell's maniacal stride and help a blind stripling across the street, but he is helpless in the halls of the winds, where newsboys are pushed through doors ("It was Pat Farrel shoved me, sir"-- U 128); and once Bloom escapes--the curses of Myles Crawford echoing after him--the newsboys follow him down the street and mock his walk. Stephen, on the other hand, slithers in and out with ease: the rhythmic movement operates faultlessly as Dedaluspère manages to sllt out before Dedalusfils sllts in, the two never bumping into each other. Whether Stephen comes to the Telegraph office voluntarily (he is, after all, an errand boy for Deasy on this occasion), he adjusts comfortably to the situation, having bypassed his appointment with Mulligan at the Ship. Instead he recommends another pub, offers to stand drinks, and leads a contingent of five out into the street, narrating his parable along the way. But the open-ended possibilities of O'Connell Street defeat his purpose: he can command the absolute attention of only one (limited) auditor, Professor McHugh. Two of the others are in advance of them ("Lenehan and Mr O'Madden Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards Mooney's"-- U148), although all six had started out together. The parable begins in camera, is continued down the stairs to the disruptive rhythm of a "bevy of scampering newsboys" who rush "down the steps, scampering in all directions" ( U146)--while O'Molloy is simultaneously trying to borrow money from Crawford--and presumably ends in the middle of tram-crammed O'Connell Street, "on sir John Gray's pavement island" ( U150). Stephen's narrative oddly ends in medias res.

Stephen fares somewhat better in Lyster's office at the National Library, where the four walls contain the listeners to his Shakespeare disquisition. The office door, however, allows for several interruptions: George Russell escapes a third of the way through and Buck Mulligan invades a third of the way from the end of Stephen's performance. In addition, the Quaker librarian, his most polite and attentive hearer, is twice called out by library clients, one of whom is Bloom himself, who had interrupted the parable in Crawford's office by his intrusion there. It is fitting irony that Stephen should have the opportunity to repeat his parable with Bloom as sole listener in the Eccles Street kitchen, yet lose his attention when the parable title, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine (this time offered in advance of the narrative), apparently evokes a separate line of thoughts in Bloom's mind, the Moses allusions making him think of "essays on various subjects or moral apothegms (e.g. My Favourite Hero or Procrastination is the Thief of Time)" ( U685).

Once Bloom has returned from Glasnevin, the goal of his morning, he throws himself into his work (the newspaper offices) and avoids as much as possible troublesome thoughts of Molly and Boylan--but these prove unavoidable. His walk down Westmoreland and Grafton Streets is determined by his desire for lunch, the hot food that will supplant the bedwarmed flesh that had been his previous haven ("Hope they have liver and bacon today"-- U164). Just as everything he sees and everyone he meets will revert the subject to Molly, so the hot lunch eludes him: the Burton proves too disgusting, and he settles for a cold sandwich at Davy Byrne's. Bracketed between the publican and Nosey Flynn, an old acquaintance, he is relatively secure within the pub, until Flynn mentions Blazes Boylan: "A warm shock of air heat of mustard hauched on Mr Bloom's heart. He raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. . . .  

Not yet" ( U172-73). From this moment on the relentless movement of time brings him toward the instant of the Molly-Blazes assignation, and it becomes the marker for him until four o'clock: "Afternoon she said" ( U183); "At four she, . . . Ternoon" ( U264). Once he leaves the moral pub Bloom is masterfully in control of Molesworth Street, guiding the blind piano tuner across the intersecting Dawson Street; but at the other end, at the Kildare Street intersection, he almost meets his doom: Boylan walking south toward their inevitable point of impact. From his sanctuary in the funeral carriage he avoided eye contact ("Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right hand"-- U92), but now in the open street he can only rush across Kildare, trusting to the sun in Boylan's eyes, and dash through the museum gate, all the while pretending to be preoccupied in searching for something in his pockets, until he can declare himself "Safe!" ( U183).

The third time proves a fatal charm: at four o'clock, from across the Liffey Bloom notices Boylan's jaunting car heading toward the Ormond Hotel: "He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jauntingcar. It is. Third time. Coincidence" ( U263). Unable to resist the temptation, Bloom crosses the river and follows Boylan, stationing himself in the dining room of the Ormond where he can observe Boylan at the bar. Spatial relationships provide Bloom with a strategic vantagepoint in the closed complex of restaurant, bar, and saloon, where sound waves carry the songs sung by Simon Dedalus and Ben Dollard, and imagined transmittal of sound the jingle of Boylan's departing car long after it is out of earshot-"Jingle a tinkle jaunted" ( U267); "Jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty" ( U271); "Jingle jaunty" ( U273); "Jingle by monuments of sir John Gray" ( U276); "Jingle into Dorset street" ( U277)--until "Jog jig jogged stopped" ( U282) and Boylan is "heard" knocking at 7 Eccles Street: "a loud proud knocker, with a cock carracarracarra cock. Cockcock" ( U282). Wavelengths extend beyond immediate hearing; thought waves violate all boundaries, of the walls of library rooms and the walls of Stephen's head as his thoughts on "a rosery of Fetter Lane of Gerard, herbalist" ( U202) are wafted (slightly transmuted) into the sirens atmosphere of the Ormond: "In Gerard's rosery of Fetter lane" ( U280). Bloom's idea that "Everything speaks in its own way" ( U121) is carried forward into the Sirens chapter: "Understand animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift of nature./ Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What?" ( U285). His stomach does indeed speak as he walks away from the Ormond. Flatulence competes with Bloom's silent reading of Emmet's last speech to the court, timed to coincide with a noisy tram:  

 Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She's passed. Then and not till then. Tram. Kran, kran, kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm sure it's the burgund. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be. Karaaaaaaa. Written. I have. Pprrpffrrppfff. Done. ( U291)

The open streets, the domain of wandering rocks, could be perilous, and Stephen Dedalus, having encountered his pathetic sister Dilly at the bookstalls, spends most of his free afternoon in pubs ("Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's"-- U 518) until we again discover him in the Holles Street Hospital. Bloom, in the interim, has made the mistake of venturing into Barney Kiernan's public house, instead of waiting safely outside for Cunningham and Power. Safe in Davy Bryne's and the Ormond as a diner, the non-drinker is vulnerable in the lair of the drinkers. His natural enemy, the Citizen (who under ordinary circumstances can be counted on to remain solidly on his pub stool), spots him immediately outside: "--What's that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen, prowling up and down outside?" ( U300). Once inside hostile territory he also makes the mistake of venturing out again, so that speculation can arise about his absence: "He had a few bob on Throwaway and he's gone to gather in the shekels" ( U335). When he next returns ("--I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for you"-- U341), the Citizen's vehemence breaks forth and Bloom is rushed out of the trap and into a jaunting car, but even the streets by now are no longer safe. The aroused onlookers ("all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door"-- U342) join in the invective, and no area of Dublin seems secure for Bloom. His departure in great haste will be replicated by Stephen's rushing out of Bella Cohen's some seven hours later.

The coming of darkness late on a mid-June night changes the spatial relationships and enforces its own rhythms. In Nausicaa, Bloom and Gerty MacDowell carefully arrange a safe distance but adequate proximity to each other, a territorial separation violated accidentally by the children's ball and purposely by the insensitive Cissy Caffrey intent on asking the time: "So over she went and when he saw her coming she could see him take his hand out of his pocket, getting nervous, and beginning to play with his watchchain" ( U 361). At the established distance Bloom is a handsome and tragic stranger and Gerty a delicate and demure damsel, a relationship that is expected to endure, protected by night falling. Gerty obviously hopes to effect her escape under cover of darkness, so that her telltale limp will not be noticed, but the night is not yet dark enough and Bloom discovers her secret--as presumably she had known of his, the secret masturbation under the protective covering of his clothes and insufficient light. Probably aware that the "distance" between them had been transgressed upon, Gerty moves off "Slowly without looking back" ( U367).

The rainclouds that burst later in the evening inundate Mulligan and Bannon, but leave Bloom and Stephen unscathed in the warm womb of the hospital Common Room, where both remain relatively protected from abuse. The ten medical students and hangers-on are fixed in proximate relationship around the table (once the two rainsoaked newcomers join them, and allowing for Dr. Dixon called away for the birth), but once they decide to move off for last drinks at the nearest pub, space becomes fluid. They attempt to keep in formation, starting out "armstrong, hollering down the street" ( U 424), someone even dictating a military regularity: "March! Tramp, tramp the boys are (attitudes!) parching" ( U424). But Dixon is feeling ill and lagging behind ("Hurrah there, Dix"-- U424), probably accompanied by Punch Costello ("Where's Punch"-- U 424). Stephen undoubtedly stands out alone, attracting the attention of the local street urchins ("Jay, look at the drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospal!"-- U424), and Bloom, also somewhat apart from the arm-strong cluster, moves them aside and earns an invitation to the pub: "Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight. Yous join uz, dear sir?" ( U424). But the doorway of Burke's frustrates any attempt by a phalanx to gain simultaneous entrance, and what began as a military formation disintegrates into a rugby scrimmage: "Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You hurt? Most amazingly sorry!" ( U425).

The Burke's enclosure swallows the ten new customers, and the loose-knit entity distributes itself along the counter for drinks. The narrative medium approximates radio transmission, sound without vision, and only the "voices" of the ten are heard in clusters along the bar, the groupings only hinted at by narrative interaction. Stephen, buying the drinks, is very much in his element, and Bloom, for whom a pub had previously been near-disaster, remains secure, despite his choice of ginger cordial ("Chase me, the cabby's caudle"-U425), and dominates sufficiently to frighten Bannon into a hasty exit: "Bloo? Cadges ads? Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous! Play low, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie" ( U427). A similar radio/non-video transmittal is operative on a lesser scale in Eumaeus, where the denizens of the cabman's shelter are rather shadowy customers: Bloom and Stephen clearly defined; the keeper and the sailor perhaps sailing under false colors as Fitzharris and Murphy; and the remaining three thoroughly indistinct (jarvies? longshoremen? loafers?). One of the three undergoes dim transformations before our eyes, from bearing "a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the townclerk" ( U631) to having "really quite a look of Henry Campbell" ( U638), to being "the cabby like Campbell, facial blemishes apart" ( U641) and "the soi-disant townclerk Henry Campbell" ( U 650). Stephen, who had been quite expansive outside in lavishing a half-crown on Corley, becomes withdrawn and uncommunicative inside with Bloom, until they begin their departure and Bloom seems to earn a modicum of Stephen's respect by answering the simple and basic question of why "they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside down on the tables in cafes" ( U660). Once outside Stephen even allows Bloom to narrow the space between them: "he passed his left arm in Stephen's right and led him on accordingly" ( U660). As they saunter off, Stephen sings to him, and the two look strangely like a married couple "Side by side" ( U665).

The intervening experiences in Nighttown are controlled by the transformational magic whose rhythm "jerks on" like the Idiot ( U 429), or marches "unsteadily rightaboutface" like Privates Carr and Compton ( U430), or "climbs in spasms" like Tommy Caffrey ( U 433), or is "staggering forward" like the drunken navvy ( U433)-no respector of fixed forms or marked distances. As Stephen's guardian angel Bloom nonetheless is constantly in danger on the streets and in Bella Cohen's, suffering numerous changes from the heights of being Lord Mayor to the depths of being Bello's Miss Ruby. But it is Stephen who confidently enters Nighttown to become its victim: in the confined parlour of the brothel he encounters the ghost of his mother, and after smashing the lamp, rushes out to the safety of the streets, where he encounters the wrath of Private Carr. Only the final transformation ( Bloom as Yeats's Fergus, Stephen as Bloom's Rudy) offers a fleeting instant of equilibrium for Stephen, the enduring stasis to be worked out later in the kitchen and back garden of 7 Eccles Street.