In Lotus Eaters, as Bloom strains to catch a glimpse
of a woman's delicately stockinged leg across the street, his
view is suddenly and violently interrupted: "A heavy
tramcar honking its gong slewed between." His frustrated
reaction, "Curse your noisy pugnose," may at first seem
directed at the man beside him, since M'Coy has been babbling
inanely and Bloom has tried to keep him from blocking his view
of the action. But a reader who holds on to this little facial
detail will discover in later chapters that the pugnose
actually belongs to the man driving the tram. Strangely,
Bloom supposes that the motorman has intentionally interfered
with his sexual fantasy.
The tram blocks Bloom's view only a moment after he tries to
keep M'Coy from blocking it: "He moved a little to the side of
M'Coy's talking head. Getting up in a minute." After this
comical objectification of a noise-making head, "noisy
pugnose" sounds like more of the same. But in fact Bloom
has taken a different noise—the trolley's clanging gong—and
attached it to a different face. Lestrygonians finds
Bloom absurdly supposing that the tram's motorman deliberately
moved his car forward in order to frustrate his lecherous
gazing: "Up with her on the car: wishswish.... Think that
pugnosed driver did it out of spite."
In Circe this fantasy of a malevolent tram driver
becomes a hallucination in which a municipal "sandstrewer"
transforms into a DUTC
"trolley" and nearly runs him down:
BLOOM
(Halts erect, stung by a spasm.) Ow!
(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog
a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily
down upon him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley
hissing on the wire. The motorman bangs his footgong.)
THE GONG
Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.
(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's
whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The
motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel,
yells as he slides past over chains and keys.)
THE MOTORMAN
Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?
Perhaps nothing more than sound-play is involved, but the
tram driver's pugnose is linked later in Circe with
Bloom's confession of a dark sexual deed. When Bello demands,
"Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all
your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid
for once…. Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing,"
Bloom stammers out: "I rererepugnosed in
rerererepugnant..." The offending driver's pushed-in nose here
morphs into a nose that has relished pushing itself into
offensive things. Does Bloom translate the demand that he
confess a "Repugnant" action into the similar-sounding
"repugnosed" because his humiliation at the hands of a
dominatrix somehow calls up the sexual frustration he endured
earlier in the day?
Thanks to Scott Shepherd for pointing out to me the person to
whom the noisy pugnose belongs!
