We read as far as " - Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said." 16.1296 (Gabler), p. 753 (Penguin).
Still sitting in the cabman's shelter, Bloom is still trying earnestly to engage Stephen in a conversation. Stephen, when he does care to answer, comes up with something short and crisp, something that Bloom often cannot make head or tail of! For example, when Bloom talks about "what a patent absurdity it is on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular", Stephen responds with "Memorable bloody bridge battle..." Understanding what Stephen refers to this time, Bloom agrees with him thoroughly, and thinks that it was all largely a money question.
Bloom continues to talk of Jews, and how they contributed to the British society when Cromwell allowed them in. From the Jews he moves on to the Turks and thinks of Islam. Next it is the turn of patriotism. Bloom comes up with his understanding of the word -, ending with the statement, "Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work". Not paying any attention to his barrage of words, Stephen hears only the last three words. "Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work." This starts another one of Bloom's discourses, this time on the importance of various kinds of works. According to him, a person who, like Stephen, tries to live by his pen is as important as a peasant. He says, "You both belong to Ireland..." "You suspect, ... that I may be important because I belong to... Ireland". (says Stephen)... "I suspect, Stephen interrupts, that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me." (In this statement Stephen becomes the altar ego of Joyce.)
Watching the young man beside him, Bloom thinks of the many examples of "... cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves." Bloom is carried away by his own thoughts on various topics, when he notices the pink edition of the Evening Telegraph lying there. His eyes run over many captions till he arrives at a note on Patrick Dignam's funeral. The note that must have been written by Hynes talks about what a genial personality Dignam was, and goes on to list the names of people who attended the funeral that morning (see chapter 6). The list contains many errors. Not only has Bloom become L. Boom it also mentions that Stephen Dedalus B. A. was at the funeral, when actually he was not there. Stephen is interested in finding out whether the letter (see chapter 2), which he brought that morning to the newspaper has been printed. (It has.) While Stephen reads the letter printed on page two, Bloom reads on page three about the horse race in which Throwaway was the winner and on page four about the Slocum Disaster.
View the entire paper of that day, 16 June 1904 at http://cas.umt.edu/english/joyce/notes/020064newspapers.htm
Again no real conversation takes place between Bloom and Stephen. In fact this section in chapter 16 is dotted with long internal monologues of Bloom. Well, what else can it be, when Bloom has the silent Stephen as companion! And much of it dwells on what are facts, what is truth, and how reliable are reports. When an event has to be rendered somehow and, for this, turned into a particular medium (language, for example), it undergoes changes invariably and can not help losing (or gaining) something on the way.
