Part 35

Query. Who’s astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall. Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the _Übermensch._ Dittoh. Five number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby’s caudle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? _Caramba!_ Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular’s got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don’t mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here. Look slippery. If you fall don’t wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine! Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you’ll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity sagaciating O K? How’s the squaws and papooses? Womanbody after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There’s hair. Ours the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss! Mummer’s wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine’s writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead astray goodygood Malachi.

Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw Hielentman’s your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot boil! My tipple. _Merci._ Here’s to us. How’s that? Leg before wicket. Don’t stain my brandnew sitinems. Give’s a shake of peppe, you there. Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. _Les petites femmes_. Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence? Machree, macruiskeen. Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all together. _Ex!_

Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like, seeing as how no shiners is acoming. Underconstumble? He’ve got the chink _ad lib_. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy bilks? Won’t wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou. We’re nae tha fou. Au reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you.

’Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir. Bantam, two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do. Gum, I’m jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he’d like? Rose of Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam’s flowers. Gemini. He’s going to holler. The colleen bawn. My colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game. Madden back Madden’s a maddening back. O lust our refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S’elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There’s a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen.

You move a motion? Steve boy, you’re going it some. More bluggy drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated libation? Give’s a breather. Landlord, landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree. Cut and come again. Right. Boniface! Absinthe the lot. _Nos omnes biberimus viridum toxicum diabolus capiat posterioria nostria_. Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo’s papli, by all that’s gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide. _Bonsoir la compagnie_. And snares of the poxfiend. Where’s the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e’en gang yer gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu lay crown of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I’m about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item, curate, couple of cookies for this child. Cot’s plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the world. Health all! _À la vôtre_!

Golly, whatten tunket’s yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at his wearables. By mighty! What’s he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by James. Wants it real bad. D’ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies. Pardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o’ yourn passed in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou’ll no be telling me thot, Pold veg! Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like since I was born. _Tiens, tiens_, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. O, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There’s eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve.

Your attention! We’re nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.

Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes. Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!

Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o’ me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is. Righto, any old time. _Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis_. You coming long? Whisper, who the sooty hell’s the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! _Ut implerentur scripturae_. Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy. Christicle, who’s this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? Elijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that’s my name, that’s yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He’s on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He’s the grandest thing yet and don’t you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You’ll need to rise precious early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He’s got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on.

[ 15 ]

_(The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, before which stretches an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red and green will-o’-the-wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fans. Round Rabaiotti’s halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble. They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly. Children. The swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.)_

THE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I’ll be with you.

THE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.

_(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus’ dance. A chain of children ’s hands imprisons him.)_

THE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute!

THE IDIOT: _(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles.)_ Grhahute!

THE CHILDREN: Where’s the great light?

THE IDIOT: _(Gobbling.)_ Ghaghahest.

_(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a rope slung between two railings, counting. A form sprawled against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, grinding growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky oillamp rams her last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on the doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch in shouldercapes, their hands upon their staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes: a woman screams: a child wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter, cease. Figures wander, lurk, peer from warrens. In a room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts from the hair of a scrofulous child. Cissy Caffrey’s voice, still young, sings shrill from a lane.)_

CISSY CAFFREY:

I gave it to Molly Because she was jolly, The leg of the duck, The leg of the duck.

_(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst together from their mouths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from the lane. A hoarse virago retorts.)_

THE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.

CISSY CAFFREY: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. _(She sings.)_

I gave it to Nelly To stick in her belly, The leg of the duck, The leg of the duck.

_(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on their blond cropped polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd close to the redcoats.)_

PRIVATE COMPTON: _(Jerks his finger.)_ Way for the parson.

PRIVATE CARR: _(Turns and calls.)_ What ho, parson!

CISSY CAFFREY: _(Her voice soaring higher.)_

She has it, she got it, Wherever she put it, The leg of the duck.

_(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with joy the_ introit _for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his brow, attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.)_

STEPHEN: _Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia_.

_(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a doorway.)_

THE BAWD: _(Her voice whispering huskily.)_ Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead inside. Sst!

STEPHEN: _(Altius aliquantulum.) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista_.

THE BAWD: _(Spits in their trail her jet of venom.)_ Trinity medicals. Fallopian tube. All prick and no pence.

_(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)_

EDY BOARDMAN: _(Bickering.)_ And says the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That’s not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is! Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant.

STEPHEN: _(Triumphaliter.) Salvi facti sunt._

_(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)_

LYNCH: So that?

STEPHEN: (_Looks behind_.) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.

LYNCH: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!

STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.

LYNCH: Ba!

STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold my stick.

LYNCH: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?

STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, to _la belle dame sans merci,_ Georgina Johnson, _ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam._

_(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left being higher.)_

LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.

_(They pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd with his flaring cresset._

_Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering forward, cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding. On the farther side under the railway bridge Bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From Gillen’s hairdresser’s window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson’s image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. He passes, struck by the stare of truculent Wellington, but in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy._

_At Antonio Rabaiotti’s door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)_

BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!

_(He disappears into Olhausen’s, the porkbutcher’s, under the downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig’s crubeen, the other a cold sheep’s trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps, standing upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel against his ribs and groans.)_

BLOOM: Stitch in my side. Why did I run?

_(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset siding. The glow leaps again.)_

BLOOM: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.

_(He stands at Cormack’s corner, watching.)_

BLOOM: _Aurora borealis_ or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar’s bush. We’re safe. _(He hums cheerfully.)_ London’s burning, London’s burning! On fire, on fire! (_He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot street._) I’ll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.

_(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)_

THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister!

(_Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling._)

THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.

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?

_(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)_

BLOOM: No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow’s exercises again. On the hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential. _(He feels his trouser pocket.)_ Poor mamma’s panacea. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard’s corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. _(He closes his eyes an instant.)_ Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!

_(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O’Beirne’s wall, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)_

BLOOM: _Buenas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta?_

THE FIGURE: (_Impassive, raises a signal arm._) Password. _Sraid Mabbot._

BLOOM: Haha. _Merci._ Esperanto. _Slan leath. (He mutters.)_ Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.

_(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps left, ragsackman left.)_

BLOOM: I beg.

(_He leaps right, sackragman right._)

BLOOM: I beg.

(_He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on._)

BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and contributed to the columns of the _Irish Cyclist_ the letter headed _In darkest Stepaside_. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.

_(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)_

BLOOM: O.

_(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepoke, sweets of sin, potato soap.)_

BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves’ dodge. Collide. Then snatch your purse.

_(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn face.)_

RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy ever. So you catch no money.

BLOOM: _(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat.) Ja, ich weiss, papachi._

RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? Have you no soul? _(With feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom.)_ Are you not my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?

BLOOM: _(With precaution.)_ I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that’s left of him.

RUDOLPH: _(Severely.)_ One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?

BLOOM: _(In youth’s smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent’s sterling silver waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side of him coated with stiffening mud.)_ Harriers, father. Only that once.

RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.

BLOOM: _(Weakly.)_ They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.

RUDOLPH: _(With contempt.) Goim nachez!_ Nice spectacles for your poor mother!

BLOOM: Mamma!

ELLEN BLOOM: _(In pantomime dame’s stringed mobcap, widow Twankey’s crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand, and cries out in shrill alarm.)_ O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! _(She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.)_ Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all?

_(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)_

A VOICE: _(Sharply.)_ Poldy!

BLOOM: Who? _(He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.)_ At your service.

_(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven hair.)_

BLOOM: Molly!

MARION: Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. _(Satirically.)_ Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?

BLOOM: _(Shifts from foot to foot.)_ No, no. Not the least little bit.

_(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire, spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)_

MARION: Nebrakada! Femininum!

_(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit, offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom stoops his back for leapfrog.)_

BLOOM: I can give you... I mean as your business menagerer... Mrs Marion... if you...

MARION: So you notice some change? _(Her hands passing slowly over her trinketed stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes.)_ O Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.

BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. _(He pats divers pockets.)_ This moving kidney. Ah!

_(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)_

THE SOAP:

We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I. He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.

_(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the soapsun.)_

SWENY: Three and a penny, please.

BLOOM: Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe.

MARION: _(Softly.)_ Poldy!

BLOOM: Yes, ma’am?

MARION: _Ti trema un poco il cuore?_

_(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon, humming the duet from_ Don Giovanni.)

BLOOM: Are you sure about that _Voglio_? I mean the pronunciati...

_(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)_

THE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen. There’s no-one in it only her old father that’s dead drunk.

_(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, Bridie Kelly stands.)_

BRIDIE: Hatch street. Any good in your mind?

_(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)_

THE BAWD: _(Her wolfeyes shining.)_ He’s getting his pleasure. You won’t get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don’t be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.

_(Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. She draws from behind, ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)_

GERTY: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. _(She murmurs.)_ You did that. I hate you.

BLOOM: I? When? You’re dreaming. I never saw you.

THE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.

GERTY: _(To Bloom.)_ When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. _(She paws his sleeve, slobbering.)_ Dirty married man! I love you for doing that to me.

_(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man’s frieze overcoat with loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)_

MRS BREEN: Mr...

BLOOM: _(Coughs gravely.)_ Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant...

MRS BREEN: Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely! Scamp!