Ulysses - Gabler Edition [215]
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
l? 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!
BLOOM
(hurriedly) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me? Don’t give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It’s ages since I. You’re looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary .....
MRS BREEN
(holds up a finger) Now, don’t tell a big fib! I know somebody won’t like that. O just wait till I see Molly! (slily) Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!
BLOOM
(looks behind) She often said she’d like to visit. Slumming. The exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money. Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their buttonholes, leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white kaffir eyes and tusks they rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel toe, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.)
TOM AND SAM
There’s someone in the house with Dina,
There’s someone in the house, I know,
There’s someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling, chortling, trumming, twanging, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance away.)
BLOOM
(with a sour tenderish smile) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second?
MRS BREEN
(screams gaily) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM
For old sake’ sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for you. (gloomily) ’Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN
Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (she puts out her hand inquisitively) What are you hiding behind your back? Tell us, there