Ulysses - Gabler Edition [240]
HENRY
(in a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar) There is a flower that bloometh.
(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom regards Zoe’s neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to the piano.)
STEPHEN
(to himself) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I’m partially drunk, by the way. (he touches the keys again) Minor chord comes now. Yes. Not much however.
(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.)
ARTIFONI
Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto.
FLORRY
Sing us something. Love’s old sweet song.
STEPHEN
No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter about the lute?
FLORRY
(smirking) The bird that can sing and won’t sing.
(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with Matthew Arnold’s face.)
PHILIP SOBER
Take a fool’s advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney’s en ville, Mooney’s sur mer, the Moira, Larchet’s, Holles street hospital, Burke’s. Eh? I am watching you.
PHILIP DRUNK
(impatiently) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who was it told me his name? (his lawnmower begins to purr) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere. Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no?
FLORRY
And the song?
STEPHEN
Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
FLORRY
Are you out of Maynooth? You’re like someone I knew once.
STEPHEN
Out of it now. (to himself) Clever.
PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER
(their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms) Clever ever. Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.
ZOE
There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with his coat buttoned up. You needn’t try to hide, I says to him. I know you’ve a Roman collar.
VIRAG
Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (harshly, his pupils waxing) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. (he wriggles) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man’s lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. (he cries) Coactus volui. Then giddy woman will run about. Strong man grapses woman’s wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman’s fat yadgana. (he chases his tail) Piffpaff! Popo! (he stops, sneezes) Pchp! (he worries his butt) Prrrrrht!
LYNCH
I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting a bishop.
ZOE
(spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils) He couldn’t get a connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.
BLOOM
Poor man!
ZOE
(lightly) Only for what happened him.
BLOOM
How?
VIRAG
(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte Goim! He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope