Ulysses - Gabler Edition [247]
A BIDDER
A florin.
(Dillon’s lacquey rings his handbell.)
THE LACQUEY
Barang!
A VOICE
One and eightpence too much.
CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH
Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.
BELLO
(gives a rap with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine shis points. Handle hrim. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His sire’s milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa my jewel! Beg up! Whoa! (he brands his initial C on Bloom’s croup) So! Warranted Cohen! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?
A DARKVISAGED MAN
(in disguised accent) Hoondert punt sterlink.
VOICES
(subdued) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.
BELLO
(gaily) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blasé man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.
BLOOM
(bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger in mouth) O, I know what you’re hinting at now!
BELLO
What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (he stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet folds of Bloom’s haunches) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where’s your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It’s as limp as a boy of six’s doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. (loudly) Can you do a man’s job?
BLOOM
Eccles street ....
BELLO
(sarcastically) I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world but there’s a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! He’s no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger, it’s kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes you wild, don’t it? Touches the spot? (he spits in contempt) Spittoon!
BLOOM
I was indecently treated, I ..... Inform the police. Hundred pounds. Unmentionable. I ....
BELLO
Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your drizzle.
BLOOM
To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll .... We .... Still .....
BELLO
(ruthlessly) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman’s will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and see.
(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)
SLEEPY HOLLOW
Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!
BLOOM
(in tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries out) I see her! It’s she! The first night at Mat Dillon’s! But that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and he ....
BELLO
(laughs mockingly) That’s your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar student.
(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)
MILLY
My! It’s Papli! But, O Papli, how old you’ve grown!
BELLO
Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt Hegarty’s armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his menfriends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos’ Rest! Why not? How many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Blameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander O.