Ulysses - Gabler Edition [248]
BLOOM
They .... I ....
BELLO
(cuttingly) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren’s auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art for art’ sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom’s.
BLOOM
Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return. I will prove ...
A VOICE
Swear!
(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between his teeth.)
BELLO
As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and out and don’t you forget it, old bean.
BLOOM
Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody ...? (he bites his thumb)
BELLO
Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that’ll send you skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have! If you have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We’ll bury you in our shrubbery jakes where you’ll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers’ names were, suffocated in the one cesspool. (he explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh) We’ll manure you, Mr Flower! (he pipes scoffingly) Byby, Poldy! Byby, Papli!
BLOOM
(clasps his head) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff .... (he weeps tearlessly)
BELLO
(sneers) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!
(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall, M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, the reverend Leopold Abramovitz, chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)
THE CIRCUMCISED
(in dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no flowers) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad.
VOICES
(sighing) So he’s gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There’s the widow. That so? Ah, yes.
(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom.)
THE YEWS
(their leaves whispering) Sister. Our sister. Ssh!
THE NYMPH
(softly) Mortal! (kindly) Nay, dost not weepest!
BLOOM
(crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with dignity) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.
THE NYMPH
Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married.
BLOOM
(lifts a turtle head towards her lap) We have met before. On another star.
THE NYMPH
(sadly) Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann’s wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.
BLOOM
You mean Photo Bits?
THE NYMPH
I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.