Ulysses - Gabler Edition [250]
(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head with humid nostrils through the foliage.)
STAGGERING BOB
(large teardrops rolling from his prominent eyes, snivels) Me. Me see.
BLOOM
Simply satisfying a need I ... (with pathos) No girl would when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn’t play ....
(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)
THE NANNYGOAT
(bleats) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM
(hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine) Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (he gazes intently downwards on the water) Thirtytwo head over heels per second. Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of government printer’s clerk.
(Through silversilent summer air the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from the Lion’s Head cliff into the purple waiting waters.)
THE DUMMYMUMMY
Bbbbblllllblblblblobschb!
(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin’s King sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her funnel towards the land.)
COUNCILLOR NANNETII
(alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitefaced, his hand in his waistcoat opening, declaims) When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have ...
BLOOM
Done. Prff!
THE NYMPH
(loftily) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (she arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her forefinger in her mouth) Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could you ...?
BLOOM
(pawing the heather abjectly) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long’s syringe, the ladies’ friend.
THE NYMPH
In my presence. The powderpuff. (she blushes and makes a knee) And the rest!
BLOOM
(dejected) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar where the back changes name. (with sudden fervour) For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules ...?
(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the treestems, cooeeing.)
THE VOICE OF KITTY
(in the thicket) Show us one of them cushions.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY
Here.
(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)
THE VOICE OF LYNCH
(in the thicket) Whew! Piping hot!
THE VOICE OF ZOE
(in the thicket) Came from a hot place.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG
(a birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns) Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
BLOOM
It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full.
THE WATERFALL
Phillaphulla Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.
THE YEWS
Ssh! Sister, speak!
THE NYMPH
(eyeless, in nun’s white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, softly, with remote eyes) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel. The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (she reclines her head, sighing) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o’er the waters dull.
(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.)
THE BUTTON
Bip!
(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)
THE SLUTS
O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
He didn’t know what to do,
To keep it up,
To keep it up.
BLOOM
(coldly) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing like an ass pissing.
THE YEWS
(their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and swaying) Deciduously!