Ulysses Part 106

THE BAWD: _(Her voice whispering huskily)_ Sst! Come here till I tell you. Maidenhead inside. Sst!

STEPHEN: _(Altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista_.

THE BAWD: _(Spits in their trail her jet of venom)_ Trinity medicals.

Fallopian tube. All p.r.i.c.k and no pence.

_(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with bertha supple, draws her shawl across her nostrils.)_

EDY BOARDMAN: _(Bickering)_ And says the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is! Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant.

STEPHEN: _(Ttriumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt._

_(He flourishes his ashplant, s.h.i.+vering the lamp image, shattering light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)_

LYNCH: So that?

STEPHEN: (_Looks behind_) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.

LYNCH: p.o.r.nosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!

STEPHEN: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.

LYNCH: Ba!

STEPHEN: Anyway, who wants two gestures to ill.u.s.trate a loaf and a jug?

This movement ill.u.s.trates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar.

Hold my stick.

LYNCH: d.a.m.n your yellow stick. Where are we going?

STEPHEN: Lecherous lynx, _to la belle dame sans merci,_ Georgina Johnson, _ad deam qui laetificat iuventutem meam._

_(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, down turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left being higher.)_

LYNCH: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. Ill.u.s.trate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.

_(They pa.s.s. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky Caffrey clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot.

Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through the crowd with his flaring cresset._

_Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools, middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering forward, cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding on the farther side under the railway bridge bloom appears, flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a sidepocket. From Gillen's hairdresser's window a composite portrait shows him gallant Nelson's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. he pa.s.ses, struck by the stare of truculent Wellington, but in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy._

_At Antonio Pabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries on.)_

BLOOM: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!

_(He disappears into Olhausen's, the porkbutcher's, under the downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen, the other a cold sheep's trotter, sprinkled with wholepepper. He gasps, standing upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel against his ribs and groans.)_

BLOOM: St.i.tch in my side. Why did I run?

_(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the lampset siding. The glow leaps again.)_

BLOOM: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.

_(He stands at Cormack's corner, watching)_

BLOOM: _Aurora borealis_ or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course.

South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe. _(He hums cheerfully)_ London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire! (_He catches sight of the navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot street_) I'll miss him. Run. Quick.

Better cross here.

_(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)_

THE URCHINS: Mind out, mister! (_Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling_)

THE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.

BLOOM: _(Halts erect, stung by a spasm)_ Ow!

_(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire. The motorman bangs his footgong.)_

THE GONG: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.

_(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman's whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over chains and keys.)_

THE MOTORMAN: Hey, s.h.i.+tbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?

BLOOM: _(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.)_ No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the st.i.tch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again.

On the hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential.

_(He feels his trouser pocket)_ Poor mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick.

Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous.

Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. _(He closes his eyes an instant)_ Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogf.a.g. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!

(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against o'beirne's wall, a visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.)

BLOOM: _Buenas noches, senorita Blanca, que calle es esta?_

THE FIGURE: (_Impa.s.sive, raises a signal arm_) Pa.s.sword. _Sraid Mabbot._

BLOOM: Haha. _Merci._ Esperanto. _Slan leath. (He mutters)_ Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.

_(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He steps left, ragsackman left.)_

BLOOM: I beg. (_He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on_.)

BLOOM: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and contributed to the columns of the _Irish Cyclist_ the letter headed _In darkest Stepaside_. Keep, keep, keep to the right.

Rags and bones at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.

_(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against Bloom.)_