Ulysses Part 113

A VOICE: O rocks.

PADDY DIGNAM: _(Earnestly)_ Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk.

Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry. _(He looks round him)_ A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That b.u.t.termilk didn't agree with me.

_(The portly figure of John O'Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding a bunch of keys tied with c.r.a.pe. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.)_

FATHER COFFEY: _(Yawns, then chants with a hoa.r.s.e croak)_ Namine.

Jacobs. Vobiscuits. Amen.

JOHN O'CONNELL: _(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone)_ Dignam, Patrick T, deceased.

PADDY DIGNAM: _(With p.r.i.c.ked up ears, winces)_ Overtones. _(He wriggles forward and places an ear to the ground)_ My master's voice!

JOHN O'CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand.

Field seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.

_(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail stiffpointcd, his ears c.o.c.ked.)_

PADDY DIGNAM: Pray for the repose of his soul.

_(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam's voice, m.u.f.fled, is heard baying under ground:_ Dignam's dead and gone below. _Tom Rochford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, jumps from his twocolumned machine.)_

TOM ROCHFORD: _(A hand to his breastbone, bows)_ Reuben J. A florin I find him. _(He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare)_ My turn now on.

Follow me up to Carlow.

_(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed in the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. All recedes.

Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog a piano sounds. He stands before a lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their bowers fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)_

THE KISSES: _(Warbling)_ Leo! _(Twittering)_ Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! _(Cooing)_ Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! _(Warbling)_ Big comebig!

Pirouette! Leopopold! _(Twittering)_ Leeolee! _(Warbling)_ O Leo!

_(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, silvery sequins.)_

BLOOM: A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.

_(Zoe Higgins, a young wh.o.r.e in a sapphire slip, closed with three bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat, nods, trips down the steps and accosts him.)_

ZOE: Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.

BLOOM: Is this Mrs Mack's?

ZOE: No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen's. You might go farther and fare worse.

Mother Slipperslapper. _(Familiarly)_ She's on the job herself tonight with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today.

_(Suspiciously)_ You're not his father, are you?

BLOOM: Not I!

ZOE: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?

_(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over his left thigh.)_

ZOE: How's the nuts?

BLOOM: Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose.

One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.

ZOE: _(In sudden alarm)_ You've a hard chancre.

BLOOM: Not likely.

ZOE: I feel it.

_(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a hard black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist lips.)_

BLOOM: A talisman. Heirloom.

ZOE: For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?

_(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm, cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, note by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny crystal of her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.)_

ZOE: You'll know me the next time.

BLOOM: _(Forlornly)_ I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to...

_(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round their sh.o.r.es file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, l.u.s.t, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)_

ZOE: _(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim._

BLOOM: _(Fascinated)_ I thought you were of good stock by your accent.

ZOE: And you know what thought did?

_(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)_

BLOOM: _(Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward hand)_ Are you a Dublin girl?

ZOE: _(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil)_ No b.l.o.o.d.y fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?

BLOOM: _(As before)_ Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device. _(Lewdly)_ The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed.

ZOE: Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.

BLOOM: _(In workman's corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating tie and apache cap)_ Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life!

_(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.)_

THE CHIMES: Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!