Ulysses Part 120

Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. _(He touches the keys again)_ Minor chord comes now.

Yes. Not much however.

_(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous moustachework.)_

ARTIFONI: _Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto._

FLORRY: Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.

STEPHEN: No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the letter about the lute?

FLORRY: _(Smirking)_ The bird that can sing and won't sing.

_(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford dons with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both are masked with Matthew Arnold's face.)_

PHILIP SOBER: Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the b.u.t.tend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew.

Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am watching you.

PHILIP DRUNK: _(Impatiently)_ Ah, bosh, man. Go to h.e.l.l! I paid my way.

If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality.

Who was it told me his name? _(His lawnmower begins to purr)_ Aha, yes.

_Zoe mou sas agapo_. Have a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere. Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no?

FLORRY: And the song?

STEPHEN: Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

FLORRY: Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.

STEPHEN: Out of it now. _(To himself)_ Clever.

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: _(Their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of gra.s.shalms)_ Clever ever. Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes.

Cleverever outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us.

ZOE: There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with his coat b.u.t.toned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to him. I know you've a Roman collar.

VIRAG: Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. _(Harshly, his pupils waxing)_ To h.e.l.l with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag who disclosed the s.e.x Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. _(He wriggles)_ Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat.

Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. _(He cries) Coactus volui._ Then giddy woman will run about. Strong man grapses woman's wrist.

Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. _(He chases his tail)_ Piffpaff! Popo! _(He stops, sneezes)_ Pchp! _(He worries his b.u.t.t)_ Prrrrrht!

LYNCH: I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting a bishop.

ZOE: _(Spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils)_ He couldn't get a connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.

BLOOM: Poor man!

ZOE: _(Lightly)_ Only for what happened him.

BLOOM: How?

VIRAG: _(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, cranes his scraggy neck forward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and howls.) Verfluchte Goim!_ He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig G.o.d! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's b.a.s.t.a.r.d. _(He leans out on tortured forepaws, elbows bent rigid, his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute world)_ A son of a wh.o.r.e. Apocalypse.

KITTY: And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral.

PHILIP DRUNK: _(Gravely) Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe?_

PHILIP SOBER: _(Gaily) c'etait le sacre pigeon, Philippe._

_(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna hair.

And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a wh.o.r.e's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)_

LYNCH: _(Laughs)_ And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.

FLORRY: _(Nods)_ Locomotor ataxy.

ZOE: _(Gaily)_ O, my dictionary.

LYNCH: Three wise virgins.

VIRAG: _(Agueshaken, profuse yellow sp.a.w.n foaming over his bony epileptic lips)_ She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. _(He sticks out a flickering phosph.o.r.escent scorpion tongue, his hand on his fork)_ Messiah! He burst her tympanum. _(With gibbering baboon's cries he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm)_ Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk!

_(Ben Jumbo Dollard, Rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, hugebearded, cabbageeared, s.h.a.ggychested, shockmaned, fat-papped, stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair of black bathing bagslops.)_

BEN DOLLARD: _(Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially in base barreltone)_ When love absorbs my ardent soul.

_(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through the ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)_

THE VIRGINS: _(Gus.h.i.+ngly)_ Big Ben! Ben my Chree!

A VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.

BEN DOLLARD: _(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter)_ Hold him now.

HENRY: _(Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs)_ Thine heart, mine love. _(He plucks his lutestrings)_ When first I saw...

VIRAG: _(Sloughing his skins, his mult.i.tudinous plumage moulting)_ Rats!

_(He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by an upward push of his parchmentroll)_ After having said which I took my departure.

Farewell. Fare thee well. _Dreck!_

_(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a pocketcomb and gives a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier, he glides to the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail c.o.c.ked, and deftly claps sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, b.u.t.ting it with his head.)_

THE FLYBILL: K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.

HENRY: All is lost now.

_(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)_

VIRAG'S HEAD: Quack!

_(Exeunt severally.)_