Ulysses Part 125

THE YEWS: _(Murmuring)_ Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School excursion? Who left his nutquesting cla.s.smates to seek our shade?

BLOOM: _(Scared)_ High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession of faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.

THE ECHO: Sham!

BLOOM: _(Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis shoes, bordered stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap with badge)_ I was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling odours of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the throng penned tight on the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes, instinct of the herd, and the dark s.e.xsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days.

_(Halcyon days, high school boys in blue and white football jerseys and shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton, Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and shout to Master Leopold Bloom.)_

THE HALCYON DAYS: Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! _(They cheer)_

BLOOM: _(Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammam.u.f.flered, starred with spent s...o...b..a.l.l.s, struggles to rise)_ Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's ring all the bells in Montague street. _(He cheers feebly)_ Hurray for the High School!

THE ECHO: Fool!

THE YEWS: _(Rustling)_ She is right, our sister. Whisper. _(Whispered kisses are heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and among the leaves and break, blossoming into bloom.)_ Who profaned our silent shade?

THE NYMPH: _(Coyly, through parting fingers)_ There? In the open air?

THE YEWS: _(Sweeping downward)_ Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.

THE WATERFALL:

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.

THE NYMPH: _(With wide fingers)_ O, infamy!

BLOOM: I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the G.o.d of the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time. Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operagla.s.ses: The wanton ate gra.s.s wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits.

She climbed their crooked tree and I... A saint couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?

_(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 pa.s.ses, plumpuddered, b.u.t.tytailed, dropping currants.)_

THE NANNYGOAT: _(Bleats)_ Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!

BLOOM: _(Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsespine)_ Regularly engaged. Circ.u.mstances 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: Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg!

_(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 qua.s.sia 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 cus.h.i.+ons.

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: _(From the thicket)_ Came from a hot place.

THE VOICE OF VIRAG: _(A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with his a.s.segai, 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: Ss.h.!.+ 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 trouserb.u.t.ton snaps.)_

THE b.u.t.tON: Bip!

_(Two s.l.u.ts of the coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)_

THE s.l.u.tS:

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 a.s.s p.i.s.sing.

THE YEWS: _(Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging and swaying)_ Deciduously!

THE NYMPH: _(Her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit)_ Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! _(A large moist stain appears on her robe)_ Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. _(She clutches again in her robe)_ Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. _(She draws a poniard and, clad in the sheathmail of an elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins)_ Nek.u.m!