Part 124 (1/2)

Return and see.

_(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.)_

SLEEPY HOLLOW: Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!

BLOOM: _(In tattered moca.s.sins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through the diamond panes, cries out)_ I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's!

But that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and he...

BELLO: _(Laughs mockingly)_ That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar student.

_(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)_

MILLY: My! It's Papli! But, O Papli, how old you've grown!

BELLO: Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt Hegarty's armchair, our cla.s.sic reprints of old masters. A man and his menfriends are living there in clover. The _Cuckoos' Rest!_ Why not?

How many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prost.i.tute?

Blameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander O.

BLOOM: They... I...

BELLO: _(Cuttingly)_ Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten s.h.i.+lling bra.s.s fender from Hampton Leedom's.

BLOOM: Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return.

I will prove...

A VOICE: Swear!

_(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowieknife between his teeth.)_

BELLO: As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and out and don't you forget it, old bean.

BLOOM: Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has n.o.body...? _(He bites his thumb)_

BELLO: Die and be d.a.m.ned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to h.e.l.l and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have!

If you have none see you d.a.m.n well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I married, the b.l.o.o.d.y old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the b.u.g.g.e.rs' names were, suffocated in the one cesspool. _(He explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh)_ We'll manure you, Mr Flower! _(He pipes scoffingly)_ Byby, Poldy! Byby, Papli!

BLOOM: _(Clasps his head)_ My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff...

_(He weeps tearlessly)_

BELLO: _(Sneers)_ Crybabby! Crocodile tears!

_(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to the earth. The pa.s.sing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the circ.u.mcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M.

Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg, M.

Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. Mastiansky, The Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)_