Part 125 (1/2)
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!