_(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there.
Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket,
pursepoke, sweets of sin, potato soap.)_
BLOOM: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves’ dodge. Collide. Then snatch
your purse.
_(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled
form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long
caftan of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta tassels.
Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison
streaks are on the drawn face.)_
RUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with
drunken goy ever. So you catch no money.
BLOOM: _(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and,
crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat.) Ja, ich weiss, papachi._
RUDOLPH: What you making down this place? Have you no soul? _(With
feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom.)_ Are you not
my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not my dear son
Leopold who left the house of his father and left the god of his
fathers Abraham and Jacob?
BLOOM: _(With precaution.)_ I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that’s
left of him.
RUDOLPH: _(Severely.)_ One night they bring you home drunk as dog after
spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?
BLOOM: _(In youth’s smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent’s sterling silver
waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one
side of him coated with stiffening mud.)_ Harriers, father. Only that
once.
RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.
BLOOM: _(Weakly.)_ They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I
slipped.
RUDOLPH: _(With contempt.) Goim nachez!_ Nice spectacles for your poor
mother!
BLOOM: Mamma!
ELLEN BLOOM: _(In pantomime dame’s stringed mobcap, widow Twankey’s
crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind,
grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net,
appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her
hand, and cries out in shrill alarm.)_ O blessed Redeemer, what have
they done to him! My smelling salts! _(She hauls up a reef of skirt and
ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus
Dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out.)_ Sacred Heart
of Mary, where were you at all at all?
_(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in
his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)_
A VOICE: _(Sharply.)_ Poldy!
BLOOM: Who? _(He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily.)_ At your
service.
_(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in
Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet
trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund
girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night, covers her face,
leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven hair.)_
BLOOM: Molly!
MARION: Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
me. _(Satirically.)_ Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?
BLOOM: _(Shifts from foot to foot.)_ No, no. Not the least little bit.
_(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her a
camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near with
disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb
wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)_
MARION: Nebrakada! Femininum!
_(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops
his head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom
stoops his back for leapfrog.)_
BLOOM: I can give you... I mean as your business menagerer... Mrs
Marion... if you...
MARION: So you notice some change? _(Her hands passing slowly over her
trinketed stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes.)_ O Poldy,
Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the
wide world.
BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower
water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the
morning. _(He pats divers pockets.)_ This moving kidney. Ah!
_(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean lemon
soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.)_