_(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon,
humming the duet from_ Don Giovanni.)
BLOOM: Are you sure about that _Voglio_? I mean the pronunciati...
_(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes
his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)_
THE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched.
Fifteen. There’s no-one in it only her old father that’s dead drunk.
_(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled,
Bridie Kelly stands.)_
BRIDIE: Hatch street. Any good in your mind?
_(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues
with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into
gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)_
THE BAWD: _(Her wolfeyes shining.)_ He’s getting his pleasure. You
won’t get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don’t be all
night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.
_(Leering, Gerty Macdowell limps forward. She draws from behind,
ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)_
GERTY: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. _(She murmurs.)_ You
did that. I hate you.
BLOOM: I? When? You’re dreaming. I never saw you.
THE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman
false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother
take the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.
GERTY: _(To Bloom.)_ When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer.
_(She paws his sleeve, slobbering.)_ Dirty married man! I love you for
doing that to me.
_(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man’s frieze overcoat with
loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes
wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)_
MRS BREEN: Mr...
BLOOM: _(Coughs gravely.)_ Madam, when we last had this pleasure by
letter dated the sixteenth instant...
MRS BREEN: Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you
nicely! Scamp!
BLOOM: _(Hurriedly.)_ Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me?
Don’t give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It’s ages since I.
You’re looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are
having this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here.
Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the
secretary...
MRS BREEN: _(Holds up a finger.)_ Now, don’t tell a big fib! I know
somebody won’t like that. O just wait till I see Molly! _(Slily.)_
Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!
BLOOM: _(Looks behind.)_ She often said she’d like to visit. Slumming.
The exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money.
Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at
the Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.
_(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scarlet socks,
upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their buttonholes,
leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller negroid hands
jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing white Kaffir eyes and tusks they
rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to
back, toe heel, heel toe, with smackfatclacking nigger lips.)_