There’s someone in the house with Dina
There’s someone in the house, I know,
There’s someone in the house with Dina
Playing on the old banjo.
_(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: then, chuckling,
chortling, trumming, twanging, they diddle diddle cakewalk dance
away.)_
BLOOM: _(With a sour tenderish smile.)_ A little frivol, shall we, if
you are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for
a fraction of a second?
MRS BREEN: _(Screams gaily.)_ O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!
BLOOM: For old sake’ sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed
marriage mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a
soft corner for you. _(Gloomily.)_ ’Twas I sent you that valentine of
the dear gazelle.
MRS BREEN: Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. _(She
puts out her hand inquisitively.)_ What are you hiding behind your
back? Tell us, there’s a dear.
BLOOM: _(Seizes her wrist with his free hand.)_ Josie Powell that was,
prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking
back in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina
Simpson’s housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game,
finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this
snuffbox?
MRS BREEN: You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic
recitation and you looked the part. You were always a favourite with
the ladies.
BLOOM: _(Squire of dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings,
blue masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl
studs, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand.)_ Ladies and
gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home and beauty.
MRS BREEN: The dear dead days beyond recall. Love’s old sweet song.
BLOOM: _(Meaningfully dropping his voice.)_ I confess I’m teapot with
curiosity to find out whether some person’s something is a little
teapot at present.
MRS BREEN: _(Gushingly.)_ Tremendously teapot! London’s teapot and I’m
simply teapot all over me! _(She rubs sides with him.)_ After the
parlour mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the
staircase ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.
BLOOM: _(Wearing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his
fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty palm
which she surrenders gently.)_ The witching hour of night. I took the
splinter out of this hand, carefully, slowly. _(Tenderly, as he slips
on her finger a ruby ring.) Là ci darem la mano._
MRS BREEN: _(In a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a
tinsel sylph’s diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside her
moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly.)
Voglio e non._ You’re hot! You’re scalding! The left hand nearest the
heart.
BLOOM: When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and
the beast. I can never forgive you for that. _(His clenched fist at his
brow.)_ Think what it means. All you meant to me then. _(Hoarsely.)_
Woman, it’s breaking me!
_(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely’s sandwichboards,
shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust out,
muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in the pall of
the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter.)_
ALF BERGAN: _(Points jeering at the sandwichboards.)_ U. p: up.
MRS BREEN: _(To Bloom.)_ High jinks below stairs. _(She gives him the
glad eye.)_ Why didn’t you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted
to.
BLOOM: _(Shocked.)_ Molly’s best friend! Could you?
MRS BREEN: _(Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss.)_
Hnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?
BLOOM: _(Offhandedly.)_ Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without
potted meat is incomplete. I was at _Leah_, Mrs Bandmann Palmer.
Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the
programme. Rattling good place round there for pigs’ feet. Feel.
_(Richie Goulding, three ladies’ hats pinned on his head, appears
weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward on which
a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He opens it and
shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, Findon haddies and
tightpacked pills.)_
RICHIE: Best value in Dub.
_(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his
napkin, waiting to wait.)_
PAT: _(Advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy.)_ Steak and
kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.
RICHIE: Goodgod. Inev erate inall...
_(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, lurching
by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.)_
RICHIE: _(With a cry of pain, his hand to his back.)_ Ah! Bright’s!
Lights!
BLOOM: _(Points to the navvy.)_ A spy. Don’t attract attention. I hate
stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.
MRS BREEN: Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and
bull story.
BLOOM: I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here.
But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular
reason.
MRS BREEN: _(All agog.)_ O, not for worlds.
BLOOM: Let’s walk on. Shall us?
MRS BREEN: Let’s.
_(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs Breen. The
terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)_
THE BAWD: Jewman’s melt!
BLOOM: _(In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel,
tony buff shirt, shepherd’s plaid Saint Andrew’s cross scarftie, white
spats, fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fieldglasses in
bandolier and a grey billycock hat.)_ Do you remember a long long time,
years and years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was
weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?
MRS BREEN: _(In smart Saxe tailormade, white velours hat and spider
veil.)_ Leopardstown.
BLOOM: I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three
year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old
fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and
you had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur
that Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to
nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and
I’ll lay you what you like she did it on purpose...
MRS BREEN: She did, of course, the cat! Don’t tell me! Nice adviser!
BLOOM: Because it didn’t suit you one quarter as well as the other
ducky little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I
admired on you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though
it was a pity to kill it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a
thing with a heart the size of a fullstop.
MRS BREEN: _(Squeezes his arm, simpers.)_ Naughty cruel I was!
BLOOM: _(Low, secretly, ever more rapidly.)_ And Molly was eating a
sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher’s lunch basket.
Frankly, though she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much
for her style. She was...
MRS BREEN: Too...
BLOOM: Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O’Reilly
were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius
Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter,
Dancer Moses was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you
asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across...
MRS BREEN: _(Eagerly.)_ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
_(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks on
towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent forward, her
feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a bunch of loiterers
listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer rasps out with
raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrestling, growling, in
maimed sodden playfight.)_
THE GAFFER: _(Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout.)_ And when
Cairns came down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he
after doing it into only into the bucket of porter that was there
waiting on the shavings for Derwan’s plasterers.
THE LOITERERS: _(Guffaw with cleft palates.)_ O jays!
_(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of their
lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)_
BLOOM: Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad
daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.
THE LOITERERS: Jays, that’s a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the
men’s porter.
_(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled,
call from lanes, doors, corners.)_