Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.
THE NYMPH: _(With wide fingers.)_ O, infamy!
BLOOM: I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god 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 operaglasses: The wanton ate grass 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 passes,
plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)_
THE NANNYGOAT: _(Bleats.)_ Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!
BLOOM: _(Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and
gorsespine.)_ Regularly engaged. Circumstances 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 NANNETTI: _(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!
THE NYMPH: _(Loftily.)_ We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a
place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat
electric light. _(She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing
her forefinger in her mouth.)_ Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then
could you...?
BLOOM: _(Pawing the heather abjectly.)_ O, I have been a perfect pig.
Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which
add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long’s
syringe, the ladies’ friend.
THE NYMPH: In my presence. The powderpuff. _(She blushes and makes a
knee.)_ And the rest!
BLOOM: _(Dejected.)_ Yes. _Peccavi!_ I have paid homage on that living
altar where the back changes name. _(With sudden fervour.)_ For why
should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules...?
_(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the
treestems, cooeeing.)_
THE VOICE OF KITTY: _(In the thicket.)_ Show us one of them cushions.
THE VOICE OF FLORRY: Here.
_(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)_
THE VOICE OF LYNCH: _(In the thicket.)_ Whew! Piping hot!
THE VOICE OF ZOE: _(From the thicket.)_ Came from a hot place.
THE VOICE OF VIRAG: _(A birdchief, bluestreaked and feathered in war
panoply with his assegai, striding through a crackling canebrake over
beechmast and acorns.)_ Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!
BLOOM: It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit
where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to
grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted
white sateen coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full.