Page 811 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

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.

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