Page 814 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

biz for cheapjacks, organs. What do ye lack? Soon got,
soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that
mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for
presence of mind. Can’t always save you, though. If I had

passed Truelock’s window that day two minutes later
would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only
went through my coat get damages for shock, five
hundred pounds. What was he? Kildare street club toff.
God help his gamekeeper.
(He gazes ahead, reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend
Wet Dream and a phallic design.) Odd! Molly drawing on
the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. What’s that like?
(Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted doorways, in window
embrasures, smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour of the
sicksweet weed floats towards him in slow round ovalling
wreaths.)
THE WREATHS: Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.
BLOOM: My spine’s a bit limp. Go or turn? And this
food? Eat it and get all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of
money. One and eightpence too much. (The retriever drives
a cold snivelling muzzle against his hand, wagging his tail.)
Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today.
Better speak to him first. Like women they like rencontres.
Stinks like a polecat. Chacun son gout. He might be mad.

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