Page 871 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

ZOE: Babby!
BLOOM: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul
of dark hair, fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze

buckles with a chubby finger, his moist tongue lolling and lisping)
One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.
THE BUCKLES: Love me. Love me not. Love me.
ZOE: Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she
captures his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch
of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.
(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him
towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the
vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous
folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed
her.)
THE MALE BRUTES: (Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung
and ramping in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged
heads swaying to and fro) Good!
(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores
are seated. They examine him curiously from under their pencilled
brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.)
ZOE: (Her lucky hand instantly saving him) Hoopsa!
Don’t fall upstairs.
BLOOM: The just man falls seven times. (He stands
aside at the threshold) After you is good manners.

870 of 1305