Ulysses
BLOOM: (Forlornly) I never loved a dear gazelle but it
was sure to ...
(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are
lakes. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves.
Aroma rises, a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the ori-
ent, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles.
Under it lies the womancity nude, white, still, cool, in luxury.
A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses
murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood
exudes, strangely murmuring.)
ZOE: (Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk
lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater)
Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.
BLOOM: (Fascinated) I thought you were of good stock
by your accent.
ZOE: And you know what thought did?
(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, send-
ing on him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw
apart, disclose a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their
mouldering bones.)
BLOOM: (Draws back, mechanically caressing her right
bub with a flat awkward hand) Are you a Dublin girl?
ZOE: (Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil)
No bloody fear. I’m English. Have you a swaggerroot?
BLOOM: (As before) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and
then. Childish device. (Lewdly) The mouth can be better en-
gaged than with a cylinder of rank weed.
ZOE: Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.
BLOOM: (In workman’s corduroy overalls, black gansy