Ulysses
Athos, faithful after death. A dog’s spittle as you probably
... (He winces) Ah!
RICHIE GOULDING: (Bagweighted, passes the door)
Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub. Fit for a prince’s. Liver
and kidney.
THE FAN: (Tapping) All things end. Be mine. Now,
BLOOM: (Undecided) All now? I should not have part-
ed with my talisman. Rain, exposure at dewfall on the
searocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every phenomenon
has a natural cause.
THE FAN: (Points downwards slowly) You may.
BLOOM: (Looks downwards and perceives her unfas-
tened bootlace) We are observed.
THE FAN: (Points downwards quickly) You must.
BLOOM: (With desire, with reluctance) I can make a true
black knot. Learned when I served my time and worked the
mail order line for Kellett’s. Experienced hand. Every knot
says a lot. Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today.
Ah!
(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose,
lifts to the edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full
pastern, silksocked. Bloom, stifflegged, aging, bends over her
hoof and with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.)
BLOOM: (Murmurs lovingly) To be a shoefitter in Man-
field’s was my love’s young dream, the darling joys of sweet
buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the
dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly
small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Ray-
monde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick