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He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pock-
et which seemed to be in its way a species of repository and
pushed it along the table. The printed matter on it stated:
Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia.
All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a
group of savage women in striped loincloths, squatted,
blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping amid a swarm of in-
fants (there must have been quite a score of them) outside
some primitive shanties of osier.
—Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin add-
ed. Stomachs like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when
they can’t bear no more children.
See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead
horse’s liver raw.
His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the
greenhorns for several minutes if not more.
—Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally.
Nobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying:
—Glass. That boggles ‘em. Glass.
Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatious-
ly turned over the card to peruse the partially obliterated
address and postmark. It ran as follows: Tarjeta Postal, Se-
ñor A Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago, Chile. There was
no message evidently, as he took particular notice. Though
not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the
eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell
and the Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted
in Maritana on which occasion the former’s ball passed
through the latter’s hat) having detected a discrepancy be-