. All that's
left of him.

RUDOLPH: _(Severely)_ One night they bring you home drunk as dog after
spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?

BLOOM: _(In youth's smart blue Oxford suit with white vestslips,
narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver
waterbury keyless watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one
side of him coated with stiffening mud)_ Harriers, father. Only that
once.

RUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make
you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps.

BLOOM: _(Weakly)_ They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I
slipped.

RUDOLPH: _(With contempt) Goim nachez_! Nice spectacles for your poor
mother!

BLOOM: Mamma!

ELLEN BLOOM: _(In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, widow Twankey's
crinoline and bustle, blouse with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind,
grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net,
appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand,
and cries out in shrill alarm)_ O blessed Redeemer, what have they done
to him! My smelling salts! _(She hauls up a reef of skirt and ransacks
the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a
shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall out)_ Sacred Heart of Mary,
where were you at all at all?

_(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels in
his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)_

A VOICE: _(Sharply)_ Poldy!

BLOOM: Who? _(He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily)_ At your service.

_(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman in
Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out her scarlet
trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow cummerbund girdles
her. A white yashmak, violet in the night, covers her face, leaving free
only her large dark eyes and raven hair.)_

BLOOM: Molly!

MARION: Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak to
me. _(Satirically)_ Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?

BLOOM: _(Shifts from foot to foot)_ No, no. Not the least little bit.

_(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her
a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable