KITTY
Don’t be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won’t, ma’amsir.
BELLO
(coaxingly) Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety. (Bloom puts out her timid head) There’s a good girly now. (Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How’s that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.
BLOOM
(fainting) Don’t tear my …
BELLO
(savagely) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the knout I’ll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. You’re in for it this time! I’ll make you remember me for the balance of your natural life. (his forehead veins swollen, his face congested) I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson’s fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness’s porter. (he belches) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler’s Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. (He twists her arm. Bloom squeals, turning turtle.)
BLOOM
Don’t be cruel, nurse! Don’t!
BELLO
(twisting) Another!
BLOOM
(screams) O, it’s hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!
BELLO
(shouts) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That’s the best bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don’t keep me waiting, damn you! (he slaps her face)
BLOOM
(whimpers) You’re after hitting me. I’ll tell ….
BELLO
Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.
ZOE
Yes. Walk on him! I will.
FLORRY
I will. Don’t be greedy.
KITTY
No, me. Lend him to me.
(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy bib, men’s grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a rollingpin stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at the door.)
MRS KEOGH
(ferociously) Can I help?
(They hold and pinion Bloom.)
BELLO
(squats with a grunt on Bloom’s upturned face, puffing cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg) I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness’s preference shares are at sixteen three quarters. Curse me for a fool that didn’t buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. (he quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom’s ear) Where’s that Goddamned cursed ashtray?
BLOOM
(goaded, buttocksmothered) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!
BELLO
Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed before. (he thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar) Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss. (he throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman’s knees, calls in a hard voice) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I’ll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (he bends sideways and squeezes his mount’s testicles roughly, shouting) Ho! Off we pop! I’ll nurse you in proper fashion. (he horserides cockhorse, leaping in the, in the saddle) The lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.
FLORRY
(pulls at Bello) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you.
ZOE
(pulling at Florry) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?
BLOOM
(stifling) Can’t.
BELLO
Well, I’m not. Wait. (he holds in his breath) Curse it. Here. This bung’s about burst. (he uncorks himself behind: then, contorting his features, farts stoutly) Take that! (he recorks himself) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters.
BLOOM
(a sweat breaking out over him) Not man. (he sniffs) Woman.
BELLO
(stands up) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over head and shoulders. And quickly too!
BLOOM
(shrinks) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch it with my nails?
BELLO
(points to his whores) As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will remind you …..
BLOOM
(charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male hands and nose, leering mouth) I tried her things on only twice, a small prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO
(jeers) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed off coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat’s udders in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho! ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?
BLOOM
Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO
(guffaws) Christ Almighty it’s too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. (he guffaws again) Christ, wouldn’t it make a Siamese cat laugh?
BLOOM
(her hands and features working) It was Gerald converted me to be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play Vice Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister’s stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful.
BELLO
(with wicked glee) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn throne.
BLOOM