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Ulysses 

100 

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 1305 

Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. 

New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms. 

Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it, 

by George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each 

whack. 

The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had 

snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat 

there: like a stallfed heifer. 

He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the 

model farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can 

become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I 

thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle 

cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it 

nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle, the page 

rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the 

cattlemarket, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded 

sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed 

boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a 

ripemeated hindquarter, there’s a prime one, unpeeled 

switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, 

bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. 

The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by whack. 

The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, 

wrapped up her prime sausages and made a red grimace. 

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—Now, my miss, he said. 

She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick 

wrist out. 

—Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence 

change. For you, please? 

Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk 

behind her if she went slowly, behind her moving hams. 

Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. Hurry up, damn 

it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the 

shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He 

sighed down his nose: they never understand. 

Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars 

in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard 

glowed to weak pleasure within his breast. For another: a 

constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles lane. They like 

them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, 

I’m lost in the wood. 

—Threepence, please. 

His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it 

into a sidepocket. Then it fetched up three coins from his 

trousers’ pocket and laid them on the rubber prickles. 

They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, 

into the till. 

—Thank you, sir. Another time. 

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A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He 

withdrew his gaze after an instant. No: better not: another 

time. 

—Good morning, he said, moving away. 

—Good morning, sir. 

No sign. Gone. What matter? 

He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. 

Agendath Netaim: planters’ company. To purchase waste 

sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with 

eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and 

construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields 

north of Jaffa. You pay eighty marks and they plant a 

dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or 

citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges need artificial irrigation. 

Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your name 

entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can 

pay ten down and the balance in yearly instalments. 

Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15. 

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it. 

He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. 

Silverpowdered olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning, 

ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few left 

from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste 

of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. 

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Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin’s 

parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant 

evenings we had then. Molly in Citron’s basketchair. Nice 

to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the 

nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, 

wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They 

fetched high prices too, Moisel told me. Arbutus place: 

Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a 

flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, 

Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the 

quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies 

handling them barefoot in soiled dungarees. There’s 

whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn’t see. 

Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is like 

that Norwegian captain’s. Wonder if I’ll meet him today. 

Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in 

heaven. 

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. 

Far. 

No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic 

lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the 

earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey metal, 

poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining 

down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. 

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