Having my way with Ulysses

Love or money

• Sirens

Ay mi pobre hija, se van a quemar juntos en el infierno.

4:08 pm

Irato

These two bitches been doing a shit job of things. I see luring but no devouring. Where’s the devouring? Why I leave girls to do a woman’s job? Move over, all of you, let me through. Mama’ll fix this mess. Lidia, ready to kill herself over that one just left. He’s on his way to a real sirena baby, go play sad music and cry. Stupida. Where’s your sanity? Stand up straight! God give me patience these girls make me crazy. Who told you to warm him up for somebody else to finish off? Did all her work for her. She’s a better singer too. She knows what sells. Think. Remember when she was selling clothes? And singing in bars. What do you think made her money, eh? Those old theatre rags don’t sells themselves, you see people lining up for that? It was the men. The men. The men she lured singing. Learn something. And Mina. Who you going to get standing there doing nothing? Look at that fatso there slapping that piano with his meat hands. He knows. Or that fake priest who helped him knows: put on tight pants when you sing to the girls. It’s not the voice it’s the body. Even a fatty like him. Come on chicas! Why is it taking men to teach you a job you should know by instinct? Listen to these guys:

 

They know their business, ya. They’ll eat you alive then drag your soul to hell and you’ll want more. Listen to their promises. Even I’d take my panties off for them. Get your shit together. Now Lidia don’t cry. An idiot who leaves just like that isn’t worth throwing yourself away over. Mi pobre hija. I just want you to get them to come to you, to see you with their own will. Now enough of this, you give me a pain deep in my heart. You have work to do and another one coming in. You get him, ok? Enough tears chica, you make yourself crazy over nothing and me with you. Now go.

A big apple bulging in his neck.

• The Wandering Rocks

Aw!Well there’s a butt scratcher for you.  Jacko is walled up in the empty larder hungry for nuts, a mating pair of lions prowling outside it wanting to open their mouths and swallow him whole, and a bear over there they invited to dinner and who just might want to eat first and on his own.  Who has the prior claim makes no difference when the monkey is too skinny to eat.  Give him a few days.  Fatten him up one piece of fruit at a time.  Give him time to make a plan, caught as he is between Love and Reuben J Barrabas.  Let him find a way to sing for his supper, get some help.  Murmuring in quiet conversation with his imagination Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrel glassyeyed, adjusted the line of his trajectory into a parabolic arc in order to avoid walking on the inside of a street light.  Have you heard me sing?  Some say I’m too loud.  Walking proudly with the attendants of his imagination the Reverend Hugh E. Love walked toward the ancient bridges of yore majestic in their time.  Why, God eternally curse your soul will you look at that.  I just lost a button.  Did you hear it fall?  About the size of a filbert.  Well, no matter, I threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.

Now in a kind of retrospective arrangement.

• The Wandering Rocks

Caution! Objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.Ow at ush a good gim, ah I ooked gook rinkig ig oo.  Resh uh parg ah en shome ah awayg agept uhgever hey offer: appearansh an pawmp weshponshivish ish uh key oo gook shawesh.  Nice to spend a little time with John Henry Menton in the pub just now.  Haw awking pawicish. Amewica, give ush your poor, your ire, your huhwew mashesh, jush ot roo our shoushern bowerer ash we’ew buiwing a waugh.  Elijah is coming to save us all!  Aw awe equaw hewe bu immigwantsh fwom shome cowtwiesh awe mow equaw tham oshersh.  Caw kew a shawe.  Denis Breen, impatient, gives up waiting for John Henry Menton to emerge from his inner office and, with his wife following close, carries dangerous stacks of papers and books toward the offices of Collis and Ward.  Angewoush woute oo go dowe.  Covershatiow ca gew ow of cogtrow an hen you oosh a shawe.  Am goo giw at wash.  Oooks goo.  Shame oshe cawsh mishe sheeing ush.  Uh pweshieng!  Shame.

They like buttering themselves in and out.

• Lestrygonians

How chimant in effect! Alla tingaling pealabells! So a many of churches one cannot pray own's prayers. 'Tis holyyear's day! Juin jully we may! Agithetta and Tranquilla shall demure umclaused but Marlborough-the-Less, Greatchrist and Holy Protector shall have open virgilances. 1:13 pm

[Scene:  The kitchen of Tranquilla convent, well appointed with red Dockrell’s wallpaper and decorated with daguerreotypes from the studio of Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar, Hungary.  The room smells of American elderflower soap and of winds that blow from the south.]

Saint Patricia:  Great Christ and Holy Protector we are running out of everything!  And even more curious, table twelve has used up their pillar of salt, do we have another?  Oh!  Oh!  Oh dear God you are bleeding!  What is that on your plate, bread loaves, bells?

Saint Agatha:  Don’t touch me!  I want to coagulate and your touch will just liquify everything.   It’s my breasts, I think we should fry them in butter.

Saint Patricia:  We fry everything in butter.

Saint Agatha:  No lard for us!  I’m hard pressed to think of anything else to give these albatrosses.  We already ran out of the rabbit pie, the port soup, the lap of mutton with chutney sauce is gone, and that base barreltoned man Ben Dollard ate the barons of beef.

Saint Patricia:  He drank all the Bass number one too.

Saint Agatha:  What, two?

Saint Patricia:  Too.  We still have some of the mulled rum.  This is a crowd to rival the Glencree dinner!  Remember?  For that one we had to bring out bread with drippings to satisfy them all.

[A priestylooking chap name of Pen something (Pendennis? My memory is getting.  Pen . . .?) opens the kitchen door and squints in with weak eyes.]

Saint Agatha:  Where are they all coming from?  Like flies to a picnic.  Perhaps we should start the entertainment now, then serve the sticky stuff.

Saint Patricia:  Good idea.  Where is old Goodwin?  Lucky we have him, I understand this will be his last performance.

Saint Agatha:  They always are.  Look behind you, we have lots of Plumtree’s in the cupboard, let’s send it out now.  After that we won’t have much left to offer.

Saint Patricia:  Not if that woman in the elephantgrey dress keeps sticking her fingers into every pie.  She can be rude.  Did you see her?  And after the band plays, we have.

Saint Agatha: We have sugarloaves with caramel.  Our staple food.  And once that’s gone that’s it.  We’ll have to barricade our doors with barbed wire.

Saint Patricia:  Well, I am glad to communicate with the outside world, but today I have suffered!

Saint Agatha:  I agree.  Just think back to our morning devotions.  Happy.  Happier then.  Here, let me straighten your brown scapular.  There you go.

Saint Patricia:  Thank you.  I’d better get back out there.  Some of them, Masons I think, are making noise about some lottery tickets.  Some scandal or other.  Thing like that spoils the effect of a night.

Saint Agatha:  Yes.  But it is all part of the stream of life, no?

Saint Patricia:  Yes, the stream of life.