Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/419

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
416

Bloom

O.

(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, fobpocket, bookpocket, pursepoke, sweets of sin, potato soap.)

Bloom

Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves dodge. Collide. Then snatch your purse.

(The retriever approches sniffling, nose to the ground. A sprawled form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long caftan of an elder in Zion and a smoking cap with magenta tassels. Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn face.)

Rudolph

Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy ever. So. You catch no money.

Bloom

(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, feels warm and cold feetmeat.) Ja, ich weiss, papachi.

Rudolph

What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (With feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom.) Are you not my son Leopold, the grand son of Leopold? Are you not my dear son Leopold who left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?

Bloom

(With precaution.) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. 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?