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bloom
(Forlornly.) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to...
(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma rises, a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.)
zoe
(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater.)
Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.
bloom
(Fascinated.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.
zoe
And you know what thought did?
(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth sending on him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.)
bloom
(Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward hand.) Are you a Dublin girl?
zoe
(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil.) No bloody fear. I’m English. Have you a swaggerroot?
bloom
(As before.) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device. (Lewdly.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed.
