Leopold Bloom

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

@THESHOPMAN -- I'll take this one.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

He puts his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it and bends, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

comes out and his unshaven reddened face, coughing. He rakes his throat rudely, pukes phlegm on the floor.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

Phlegmy coughs shake the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy curtains. The shopman's uncombed grey head

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

hugging them against his unbuttoned waistcoat and bearing them off behind the dingy curtain.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

Onions of his breath come across the counter out of his ruined mouth. He bends to make a bundle of the other books,

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

@THESHOPMAN -- That I had.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

I lay both books aside and glance at Tales of the Ghetto by Leopold von Sacher Masoch.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

I idly turn over pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, then of Aristotle's Masterpiece. Crooked botched print.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

all over the world. All butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

Plates: infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this moment

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

A darkbacked figure under Merchants' arch, I scan books on the hawker's cart.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter she likes in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

On quietly creaky boots I go up the staircase to the hall, pause by the bedroom door.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

Why are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? I glance round me. No.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She laps slower, then licking the saucer clean.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton kidney at Buckley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

I listen to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with this drouth. Want pure fresh water.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

Or kind of feelers in the dark, perhaps.

[Leopold Bloom @LeopoldBloom]

Wonder is it true if you clip them they can't mouse after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips.