forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath
of cooked spicy pig’s blood.
A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish : the last. He stood
by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the items
from a slip in her hand. Chapped : washing soda. And a pound and a half of
Denny’s sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his name is.
Wonder what he does. Wife is oldfish. 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 up a page 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.
— 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
cuddled her in Eccles’ Lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O
please, Mr Policeman, I’m lost in the wood.
— Threepence, please.