The Annotated "Ulysses"/Page 046
A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.
Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on
all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off
like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming
gull. The man’s shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded
back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck,
trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff
forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds
of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many
crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves
and waves.
Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused
their bags, and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to
them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at
them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came
towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting from his jaws. His
speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The
carcase lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing
closer, went round it, sniffing rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s
bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great
goal. Ah, poor dogsbody. Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.
— Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel.
The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless
kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk
back in a curve. Doesn’t see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped,
dawdled, smelt a rock and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it.
He trotted forward and, lifting his hindleg, pissed quick short at an unsmelt
rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then scattered sand :
then his forepaws dabbled and delved. Something he buried there, his
grandmother. He rooted in the sand, dabbling delving and stopped to listen
to the air, scraped up the sand again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a
pard, a panther, got in spousebreach, vulturing the dead.
After he woke me up last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open
hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it.
That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against
my face. Smiled : creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come. Red
carpet spread. You will see who.