CHAPTER III
He went slowly up the stairs feeling for his key. He arrived at the door without having found it. The door was ajar. At first this seemed natural to him, and he continued the search for the key. Then he suddenly dropped that occupation, pushed the door open and went into his studio. The moonlight came heavily through the windows. In a part of the room where it did not strike he became aware of an apparition of solid white. It was solid white flowed round by Naples yellow. It crossed into the moonlight and faced him, its hands placed like a modest statue’s. The hair reached below the waist, and flowed to the right from the head. This tall nudity began laughing with a harsh sound like stone laughing.
“Close the door!” it shouted, “there’s a draught. You took a long time to consider my words. I’ve been waiting. Forgive me, Tarr. My words were acidulated whores, but my heart”—she put her hand on the skin roughly above that organ—“my heart was completely full of sugar! The acidulated demi-mondaine was a trick. It occupied your mind. You didn’t notice me take your key!”
His vanity was soothed. The key in her possession, which could only have been taken in the café, seemed to justify the harsh dialogue.
She stood before him now with her arms up, hands joined behind her head. This impulse to take her clothes off had the cultural hygienic touch so familiar to him. The Naples yellow of the hair was the same colour as Bertha’s, only it was coarser and thicker, Bertha’s being fine. Anastasya’s dark face, therefore, had the appearance almost of a mask.
“Will you engage me as your model? Je fais de la réclame pour les Grecs.”
“You are very Ionian—hardly Greek. But I don’t require a model. I never use nude models.”
“Well, I must dress again, I suppose.” She turned towards a chair where her clothes were piled. But Tarr had learnt the laws of cultural emancipation.
He shouted, “I accept, I accept!” He lifted her up in his arms, kissing her in the mass, as it were, and carried her through the door at the back of the studio leading to his bedroom.
“Tarr, be my love. I don’t want to give you up.”
This was said next morning, the sunlight having taken the place of the moonlight, but striking on the opposite side of the house.
“You won’t hear marriage talked about by me. I want to rescue you from your Bertha habits. Allow yourself to be rescued! We’re very well together, aren’t we? I’m not doing Bertha a bad turn, either, really. I admit my motive is quite selfish. What do you say?”
“I am your slave!”
Anastasya rolled up against him with the movement of a seal.
“Thank you, Tarr. That’s better than having a slave, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I think everything is in order.”
“Then you’re my efficient chimpanzee?”
“No, I’m the new animal; we haven’t found a name for it yet. It will succeed the Superman. Back to the Earth!”
“Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Kiss me!”