Anastasya’s eyes were bloodshot with the gulp she had taken to honour Waste. Tarr patted her on the back.
“There are no lions in the forests!” she hiccuped, patting her chest. “You’re pulling my leg.”
They got to their coffee more or less decorously. But Tarr had grown extremely loquacious and expansive in every way. He began slapping her thighs to emphasise his points, as Diderot was in the habit of doing with the Princesse de Clèves. After that he began kissing her, when he had made a particularly successful remark, to celebrate it. Their second bottle of wine had put many things to flight. He lay back in his chair in prolonged bursts of laughter. She, in German fashion, clapped her hand over his mouth, and he seized it with his teeth and made pale shell-shapes in its brown fat.
In a café opposite the restaurant, where they next went, they had further drinks.
They caressed each other’s hands now as a matter of course! Indifferent to the supercilious and bitter natives, they became lost in lengthy kisses, their arms round each other’s necks. In a little cave of intoxicated affection, a conversation took place.
“Have you had dealings with many⸺?”
“What’s that you say, dear?” she asked with eager, sleepy seriousness. The “dear” reminded him of accostings in the streets.
“Have you been the mistress of many men?”
“No, of course not. Only one. He was a Russian.”