TATTER

(from a novel)

Fascination of Karen who says everything two ways. Fascination of Karen; she still retains Karen eyes. The Karen-eyed Karen. There was no possible intention that had precluded the Delphic, the Attic sort of adulation, the Karen-eyed Karen. Let Karen keep her Karen eyes and I will follow her. Simply my curiosity . . . because Karen can't do anything after the Delphic music. After the myrtle-colour of the eyes smudged in of a head in the Acropolis . . . Karen.

What the Arabs call white roses didn't exactly say it. Stood Dido with a willow in her hand said some of it. There were things to be said, there are things to be said, there is some child somewhere who will say them. Stick to first principles, eat and be eaten. Karen had discovered her first principle in Tatter. "What's its Name ?" said Stella, "O," said Karen, "Tatterdemalion . . . I took the first thing I stuck a pin into, in my Roget's Thesaurus, do you remember?"

"Tatter, you are called something else, precisely?" One talked to Tatter that way. He made one sit up, jerk straight a fox fur, give in, give up, wait happily for the development of the next generation. Phoebe didn't have this effect on her. Stella said, "Tatter you must meet my daughter." The eyes opposite were pool-water, deep, with extravagant line of soot black, the mouth pouched like a child Pharoah, there was a remarkable disparity between the baby head, not older nor more round than Phoebe, the tall body that might have been Discobolus. The head was a baby head, not half so wise as Phoebe. "I suppose you're about . . . sixteen?" Nobody could suppose that, looking at black stars in soot-lined, deep, tilted, slightly squirrel-like, long eyes. The boy was combination of Pharoah, squirrel and baby. Something must be done, obviously, about it. One spoke to these things casually, asked them if they liked school. One said all the wrong things, knowing that one said them, egging oneself forward, saying, "he will expect me, as mother of a marriageable daughter, to say them." Her daughter (ten) became marriageable . . . that is, if there is no too great disparity in age. The disparity was not too great. The squirrel Pharoah answered the question she had flung out somewhere, "fourteen." Fourteen hitched on to some thing -- Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases and the fact that Karen had had a brother . . . of course, Tatter was the nephew. For a moment Stella had thought the odd tall little being was just Karen. Karen had done well to try to "have a child." This was perhaps the answer. "You . . . like school?"

2.

Tatter up and down the street in and out of houses. There were presumably others like him but he was the first, the only one that mattered. Tatter, lovable and unselfconscious, reproving Karen was another revelation. "He's a grubbly little gnome," said Karen. Her eyes were shut, inimitable pattern of eyes-shut that Stella had forgotten. Tatter was a grubby little gnome. He opened doors, wilful Peter Pan, obvious sort of squirrel child-Pharoah. He was a commonplace; like Seth, he linked one up with everything. Seth was that, sort of Irish eyes you get on an old gramophone record, things seen in movies. Tatter did that same thing. Seth Peterson and Tatter were worlds ahead of anybody, they did these things unselfconsciously, they only linked up with the myrtle colour of the pervanç eyes smudged in, with Lippo Lippi thumb marks, on marble eye-sockets of pre-Phidian marble. Karen was pre-Phidian marble. The head rose now from another frock, a blue thing, old as the hills obviously, "my landlady," remarked Karen, seeing Stella staring, "washed it." Stella said, "it seems to have done it no harm." Tatter was saying he wouldn't have one of the cigarettes Stella automatically proffered. "Doesn't Tatter smoke then?" Karen said, as if from a prompter's box, "yes . . . this time certainly." Tatter took one of the tiny Russians, the last of the box that Adrian had left when Pamela had been there. "O . . . what did you think of Adrian?" Karen brought eyes back; inimitable pattern of eyes half-shut, became obvious open eyes on guard. " . . . what is the matter with him?" "I wish you'd tell me, Karen."

"Have another, Tatter? But that isn't your name?" Tatter said his name was Richard Summers. "That's no name for you, Tatter . . . though beautiful. What will you do Tatter?" He answered with no hesitation, "I write now. I want really to be an actor." "What do you write, Tatter?" "O mostly about myself," apologetic gesture of every author. He made exact and inimitable gesture, that familiar intimation of a shrug of condescending depreciating, towards one's work. He had seen someone do that; he was medium, one saw, to any sort of forces. He was like Karen. He was medium toward expression, not mediumistic like Karen. Adrian had said, "she was born with gifts we all struggle to attain to." Adrian had said, "it was too easy for her. She introverted, turned inward those gifts." Adrian had "seen" Karen and drawn away, "There would be nothing but madness in that relationship. Karen was saying of Adrian, "his perception is greater than his intellect. He perceives things that not his mind and perhaps hardly any mind, could cope with. If he could attach his intellect to his perception . . ." she had made the gesture that included Stella, Tatter, Duse, Bernhardt, Phrene. The gesture said that a mind equal to Adrian's perception, attached to the perception of Adrian would mean world-renaissance, Karen had "seen" Adrian. How do we manage, striking across layers of super-imposed Chinese faces, exotic taste (Lei Chei) chatter, "but what is being written?", close-ups and fade-outs of half-caste waitresses and the proprietor's wife, with Japanese, Javanese profile behind a counter piled with pumpkin-coloured melons, to get at these things? How do we manage across continents, ages, race prejudice and American counter-perception to strike bed-rock? There was no time, no space, no interval demanded. Karen "saw" Adrian in a flash and Karen, perceiving that he drew back, was being hateful. "Karen."