ATDTDA (8): Femme fatale, 223-225

[Paul Nightingale]

As in Chicago, Lew is out of synch. Again, is he
innocent, or is he guilty, and what of? And: "... did
somebody want him to be suspicious? maybe even trying
to provoke him into doing himself some damage?"

Cf. the opening of Ch16: "Taking quick looks behind
him on the trail, Lew Basnight was apt to see things
that weren't necessarily there." (171)

However, instead of 'inventing' a Kieselguhr Kid to
haunt him, Lew here decides that Yashmeen is "the most
trustworthy of the bunch" (223) because they have been
brough her under similar circumstances. However, given
the "frank admiration" he "beamed" earlier (222), he
does seem to have a thing for her. He says she
"sound[s] like a detective" (224), perhaps his female
equivalent.

Their relationship thus far have required a series of
(effortless?) ripostes on her part. From "[s]martly
taken at silly point" (222) to "I hope not" when he
asks if this is "what they call 'walking out'" (224),
to the "amused flash of her interesting eyes" and the
ironic suggestion that she might have judged the Cohen
and co unfairly. Hence: "They walked on in silence,
Lew frowning as if trying to think something through."

He might well be trying to fathom the mystery of TWIT;
and he might be trying to fathom her. A detective
needs a femme fatale: earlier, Lew had resisted the
Cohen's attempt to style him the Psychical Detective.

Yashmeen suggests there is something English/British
about never "speaking plainly". On the one hand this
is a proto-Wittgensteinian point, and therefore very
'unEnglish'; on the other, she is simply pointing out
that language/mores are always cryptic to the
outsider. Hence: "... as you will have begun to
notice, no one ever speaks plainly". The juxtaposition
of "you" to "one" here is key; "you" often means
"one", but on this occasion she is emphasising his
outsider status, collapsing the generalisation on to a
particularity.

Her lengthy discourse on language games is interrupted
by the narrative voice telling us that she is
Girton-bound: Lew concludes she "might be more than
what others were claiming on her behalf" (225). Cf.
her comment that Englishness is less than it appears,
plain speaking dressed up as mutton perhaps.