Tarr (Oxford World's Classics) (22 page)

‘Hallo! You look rather hot. You nearly knocked me over a minute ago in your haste’ Ernst was saying.

Kreisler jumped—as the bravest might, if, having stoutly confronted an apparition, it suddenly became a man of flesh and blood. Had his glasses been firmly planted on his nose things might have gone differently. He frowned vacantly at his disaffected chum and went on rubbing them.

Vokt saw something was wrong. To ‘have it out’ and have done with it would perhaps be best, but he was sluggish.

‘It’s dreadfully hot!’ he said uneasily, looking round as though examining the heat. He stepped up on to the pavement out of the way of a horse-meat chariot.
*
The large panelled conveyance, full of outlandish red carcases of large draught horses, went rushing down
the street, bearing with it an area of twenty yards of deafness. This explosion of sound had a pacifying effect upon Kreisler; it made him smile for some reason or other: and Vokt went on:

‘I don’t know whether I told you about my show.’

‘What show?’ asked Kreisler rudely.

‘In Berlin you know. It has not gone badly. Our compatriots improve—. I believe we’re an artistic nation—what do you think? No? I’ve got a commission to paint the Baroness Wort-Schrenck. What have you been doing lately?’ There was a refractory pause. ‘I’ve intended coming round to see you: but I’ve been sticking at home working. Have you been round at the Berne—?’

He spoke rapidly and confidentially, as though they had been two breathless stockbrokers meeting in the street at the busiest period of the day compressing into a few minutes, between two handshakes, a lot of domestic news. He sought to combine conviction that he was very anxious to tell Kreisler all about himself, and (by his hurried air) paralysis of the other’s desire to have an explanation.

‘I am glad you are going to paint the Baroness Wort-Schrenck. I congratulate you Mr. Vokt! I am in a hurry. Good day.’

Kreisler turned and walked towards the Juan Soler Academy. For no reason, except that it was impossible, he could not get money from Vokt: it was as though that money would not be real money at all. Supposing he got some money from him; the first place he tried to pass it, the man would say: ‘This is not money.’—As for taking him to task, his red correct face made it quite out of the question; it had suddenly become a lesson and exercise that it would be ridiculous to repeat. He was not a schoolboy.

Vokt walked away ruffled: he was mortified now because, through apprehension of a scene, he had been so friendly. The old Otto had scored: he, Vokt, had humiliated himself needlessly, for it was evident Kreisler’s manner had been misinterpreted by him, there had after all been no danger, since he had gone off so quickly of his own accord.

Kreisler had not intended going to Soler’s that day; yet there he was, presumably got there now to avoid Ernst Vokt.
Pfui
—noch einmal! with astonishment he saw himself starting up from the Berne a quarter of an hour before, steaming away in pursuit of that skulking truant—impetus of angry thought carrying him far beyond his destination; when lo and behold (oh irony of the
Schicksal
!) Vokt comes along pat and runs him into the painting school! He compared himself
to one of those little nursery locomotives that go straight ahead without stopping; that anyone can take up and send puffing away in the opposite direction. Humouring this fancy he entered the studio with the gaze a man might wear who had fallen through a ceiling and found himself in a strange apartment in the midst of a family circle. The irresponsible, the resigned and listless air signified whimsical expectancy. He was a thing, scarcely any longer a Mensch,—though if given a good push he could show what he was made of! Some other figure would now rise up no doubt and turn him streetwards again? He waited.

He was confronted by a fellow statue. A member of the race which has learnt to sleep standing up ‘posed’ upon the throne. He had suddenly come amongst brothers: he was as torpid as the Model was, as indifferent as these mechanical students. The clock struck. With a glance at the Massier,
*
the Model slowly and rhythmically abandoned her rigid attitude, coming to life as living statues do in ballets;
*
she reached stiffly for her chemise. The dozen other figures, who had been slowly pulsing—advancing or retreating, suspended around her mustard red body—now with laboured movements dispersed, relapsing aimlessly here and there, chiefly against walls.

He had been considering a fat hill of flesh, and especially a parting carried half way down the back of the skull. Why should not its owner, and gardener, he had reflected, continue it the entire distance down, dividing his head in half with a line of white scalp? This person now turned upon him sudden, unsurprised, placid eyes. Had he
eyes
as well as a parting, at the back of his head? He was on the point of enquiring whether that parting should or should not be gone on with till it reached the neck.

Three had struck. He left and returned to the Berne neighbourhood, by the same and most roundabout route, as though to efface in some way his previous foolish journey.

Every three or four hours vague hope recurred of the delayed letter, like hunger recurring at the hour of meals. He went up to the loge of his house and knocked.

‘Il n’y a rien pour vous!’

Four hours remained: the german party was to meet at Fräulein Liepmann’s after dinner.

O
TTO
’
S
compatriots at the Café were sober and thoughtful, with some discipline in their idleness: their monthly monies flowed and ebbed, it was to be supposed, small regular tides frothing monotonously in the form of beer and glasses of cheap sekt. This rather desolate place of chatter newspapers and airy speculative art-business had the charm of absence of gusto, of water-lilies, of the effete lotus.

Kreisler was purer german, of the true antiquated grain. He had experienced suddenly home-sickness, not for Germany, exactly, but for the romantic stiff ideals of the german student of his generation. It was a home-sickness for his early self: like the knack of riding a bicycle or anything learnt in youth, this character was easily resumed. Gradually he was discovering the foundations of his personality: many previous moods and phases of his nature were mounting to the surface, now into a conscious light.

Arrived in front of the Berne, he stood for fifteen minutes looking up and down the street, at the pavement, his watch, the passers-by. Then he chose the billiard-room door to avoid the principal one, whereby he usually entered. All the familiar ugliness of this essential establishment he hated with methodic deliberate hatred; taking things one by one as it were, persons and objects, he hated powerfully. The garçon’s spasmodic running about was like a gnat’s energy above stagnation. The garçon was his enemy.

Passing from the billiard-room to a gangway with several tables, his dull grey eye fell upon something it did not understand. How could it be expected to understand? It was an eye, and it stuck—it blinked—it trembled. It signalled: the gland shot a tear into it. It clouded. It was simple though: it was amazed and did not understand.

A
NASTASYA
.

Stolid surprise and some sort of bovine calculation was all that could be detected upon his face.

Set in the heart of this ennui, it arrested the mind like a brick wall some carter drowsed upon his waggon: stopping dead, Kreisler stupidly stared.

Anastasya was sitting there: she was seated beside Soltyk. Undoubtedly! Soltyk!

Kreisler seemed about to speak to them—they were at least under that impression: quite naturally he was about to do this, like a
child surprised. As though in intense abstraction, he fixed his eyes on them: then he took a step towards them, possibly with the idea of sitting down at their side. But consciousness set in, with a tropic tide of rage, and carried him at a brisk pace towards the door, corresponding to the billiard-room door, on the other side of the establishment. Yet in the midst of this he instinctively raised his hat a little, his eyes fixed now upon his feet.

He was in a great hurry to get past this couple: and this could not be done without discovering two inches of the scalp for a moment: so as an impatient man in a crush, wishing to pass, pushes another aside, raising his hat at the same time to have the right to be rude, he passed saluting.

Same table on terrace as an hour before. But Kreisler seemed squatting on air, or upon one of those gyrating platforms in the Fêtes.
*

The garçon, with a femininely pink, virile face, which, in a spirit of fun he kept constantly wooden and dour—except when, having taken the order, he winked or smiled—came up hastily.

‘Was wünschen Sie?’ he asked, wiping the table with a serviette. He had learned a few words of german. Supposing Kreisler rather a touchy man he always attempted to put him at his ease, as the running of bills was profitable. He had confidence in this client, and hoped the bill would assume considerable proportions.

Kreisler’s thoughts dashed and stunned themselves against this wooden waiter. His mind stood stock-still for several minutes: the pink wooden face paralysed everything. As its owner thought the young gentleman was having a joke with him, it became still more humorously wooden. The more expressionless it became, the more paralysed grew Kreisler’s intelligence. He stared at him more and more oddly, till the garçon was forced to give up.

As he had appeared to walk deliberately with hot intention to his seat, so he seemed gazing deliberately at the waiter and choosing his drink: then the dam gave way. He hated this familiar face; his thought smashed and buffeted it: such commercial modicum of astute good nature was too much! It was kindness that only equilibrium could ignore. The expression of his own face became distorted: the garçon fixed him with his eye and took a step back, with dog-like doubt, behind the next table—what was up with this strange Bosche
*
now? Oh là là!

Anastasya had smiled in a very encouraging way as Otto passed. But this had offended him extremely. Anastasya-Soltyk: Soltyk-Anastasya: that was a bad coupling! His sense of persecution seized him in a frenzy of suspicion. This had done it! Soltyk, who had got hold of Vokt, and was the something that had interfered between that borrowable quantity and himself, occupied in his life now a position not dissimilar to his stepmother. Vokt and his father, who had kept him suspended in idleness, and who now both were withdrawing or had withdrawn like diminishing jets of water, did not attract the full force of his indolent tragic anger. Behind Ernst and his parent stood Soltyk and his stepmother.

That lonely ego, in Otto’s case so overworked, might at this point have said, if afforded that relief: ‘Hell take that little beast Ernst! I come to Paris, I am ashamed to say, partly for him: but the little swine-dog
*
has given me the go-by, may his bones rot! I don’t like that swine-dog Soltyk! He’s a sneaking russian rascal!’ It would not have said more frankly ‘I’ve lost the access to Ernst’s pocket. The pig-dog Soltyk is sitting there!’

Anastasya now provided him with an acceptable platform from which his vexation might spring at Soltyk. ‘Das Weib’ was there. All was in order for unbounded inflammation.

He wanted to bury his fear in her hot hair, that devilish siren—their hair was always hot, so were their lips: her lips must be kissed as he had never kissed any Weib’s: he must tread her woman-body in a masterful rutting debauch, and of course subsequently spurn it having used it. But what would Soltyk be doing about it? He had met her alone, that was all right and not impossible within a world made by their solitary meeting: he had lived with her instinctively in this solitary world since then. It was quite changed at present. Soltyk had got into it. Soltyk, by implication, brought a host of other people, even if it did not mean that he was a definite rival there himself. What would he be saying to her now? Sneers and grins filled space, directed at himself—more than ten thousand men could have discharged. His ears grew hot at the massed offence. His stepmother-fiancée! he knew that story was current. But anything that would conceivably prejudice the beautiful stranger against him, he accepted as already retailed. There he sat, like a coward: he was enraged at their distant insulting equanimity.

A breath of violent excitement struck him, coming from within: he stirred dully beneath it. She was there, he had only put a thin
partition between them. His heart beat slowly and ponderously. ‘On hearing what the swine Soltyk has to say, she will remember my conduct in the restaurant and my appearance, she will make it all fit in. But it does fit in! What tricks I have played! Anything I did now would only be filling out the figure my ass-tricks have cut for her!’

He was as conscious of the interior, which he could not see from his place upon the street, as though, passing through, he had just found the walls, tables, chairs, painted bright scarlet. He felt he had left a wake of seething agitation in his passage of the Café. Passing the two people inside there had been the affair of a moment: it was not yet grasped; this experience apparently of the past was still going on: the senses’ picture even was not yet complete. New facts, important details, were added every moment. He was still passing Anastasya and Soltyk. He sat on, trembling, at the door. There were other exits. She might be gone.—But he forgot about them, his turmoil suddenly drifting away from the exciting source.

He thought of the
frac
: a colossal relief announced itself and swept him into bliss. How he had pestered himself about the pawned suit! Fate had directed him there to the Café to save him the trouble of further racking of brains and expense of shoe-leather. Should he leave Paris? At that idea he grew mutinous. Its occurrence filled him with suspicions.

The fit was over; he was eyeing himself obliquely in the looking-glass behind his head.

He almost jumped away at two voices beside him, and the thrilling sound of the proverbial petticoat: it was as though someone had spoken with his own voice, it did not appear related to anything visible. He felt they were coming to speak to him—just as they had supposed that he was about to speak to them. The nerves on that side of his head twitched as though shrinking from a touch.