Tarr (Oxford World's Classics) (39 page)

There was something mean and improper in everything he had done, which he could not define. Undoubtedly he had insulted this man by his attitude, his manner often had been mocking; but when
the other had turned, whip in hand, he had—walked away? What really should he have done? He should, no doubt, having humorously instituted himself Kreisler’s keeper, have humorously struggled with him, when the idiot became obstreperous. But at that point his humour had stopped. Then his humour had limitations?

Once and for all no one had a right to treat a man as he had Kreisler and yet claim, when turned upon, immunity from action on the score of the other’s imbecility. In allowing the physical struggle any importance he allowed Kreisler an importance, too: this made his former treatment of him unjustified. In Kreisler’s eyes was he not a ‘blagueur’—without resistance at a pinch, who walks away when turned on? Yet this opinion was of no importance, since he had not a shadow of respect for Kreisler. Again he turned on himself:—If he was so weak-minded as to care what trash like Kreisler thought or felt—! Gripped in this ratiocination he wandered back towards the Café.

His unreadiness, his dislike for action, his fear of ridicule, he treated severely in turn: he laughed at himself: but it was no good. At last he surrendered to the urgency of his vanity: plans for retrieving this discomfort came crowding upon him. He would go to the Café as usual on the following evening, sit down smilingly at Kreisler’s table as though nothing had happened: in short, he would altogether endorse the opinion that Kreisler had formed of him. And yet why this meanness, even assumed? His contempt for everybody else in the end must degrade him: for if nothing in other men was worth honouring, finally his own self-neglect must result, like the Cynic’s dishonourable condition.
*

Still, for a final occasion and since he was going this time to accept any consequences, he would follow his idea: he would be to Kreisler’s mind, for a little, the strange ‘fawner and hoverer’ who had been kicked out on the previous night. He would even have to ‘pile it on thick’ to be accepted at all, he must exaggerate what especially provoked Kreisler’s unflattering notion of him. Then he would aggravate Kreisler by degrees and with the same bonhomie. As he reached this point he laughed aloud, as a sensible old man might laugh at himself on arriving at a similar decision. The picture of Kreisler and himself setting about each other was not edifying.

The parallel morals of his Bertha affair and his Kreisler affair became increasingly plain to him. His sardonic dream of life got him, as a sort of quixotic dreamer of inverse illusions, blows from the
swift arms of windmills and attacks from indignant and perplexed mankind. But he—unlike Quixote—instead of having conceived the world as more chivalrous and marvellous than it was, had conceived it as emptied of all dignity, sense and generosity.
The drovers and publicans were angry at not being mistaken for a legendary chivalry, for knights and ladies!
The very windmills resented not being taken for giants!
*
—The curse of humour was in him, anchoring him at one end of the seesaw whose movement and contradiction was life.

Reminded of Bertha, he did not, however, hold her responsible: but his protectorate would be wound up. Acquaintance with Anastasya on the other hand would be definitely developed despite the threatened aggression against his nose.

P
AINTING
languished in the Montmartre studio, which was no longer anything but an inconvenient address, requiring a long bus or taxi ride at the end of the day. At this time Tarr’s character performed repeatedly the following manœuvre: his best energies would, once a farce was started, gradually take over the business from the play department, and continue the farce as a serious line of its own. It was as though it had not the go to initiate anything of its own accord: it appeared content to exploit the clown’s discoveries. But as for painting he ceased almost to think of it: he rose late, breakfasted near at hand, and proceeded to the Rive Gauche and his daily occupations.

The bellicose visit to Kreisler now projected was launched to a slow blast of Humour, ready, when the time came, to turn into a storm. His contempt would not allow him to enter into anything seriously against him: Kreisler was a joke. Jokes, it had to be admitted (and in that they became more effective than ever) were able to make you sweat, even break your ribs and black your eyes.

That Kreisler could be anywhere but at the Café Toucy on the following evening never entered Tarr’s head. As he was on an unpleasant errand, he took it for granted that Fate would on this occasion put everything punctually at his disposal: had it been an errand of pleasure, he would instinctively have supposed the reverse.

At ten, and at half-past, the other comedian
*
had not yet put in an appearance. At last Tarr set out to make a rapid tour of the other Cafés. But Otto might be turning over a new leaf: he might be going to bed, as on the previous evening. He must not be again sought, though, on his own territory: the moral disadvantage of this position, on a man’s few feet of most intimate floor space, Tarr had too clearly realized to repeat the experiment.

The Café des Sports Aquatiques,
*
the most frequented of the Quarter, entered merely in a spirit of german thoroughness, turned out to be the one. More alert, and brushed up a little, Tarr thought,
there sat Kreisler sure enough with another man, possessing a bearded, naïf, and rather pleasant face. No pile of saucers this time attended him. A Mokka was in front of each of them.

The stranger was a complication: perhaps the night’s affair should be put off until the conditions were more favourable. But Tarr’s vanity was impatient: his protracted stay in the original Café had made him nervous. On the other hand, it might come at once—an opposite complication: Kreisler might open hostilities upon the spot. This would rob Tarr of the subtle benefits to be derived from his gradual strategy. That must be risked.

He was not very calm. He crudely went up to Kreisler’s table and sat down. The necessary good humour was absent from his face: he had carefully preserved this expression for some time, even walking lazily and quietly as if he were carrying a jug of milk; now it vanished in a moment. Despite himself, he sat down opposite Kreisler as solemn as a judge, pale, his eyes fixed upon the object of his care with something like a scowl.

But, his first absorption in his own sensations lifting a little, he recognized that something very unusual was in the air.

Kreisler and his friend were not speaking or attending to each other at all: they were just sitting still and watchful, two self-possessed malefactors. The arrival of Tarr to all appearance disturbed and even startled them, as if they had been completely wrapped up in some engrossing game or conspiracy.

Kreisler had his eyes trained across the room. The other man, too, was turned slightly in that direction, although his eyes followed the tapping of his shoe against the ironwork of the table, and he only looked up occasionally.

Kreisler turned round, stared at Tarr without at once taking in who it was. ‘It’s only Bertha’s Englishman’ he seemed then to say: he took up his former wilful and patient attitude, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

Tarr had grinned a little as Kreisler turned his way, rescued from his solemnity: there was just a perceptible twist in the German’s neck and shade of expression that would have said ‘Ah there you are? Well, be quiet, we’re having some fun. Just you wait!’

But Tarr was so busy with his own feelings that he didn’t quite understand this message: he wondered if he had been seen by Kreisler in the distance, and if this reception had been concerted between Otto and this other fellow. If so, why?

Sitting, as he was, with his back to the room, he stared at his neighbour. His late boon companion distinctly was waiting, with absurd patience, for something. The poise of his head, the set of his yellow prussian jaw, were truculent, although otherwise he was peaceful and attentive. His collar looked
new
rather than clean, it was of a dazzling white: his necktie was not one familiar to Tarr. Boots shone impassibly beneath the table.

Screwing his chair sideways, Tarr faced the room. It was full of people—very athletically dressed american men, all the varieties of the provincial in american women, powdering their noses and ogling Turks, or sitting, the younger ones, with blameless curiosity never at peace, and fine Schoolgirl Complexions:
*
and there were many many Turks, Mexicans, Russians and other ‘types’ for the american ladies! In the wide passage-way into the further rooms sat the orchestra, playing the ‘Moonlight Sonata.’
*

In the middle of the room, at Tarr’s back, he now saw a group of eight or ten young men whom he had seen occasionally in the Café Berne. They looked rather german, but smoother and more vivacious: Poles or Austrians, then? Two or three of them appeared to be amusing themselves at his expense. Had they noticed the little drama that he was conducting at his table? Were they friends of Kreisler’s, too?

Tarr flushed and felt far more like beginning on them than on his complicated idiot of a neighbour, who had grown cold as mutton on his hands.

He had moved his chair a little to the right, towards the group at his back, and more in front of Kreisler, so that he could look into his face. On turning back now, and comparing the directions of the various pairs of eyes engaged, he at length concluded that he was without the sphere of interest;
just
without it.

At this moment Kreisler sprang up. His head was thrust forward, his hands were in rear, partly clenched and partly facilitating his swift passage between the tables by hemming in his lean sweeping coattails. The smooth round cloth at the top of his back, his smooth head above that, with no back to it, struck Tarr in a sudden way like a whiff of sweat: Germans had no backs to them, or were like polished pebbles behind, was the deliverance of this impression.

Tarr had mechanically moved his hand upwards from his lap to the edge of the table on the way to ward off a blow when Kreisler first
rose to his feet: he was dazed by all the details of this meeting, and the peculiar miscarriage of his plan. But Kreisler brushed past him with the swift deftness of a person absorbed by some overmastering impulse. The next moment Tarr saw the party of young men he had been observing in a blur of violent commotion: Kreisler was in among them, working on something in their midst. There were two blows—smack—smack; an interval between them. He could not see who had received them.

Tarr then heard Kreisler shout in german:

‘For the
second
time to-day! Is your courage so slow that I must do it a
third
time?’

Conversation had stopped in the Café and everybody was standing. The companions of the man smacked, too, had risen in their seats: they were expostulating, in three languages. Several were mixed up with the waiters, who had rushed up to engage in their usual police work on such occasions. Over Kreisler’s shoulder, his eyes carbonized to a black sweetness, his cheeks a sweet sallow-white, with a red mark where Kreisler’s hand had been, Tarr saw the man his german friend had singled out. He had sprung towards his aggressor, but by that time Kreisler had been seized from behind and was being hustled towards the door. The blow seemed to hurt his vanity so much that he was standing half-conscious till the pain abated. He seemed to wish to brush the blow off, but was too vain to raise his hands to his cheek: it was left there like a scorching compress. It was surprising how much he seemed to mind. His friends—Kreisler wrenched away from them—were left standing in a group, in attitudes of violent expostulation and excitement.

Otto Kreisler receded in the midst of a band of waiters towards the door. He was resisting and protesting, but not too much to retard his quick exit. The Café staff had the self-conscious unconcern of civilian braves.
*

The young man attacked and his friends were explaining what had happened, next, to the manager of the Café who had hastened to the scene. A waiter brought in a card upon a plate.
*
There was a new outburst of protest and contempt from the others. The plate was presented to the individual chiefly concerned, who brushed it away, as though he had been refusing a dish that a waiter was, for some reason, pressing upon him. Then suddenly he took up the card, tore it in half, and again waved away the persistent platter.
The waiter looked at the manager of the Café and then returned to the door.

So this was what Kreisler and the little bearded man had been so busy about! Kreisler as well had laid his plans for the evening. And Tarr’s scheme was destined not to be realized—unless he followed Kreisler at once and got up a second row, a more good-natured one, just outside the Café? Should he go out now and punch Kreisler’s head, fight about a little bit, and then depart, his business done, and leave Kreisler to go on with his other row? For he felt that Kreisler intended making an evening of it. His companion had not taken part in the fracas, but had followed on his heels at his ejection, protesting with a vehemence that was intended to hypnotize.

Tarr felt relieved. Just at the moment when he had felt that he was going to be one of the principal parties to a violent scene, he had witnessed, not himself at all, but another man snatched up into his rôle. As he watched the man Kreisler had struck, he seemed to be watching himself. And yet he felt rather on the side of Kreisler. With a mortified chuckle he prepared to pay for his drink and be off, leaving Kreisler for ever to his very complicated, mysterious and turbulent existence.

Just then he noticed that Kreisler’s friend had come back again, and was talking to the man who had been struck. He could hear that they were speaking in russian or polish. With great collectedness, Kreisler’s emissary, evidently, was meeting their noisy expostulations. He could not at least, like a card, be torn in half! On the other hand, in his person he embodied the respectability of a visiting card. He was dressed with perfect ‘correctness’ suitable to such occasions and such missions as his appeared to be: by his gestures (one of which was the taking an imaginary card between his thumb and forefinger and tearing it in half) Tarr could follow a little the gist of his remarks.