Tarr (Oxford World's Classics) (41 page)

Kreisler, although evicted from the Café, had been allowed by the waiters to take up his position on a distant portion of the terrace: there, legs crossed and his eye fixed upon the door with a Scottish solemnity,
*
he squatted with rigid patience. He was an object of considerable admiration to the Café staff: his coolness and persistence appeared to them admirable and typical: his portentousness aroused their wonder and respect.
Celui-là
meant business. He was behaving correctly.

Soltyk opened the note at once. On it was written in german:

‘
To the cad Soltyk

‘If you make any more trouble about appointing seconds, and continue to waste the time of the gentlemen who have consented to act for me, I shall wait for you at the door and try some further means of rousing your courage.’

Sitting next to Soltyk was a small swarthy rat-like person who had taken no part in the discussions or protests but who had watched everything that happened like some observer of another species, dangerously aloof. He now reached out his hand, took up the letter as though it had been a public document, and read it. He then bent towards Soltyk and said:

‘What is really the matter with this gentleman?’

Soltyk shrugged his shoulders.

‘He’s a brute and he is a little crazy into the bargain: he wants to pick a quarrel with me, I don’t know why.’

‘Doesn’t he want to be taken seriously, only? Let his shaggy friend here have a chat with a friend of yours. He may become a nuisance—.’

Soltyk looked sharply at the rat-like figure with dislike.

‘What nonsense you’re talking Jan! Why are you talking such nonsense?’

‘I think Jan’s right!’ said another.

‘I never heard such a stupid remark! If he comes for me at the door, let him! I wish that little man there would go away: he has annoyed us quite enough!’

‘Louis, will you give me permission to speak to him on your behalf?’

Soltyk looked the rat-like figure in the eyes with astonishment and enquiry.

‘Why
are you talking like this, Jan?’

‘I think it is the best way out, Louis. Shall I act for you?’

Soltyk hesitated.

‘If that will give you any satisfaction’ he said coldly.

Jan Pochinsky got up without another word and put himself at Bitzenko’s disposition. The whole party became tumultuous at this.

‘What the devil are you up to Jan? Let them alone!’

‘You’re not going—?’

‘Tell them to go to hell! What on earth are you doing Jan?’

‘Jan, come back you silly fool! You must be mad. Louis, tell that fool to sit down! He hasn’t your permission to—? Jan! Come here!’

Jan took no notice, except to mutter: ‘This is the best thing to do.’

‘The best thing? What do you mean? Louis is not going to take that imbecile seriously! You are mad, completely mad!’

Jan shrugged his shoulders, as he reached up on tiptoe for his hat.

‘Do you want this to last the whole evening?’ he said.

He followed Bitzenko out, and Tarr followed Bitzenko.

T
HEY
went over to a small, gaudy, quiet Débit on the other side of the Boulevard, Kreisler watching them, but still with his eye upon the door near at hand. Tarr was amused now at his position of dummy:
*
he enjoyed crossing the road under Kreisler’s eye, in his service. He would not have missed this for a great deal.

Bitzenko was the prophet of the necessity of this affair, more than Otto Kreisler he was the initial figure: it might have been that, given
the outraged Freiherr behind him as solid as a rock, nothing would have saved their proposed victim. But as an agent of destiny he was promptly eclipsed by Jan. When he sat down opposite this almost dwarfish, dusky and impassible, second—who avoided his eyes with a contemptuous expression and waited for him to speak—he was nonplussed and mastered; he felt in his bones, in the extremity of his toes, in the mangy bristles of his peasant-beard, that he would rise from that council-board a beaten man.

His veiled cold and disgusted eyes fishily fastened upon the leg of a chair, Jan asked him to state his case. He stated it, as before, and Pochinsky said:

‘Do you consider that an adequate reason for asking my principal to meet this mountebank?’
*

Bitzenko leapt to his feet.

‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’ he rapidly stuttered. ‘I cannot allow you to refer to the Freiherr—! I really cannot dream of allowing the Freiherr! Really the Freiherr cannot be referred to—! Excuse me! I must ask you!’

Tarr yawned: the sing-song and complaining french of his russian colleague irritated him.

‘Excuse me!’ he exclaimed, in conscious parody. ‘Do not let us come to blows over the Freiherr whatever we do.’

‘By all means! More exactly! But do not let us stand by—we cannot stand by—!’

‘Nothing of the sort! I did not expect that.’

Jan, sunk in a frigid lethargy of measureless contempt, sat with his little arm thrown over the back of the chair, his round-shouldered rat-like trunk hanging from this boney hook, the semitic sharpness of his features turned away in a patient oblivion.

Bitzenko resumed his seat with violence.

‘It is too much! Excuse me! I am exasperated!’

‘What does the Freiherr wish?’ asked Jan, his eyes still veiled.

‘He desires immediate satisfaction.’

‘What order of satisfaction?’

‘Satisfaction at the sword-point or with army-pistols.’

‘But does the nature of the dispute demand such an extreme issue as that? Our principals might be killed if they used such arms as you mention, might they not? I ask in ignorance.’

Bitzenko gasped.

‘That is a possibility that my principal has duly weighed!’ he hissed and panted.

Jan was silent: his judicial calm and immobility imposed so much upon the astonished Bitzenko and the perplexed Tarr that they found themselves sitting spellbound until this Sphinx
*
should give utterance to his thoughts.

‘You are prepared to accept no compromise on behalf of your principal?’ at length Jan asked indifferently.

‘None! I have stated his terms. He does not see his way—as a man of honour—in such a case as this—to compromise—to compromise—in any sense. Those are my instructions.’

There was another momentous silence.

Jan rose without looking at them, pushed his chair aside and said under his breath:

‘You will stay here? I will see my principal.’

Bitzenko watched him withdraw with the deepest misgivings. These he immediately expanded in conversation with his colleague.

Jan re-entered the Café des Sports Aquatiques and sat down beside Soltyk.

‘Well?’

His friends leant forward and there was a silence.

‘Well I’m afraid I was mistaken, Louis: your German means business. I wash my hands of it—I admit I was wrong. The challenge should have been disregarded.’

The gathering gasped and uproar ensued.

‘Disregarded? It’s absurd absurd absurd! Tell the whole damned crew to go to the devil! How many of them are there?’

‘What possessed you Jan to butt in—what business was it of yours! What do you know at all—na! Now—!’

‘Yes! You acted on your own initiative. What possessed you—?’

Jan protested coldly and lazily, his arm hooped over the back of his chair.

‘Excuse me. I went at Louis’ request.’

‘You did not!’

‘At Louis’ request? When?’

‘What did they say?’

Everyone shouted at once. The new polish pandemonium attracted the bright attention of the american painting-ladies in the neighbourhood.

‘Who is this Bitzenko!’ one of the least active of the Poles enquired strengthlessly.

‘Don’t you know him?’ another screamed. ‘Lurioff used to know him, but
intimately
, he used to be a friend of Bobby’s, a great friend of Bobby’s! You know the large studios rue Ulm, near the Invalides, yes behind the Metro—he lives there: he’s rich, quite fairly well-off. He is of good family, he is mad.’

Soltyk patted his cheek gently, watching Jan, who kept his eyes upon the ground.

‘He once had a duel and blinded a man!’

‘Who—that bird—?’

‘How—
blinded
him?’

‘Yes indeed—blinded him, in both eyes—bang! bang!’

‘No! how could he in a duel! In both eyes!’

‘But I tell you that is so! Both I assure you! There are duels in which you have a right—.’

‘Oh shut up! Do stop talking about duels! I’m sick of the word
duel
! What is a duel? Who ever heard?’

While they wrangled Soltyk continued to pat his cheek without speaking. Now everyone was silent, they lay back exhausted.

‘Well?’ Soltyk addressed Jan.

‘Well!’ replied Jan. ‘As I said I give it up—I wash my hands of it. Henceforth it’s your funeral.’

‘How do you mean Jan,
wash your hands of it
, you’re not going to leave me in the lurch!’

Jan coloured, but kept his eyes upon the floor.

‘You’re not surely going to be so mean as to leave me in the lurch—having taken the matter up with such good will: you’re not going to throw up the sponge for me Jan at the first difficulty?’

Jan fidgeted in his chair.

‘I have acted for the best.’

‘Yes’ Soltyk insisted ‘but you are not going to leave off acting for the best, are you, by any chance? None of these other people here, you know, will act for me! Not one of them would have taken the matter up in the splendid zealous way you did—there’s not a potential “second” among them! Look at them! Not one! Whatever shall I do Jan, if you desert me?’

Soltyk continued to pat the red mark upon his cheek, as though to draw attention to it, while he kept his gaze fixed upon the lowered
eyelids of Pochinsky. The others watched in complete silence, mostly staring at Jan.

Jan raised his eyes and glanced at the ring of faces. With a slight sneer he then remarked:

‘You seem annoyed with me Louis.’

A murmur of protest rose from the others. One exclaimed:

‘What did you appoint yourself Louis’ “second” for—“second” “second”! What need had he of your services anyway—the whole affair is
pour rire
—why have you acted like this! Tell us, your behaviour after all requires explaining! Now you
wash your hands
—what is that I should like to know?’

‘Well you all seem annoyed with me. But there is no need to be—there is no occasion Louis for you to fight, none whatever.’

Again there was a clamour.

‘But this is too much!
No need to fight!
What’s the man talking about!’

‘I think Jan had better have a round with Bitzenko if he’s so interested in fighting, as he calls it!’

Soltyk was frowning now: he continued to hold his hand to his cheek.

‘How have you left the matter Jan?’ he asked.

‘I’m out of it!’ Jan repeated shortly.

‘Yes but how did you leave it, when you left it—for me?’

‘
You
are out of it too, unless you wish to be otherwise—there’s no use being cross with me Louis, I have acted for the best—what more could I do? I thought you wanted me to go and see what I could do.’

‘And what did you say before you came back? Are they still there?’

‘All—still there!’

‘Will you oblige me by returning Jan and making the terms that you consider appropriate?’ Soltyk asked him.

Grumbling in an offended undertone Jan said:

‘You must do your own dirty work Louis—I have got no thanks—in fact you seem very angry with me! I’ve done nothing. Anyone would think that I had—.’

Soltyk laughed:

‘Smacked my face? Is that what you mean, yes?’

‘No—I seem to have done something to displease you.’

‘Well: go Jan and find out the sort of duel it is I am expected to “fight.” This is getting most awfully boring. Let us get all this
nonsense over for heaven’s sake. He will be in here again soon, smacking me, or he may even kick this time!’

The others once more clamoured.

Jan got up and on tiptoe reached his hat.

‘I’m off!’ he said.

Soltyk seized him by the arm, exclaiming:

‘What? But I never heard of such a thing! My Second in flight? What would everybody say to that? No Jan, you must see me through with it now.’

‘Don’t be absurd Louis’ one of the others exclaimed. ‘Do let’s drop all this nonsense. It’s Jan’s fault that we’re still talking about it. Let him go. He wants to go to bed—it’s a pity he didn’t go before!’

‘A great pity!’

‘lt’s a pity Jan—.’

‘Jan! Sit down!’ Soltyk pulled him down. ‘Jan—arrange all this for me, before you leave us. I rely on you Jan.’

Soltyk’s personal friend, Pete Orlinski, rose from his seat and came round and leaning upon his shoulder began pouring out a stream of alarmed protestation. His voice rose and fell in an intense torrent of close-packed sound, close to Soltyk’s ear: his face shone and the veins stood out in it. He gathered his arguments up in the tips of his fingers in little nervous bunches and held them up for examination, thrust them under his friend’s nose as though asking him to smell them. Then with a spasm of the body, a twanging vibration on some deep chord, a prolonged buzz in the throat, he dashed his gathered fingers towards the floor.

Two more of Soltyk’s closer business friends began overwhelming him with protests.

‘Have you gone mad Louis! You are not going to pay any attention to this drivel about libels, about “beautiful girls—!” ’

‘You are surely not so mad as to take this German seriously? Louis! you must be quite mad! Let Jan go, let him go, do let him go!—Jan—
go away!
Please leave at once! You see what a mess you’ve made, please take yourself off!’

Soltyk still held his self-appointed Second by the sleeve.

Bitzenko entered by the swing door, followed by Tarr.

‘Here they come! My dear Jan,
please
go and make all the necessary arrangements for my execution!’

Soltyk grew pale as this sinister figure, so bourgeois, prepossessing and mildly-bearded, with its legend of blindings and blood—its uncanny tenacity as a second—approached: he turned quickly to a good-looking sleek, sallow youth at his elbow and said: