Tarr (Oxford World's Classics)

by Wyndham Lewis

  Bertha looked in at the door, at the clock inside, as they took up their place on the quieter ‘terrasse.’ She asked herself how long she would stop. A half-hour, she thought.

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘WHO is that, then—Anass—what?’ Kreisler asked, after some moments of gradually changing silence, when Miss Vasek began to be mentioned by Bertha. He was stretched out in massive abandon and seemed interested in nothing in the world.

  This meeting had been the only event of the day for him: at first he had looked forward to it a little, but as it approached he had grown fidgety, he began counting the time, it became a burden. What useless errand was he on now, he pondered, and could not make out how he had come to let himself in for this at all. It was a mystery. He would not have gone. But the appointment being made, and fixed in his mind, and he having felt it in the distance all day, he knew if he did not go that he would be still more uncomfortable. In the empty evening he would have been at the mercy of this thing-not-done, like an itch.

  Bertha, for her part, had now recovered: Kreisler’s complete abstraction and indifference were a soothing atmosphere. He seemed to know as little why he was there as she, or less. He was plainly only waiting for her to disappear again. As to there being anything compromising in this meeting, that could be dismissed on every count: and he looked very unlikely to suggest another. Elsa’s description of his conduct with women came to mind, as she sat beside this aloof and lounging statue. This was the man who had caused her fresh misgivings! When a dog or cow has passed a trembling child without any signs of doing it mischief, the child sometimes is inclined to step after it and put forth a caressing hand. She felt almost drawn to this inoffensive person.

  Kreisler had created a situation not unlike that of the Dance-night: there they sat, she pressing him a little now, he politely apathetic. It seemed for all the world as though Bertha had run after him somewhere and forced a meeting upon him, to which he had grudgingly consented. Bertha was back in what would always be for him her characteristic rôle. And so now she appeared still to be following him up, to the discomfort of both, for some unexplained reason.

  ‘No I don’t know who you mean’ he said, replying to descriptions of Anastasya. ‘A tall girl you say? No, I can’t bring to mind a tall girl, answering to that description.’

  He liked fingering over listlessly the thought of Anastasya, but as a stranger: the subject gave him a little more interest in Bertha, just as, for her, it had a similar effect in his favour. Forthwith she was quite convinced that Fräulein Vasek had been guilty of the most offensive, the most self-complacent, mistake. Pfui!

  Bertha now had achieved a simplification or synopsis of the whole matter as follows:

  Anastasya Vasek, alleged bastard of a Grand Duke, a beautiful and challengingly original Modern Girl,* arrives, bespangled and replete with childish self-confidence, upon the scene of her (Bertha’s) simple little life—her plain blunt womanhood contrasted with this pretentious super-sex: this audacious interloper had discovered her kissing, and being kissed in return by an absurd individual in the middle of the street. Bertha had disengaged herself rapidly from this compromising embrace, and had explained that she had been behaving in that way solely because he had captured her pity through his miserable and half-starved appearance; that, even then, he had assaulted her, and she had been found in that delicate situation entirely independent of her own will. Anastasya’s lip had curled, and she had received these explanations in silence. Then, upon their nervous repetition, she had negligently observed, with the perfect effrontery of the minx that she was—‘You were no doubt being hugged by Herr Kreisler in the middle of the pavement as you admit and as we all were able to observe, the motives the ordinary ones. You might have waited till—but that’s your own business. On the other hand, the reason of his devastated appearance this evening and of all the rest of his goings-on, was this. He had the colossal neck* to wish to make up to me: I sent him about his business, and he “manifested” in the way you know.’

  Reducing all the confused material of this affair to such essential proportions, Bertha saw clearly the essence of her action. Definite withdrawal from the circle of her friends had now become essential. It was being accomplished with as much style as possible: Kreisler provided the style. She cast a glance upon this at her silent abstracted companion, and smiled. The smile was not ill-natured.

  It was her first instinct now to wallow still more in this unbecoming situation. She desired even to be seen with Kreisler. The meanness, the strangeness, the déchéance, in consorting with this sorry bird, must be heightened into poetry and thickened with luscious fiction. They had driven her to this—they were driving her! Very well—she was weary, she was lasse (she drooped beside Otto as she pondered), she would satisfy them. She would satisfy Sorbert—it was what he wanted, was it not? She would be faithful to his wishes, his last wishes.

  Kreisler was the central, irreducible element in this mental pie: he was the egg-cup that kept up the crust. She tried to interest herself in Kreisler and satisfy Tarr, her friends, the entire universe, more thoroughly.

  CHAPTER 9

  DESTINY has more power over the superstitious: they attract constantly bright fortunes and disasters within their circle. Destiny had laid its trap in the unconscious Kreisler. It had fixed it with powerful violent springs.—Eight days later (dating from the Observatoire meeting) it snapped down upon Bertha.

  Kreisler’s windows had been incandescent with steady saffron rays coming over the roofs of the Quarter: it was a record conflagration of der Gang. His small shell of a room had breasted them with pretence of antique adventure: the old boundless yellow lights streamed from their abstract Eldorado:* they were a Gulf Stream* for our little patch of a world, making a people as quiet as the English. Men once more were invited to be the motes in the sunbeam and to play in the sleepy surf upon the edge of remoteness.

  Now, from within, his windows looked as suddenly harsh and familiar: unreasonable limitations gave its specific colour to thin glass.

  The clock struck eight: like eight metallic glittering waves dashing discordantly together in a cavern, its strokes rushed up and down in Bertha’s head. She was leaning upon the mantelshelf, head sunk forward, with the action of a person about to be sick.

  A moment before she had struggled up from the bed—the last vigour at her disposal being spent in getting away from that at all costs.

  ‘Oh Schwein! Schwein! Ich hass dich—ich hass dich! Schwein! Pfui! du hässlicher Mensch du!’*

  All the repulsion of her being, in a raw indecent heat, seemed turned into this tearful sonority, pumped up in spasms and hissing on her lips as she spat out the usual epithets for the occasion. The deepening sing-song of the ‘hässlicher Mensch!’ was accompanied by a disgusting sound like the brutal relishing and gobbling of food. The appetite of hatred spat and gobbled while it lasted. Her attitude was reminiscent of the way people are seen to stand, bent awkwardly forward, neck craned out, slowly wiping the dirt off their clothes, or spitting out the remains of their polluted drink, cursing the person who has victimized them, after the successful execution of some practical joke. This had been, too, a practical joke of the primitive and whimsical order, in its madness and inconsequence. But it was of a solemn and lonely kind, more like the tricks that desperate people play upon themselves: at its consummation there had been no chorus of intelligible laughter.—An uncontrolled satyrlike figure had suddenly leapt away from the battling Amazon—it was all over, the day was lost, she lay convulsed upon her back, her mouth smeared with blood: in a struggle that had been outrageous and extreme, rolling in each other’s arms, like confederates beneath the same ban of the world’s law, only calling to each other hoarsely under their breaths, Bertha and he had fought out the simple point, mysteriously fierce, like snarling animals. A joke too deep for laughter, parodying the phrase alienating sorrow and tears, had been achieved in this encounter.

  A folded blouse lay upon the corner of Kr
eisler’s bleak trunk. Bertha’s arms and shoulders were bare, her hair hanging in wisps and strips: generally, a Salon picture* was the result. For purposes of work (he had asked her to sit for him) the blouse had been discarded. A jagged tear in her chemise over her right breast also seemed the doing of a Salon artist of facile and commercial invention: a heavy Susannalike breast* heaved uncontrollably.

  Kreisler stood at the window. His eyes had an expressionless lazy stare, his lips were open. His conscious controls and the entire body were still spinning and stunned: his muscles teemed with actions not finished, sharp, when the action finished: he was still swamped with violence. His sudden immobility, as he stood there, made the posthumous riot of movement rise to his brain like wine from a feeble body. Satisfaction however had damped and softened everything except this tingling prolongation of action.

  Bertha’s hidden face was strained into an old woman’s bitter mask, inane tears soaking into it. A watchful fate appeared to be inventing morals to show her the folly of her perpetual romancing: this was its last cynical invention: what had occurred was senseless, there was not a visible pinshead of compensation. It never occurred to her that such things could be arrived at without traversing romance. But where oh where was the romance in this occurrence? The terrible absence of romance crushed her.

  The famous embrace upon the evening-boulevard had been followed by a vast scaffolding of fable and ingenious explanation. What was this to be followed by? By nothing. Her heart sank: with the ultimate thud of nightmare it struck bottom. This was an end of all explanations. She recognized the logic of this act—more repulsive by far than its illogic. Oh what a fool she had been, for this was a dark insult—the Shicksal, the Shicksal had spat in her face.

  A separate framework of time had been arranged for it to happen in, this last disrespectful attack. A moment before, it was quite impossible to say how long, Otto Kreisler, the swine-man standing at that window over there, had been tranquilly scratching away at his wretched drawing. In a pose improvised by her with quick ostentatious understanding—it represented the most captivating moment of a lady’s toilette, the hair down, a comb in her hand—she had sat a humorous indulgence in her eye for her not very skilful colleague: she had been partly undressed: the scene was significant.

  That stage had been preceded (as she dizzily went backwards) by one in which she had been assailed by sudden anxieties: startled by his request to draw her ‘shoulders’—her bare shoulders, arms and probably breasts, she could not refuse her breasts—immediately she had repressed the unworthy prejudice by which she had been assailed: she had come to sit for him and her body of course was a most beautiful thing, whereas the mere idea that there was any danger was extremely repulsive where there was any question of a beautiful thing—Pfui! He was an artist (a bad one, poor chap, but professional!) they were two priests of Beauty.

  ‘Shall I strip?’ she had asked jauntily, cocking her big blue eye. ‘I have rather good legs.’

  ‘I don’t want your legs at the moment’ Kreisler had replied.

  ‘No? Oh. To the waist?’

  ‘Just the arms and breasts, I think.’

  ‘The arms and breasts? Good.’

  While he was working they had not talked. Then he had put down his paper and chalk, stretched, and delivered himself of the unusual remark:

  ‘Your arms are like bananas!’

  ‘Oh!’

  A shiver of anxiety had penetrated her at the word ‘bananas’: anybody who could regard her arms in that light was inartistic: she was distinctly glad that her ‘good’ legs had not been wanted. He was a modern artist of course and it was natural, perhaps inevitable, that he should compare her arms to bananas.

  ‘Oh are they like that? they are rather flat. I hope you’ve made a good drawing. May I see?’

  The rationale of the exposure must be emphasized a little now that she was not posing and that she had scented a freshness in his manner. He had got up: before she quite knew what was happening he had caught hold of both her arms above the elbow, chafing them violently up and down, remarking:

  ‘You have pins and needles Fräulein?’ Fräulein used here had a disquieting sound: she drew herself away, with understanding, but upon the defence.

  ‘No thank you: now I will put my clothes on if you have finished. I’m a little cold. It’s fresh.’

  He knew it was not fresh as she was perspiring; he smiled—a ‘dangerous,’ a very equivocal, smile.

  They had eyed each other uncertainly for a moment, he with a flushed fixed extremely stupid smile. She was afraid to move away now—she fixed him absent-mindedly with knit brow, her large eye revolving slightly. He straddled close up to her, growing more male every moment, his eyes settling down ‘masterfully’ into her one heavily-focussed optic, and then he coughed.

  ‘Let me chafe your arm! I like doing it.’

  ‘No.—Thanks!’ she had replied sharply without moving.

  She could see a gold-stopping and a gap on the right of his mouth as his lip curved up in the extension of his grin, become now an even lurid danger-signal. His eye fell some inches and with dismay she observed its lid drooping with a suggestive promise of a ‘dangerous’ passion. His gaze reposed with obvious boldness upon her bust.

  ‘Your breasts are good!’ he almost shouted, shooting up a hand to finger one—she thrust his hand away with force and shouted back:

  ‘Yes: they are good. But I don’t wish you to touch me: you understand that?’

  With the fury of a person violently awakened to some insult he had flung himself upon her: her tardy panting expostulation, defensive prowess, disappeared in the whirlpool towards which they had both with a strange deliberateness and yet aimlessness, been steering.

  An iron curtain rushed down upon that tragedy: he was standing there at the window now as though to pretend that nothing had passed to his knowledge; she had been dreaming things, merely. The monotony and silence of the posing had prepared her for the strangeness now: that other extreme joined hands with this. She saw side by side and unconnected, the silent figure engaged in drawing her bust and the other one full of blindness and violence. Then there were two other figures, one getting up from the chair, yawning, and the present lazy one at the window—four in all, that she could not for some reason bring together, each in a complete compartment of time of its own. It would be impossible to make the present idle figure at the window interest itself in these others. The figure talked a little to fill in an interval; it had drawn: it had suddenly flung itself upon her and done something disgusting: and now it was standing idly by the window, becalmed, and completely cut off from its raging self of the recent occurrence. It could do all these things: it appeared to be in a series of precipitate states: in this it resembled a switchback, rising slowly, in a steady innocent way, to the top of an incline, and then plunging suddenly down the other side with a catastrophic rush. The fury of her animal hostility did not survive this phase for long.

  She had come there, got what she did not expect, and must now go away again, it was simple enough: to Kreisler there was nothing more to be said. There never had been anything to say to him: he was a mad beast as everyone had always been right in remarking.

  Now she had to take her departure as though nothing had happened. It was nothing actually, nothing in fact had happened: what did it matter what became of her? The body was of little importance: what was the good (seeing what she knew and everything) of storming against this person?

  She had done up her hair; her hat was once more on her head: she went towards the door, her face really haggard, the inevitable consciousness of drama providing the customary unnecessary emphasis. Kreisler turned round, went towards the door also, unlocked it, let her pass without saying anything, his eyes severely fixed upon the floor at his feet, and, waiting a moment, closed it indifferently again with a slight bang. She was let out as a workman would have been, who had been there to mend a shutter or rectify a bolt.

  CHAPTER 10
<
br />   BERTHA made her way home in a roundabout fashion. She did not court at that moment a meeting with anyone she knew. The streets were loftily ignorant of her small affairs. Thank God for bricks and mortar, for strangers, for the indifference of nature and its great extent! Ha! ha! with fat dejected back guffawed the shattered Bertha, the importance of our human actions! Is it more than the kissing of the bricks?

  As she tramped on she experienced anger and astonishment at finding herself walking away in this matter-of-fact manner. That the customary street scene would absolutely not mix with the obsessional nature of her late experience perplexed her.

  Nature no doubt was secret enough: but not to tell this experience of hers to anybody would be shutting her in with Kreisler, somehow for good: she would then never be able to escape the contamination of that abominable little attic of his. Was it not one of those things that in some form one should be able to tell? She had a growing wish to make it known at once somewhere or other.

  The moral of the late event had had its chance of influencing her radically but it had not succeeded: nothing radically was changed: she began dreaming immediately of sacrifices, of the proper presentation of this harsh event: yet, spasmodically, disgust with Kreisler reappeared. Kreisler by doing this had made an absolute finishing with Kreisler perhaps impossible? That was an evil notion that she shook roughly off. No! Of Otto Kreisler—enough! No more of him, at least. Pfui! Of that no more!

  There was nobody now on her side in any sense whatever, or upon whose side she could range herself. She was a sort of Kreisler now. Kreisler himself had taken his place beside her women friends, Tarr and so on, in a disgusting and dumbfounding way: the list of people who preyed on her mind and pushed her to all these ill-assorted actions. Kreisler she had set up as a ‘cause’ against her friends: in a manner peculiar to himself he had betrayed her and placed himself in the ranks of her critics. He had certainly carried out in the fullest fashion their estimate of him. So Kreisler had acted satanically on behalf of her friends.