He sat in his Cafés asking himself why he did not simply take the bus down the hill or hail a passing taxi: she was not of the least importance, so why make so much fuss as though she were.
His resentment against Bertha was quite active: there was plenty of room for the satisfaction of this impulse, and the equally strong one to see her again. The road back to the Quartier Berthe would probably have been taken immediately, but it needed as much of an effort, in the contrary direction, to get back, as it had to get away.
At last one evening he started. He went deliberately up to an omnibus ‘Clichy—St. Germain’ and took his seat under its roof. He was resolved to luxuriate in his weakness, now he had got started: he would do most thoroughly what he had been wanting to do for a week.
He would be treading the floor of Bertha’s absurd flat again now and basking in her banality: the terrible german middle-classishness would again hem him in. Also he would make it his business to find out what had been happening in his absence: perhaps even, he might condescend to hang about a little outside and attempt to surprise her in some manner. Then he would behave ‘en maître,’ there would be no further question of his having given her up and renounced his rights: he would behave just as though he had never gone away at all: he would claim his full rights with quite superfluous appeals to her love. In brief, he would conduct himself without any dignity or honesty at all—he was on his mettle.
But once on the way in his bus, a wave of excitement overran him: what awaited him? She might really have given him up. She might not be there any more. But like Kreisler he found it difficult to think of her as fleeing, and not pursuing.
PART V
A MEGRIM OF HUMOUR
CHAPTER 1
SOME days later, in the evening, Tarr was to be found in a strange place. Decidedly, his hosts could not have explained it, how he got there: he displayed no consciousness of the anomaly. For the second time—after dining with her and her following at Restaurant Séguin, he had returned to Fräulein Liepmann’s flat. As inexplicable as Kreisler’s former visits, these ones that Tarr began to make were not so perfectly unwelcome: also of course there was a glimmering of meaning in them for Bertha’s women friends. Two nights before he had presented himself at the door of the flat as though he had been an old and established visitor there, shaken hands and sat down. He had listened to their music, drunk their Mokka and gone away apparently satisfied. Did he regard his official standing with Bertha as a sanction, giving him a right to their hospitality? At all events it was a prerogative he had never exercised before, except on one or two occasions in her company, quite at the start.
Their explanation of this occurrence was that the young Englishman was in despair. His separation from Bertha (or her conduct with Kreisler) had hit him hard: he wished for mediation, or merely consolation.
Neither of these guesses was right: it was really something quite absurd: in reality Tarr was revisiting the glimpses of the moon, or the old, distant battlefields of love, in a tourist spirit, not without some preoccupations of a distinctly scientific or historical nature. It was rather as if he had been an official despatched by the Tarr Society to find where Tarr had slept, or taken his meals, with a view to putting up medallions or brass-plates: also for the collection of data for the Society’s archives. But ten days away from his love affair with Bertha, Tarr was now coming back to the old haunts and precincts of his infatuation: he was living it all over again in memory, the central and all the accessory figures still in exactly the same place. Quite suddenly, everything to do with ‘those days,’ as he thought of a week or two before (or what had ended officially then) had become of absorbing interest, though curiously remote. Bertha’s women friends were delightful landmarks: Tarr could not understand how it was he had not taken any interest in them before. They had so much the german savour of that life lived with Bertha about them.
But not only with them, but with Bertha herself he was likewise carrying on this mysterious retrospective life: he was so delighted, in fact, to be free of her, that he willingly poetized her personality and everything to do with it. It was, as a taste, on a par with the passion for the immediate past of the great Victorian Epoch.
On this second visit to Fräulein Liepmann’s Tarr met Anastasya Vasek. She, at least, was nothing to do with his souvenirs:* yet, not realizing her as an absolute newcomer at once, he accepted her as another proof of how delightful all these people in truth were. He patronized her as a modern aesthete would patronize an antima-cassar.
So far he had been a very silent guest. What would this enigma eventually say, when it decided to speak? the Liepmann circle wondered.
‘How is Bertha?’ they had asked him.
‘She has got a cold’ he had answered. It was a fact that she had caught a summer cold several days before. How strange! they thought. So he sees her still!
‘She hasn’t been to Flobert’s lately’ Renée Liepmann: said, ‘I’ve been so busy or I’d have gone round to see her: she’s not in bed is she?’
‘Oh no, she’s just got a slight summer cold, she’s a little hoarse that’s all. She’s very well otherwise’ Tarr answered.
Bertha disappears: Tarr turns up tranquilly in her place. Was he a substitute? It was most mysterious, and might turn out to be aggravating. The first flutter over, their traditional hostility for him reawakened: had he not always been an arrogant, eccentric and unpleasant person—Homme égoïste. Homme sensuel! in van Bencke’s famous words. So what was he up to?
On observing him talking with new liveliness, to which they were quite unaccustomed and which he never showed with them, with the beautiful Anastasya, their suspicions began to take form. They did not of course say: ‘Perhaps getting to like Germans, and losing his first, he has come here to find another.’ And yet the conclusions to which they eventually came could without much alteration have been reduced to this simple statement. On his side, comfortable in his liberty, Tarr was still enjoying the satisfactions of slavery.
Tarr had been Homme égoïste so far it was certain, but Homme sensuel was an exaggeration. His sensual nature had remained undeveloped: his Bertha, if she had not been a joke, would not have satisfied him. Her milkmaid’s physique—the oreiller de chair fraîche où on ne peut aimer*—had not succeeded in waking his senses: there was no more reality in their sex relations than in their other relations. But he had never wished for that sort of reality: his intellect had conspired to the effect that his senses never should be awakened, in that crude way: it was some such soothing milking process that nature wished him to have in place of passion, as he dimly understood.
The whole of the meaning of his attachment to stupidity became more clear and consistent as he persevered, indeed: his artist’s asceticism could not support anything more serious than such an elementary rival: when he was on heat, it turned his eyes away from the highest beauty, and deliberately it dulled the extremities of his senses, so that he had nothing but rudimentary inclinations left.
But perhaps that chapter was closing: in the interests of his animalism he was about to betray the artist in him: for he had of late been saying to himself that he must really endeavour to find a more suitable lady-companion, one he need not be too ashamed of. ‘Life’ would be given a chance.
Anastasya’s highly artistic beauty suggested an immediate solution.
Sorbert was now dragged out of his luxury of reminiscence without knowing it, he began discriminating between the Bertha enjoyment felt through the pungent german medium of her friends, and this novel artistic sensation. Yet as an intruder this novelty met with some resistance.
Tarr asked Fräulein Vasek from what part of Germany she came.
‘My parents are russian. I was born in Berlin and brought up in America. We live in Vienna’ she answered. ‘I am a typical Russian, therefore.’
So she accounted for her jarring on his maudlin german reveries.
‘Lots of russian families have settled latterly in Germany haven’t they?�
� he asked.
‘Russians are still rather savage: the more bourgeois a place or thing is the more it attracts them. German watering places, musical centres and so on, they like about as well as anything. Often they settle there if they can afford to.’
‘Do you regard yourself as a Russian or a German?’
‘Oh a Russian. I’m thoroughly russian.’
‘I’m glad of that’ said Tarr impulsively quite forgetting where he was and the nature of his occupation.
‘Don’t you like Germans then?’
‘Now you remind me of it I suppose I do: very much, in fact.’ He shook himself with self-reproach and gazed round benignly upon his hosts. ‘Else I shouldn’t be here,’ he added. ‘They’re such a nice, modest, assimilative race: I admire their sense of duty so much; they make perfect servants, they’re excellent mercenary troops.* I much prefer them to people of aristocratic or artistic race, who are apt to make a nuisance of themselves.’
‘I see you know them really à fond.’ She laughed in the direction of the Liepmann.
He made a deprecating gesture.
‘Not much. But they are an accessible and friendly people.’
‘You are English?’
‘Yes.’
He treated his hosts with a warm affability which sought to make up for past affronts: this was only partially successful, it appeared.
The two von Arnims came over and made an affectionate demonstration around and upon Anastasya. She got up, scattering them abruptly, and went over to the piano.
‘What a big brute!’ Tarr thought. ‘She would be just as good as Bertha to make a fuss of, though on the large side, and you get a respectable human being into the bargain!’ He was not convinced offhand that she would be as satisfactory. Let us see how it would be, he reflected, when it came to the point; this even more substantial machine, of repressed, moping senses, did attract certainly: to take it to pieces, bit by bit, and penetrate to its intimacy, might give a similar pleasure to undressing Bertha. But he fell into a reverie—it was really because she was so big that he was sceptical: women possessed of such an intense life as Anastasya always appeared on the verge of a dark spasm of unconsciousness: with their organism of fierce mechanical reactions their self-possession must be rather a bluff, and to have on your hands a blind force of those dimensions! He shuddered: for the moment he was saved.
Surrender to a woman was a sort of suicide for an artist. Nature, who never forgives an artist, would never allow her to forgive. So he has two enemies instead of one. With any ‘superior’ woman he had ever met, this feeling of being with a parvenu* never left him and Fräulein Vasek was not an exception. An artist, she would be a vulgar one.
On leaving, Tarr recognized that he no longer would come back to enjoy a diffused form of Bertha there: the prolongations of his Bertha period had passed its climax. On leaving Renée Liepmann’s, nevertheless, he went to the Café Toucy, some distance away, but with an object. To make his present frequentations quite complete, it only needed Kreisler. Otto was there, very much on his present visiting list. He visited him regularly at the Café Toucy, where he was constantly to be found.
CHAPTER 2
THE following is the manner in which Tarr had become acquainted with Kreisler. Upon his first return from his exile in Montmartre he had arrived at Bertha’s place about seven in the evening. He hung about for a little: in ten minutes’ time he had his reward. She came out, followed by Herr Kreisler.
At first Bertha had not seen him. He followed on the other side of the street, some fifteen yards behind. He did this with sleepy gratification. All was well: this was most amusing.
Relations with her were now, it must be clear even to her, substantially at an end: a kind of good sensation of alternating jealousy and regret made him wander along with obedient gratitude. Should she turn round and see him, how uncomfortable the poor creature would be! How naturally alike in their mechanical marching gait she and the German were! He was a distinct third party—at last! Being-a-stranger, with very different appearance, thrilled him agreeably. Now by a little strategic manœuvre of short-cuts he would get in front of them. This he did.
As he debouched from his turning some way ahead Bertha at once recognized him. She stopped dead and appeared to the astonished Otto to be about to take to her heels. It was flattering in a way that his mere presence should produce this effect: Tarr went up to her his hand stretched out. Her palm a sentimental instrument of weak, aching, heavy tissues, she gave him her hand. Her face was fixed on him in a mask of regret and reproach: fascinated by the intensity of this, he had been staring at her a little too long, perhaps with some reflection of her expression. He turned towards Kreisler: there he met a, to him, conventional meaningless countenance, of teutonic make.
‘Herr Kreisler’ Bertha said with laconic energy, as though she were uttering some fatal name. Her ‘Herr Kreisler’ said hollowly ‘It’s done!’ It tolled ‘My life is finished!’ It also had an inflexion of ‘What shall I do?’
A sick energy saturated her face, the lips were indecently compressed, the eyes wide, dull, with watery rims.
Tarr bowed to Kreisler as Bertha said his name. Kreisler raised his hat. Then, with a curious feeling of already thrusting himself on these two people, he began to walk along beside Bertha.
She moved like an unconvinced party to a bargain, who consents to walk up and down a little, preliminary to a final consideration of the affair. ‘Yes, but walking won’t help matters’ she might have been saying continuing to walk aimlessly on. Kreisler’s indifference was absolute. There was an element of the child’s privilege in Tarr’s making himself of the party (‘Sorbet, tu es si jeune’* in other words, to quote his late fiancée). There was the claim for indulgence of a spirit not entirely serious because so much at the beginning of life, so immature. The childishness of turning up as though nothing had happened, with such wilful resolve not to recognize the passionate seriousness of Bertha’s drama, the significance of the awful words ‘Herr Kreisler!’ and so on, was not lost upon Tarr, but he did not understand the nature of the forces upon which his immunity reposed. Bertha must know the meaning of his rapid resurrection—she knew him too well not to know that that was as far as his argument got. So they walked on, without conversation. Then Tarr enquired if she were ‘quite well.’
‘Yes Sorbert, quite well’ she replied, with soft tragic banter.
As though by design, he always found just the words or tone that would give an opening for her lachrymose irony.
But the least hint that he had come to reinstate himself must not remain: it must be clearly understood that Kreisler was the principal figure now: he, Tarr, was only a privileged friend—that must be emphasized!
With surely unflattering rapidity somebody else had been found: her pretension to heroic attachment was compromised. Should not he put in for the vacant rôle? He would try his hand at it. He found a formula, where Kreisler was concerned: he had the air to a marked extent now of welcoming this newcomer. ‘Make yourself at home, take no notice of me’ his manner said in the plainest way. As to showing him over the premises he was taking possession of—he had made the inspection himself, no doubt that was unnecessary.
‘We have a mutual friend, Lowndes’ Tarr said to Kreisler pleasantly. ‘A week or two ago he was going to introduce me to you, but it was fated—.’
‘Ah yes, Lowndes’ said Kreisler. ‘I know him.’
‘Has he left Paris do you happen to know?’
‘I think not. I thought I saw him yesterday, there, in the Boulevard Steinberg’ Kreisler nodded over his shoulder, indicating precisely the spot on which he had observed Lowndes on the preceding day: his gesture implied that Lowndes might still be found thereabout.
Bertha shrank in clumsy pantomime from their affability. From the glances she pawed her german friend with, he deserved nothing, it was more than plain, but horrified avoidance. Sorbert’s astute and mischievous way of saddling her with Kreisler, accepting thei
r being together as the most natural thing in life, brought out her fighting spirit. Tarr honoured him, clearly out of politeness to her: very well: all she could do for the moment was to be noticeably distant with Kreisler. She must display towards him the disgust and reprobation that Tarr ought to feel, and which he refused to exhibit in order to vex her.
During the last few days Kreisler had persisted in seeing her: he had displayed some cleverness in his choice of means. As a result of overtures and manœuvres, Bertha had now consented to see him. Her demoralization was complete. She could not stand up any longer against the result, personified by Kreisler, of her romantic actions. At present she had transferred her hatred from herself to Kreisler.
Tarr’s former relations with Bertha were known to Otto; he resented the Englishman’s air of proprietorship, the sort of pleasant ‘handing-over’ that was going on; it probably had for object, he thought, to cheapen his little success, and he did not like it. Bertha was of course responsible.
‘I don’t think Herr Kreisler I’ll come to dinner after all.’ She stood still and rolled her eyes wildly in several directions, and stuck one of her hands stiffly out from her side.
‘Very well Fräulein’ he replied evenly. The dismissal annoyed him: his eyes took in Tarr compendiously in passing. Was this a resuscitation of old love at his expense? Tarr had perhaps come to claim his property: this was not the way that is usually done.
‘Adieu Herr Kreisler’ sounded like his dismissal. A ‘never let me see you again, understand that here things end!’ was written blackly in her eyes. With some irony he bid good-day to Tarr.
‘I hope we shall meet again.’ Tarr shook him warmly by the hand.
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