‘It is likely’ Kreisler replied at once.
Kreisler as yet was undisturbed. He had no intention of relinquishing his acquaintance with Bertha Lunken: if the Englishman’s amiability were a polite way of reclaiming property left ownerless and therefore susceptible of new rights being created in it, then in time those later rights would be vindicated.
Kreisler’s first impression of Tarr was not flattering. But no doubt they would meet again, as he had said.
CHAPTER 3
BERTHA held out her hand brutally, in a sort of spasm of will: said, in the voice of ‘finality,’
‘Good-bye Sorbert. Good-bye!’
He did not take it. She left it there a moment, saying again ‘Good-bye!’
‘Good-bye if you like’ he said at length. ‘But I see no reason why we should part in this florid manner: if Kreisler wouldn’t mind’—he looked after him—‘we might go for a little walk: or will you come and have a drink—?’
‘No Sorbert, I’d rather not. Let us say good-bye at once, will you?’
‘My good Bertha don’t be so stupid! You are you know the world’s goose!’ He took her arm and dragged her towards a Café, the first one on the Boulevard they were approaching.
She hung back, prolonging the personal contact, yet pretending to be resisting it with wonder—her eyes rolled.
‘I can’t Sorbert. Je ne peux pas!’ purring her lips out and rolling her eyes furiously. In the end she allowed herself to be dragged and pushed into the Café. For some time conversation hung back.
‘How is Fräulein Liepmann getting on?’
‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen her.’
‘Ah!’
Tarr felt he had five pieces to play. He had played one. The other four he toyed with in a lazy way.
‘Van Bencke?’
‘I have not seen her.’
That left three.
‘How is Isolde?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Seen the Kinderbachs?’
‘One of them.’
‘How is Clare?’
‘Clare? She is quite well I think.’
The solder for the pieces of this dialogue was a dreary grey material supplied by Bertha. Their talk was an unnecessary column on the top of which she perched herself with glassy quietude.
She turned to him abruptly as though he had been hiding behind her and tickling her neck with a wisp of straw, in bucolic horseplay.
‘Why did you leave me Sorbert! Why did you leave me?’
He filled his pipe, and then said, feeling an untalented Pro on a provincial first-night: ‘I went away at that particular moment, as you are aware, because I had heard that Herr Kreisler—.’
‘Don’t speak to me about Kreisler—don’t mention his name, I beg you. I hate that man. Pfui!’
Her violence made Tarr have a look at her. Of course she would say that: she was using too much hatred though, not to be rather flush of it for the moment.
‘But I don’t see—.’
‘Don’t, don’t!’ She sat up suddenly in her chair and shook her finger in his face. ‘If you mention Kreisler again Sorbert I shall hate you too! I especially pray you not to mention him! It is unfair to me and—I cannot bear it!’
She collapsed, mouth drawn down at corners.
‘As you like.’ In insisting farther he would appear to be demanding an explanation: hints of exceptional claims upon her confidence must be avoided, there must be no explanations.
‘Why did you leave me? You don’t know, I have been mad ever since but completely off my head. One is as helpless as possible! I have felt just as though I had got out of a sick-bed. I have had no strength at all, I still don’t know where I am nor why I am here. Sorbert!’ He looked up with feigned astonishment.
‘Very well!’ She relapsed with a sigh at his side in a relaxed and even careless attitude.
From the Café they went to Flobert’s. It was after nine o’clock and the place was empty. She bought a wing of chicken, at a dairy a salad and eggs, two rolls at the baker’s, the material for two suppers. It was more than she would need for herself: Sorbert did not offer to share the expense. At the gate leading to her house he left her.
Immediately afterwards, walking towards the terminus of the Montmartre omnibus, he realized that he was well in the path that led away, as he had not done while still with her. He was glad and sorry, doing homage to her and the future together. As a moribund Bertha she possessed a novel fascination: the immobile short sunset of their friendship should be enjoyed. A rich throwing-up and congesting of souvenirs on this threshold were all the better for the weak and silly sun: ah what a delightful imperturbable clockwork orb!
On the next day at a rather earlier hour Tarr again made his way across Paris. He invited himself to tea with her. They talked to each other as though posing for their late personalities.
Deliberately he took up one or two controversial points. In a spirit of superfluous courtesy he went back to the subject of several of their old typical disputes, and proceeded to argue, with a sober eloquence, against himself. He seemed concerned to show her how very wrong he had been.
All their difficulties seemed swept away in a relaxed humid atmosphere, most painful and disagreeable to her. He agreed entirely with her, now agreeing no longer meant anything! But the key was elsewhere: enjoyment of and acquiescence in everything Berthaesque and Teutonic was where it was to be found. Just as now he went to see Bertha’s very german friends, and said ‘How delightful’ to himself at every moment so he appeared to be resolved to come back for a week or two and to admire and patronize everything that formerly he had found most irritating in Bertha herself. Before retiring for good like a man who hears that the rind of the fruit he has just been eating is good and comes back to his plate to devour the part he has discarded, Tarr returned to have a last leisurely tankard of german beer. Or still nearer the figure, his claim in the unexceptionable part of her now lapsed, he had returned demanding to be allowed to live just a little while longer on the absurd and disagreeable section.
On her side Bertha suffered more than in all the rest of the time she had spent with him put together. To tell the whole Kreisler story might lead to a fight. Her beloved Sorbert might be shot by that brute. She had a vivid picture of her Young Werther breathing his last almost im blauen Frack mit gelber Veste, the assembly beside themselves with sorrow, ‘hanging upon his lips,’ as she and he in the golden summer of their early friendship had read, beside a goethean brook, the ending of those imaginary Sorrows.* Nothing would ever induce her, she thought in terror, to expose him to those dangers. It was too late now. She could not, in honour, seek to re-entangle Tarr.
Nor could she disown Kreisler. She had been found with Kreisler; she had no means of keeping him away for good. An attempt at suppressing him might produce any result—the most fearful vile things might happen. Should she have been able, or had she desired, to resume her relations with Tarr, Kreisler would not have left him uninformed of all the things that had happened, shown in the most uncongenial light, she could see Kreisler describing his actions to Tarr, watching him like a cat with a mouse. If left alone, and not driven away with ignominy, he might gradually quiet down and disappear.—Sorbert would be gone, too, by that time!
Their grand, beautiful friendship into which she had put all the romance of which her spirit was capable, in generous shovelfuls, was ending in shabby shallows. Tarr had the best rôle, and did not deserve it. No cruel implacable creditor, coming between a person and his happiness, was ever more detested than she at the last detested Kreisler.
CHAPTER 4
TARR left Bertha punctually at seven. She looked very ill. He resolved not to go there any more.
Very low, feeling strangely upset, he made towards Vallet’s; when he reached it, it was full of Americans. He gave all these merry school-children, with their nasal high-spirits, a dark look and sat down. Kreisler was not there: afterwards he went on a hunt for him and ran him
to earth at the Café Toucy.
Kreisler was not cordial. He emitted sounds of gruff surprise, shuffled his feet and blinked. But Tarr sat down in front of him. Kreisler grinned unpleasantly, summoning the waiter he offered him a drink. After that he settled down to contemplate Bertha’s Englishman at his leisure, and to await developments. He was always rather softer with people with whom he could converse in his own harsh tongue.
Tarr naturally sought out Kreisler on the same principle that he thrust himself upon the Liepmann group: a bath of Germans was his prescription for himself, a voluptuous immersion. To heighten the effect, he was being german himself—being Bertha as well.
But he was more german than the Germans, Kreisler did not recognize the portrait entirely. Successive lovers of a certain woman fraternizing, husbands hobnobbing with their wives’ lovers or husbands of their unmarried days is a commonplace of german or scandinavian society, and Tarr brought an alien intensity into the situation.
Kreisler had not returned to Bertha’s. He was too lazy: but he concluded that she had better be given scope for anything the return of Tarr might suggest. He, Otto Kreisler, might be supposed no longer to exist: his mind in short was working up for some truculent action. Tarr was no obstacle: he would just walk through this fancy-man like a ghost when he saw fit to ‘advance’ again.
‘You met Lowndes in Rome didn’t you?’ Tarr asked him.
Kreisler nodded.
‘Have you seen Fräulein Lunken to-day?’
‘No.’ As Tarr was coming to the point Kreisler condescended to speak—‘I shall see her to-morrow morning.’
A space for protest or comment seemed to be left: but Tarr smiled at the tone of this piece of information. Kreisler at once grinned, mockingly, in return.
‘You can get out of your head any idea that I have turned up to interfere with your proceedings’ Tarr then said. ‘Affairs lie entirely between Fräulein Lunken and yourself.’
Kreisler met this assurance truculently.
‘You could not interfere with my proceedings. I do what I want to do in this life!’
‘Capital! Wunderbar! How I admire you!’
‘Your admiration is not asked for!’
‘It leaps up involuntarily! Prosit! But I did not mean, Herr Kreisler, that my desire to interfere, had such desire existed, would have been tolerated. Oh no! I meant that no such desire existing, we had no cause for quarrel. Prosit!’
Tarr again raised his glass expectantly and coaxingly, peering steadily at the German. He said ‘Prosit’ as he would have said ‘Peep-oh!’*
‘Pros’t!’ Kreisler answered with alarming suddenness, and an alarming diabolical smile. ‘Prosit!’ with finality. He put his glass down with a crash. ‘That is all right. I have no desire’ he wiped and struck up his moustaches ‘to quarrel with anybody. I wish to be left alone. That is all.’
‘To be left alone to enjoy your friendship with Fräulein Lunken—that is your meaning? Am I not right? I see.’
‘That is my business. I wish to be left alone.’
‘Of course it’s your business, my dear sir. Have another drink!’ He called the waiter. Kreisler agreed to another drink.
Why was this Englishman sitting there and talking to him? It was in the german style and yet it wasn’t. Was Kreisler to be shifted, was he meant to go? Had the task of doing this been put on Bertha’s shoulders? Had Tarr come there to ask him, or in the hope that he would volunteer a promise, never to see Bertha again or something of that sort? On the other hand, was he being approached by Tarr in the capacity of an old friend of Bertha’s, or in her interests or at her instigation?
With frowning impatience he bent forward quickly once or twice, asking Tarr to repeat some remark. Tarr’s german was not so good as it might have been. But another glass of french Pilsener, and Kreisler became engagingly expansive.
‘Have you ever been to England?’ Tarr asked him.
‘England?—No—I should not mind going there at all! I like Englishmen! I feel I should get on better with them than with these French. I hate the French! They are all actors.’
‘You should go to London.’
‘Ah to London. Yes, I should go to London, it must be a wonderful town! I have often meant to go there. Is it expensive?’
‘The journey?’
‘Well, once you’re there. Life is dearer than it is here, I have been told.’ For the moment Kreisler forgot his circumstances. The Englishman seemed to have hit on a means of escape for him: he had never thought of England! A hazy notion of its untold wealth made it easier for him to put aside momentarily the fact of his tottering finances.
Perhaps this Englishman had been sent him by the Schicksal. He had always got on well with Englishmen!
The notion then crossed his mind that Tarr perhaps wanted to get him out of Paris. That was it. He had come to make him some offer of hospitality in England. At once, in a bargaining spirit he began to run England down. He must at all costs not appear too anxious to go there.
‘They say, though, things have changed. England’s not what it was’ he said, shaking his head heavily from side to side.
‘No. But it has changed for the better.’
‘I don’t believe a word of it! It’s rotten. I’ve heard!’
‘No, it’s quite true. The last time I was there it had improved so much that I thought of stopping. Merrie England is played out, there won’t be a regular Pub in the whole country in fifty years. Art will flourish you see if it doesn’t! There’s not a real gypsy left in the country. It’s fantastic: not one genuine one. The sham art-ones are dwindling!’
‘Are the Zigeuner disappearing?’
‘Rather! There’s not a true-blue Romany Rye* from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s!’*
‘The only Englishmen I know are very sympathisch.’
‘Of course.’
They pottered about, on the subject of England, for some time. Kreisler was very tickled with the idea of England.
‘English women—what are they like?’ Kreisler then enquired with a grin. Their relations made this subject delightfully delicate and yet, Kreisler thought, very natural. This Englishman was evidently a description of pander, and no doubt he would be as inclined to be hospitable with his countrywomen in the abstract as with his late fiancée in concrete fashion.
‘A friend of mine who had been there told me they were very “pretty” ’—he pronounced the english word with mincing slowness and mischievous interrogation marks in his distorted face.
‘Your friend did not exaggerate: the britannic lasses are like languid nectarines! The Tiller girls* are a pale shadow of what you see in Britain. You would enjoy yourself there.’
‘But I can’t speak english—only a little. “I spik ingleesh a leetle” ’ he attempted with pleasure.
‘Very good! You’d get on splendidly! They’re most partial to the german brogue.’
Kreisler brushed his moustaches up, sticking his lips out in a hard gluttonous way. Tarr watched him with sympathetic curiosity.
‘But—my friend told me—they’re not—I don’t know how to describe it—not very kind. Are they easy? They are great flirts—so far—and then bouf!*—you are sent flying! They are teasers, what, are they not!’
‘You would find nothing on the lines of Fasching*—no official Ausgelassenheit, you understand me. No you would not find anything to compare with the facilities of your own country. But you would not wish for that?’
‘No?—But, tell me, then. They are cold?—They are of a calculating nature?’
‘They are practical, I suppose, up to a certain point. But you must go and see.’
Kreisler ruminated.
‘What do you find particularly attractive about Bertha?’ Tarr asked in a discursive way. ‘I ask you as a German. I have often wondered what a German would think of her.’
Kreisler looked at him with resentful uncertainty for a moment. He took a draught of beer and smacked his lips.
‘You wa
nt to know what I think of the Lunken?—She’s a sly prostitute, that’s what she is!’ he announced loudly and challengingly.
‘Ah!’
When he had given Tarr time for any demonstration and decided that nothing was forthcoming he thawed into his sociable self. He then added:
‘She’s not a bad girl! But she tricked you my friend! She never cared that’—he snapped his fingers inexpertly—‘for you! Not that! She told me so!’
‘Really? That’s interesting.—But I expect you’re only telling lies. All Germans do!’
‘All Germans lie?’ Kreisler exclaimed shrilly.
‘ “Deutsches Volk—the folk that deceives!”* is your philosopher Nietzsche’s account of the origin of the word Deutsch.’
Kreisler sulked a moment.
‘No. We don’t lie! Why should we? We’re not afraid of the truth, so why should we?’
‘Perhaps, as a tribe, you lied to begin with, but have now given it up?’
‘What?’
‘That may be the explanation of Nietzsche’s etymology. Although he seemed very stimulated at the idea of your national certificate of untruthfulness: he felt that, as a true patriot, he should react against your blue eyes, your beer, and the childish frankness.’
‘Quatsch! What did Nietzsche know about the Germans? He was a Jew! Nietzsche!’
‘You’ve mixed him up with Wagner.’*
‘Nietzsche was always paradoxal: he would say anything to amuse himself. You English are the greatest liars and hypocrites on this earth!’
‘ “See the Continental Press”!* I only dispute your statement because I know it is not first-hand. Hypocrisy is usually a selfish stupidity.’
‘The English are stupid hypocrites then! We agree. Prosit!’
‘The Germans are uncouth but zealous liars! Prosit!’
He offered Kreisler a cigarette. A pause occurred to afford the acuter national susceptibilities time to cool.
‘You haven’t yet given me your opinion of Bertha. You permitted yourself a truculent flourish that evaded the question.’
‘I wish to evade the question!—I told you that she has tricked you. She is very underhand—malin!* She is tricking me now, or she is trying to. She will not succeed with me!’
Tarr (Oxford World's Classics) Page 27