Tarr (Oxford World's Classics)

by Wyndham Lewis

  People refused to treat him as anything but a sack of potatoes, however. Four or five men had been arguing about him over there for the last five minutes and they had not once looked in his direction. He coughed to draw attention to himself. They all looked round in surprise.

  Clearly Bitzenko was defending his duel. Why should Bitzenko go on disposing of him in this fashion? This busybody took everything for granted; he never so much as appealed to him, even once. Had Bitzenko been commissioned to hustle him out of existence?

  But Soltyk: there was that fellow again slipping something into his mouth! A cruel and fierce sensation of mixed origin but berserker stamp rose self-consciously in a hot gush around his heart. He loved that man! Na ja! it was certainly a sort of passion he had for him! But—mystery of mysteries!—because he loved him he wished to plunge a sword into him, to plunge it in and out and up and down! Oh why had pistols been chosen?

  For two pins he would let him off! He would let him off if—yes. He began pretending to himself that the duel might after all not take place. That was the only way he could get anything out of it.

  He laughed; then shouted out in German:

  ‘Give me one!’

  They all looked round. Soltyk did not turn, but the side of his face became crimson. Kreisler felt a surge of active passion at the sight of the blood in his face.

  ‘Give me one’ Kreisler shouted again, putting out the palm of his hand, and laughing in a thick, insulting, hearty manner. He was now a Knabe a Bengel—he was young and cheeky. His last words had been said with quick cleverness: the heavy coquetting was double-edged.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Bitzenko called back.

  ‘I want a jujube.* Ask Herr Soltyk! Tell him not to keep them to himself!’

  They all turned towards the other principal to the duel, standing some yards beyond them. Head thrown back and eyes burning, Soltyk gazed at Kreisler. If killing could be embodied in the organ that sees a perfect weapon would exist: but Soltyk’s battery was too conventional to pierce the layers of putrefying tragedy, Kreisler’s bulwark. His cheeks were a dull red, his upper lip was stretched tightly over the gums: the white line of teeth made his face look as though he were laughing. He stamped his foot on the ground with the impetuous grace of a Russian dancer, and started walking hurriedly up and down. He glared at his seconds as well, but although sick with impatience made no protest.

  A peal of drawling laughter came from Kreisler.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, my mistake’ he shouted. ‘Don’t disturb yourself. Take things easy!’

  Bitzenko came over and asked Kreisler if he still, for his part, was of the same mind, namely, that the duel should proceed. The principal stared impenetrably at the Second.

  ‘If such an arrangement can be come to as should—er—’ he began slowly. He was going to play with Bitzenko too, against whom his humour had shifted. A look of deepest dismay appeared in the Russian’s face.

  ‘I don’t understand. You mean?’

  ‘I mean that if the enemy and you can find a basis for understanding—’ and Kreisler went on staring at Bitzenko with his look of false surprise.

  ‘You seem very anxious for me to fight, Herr Bitzenko’ he then exclaimed furiously.—With a laugh at Bitzenko’s miserable face, and with evident pleasure at his own ‘temperamental’ facial agility, the quick-change artist every inch, he left the Russian, walking towards the other assistants. Addressing Pochinsky, his face radiating affability, stepping with caution, as though to avoid puddles, he said in a finicky caressing voice:

  ‘I am willing to forgo the duel at once on one condition. Otherwise it must go on!’ he barked fiercely. ‘If Herr Soltyk will give me a kiss I will forgo the duel!’

  He smiled archly and expectantly at Pochinsky.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean!’ Jan piped with a dark delighted snigger.

  ‘Why a kiss? You know what a kiss is, my dear sir.’

  ‘I shall consider you out of your mind. Men do not kiss men. Men fight—but kiss! That is not manly behaviour—.’

  ‘That is my condition.’

  Soltyk had come up behind Pochinsky.

  ‘What is your condition?’ he asked loudly.

  Kreisler stepped forward so quickly that he was beside him before Soltyk could move: with one hand coaxingly extended towards his arm he was saying something, too softly for the others to hear.

  By his rapid action he had immobilized everybody. Surprise had shot their heads all one way: they stood, watching and listening, screwed into astonishment as though by deft fingers. His soft words, too, must have carried sleep: their insults and their honey clogged up his enemy. A hand had been going up to strike: but at the words it stopped dead. So much new matter for anger had been poured into the ear that it wiped out the earlier impulse: action must again be begun right down from the root. Soltyk stared stupidly at him.

  Kreisler thrust his mouth forward amorously, his body in the attitude of the Eighteenth-Century gallant, right toe advanced and pointed, as though Soltyk had been a woman.*

  Soltyk became white and red by turns: the will was released in a muffled explosion, it tore within at its obstructions, he writhed upright, a statue’s bronze softening, suddenly, with blood. His blood, one heavy mass, hurtled about in him, up and down, like a sturgeon in a narrow tank. All the pilules* he had taken seemed acting sedatively against the wildness of his muscles: the bromium fought the blood. His hands were electrified: will was at last dashed all over him, an arctic douche and the hands become claws flew at Kreisler’s throat. His nails made six holes in the flesh and cut into the tendons beneath: his enemy was hurled about to left and right, he was pumped backwards and forwards. Otto’s hands grabbed a mass of hair, as a man slipping on a precipice seizes a plant: then they gripped along the coat sleeves, connecting him with the engine he had just overcharged with fuel: his face sallow white, he became puffed and exhausted.

  ‘Acha—acha—’ a noise, the beginning of a word, came from his mouth. He sank down on his knees. A notion of endless violence filled him. Tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun his blood ‘chugged’—he collapsed upon his back and the convulsive arms came with him. The strangling sensation at his neck intensified.

  Meanwhile a breath of absurd violence had smitten everywhere. Khudin had shouted:

  ‘That “crapule” is beneath contempt! Pouah! I refuse to act! Whatever induced us—! Pouah!’

  Bitzenko had begun a discourse. Khudin turned upon him, shrieking ‘Foute-moi donc la paix, imbécile!’

  At this Bitzenko had rapped him smartly upon the cheek. Khudin, who spent his mornings sparring with a negro pugilist, gave him a blow between the eyes, which laid him out insensible upon the field of honour. But Bitzenko’s russian colleague, interfering when he noticed this, seized Khudin round the waist and after a sharp bout, threw him, falling on top of him.

  Jan, his face radiant with unaffected malice, hurried with the physician to separate Soltyk and Kreisler, scuffling and exhorting. The field was filled with cries, smacks, harsh movements and the shrill voice of Jan exclaiming ‘Gentlemen! gentlemen!’

  This chaos gradually cleared up: Soltyk was pulled off; Khudin and the young Russian were separated by the surgeon with great difficulty. Bitzenko once more was upon his feet. Everybody on all hands was dusting trousers, arranging collars, picking up hats.

  Kreisler stood stretching his neck to right and left alternately. His collar was torn open; blood trickled down his chest. He had felt weak and quite unable to help himself against his antagonist. Actual fighting appeared a contingency outside the calculations or functioning of his spirit. Brutal by rote and in the imagination, if action came too quickly, before he could inject it with his dream, his energies became disconnected. This mêlée had been a most disturbing interlude: he was extremely offended by it. His eyes rested steadily and angrily upon Soltyk now. This attempt upon the part of his enemy to escape into physical and secondary things he must be made to pay for! Kre
isler staggered a little, with the dignity of the drunken man: his glasses were still in place, they had weathered the storm, tightly riding his face, because of Soltyk’s partiality for his neck.

  The physician, flushed from his recent work, took Soltyk by the arm.

  ‘Come along Louis: surely you don’t want any more of it? Let’s get out of this, I refuse to act professionally. This is a brawl not a duel. You agree with me Pochinsky don’t you?’

  Soltyk was panting, his mouth opening and shutting. He first turned this way, then that: his actions were those of a man avoiding some importunity.

  ‘C’est bien, c’est bien!’ he gasped in French. ‘Mais oui, je sais bien! Laisse-moi.’*

  All his internal disorganization was steadily claiming his attention.

  ‘Mais dépêche-toi donc! Tu n’as plus rien à faire ici.’* Half supporting him, the doctor began urging him along towards the car: Soltyk, stumbling and coughing, allowed himself to be guided. Jan followed slowly, grinning.

  Bitzenko, recuperating rapidly, observed what was happening. With a muffled cry for assistance, he started after them.

  Kreisler saw all this at first with indifference. He had taken his handkerchief out and was dabbing his neck. Then suddenly, with a rather plaintive but resolute gait, he ran after his Second, his eye fixed upon the retreating Poles.

  ‘Hi! A moment! Your Browning! Give me your Browning!’ he said hoarsely. His voice had been driven back into the safer depths of his body: it was a new and unconvincing one. Bitzenko did not appear to understand.

  Kreisler plucked the revolver out of his pocket with an animal deftness. There was a report. He was firing in the air.

  The retreating physician had faced quickly round, dragging Soltyk. Kreisler was covering them with the Automatic.

  ‘Halt!’ he shouted ‘halt there! Not so fast! I will shoot you like a dog if you will not fight!’

  Covering them, he ordered Bitzenko to take one of the revolvers provided for the duel over to Soltyk.

  ‘That will be murder—if you assist in this, sir, you will be participating in a murder! Stop this—.’

  The doctor was jabbering at Bitzenko, his arm still through his friend’s. Soltyk stood wiping his face with his hand, his eyes upon the ground. His breath came heavily and he kept shifting his feet.

  The tall young Russian stood in a twisted attitude, a gargoyle Apollo:* his mask of peasant tragedy had broken into a slight and very simple smile.

  ‘Move and I fire! Move and I fire!’ Kreisler kept shouting, moving up towards them, with stealthy grogginess. He kept shaking the revolver and pointing at them with the other hand, to keep them alive to the reality of the menace.

  ‘Don’t touch the pistols Louis!’ said the doctor, standing with folded arms beside his friend, as Bitzenko came over with his leather dispatch case. ‘Don’t touch them Louis! They daren’t shoot! They dare not. Don’t touch!’

  Louis appeared apathetic both as to the pistols and the good advice.

  ‘Leave him both!’ Kreisler called, his revolver still trained on Soltyk. Bitzenko put them both down, a foot away from Soltyk, and walked hurriedly out of the zone of fire where he found himself beside Jan, who had withdrawn upon the arrival of Kreisler and his Automatic.

  ‘Will you take up one of those pistols or both?’ Kreisler asked.

  ‘Kindly point that revolver somewhere else and allow us to go!’ the indignant physician called back.

  ‘I’m not speaking to you, pig-face! It’s you I’m addressing. Take up that pistol!’

  He was now five or six yards from them.

  ‘Herr Soltyk is unarmed! The pistols you want him to take have only one charge. Yours has twelve.* In any case it would be murder!’

  Kreisler walked up to them. He was very white, much quieter and acting with some effort. He stooped down to take up one of the pistols. The doctor aimed a blow at his head. It caught him just in front of the ear, on the right cheek bone: he staggered sideways; tripped and fell. The moment he felt the blow he pulled the trigger of the Browning, which still pointed towards his principal adversary. Soltyk threw his arms up, Kreisler was struggling upwards to his feet, he fell face forwards on top of him.

  Believing this to be a new attack, Otto seized the descending body round the middle, rolling over on top of it. It was quite limp. He then thought the other man had fainted or perhaps ruptured himself. He drew back quickly: two hands grasped him and flung him down on his stomach. This time his glasses went. Scrambling after them, he remembered his Automatic which he had dropped: he shot his hands out to left and right, forgetting his glasses, to recover the revolver. He felt that a blow was a long time in coming.

  ‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’

  The doctor’s voice, announcing that in french, he heard at the same time as Bitzenko’s panting in his ear:

  ‘What are you looking for? Come quickly!’

  ‘Where is the Browning?’ he asked. At that moment his hand struck his glasses: he put them on and got to his feet.

  At Bitzenko’s words he had a feeling of a new order of things having set in, a sensation he remembered having experienced on two other occasions in his past life. They came in a fresh surprising tone: it was as though they were the first words he had heard that day. Something was ripped open, and everything was fresh loud and new. The words themselves appeared to signify a sudden removal, a journey, novel conditions.

  ‘Come along, I’ve got the gun. There’s no time to lose.’ It was all over; he must embrace practical affairs. The Russian’s voice was business-like: something had finished for him too. Kreisler saw the others standing in a peaceful group; the doctor was getting up from beside Soltyk.

  He rushed over to Kreisler and shook his fist in his face and tried to speak. But his mouth was twisted down at the corners, and he could hardly see. The palms of his hands pressed into each of his eyes, the next moment he was sobbing, walking back to his friends. Jan was looking at Kreisler but it seemed with nothing but idle curiosity.

  Bitzenko’s bolt was shot: Kreisler had been unsatisfactory. All had ended in a silly accident: this was hardly a real corpse at all. But something was sent to console him. The Police had got wind of the duel. Bitzenko his compatriot and Kreisler were walking down the field, intending to get into the road at the farther end and so reach the nearest station. The taxi had been sent away, Kreisler having no more money, and Bitzenko’s feeling in the matter being that, should Kreisler fall, a corpse can always find some sentimental soul to look after it. There was always the Morgue, a most satisfactory place for a body.

  Half-way along the field, a car passed them on the other side of the hedge at full tilt. Once more the Russian was in his element. His face cleared: he looked ten years younger—in the occupants of the car he had recognized members of the police force!

  Calling ‘run!’ to Kreisler he took to his heels, followed by his compatriot—whose neck shot in and out and whose great bow legs could almost be heard twanging as he ran. They reached another hedge, ran along the farther side of it, Bitzenko bent double as though to escape a rain of bullets. Eventually he was seen careering across an open space quite near the river, which lay a couple of hundred yards beyond the lower end of the field. There he lay ambushed for a moment, behind a shrub: then he darted forward again, eventually disappearing along the high road in a cloud of dust. As to his athletic young friend, he made straight for the railway-station, which he reached without incident, and returned immediately to Paris and to bed. Kreisler for his part conformed to Bitzenko’s programme of flight: he scrambled through the hedge, crossed the road, and escaped almost unnoticed.

  The truth was that the Russian had attracted the attention of the police to such an extent by his striking flight, that without a moment’s hesitation they had bolted helter-skelter after him. They contented themselves with a parting shout or two at Kreisler. Duelling was not an offence that roused them very much and capture in such cases was not so material that they would
feel very disposed for a cross-country run. But they were so impressed by the Russian’s business-like way of disappearing that they imagined this must have been a curiously venal sort of duel: that he was the principal they did not doubt for a moment. So they went after him in full cry, rousing two or three villages in their passage, whose occupants followed at their heels, pouring with frantic hullabaloo in the direction of the capital. Bitzenko, however, with admirable resourcefulness, easily outwitted them. He crossed the Seine near Saint Cloud,* and got back to Paris in time to read the afternoon newspaper reports of the duel and flight with a tranquil satisfaction.

  CHAPTER 6

  FIVE days after this, in the morning, Otto Kreisler mounted the steps of the police station of a small town near the german frontier. He was going to give himself up.

  Bitzenko had pictured his principal, in the event of a successful outcome to the duel, seeking rapidly by train the german frontier, disguised in some extraordinary manner. Had the case been suggested to him of a man in this position without sufficient money in his pocket to buy a ticket, he would then have imagined a figure of melodrama hurrying through France, dodging and dogged by the police, defying a thousand perils. Whether Kreisler were still under the spell of the Russian or not, this was the course, more or less, taken by him. He could be trusted not to go near Paris: that city nothing would have persuaded him to re-enter.

  The police disturbing the last act of his sanguinary farce was a similar contretemps to Soltyk’s fingers in his throat. At the last moment everything had begun to go wrong: for this he had not been prepared because the world had shown no tendency up till then to interfere.