Tarr (Oxford World's Classics)

by Wyndham Lewis

  Soltyk had died when his back was turned, so to speak: he got the contrary of comfort out of the thought that he could claim to have done the deed. The police had rushed in and broken things off short, swept everything up and off—the banquet had terminated in a brutal raid. A sensation of shock and dislocation remained in Otto’s mind: he had been hurried so much! He had never needed leisure, breathing space, so much: had he been given time—only a little time—he might have put that to rights—this sinister regret could only imply a possible mutilation of the corpse.

  A dead man has no feeling, he can be treated as an object: but a living man needs time—does not a living man need so much time to develop his movements, to lord it with his thoughtful body, to unroll his will? Time is what be needs clearly. As a tramp, hustled away from a Café by the personnel, protests, at each jerk the waiter gives him, that he is a human being, probably a free human being—yes probably free; so Kreisler complained to his fate that he was a living man, that he required time—that above all it was time he needed—to settle his affairs and withdraw from life. He whined and blustered to no effect.

  Soltyk’s death dismayed him deeply: if you will think of a demented person who has become possessed of the belief that it is essential for the welfare of the world that he should excuperate* into a bird’s nest while standing upon one leg on the back of a garden seat, but who is baulked, first of all by the seat giving way, and secondly by the bird’s nest catching fire and vanishing because of the use by the bird of certain chemical substances in its construction, combined with the heat of the sun, you will have a parallel for Kreisler’s superstitious disappointment.

  He was superstitious as well in the usual way about this decease: in the course of his spiritless and brooding tramp he questioned if it were not he that had died, and not Soltyk at all, and if it were not a ghost who was now wandering off nowhere in particular.

  One franc and a great many coppers remained to him. As he jumped from field to road and road to field again in his flight, they rose and fell in a little leaden wave in his pocket, breaking dully upon his thigh. This little wave rose and fell many times, till he began to wait for it and its monotonous grace. It was like a sigh: it heaved and clashed down in a foiled way. That evening he spent it on a meal in a small village hotel. The night was dry: he slept in an empty barge. Next day, at four in the afternoon, he arrived at Meaux.* Here he exchanged what he stood up in, hat and boots as well as clothes, for a shabby workman’s outfit. He gained seven francs and fifty centimes on the transaction. He caught the early train for Rheims,* travelling 35 kilometres of his journey at a sou a kilometre. A meal near the station, and he took another ticket to Verdun.* Believing himself nearer the frontier than he actually was, he set out on foot: at the next large town, Marcade,* he had too hearty a meal. His money gave out before the frontier was nearly reached. For two days he had eaten hardly anything: he tramped on in a dogged careless spirit.

  The nearness of his home-frontier began to rise like a wall in front of him. This question had to be answered: Did he want to cross the german frontier? Did he really want, having reached it, to cross it?

  His answer to this question had been to mount the steps of the local police-station.

  His prussian severity of countenance, now that he was dressed in every point like a vagabond—without hat and his hair disordered, five days’ beard on his chin—this sternness of the german officer-caste gave him the appearance of a forbidding ruffian. The ‘agent’ on duty, who barred his passage brutally before the door of the inner office, scowling too, classed him as a dangerous vagabond. His voluntary entrance into the police station he regarded as an act not only highly suspicious and unaccountable in itself, but of the last insolence.

  ‘Qu’est-ce qu’il te faut?’

  ‘Foir le gommissaire’ returned Kreisler.

  ‘Tu ne peux pas le voir. Il n’y est pas.’*

  A few more laconic sentences followed. The ‘agent’ reiterated sulkily that the official he desired to see was not there. But he was eyeing Kreisler doubtfully and turning something over in his mind.

  The day before two Germans had been arrested in the neighbourhood as spies.* They were now under lock and key in this particular building, until further evidence should be collected. It was extremely imprudent for a German to loiter on the frontier on entering France, it was naturally much wiser for him to push on at once—looking neither to right nor to left—for the interior. This was generally realized by Germans. But the two men in question were carpenters by profession: both carried huge foot-rules* in their pockets. Upon this discovery their captors were in a state of consternation: they shut them up, with their implements, in the most inaccessible depths of the local clink. But it was in the doorway of this building that Kreisler now stood.

  The ‘agent’ who had recognized a German by his accent at length turned and disappeared through the door. He reappeared with two colleagues. They crowded the doorway and surveyed Kreisler blankly. One asked in a very knowing voice:

  ‘What’s the game Fritz?* What are you doing here? Come about your pals?’

  ‘I had tuel and killt man;* I have walked for more days—.’

  ‘Yes we know all about that!’

  ‘So you had a duel eh?’ asked another: they all laughed with nervous suddenness at the picture of this hobo defending his honour at twenty paces.

  ‘Well is that all you have to say?’

  ‘I would eat.’

  ‘Yes I daresay! Your two pals inside also have big appetites. But look sharp, come to the point! Have you anything to tell us about your compatriots inside there?’

  His throttling by Soltyk had been Kreisler’s last milestone: he had changed, he now knew he was beaten, and that there was nothing to do but to die. His body ran to the german frontier as a chicken’s does down a yard, headless, from the block.

  It was a dull and stupid face he presented to the official. He did not understand him. He muttered that he was hungry. He could hardly stand; leaning his shoulder against the wall, he stood with his eyes upon the ground. The police bristled. He was making himself at home! What a toupet!*

  ‘Va-t’en! If you don’t want to tell us anything, clear out—look sharp about it. A pretty lot of trouble you cursed Germans are giving us! You’ll none of you speak when it comes to the point: you all stand staring like boobies. But that won’t pay here. Off you go—double march!’

  The two others turned back into the office and slammed the door. The first police officer stood before it again, looking truculently at Kreisler. He said:

  ‘Passez votre chemin! Don’t stand gaping there!’

  Then, giving him a shake, he hustled him to the top of the steps. A parting shove sent him staggering down into the road.

  Kreisler walked on for a little. Eventually, in a quiet square, near the entrance of the town, he fell upon a bench, drew his legs up and went to sleep.

  At ten o’clock, the town lethargically retiring, all its legs moving slowly, like a spent insect, an ‘agent’ came gradually along the square. He stopped opposite the sleeping Kreisler, surveying him with lawful indignation.

  ‘En voilà un qui ne se gêne pas, ma foi!’ He swayed energetically up to him.

  ‘Eh! le copain! Tu voudrais coucher à la belle étoile?’

  He shook him.

  ‘Oh là! Tu ne peux pas passer la nuit ici! Houp! Dépêche-toi. D’bout!’*

  Kreisler responded only by a tired movement as though to bury his skull in the bench. A more violent jerk rolled him upon the ground. Thereupon he awoke and as he lay there he protested in german, with a sort of dull asperity. He scrambled to his knees and then to his feet.

  At the sound of the familiar gutturals of the neighbouring Empire the patriot in the policeman came to life. Kreisler stood there, muttering partly in german and partly in french, he was very tired. He spoke with some bitterness of his attempt to get into the police station: he criticized the inhospitable reception he had received. The
‘agent’ understood several words of german—notably ‘Ja’ and ‘Abort.’ The consequence was that however much might be actually intended on any given occasion, by anyone speaking in german, it could never equal in scope intensity and meaning what he thought he distinguished.

  He was at once convinced that Kreisler was threatening an invasion*—he scoffed loudly in reply. He understood Kreisler to assert that the town in which they stood would soon belong to Germany and that he would then sleep not upon a bench, but in the best bed their dirty little hole of a village could offer. He approached this contumelious Boche* threateningly. Eventually he distinctly heard himself apostrophized as a ‘sneaking flic.’ At that his hand grasped Kreisler’s collar, he threw him in the direction of the police station. He had miscalculated the distance: Kreisler, weak for want of food, fell at his feet. Getting up, he scuffled a short while. Then, it occurring to him that here was an excellent opportunity of getting a dinner and being lodged after all in the Bureau de Police, he suddenly became docile.

  Arrived at the police station—with several revolts against the brutal handling he was subjected to—he was met at the door by the same inhospitable man as earlier in the day. This person was enraged beyond measure: he held Kreisler, while his comrade went into the office to report: he held him as a restive horse is held, and jerked him several times against the wall, as if he had been resisting with a desperate fougue.

  Two men, one of whom he had formerly seen, came and looked at him. No effort was made to discover if he were really at fault: by this time they were persuaded that he was a ruffian, if not a spy then a murderer, although they were inclined to regard him as a criminal enigma. They felt they could no longer question his right to a night’s lodging. He was led to a cell where he was given some bread and water at his urgent request.

  On the following morning he was taken up before the Commissaire. When Kreisler was brought in, this gentleman had just finished cross-examining for the fifteenth time the two german carpenters detained as spies. They had not much peace: they were liable to be dragged out of their cells several times in the course of an afternoon, as often as a new theory of their guilt should occur to one of the numerous staff of the police station. They would be confronted with their foot-rules and watched in breathless silence; or be cross-questioned and caught out as to their movements during the month previous to their arrest. The Commissaire was perspiring all over with the intensity of his last effort to detect something. Kreisler was led in and prevented from becoming in any way intelligible during a quarter of an hour by the furious interruptions of the enraged officer. At last he succeeded in conveying that he was quite unacquainted with the two carpenters; moreover, that all he needed was food, that he had decided to give himself up and await the decision of the Paris authorities as regards his duel. If they were not going to take any action, he would return to Paris—at least as soon as he had received a certain letter; and he gave his address. He was sent back to his cell in disgrace.

  He slept the greater part of the day. The next he spent nervous and awake. In the afternoon a full confirmation of his story reached the authorities. It was likely the following morning, he was told, that he would be sent to Paris. It meant, then, that he was going to be tried, as a kind of murderer: there would be the adverse witnesses who would maintain that he shot a defenceless man deliberately.

  He became extremely disturbed as he sat and reflected upon what was in store for him—Paris, the vociferous courts, the ennuis of a criminal case. All the circumstances of this now distant affair would be resuscitated. Then the Russian—he would have to see him again. Sorrow for himself bowed him down. This prospective journey to Paris was ridiculous—noise, piercing noise, effort, awaited him revengefully. There was no detail he could not forecast. The energy and obstinacy of the rest of the world, the world that would cross-question him and drag him about from spot to spot, at last setting him to pick oakum,* no doubt, these frightened him as something mad. Bitzenko appealed most to this new-born anxiety: Bitzenko was like some much-relished dish a man has one day eaten too much of, and will never be able to see again without wishing to vomit.

  On the other hand, he became quite used to his cell: his mind was sick and this room had a clinical severity. It had all the severity of a place in which an operation might suitably be performed. He became fond of it. He lay upon his bed: he turned over the shell of many empty and depressing hours he had lived: in all these listless concave shapes he took a particular pleasure. ‘Good times’ were avoided: days spent with his present stepmother, before his father knew her, gave him a particularly numbing and nondescript feeling.

  He sat up, listening to the noises from the neighbouring rooms and corridors. It began to sound to him like one steady preparation for his removal: steps bustled about getting this ready and getting that ready as though for a departure.

  The police station had cost him some trouble to enter: but from the start they had been attracted to each other. There is no such thing as a male building perhaps, all buildings are probably female: what are they?—they are the most highly developed ‘things.’ This small modern edifice was having its romance; Otto Kreisler was its liebhaberei.

  It was now warning him, it was full of rumours: it echoed sharply the fact of its policemen.

  After his evening meal he took up his bed in his arms and placed it upon the opposite side of the cell, beneath the window. He sat there for some time as though resting after this effort. The muttering of two children on a doorstep in the street below came to him on the evening light with dramatic stops and emptiness. It bore with it an image, like an old picture, bituminous* and with a graceful queer formality: this fixed itself before him in the manner of a mirage. He watched it muttering.

  Slowly he began to draw off his boots. He took out the laces, and tied them together for greater strength. Then he tore several strips off his shirt and made a short cord of them. He went through these actions with an unconscious deftness, as though it were a routine. He measured the drop from the bar of the ventilator with puckered forehead calculating the necessary length of cord, like a boy preparing the accessories of some game. It was only a game, too: he recognized what these proceedings meant, but shunned the idea that it was serious. In the way that a person disinclined to write a necessary letter may take up his pen, resolving to begin it merely, but writes more and more until it is in fact completed, so Kreisler proceeded with his unattractive task.

  Standing upon the bed, he attached the cord to the ventilator. He tested its strength by holding it some inches from the top, and then, his shoulders hunched, swaying his whole weight languidly upon it for a moment. Adjusting the noose, he smoothed his hair back after he had slipped it over his head. He made as though to kick the bed away, playfully, then stood still, staring in front of him. The last moment must be one of realization. His caution had been due to a mistrust of some streaks of him, the most suspect that connected with the nebulous tracts of sex.

  A sort of heavy confusion burst up as he withdrew the restraint. It reminded him of Soltyk’s hands upon his throat. The same throttling feeling returned: the blood bulged in his head: he felt dizzy—it was the Soltyk struggle over again. But, as with Soltyk, he did not resist: he gently worked the bed outwards from beneath him, giving it a last steady shove. He hung, gradually choking—the last thing he was conscious of his tongue.

  The discovery of Kreisler’s body caused a profound indignation among the staff of the police station. They remembered the persistence with which this unprincipled vagrant had attempted to get into the building. It was clear to their minds that his sole purpose had been to hang himself upon their premises. From the first he had mystified them. Now their uneasy suspicions were bitterly confirmed. Each man felt that this corpse had personally insulted him and made a fool of him, still worse. They thrust it savagely into the earth, with vexed and disgusted faces.

  Herr Kreisler paid without comment what was claimed by the landlord in Paris for his son�
�s rooms; and writing to the authorities at the frontier-town about the burial, paid exactly the sum demanded by this town for disposing of the body, without comment of any sort.

  CHAPTER 7

  ANASTASYA had personally liked Kreisler. That was why the spectacle of Fräulein Lunken excusing herself, in the process putting Kreisler in a more unsatisfactory light, had annoyed her. But apart from that, Bertha’s undignified rigmarole after the Club dance had irritated her: to cut it short she brutally announced that Kreisler’s behaviour was due simply to the fact that he fancied himself in love with her, Anastasya. ‘He was not worrying about Fräulein Lunken: he was in love with me’ the statement amounted to, it had been an irritated exhibition of frankness as immodestly presented as possible, to shock this little bourgeois fool. Bertha! how could Tarr consort with such a dumm cow? Her aristocratic woman’s sense did not appreciate the taste for the slut, the Miss or the suburban queen. The apache, the coster-girl,* the whore—all that had character, oh yes! Her romanticism, in fact, was of the same order as Bertha’s but much better class.

  Two days after the duel she met Tarr in the street. They agreed to meet at Vallet’s for dinner. The table at which she had first come across Otto Kreisler was where they sat.

  ‘You knew Soltyk didn’t you?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes. Poor Soltyk!’

  She looked at Tarr doubtfully. A certain queer astonishment in her face struck Tarr. She spoke with a businesslike calm about his death.

  ‘I knew him only slightly’ she then said. ‘You know how he made a living? He sold objets d’art. I had several things I wanted to sell, he put the thing through for me, and advised me about some other things I was disposing of in Vienna.’

  ‘He was your agent, or something of the sort.’

  ‘That’s it. He was an excellent business-man, I think. I believe he was rather too sharp for me over one transaction.’