Tarr (Oxford World's Classics) Read online

  ‘Yes, figuratively’ hiccuped Tarr and spat lightly. ‘But in reality the country would be armed better than it ever had been before, really to the teeth I declare: by throwing over these famous “national characteristics” to which we cling sentimentally, and which are merely the accident of a time, we should lay a foundation of unspecific force on which new and more masculine “national flavours” would very soon sprout. The humorist is not so masculine as he thinks himself.’

  ‘I quite agree’ Butcher jerked out energetically.

  He ordered another lager, hiccuping toughly.

  ‘I agree with what you say! If we don’t give up dreaming we shall get spanked, I mean whipped. Look at me! I’ve given up my gypsies. That was very public-spirited of me?’ He looked coaxingly sideways at his friend, who patted his knee and went on from there.

  ‘If everyone would give up their gypsies their jokes and their gentlemen—. “Gentlemen” are worse than gypsies. It would do perhaps if they reduced them considerably, as you have your beastly Romanys. I’m going to swear off Humour for a year to set all Englishmen an example. Even upon you, Guy, I shall gaze inhumanly. All these mock matrimonial difficulties of mine come from humour. I am going to gaze on Bertha inhumanly, and not humorously any longer, that’s flat.’

  He gazed at an imaginary Bertha without a spark of humour.

  ‘Humour’ he said ‘does paralyse the sense for Reality, people are rapt by their sense of humour in a phlegmatic and hysteric dreamworld, full of the delicious swirls of the switch-back, the intoxication of the merry-go-round—screaming leaps from idea to idea. My little weapon for bringing my man to earth—shot-gun or what not—gave me good sport, too, and was of the best workmanship: I carried it slung jauntily for some time at my side—you may have noticed it. But I am in the tedious situation of a crack marksman who hits the bull’s-eye every time. Had I not been disproportionately occupied with Miss Lunken’s absurdities, really out of all reasonable proportion, I should never have allowed that charming girl to engage herself to me. But that is all over. My first practical step now will be to take this question of “engaging” myself or not into my own hands. I shall dis-engage myself on the spot.’

  ‘So long as you don’t engage yourself again next minute, and so on. If I felt that the time was not quite ripe, I’d leave it in Fräulein Lunken’s hands a little longer. I expect she does it better than you would.’

  Butcher filled his pipe, then he began laughing. He gave high-pitched crackling laughs, throwing his head backwards and forwards, until Tarr stopped him.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’

  ‘You are a bum!* Ha! ha! ha!’

  ‘How am I a bum, Butcher! Ever since you’ve worn that pullover you’ve employed that jargon.’

  Butcher composed himself, theatrically.

  ‘I had to laugh! You repent of your thoughtlessness: your next step is to put things right.—I was laughing at the way you go about it. Ha! ha! ha! I like the way you—! Kindly but firmly you set out to break off your engagement and discard the girl: that is very neat. Yes. Ha! ha! ha!’

  ‘Do you think so? Well, it may be a trifle overtidy: I hadn’t looked at it from that side.’

  ‘You can’t be too tidy’ Butcher said dogmatically. He talked to Tarr, when a little worked up, as Tarr talked to him, but he did not notice that he did. Partly it was calinerie and flattery.

  Tarr pulled out of his waistcoat pocket a very heavy and determined looking watch. Had he been compelled to use a small watch he would have suffered: for the time to be microscopic and noiseless would be unbearable—the time must be human, upon that he insisted. He liked it loud and large.

  ‘It is late. I must go. Must you get back to Passy* or can you stop—?’

  ‘Do you know, I’m afraid I must get back. I have to lunch with a feller at one who is putting me on to a good thing. But can I take you anywhere? Or are you lunching here?’

  ‘No.—Take me as far as the Samaritaine,* will you?’

  Butcher took him along two sides of the Louvre, to the river.

  ‘Good-bye, then. Don’t forget Saturday, six o’clock.’ Butcher nodded in bright clever silence. He shuffled into his car again, working his shoulders like a verminous tramp. He rushed away, piercing blasts from his horn rapidly softening as he became smaller. Tarr was glad he had brought the car and Butcher together; opposites they decidedly were, but with some grave essential in common.

  His usual lunch time an hour away, his so far unrevised programme was to go to the Rue Lhomond and search for Hobson’s studio. For the length of a street it was equally the road to the studio and to Bertha’s rooms. He knew to which he was going. But a sensation of peculiar freedom and leisure possessed him. There was no hurry. Was there any hurry to go where he was going?

  With a smile in his mind, his face irresponsible and solemn, he turned sharply into a narrow street, rendered dangerous by motor buses, and asked at the porter’s lodge of a large residence if Monsieur Lowndes were in.

  ‘Monsieur Lounes? Je pense que oui. Je ne l’ai pas vu sortir.’*

  He ascended to the fourth floor and rang a bell.

  Lowndes was in: he heard him approaching the door on tiptoe, and felt him gazing at him through the customary crack. He placed himself in a favourable position.

  CHAPTER 3

  TARR’S idea of leisure recognized no departure from the tragic theme of existence: pleasure could take no form that did not include death and corruption—at present Bertha and Humour. Only he wished to play a little longer: it was the last chance he might have. Work was in front of him with Bertha, he recognized.

  He was giving up play, that was quite understood; but the giving up of play, even, had to take the form of play. He had viewed everything in terms of sport for so long that he had no other machinery to work with: and sport might perhaps, for the fun of the thing, be induced to cast out sport.

  As Lowndes crept towards the door, Tarr said to himself, with ironic self-restraint, ‘bloody fool—bloody fool! bloody—fool.’

  Lowndes was a colleague, who was not very active, but had just enough money to be a cubist, that was to say quite a lot. He was extremely proud of being interrupted in his work, for Lowndes’ ‘work’ was a serious matter, a very serious matter indeed. He ‘found great difficulty in working’; always he implied that you did not. He suffered from a form of persecution mania as regards his ‘mornings.’ To start with, it was plain, from what he said, that he was very much in request: people, seemingly, were always attempting to get into his room: such was the fatal attraction he exercised. But although you were led to fancy the existence of a long queue of unwelcome visitors, in reality the only person you definitely knew had been guilty of interrupting his ‘work’ was Thornton. This man, because of his admiration for Lowndes’ mordant wit, and through moth-like attraction for his cubism and respect for his income, had to suffer much humiliation. He was to be found (even in the morning, strange to say) in Lowndes’ studio, rapidly sucking a pipe, blinking, flushing, stammering the rakish locutions of an inexpensive almost nameless second-rate Public School. When you entered, he looked timidly and quickly at the inexorable Lowndes, and began gathering up his hat and books.

  Lowndes’ manner became withering—you felt that, before your arrival, his master had been less severe, tête à tête life might have been almost bearable for Thornton. When at length he had taken himself off, Lowndes would hasten to exculpate himself: Thornton was a fool, but he could not always keep Thornton out etc.

  ‘Oh. Come in Tarr’ Lowndes said, looking at the floor of the passage. ‘I didn’t know who it was—.’ The atmosphere became thick with importunate phantom intruders. The wretched Thornton seemed to hover timidly in the background.

  ‘Am I interrupting you—?’ Tarr asked politely.

  ‘No-o-o!’ a long, reassuring, musical negative.

  His face was very dark and slick, bald on top, pettily bearded, pointlessly handsome. Tarr always detected a tinge
of indecency in these particular good looks. His celtic head was allied with a stocky commercial figure: behind his spectacles his black eyes had a way of scouring and scurrying over the floor: they were often dreamy and burning and it was then that the indecency most plainly declared itself: he waddled slightly—or rather confided himself first to one muscular little calf, then to the other.

  Tarr had come to talk to him about Bertha.

  ‘I’m afraid I must have interrupted your work—?’ Tarr said, and looked stolidly at the floor.

  ‘No it’s quite all right: I was just going to have a rest. I’m rather off colour.’

  Tarr misunderstood him.

  ‘Off colour? What is the matter with colour now—?’

  ‘No, I mean I’m seedy.’

  ‘Oh ah. I see.’

  His eyes searching the floor, Lowndes pottered about like an aimless preoccupied dog: he felt more independent as he examined the floor boards and had something to do—it was a form of ‘work’ in fact to count the nail heads.

  As with most leisured nobodies who do things, and like to foresee the analysis that waits upon fame, Lowndes had an autobiographic streak—he did not aspire to a Boswell.* His character sketch would run somewhat as follows: ‘A fussy and exacting man, even avuncular, strangely, despite the fineness and breadth of his character, minute precious and tidy.’ In this way he made a virtue of his fuss. Or to show how the general illusion would work in a particular case:—‘He had been disturbed in his “work” by Tarr, who by his visit had just caused him to emerge from that state of wonderful concentration called “work”: he had not been able at once to accommodate himself: his nerves drove him from object to object. But he would soon be quiet now.’

  Tarr looked on with an ugly patience.

  ‘Lowndes, I have come to ask you for a little piece of advice.’

  Lowndes was flattered and relished the mystery.

  ‘Yes-es’ he said, smiling, in a slow ‘sober,’ professional sing-song.

  ‘Or rather, for an opinion. What is your opinion of german women?’

  Lowndes had spent two years in Berlin and Munich. Many of his friends were austrian.

  ‘German women? But I must know first why you ask me that question. You see, it’s a wide subject.’

  ‘A wide subject—wide. Yes, very good! Ha! ha! Well, it is like this. I think that they are superior to our women, you know, the English. That is a very dangerous opinion to hold, because there are so many german women knocking about just now. I want to get rid of it: can you help me? Yes or no?’

  Lowndes mused upon the ground. Then he looked up brightly.

  ‘No I can’t. For I share it!’

  ‘Lowndes, I’m surprised at you.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I did not expect you to be flippant. Still, perhaps you can help me: our ideas about girls may not be the same.’

  Tarr always embarrassed him: Lowndes huddled himself tensely together, worked at his pipe, and met his visitor’s jokes painfully. He hesitated.

  ‘What are your ideas on the subject of girls?’ he asked in a moment.

  ‘Oh I think they ought to be convex if you are concave—stupid if you are intelligent, hot if you are cold, refrigerators if you are a volcano. Always white all over—clothes, underclothes, skin and all. My ideas do not extend much beyond that for the present on the subject of girls—white girls, I mean.’

  Lowndes organized Tarr’s statement, with a view to an adequate and easy reply. He gnawed at his pipe.

  ‘Well, german women are usually convex. There are also concave ones. There are cold ones and hot ones.’ He looked up. ‘It all seems to depend what you are like!’

  ‘I Lowndes am cold; inclined to be fat; strong i’ the head; and uncommonly swarthy, as you see.’

  ‘In that case, if you took plenty of exercise’ Lowndes undulated himself as though for the passage of the large bubbles of the chain of an ever-growing chuckle, ‘I should think that german women would suit you very well!’

  Tarr rose.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t come to see you, Lowndes. Your answer is disappointing.’

  Lowndes got up, disturbed at Tarr’s sign of departure.

  ‘I’m sorry. But I’m not an authority.’ He leant against the fireplace to arrest Tarr’s withdrawal for a minute or two. ‘Are you doing much work?’

  ‘I? No.’

  ‘Are you ever in in the afternoons?’

  ‘Not much. I’m just moving into a new studio.’

  Lowndes looked suddenly at his watch, with calculated, apelike impulsiveness.

  ‘Where are you having lunch? I thought of going down to Vallet’s to see if I could come across a beggar of the name of Kreisler: he could tell you much more about german women than I can. He’s a German. Come along won’t you? Are you doing anything?’

  ‘No, I know quite enough Germans. Besides, I must go somewhere—I can’t have lunch just yet. Good-bye. Thank you for your opinion.’

  ‘Don’t mention it’ Lowndes replied softly, his head turned obliquely to his shoulder, as though he had a stiff neck, rocking upon his pneumatic calves.

  He was rather hurt at the brevity of Tarr’s visit. His ‘morning’ had not received enough respect: it had been treated, in fact, cavalierly by this imperious visitor. As to his ‘work’ that had never been so much as mentioned, directly.

  When Tarr got outside he stood on the narrow pavement, looking into a shop window. It was a florist’s and contained a great variety of flowers. The Spring for him was nameless: he could not give a single flower its name. He hung on in front of this shop before pushing off, as a swimmer clings to a rock, waving his legs. Then he got back into the street from which his visit to Lowndes had deflected him. Down it he drifted, paddling his sombrero* at his side. He still had some way to go before he need decide between the Rue Martine (where Bertha lived) and the Rue Lhomond.

  Resolution had not come to him out of his talks: that already existed, the fruit of various other conversations on his matrimonial position—held with the victim, Fräulein Lunken, herself.

  Not to go near Bertha was the negative programme for that particular day. To keep away was seldom easy. But ever since his conversation at the Berne he had been conscious of the absurd easiness of doing so, if he wished. He had not the least inclination to go to the Rue Martine! This sensation was so grateful and exhilarating that its object shared in its effect. He determined to go and see her. This present magisterial feeling of full-blooded indifference was born to be enjoyed: where best to enjoy it was beyond question where Bertha was.

  As to the studio, he hesitated. A new situation had been created by this new feeling of indifference. Its duration could not be gauged.

  Tarr wished to stay in Paris just then to finish two large paintings begun some months before. With him, for the impressionist’s necessity to remain in front of the object to be represented* was substituted a sensation of the desirability of finishing a canvas in the place where it had been begun. From this point of view he had an impressionist’s horror of change.

  So he had evolved a plan. At first sight it was wicked, though not blacker than most of his ingenuities of the same order. Bertha, as he had suggested to Butcher, he had in some lymphatic manner within his skin. It appeared a matter of physical discomfort to leave her altogether. It must be effected gradually. In consequence he had resolved that, instead of going away to England, where the separation might cause him restlessness, he had perhaps better settle down in her neighbourhood. Through a series of specially tended ennuis, he would soon find himself in a position to depart. Thus the extreme nearness of the studio to Bertha’s flat was only another inducement for him to take it. ‘If it were next door, so much the better!’ thought he.

  Now for this famous feeling of indifference. Was there anything in it? That was the question. The studio for the moment should be put aside: he would go to see Bertha. Let this visit solve this question.

  CHAPTER 4


  THE new summer heat drew heavy pleasant ghosts out of the ground, like plants disappeared in winter; spectres of energy, bulking the hot air with vigorous dreams. Or they had entered into the trees, in imitation of pagan gods, and nodded their delicate distant intoxication to him. Visions were released in the sap, with scented explosion, the Spring one bustling and tremendous reminiscence.

  Tarr felt the street was a pleasant current, setting from some immense and tropic gulf, neighboured by Floridas of remote invasions:* he ambled down it puissantly, shoulders shaped like these waves, a heavy-sided drunken fish. The houses, with winks of the shocked clock-work, were grazed, holding along their surface a thick nap of soft warmth. The heat poured weakly into his veins—a big dog wandering on its easily transposable business, inviting some delightful accident to deflect it from maudlin and massive promenade: in his mind, too, as in the dog’s, his business was doubtful—a small black spot ahead in his brain, half puzzling but peremptory.

  The mat ponderous light-grey of putty-coloured houses—like a thickening merely of hot summer atmosphere without sun—gave a spirituality to this deluge of animal well-being, in weighty pale sense-solidarity. Through the opaquer atmosphere sounds came lazily or tinglingly. People had become a balzacian species, boldly tragic and comic.*

  Tarr stopped at a dairy. He bought saladed potatoes, a Petit Suisse.* The coolness, as he entered the small tiled box, gave an eerie shock to his sharply switched senses. The dairy-man, in blue-striped smock and black cap, peaked and cylindrical, came out of an inner room. Through its glasses several women were visible, busy at a meal. The isolation of this person from the heat and mood of the world outside impressed his customer as he came forward with truculent ‘Monsieur!’ Tarr, while his things were done up, watched the women. The discreet voices, severe reserve of keen business preoccupations, showed the usual Paris commerçante; the white, black and slate-grey of the dresses, the extreme neatness, silent felt over-slippers, make their commercial devotions rather conventual. With this purchase—followed by one of strawberries at a fruiterer’s opposite—his destination was no longer doubtful.