Had Tarr foreseen this possible termination of his rôle of “obstacle?” And ought he, he would ask himself, to have gone on with this half-farce if he were not prepared to meet the ultimate consequences? Kreisler was quite unworthy to stand there, with perfect reason, and to be telling him to “get out.” It was absurd to exalt Kreisler in that way! But Tarr had probably counted on being equal to any emergency, and baffling or turning Kreisler’s violence in some genial manner.
He stood for a few seconds in a tumultuous hesitation, when he saw Kreisler run across the room, bend forward and dive his arm down behind his box. Hewatched with uncomfortable curiosity this new move, as one might watch a surgeon’s haste at the crisis of an operation, searching for some necessary implement, mislaid for the moment. He felt schoolboy-like, left waiting there at Kreisler’s disposition. It was as a reaction against this unpleasant feeling that he stepped towards the door. The wish not to “obey” or to seem to turn tail either had alone kept him where he was. He had just found the door when Kreisler, with a bound, was back from his box, flourishing an old dog-whip in his hand.
“Ah, you go? Look at this!” He cracked the whip once or twice. “This is what I keep for hounds like you!” Crack! He cracked it again in rather an inexperienced way with a certain difficulty. He frowned and stopped in his discourse, as though it had been some invention he were showing off, that would not quite work at the proper moment, necessitating concentration.
“If you wish to see me again, you can always find me here. You won’t get off so easily next time!” He cracked the whip smartly and then slammed the door.
Tarr could imagine him throwing it down in a corner of the room, and then going on with his undressing.
When Kreisler had jumped to the doorway Tarr had stepped out with a half-defensive, half-threatening gesture and then gone on with strained slowness, lighting a match at the head of the stairs. He felt like a discomfited pub-loafer as he raised the match to an imaginary clay pipe rising in his mind. There was the ostentatious coolness of the music-hall comedian.
The thing that had chiefly struck him in Kreisler under this new aspect was a kind of nimbleness, a pettiness in his behaviour and movements, where perhaps he had expected more stiffness and heroics; the clown-like gibing form his anger took, a frigid disagreeable slyness and irony, a juvenile quickness and coldness.
Tarr was extremely dissatisfied with the part he had played in this scene. First of all he felt he had withdrawntoo quickly at the appearance of the whip, although he had in fact got under way before it had appeared. Then, he argued, he should have stopped at the appearance of this instrument of disgrace. To stop and fight with Kreisler, what objection was there to that, he asked himself? A taking Kreisler too seriously? But whatlessserious than fighting? He had saved himself an unpleasantness, something ridiculous, merely to find himself outside Kreisler’s door, a feeling of primitive dissatisfaction in him. Had he definitely been guilty of a lack of pluck or pride, it would have been better.
There was something mean and improper in all this that he could not reason away or mistake. He had undoubtedly insulted this man by his attitude,s’en était fiche de lui; and when the other turned, whip in hand, he had walked away. What really should he have done? He should, no doubt, he thought, having humorously instituted himself Kreisler’s keeper, have humorously struggled with him, when the idiot became obstreperous. At that point his humour had stopped. Then his humour had limitations?
Once and for all and certainly: he had no right to treat a man as he had treated Kreisler and yet claim, when he turned and resented this treatment, immunity from action on the score of Kreisler’s idiocy. In allowing the physical struggle any importance he allowed Kreisler an importance, too, that made his former treatment of him unreal and unjustified. In Kreisler’s eyes he was ablagueur, without resistance at a pinch, who walks away when turned on. This opinion was of no importance, since he had not a shadow of respect for Kreisler. Again he turned on himself. If he was so weak-minded as to care what trash like Kreisler thought or felt! He wandered in the direction of the Café de l’Aigle, gripped in this ratiocination.
His unreadiness, his dislike for action, his fear of ridicule, he treated severely in turn. He thought of everything he could against himself. And he laughedat himself. But it was no good. At last he gave way to the urgency of his vanity and determined not to leave the matter where it was. At once plans for retrieving this discomfort came crowding on him. He would go to the café as usual on the following evening, sit down smilingly at Kreisler’s table as though nothing had happened. In short, he would altogether endorse the opinion that Kreisler had formed of him. And yet why this meanness, even assumed, Tarr asked himself, even while arranging realistically his to-morrow evening’s purification? Always in a contemptuous spirit, some belittlement or unsavoury rôle was suggesting itself. His contempt for everybody degraded him.
Still, for a final occasion and since he was going this time to accept any consequences, he would follow his idea. He would be, to Kreisler’s mind for a little, the strange “slaverer and hoverer” who had been kicked out on the previous night. He would even have to “pile it on thick” to be accepted at all, exaggerate in the direction of Kreisler’s unflattering notion of him. Then he would gradually aggravate Kreisler, and with the same bonhomie attack him with resolution. He laughed as he came to this point, as a sensible old man might laugh at himself on arriving at a similar decision.
Soothed by the prospect of this rectification of the evening’s blunder, Tarr once more turned to reflect on it, and saw more clearly than ever the parallel morals of his Bertha affair and his Kreisler affair. His sardonic dream of life got him, as a sort of Quixotic dreamer of inverse illusions, blows from the swift arms of windmills and attacks from indignant and perplexed mankind. He, instead of having conceived the world as more chivalrous and marvellous than it was, had conceived it as emptied of all dignity, sense, and generousness. The drovers and publicans were angry at not being mistaken for legendary chivalry or châtelaines. The very windmills resented not being taken for giants! The curse of humour was in him, anchoring him at one end of thesee-saw whose movement and contradiction was life.
Reminded of Bertha, he did not, however, hold her responsible. But his protectorate would be wound up. Acquaintance with Anastasya would be left where it was, despite the threatened aggression against his nose.
Tarr’s character at this time performed repeatedly the following manœuvre: his best energies would, once a farce was started, gradually take over the business from the play department and continue it as a serious line of its own. It was as though it had not the go to initiate anything of its own accord. It was content to exploit the clown’s discoveries.
The bellicose visit to Kreisler now projected was launched to a slow blast of Humour, ready, when the time came, to turn into a storm. His contempt for the German would not allow him to enter into anything seriously against him. Kreisler was a joke. Jokes, it had to be admitted (and in that they became more effective than ever), were able to make you sweat.
That Kreisler could be anywhere but at the Café de l’Aigle on the following evening never entered Tarr’s head. As he was on an unpleasant errand, he took it for granted that Fate would on this occasion put everything punctually at his disposal. Had it been an errand of pleasure, he would have instinctively supposed the reverse.
At ten, and at half-past, his rival had not yet arrived. Tarr set out to make rapidly a tour of the other cafés. But Kreisler might be turning over anew leaf. He might be going to bed, as on the previous evening. He must not be again sought, though, on his own territory. The moral disadvantage of this position, on a man’s few feet of most intimate floor space, Tarr had clearly realized.
The Café Souchet, the most frequented café of the Quarter, entered merely in a spirit of German thoroughness, was, however, the one. More alert, and brushed up a little, Tarr thought, Kreisler was sitting with another man, with a bearded, naïf, and rather pleasant face, over his coffee. No pile of saucers this time attended him.
The stranger was a complication. Perhaps the night’s affair should be put off until the conditions were more favourable. But Tarr’s vanity was impatient. His wait in the original café had made him nervous and hardly capable of acting with circumspection. On the other hand, it might come at once. This was an opposite complication. Kreisler might open hostilities on the spot. This would rob him of the subtle benefits to be derived from his gradual strategy. This must be risked. He was not very calm. He crudely went up to Kreisler’s table and sat down. The feeling of the lack of aplomb in this action, and his disappointment at the presence of the other man, chased the necessary good humour out of his face. He had carefully preserved this expression for some time, even walking lazily and quietly as if he were carrying a jug of milk. Now it vanished in a moment. Despite himself, he sat down opposite Kreisler as solemn as a judge, pale, his eyes fixed on the object of his activity with something like a scowl.
But, his first absorption in his own sensations lifted and eased a little, he recognized that something very unusual was in the air.
Kreisler and his friend were not speaking or doing anything visibly. They were just sitting still, two self-possessed malefactors. Nevertheless, Tarr’s arrival to all appearance disturbed and even startled them, as if they had been completely wrapped up in some engrossing game or conspiracy.
Kreisler had his eyes trained across the room. The other man, too, was turned slightly in that direction, although his eyes followed the tapping of his boot against the ironwork of the table, and he only looked up occasionally.
Kreisler turned round, stared at Tarr without at once taking in who it was; then, as though saying to himself, “It’s only Bertha’s Englishman,” he took up his former wilful and patient attitude, his eyes fixed.
Tarr had grinned a little as Kreisler turned his way, rescued from his solemnity. There was just a perceptible twist in the German’s neck and shade of expression that would have said “Ah, there you are? Well, be quiet, we’re having some fun. Just you wait!”
But Tarr was so busy with his own feelings that he didn’t understand this message. He wondered if he had been seen by Kreisler in the distance, and if this reception had been concerted between him and his friend. If so, why?
Sitting, as he was, with his back to the room, he stared at his neighbour. His late boon companion distinctly was waiting, with absurd patience, for something. The poise of his head, the set of his yellow Prussian jaw, were truculent, although otherwise he was peaceful and attentive. His collar lookednewrather than clean. His necktie was one not familiar to Tarr. Boots shone impassibly under the table.
Tarr screwed his chair sideways, and faced the room. It was full of people—very athletically dressed American men, all the varieties of the provincial in American women, powdering their noses and ogling Turks, or sitting, the younger ones, with blameless interest and fine complexions. And there wereplentyof Turks, Mexicans, Russians and other “types” for the American ladies! In the wide passage-way into the further rooms sat the orchestra, playing the “Moonlight Sonata,” Dvorak and the “Machiche.”
In the middle of the room, at Tarr’s back, he now saw a group of eight or ten young men whom he had seen occasionally in the Café Berne. They looked rather German, but smoother and more vivacious. Poles or Austrians, then? Two or three of them appeared to be amusing themselves at his expense. Had they noticed the little drama that he was conducting at his table? Were they friends of Kreisler’s, too?—He was incapable of working anything out. He flushed and felt far more like beginning on them than on his complicated idiot of a neighbour, who had become a cold task. This genuine feeling illuminated for him the tired frigidity of his present employment.
He had moved his chair a little to the right, towards the group at his back, and more in front of Kreisler, so that he could look into his face. On turning back now, and comparing the directions of the various pairs of eyes engaged, he at length concluded that he was without the sphere of interest;justwithout it.
At this moment Kreisler sprang up. His head was thrust forward, his hands were in rear, partly clenched and partly facilitating his passage between the tables by hemming in his coat tails. The smooth round cloth at the top of his back, his smooth head above that with no back to it, struck Tarr in the way a momentary smell of sweat would. Germans had no backs to them, or were like polished pebbles behind. Tarr mechanically moved his hand upwards from his lap to the edge of the table on the way to ward off a blow. He was dazed by all the details of this meeting, and the peculiar miscarriage of his plan.
But Kreisler brushed past him with the swift deftness of a person absorbed with some strong movement of the will. The next moment Tarr saw the party of young men he had been observing in a sort of noisy blur of commotion. Kreisler was in among them, working on something in their midst. There were two blows—smack—smack; an interval between them. He could not see who had received them.
Tarr then heard Kreisler shout in German:
“For thesecondtime to-day! Is your courage so slow that I must do it athirdtime?”
Conversation had stopped in the café and everybody was standing. The companions of the man smacked, too, had risen in their seats. They were expostulating in three languages. Several were mixed up with thegarçons, who had rushed up to do their usual police work on such occasions. Over Kreisler’s shoulder, his eyes carbonized to a black sweetness, his cheeks a sweet sallow-white, with a red mark where Kreisler’s hand had been, Tarr saw the man his German friend had singled out. He had sprung towards the aggressor, but by that time Kreisler had been seized from behind and was being hustled towards the door. The blow seemed to hurt his vanity so much that he was standing half-conscious till the pain abated. He seemed to wish to brush the blow off, but was too vain to raise his hands to his cheek. It was left there like a scorching compress. His friends, Kreisler wrenched away from them, were left standing in a group, in attitudes more or less of violent expostulation and excitement.
Kreisler receded in the midst of a band of waiters towards the door. He was resisting and protesting, but not too much to retard his quick exit. Thegarçonshad the self-conscious unconcern of civilian braves.
The young man attacked and his friends were explaining what had happened, next, to the manager of the café. Agarçonbrought in a card on a plate. There was a new outburst of protest and contempt from the others. The plate was presented to the individual chiefly concerned, who brushed it away, as though he had been refusing a dish that a waiter was, for some reason, pressing upon him. Then suddenly he took up the card, tore it in half, and again waived away the persistent platter. Thegarçonlooked at the manager of the café and then returned to the door.
So this was what Kreisler and the little beardedman had been so busy about! Kreisler had laid his plans for the evening as well! Tarr’s scheme was destined not to be realized; unless he followed Kreisler at once, and got up a second row, a more good-natured one, just outside the café? Should he go out now and punch Kreisler’s head, fight about a little bit, and then depart, his business done, and leave Kreisler to go on with his other row? For he felt that Kreisler intended making an evening of it. His companion had not taken part in the fracas, but had followed on his heels in his ejection, protesting with a vehemence that was intended to hypnotize.
Just at the moment when he had felt that he was going to be one of the principal parties to a violent scene, Tarr had witnessed, not himself at all, but another man snatched up into his rôle. He felt relieved. As he watched the man Kreisler had struck, he seemed to be watching himself. And yet he felt rather on the side of Kreisler. With a mortified chuckle he prepared to pay for his drink and be off, leaving Kreisler for ever to his very complicated, mysterious and turbulent existence. He noticed just then that Kreisler’s friend had come back again, and was talking to the man who had been struck. He could hear that they were speaking Russian or Polish. With great collectedness, Kreisler’s emissary, evidently, was meeting their noisy expostulations. He could not at least, like a card, be torn in half! On the other hand, in his person he embodied the respectability of a visiting card. He was dressed with perfect “correctness” suitable to such occasions and such missions as his appeared to be. By his gestures (one of which was the taking an imaginary card between his thumb and forefinger and tearing it) Tarr could follow a little what he was saying.
“That, sir,” he seemed to assert, “is not the way to treat a gentleman. That, too, is an insult no gentleman will support.” He pointed towards the door. “Herr Kreisler, as you know, cannot enter the café; he is waiting there for your reply. He has been turned out like a drunken workman.”
The Russian was as grave as he was collected, and stood in front of the other principal in this affair, who had sat down again now, with the evident determination to get a different reply. The talking went on for some time. Then he turned towards Tarr, and, seeing him watching the discussion, came towards him, raising his hat. He said in French:
“You know Herr Kreisler, I believe. Will you consent to act for him with me, in an affair that unfortunately⸺? If you would step over here, I will put you ‘au courant.’”
“I’m afraid I cannot act for Herr Kreisler, as I am leaving Paris early to-morrow morning,” Tarr replied.
But the Russian displayed the same persistence with him as he had observed him already capable of with the other people.
At last Tarr said, “I don’t mind acting temporarily for a few minutes, now, until you can find somebody else. But you must understand that I cannot delay my journey—you must find a substitute at once.”
The Russian explained with businesslike gusto and precision, having drawn him towards the door (seemingly to cut off a possible retreat of the enemy), that it was a grave affair. Kreisler’s honour was compromised. His friend Otto Kreisler had been provoked in an extraordinary fashion. Stories had been put about concerning him, affecting seriously the sentiments of a girl he knew regarding him; put about with that object by another gentleman, also acquainted with this girl. The Russian luxuriated emphatically on this point. Tarr suggested that they should settle the matter at once, as he had not very much time. He was puzzled. Surely the girl mentioned must be Bertha? If so, had Bertha been telling more fibs? Was the Kreisler mystery after all to her discredit? Perhaps he was now in the presence ofanotherrival, existing, unknown to him, even during his friendship with her.
In this heroic, very solemnly official atmosphere of ladies’ “honour” and the “honour” of gentlemen, that the little Russian was creating, Tarr unwillinglyremained for some time. Noisy bursts of protest from other members of the opposing party met the Russian’s points. “It was all nonsense;” they shouted; “there could be no question of honour here. Kreisler was a quarrelsome German. He was drunk.” Tarr liked his own farces. But to be drawn into the service of one of Kreisler’s was a humiliation. Kreisler, without taking any notice of him, had turned the tables.
The discussion was interminable. They were now speaking French. The entire café appeared to be participating. Several times the principal on the other side attempted to go, evidently very cross at the noisy scene. Then Anastasya’s name was mentioned. Tarr found new interest in the scene.
“You and Herr Kreisler,” the Russian was saying patiently and distinctly, “exchanged blows, I understand, this afternoon, before this lady. This was as a result of my friend Herr Kreisler demanding certain explanations from you which you refused to give. These explanations had reference to certain stories you are supposed to have circulated as regards him.”
“Circulated—as regards—that chimpanzee you are conducting about?
“If you please! By being abusive you cannot escape. You are accused by my friend of having at his expense⸺”
“Expense? Does he want money?”
“If you please! You cannot buy off Herr Kreisler; but he might be willing for you to pay a substitute if you find it—inconvenient⸺?”
“I find you, bearded idiot!⸺”
“We can settle all that afterwards. You understand me? I shall be quite ready! But at present it is the affair between you and Herr Kreisler⸺”
In brief, it was the hapless Soltyk that Kreisler had eventually got hold of, and had just now publicly smacked, having some hours before smacked him privately.
Kreisler’s afternoon encounter with Anastasya and Soltyk had resembled Tarr’s meeting with him and Bertha. Kreisler had seen Anastasya and his new café friend one day from his window. His reference to possible nose-pulling was accounted for by this. The next day he had felt rather like seeing Anastasya again somewhere. With this object, he had patrolled the neighbourhood. About four o’clock, having just bought some cigarettes at the “Berne,” he was standing outside considering a walk in the Luxemburg, when Fräulein Vasek appeared in this unshunnable circus of the Quartier du Paradis. Soltyk was with her. He went over at once. With urbane timidity, as though they had been alone, he offered his hand. She looked at Soltyk, smiling. But she showed no particular signs of wanting to escape. They began strolling along the Boulevard, Soltyk showing every sign of impatience. She then stopped.
“Mr. Soltyk and I were just going to have the ‘five o’clock’ somewhere,” she said.
Soltyk looked pointedly down the Boulevard, as though that had been an improper piece of information to communicate to Kreisler.
“If you consent to my accompanying you, Fräulein, it would give me the greatest pleasure to remain in your company a little longer.”
She laughed. “Where were we going, Louis? Didn’t you say there was a place near here?”
“There is one over there. But I’m afraid, Fräulein Vasek, I must leave you.—I have⸺”
“Oh, must you? I’m sorry.”
Soltyk was astonished and mortified. He did not go, looking at her doubtfully. At this point Kreisler had addressed him.
“I said nothing, sir, when a moment ago, you failed to return my salute. I understand you were going to have tea with Fräulein Vasek. Now you deprive her suddenly of the pleasure of your company.So there is no further doubt on a certain point. Will you tell me at once and clearly what objection you have to me?”
“I don’t wish to discuss things of that sort before this lady.”
“Will you then name a place where they may be discussed? I will then take my leave?”
“I see no necessity to discuss anything with you.”
“Ah, you see none. I do. And perhaps it is as well that Fräulein Vasek should hear. Will you explain to me, sir, how it is that you have been putting stories about having reference to me, and to my discredit, calculated to prejudice people against me? Since this lady no doubt has heard some of your lies, it would be of advantage that you take them back at once, or else explain yourself.”
Before Kreisler had finished, Soltyk said to Anastasya, “I had better go at once, to save you this—” Then he turned to Kreisler,
“I should have thought you would have had sufficient decency left⸺”
“Decency, liar? Decency,lying swine? Decency—? What do you mean?” said Kreisler, loudly, in crescendo.
Then he crossed quickly over in front of Anastasya and smacked Soltyk first smartly on one cheek and then on the other.
“There is liar branded on both your cheeks! And if you should not wish to have coward added to your other epithets, you or your friends will find me at the following address before the day is out.” Kreisler produced a card and handed it to Soltyk.
Soltyk stared at him, paralysed for the moment at this outrage, his eyes burning with the sweet intensity Tarr noticed that evening, taking in the incredible fact. He got the fact at last. He lifted his cane and brought it down on Kreisler’s shoulders. Kreisler snatched it from him, broke it in three and flung it in his face, one of the splinters making a little gash in his under lip.
Anastasya had turned round and begun walkingaway, leaving them alone. Kreisler also waited no longer, but marched rapidly off in the other direction.
Soltyk caught Anastasya up, and apologized for what had occurred, dabbing his lip with a handkerchief.
Kreisler after this felt himself fairly launched on a satisfactory little affair. Many an old talent would come in useful. He acted for the rest of the day with a gusto of professional interest. For an hour or two he stayed at home. No one came, however, to call him to account. Leaving word that he would soon be back, he left in search of a man to act for him. He remembered a Russian he had had some talk with at the Studio, and whom he had once visited. He was celebrated for having had a duel and blinded his opponent. His instinct now led him to this individual, who has already been seen in action. His qualifications for a second were quite unique.
Kreisler found him just finishing work. He had soon explained what he required of him. With great gravity he set forth his attachment for a “beautiful girl,” the discreditable behaviour of the Russian in seeking to prejudice her against him. In fact, he gave an entirely false picture of the whole situation. His honourmustnow be satisfied. He would accept nothing less than reparation by arms. Such was Kreisler, but he washimselfvery cynically. He had explained this to Volker after the following manner: “I am a hundred different things; I am as many people as the different types of people I have lived amongst. I am a ‘Boulevardier’ (he believed that on occasion he answered fully to that description), I am a ‘Rapin’; I am also a ‘Korps-student.’”
In his account of how things stood he had, besides, led the Russian to understand that there was more in it all than it was necessary to say, and, in fact, than hecouldsay. Whatever attitude Soltyk might take up, this gentleman too knew, he hinted, that they had come to the point in their respective relations towards this “beautiful girl” at which one of themmust disappear. In addition, he, Kreisler, had been grossly insulted in the very presence of the “beautiful girl” that afternoon. The Russian’s compatriot had used his cane. These latter were facts that would be confirmed later, for the physical facts at least could not be got round by Soltyk.
The Russian, Bitzenko by name, a solemnly excitable bourgeois of Petrograd, recognized a situation after his own heart. Excitement was a food he seldom got in such quantities, and pretending to listen to Kreisler a little abstractedly and uncertainly to start with, he was really from the first very much his man.
So Kreisler and his newly found henchman, silently and intently engaged on their evening’s business, have been accounted for. Soltyk had been discovered some quarter of an hour before Tarr’s appearance, and stared out of countenance for the whole of the time by Kreisler.
The indignation and flurry subsided; but the child of this eruption remained. The Polish party found the legacy of the uproar as cold as its cause had been hot. Bitzenko inspired respect as he scratched his beard, which smelt of Turkish tobacco, and wrinkled up imperturbably small grey eyes.
Then, the excitement over, the red mark on Soltyk’s cheek became merely a fact. One or two of his friends found themselves examining it obliquely, as a relic, with curiosity.
He had had his face smacked earlier in the day, as well. How much longer was his face going to go on being smacked? Here was this Russian still there. Therewasthe chance of an affair. A duel—a duel, for a change, in our civilized life;c’était une idée.
Who was the girl the Russian kept mentioning?Was she that girl he had been telling them about who had a man-servant? Kreisler was a Frei-Herr? The Russian had referred to him as “my friend the Frei-Herr.”
“Herr Kreisler does not wish to take further measures to ensure himself some form of satisfaction,” the Russian said monotonously.
“There is always the police for drunken blackguards,” Soltyk answered.
“If you please! That is not the way! It is not usually so difficult to obtain satisfaction from a gentleman.”
“But then I am not a gentleman in the sense that your friend Kreisler is.”
“Perhaps not, but a blow on the face⸺”
The little Russian said “blow on the face” in a soft inviting way, as though it were a titbit with powers of fascination of its own.
“But it is most improper to ask me to stand here wrangling with you,” he next said.
“You please yourself.”
“I am merely serving my friend Herr Kreisler. Will you oblige me by indicating a friend of yours with whom I can discuss this matter?”
The waiter who had brought in the card again approached their table. This time he presented Soltyk with a note, written on the café paper and folded in four.
Tarr had been watching what was going on with as much interest as his ruffled personal dignity would allow him to take. He did not believe in a duel. But he wondered what would happen, for he was certain that Kreisler would not let this man alone until something had happened. What would he have done, he asked himself, in Soltyk’s place? He would have naturally refused to consider the idea of a duel as a possibility. If you had to fight a duel with any man who liked to hit you on the head—Kreisler, moreover, was not a man with whom a duel need be fought. He was in a weak position in that way, in spite of the additional blacking on his boots. Tarrhimself, of course, could have taken refuge in the fact that Englishmen do not duel. But what would have been the next step, this settled, had he been in Soltyk’s shoes? Kreisler was waiting at the door of the café. If his enemy got up and went out, at the door he would once more have his face smacked. His knowledge of Kreisler convinced him that that face would be smacked all over thequartier, at all hours of the day, for many days to come. Kreisler, unless physically overwhelmed, would smack it in public and in private until further notice. He would probably spit in it, after having smacked it, occasionally. So Kreisler must be henceforth fought by his victim wherever met. Would this state of things justify the use of a revolver? No. Kreisler should be maimed. It all should be prepared with great thoroughness; exactly the weight of stick, etc. The French laws would allow quite a bad wound. But Tarr felt that the sympathetic young Prussian-Pole would soon have Bitzenko on his hands as well. Bitzenko was very alarming.
Kreisler, although evicted from the café, had been allowed by the waiters to take up his position on a distant portion of the terrace. There he sat with his legs crossed and his eye fixed on the door with a Scottish solemnity. He was an object of considerable admiration to thegarçons. His coolness and persistence appeared to them amusing and typical. His solemnity aroused their wonder and respect. He meant business. He was behaving correctly.
Soltyk opened the note at once.
On it was written in German:
“To the cad Soltyk“If you make any more trouble about appointing seconds, and delay the gentlemen who have consented to act for me, I shall wait for you at the door and try some further means of rousing you to honourable action.”
“To the cad Soltyk
“If you make any more trouble about appointing seconds, and delay the gentlemen who have consented to act for me, I shall wait for you at the door and try some further means of rousing you to honourable action.”
A little man sitting next to Soltyk with an eloquent, sleek lawyer’s face took the letter as though it hadbeen a public document and read it. He bent towards his friend and said:
“What is really the matter with this gentleman?”
Soltyk shrugged his shoulders.
“He’s a brute, and he is a little crazy as well. He wants to pick a quarrel with me, I don’t know why.”
“He means trouble. Doesn’t he want to be taken seriously, only? Let his shaggy friend here have a chat with a friend of yours. He may be a nuisance—”
“What rot! Why should one, Stephen? If he comes for me at the door, let him! I wish that little man there would go away. He has annoyed us quite enough.”
“Louis, will you give me permission to speak to him on your behalf?”
“If that will give you any satisfaction.”
Stephen (Staretsky) got up and put himself at Bitzenko’s disposition. The whole party became tumultuous at this.
“What the devil are you up to, Stephen? Let them alone.”
“You’re not going⸺?”
“Tell them to go to hell!”
“Stephen, come back, you silly fool!”
Stephen Staretsky smiled at this with a sort of worldly indulgence. “You don’t understand. This is the best thing to do,” he seemed to say.
“Do you want this to last the whole evening?” he asked the man nearest him.
He followed Bitzenko out, and Tarr followed Bitzenko.
They went over to a small, gaudy, quiet café opposite, Kreisler watching them, but still with his eye on the door near at hand.
Tarr was amused now at his position of dummy. He enjoyed crossing the road under Kreisler’s eye, in his service. The evening’s twists were very comic.
Imaginative people are easy to convince of the naturalness of anything; and the Russian was the prophet of the necessity of this affair. Stephen was not convinced; but he soon made up his mind that Bitzenko was either Kreisler’s accomplice in some scheme or at least had made up his mind that there could only be one ending to the matter.
He went back to the café and, sitting down beside Soltyk again, said:
“I’m afraid I was mistaken, Louis. Your German means to fight you or else he has some little game. If you’re sure there’s nothing in it, you must tell him and his little Russian to go to the devil.”
While Stephen Staretsky had been away one of Soltyk’s friends told them about Bitzenko.
“Don’t you know him, Louis? Maiewski used to know him. He lives in one of those big studios, Rue Ulm, near the Invalides. Il a du pognon, il parait.”
Soltyk began patting his cheek gently. But his vanity ached steadily inside.
“What is his name?” asked another.
“Bitzenko. He once had a duel and blinded a man.”
Soltyk looked up and stopped patting his cheek.
“How? Blinded him?” somebody asked.
“Yes, blinded him.”
The blows began to take effect, the atmosphere becoming somehow congenial to them. When Stephen Staretsky delivered his message Soltyk was losing his self-control. The opportunity of killing this obnoxious figure offered him so obstinately by Bitzenko—whom he disliked even more—began to recommend itself to him. Thiscommis voyageursent to press the attractions of destruction had won his point.
Soltyk had been silent. He had been twisting up the corners of a newspaper on the table before him, and appeared struck lazy, into a kind of sullen sleepiness and detachment resembling despair.
“Ask him,” he said suddenly to Staretsky, “what he wants.”
“What do you mean?”
Soltyk answered irritably, “Why, what they want: what sort of a duel he wants and when.” “Duel” was said as though it were a common object. “Settle it quickly and let’s get all this nonsense over, since you have begun negotiations.”
Stephen Staretsky stared at him.
“You don’t mean—? I have not been negotiating. I simply⸺”
The others once more clamoured, after a moment of astonishment.
“You don’t mean to say, Louis, you’re going⸺?”
“What nonsense, what utter nonsense! What can you be thinking of?”
“If Bitzenko comes in again, pay no attention to him! What possesses you, Louis! Whatever possesses you, Louis!”
Soltyk looked angrily at his friends without replying.
“Staretsky, arrange that, do you mind?” he said when the exclamations stopped. “But for Heaven’s sake get it finished quickly. This is becoming boring.”
Staretsky said, leaning on the back of Soltyk’s chair, with authority:
“Don’t be absurd, Louis: don’t be absurd. You must refuse to listen to him. All that rot about libelling and the ‘beautiful girl’: my God, man, you’re not going to take that seriously?”
“Of course not. But I shall fight the German clown. I want to. This is becoming ridiculous.”
Soltyk had made up his mind. He would never have armed himself and shot Kreisler in the street. That would have been too ridiculous. It would have had the touch of passion and intimacy of acrime passionel. It would only have been dignified for an inhabitant of Nevada.
He did not regard this as a duel, but a brawl, ordered by the rules of “affairs of honour.” If a drunken man or anapacheattacked you the best thing to do would be to fight. If he offered to “fight you fair”—puttingit in that way—thenthatwould be the best thing, too, no doubt.
But Bitzenko really had brought him to this. Kreisler alone could never have hoped to compass anything approaching a duel with him.
Stephen Staretsky overwhelmed him with expostulation—even reproaches. His voice rose and fell in a microscopic stream of close-packed sound. His face became shiny and the veins appeared in it. He begged Soltyk to think of his friends! He gathered his arguments up in the tips of his fingers in little nervous bunches and held them under his friend’s nose, as though asking him to smell them. And then, with a spasm of the body, a vibrating twang on some deep chord in his throat, he dashed his gathered fingers towards the floor.
In face of this attack it was impossible, even had he wished to do so, for Soltyk to reconsider his decision. The others, too, sat for the most part watching him.
Bitzenko appeared again. Soltyk became pale at the sight of this sinister figure, so bourgeois, prepossessing, and bearded, with its legend of blindings and blood and uncanny tenacity as a second.
He turned to a good-looking, sleek, sallow companion at his elbow.
“Khudin, will you act for me, as Stephen won’t?”
Stephen Staretsky rose. A superfine sweat moistened his skin. His extraordinary volubility was tucked away somewhere in him in a flash, in a satisfied and polished acrobatic, and he faced the Russian. Khudin rose at the same time. Bitzenko had won.
Tarr was astonished at the rapid tragic trend of these farcical negotiations.
“How angry that man must be to do that,” he thought. But he had not been smacked the evening before; yet he remembered he had been passably angry.
Otto Kreisler, when he had entered the Café Souchet, had been anxious. His eyes had picked out Soltyk in a delicate flurry. He had been afraid that he might escape him. Soltyk looked so securely bedded in life, and he wanted to wrench him out. He was not at all bad-tempered at the moment. He would have extracted him quite “painlessly” if required. But bleeding and from the roots, he must come out! (Br-r-rr. The Bersaker rage!)
He was quite quiet and well-behaved; above all things,well-behaved! The mood he had happened on for this particular phase of his action was a virulent snobbery. He was a painful and blushing snob! He had, at his last public appearance, taken the rôle of a tramp-comedian. He had invited every description of slight and indignity. The world seemed to wish to perpetuate this part for him. But he would not play! He refused! A hundred times, he refused!
He remembered with eagerness that he was a German gentleman, with auniversity education; who had never worked;a member of an honourable family! He remembered each detail socially to his advantage, realizing methodically things he had from childhood accepted and never thought of examining. But he had gone a step further. He had arbitrarily revived the title of Frei-Herr that, it was rumoured in his family, his ancestors had borne. With Bitzenko he had referred to himself as the Frei-Herr Otto Kreisler. Had the occasion allowed, he would have been very courteous and gentle with Soltyk, merely to prove what a gentleman he was! But, alas, nothing but brutality (against the grain—the noble grain—as this went!) would achieve his end.
And the end was still paramount. His snobbery was the outcome of this end, of his end. It was, in this obsession of disused and disappearing life, the wild assertion of vitality, the clamour for recognitionthat life and the beloved self were still there, that brought out the reeking and brand-new snob. He was almost dead (he had promised his father his body for next month, and must be punctual), but people already had begun treading on him and striking matches on his boots. As to fighting with a man who was practically dead, to all intents and purposes, one mass of worms—a worm, in short—that was not to be expected of anybody.
So he became a violent snob.
It was Soltyk’s rude behaviour on the day before in the presence of Anastasya that had set him raving on this subject. The Russian Pole was up against a raving snob whose social dignity he had wounded.
Bitzenko and Kreisler came out to get Louis Soltyk like two madmen, full of solemn method and with miraculous solidarity. Their schemes and energies flew direct from mind to mind, without the need for words. Bitzenko with his own hand had brushed the back of Kreisler’s coat; on tiptoe doing this he looked particularly childlike. They were together there in Kreisler’s room before they started like two little boys dressing up in preparation for some mischief.
Kreisler had fixed his eyes on Soltyk from his table with alert offensiveness. The prosperous appearance of the Poles annoyed him deeply. Their watches were all there, silk handkerchiefs slipped up their sleeves; they looked sleek and new. A gentle flame of social security and ease danced in their eyes and gestures. He was out in the dark, they were in a lighted room! He wished their fathers’ affairs might deteriorate and their fortunes fall to pieces; that their watches could be stolen, and their restaurant-tick attacked by insidious reports! And as he watched them he felt more and more an outcast, shabbier and shabbier. He saw himself the little official in a German provincial town that his father’s letter foreshadowed.
One or two of them pointed him out to Soltyk, and it was a wounding laugh of the latter’s that brought him to his feet.
As he was slapping his enemy he woke up out of his nightmare. He was like a sleeper having the first inkling of his solitude when he is woken by the climax of his dream, still surrounded by tenacious influences. But had any one struck him then, the blow would have had as little effect as a blow aimed at a waking man by a phantom of his sleep. The noise around him was a receding accompaniment.
Then he felt hypnotized by Soltyk’s quietness. The sweet white of the face made him sick. To overcome this he stepped forward again to strike the dummy once more, and then it moved suddenly. As he raised his hand his glasses almost slipped off, and at that point he was seized by thegarçons. Hurried out on to the pavement, he could still see, at the bottom of a huge placid mirror just inside the café, the wriggling backs of the band of Poles. Drawing out his card-case, he had handed the waiter a visiting-card. The waiter at first refused it. He turned his head aside vaguely, as a dog does when doubtful about some morsel offered him; then he took it. Kreisler saw in the mirror the tearing up of his card. Fury once more—not so much because it was a new slight as that he feared his only hope, Soltyk, might escape him.
The worry of this hour or so in which Bitzenko was negotiating told on him so much that when at last his emissary announced that an arrangement had been come to in the sense he wished, he questioned him incredulously. He felt hardly any satisfaction, reaction setting in immediately.
Bitzenko went back to Kreisler’s door with him and, promising to return within half an hour, left him. Tarr having, as he had stipulated, left when the talking was over, Bitzenko first went in search of a friend to serve as second. The man he decided on was already in bed, and at once, half asleep, without preparation of any sort, consented to do what was asked of him.
“Will you be a second in a duel to-morrow morning at half-past six?”
“Yes.”
“At half-past six?”
“Yes.” And after a minute or two, “Is it you?”
“No, a German friend of mine.”
“All right.”
“You will have to get up at five.”
Bitzenko’s friend was a tall, powerfully built young Russian painter, who, with his great bow-legs, would take up some straggling and extravagantly twisted pose of the body and remain immobile for minutes together, with an air of ridiculous detachment. This combination of a tortured, restless attitude, and at the same time statuesque tendency, suggested something like a contemplative acrobat or contortionist. A mouth of almost anguished attention and little calm indifferent eyes, produced similar results in the face.
Bitzenko’s next move was to go to his rooms, put a gently ticking little clock, with an enormous alarum on the top, under his arm, and then walk round once more to Otto Kreisler’s. He informed his friend of these last arrangements made in his interests. He suggested that it would be better for him to sleep there that night, to save time in the morning. In short, he attached himself to Kreisler’s person. Until it were deposited in the large cemetery near by, or else departed from the Gare du Nord in a deal box for burial in Germany, it should not leave him. In the event of victory, and he being no longer responsible for it, it should disappear as best it could. The possible subsequent conflict with the police was not without charm for Bitzenko. He regarded the police force, its functions and existence, as a pretext for adventure.
The light was blown out. Bitzenko curled himself up on the floor. He insisted on this. Kreisler must be fresh in the morning and do him justice. The Russian could hear the bed shaking for some time. Kreisler was trembling violently. A sort of exultation at the thought of his success caused this nervous attack. He had been quite passive since he had heard that all was well.
At about half-past four in the morning Kreisler was dreaming of Volker and a pact he had made with him in his sleep never to divulge some secret, which there was never any possibility of his doing in any case, as he had completely forgotten what it was. He was almost annihilated by a terrific explosion. With his eyes suddenly wide open, he saw the little clock quivering in the mantelpiece beneath its large alarum. When it had stopped Kreisler could hardly believe his ears, as though this sound had been going to accompany life, for that day at least, as a destructive and terrifying feature. Then he saw the Russian, already on his feet. His white and hairy little body had apparently risen energetically out of the scratch bedclothes simultaneously with the “going off” of his clock, as though it were a mechanism set for the same hour.
They both dressed without a word. Kreisler wrote a short letter to his father, entrusting it to his second.
Kreisler’s last few francs were to be spent on a taxi to take them to the place arranged on, outside the fortifications.
They found the other second sound asleep. Bitzenko more or less dressed him. They set out in their taxi to the rendezvous by way of the Bois.
The chilly and unusual air of the early morning, the empty streets and shuttered houses, destroyed all feeling of reality of what was happening for Kreisler. Had the duel been a thing to fear it would have had an opposite effect. His errand did not appear as an inflexible reality, either, following upon events that there was no taking back. It was a whim, a caprice, they were pursuing, as though, for instance, they had woken up in the early morning and decided to go fishing. They were carrying it out with a dogged persistency, with which our whims are often served.
He kept his thought away from Soltyk. He seemed a very long way off; it would be fatiguing for the mind to go in search of him.
When the scientist’s nature, with immensefugue,has induced a man to marry some handsome young lady—this feat accomplished, Nature leaves him practically alone, only coming back to give him a prod from time to time—assured that, like a little trickling stream, his life will go steadily on in the bed gauged for it by this upheaval. Nature, in Kreisler’s case, had done its work of another description. But she had left the Russian with him to see that all was carried out according to her wishes. Kreisler’s German nature that craved discipline, a course marked out, had got more even than it asked for. It had been presented with a mimic Fate.
But Bitzenko evidently took his pleasure morosely. The calm and assurance of the evening before had given place to a brooding humour. He was only restored to a silent and intense animation on hearing his “Browning” speak. He produced this somewhere in the Bois, and insisted on his principal having a little practice as they had plenty of time to spare. This was a very imprudent step. It might draw attention to their movements. Kreisler proved an excellent shot. Then the Russian himself, with impassible face, emptied a couple of chambers into a tree-trunk. He put his “Browning” back into his pocket hastily after this, as though startled at his own self-indulgence.
A piece of waste land, on the edge of a wood, well hidden on all sides, had been chosen for the duel.
The enemy was not on the ground. Kreisler’s passivity still subsisted. So far he had felt that Accident had been dealt a shrewd blow and brought to its knees. He was in good hands. Until this was all over he had nothing to worry about.
Fresh compartment. The duel became for him, as he stood on the damp grass, conventional. It was a duel like another. He was seeking reparation by arms. He had been libelled and outraged. “A beautiful woman” was at the bottom of it. Life had no value for him!Tant pisfor the other man who had been foolhardy enough to cross his path. His coat-collar turned up, he looked sternly towardsthe road, his moustaches blowing a little in the wind. He asked Bitzenko for a cigarette. That gentleman did not smoke, but the other Russian produced a khaki cigarette with a long mouthpiece. He struck a light. As Kreisler lit his cigarette at it, his hand resting against the other’s, a strange feeling shot through him at the contact of this flesh. He moistened his lips and spat out a piece of the mouthpiece he had bitten through.
The hour arranged came round and there was still no sign of anybody. The possibility of a hitch in the proceedings dawned on Kreisler. Personal animosity for Soltyk revived. That idea of obstinacy in a caprice, instead of merely carrying out something prearranged and unavoidable, despite his passivity, had proved really the wakefulness of his will. He looked towards his companions, alone there on the ground of the encounter. They were an unsatisfactory pair, after all. They did not look a winning team. He reproached himself for having hit just on this Russian for assistance.
Bitzenko, on the other hand, was deep in thought. He was rehearsing his part of second. The duel in which he had blinded his adversary was a figment of his boyish brain, confided with tears in his voice one evening to a friend. His only genuine claim to activity was that, in a perfect disguise, he had assisted the peasants of his estate to set fire to his little Manor House during the revolution of 1906 for the fun of the thing and in an access of revolutionary sentiment. Afterwards he had assisted the police with information in the investigation of the affair, also anonymously. All this he kept to himself. He referred to his past in Russia in a way that conjured up more luridness than the flames of his little château (which did not burn at all well) warranted.
Bitzenko was quite in his element climatically; whereas Kreisler felt his hands getting so cold that he thought they might fail him in the duel.
But a car was heard beyond the trees on the Paris road. This sound in the listless blur of nature wasmasterful in its significance. It struck steadily and at once into brutish apathy. It so plainly knew what it wanted. It had perhaps outstripped men in that. Men in their soft bodies still contained the apathy of the fields. Their mind had burst out of them and taken these crawling pulps up on its rigid back.
It was Staretsky’s car. With its load of hats it drew up. The four members of the other party came on to the field, the fourth a young Polish doctor. They walked quickly. Bitzenko went to meet them. Staretsky protested energetically that the duel must not proceed.
“It must—not—go—on! Should anything happen—you must allow me to say, should anything happen—the blood of whoever falls will be at your door!” But he felt all the same that the prospect of having a little pond of blood at his door was an alluring one for Bitzenko.
“Has not your principal seen that in accepting this duel, M. Soltyk had proved his respect for Herr Kreisler’s claim? The attitude your principal attributed to him isnothis attitude⸺”
Bitzenko stiffened.
“Is there anything in Herr Kreisler that would justify M. Soltyk in considering that he was condescending⸺?”
The little Russian kept up his cunning and baffling wrangle. Soltyk’s eyes steadily avoided Kreisler’s person. He hoped this ridiculous figure might make some move enabling them to abandon the duel. But the idea of a favour coming from such a quarter was repellent. His stomach had been out of order the day before—he wondered if it would surge up, disgrace him. He might be sick at any moment. He saw himself on tiptoe, in an ignominious spasm, the proceedings held up, friends and enemies watching. He kept his eyes off Kreisler as a man on board ship keeps his eyes off a dish of banana fritters or a poached egg.
Kreisler, from twenty yards off, stared through hisglasses at the group of people he had assembled, as though he had been examining the enemy through binoculars. Obediently, erect and still, he appeared rather amazed at what was occurring. Soltyk, in rear of the others, struggled with his bile. He slipped into his mouth a sedative tablet, oxide of bromium and heroin. This made him feel more sick. For a few moments he stood still in horror, expecting to vomit at every moment. The blood rushed to his head and covered the back of his neck with a warm liquid sheet.
Kreisler’s look of surprise deepened. He had seen Soltyk slipping something into his mouth, and was puzzled and annoyed, like a child. What was he up to? Poison was the only guess he could give. What on earth⸺?
Having taken part in manymensurshe knew that for this very serious duel his emotions were hardly adequate. His nervous system was as quiescent as a corpse’s. He became offended with his phlegm. All this instinctive resistance to the idea of Death, the indignity of being nothing, was rendered empty by his premature insensitiveness. He tried to visualize and feel. In a few minutes he might be dead! That had so little effect that he almost laughed.
Then he reflected that that man over there might in a few minutes be wiped out. He would become a disintegrating mess, uglier than any vitriol or syphilis could make him. All that organism he, Kreisler, would be turning into dung, as though by magic. He, Kreisler, is insulted. The sensations and energies of that man deny him equality of existence. He, Kreisler, lifts his hand, presses a little bar of steel, and the other is swept away into the earth. Heaven knows where the insulting spirit goes to. But thephysical disfigurementat least is complete. He went through it laboriously. But it fell flat as well. He was too near the event to benefit by his fancy. Possibilities were weakened by the nearness of Certainty.
His momentary resentment with Bitzenko survived, and he next became annoyed at being treated like an object, as he felt it. He was not deliberately conscious of much. But, try as he would to elude the disgraces and besmirchings of death, people refused to treat him as anything but a sack of potatoes.
There four or five men had been arguing about him for the last five minutes, and they had not once looked his way. But clearly Bitzenko was defendinghisduel.
Why should Bitzenko go on disposing of him in this fashion? He 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 real and romantic origin rose hotly round his heart. Helovedthat man! But because he loved him he wished to plunge a sword into him, to plunge it in and out and up and down! Why had pistols been chosen?
He would let him off for two pins! 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 way. He was now aKnabe. 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!”
They all turned towards the other principal to the duel, standing some yards on the other side of them.
Head thrown back and eyes burning, Soltyk gazed at Kreisler. It was genuine, but not very strong. If killing could be embodied in the organ thatsees—a new function of expression—a perfect weapon would exist. Only the intensest expression being effective, such spiritual blasting powers would be a solution of the arbitrary decisions of force. Words, glances, music are at present as indirect as hands and cannons. Such music might be written, however, that no fool, hearing it, could survive. Whether it throttled him in a spasm of disgust or of shame is immaterial. Soltyk’s battery was too conventional to pierce the layers of putrifying tragedy, Kreisler’s bulwark. It played to the limit of its power. 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.
Bitzenko came over and asked Kreisler if he still, for his part, was of the same mind, that the duel should go on. 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 said furiously. With a laugh at Bitzenko’s miserable face and evident pleasure at hisquick-change temperamental, facial agility, he left him, walking towards the other assistants.
Addressing Staretsky, his face radiating affability, stepping with caution, as though to avoid puddles, he said:
“I am willing to forgo the duel at once on one condition. If Herr Soltyk will give me a kiss, I will forgo the duel!”
He smiled archly and expectantly at Staretsky.
“I don’t know what you mean!”
“Why, a kiss. You know what a kiss is, my dear sir.”
“I shall consider you out of your mind, if⸺”
“That is my condition.”
Soltyk had come up behind Staretsky.
“What is yourcondition?” 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.
He had immobilized everybody by his rapid action. 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 all the earlier impulse. Action must be again begun right down from the root.
Kreisler thrust his mouth forward amorously, his body in the attitude of the eighteenth-century gallant, as though Soltyk had been a woman.
The will broke out frantically from the midst of bandages and a bulk of suddenly accruing fury. Soltyk tore athimselffirst, writhing upright, a statue’s bronze softening, suddenly, with blood. He became white and red by turns. 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. The hands flew at Kreisler’s throat. His nails made six holes in the flesh and cut into the tendons beneath. Kreisler was hurled about. He was pumped backwards and forwards. His hands grabbed a mass of hair; as a man slipping on a precipice gets hold of a plant. Then they gripped along the coat-sleeves, connecting him with the engine he had just overcharged with fuel. A sallow white, he became puffed and exhausted.
“Acha—acha—” a noise, the beginning of a word, came from his mouth. He sank on his knees. A notion of endless violence filled him. “Tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun!” He fell on 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.
Staretsky had said:
“Thatcrapuleis beneath contempt! Pouah!—I refuse to act. Whatever induced us⸺”
Bitzenko had begun a discourse. Staretsky turned on him, shrieking, “Foute-moi la paix, imbécile!”
At this Bitzenko rapped him smartly on the cheek. Staretsky, who spent his mornings sparring with a negro pugilist, gave him a blow between the eyes, which laid him out insensible.
Bitzenko’s friend, interfering when he saw this, seized Staretsky round the waist, and threw him down, falling with him.
The doctor and the other second, Wenceslas Khudin, went to separate Soltyk and Kreisler, scuffling and exhorting. The field was filled with cries, smacks, and harsh movements.
This Slav chaos gradually cleared up.
Soltyk was pulled off; Staretsky and the young Russian were separated. Bitzenko once more was onhis feet. Then they were all dusting their trousers, arranging their collars, picking up their 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 unable to help himself against Soltyk.
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 forces were disconnected. This physicalmêléehad been a disturbing interlude. He was extremely offended at it. His eyes rested steadily and angrily on Soltyk. This attempt on his part to escape into physical and secondary things he must be made to pay for! He staggered a little, with the dignity of the drunken man.