He had introduced himself—now for the second time—into Fr?ulein Lipmann’s ?sthetic saloon, after dining with her and her following at Flobert’s Restaurant. As inexplicable2 as Kreisler’s former visits, these ones that Tarr began to make were not so perfectly3 unwelcome. There was a glimmering4 of meaning in them for Bertha’s women friends. He had just walked in two nights before, as though he were an old and established visitor there, shaken hands and sat down. He then listened to their music, drank their coffee and went away apparently5 satisfied. Did he consider that his so close connexion with Bertha entitled him to this? It was at all events a prerogative6 he had never before availed himself of, except on one or two occasions at first, in her company.
The women’s explanation of this eccentric sudden frequentation was that Tarr was in despair. His separation from Bertha (or her conduct with Kreisler) had hit him hard. He wished for consolation7 or mediation8.
Neither of these guesses was right. It was really[200] something absurder than that that had brought him there.
Only a week or ten days away from his love affair with Bertha, Tarr was now coming back to the old haunts and precincts of his infatuation. He was living it all over again in memory, the central and all the accessory figures still in exactly the same place. Suddenly, everything to do with “those days,” as he thought of a week or two before (or what had ended officially then) had become very pleasing. Bertha’s women friends were delightful9 landmarks10. Tarr could not understand how it was he had not taken an interest in them before. They had so much of the German savour of that life lived with Bertha about them!
But not only with them, but with Bertha herself he was likewise carrying on this mysterious retrospective life. He was so delighted, as a fact, to be free of Bertha that he poetized herself and all her belongings11.
On this particular second visit to Fr?ulein Lipmann’s he met Anastasya Vasek. She, at least, was nothing to do with his souvenirs. Yet, not realizing her as an absolute new-comer at once, he accepted her as another proof of how delightful these people in truth were.
He had been a very silent guest so far. They were curious to hear what this enigma12 should eventually say, when it decided1 to speak.
“How is Bertha?” they had asked him.
“She has got a cold,” he had answered. It was a fact that she had caught a summer cold several days before.—“How strange!” they thought.—“So he sees her still!”
“She hasn’t been to Flobert’s lately,” Renée Lipmann said. “I’ve been so busy, or I’d have gone round to see her. She’s not in bed, is she?”
“Oh, no, she’s just got a slight cold. She’s very well otherwise,” Tarr answered.
Bertha disappears. Tarr turns up tranquilly13 in her place. Was he a substitute? What could all this[201] mean? Their first flutter over, their traditional hostility14 for him reawakened. He had always been an arrogant15, eccentric, and unpleasant person: “Homme égo?ste! Homme sensuel!” in Van Bencke’s famous words.
On seeing him talking with new liveliness, not displayed with them, to Anastasya, suspicions began to germinate16. Even such shrewd intuition, a development from the reality, as this: “Perhaps getting to like Germans, and losing his first, he had come here to find another.” Comfortable in his liberty, he was still enjoying, by proxy17 or otherwise, the satisfaction of slavery.
The arrogance18 implied by his infatuation for the commonplace was taboo19. He must be more humble20, he felt, and take an interest in his equals.
He had been “Homme égo?ste” so far, but “Homme sensuel” was an exaggeration. His concupiscence had been undeveloped. His Bertha, if she had not been a joke, would not have satisfied him. She did not succeed in waking his senses, although she had attracted them. There was no more reality in their sex relations than in their other relations.
He now had a closer explanation of his attachment21 to stupidity than he had been able to give Lowndes. It was that his artist’s asceticism22 could not support anything more serious than such an elementary rival, and, when sex was in the ascendant, it turned his eyes away from the highest beauty and dulled the extremities23 of his senses, so that he had nothing but rudimentary inclinations24 left.
But in the interests of his animalism he was turning to betray the artist in him. For he had been saying to himself lately that a more suitable lady-companion must be found; one, that is, he need not be ashamed of. He felt that the time had arrived for Life to come in for some of the benefits of Consciousness.
Anastasya’s beauty, bangles, and good sense were the very thing.
Despite himself, Sorbert was dragged out of his luxury of reminiscence without knowing it, and[202] began discriminating25 between the Bertha enjoyment26 felt through the pungent27 German medium of her friends, and this novel sensation. Yet this sensation was an intruder. It was as though a man having wandered sentimentally28 along an abandoned route, a tactless and gushing29 acquaintance had been discovered in unlikely possession.
Tarr asked her from what part of Germany she came.
“My parents are Russian. I was born in Berlin and brought up in America. We live in Dresden,” she answered.
This accounted for her jarring on his maudlin30 German reveries.
“Lots of Russian families have settled latterly in Germany, haven’t they?” he asked.
“Russians are still rather savage31. The more bourgeois32 a place or thing is the more it attracts them. German watering places, musical centres and so on, they like about as well as anything. They often settle there.”
“Do you regard yourself as a Russian—or a German?”
“Oh, a Russian. I?”
“I’m glad of that,” said Tarr, quite forgetting where he was, and forgetting the nature of his occupation.
“Don’t you like Germans then?”
“Well, now you remind me of it, I do:—Very much, in fact,” He shook himself with self-reproach and gazed round benignantly and comfortably at his hosts. “Else I shouldn’t be here! They’re such a nice, modest, assimilative race, with an admirable sense of duty. They are born servants; excellent mercenary troops, I understand. They should always be used as such.”
“I see you know them à fond.” She laughed in the direction of the Lipmann.
He made a deprecating gesture.
“Not much. But they are an accessible and friendly people.”
[203]
“You are English?”
“Yes.”
He treated his hosts with a warm benignity33 which sought, perhaps, to make up for past affronts34. It appeared only to gratify partially35. He was treating them like part and parcel of Bertha. They were not ready to accept this valuation, that of chattels36 of her world.
The two Kinderbachs came over and made an affectionate demonstration37 around and upon Anastasya. She got up, scattering38 them abruptly39 and went over to the piano.
“What a big brute40!” Tarr thought. “She would be just as good as Bertha to kiss. And you get a respectable human being into the bargain!” He was not intimately convinced that she would be as satisfactory. Let us see how it would be; he considered. This larger machine of repressed, moping senses did attract. To take it to pieces, bit by bit, and penetrate41 to its intimacy42, might give a similar pleasure to undressing Bertha!
Possessed43 of such an intense life as Anastasya, women always appeared on the verge44 of a dark spasm45 of unconsciousness. With their organism of fierce mechanical reactions, their self-possession was rather bluff46. So much more accomplished47 socially than men, yet they were not the social creatures, but men. Surrender to a woman was a sort of suicide for an artist. Nature, who never forgives an artist, would never allow her to forgive. With any “superior” woman he had ever met, this feeling of being with a parvenu48 never left him. Anastasya was not an exception.
On leaving, Tarr no longer felt that he would come back to enjoy a diffused49 form of Bertha there. The prolongations of his Bertha period had passed a climax50.
On leaving Renée Lipmann’s, nevertheless, Tarr went to the Café de l’Aigle, some distance away, but with an object. To make his present frequentation quite complete, it only needed Kreisler. Otto was[204] there, very much on his present visiting list. He visited him regularly at the Café de l’Aigle, where he was constantly to be found.
This is how Tarr had got to know him.
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1
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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glimmering
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| n.微光，隐约的一瞥adj.薄弱地发光的v.发闪光，发微光( glimmer的现在分词 ) | |
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5
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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6
prerogative
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| n.特权 | |
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7
consolation
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| n.安慰，慰问 | |
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mediation
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| n.调解 | |
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9
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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10
landmarks
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| n.陆标( landmark的名词复数 )；目标；（标志重要阶段的）里程碑 ~ (in sth)；有历史意义的建筑物（或遗址） | |
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belongings
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| n.私人物品，私人财物 | |
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enigma
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| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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tranquilly
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| adv. 宁静地 | |
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hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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15
arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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germinate
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| v.发芽；发生；发展 | |
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17
proxy
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| n.代理权，代表权；（对代理人的）委托书；代理人 | |
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18
arrogance
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| n.傲慢，自大 | |
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19
taboo
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| n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止 | |
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20
humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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asceticism
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| n.禁欲主义 | |
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extremities
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| n.端点( extremity的名词复数 )；尽头；手和足；极窘迫的境地 | |
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24
inclinations
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| 倾向( inclination的名词复数 )； 倾斜； 爱好； 斜坡 | |
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discriminating
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| a.有辨别能力的 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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pungent
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| adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的 | |
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sentimentally
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| adv.富情感地 | |
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29
gushing
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| adj.迸出的；涌出的；喷出的；过分热情的v.喷，涌( gush的现在分词 )；滔滔不绝地说话 | |
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30
maudlin
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| adj.感情脆弱的，爱哭的 | |
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31
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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32
bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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33
benignity
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| n.仁慈 | |
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34
affronts
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| n.（当众）侮辱，（故意）冒犯( affront的名词复数 )v.勇敢地面对( affront的第三人称单数 )；相遇 | |
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35
partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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36
chattels
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| n.动产，奴隶( chattel的名词复数 ) | |
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37
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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38
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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39
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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40
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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41
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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42
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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43
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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44
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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45
spasm
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| n.痉挛，抽搐；一阵发作 | |
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46
bluff
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| v.虚张声势，用假象骗人；n.虚张声势，欺骗 | |
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47
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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48
parvenu
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| n.暴发户，新贵 | |
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49
diffused
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| 散布的，普及的，扩散的 | |
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50
climax
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| n.顶点；高潮；v.(使)达到顶点 | |
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