Kreisler was not cordial. He emitted sounds of surprise, shuffled2 his feet and blinked. But Tarr sat down in front of him on his own initiative. Then Kreisler, calling the gar?on, offered him a drink. Afterwards he settled down to contemplate3 Bertha’s Englishman, and await developments. He was always rather softer with people with whom he could converse4 in his own harsh tongue.
The causes at the root of Tarr’s present thrusting of himself upon Kreisler were the same as his later visits at the Lipmann’s. A sort of bath of Germans was his prescription5 for himself, a voluptuous6 immersion7. To heighten the effect, he was being German himself: being Bertha as well.
But he was more German than the Germans. Many aspects of his conduct were so un-German that Kreisler did not recognize the portrait or hail him as a fellow. Successive lovers of a certain woman fraternizing; husbands hobnobbing with their wives’ lovers or husbands of their unmarried days is a commonplace of German or Scandinavian society.
Kreisler had not returned to Bertha’s. He was too lazy to plan conscientiously8. But he concluded that she had better be given scope for anything the return of Tarr might suggest. He, Otto Kreisler, might be supposed no longer to exist. His mind was working up again for some truculent9 action. Tarr was no obstacle. He would just walk through Tarr like a ghost when he saw fit to “advance” again.
“You met Lowndes in Rome, didn’t you?” Tarr asked him.
[212]
Kreisler nodded.
“Have you seen Fr?ulein Lunken to-day?”
“No.” As Tarr was coming to the point Kreisler condescended10 to speak: “I shall see her to-morrow morning.”
A space for protest or comment seemed to be left after this sentence, in Kreisler’s still very “speaking” expression.
Tarr smiled at the tone of this piece of information. Kreisler at once grinned, mockingly, in return.
“You can get out of your head any idea that I have turned up to interfere11 with your proceedings12,” Tarr then said. “Affairs lie entirely13 between Fr?ulein Lunken and yourself.”
Kreisler met this assurance truculently14.
“You could not interfere with my proceedings. I do what I want to do in this life!”
“How splendid. Wunderbar! I admire you!”
“Your admiration15 is not asked for!”
“It leaps up involuntarily! Prosit! But I did not mean, Herr Kreisler, that my desire to interfere, had such desire existed, would have been tolerated. Oh, no! I meant that no such desire existing, we had no cause for quarrel. Prosit!”
Tarr again raised his glass expectantly and coaxingly16, peering steadily17 at the German. He said, “Prosit” as he would have said, “Peep-oh!”
“Pros’t!” Kreisler answered with alarming suddenness, and an alarming diabolical18 smile. “Prosit!” with finality. He put his glass down. “That is all right. I have no desire,” he wiped and struck up his moustaches, “to quarrel with anybody. I wish to be left alone. That is all.”
“To be left alone to enjoy your friendship with Bertha—that is your meaning? Am I not right? I see.”
“That is my business. I wish to be left alone.”
“Of course it’s your business, my dear chap. Have another drink!” He called the gar?on. Kreisler agreed to another drink.
Why was this Englishman sitting there and talking[213] to him? It was in the German style and yet it wasn’t. Was Kreisler to be shifted, was he meant to go? Had the task of doing this been put on Bertha’s shoulders? Had Tarr come there to ask him, or in the hope that he would volunteer a promise, never to see Bertha again?
On the other hand, was he being approached by Tarr in the capacity of an old friend of Bertha’s, or in her interests or at her instigation?
With frowning impatience19 he bent20 forward quickly once or twice, asking Tarr to repeat some remark. Tarr’s German was not good.
Several glasses of beer, and Kreisler became engagingly expansive.
“Have you ever been to England?” Tarr asked him.
“England?—No—I should like to go there! I like Englishmen! I feel I should get on better with them than with these French. I hate the French! They are all actors.”
“You should go to London.”
“Ah, to London. Yes, I should go to London! It must be a wonderful town! I have often meant to go there. Is it expensive?”
“The journey?”
“Well, life there. Dearer than it is here, I have been told.” Kreisler forgot his circumstances for the moment. The Englishman seemed to have hit on a means of escape for him. He had never thought of England! A hazy21 notion of its untold22 wealth made it easier for him to put aside momentarily the fact of his tottering23 finances.
Perhaps this Englishman had been sent him by the Schicksal. He had always got on well with Englishmen!
The peculiar24 notion then crossed his mind that Tarr perhaps wanted to get him out of Paris, and had come to make him some offer of hospitality in England. In a bargaining spirit he began to run England down. He must not appear too anxious to go there.
“They say, though, things have changed. England’s not what it was,” he said.
[214]
“No. But it has changed for the better.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“Quite true. The last time I was there it had improved so much that I thought of stopping. Merry England is foutu! There won’t be a regular Pub. in the whole country in fifty years. Art will flourish! There’s not a real gipsy left in the country. The sham25 art-ones are dwindling26!”
“Are the Zigeuner disappearing?”
“Je vous crois! Rather!”
“The only Englishmen I know are very sympathisch.”
They pottered about on the subject of England for some time. Kreisler was very tickled27 with the idea of England.
“English women—what are they like?” Kreisler then asked with a grin. Their relations made this subject delightfully28 delicate and yet, Kreisler thought, very natural. This Englishman was evidently a description of pander29, and no doubt he would be as inclined to be hospitable30 with his countrywomen in the abstract as with his late fiancée in material detail.
“A friend of mine who had been there told me they were very ‘pretty’”—he pronounced the English word with mincing31 slowness and mischievous32 interrogation marks in his distorted face.
“Your friend did not exaggerate. They are like languid nectarines! You would enjoy yourself there.”
“But I can’t speak English—only a little. ‘I spik Ingleesh a leetle,’” he attempted with pleasure.
“Very good! You’d get on splendidly!”
Kreisler brushed his moustaches up, sticking his lips out in a hard gluttonous33 way. Tarr watched him with sympathetic curiosity.
“But—my friend told me—they’re not—very easy? They are great flirts34. So far—and then bouf! You are sent flying!”
“You would not find anything to compare with the facilities of your own country. But you would not wish for that?”
[215]
“No?—But, tell me, then, they are cold?—They are of a calculating nature?”
“They are practical, I suppose, up to a certain point. But you must go and see.”
Kreisler ruminated35.
“What do you find particularly attractive about Bertha?” Tarr asked in a discursive36 way. “I ask you as a German. I have often wondered what a German would think of her.”
Kreisler looked at him with resentful uncertainty37 for a moment.
“You want to know what I think of the Lunken?—She’s a sly prostitute, that’s what she is!” he announced loudly and challengingly.
“Ah!”
When he had given Tarr time for any possible demonstration38, he thawed39 into his sociable40 self. He then added:
“She’s not a bad girl! But she tricked you, my friend! She never cared that”—he snapped his fingers inexpertly—“for you! She told me so!”
“Really? That’s interesting.—But I expect you’re only telling lies. All Germans do!”
“All Germans lie?”
“‘Deutsches Volk—the folk that deceives!’ is your philosopher Nietzsche’s account of the origin of the word Deutsch.”
Kreisler sulked a moment till he had recovered.
“No. We don’t lie! Why should we? We’re not afraid of the truth, so why should we?”
“Perhaps, as a tribe, you lied to begin with, but have now given it up?”
“What?”
“That may be the explanation of Nietzsche’s etymology41. Although he seemed very stimulated42 at the idea of your national certificate of untruthfulness. He felt that, as a true patriot43, he should react against your blue eyes, beer, and childish frankness.”
“Quatsch! Nietzsche was always paradoxal. He would say anything to amuse himself. You English are the greatest liars44 and hypocrites on this earth!”
[216]
“‘See the Continental45 Press’! You should not swallow that rubbish. I only dispute your statement because I know it is not first-hand. What I mean about the Germans was that, like the Jews, they are extremely proud of success in deceit. No enthusiasm of that sort exists in England. Hypocrisy46 is usually a selfish stupidity, rather than the result of cunning.”
“The English are stupid hypocrites then! We agree. Prosit!”
“The Germans are uncouth47 but zealous48 liars! Prosit!”
He offered Kreisler a cigarette. A pause occurred to allow the acuter national susceptibilities to cool.
“You haven’t yet given me your opinion of Bertha. You permitted yourself a truculent flourish that evaded49 the question.”
“I wish to evade50 the question.—I told you that she has tricked you. She is very malin! She is tricking me now; or she is trying to. She will not succeed with me! ‘When you go to take a woman you should be careful not to forget your whip!’ That Nietzsche said too!”
“Are you going to give her a beating?” Tarr asked.
Kreisler laughed in a ferocious51 and ironical52 manner.
“You consider that you are being fooled, in some way, by Fr?ulein Lunken?”
“She would if she could. She is nothing but deceit. She is a snake. Pfui!”
“You consider her a very cunning and double-faced woman?”
Kreisler nodded sulkily.
“With the soul of a prostitute?”
“She has an innocent face, like a Madonna. But she is a prostitute. I have the proofs of it!”
“In what way has she tricked me?”
“In the way that women always trick men!”
With resentment53 partly and with hard picturesque54 levity55 Kreisler met Tarr’s discourse56.
This solitary57 drinker, particularly shabby, who[217] could be “dismissed” so easily, whom Bertha with accents of sincerity58, “hated, hated!” was so different to the sort of man that Tarr expected might attract her, that he began to wonder. A certain satisfaction accompanied these observations.
For that week he saw Kreisler nearly every day. A partie à trois then began. Bertha (whom Tarr saw constantly too) did not actually refuse admittance to Kreisler (although he usually had first to knock a good many times), yet she prayed him repeatedly not to come any more. Standing59 always in a drooping60 and desperate condition before him, she did her best to avert61 a new outburst on his part. She sought to mollify him as much as was consistent with the most absolute refusal. Tarr, unaware62 of how things actually stood, seconded his successor.
Kreisler, on his side, was rendered obstinate63 by her often tearful refusal to have anything more whatever to do with him. He had come to regard Tarr as part of Bertha, a sort of masculine extension of her. At the café he would look out for him, and drink deeply in his presence.
“I will have her. I will have her!” he once shouted towards the end of the evening, springing up and calling loudly for the gar?on. It was all Tarr could do to prevent him from going, with assurances of intercession.
His suspicions of Tarr at last awoke once more. What was the meaning of this Englishman always there? What was he there for? If it had not been for him, several times he would have rushed off and had his way. But he was always there between them. And in secret, too, probably, and away from him—Kreisler—he was working on Bertha’s feelings, and preventing her from seeing him. Tarr was anyhow the obstacle. And yet there he was, talking and palavering, and offering to act as an intermediary, and preventing him from acting64. He alone was the obstacle, and yet he talked as though he were nothing to do with it, or at the most a casually65 interested third party. That is how Kreisler felt on[218] his way home after having drunk a good deal. But so long as Tarr paid for drinks he staved him off his prey66.
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1
canny
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| adj.谨慎的，节俭的 | |
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2
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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3
contemplate
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| vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视 | |
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4
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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5
prescription
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| n.处方，开药；指示，规定 | |
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6
voluptuous
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| adj.肉欲的，骄奢淫逸的 | |
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7
immersion
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| n.沉浸；专心 | |
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8
conscientiously
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| adv.凭良心地；认真地，负责尽职地；老老实实 | |
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9
truculent
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| adj.野蛮的，粗野的 | |
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10
condescended
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| 屈尊，俯就( condescend的过去式和过去分词 )； 故意表示和蔼可亲 | |
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11
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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12
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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13
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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truculently
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15
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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16
coaxingly
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| adv. 以巧言诱哄，以甘言哄骗 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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18
diabolical
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| adj.恶魔似的，凶暴的 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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20
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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21
hazy
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| adj.有薄雾的，朦胧的；不肯定的，模糊的 | |
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untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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23
tottering
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| adj.蹒跚的，动摇的v.走得或动得不稳( totter的现在分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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24
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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25
sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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26
dwindling
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| adj.逐渐减少的v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的现在分词 ) | |
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27
tickled
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| （使）发痒( tickle的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）愉快，逗乐 | |
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28
delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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pander
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| v.迎合；n.拉皮条者，勾引者；帮人做坏事的人 | |
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30
hospitable
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| adj.好客的；宽容的；有利的，适宜的 | |
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31
mincing
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| adj.矫饰的；v.切碎；切碎 | |
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32
mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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33
gluttonous
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| adj.贪吃的，贪婪的 | |
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34
flirts
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| v.调情，打情骂俏( flirt的第三人称单数 ) | |
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35
ruminated
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| v.沉思( ruminate的过去式和过去分词 )；反复考虑；反刍；倒嚼 | |
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36
discursive
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| adj.离题的，无层次的 | |
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37
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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38
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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thawed
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| 解冻 | |
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40
sociable
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| adj.好交际的，友好的，合群的 | |
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41
etymology
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| n.语源；字源学 | |
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42
stimulated
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| a.刺激的 | |
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43
patriot
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| n.爱国者，爱国主义者 | |
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44
liars
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| 说谎者( liar的名词复数 ) | |
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45
continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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46
hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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47
uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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48
zealous
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| adj.狂热的，热心的 | |
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49
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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50
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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51
ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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52
ironical
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| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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53
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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54
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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55
levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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56
discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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57
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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58
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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59
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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60
drooping
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| adj. 下垂的，无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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61
avert
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| v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等) | |
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62
unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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63
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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64
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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65
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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66
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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