Tarr (Oxford World's Classics) (43 page)

‘Monsieur Bitzenko, this duel must not be proceeded with!’

‘On no account!’ exclaimed Khudin emphatically. ‘It is monstrous!’

‘That is a point of view, gentlemen, I cannot accept. On what grounds—?’

‘Our principal has proved his respect for Herr Kreisler’s claim by accepting this place of meeting.’

Bitzenko stiffened.

‘Is there anything in Herr Kreisler that would justify Monsieur Soltyk in considering that he was condescending—?’

‘The attitude attributed to our principal is not his attitude’ Jan then said, looking at the ground.

‘Is the implication that my principal has misrepresented the facts?’

Soltyk’s eyes steadily avoided Kreisler’s person. He hoped this ridiculous figure might make some move enabling them to abandon the duel. His stomach had been out of order the day before—he wondered if it would surge up, disgrace him: he might in fact be sick at any moment he felt: 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 bad sailor on board ship keeps his eyes off a plate of soup.

Kreisler, from a distance of twenty yards stared through his glasses at the group of people his energy had collected at that early hour of the morning, as though he had been examining the enemy through binoculars. Obediently erect and still, he looked 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 aniseed.
*
This made him feel more sick: for some moments he stood still in horror, expecting to vomit. 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 observed Soltyk slipping something into his mouth, and was puzzled and annoyed. What was he up to? Poison was the only guess he could make; but what was that for?

Having taken part in many Mensurs he knew that for this very serious duel his emotions were inadequate for the occasion: his nervous system was as dead as that of a corpse. He became offended with his phlegm: this wealth of instinctive resistance to the idea of Death, the indignity of being nothing, was rendered empty by his premature insensitiveness. In a few minutes he might be dead!—but how absurd—that had so little effect that he almost laughed.

Then, with better results, he occupied himself with the notion that that man yonder might in a few minutes be wiped out—he would become a disintegrating mess, more repulsive than vitriol or syphilis
*
could make him: all that organism he, Kreisler, would be turning into dung, as though by magic. He, Kreisler, is insulted: he is denied equality of existence, his favourite money-lender is corrupted and estranged: 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! Heaven cares! But the physical break-up at least is beautifully complete. He went through it with painstaking realism. But he was too near the event to benefit properly by his fancy: possibilities were weakened by the nearness of Certainty.

People refused to treat him as anything but a sack of potatoes, however. Four or five men had been arguing about him over there for the last five minutes and they had not once looked in his direction. He coughed to draw attention to himself. They all looked round in surprise.

Clearly Bitzenko was defending his duel. Why should Bitzenko go on disposing of him in this fashion? This busybody 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 origin but berserker stamp rose self-consciously in a hot gush around his heart. He
loved
that man! Na ja! it was certainly a sort of passion he had for him! But—mystery of mysteries!—because he loved him he wished to plunge a sword into him, to plunge it in and out and up and down! Oh why had pistols been chosen?

For two pins he would let him off! 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 manner. He was now a
Knabe
a
Bengel
—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! Tell him not to keep them to himself!’

They all turned towards the other principal to the duel, standing some yards beyond them. Head thrown back and eyes burning, Soltyk gazed at Kreisler. If killing could be embodied in the organ that
sees
a perfect weapon would exist: but Soltyk’s battery was too conventional to pierce the layers of putrefying tragedy, Kreisler’s bulwark. 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. ‘Don’t disturb yourself. Take things easy!’

Bitzenko came over and asked Kreisler if he still, for his part, was of the same mind, namely, that the duel should proceed. 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 exclaimed furiously.—With a laugh at Bitzenko’s miserable face, and with evident pleasure at his own ‘temperamental’ facial agility, the quick-change artist every inch, he left the Russian, walking towards the other assistants. Addressing Pochinsky, his face radiating affability, stepping with caution, as though to avoid puddles, he said in a finicky caressing voice:

‘I am willing to forgo the duel at once on one condition. Otherwise it must go on!’ he barked fiercely. ‘If Herr Soltyk will give me a kiss I will forgo the duel!’

He smiled archly and expectantly at Pochinsky.

‘I don’t know what you mean!’ Jan piped with a dark delighted snigger.

‘Why a kiss? You know what a kiss is, my dear sir.’

‘I shall consider you out of your mind. Men do not kiss men. Men
fight
—but kiss! That is not manly behaviour—.’

‘That is my condition.’

Soltyk had come up behind Pochinsky.

‘What is your
condition
?’ 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.

By his rapid action he had immobilized everybody. 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 the earlier impulse: action must again be begun right down from the root. Soltyk stared stupidly at him.

Kreisler thrust his mouth forward amorously, his body in the attitude of the Eighteenth-Century gallant, right toe advanced and pointed, as though Soltyk had been a woman.
*

Soltyk became white and red by turns: the will was released in a muffled explosion, it tore within at its obstructions, he writhed upright, a statue’s bronze softening, suddenly, with blood. 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 and the hands become claws flew at Kreisler’s throat. His nails made six holes in the flesh and cut into the tendons beneath: his enemy was hurled about to left and right, he was pumped backwards and forwards. Otto’s hands grabbed a mass of hair, as a man slipping on a precipice seizes a plant: then they gripped along the coat sleeves, connecting him with the engine he had just overcharged with fuel: his face sallow white, he became puffed and exhausted.

‘Acha—acha—’ a noise, the beginning of a word, came from his mouth. He sank down on his knees. A notion of endless violence filled him. Tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun—tchun his blood ‘chugged’—he collapsed upon 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. Khudin had shouted:

‘That “crapule” is beneath contempt! Pouah! I refuse to act! Whatever induced us—! Pouah!’

Bitzenko had begun a discourse. Khudin turned upon him, shrieking ‘Foute-moi donc la paix, imbécile!’

At this Bitzenko had rapped him smartly upon the cheek. Khudin, who spent his mornings sparring with a negro pugilist, gave him a blow between the eyes, which laid him out insensible upon the field of honour. But Bitzenko’s russian colleague, interfering when he noticed this, seized Khudin round the waist and after a sharp bout, threw him, falling on top of him.

Jan, his face radiant with unaffected malice, hurried with the physician to separate Soltyk and Kreisler, scuffling and exhorting. The field was filled with cries, smacks, harsh movements and the shrill voice of Jan exclaiming ‘Gentlemen! gentlemen!’

This chaos gradually cleared up: Soltyk was pulled off; Khudin and the young Russian were separated by the surgeon with great difficulty. Bitzenko once more was upon his feet. Everybody on all hands was dusting trousers, arranging collars, picking up 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 quite unable to help himself against his antagonist. 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 energies became disconnected. This mêlée had been a most disturbing interlude: he was extremely offended by it. His eyes rested steadily and angrily upon Soltyk now. This attempt upon the part of his enemy to escape into physical and secondary things he must be made to pay for! Kreisler staggered a little, with the dignity of the drunken man: his glasses were still in place, they had weathered the storm, tightly riding his face, because of Soltyk’s partiality for his neck.

The physician, flushed from his recent work, took Soltyk by the arm.

‘Come along Louis: surely you don’t want any more of it? Let’s get out of this, I refuse to act professionally. This is a brawl not a duel. You agree with me Pochinsky don’t you?’

Soltyk was panting, his mouth opening and shutting. He first turned this way, then that: his actions were those of a man avoiding some importunity.

‘C’est bien, c’est bien!’ he gasped in French. ‘Mais oui, je sais bien! Laisse-moi.’
*

All his internal disorganization was steadily claiming his attention.

‘Mais dépêche-toi donc! Tu n’as plus rien à faire ici.’
*
Half supporting him, the doctor began urging him along towards the car: Soltyk, stumbling and coughing, allowed himself to be guided. Jan followed slowly, grinning.

Bitzenko, recuperating rapidly, observed what was happening. With a muffled cry for assistance, he started after them.

Kreisler saw all this at first with indifference. He had taken his handkerchief out and was dabbing his neck. Then suddenly, with a rather plaintive but resolute gait, he ran after his Second, his eye fixed upon the retreating Poles.

‘Hi! A moment! Your Browning! Give me your Browning!’ he said hoarsely. His voice had been driven back into the safer depths of his body: it was a new and unconvincing one. Bitzenko did not appear to understand.

Kreisler plucked the revolver out of his pocket with an animal deftness. There was a report. He was firing in the air.

The retreating physician had faced quickly round, dragging Soltyk. Kreisler was covering them with the Automatic.

‘Halt!’ he shouted ‘halt there! Not so fast! I will shoot you like a dog if you will not fight!’

Covering them, he ordered Bitzenko to take one of the revolvers provided for the duel over to Soltyk.

‘That will be murder—if you assist in this, sir, you will be participating in a murder! Stop this—.’

The doctor was jabbering at Bitzenko, his arm still through his friend’s. Soltyk stood wiping his face with his hand, his eyes upon the ground. His breath came heavily and he kept shifting his feet.

The tall young Russian stood in a twisted attitude, a gargoyle Apollo:
*
his mask of peasant tragedy had broken into a slight and very simple smile.

‘Move and I fire! Move and I fire!’ Kreisler kept shouting, moving up towards them, with stealthy grogginess. He kept shaking the revolver and pointing at them with the other hand, to keep them alive to the reality of the menace.

‘Don’t touch the pistols Louis!’ said the doctor, standing with folded arms beside his friend, as Bitzenko came over with his leather dispatch case. ‘Don’t touch them Louis! They daren’t shoot! They dare not. Don’t touch!’