Tarr. Wyndham Lewis
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Lowndes had spent two years in Berlin and Münich. Many of his friends were Austrian.
“German women? But I must know first why you ask me that question. You see, it’s a wide subject.”
“A wide subject—wide. Yes, very good! Ha ha!—Well, it is like this. I think that they are superior to Englishwomen. That is a very dangerous opinion to hold, as there are so many German women knocking about just now.—I want to rid myself of it.—Can you help me?”
Lowndes mused on the ground. Then he looked up brightly.
“No, I can’t. Because I share it!”
“Lowndes, I’m surprised at you. I never thought you were that sort of man!”
“How do you mean?”
“Perhaps you can help me nevertheless. Our ideas on females may not be the same.”
Tarr always embarrassed him. Lowndes huddled himself tensely together, worked at his pipe, and met Tarr’s jokes painfully. He hesitated to sally forth and drive the joke away.
“What are your ideas on females?” he asked in a moment.
“Oh, I think they ought to be convex if you are concave—stupid if you are intelligent, hot if you are cold, frigid if you are volcanic. Always white all over, clothes, underclothes, skin and all.—My ideas do not extend much beyond that.”
Lowndes organized Tarr’s statement, with a view to an adequate and light reply. He gnawed at his pipe.
“Well, German women are usually convex. There are also concave ones. There are cold ones and hot ones.” He looked up. “It all seems to depend what you are like!”
“I am cold; inclined to be fat; forte tête; and swarthy, as you see.”
“In that case, if you took plenty of exercise,” Lowndes undulated himself as though for the passage of the large bubbles of chuckle, “I should think that German women would suit you very well!”
Tarr rose.
“I wish I hadn’t come to see you, Lowndes. Your answer is disappointing.”
Lowndes got up, disturbed at Tarr’s sign of departure.
“I’m sorry. But I’m not an authority.” He leant against the fireplace to arrest Tarr’s withdrawal for a minute or two. “Are you doing much work?”
“I? No.”
“Are you ever in in the afternoons? I should like to come round some day⸺”
“I’m just moving into a new studio.”
Lowndes looked suddenly at his watch, with calculated, ape-like impulsiveness.
“Where are you having lunch? I thought of going down to Lejeune’s to see if I could come across a beggar of the name of Kreisler. He could tell you much more about German women than I can. He’s a German. Come along, won’t you? Are you doing anything?”
“No, I know quite enough Germans. Besides, I must go somewhere—I can’t have lunch just yet. Good-bye. Thank you for your opinion.”
“Don’t mention it,” Lowndes said softly, his head turned obliquely to his shoulder, as though he had a stiff neck, and balancing on his calves.
He was rather wounded, or brusque, by the brevity of Tarr’s visit. His “morning” had not received enough respect. It had been treated, in fact, cavalierly. His “work” had not been directly mentioned.
When Tarr got outside, he stood on the narrow pavement, looking into a shop window. It was a florist’s and contained a great variety of flowers. He was surprised to find that he did not know a single flower by name. He hung on in front of this shop before pushing off, as a swimmer does to a rock, waving his legs. Then he got back into the street from which his visit to Lowndes had deflected him. He let himself drift down it. He still had some way to go before he need decide between the Rue Martine (where Bertha lived) and the Rue Lhomond.
He had not found resolution in his talks. That already existed, the fruit of various other conversations on his matrimonial position—held with the victim, Fräulein Lunken, herself.
Not to go near Bertha was the negative programme for that particular day. To keep away was seldom easy. But ever since his conversation at the Berne he had been conscious of the absurd easiness of doing so, if he wished. He had not the least inclination to go to the Rue Martine!—This sensation was so grateful that its object shared in its effect. He determined to go and see her. He wanted to enjoy his present feeling of indifference. Where best to enjoy it was no doubt where she was.
As to the studio, he hesitated. A new situation was created by this new feeling of indifference. Its duration could not be gauged.—He wished to stay in Paris just then to finish some paintings begun some months before. He substituted for the Impressionist’s necessity to remain in front of the object being represented, a sensation of the desirability of finishing a canvas in the place where it was begun. He had an Impressionist’s horror of change.
So Tarr had evolved a plan. At first sight it was wicked. It was no blacker than most of his ingenuities. Bertha, as he had suggested to Butcher, he had in some lymphatic way, dans la peau. It appeared a matter of physical discomfort to leave her altogether. It must be done gradually. So he had thought that, instead of going away to England, where the separation might cause him restlessness, he had perhaps better settle down in her neighbourhood. Through a series of specially tended ennuis, he would soon find himself in a position to depart. So the extreme nearness of the studio to Bertha’s flat was only another inducement for him to take it. “If it were next door, so much the better!” he thought.
Now for this famous feeling of indifference. Was there anything in it?—The studio for the moment should be put aside. He would go to see Bertha. Let this visit solve this question.
CHAPTER IV
The new summer heat drew heavy pleasant ghosts out of the ground, like plants disappeared in winter; spectres of energy, bulking the hot air with vigorous dreams. Or they had entered into the trees, in imitation of Pagan gods, and nodded their delicate distant intoxication to him. Visions were released in the sap, with scented explosion, the spring one bustling and tremendous reminiscence.
Tarr felt the street was a pleasant current, setting from some immense and tropic gulf, neighboured by Floridas of remote invasions. He ambled down it puissantly, shoulders shaped like these waves; a heavy-sided drunken fish. The houses, with winks of the shocked clockwork, were grazed, holding along their surface thick soft warmth. It poured weakly into his veins. A big dog wandering on its easily transposable business, inviting some delightful accident to deflect it from maudlin and massive promenade. In his mind, too, as in the dog’s, his business was doubtful—a small black spot ahead in his brain, half puzzling but peremptory.
The mat heavy light grey of putty-coloured houses, like thickening merely of hot summer atmosphere without sun, gave a spirituality to this deluge of animal well-being, in weighty pale sense-solidarity. Through the opaquer atmosphere sounds came lazily or tinglingly. People had become a Balzacian species, boldly tragic and comic: like a cast of “Comédie Humaine” humanity off for the day, Balzac sleeping immensely in the cemetery.
Tarr stopped at a dairy. He bought saladed potatoes, a petit suisse. The coolness, as he entered, felt eerie. The dairyman, in blue-striped smock and black cap, peaked and cylindrical, came out of an inner room. Through its glasses several women were visible, busy at a meal. This man’s isolation from the heat and mood of the world outside, impressed his customer as he came forward with a truculent “Monsieur!” Tarr, while his things were done up, watched the women. The discreet voices, severe