In Paris Ernst Volker had found himself. It seemed especially constructed for him, such a wonderful, large, polite institution. No one looked at him because he was small. For money in Paris represented delicate things, in Germany chiefly gross ones. His money lent him more stature than anything else could, and in a much more dignified and subtle way than elsewhere. His talent benefited for the first time by his money. Heavy temperament, primitive talent, had their big place, but money had at last come into its own and got into the spiritual sphere. A very sensible and soothing spirit reigned in this seat of intelligence. A very great number of sensible, well-dressed figures perambulated all over these suave acres. Large tribes of “types” prosecuted their primitive enthusiasms in certain cafés, unannoyed by either the populace or the differently minded élite. The old romantic values he was used to in his Fatherland were all deeply modified. Money—that is luck and its power—was the genius of the new world. American clothes were adapted for the finer needs of the Western European.
On the evening following Kreisler’s arrival Volker had an engagement. The morning after that Kreisler turned up at half-past twelve. Volker was painting Fr?ulein Bodenaar. She was very smartly dressed, in a tight German way. He displayed a disinclination to make Kreisler and his sitter acquainted. He was a little confused. They arranged to meet at dinner-time. He was going to lunch with Fr?ulein Bodenaar.
Kreisler the night before had spent a good deal of money in the German paradise beyond the river. Volker understood by the particular insistent blankness of Kreisler’s eye that money was needed. He was familiar with this look. Kreisler owed him fifteen hundred marks. He had at first made an effort to pay back Volker money borrowed, when[77] his allowance arrived. But in Rome, and earlier for a short time in Münich, his friend’s money was not of so much value as it was at present. Ernst waived repayment in an eager, sentimental way. The debt grew. Kreisler had felt keenly the financial void caused by Volker’s going off to Paris. He had not formulated to himself the real reason of his following Volker. Nor had he taken the trouble to repudiate it. He was now in the position of a man separated for some months from his wife. He was in a luxurious hurry to see once more the colour of Volker’s gold.
Kreisler was very touchy about money, like many borrowers. He sponged with discrimination. He had not for some time required to sponge at all, as Volker amply met his needs. So he had got rather out of practice. He found this reopening of his account with little friend Ernst a most delicate business. It was worse than tackling a stranger. He realized there might be a modification of Volker’s readiness to lend. He therefore determined to ask for a sum in advance of actual needs, and by boldness at once re-establish continuity.
After dinner he said:
“You remember Ricci? Where I got my paints the first part of the time. I had some trouble with that devil before I left. He came round and made a great scandal on the staircase. He shouted ‘Bandit! Ha! ha! Sporca la tua Madonna!’—how do you say it?—‘Sporco Tedesco.’ Then he called the neighbours to witness. He kept repeating he was ‘not afraid of me.’ I took him by the ear and kicked him out!” he ended with florid truculence.
Volker laughed obsequiously but with discomfort. Kreisler solicited his sympathetic mirth with a masterful eye. He laughed himself, unnecessarily heartily. A scene of violence in which a small man was hustled, which Volker would have to applaud, was a clever prelude. Then Otto began to be nice.
“I am sorry for the little devil! I shall have the money soon. I shall send it him. He shall not suffer. Antonio, too. I don’t owe much. I had to[78] settle most before I left. Himmel! My landlord!” He choked mirthfully over his coffee a little, almost upsetting it, then mincingly adjusted the cup to his moustached lips.
If he had to settle up before he left, he could not have much now, evidently! There was a disagreeable pause.
Volker stirred his coffee. He immediately showed his hand, for he looked up and with transparent innocence asked:
“By the way, Otto, you remember Blauenstein at Münich??”
“You mean the little Jew from whom everybody used to borrow money?” Kreisler fixed him severely and significantly with his eye and spoke with heavy deliberation.
“Did people borrow money from him? I had forgotten. Yes, that’s the man. He has turned up here; who do you think with? With Irma, the Bohemian girl. They are living together—round the corner there.”
“Hum! Are they? She was a pretty little girl. Do you remember the night Von Gerarde was found stripped and tied to his door-handle? He assured me Irma had done it and had pawned his clothes.”
Was Volker thinking that Blauenstein’s famous and admitted function should be resorted to as an alternative for himself by Kreisler?
“Volker, I can speak to you plainly; isn’t that so? You are my friend. What’s more, already we have—” he laughed strongly and easily. “My journey has cost the devil of a lot. I shall be getting my allowance in a week or so. Could you lend me a small sum of money. When my money comes?”
“Of course! But I am hard up. How much—?” These were three jerky efforts.
“Oh, a hundred and fifty or two hundred marks.”
Volker’s jaw dropped.
“I am afraid, my dear Kreisler, I can’t—just now—manage that. My journey, too, cost me a lot. I’m[79] very sorry. Let me see. I have my rent next week? I don’t see how I can manage?”
Volker had a clean-shaven, depressed, and earnest face. He had always been honest and timid.
Kreisler looked sulkily at the tablecloth and knocked the ash sharply off his cigarette into his cup.
He said nothing. Volker became nervous.
“Will a hundred marks be of any use?”
“Yes.” Kreisler drew his hand over his chin as though stroking a beard down and then pulled his moustaches up, fixing the waitress with an indifferent eye. “Can you spare that?”
“Well—I can’t really. But if you are in such a position that?”
This is how he lost Volker. He felt that hundred marks, given him as a favour, was the last serious bite he would get. He only gradually realized of how much more worth Volker’s money now was, and what before was an unorganized mass of specie, in which the professional borrower could wallow, was now a sound and suitably conducted business. He met that night the new manager.
He was taken round to the Berne after dinner. He did not realize what awaited him. He found himself in the head-quarters of many national personalities. Politeness reigned. Kreisler was pleased to find a permanent vat of German always on tap. His roots mixed sluggishly with Ernst’s in this living lump of the soil of the Fatherland dumped down at the head of the Boulevard Pfeiffer.
The Germans he met here spoke a language and expressed opinions he could not agree with, but with which Volker evidently did. They argued genially over glasses of beer and champagne. He found his ticket at once. He was the vielle barbe of the party.
“Yes, I’ve seen Gauguins. But why go so far as the South Sea Islands unless you are going to make people more beautiful? Why go out of Europe? Why not save the money for the voyage?” he would bluster.
“More beautiful? What do you understand by[80] the word ‘beautiful,’ my dear sir?” would answer a voice in the service of new movements.
“What do I call beautiful? How would you like your face to be as flat as a pancake, your nostrils like a squashed strawberry, one of your eyes cocked up by the side of your ear? Would not you be very unhappy to look like that? Then how can you expect any one but a technique-maniac to care a straw for a picture of that sort—call it Cubist or Fauve or whatever you like? It’s all spoof. It puts money in somebody’s pocket, no doubt.”
“It’s not a question, unhappily, of how we should like our faces to be. It is how they are. But I do not consider the actual position of my eyes to be any more beautiful than any other position that might have been chosen for them. The almond eye was long held in contempt by the hatchet-eye?”
Kreisler peered up at him and laughed. “You’re a modest fellow. You’re not as ugly as you think! Nach! I like to find?”
“But you haven’t told us, Otto, what you call beautiful.”
“I call this young lady here”—and he turned gallantly to a blushing cocotte at his side—“beautiful, very beautiful!” He kissed her amid gesticulation and applause.
“That’s just what I supposed,” his opponent said with appreciation.
He did not get on well with Soltyk. Louis Soltyk was a young Russian, half Polish, who occasionally sat amongst the Germans at the Berne. Volker saw more of him than anybody. It was he who had superseded Kreisler in the position of influence as regards Volker’s purse. Soltyk did not borrow a hundred marks. His system was far more up to date. Ernst had experienced an unpleasant shock in coming into contact with Kreisler’s clumsy and slovenly, small-scale money habits again! Soltyk physically bore, distantly and with polish, a resemblance to Kreisler. His handsome face and elegance were very different. Kreisler and he disliked each[81] other for obscure physiological reasons: they had perhaps scrapped in the dressing-rooms of creation for some particular fleshly covering, and each secured only fragments of a coveted garment. In some ways, then, Soltyk was his efficient and more accomplished counterpart, although as empty and unsatisfactory as himself.
“Aber wo ist der deutsche Student?” Soltyk would ask, referring to him usually like that.
“He’s in good company somewhere!” Volker revealed Kreisler as a lady’s man. This satisfied Soltyk’s antipathy. The Russian kept an eye on Volker’s pocket while Kreisler was about. He had not only recognized in him a mysterious and vexing kinship, with his instinct; his sharper’s sense, also, noted the signs of the professional borrower, the most contemptible and slatternly member of the crook family. In an access of sentiment Ernst asked his new friend to try and sell a painting of Kreisler’s. Soltyk dealt in paintings and art objects. But Soltyk took him by the lapel of the coat and in a few words steadied him into cold sense.
“Non! Sois pas bête! Here,” he pulled out a handful of money and chose a dollar-piece. “Here—give him this. You buy a picture—if it’s a picture you want to buy—of Krashunine’s. Kreisler has nothing but Kreisler to offer. C’est peu!”
Ernst introduced Kreisler next to another sort of Paris compatriot. It was a large female contingent this time. He took him round to Fr?ulein Lipmann’s on her evening, when these ladies played the piano and met.
Kreisler felt that he was a victim of strategy. He puffed and swore outside, complained of their music, the coffee, their way of dressing.
The Lipmann circle could have stood as a model for Tarr’s Bourgeois-Bohemians, stood for a group.
For chief characteristic this particular Bourgeois-Bohemian set had the inseparability of its members. Should a man, joining them, wish to flirt with one[82] particularly, he must flirt with all—flatter all, take all to the theatre, carry the umbrellas and paint-boxes of all. Eventually, should he come to that, it is doubtful if a proposition of marriage could be made otherwise than before the assembled band! And marriage alone could wrench the woman chosen away from the clinging bunch.
Kreisler, despite his snorting, went again with Volker. The female charm had done its work. This gregarious female personality had shown such frank invitation to Volker that had any separate woman exhibited half as hospitable a front he would have been very alarmed. As it was, it had at first just fulfilled certain bourgeois requirements of his lonely German soul. Kreisler came a few weeks running to the Lipmann soirée. Never finding Volker there, he left off going as well. He felt he had been tricked and slighted. The ladies divined what had happened. Fr?ulein Lipmann, the leader, put a spiteful little mark down to each of their names.