CHAPTER IV
They went over to a small, gaudy, quiet café opposite, Kreisler watching them, but still with his eye on the door near at hand.
Tarr was amused now at his position of dummy. He enjoyed crossing the road under Kreisler’s eye, in his service. The evening’s twists were very comic.
Imaginative people are easy to convince of the naturalness of anything; and the Russian was the prophet of the necessity of this affair. Stephen was not convinced; but he soon made up his mind that Bitzenko was either Kreisler’s accomplice in some scheme or at least had made up his mind that there could only be one ending to the matter.
He went back to the café and, sitting down beside Soltyk again, said:
“I’m afraid I was mistaken, Louis. Your German means to fight you or else he has some little game. If you’re sure there’s nothing in it, you must tell him and his little Russian to go to the devil.”
While Stephen Staretsky had been away one of Soltyk’s friends told them about Bitzenko.
“Don’t you know him, Louis? Maiewski used to know him. He lives in one of those big studios, Rue Ulm, near the Invalides. Il a du pognon, il parait.”
Soltyk began patting his cheek gently. But his vanity ached steadily inside.
“What is his name?” asked another.
“Bitzenko. He once had a duel and blinded a man.”
Soltyk looked up and stopped patting his cheek.
“How? Blinded him?” somebody asked.
“Yes, blinded him.”
The blows began to take effect, the atmosphere becoming somehow congenial to them. When Stephen Staretsky delivered his message Soltyk was losing his self-control. The opportunity of killing this obnoxious figure offered him so obstinately by Bitzenko—whom he disliked even more—began to recommend itself to him. This commis voyageur sent to press the attractions of destruction had won his point.
Soltyk had been silent. He had been twisting up the corners of a newspaper on the table before him, and appeared struck lazy, into a kind of sullen sleepiness and detachment resembling despair.
“Ask him,” he said suddenly to Staretsky, “what he wants.”
“What do you mean?”
Soltyk answered irritably, “Why, what they want: what sort of a duel he wants and when.” “Duel” was said as though it were a common object. “Settle it quickly and let’s get all this nonsense over, since you have begun negotiations.”
Stephen Staretsky stared at him.
“You don’t mean—? I have not been negotiating. I simply⸺”
The others once more clamoured, after a moment of astonishment.
“You don’t mean to say, Louis, you’re going⸺?”
“What nonsense, what utter nonsense! What can you be thinking of?”
“If Bitzenko comes in again, pay no attention to him! What possesses you, Louis! Whatever possesses you, Louis!”
Soltyk looked angrily at his friends without replying.
“Staretsky, arrange that, do you mind?” he said when the exclamations stopped. “But for Heaven’s sake get it finished quickly. This is becoming boring.”
Staretsky said, leaning on the back of Soltyk’s chair, with authority:
“Don’t be absurd, Louis: don’t be absurd. You must refuse to listen to him. All that rot about libelling and the ‘beautiful girl’: my God, man, you’re not going to take that seriously?”
“Of course not. But I shall fight the German clown. I want to. This is becoming ridiculous.”
Soltyk had made up his mind. He would never have armed himself and shot Kreisler in the street. That would have been too ridiculous. It would have had the touch of passion and intimacy of a crime passionel. It would only have been dignified for an inhabitant of Nevada.
He did not regard this as a duel, but a brawl, ordered by the rules of “affairs of honour.” If a drunken man or an apache attacked you the best thing to do would be to fight. If he offered to “fight you fair”—putting it in that way—then that would be the best thing, too, no doubt.
But Bitzenko really had brought him to this. Kreisler alone could never have hoped to compass anything approaching a duel with him.
Stephen Staretsky overwhelmed him with expostulation—even reproaches. His voice rose and fell in a microscopic stream of close-packed sound. His face became shiny and the veins appeared in it. He begged Soltyk to think of his friends! He gathered his arguments up in the tips of his fingers in little nervous bunches and held them under his friend’s nose, as though asking him to smell them. And then, with a spasm of the body, a vibrating twang on some deep chord in his throat, he dashed his gathered fingers towards the floor.
In face of this attack it was impossible, even had he wished to do so, for Soltyk to reconsider his decision. The others, too, sat for the most part watching him.
Bitzenko appeared again. Soltyk became pale at the sight of this sinister figure, so bourgeois, prepossessing, and bearded, with its legend of blindings and blood and uncanny tenacity as a second.
He turned to a good-looking, sleek, sallow companion at his elbow.
“Khudin, will you act for me, as Stephen won’t?”
Stephen Staretsky rose. A superfine sweat moistened his skin. His extraordinary volubility was tucked away somewhere in him in a flash, in a satisfied and polished acrobatic, and he faced the Russian. Khudin rose at the same time. Bitzenko had won.
Tarr was astonished at the rapid tragic trend of these farcical negotiations.
“How angry that man must be to do that,” he thought. But he had not been smacked the evening before; yet he remembered he had been passably angry.