Read Travesties for Free Online Page B

In fact, as her elder brother I have had to speak to her about it. Unrelieved truthfulness can give a young girl a reputation for insincerity. I have known plain girls with nothing to hide captivate the London season purely by discriminate mendacity.
    TZARA : Oh, I assure you Gwendolen has been in the Public Library. But I have had to admire her from afar, all the way from Economics to Foreign Literature.
    CARR : I had no idea Gwendolen knew any foreign languages, and I am not sure that I approve. It’s the sort of thing that can only broaden a girl’s mind.
    TZARA : Well, in this library Foreign Literature includes English.
    CARR : What a novel arrangement. Is any reason given?
    TZARA (
Impatiently
): The point is, Henry, I can’t get to speak to her alone.
    CARR : Ah, yes-her chaperone.
    TZARA : Chaperone?
    CARR : Yes – you don’t imagine I’d let my sister go unchaperoned in a city largely frequented by foreigners. Gwendolen has made a friend in Zurich. I have not met her but Gwendolen assures me that they are continuously in each other’s company, and from a description which I have elicited by discreet questioning she cannot but be a wholesome and restraining influence, being practically middle-aged, plainly dressed, bespectacled and answering to the name of Joyce, oh good heavens. Is he after her money?
    TZARA : Only in derisory instalments. He claims to be writing a novel, and has made a disciple out of Gwendolen. She transcribes for him, looks things up in works of reference, and so on. The poor girl is so innocent she does not stop to wonder what possible book could be derived from reference to Homer’s
Odyssey
and the Dublin Street Directory for 1904.
    CARR : Homer’s
Odyssey
and the Dublin Street Directory?
    TZARA : For 1904.
    CARR : I admit it’s an unusual combination of sources, but not wholly without possibilities. Anyway, there’s no need to behave as though you were married to her already. You are not married to her already, and I don’t think you ever will be.
    TZARA : Why on earth do you say that?
    CARR : In the first place, girls never marry Romanians, and in the second place I don’t give my consent.
    TZARA : Your consent!
    CARR : My dear fellow, Gwendolen is my sister and before I allow you to marry her you will have to clear up the whole question of Jack.
    TZARA : Jack! What on earth do you mean? What do you mean,Henry, by Jack? I don’t know anyone of the name of Jack.
    CARR (
Taking a library ticket from his pocket
): You left this here the last time you dined.
    TZARA : Do you mean to say you have had my library ticket all this time? I had to pay a small fine in replacing it.
    CARR : That was extravagant of you, since the ticket does not belong to you. It is made out in the name of Mr Jack Tzara, and your name isn’t Jack, it’s Tristan.
    TZARA : No, it isn’t, it’s Jack.
    CARR : You have always told me it was Tristan. I have introduced you to everyone as Tristan. You answer to the name of Tristan. Your notoriety at the Meierei Bar is firmly associated with the name Tristan. It is perfectly absurd saying your name isn’t Tristan.
    TZARA : Well, my name is Tristan in the Meierei Bar and Jack in the library, and the ticket was issued in the library.
    CARR : To write – or at any rate to draw words out of a hat – under one name, and appear at the Public Library under another is an understandable precaution – but I cannot believe that that is the whole explanation.
    TZARA : My dear Henry, the explanation is perfectly simple. One day last year, not long after the triumph at the Meierei Bar of our noise concert for siren, rattle and fire-extinguisher, a bunch of the boys were sinking a beer at the Cafe Zum Adler – myself, Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, Picabia … Arp, as usual, was inserting a warm croissant into his nose, I was quietly improving a Shakespeare sonnet with a pair of scissors.
    CARR : Which one?
    TZARA :