The Doll (117 page)

But the greatest pleasure of all was that caused by the sight of young women, their graceful movements, smiling lips and inviting glances. Some looked him straight in the eye with an expression of sweetness and coquetry; Wokulski's heart beat faster, a disturbing current flowed through him from top to toe.

‘Pretty creatures!' he thought. Then, however, he remembered Mrs Wąsowska and had to admit that among all these pretty women, she was the prettiest and, still better, the most attractive … What a figure, what marvellous ankles and bosom and eyes, holding something of diamonds and velvet … He could have sworn he'd caught the perfume of her body, that he could hear her convulsive laughter, and his head reeled at the mere thought of getting close to her …

‘What a passionate woman she must be!' he murmured. ‘I'd bite her …'

The image of Mrs Wąsowska pursued him and tormented him so, that he suddenly conceived the idea of visiting her again that day, in the evening. ‘After all, she invited me to lunch and dinner,' he told himself, feeling that something was surging up in him.

‘What if she shows me the door? Why did she flirt with me? I knew all along that she didn't dislike me, well and I fancy her, which is something.'

Just then, a dark girl with violet eyes and the face of a child passed him, and Wokulski realised with amazement that he liked her too.

A few yards from his apartment, he heard someone shouting: ‘Hey! Hey! Staś!'

Wokulski looked around and caught sight of Szuman under the canopy of a café. The doctor abandoned an uneaten portion of ice cream, threw down a silver coin and hurried to him. ‘I was on my way to see you,' said Szuman, taking his arm. ‘You know, you haven't looked so well for a long time. I'll be bound that you're coming back into the firm, and will drive those Yids out … What a look! What an eye! At last I recognise the old Staś!'

They passed the gateway and stairs and went into the apartment. ‘And I was just thinking that a new sickness was threatening me,' said Wokulski, with a smile. ‘Would you like a cigar?'

‘Why should it?'

‘Just imagine, for perhaps an hour past, women have been making a tremendous impression on me … I'm shocked.'

Szuman laughed out loud: ‘Capital! … Instead of giving a dinner party to celebrate his happiness, he's afraid … Do you think you were in a healthy state of mind when you were crazy about one woman? You're well today, when you like them all, and have nothing more important to do then to strive for the favours of the woman who suits your taste best.'

‘Hm … But suppose she were a great lady?'

‘So much the better … Great ladies are far more appetising than chambermaids. Femininity gains greatly by chic and intelligence, and by pride above all. What ideal conversations await you, what trusting looks … They're worth ten times more, let me tell you.'

A shadow flitted across Wokulski's face.

‘Aha!' cried Szuman, ‘I can see the long ears of that creature on which Christ rode into Jerusalem … Why do you grimace? Flirt with great ladies only, they're the ones who are interested in democracy.'

The bell rang in the vestibule and Ochocki came in. He glanced at the excited doctor and inquired: ‘Do I interrupt you gentlemen?'

‘No,' Szuman replied, ‘you may even be helpful. For I am just advising Staś to cure himself by having a love affair, though … Not an ideal one. Enough of those!'

‘Well, sir, I would like to attend the lecture too,' said Ochocki, lighting the cigar offered him.

‘Now for an argument!' Wokulski muttered.

‘Not at all,' Szuman declared. ‘A man with your money could be completely happy, all that is needed for rational happiness are — to eat different dishes every day, have clean linen and to change one's residence and one's mistress every three months.'

‘There wouldn't be enough women to go around,' Ochocki interposed.

‘Leave that to the women, sir, and they'll make sure there is no shortage,' the doctor replied, scoffingly. ‘After all, the same diet applies to women as well.'

‘A quarterly change of diet?' asked Ochocki.

‘Certainly. Why should they be any worse off than we?'

‘But the tenth or twentieth change of diet wouldn't be interesting.'

‘Prejudice! Prejudice!' said Szuman. ‘You'll never notice or guess, especially if they assure you that you are only the second or fourth, and in any case you're the man they truly love and have been waiting for.'

‘Weren't you at Rzecki's?' Wokulski suddenly asked Szuman.

‘Well, I'm not writing him prescriptions for love,' the doctor replied. ‘The old man is going to rack and ruin.'

‘That's so, he looks terrible,' Ochocki put in.

The conversation shifted to Rzecki's state of health, then to politics, finally Szuman bade them goodbye.

‘A cynical devil, that,' Ochocki muttered.

‘He doesn't care for women,' Wokulski added, ‘and besides, he sometimes has bad days, and then he talks like a heretic.'

‘Not without justice, sometimes,' Ochocki said. ‘He hit the mark with those observations … For only an hour ago I had a solemn talk with my aunt, who insists on trying to make me get married, and claims that nothing so ennobles a man as the love of a good woman.'

‘He wasn't advising you, but me.'

‘As I listened to his argument, I too was thinking of you. I can imagine how you'd look if you changed your mistress every three months, if at some time all the people who now work towards providing your income were to stand before you and ask: “With what are you repaying us for our labour, poverty and shortened lives, part of which we hand over to you? With work, or advice, or example?”'

‘What sort of people work towards my income nowadays?' asked Wokulski. ‘I have withdrawn from trade and am putting my fortune into investments.'

‘If you are investing it in land mortgages, then the interest will be paid by farmhands: if in shares, then the dividends are provided by railroad workers, confectioners, weavers, goodness knows who.'

Wokulski became still more sombre. ‘Pray tell me, sir,' he said, ‘why should I think of that? Thousands of people live on their dividends, and don't trouble themselves with such problems.'

‘But then,' Ochocki muttered, ‘they are the others, not you. I have fifteen hundred roubles a year altogether, but it often strikes me that such a sum would provide subsistence to three or four people, and that some fellows are giving up their lives for me, or having to limit their own needs which are restricted enough in all conscience.'

Wokulski walked about the room. ‘When are you going abroad?' he suddenly inquired.

‘I don't even know that,' Ochocki replied sourly. ‘My debtor won't repay the money for a year. He'll pay me off simply by getting into another debt, but that won't be easy to do nowadays.'

‘Does he pay high interest?'

‘Seven per cent.'

‘Is it secure?'

‘The next best thing after the Credit Union.'

‘Suppose I gave you the cash and took over your rights, would you go abroad then?'

‘In a moment!' exclaimed Ochocki, leaping up. ‘Why should I settle down here? I'd marry well in sheer desperation, and later do as Szuman advises.'

Wokulski reflected. ‘What would be the harm in marrying?' he said in an undertone.

‘For Heaven's sake! … I couldn't support a poor wife, a rich one would make a sybarite out of me, and either would mean the end of my plans. What I need is some odd woman who would work in the laboratory with me, and where am I to find one?'

Ochocki seemed highly agitated, and made to leave.

‘So, my dear sir,' said Wokulski, bidding him goodbye, ‘we will discuss the matter of your capital. I'm prepared to pay you off.'

‘As you wish … I am not going to ask you to do it, but should be most grateful.'

‘When are you leaving for Zasławek?'

‘Tomorrow, I called to say goodbye to you.'

‘So the matter is settled,' Wokulski ended, pressing his hand. ‘You shall have the cash in October.'

After Ochocki's departure, Wokulski lay down to sleep. He had experienced so many powerful and conflicting impressions this day that he was unable to set them in order. It seemed to him that since the moment of his break with Izabela he had entered upon some terrible elevation, surrounded by precipices, and that only today had he gained its heights, or had emerged on a second level where he could see still unclear but totally new prospects.

For some time, hosts of women moved before his eyes, and especially Mrs Wąsowska: then again, he saw crowds of labourers and workmen, asking him what he had given them in exchange for his income. Finally he fell asleep.

He woke at six next morning, and his first impression was a feeling of freedom and vitality. He didn't really want to get up, but he was not suffering and he did not think about Izabela. That's to say, he thought of her, but he didn't have to: in any case, the recollection of her did not ravage him in its previous painful manner.

Then this absence of suffering alarmed him. ‘Is it a premonition?' he wondered. He recalled the events of the previous day: his memory and logic served him well. ‘Perhaps I am regaining my will-power,' he murmured.

For an experiment, he decided he would get up in five minutes, bathe, dress and then go at once for a walk in the Łazienki park. He gazed at the moving hands of his watch and inquired uneasily: ‘Perhaps I shan't be able to do it?'

The hand reached five minutes, and Wokulski rose without haste, but also without hesitation. He let the water into the bath himself, bathed, dried, dressed, and within half an hour was entering the Lazienki.

He was struck by the fact that all this time he had not thought of Izabela, but of Mrs Wąsowska. Obviously something had changed in him since yesterday; perhaps some paralysed cells in his brain had started functioning. The thought of Izabela had lost its domination over him.

‘What an extraordinary thing,' he thought. ‘Mrs Wąsowska has ejected that other woman, but any woman may replace Mrs Wąsowska. So I'm genuinely cured of my madness …'

He walked to the lake and gazed indifferently at the boats and swans. Then he turned down the path leading to the Orangery, where they had been together, and he told himself that … he would make a hearty breakfast. But as he was coming back the same way, rage overcame him and he rubbed out his own footsteps with the fierce joy of a mischievous urchin: ‘If only I could erase everything thus … That stone, and the ruins … Everything!'

At this moment he felt an unconquerable urge to destroy certain things awakening in him: but at the same time he realised it was an unhealthy symptom. It also gave him great satisfaction to be able to think calmly about Izabela, and even do her justice. ‘What did I get so angry about?' he asked himself. ‘If it hadn't been for her, I'd never have made a fortune … If it hadn't been for her and Starski, I wouldn't have gone to Paris for the first time, or met Geist, and wouldn't have cured myself of my stupidity at Skierniewice. After all, they are my benefactors, the pair of them. I ought even to have acted as a go-between for the fine pair, or at least facilitated their rendezvous. And to think that Geist's metal will one day emerge from such dirt!'

It was quiet and almost deserted in the Botanical Gardens. Wokulski passed the well and began slowly ascending the shadowy hill where, over a year ago, he had talked to Ochocki for the first time. The hill seemed to him to be the foundation of those enormous stairs, at the summit of which a statue of the mysterious woman had appeared to him. He could see her now, and noticed with emotion that the clouds surrounding her head had drawn aside for a moment. He caught sight of her stern face, loose hair and under her brass brows were living, leonine eyes, gazing at him with an expression of overwhelming might. He withstood that look, and suddenly felt he was growing … That already his head surpassed the highest trees in the park, and almost attained the naked feet of the goddess.

Now he realised that this pure and eternal beauty was Fame, and that on her summit there is no comfort other than work and danger.

He returned home more sorrowful, yet was still tranquil. It was as though a bond had been formed during his stroll between his future and that distant past, when he as a shop assistant had constructed machines for perpetual motion, or balloons that could be steered. But the last few years had only been an interruption and waste of time. ‘I must go away,' he told himself, ‘I must rest, then later … We'll see.'

That afternoon he sent a long telegram to Suzin in Moscow.

Next day, around one o'clock, when Wokulski was eating lunch, Mrs Wąsowska's footman entered and informed him she was waiting in the carriage. When he hurried into the street, Mrs Wąsowska told him to get in. ‘I am carrying you off,' said she.

‘To lunch?'

‘No, merely to the Łazienki. It will be safer for me to talk to you in front of witnesses, and in the open air.'

But Wokulski was sombre and said nothing.

In the park, they got out of the carriage, walked around the palace terrace and began strolling along the path adjacent to the amphitheatre.

‘You must go out among people, Mr Wokulski,' Mrs Wąsowska began. ‘You must rouse yourself from your apathy, otherwise a charming prize will slip through your hands.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Certainly. All the ladies are interested in your sufferings, and I wager that more than one would like to console you.'

‘Or amuse herself with my alleged sufferings, like a cat with a hurt mouse? No, madam — I need no ladies to console me, because I'm not suffering at all, or at least not through the fault of a woman.'

‘What's that?' Mrs Wąsowska exclaimed. ‘Anyone might suppose you really hadn't received a blow from tiny hands …'