The Doll (123 page)

By noon he had written two letters: one to Mrs Stawska, suggesting she move to Warsaw and enter business with him; the second to Lisiecki, inquiring whether he wouldn't like to come back and accept a position in the new store. As he wrote and reread the letters a malicious smile never left his face. ‘I can imagine Szlangbaum's expression,' he thought, ‘when we open a store in competition right under his very nose … He he he! He gave them orders to watch me! Serve me right for letting that trickster gain power over me … He he he!'

At this moment he knocked the pen with his sleeve and it fell to the floor. Rzecki leaned over to pick it up, and suddenly felt a strange pain in his chest, as if someone had pierced his lungs with a thin knife. For a moment everything went dark and he felt slightly faint: so, without picking up the pen, he rose from the chair and lay down on the
chaise-longue
. ‘Szlangbaum will be bankrupt within a few years, or I'm a booby,' he thought, ‘I'm an old fool … I bothered my head with the Bonapartes and the rest of Europe, and meanwhile an old-clothesman grew up under my nose, who told them to watch me as a thief … Well, at least I've gained experience: enough for a lifetime … Now you can all stop calling me a romantic and a dreamer.'

Something obstructed his left lung. ‘Asthma?' he muttered. ‘I must cure myself properly … Otherwise I'll be a complete invalid in five or six years … Ah, if only I'd paid attention ten years ago …'

He closed his eyes, and it seemed to him he could see his whole life, from the present moment back to his childhood, unfolded like a panorama along which he was moving with a curiously tranquil motion … He was merely struck by the fact that each picture, as it passed, was obliterated in his mind so irrevocably that he could not possibly recall what he had been looking at a moment earlier. Here was the dinner in the Hotel Europe, on the occasion of opening the new store … Here the old store and Miss Łęcka talking in it to Mraczewski … Here was his room with the barred window, into which Wokulski had just that moment entered on his return from Bulgaria …

‘Just a moment … What did I see before that?' he thought.

It was Hopfer's wine-cellar, where he had met Wokulski. And here was the battlefield, where bluish smoke was rising above lines of blue and white uniforms … And here was old Mincel in his armchair, pulling the strings of the Cossack in the window …

‘Did I really see all this, or was it only a dream? Merciful God …' he whispered.

Now it seemed to him he was a little boy and that, while his father was talking about the Emperor Napoleon to Mr Raczek, he himself had climbed into the attic and was looking through the window at the Vistula river, over towards Praga. But gradually the image of the city faded before his eyes, and there remained only the window. First it was as large as a plate, then the size of a saucer, then it diminished to the size of a silver coin …

At the same time he was seized on all sides by oblivion and darkness, or rather by a profound blackness, in which only that window gleamed, like a star of ever-diminishing brightness.

Finally that last star went out, too.

Perhaps he saw it again, but never on earth.

Towards two that afternoon Ignacy's servant Kazimierz came in with a basket and plates. He laid the table noisily, and seeing that his master did not wake up, cried: ‘Please, sir, your dinner will get cold …'

As Ignacy still didn't stir, Kazimierz approached the
chaise-longue
and said: ‘If you please, sir …'

Suddenly he drew back, ran into the passage and began knocking on the back door of the shop, in which there was Szlangbaum and one of his clerks. Szlangbaum opened the door. ‘What is it?' he asked the servant brusquely.

‘If you please, sir … Something has happened to my master …'

Szlangbaum came into the apartment cautiously, looked at the
chaise-longue
and retreated: ‘Run for Dr Szuman,' he exclaimed, ‘I don't want to go in there …'

At this moment, Ochocki was with the doctor, telling him he had returned from St Petersburg that morning and that he was taking his cousin, Izabela Łęcka, to catch the Vienna express that evening, as she was going abroad. ‘Just think of it,' he concluded, ‘she is going into a convent.'

‘Izabela?' Szuman inquired. ‘Come, does she intend to flirt with the Almighty Himself, or merely to relax after all this excitement, so as to get married with a firmer step?'

‘Less of that … She's a strange woman,' Ochocki murmured.

‘They all seem strange to us,' the doctor replied in an irritable voice, ‘until we find out they are only stupid or wretched … Have you heard anything of Wokulski?'

‘As a matter of fact …' he began. Then he suddenly stopped and said no more.

‘Do you know anything of him? Or are you going to make a state secret of it?' the doctor persisted.

At this moment Kazimierz rushed in, exclaiming: ‘Doctor, something has happened to my master. Quickly, sir!'

Szuman jumped up, Ochocki with him. They hailed a droshky and hurried to the house in which Rzecki lived. Maruszewicz, wearing a very worried look, stopped them in the gateway. ‘Well, just imagine this,' he cried to the doctor, ‘I had important business to discuss with him … It is a question of my honour … And now he's gone and died!'

The doctor and Ochocki, followed by Maruszewicz, went into Rzecki's apartment. In the first room they found Szlangbaum, Councillor Węgrowicz and the commercial traveller Szprott.

‘If he'd drunk light beer,' said Węgrowicz, ‘he'd have lived to be a hundred. But now …'

Seeing Ochocki, Szlangbaum seized him by the arm: ‘Must you withdraw your money this week?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why so fast?'

‘I'm leaving.'

‘For long?'

‘Perhaps for good,' he replied sharply, and went with the doctor into the room where the remains lay.

The others followed on tiptoe.

‘A terrible thing,' the doctor exclaimed, ‘men such as he perish, you others are leaving. Who will be left here in the end?'

‘We will!' replied Maruszewicz and Szlangbaum, simultaneously.

‘There will be no lack of men,' Councillor Węgrowicz declared.

‘No, there won't … But in the meantime, pray be off with you,' the doctor cried.

The whole group, manifesting their indignation, retreated to the vestibule. Only Szuman and Ochocki remained.

‘Just look at him, sir,' said the doctor, indicating the remains. ‘The last Romantic! How they betake themselves off … How they betake themselves …'

He tugged his moustache and turned to the window.

Ochocki took Rzecki's already cold hand and leaned over as though to whisper something in his ear. Suddenly he caught sight of Węgiełek's letter protruding from the side pocket of the dead man, and he automatically read aloud the words written in large letters: ‘
Non omnis moriar
…'

‘You're right,' he said, as if to himself.

‘I am?' asked the doctor, ‘I've known that for a long time.'

Ochocki said nothing.

Most of the passages excised by the Tsarist censor have been restored to the main text. The following passage could not be restored, since Prus rewrote Chapter XIX, from which it came, introducing some new details which play a role in the subsequent narrative. It remains an interesting example of what Tsarist censorship found objectionable
.

Almost at the same time that Rzecki was following the auction of the Łęcki house, two gentlemen were conferring in his own apartment: one of them was Wokulski and the other was the Moscow merchant, Suzin.

Suzin was a short giant, with a powerful head, powerful shoulders, and even more powerful hands; he gave the impression of a strong ox dressed in a badly cut frock-coat of very thin cloth. His whole form manifested immeasurable strength, and his red face with its irregular features glowed with almost disgraceful health. He had long, flax-coloured hair, now thickly threaded with grey, cut at his collar and parted at his forehead, matched by a great beard, also flax-coloured and streaked with white. His thick fingers bore a few rings with huge diamonds, and around his neck hung a gold chain to which one would be more inclined to fasten a great coin than a watch. From under his brows, reminiscent of juniper bushes, small grey eyes looked out, flashing with shrewdness.

Wokulski sat in the armchair, deep in thought. Suzin, looking through some papers and drinking soda water and cognac in the heat, said: ‘Your old fogeys, Stanisław Piotrowicz, respectable Polish gentlemen, every one of them, Polish szlachta … but what are they compared to our own? That Jew, what do they call him, Szlajmans? … he looks as if he's set to take over your shop. (Fend off the Jews, Stanisław Piotrowicz! But as you wish …) And that Klein, he's a nihilist … Mraczewski's a nihilist too, but of the type that chases the girls; Klein, on the other hand, is a thin nihilist, all gaunt, and if he gets up to something — well, God forbid! …'

He began to read through his papers again, sipped at his water and cognac and continued: ‘But I always incline towards my own people, like that Roman governor — remember? — who said, “all the same, Carthage must be destroyed!” … And I will carry on saying to you: go with me to Paris tonight. I can guarantee you fifteen thousand roubles straightaway, and if a certain proposition works out for me — maybe even fifty … Ah! Mr Wokulski, such money — what a waste … Take pity on yourself and on me and go today … Why sit here? What will you gain by it, what will you sit out? … You are not at all what you were; a brain-fever, no? … You don't drop in on Moscow, you don't reply to letters and you disdain such money! And now old Suzin is worse than a dog in your eyes. You'd call doctors, go to Karlsbad, ha? …'

At that moment the door opened cautiously and in came the gaunt Klein, handing Wokulski a letter in a pale blue envelope with a lithographic seal of forget-me-nots. Wokulski seized the letter quickly, paled, flushed, threw the torn envelope onto the table and began to read:

‘Will there be a reply?' asked Klein in a low voice.

‘No.'

Klein disappeared like a theatrical ghost behind the wings, and Wokulski continued to peruse the letter, a second, third, and fourth time. Suzin pushed aside his papers and with the greatest attention began to observe him with his small eyes. Then he took the pale blue envelope into his hands, examined it, and again directed his gaze towards Wokulski, smiling slightly with a hint of mild irony.

When Wokulski put away the letter, looking around the room like a man just awakened, Suzin indicated the envelope and said: ‘Obviously a letter from a woman … the devil take these females! … No sooner enters a room, but you know that she is there … your nose tells you. An old man once told me that Adam in Eden must have eaten a forbidden fruit, because the tree on which it grew bore the scent of a woman … The devil take them! But all the same she must somehow have troubled you, Stanisław Piotrowicz …'

‘Who?'

‘The one who sent this envelope. I am surprised at how much you have changed. Finish with her quickly, or you'll fall victim to some misfortune …'

‘If it could be finished …' sighed Wokulski.

Suzin laughed. ‘Ah, dear fellow! What cannot be? Everything can … I was once at an opera, by some German (say what you will, but the Germans have sense!), where the devil himself found no better means for a woman than diamonds … He took her some diamonds (perhaps ten, perhaps fifteen thousand roubles worth), and all was well …'

‘What nonsense you're talking, Suzin!' whispered Wokulski, leaning his head on his hand.

‘Oh, you gentleman! Oh, you addlebrained Polish gentleman!' Suzin laughed. ‘Here is what causes your downfall, all you Poles: with you it's heart, all heart, for everything, for trade, politics, women, everything — and that is your folly. Have a pocket for everything, but keep your heart only for yourself in order to enjoy what your money buys. A woman is such a singular creature that you will not haggle anything out of her for a heart, nor out of a Jew for prayers … For she will make a trophy of your heart, and another will come along without a heart and she will fall in love with him, kissing him before your very eyes … Send me to her, Stanisław Piotrowicz, and I will say to her a brief word: “Hey, little madame — you have troubled that gentleman, Mr Wokulski, and taken away his good sense. Give back his reason, and I will give you — a dozen honey-cakes … Perhaps too few? … Twice as many will I give you, and
shabash
!'

Wokulski looked so dreadful that Suzin stopped, and then changed the subject of the conversation. ‘You know,' he continued, ‘what Maria Siergiejewna told me about her daughter before my departure? … “Oh,” said she, “silly Luboczka pines and pines for that scoundrel Wokulski. I explain to her: don't you go thinking about Mr Wokulski. Mr Wokulski is sitting in Warsaw playing the national anthem on the piano … and never spares a thought for such a foolish girl … but Luboczka, nothing, like a stone …” And then Maria Siergiejewna says: “I don't give a damn for that rotten Poland, let it perish for all I care, but I'm sorry for the child …”'

‘Just think, Stanisław Piotrowicz: the girl's a peach, she's been through the Smolny Institute, got a medal, she'll put three million roubles down on the table at once and she dances and paints and more than one guards colonel has tried for her hand … Marry her, and you'll have money enough for three local ladies, as long as God gives you strength, for women have devoured better Samsons …'