The Doll (15 page)

‘Nothing, nothing…' he repeated, wandering through the alleys with their shacks sunk below street level, roofs overgrown with moss, buildings with shutters and doors nailed shut, with tumbledown walls, windows patched with paper or stuffed with rags. He walked along looking through dirty window-panes into dwellings, and absorbed the sight of cupboards without doors, chairs with only three legs, sofas with torn seats, clocks with one hand and cracked faces. He walked along and silently laughed to himself to see labourers interminably waiting for work, craftsmen employed only at patching old clothes, women whose entire property was a basket of stale cakes—and to see ragged men, starving children and unusually dirty women.

‘This is a microcosm of Poland,' he thought, ‘where everything tends to make people wretched and to extinguish them. Some perish through poverty, others through extravagance. Work is taken from other people's mouths to feed the useless; charity breeds insolent loafers, while poverty is unable to acquire tools and is beseiged by perpetually hungry children, whose greatest virtue is to die a premature death. Individuals with initiative are of no use here, for everything conspires to chain initiative and waste it in a vain struggle—for nothing.'

Then his own story rose up before him in broad outline. As a child he had yearned for knowledge—they had put him to work in a shop and restaurant. As a clerk he had been killing himself with night work—everyone mocked him, from the kitchen-hands to the intelligentsia getting drunk in the shop. When he finally reached the university—they tormented him with the dishes he had recently served up to customers.

He only breathed freely when he reached Siberia. There he had been able to work, had gained the recognition and friendship of
Czerski, Czekanowski, Dybowski
. He returned to Poland almost a scholar, but when he sought employment in that field, he had been laughed at and scorned and sent into trade… ‘A good living, in times like these!'

So he had gone back to trade, but then people exclaimed he had sold himself and was living on his wife, on the Mincels' work.

It had so happened that after a few years his wife died, leaving him a quite sizeable fortune. After burying her, Wokulski withdrew somewhat from the store and again took to his books. And perhaps the haberdashery merchant might have become a good natural scientist, had he not been once to the theatre and seen Izabela there. She was sitting in a box, with her father and Flora, wearing a white gown. She was looking not at the stage, which was holding the attention of everyone else, but at somewhere before her, who knows where or at what? Was she, perhaps, thinking of Apollo?…

Wokulski gazed at her all the time. She made a peculiar impression upon him. It seemed he had seen her before, and knew her well. He gazed still more intently into her dreaming eyes and recalled, without knowing why, the limitless tranquillity of the Siberian steppe, where sometimes it was so hushed that you could almost hear the rustle of souls flying back to the West. Not until later did he realise he had never before seen her anywhere, yet it was somehow as if he had been awaiting her for a long time.

‘Are you she—or not?' he asked in his soul, unable to look away from her.

Henceforth he concerned himself little with the store or his books, but kept seeking opportunities to see Izabela at the theatre, concerts or lectures. He would not have called his feelings ‘love', and in fact was not sure whether human language had a word to express them. All he knew was that she had become a mystic point where all his memories, longings and hopes coincided, a hearth without which his life would have neither sense nor meaning. His work in the grocery store, the university, Siberia, marriage to Mincel's widow, finally his involuntary visit to the theatre when he had not in the least wanted to go—all these were but pathways and stages through which fate had led him to catch sight of Izabela.

From then on, his time consisted of two phases. When he was looking at Izabela he felt completely calm and somehow greater; away from her, he thought about her and yearned for her. Sometimes it seemed there was a sort of error deep within his feelings, and that Izabela was not the centre for his soul at all, but an ordinary and perhaps even very commonplace eligible young lady. But then a strange plan came into his head.

‘I shall make her acquaintance, and ask her point-blank: “Are you she for whom I have been waiting all my life? If not, I will go away without bearing you any grudge or being unhappy.”'

A little later he saw that this plan showed mental aberration on his part. So he laid aside his inquiry as to what she was or was not and decided, come what may, to make the acquaintance of Izabela. Then he realised there was no one among his acquaintances able to introduce him into the Łęcki home. Worse still: Mr Łęcki and the young lady were customers in his store, but this relationship, instead of facilitating a meeting, made it more difficult.

Gradually he formulated the conditions required for making Izabela's acquaintance. In order simply to talk frankly to her, he must not be in trade, or be a very rich merchant; must be of genteel birth at least, and be acquainted with aristocratic circles; above all, however, he must have a great deal of money.

It had not been difficult to prove his genteel birth. Last May he set about the matter, which his journey to Bulgaria had expedited so that by December he already had the necessary certificate. It had been more difficult to make a fortune, but Fate had helped.

At the beginning of the Eastern War, a rich Muscovite, Suzin, a friend of Wokulski's from Siberia, passed through Warsaw. He called on Wokulski and forcefully urged him to go in for army supplies. ‘Get together as much money as you can, Stanisław Piotrovich,' he had said, ‘and I give you my word you'll make a million.' Then, in an undertone, he revealed his plans.

Wokulski had listened. He wanted nothing to do with some of them, others he accepted, though hesitantly. He regretted leaving the city where he at least saw Izabela from time to time. But when she left Warsaw in June for her aunt's estate, and when Suzin began urging him on with telegrams, Wokulski made up his mind, and drew out all his late wife's cash, amounting to thirty thousand roubles, which the lady had kept untouched in her bank.

Some days before his departure, he visited a doctor of his acquaintance, Szuman, whom he rarely saw despite a mutual liking. The doctor was Jewish, an old bachelor, yellow and tiny, with a black beard and the reputation of an eccentric. As he had private means, he practised medicine for nothing, and only as much as was necessary for his ethnographical studies; to his friends, however, he would give a piece of advice, once and for all: ‘Take any medicine you like, from the smallest dose of castor oil to the largest of strychnine, and it'll help you somehow—even if you have glanders.'

When Wokulski rang the doctor's doorbell, the doctor was busy classifying the hair of various individuals of the Slavic, Teutonic and Semitic races, measuring the largest and smallest cross-sections through a microscope.

‘So it's you…' he said to Wokulski, looking round. ‘Light your pipe if you want to, and sit down on the sofa, if you can find room.' His visitor did as instructed, the doctor went on with his own business. For a time both were silent, then Wokulski said: ‘Tell me this: does medical science know of a state of mind in which it seems to a man that all his previously scattered knowledge…and feelings have become concentrated, as it were, into one organism?'

‘Of course. Continuous mental work and good food can form new cells in the brain or join together old ones. And then one unity is formed out of the various sections of the brain and various spheres of knowledge.'

‘But what is the meaning of that state of mind in which a man grows indifferent to death, or begins to feel the need of legends of eternal life?'

‘Indifference to death,' the doctor replied, ‘is a trait of mature minds, and the desire for an eternal life is the sign of approaching old age.'

Again they fell silent. The visitor smoked his pipe, the doctor concerned himself with the microscope.

‘Do you think,' Wokulski asked, ‘that it's possible…to love a woman ideally, without desiring her?'

‘Of course. It is a kind of mask, in which the instinct to preserve the species likes to disguise itself.'

‘Instinct…species…the instinct for preserving something, and—preserving the species…' Wokulski repeated. ‘Three phrases and four pieces of nonsense.'

‘Make a sixth,' said the doctor, not looking away from his eyepiece, ‘and get married.'

‘The sixth?' asked Wokulski, rising, ‘where's the fifth?'

‘You have already done it; you have fallen in love.'

‘Me? At my age?'

‘Forty-five years old—that is the period for a man's last love, and the most serious.'

‘Experts say first love is the worst,' Wokulski murmured.

‘Not so. After the first, a hundred others are waiting, but after the hundredth there's nothing. Get married; that is the only cure for your ailment.'

‘Why didn't you ever marry?'

‘My fiancee died,' the doctor answered, leaning back in his chair and eyeing the ceiling. ‘So I did all I could: I took chloroform. This was in the provinces… But God sent me a good colleague, who broke down the door and saved me. The worst kind of charity! I had to pay for the door he smashed, and my colleague inherited my practice by pronouncing me insane.'

He turned back to the hairs and the microscope.

‘But what moral significance am I to draw from your remarks about last love?'

‘That one should never interfere with a suicide,' the doctor replied.

Wokulski stayed another fifteen minutes, then rose, put his pipe away, and leaned over to embrace the doctor. ‘Goodbye, Michał.'

The doctor rose. ‘Well?'

‘I am leaving for Bulgaria.'

‘What for?'

‘To go in for military supplies. I have to make a large fortune,' Wokulski replied.

‘Or else…?'

‘Or else—I shall not come back.'

The doctor gazed into his eyes, and shook his hand firmly.

‘
Sit tibi terra levis
,' he said calmly. He took him to the door and returned to his work.

Wokulski was already on the stairs when the doctor ran after him and called over the banister: ‘If you come back, don't forget to bring me specimens of hair: Bulgarian, Turkish and so on, of both sexes. But remember—in separate packets, with notes. You know how it's done…'

… Wokulski aroused himself from these old memories. The doctor and his house weren't there, and he had not even seen either of them for ten months. This was muddy Radna Street, and that was Browarna. Above him, behind the naked trees, the yellow buildings of the university were looking down: below were one-storey houses, empty spaces and fences, and further off—the Vistula.

Near him, a man with a red beard, in a worn greatcoat, had halted. He took off his hat and kissed Wokulski's hand. Wokulski looked at him more closely.

‘Wysocki?' he said. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘We live here, sir, in this house,' said the man, pointing to a low shack.

‘Why have you stopped coming for carting jobs?' Wokulski asked.

‘How could I, sir, when my horse died at New Year?'

‘So what are you doing?'

‘Well—nothing. We spent the winter at my brother's; he's a guard on the Vienna railroad. But things are going badly for him, they've transferred him from Skierniewice to near Częstochowa. He had three acres of land at Skierniewice, and lived like a rich man, but today he's badly off and his land is going from bad to worse without anyone to look after it.'

‘Well, but what about you yourselves?'

‘My wife does a little laundry, but for people who can't pay much, and I…well, there it is… We're going from bad to worse, sir—not the first, and not the last either. In Lent a man keeps up his spirits by saying “Today you'll fast for the souls of the dead, tomorrow to commemorate Christ eating nothing, the day after in the hope that God will cure evil.” But after the holiday there won't even be a way to explain to the children why they're not eating… But you look poorly, sir. Evidently the time has come for us all to perish…' the destitute man sighed.

Wokulski reflected. ‘Is your rent paid?' he asked.

‘We haven't any rent to pay, for they are turning us out, sir.'

‘Why on earth didn't you come to the shop, to Rzecki?' Wokulski asked.

‘I dared not. My horse has gone, the Jews have my cart, my coat is like a beggar's… How could I come and bother other people?'

Wokulski produced his wallet. ‘Here,' he said, ‘ten roubles for the holiday. Tomorrow afternoon, go to the shop and get a note for Praga. There you will choose a horse yourself from the dealers, and come for work. You will get three roubles a day from me, so you can easily repay your debt. In any case, you will manage.'

The poor man trembled as he took the money. He listened attentively to Wokulski, and the tears flowed down his lean face.

‘Did someone tell you, sir,' he asked after a moment, ‘that things are like this with us? For someone,' he added in a whisper, ‘sent a nun, a month back. She said I must be a loafer, and gave us paper for a sack of coal. Did you, maybe, sir…?'

‘Go home, and come to the shop tomorrow,' Wokulski replied.

‘I will, sir,' said the man, bowing low.

He left, but kept stopping, obviously pondering over his unexpected good fortune.

At this moment Wokulski felt a peculiar sense of foreboding.

‘Wysocki!' he called, ‘what's your brother's first name?'

‘Kasper, sir,' the man replied, running back.

‘What station does he live near?'

‘Częstochowa, sir.'

‘Go home. Maybe they'll transfer Kasper back to Skierniewice.'