The Doll (59 page)

‘Come now, aren't you saying goodbye to the customers, Herr Doktor?' Hopfer's waiters shouted after him.

We walked along the street without uttering a word. Staś was biting his lips and it occurred to me that getting out of the cellar like that was a symbol of his life, which had led him to tearing up his roots from Hopfer's shop and setting out into a wider world. A prophetic incident! For to this very day Staś always comes out on top. And God knows what such a man mightn't do for his country if only the ladder were not moved away at every step he takes, and if he did not have to waste time and energy uprooting himself every time.

After moving into my room, he worked entire nights and days until sometimes I was quite cross with him. He rose before six and read. At ten he hurried to a lecture, then started reading again. At four he went out tutoring in various houses (mostly Jewish, where Szuman introduced him), and on coming home again he read and read until he went to bed, dead with fatigue, well after midnight.

He would have had a reasonable income from these lessons, had it not been for his father, who visited him from time to time, and only altered in that he wore a snuff-coloured frock-coat instead of the sand-coloured one, and wrapped his documents up in a blue handkerchief. Otherwise he remained the same as when I first met him. He would sit at his son's table and put his papers on his knees and say in a low querulous voice: ‘Books…nothing but books! Here you are, wasting money on study, while I haven't enough for the law-suit. Even if you graduate from two universities, you won't get out of your present wretchedness until we get grandfather's estate back. Only then will people admit you're a gentleman, equal to others. And then relatives will turn up …'

Staś spent his spare time experimenting with balloons. He got a large demijohn and prepared some kind of gas in it, using vitriol (I don't remember what kind of gas it was) and filled a balloon — not a very large one, admittedly, but very artfully constructed. There was a machine with a propeller under it…And it actually flew up to the ceiling, then burst by hitting the wall. Thereupon Staś tinkered with it, repaired it, filled the demijohn with all sorts of messes, and tried again, interminably. Once the demijohn burst and the vitriol nearly burned out his eye. But that didn't matter to him, since he hoped the balloon would at least help him ‘extricate' himself from his wretched position.

From the day when Wokulski moved into my room, our shop gained a new customer in Kasia Hopfer. I don't know what it was she liked about us — whether it was my beard, or Jan Mincel's stoutness. For though the girl had a dozen haberdashery shops nearer home, she came to ours several times a week: ‘A ball of wool, please…A reel of silk, please…Ten groszy worth of needles…' She would run a mile in rain or shine for such things as these, and after buying a packet of pins for a few pennies, would sit half an hour in the shop talking to me: ‘Why don't you gentlemen ever come to see us?…Along with Stanisław?' said she, blushing, ‘my father is ever so fond of you both — we all are.'

At first I was surprised by old Hopfer's unexpected affection, and suggested to Kasia that I didn't know her father well enough to pay him visits. But she insisted: ‘Stanisław must be angry with us, I can't think why, because at least papa…and all of us…are very fond of him. Stanisław surely can't complain that he has been unfairly treated by us…Stanisław…'

And while talking thus about Stanisław, she would buy silk thread instead of wool, or needles instead of a pair of scissors.

The worst of it was that the poor thing was pining away week by week. Every time she came to the shop for her little purchases, she seemed to be looking a little better. But as soon as the blush of momentary excitement had gone from her face, I could see she was even paler than before, her eyes unhappier and deeper set. And the way she used to inquire: ‘Doesn't Stanisław ever come into the shop?' And she would look at the door leading to the passage and my apartment, where, at a few yards distance, Wokulski sat frowning over his books, never guessing that here he was so sought after.

I was sorry for the poor girl, so once, when drinking tea with Wokulski in the evening, I remarked: ‘Don't be childish — call on Hopfer. The old man has plenty of money.'

‘Why should I?' he replied, ‘haven't I had enough of that place?' As he spoke, he shuddered.

‘You ought to go, because Kasia dotes on you,' said I.

‘Don't mention Kasia to me,' he interrupted, ‘she's a very good girl, sometimes she would secretly sew on a coat-button for me, or throw a flower through the window, but she's not for me, nor I for her.'

‘She's a positive dove of a child,' I put in.

‘So much the worse, for I'm no dove. The only kind of woman who could attract me would be one like myself. And I've never met such a one.' (He met one sixteen years later, but God knows he has no reason to be glad of it!)

Kasia gradually ceased coming to the shop, and instead old Hopfer paid a visit to Mr and Mrs Jan Mincel. He must have mentioned Staś to them, for the next day Mrs Mincel hurried downstairs and began scolding me: ‘What sort of a lodger have you, Ignacy, that young ladies dote on him so? Who's this Wokulski? Jan,' she turned to her husband, ‘why hasn't the gentleman called on us? We must marry him off. Tell him to come upstairs this minute …'

‘Oh, let him go upstairs,' Jan Mincel replied, ‘but as for marrying him off, that I won't. I'm an honest shopkeeper and don't want to go in for match-making.'

Mrs Mincel kissed his sweaty face as if they were still on their honeymoon, but he pushed her aside mildly and wiped his face with his cravat: ‘Devil take these women!' he said, ‘they can't resist making people unhappy. Go on with your match-making, do! Hopfer, Wokulski, anyone — but remember I'm not going to pay for it!'

From that time on, whenever Jan Mincel went out of an evening for beer or to the club, Mrs Mincel would invite Wokulski and me in. Staś would drink his tea quickly, without even looking at her: then, with his hands in his pockets, would think about his balloons and sit like a block of stone, while our hostess urged him to fall in love: ‘Is it possible, Mr Wokulski, that you've never been in love?' said she, ‘as far as I know, you are twenty-eight years old, almost as old as I am …and I've long since regarded myself as an old woman, while you're still an innocent …'

Wokulski crossed one leg over the other, but still said nothing.

‘Kasia is a delicious morsel,' said our hostess, ‘fine eyes — though she seems to have a cast in one of 'em; a reasonable enough figure, although she must have one shoulder higher than the other (but that only adds to her charms). Her nose isn't quite to my liking, I admit, and her mouth is a little too big, but what a good girl she is! If she only had a little more sense …Well, but women don't acquire sense, Mr Wokulski, until they are thirty. When I was Kasia's age, I was as silly as a canary-bird …I fell in love with my present husband!'

On the third visit, Mrs Mincel welcomed us wearing a peignoir (it was a very fine peignoir, embroidered with lace), but I wasn't even invited the fourth time. I have

‘Work on him, my dear,' her husband would encourage her, ‘for it is a shame about the girl and Wokulski too. It is awful to think that such a decent fellow, who has been a clerk so long, and who might inherit Hopfer's business, should want to waste himself at the university. Tfu!'

Confirmed in her good intentions, Mrs Mincel not only invited Wokulski to tea in the evenings (he usually didn't go), but sometimes popped anxiously into my room herself, inquiring whether Staś was sick and wondering why he had not yet fallen in love — he, almost older than she was (I think she was a little older than he was). At the same time, she began having hysterical fits, would scold her husband who left home for whole days at a time, and protest to me I was a scoundrel who didn't understand life, and took in doubtful persons as lodgers …

In a word, as such scenes began to occur in the house Jan Mincel grew thin, despite the fact that he drank more and more beer, while I thought I would either resign from my job with Mincel, or give Staś notice to leave.

How in the world did Mrs Mincel learn of my troubles? I have no idea. Suffice it to say that she popped into my room one evening, told me I was her enemy and must be a great scoundrel, since I was giving notice to quit a man as energetic as Wokulski …Then she added that her husband was a wretch, that all men were wretches and finally had hysterics on my sofa.

Scenes like this went on for several days, and I don't know what the outcome would have been, had it not been that one of the most extraordinary incidents I ever saw took place.

Once Machalski invited Wokulski and me to his place for the evening. We went there after nine, and in his favourite cellar, by the light of three tallow candles I saw several dozen people, including Mr Leon. I am sure I shall never forget that crowd of predominantly young faces against the background of the black walls of the cellar, looking out from behind barrels or half lost in the gloom.

As the hospitable Machalski greeted us on the stairs with huge glasses of wine (and very good wine too) and took me into his especial care, I must at once admit that my head began spinning and a few minutes later I was quite tipsy. So I sat down at a distance from the proceedings, in a deep alcove, and dozed, half-awake, half-asleep, as I watched the feasters.

I am not quite sure what happened down there, for the most fantastic notions whirled through my head. I dreamed that Mr Leon was speaking, as usual about the power of faith, lack of spirit and the need for sacrifice, which all those present loudly encored. The unanimous voices died down, however, when Leon started declaring that it was time to put these words into action. I must have been quite tipsy, for Leon seemed to be suggesting that one of us should jump from the Nowy Zjazd bridge down to the pavement below, and on this, everyone fell silent to a man, while several concealed themselves behind barrels.

‘So no one can make up his mind to try?' Leon cried, wringing his hands. Silence. The cellar grew emptier.

‘Nobody? Nobody?'

‘I will,' said a voice I hardly recognised. I looked around. By a flickering tallow candle stood Wokulski. But Machalski's wine had been so strong that
at this moment I passed out
.

After the banquet in the wine-cellar, Staś did not show himself at my dwelling for several days. Finally he entered — wearing someone else's clothes, thinner, but with his head high. Then for the first time I heard a sort of harsh note in his voice, which still makes a very disagreeable impression on me to this day.

From that time on, he entirely changed his way of life. He threw the balloon and propeller into a corner, where they soon began collecting spider-webs; he gave the demijohn to the caretaker for a water-jug, and never even glanced at his books. So that treasury of human wisdom lay about on shelves or the table, closed or open, while he …

Sometimes he would not be at home for several days together, not even for the night: then again he would drop in of an evening and throw himself on his bed, fully dressed. Sometimes, several gentlemen unknown to me would come instead of him, and spend the night on the sofa or in Staś's bed, without even thanking me or telling me their names or profession. Then again sometimes Staś would reappear and sit in the room for a few days, doing nothing, irritable, always on the alert, like a lover come to a tryst with a married lady and afraid of meeting her husband.

I do not suppose that this married lady was Małgosia Mincel, for she now looked as if a gadfly had bitten her. Mornings, the woman rushed around three or so churches, evidently wishing to pester merciful Heaven from several vantage points. Immediately after dinner she went to meetings of ladies who deserted their husbands and children to busy themselves with gossip in the expectation of great events. In the evenings, gentlemen would call on her: but they used to pack her off into the kitchen without even speaking to her.

It is hardly surprising that with such chaos at home I too began to grow confused. Warsaw seemed more crowded, everyone bemused. Every hour I expected some indefinable surprise, but nevertheless we were all in a good temper and our heads full of plans.

Jan Mincel, meanwhile, worried by his spouse at home, went out for beer early in the morning and did not come home till late. He even thought up a saying: ‘What does it matter? Death only stings once …' which he used to repeat till his dying day.

Finally, Staś Wokulski entirely disappeared from my sight. Not until two years later did he write to me from Irkutsk, asking me to send his books.

In autumn 1870 (I had just come home from Jan Mincel's, he was ill in bed) I had just sat down to my evening tea in my room, when suddenly someone knocked: ‘
Herein
!' said I.

The door squeaked …I looked up, and there on the threshold was a bearded figure in a sealskin overcoat, fur outwards: ‘Well,' said I, ‘may the devil take me if it isn't Wokulski …'

‘In person,' said the individual in sealskin.

‘For goodness sake,' said I, ‘you're joking to be sure … Or are you lost? Where in the world do you come from? Are you his spirit?'

‘No, I'm alive,' said he, ‘and hungry into the bargain.'

So he took off his cap, got out of his fur-coat, sat down by the candle. He really was Wokulski. He'd grown a beard like a brigand, had a countenance like Longinus (who put a spear into Christ our Lord), but of course it really was Wokulski.

‘So you're back,' said I, ‘have you just arrived?'

‘Yes, and back for good.'

‘What was that country like?'

‘Not bad.'

‘Hm …And the people?'

‘Not bad.'

‘Hm …And what did you live on?'