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.’
But the other man came closer, instead of going away. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said timidly, ‘but what if someone asks me where I got this money?’
‘Tell them it was on account from me…’
‘I understand, sir…God…may God…’
But Wokulski was no longer listening; he was walking towards the Vistula, thinking: ‘How fortunate they are, all these people whose apathy is caused merely by hunger, and who only suffer from the cold. And how easy it is to make them happy! With even my small fortune I could elevate several thousand such families. It’s unlikely, yet it is so.’
Wokulski reached the Vistula bank, and looked about in surprise. Here, occupying several acres of space, was a hill of the most hideous garbage, stinking, almost moving under the
sun, while only a few dozen yards away lay the reservoirs from which Warsaw drank.
‘Here,’ he thought, ‘is the centre of all infection. What a man throws out of his house today he drinks tomorrow. Later he’s moved to the Powazki cemetery, and then again from the other side of the city he infects those of his dear ones who are still alive… A boulevard here, drains and water from the hill-top—several thousand people could be saved from death, and tens of thousands from diseases… Not much work, but an inestimable profit; nature would know how to compensate for it.’
On the side and in the ravines of the hideous hill he saw what looked like people. Several drunkards, or criminals, were dozing in the sun, there were two women street-sweepers and a loving couple, consisting of a leprous woman and a consumptive man without a nose. They looked like phantoms of diseases unearthed here, rather than human beings, that had dressed themselves in rags. All these individuals sniffed the scent of an intruder: even the sleepers lifted their heads and gazed at the visitor with the look of mad dogs.
Wokulski smiled. ‘Had I come here by night, they would certainly have cured me of melancholia. Tomorrow I’d be resting under this garbage which, after all, is as comfortable a grave as any. In the town there’d be a fuss, these honest folk would be run to earth and excommunicated—yet they might have done me a favour…
‘For they do not know, as they slumber in their tombs, the heavy cares of this life, and their souls no longer struggle with desires, yearning, powerless…
‘But am I really growing sentimental? My nerves must be thoroughly disordered. But a boulevard wouldn’t do away with these Mohicans: they’d move over the river to Praga or beyond, go on with their business, make love like that pair, even increase and multiply. What fine children you will have, my homeland, born and brought up in this garbage heap, with a mother covered in sores and a father with no nose!…
‘My own children would be different; they would have her beauty, my strength… Yes, but they will never be. In this country only disease, poverty and crime find a marriage bed and shelter for their offspring. It is terrible to think what will happen here within a few generations. Yet there is a simple remedy: compulsory labour, properly renumerated. That alone can bring forth better individuals and wipe out evil without a fuss… We would have an active population where today we have hungry or sick people…’
Then, without knowing why, he thought: ‘What does it matter if she flirts a little? Coquetry in a woman is like colour in flowers. It’s their nature to want to please everyone, even a Mraczewski… She flirts with everyone else, but for me there’s only “Pay that gentleman!”… Perhaps she thinks I cheated them in buying the silver? That would indeed be amusing!’
A heap of planks was lying on the very edge of the Vistula. Wokulski felt tired, sat down and gazed around. The Saska Kępa district, already turning green, and the houses of Praga with their red roofs, were reflected on the smooth surface of the water. A barge stood motionless in the centre of the river. A ship Wokulski had seen on the Black Sea last summer motionless because its engines had broken down, had looked no bigger. ‘It was travelling along like a bird, then suddenly broke down; the engine had failed. I asked myself then, what if I too sometime come to a halt? And now I have done so. What commonplace engines they are that cause movement in the world: a little bit of coal moves a ship, a little bit of heart—a man.’
At this moment a premature yellow butterfly passed over his head, in the direction of the town, ‘Where did it come from, I wonder?’ Wokulski thought. ‘Nature has her caprices sometimes—and analogies,’ he added. ‘There are butterflies in mankind, too: prettily coloured, flitting over the surface of life, feeding on sweets without which they perish—such is their occupation. As for the worms—they undermine the earth and make it ready for sowing. The butterflies play; you labour: space and light exist for them—your only privilege is growing together again if someone carelessly steps on you…
‘Are you sighing for a butterfly, you fool? And surprised because you disgust her? What bond can exist between her and me?… Well, a caterpillar resembles a worm until it becomes a butterfly. Ah, so you are to become a butterfly, are you—you haberdasher! Why not, though? Continuous improvement is a natural law, and just consider how many merchant families in England have become Your Lordships.
‘In England! There a creative era still exists in society; there, everything is improving and moving up to a higher level. There, even the higher levels of society continue to attract new forces to themselves. But here the higher level has solidified like water in frost, and has not only created a peculiar species not connected with the rest and has a feeling of physical repulsion towards them, but even hampers all movement below by its own dead weight. Why deceive myself? She and I are two different species, just like the butterfly and the worm. Am I to leave my hole in the ground and the other worms for the sake of her wings? These are my people—lying here on the garbage. And perhaps they are poor and will be poorer because I want to squander some thirty thousand roubles a year for playing with the butterfly… Stupid tradesman, vile man that you are…
‘Thirty thousand roubles means as much as sixty small workshops or stores, which whole families could live on. And am I to destroy their existence, suck the human souls out of them and drive them to this garbage heap?
‘Very well—but if it were not for her, would I have this fortune now? Who knows what would have become of me and this money had it not been for her? Perhaps it is precisely because of her that the money will acquire creative properties; maybe at least a dozen families will benefit by it.’
Wokulski turned and suddenly caught sight of his own shadow on the ground. Then he recalled that his shadow went before, after or beside him always and everywhere, just as the thought of this woman accompanied him always and everywhere, awake or dreaming, interfused with all his aims, plans and acts.
‘I can’t give her up,’ he whispered, clasping his hands together as if explaining to someone.
He rose from the planks and went back to town.
Walking along Oboźna Street he recalled the driver Wysocki, whose horse had fallen and been destroyed, and it seemed to him he could see a whole row of carts, in front of which lay fallen horses, with a whole row of drivers in despair over them, each with a group of wretched children and a wife who washed linen for people who couldn’t pay.
‘A horse?’ Wokulski whispered, and somehow his heart ached. Once, last March, as he had been crossing Aleje Jerozolimskie, he had seen a crowd of people, a black coal-wagon standing across the street by a gate, and an unharnessed horse a few feet away. ‘What’s happened?’ ‘Horse broke its leg,’ one of the passers-by replied cheerfully; he had a violet scarf on, and kept his hands in his pockets.
Wokulski looked at the culprit as he passed. It was a lean nag with its ribs showing, and kept lifting its back leg. Tied to a small tree, it stood quietly, looked with its rolling eye at Wokulski and gnawed in its pain at a branch covered with hoar-frost.
‘Why should I be reminded of that horse just now?’ Wokulski thought. ‘Why do I feel this pity?’
He walked thoughtfully up Oboźna and felt that, in the course of the few hours spent by the river, a change had come upon him. Formerly—ten years ago, a year ago, even yesterday—while walking about in the streets he never met anything unusual. People passed by, droshkies drove along, shops opened their doors hospitably for customers. But now a new kind of feeling had come to him. Each ragged man looked as if he were shouting for help, the more loudly because he said nothing but only cast a fearful glance, just as that horse with the broken leg had done. Each poor woman looked like a washerwoman, supporting her family on the brink of poverty and decline with her worn hands. Each pitiful child seemed condemned to premature death or to spending days and nights on the garbage heap in Dobra street.
It was not only people who concerned him. He shared the weariness of horses pulling heavy carts along, and the sores where their horse-collars ha
d drawn blood. He shared the fright of a lost dog barking in the street for his master and the despair of a starving bitch as she ran from one gutter to the next, seeking food for herself and her puppies. And on top of these sufferings he was even pained by the trees with their bark cut, the pavements like broken teeth, dampness on broken pieces of furniture and ragged garments. It seemed to him that every object like this was sick or wounded, complaining: ‘See how I suffer…’, and that he alone heard and understood their laments. And this peculiar capacity for feeling the pain of others had been born in him only today, an hour ago.
Strange! After all, he had the reputation of an established philanthropist. Members of the Charitable Society, in their frock-coats, had thanked him for his offerings to their ever-hungry institutions; Countess Karolowa talked in drawing-rooms of all the money he had donated to her orphanage; his servants and clerks spread his fame for raising their wages. But these things caused Wokulski no pleasure, for he himself attached no significance to them. He tossed thousands of roubles to charity to buy fame, without ever asking what was to be done with the money.
Not until today, when he had extricated a man from destitution by a mere ten roubles, which no one would tell the rest of the world of, not until today had he recognised what sacrifice meant. Not until this day had a new, hitherto unknown part of the world risen up before his eyes—poverty, which must be helped.
‘Yes, but did I not notice poverty before?’ Wokulski whispered. And he recalled whole throngs of ragged people, poor, looking for work, throngs of starving horses, hungry dogs, trees with broken bark and broken branches. He had encountered all these things without emotion. It was not until now, when a great personal pain had fallowed and harrowed his soul, had fertilized it with his own blood and tears unseen to the world, that this strange plant had grown within him: this mutual sympathy encompassing everything—people, animals, even inanimate objects.