‘I’m having incredibly good fortune,’ he thought. ‘In six months I’ve made a fortune of thousands, in a few years I may have millions. Even earlier… Already today I have the entrée to drawing-rooms, and with a year—what? I might have waited on some of those people with whom I rubbed shoulders this evening—seventeen years ago, in the shop: the only reason I did not, was that none of them would enter such a place. From the cellar of a shop to the boudoir of a Countess! What a leap… But am I not advancing too fast?’ he added, with secret uneasiness in his heart.
He had reached the wide Aleje Ujazdowskie, where a fair was being held in the southern portion. The sound of barrel-organs mingled with the blowing of trumpets and the uproar of a crowd of several thousands enveloped him like the wave of an incoming tide. He could very clearly see the long line of swings rocking from right to left, like great pendulums. Then another line of swiftly revolving canopies, striped in different colours, where hideous monsters glowed and brightly dressed clowns, or huge dolls, were standing. And in the centre were two lofty poles, up which men competing for frock-coats or cheap watches were scrambling. An excited crowd was swarming among all these temporary and dirty stands.
Wokulski recalled his childhood. How he used to enjoy a roll and a sausage, when he was starving! How he had imagined himself to be a famous bold warrior, as he rode on a merry-go-round! What wild intoxication he had felt flying on a swing! What a delight it had been to think he did not have to go to work in the morning—his holiday for the whole year! And what could compare with the certainty that tonight he could go to bed at ten o’clock, and tomorrow, if he wished, he could also get up at ten o’clock after sleeping twelve solid hours!
‘Was that really me?’ he asked himself in amazement. ‘Was I so pleased with things that now only disgust me?…So many thousands of merry-making poor people all around me—while I, a wealthy man in comparison—what do I have?…Uneasiness and ennui, ennui and uneasiness…Just when I might possess that which I once dreamed of, I have nothing, for my former dreams have evaporated. Yet I believed so firmly in my exceptional good fortune!…’
At this moment a loud cry rose from the crowd. Wokulski roused himself, and saw a human figure at the top of a pole: ‘Aha, the winner,’ Wokulski said to himself, keeping his balance with difficulty in the crowd that was running, applauding, cheering, pointing to the hero, asking his name. It looked as if they were about to carry the winner of the frock-coat into the town, but the enthusiasm languished. People ran more slowly, even stopped, the cries died down, finally ceased completely. The winner climbed down from the summit and in a few minutes was forgotten.
‘A warning for me…’ Wokulski whispered, wiping the sweat from his forehead. The square and the excited crowd sickened him. He went back to town.
Droshkies and carriages were driving along the Boulevard. In one, Wokulski caught a glimpse of a pale blue dress: ‘Izabela?…’ His heart began to beat violently: ‘No, it isn’t her…’
A few hundred feet away he caught sight of a pretty face and distinguished gestures: ‘She?…No. How could it be?’
And he walked along the entire Boulevard, through Alexander Square across Nowy Świat, continually gazing at people and continually disappointed. ‘So this is my good fortune?’ he thought. ‘I don’t desire what I could have, and fret for what I don’t have. So this is good fortune?…Who knows, perhaps death is not the great evil that people imagine.’
And for the first time he yearned for heavy, dreamless sleep undisturbed by any desire, or even hopes.
At the same time, Izabela had returned home from her aunt’s and called to Flora almost from the threshold: ‘You know who was at the reception?’
‘Who?’
‘Well, that Wokulski…’
‘Why not, since he was invited?’ Flora replied.
‘But it was impertinence! Unheard of!…And to crown it all, just fancy that my aunt is fascinated by him; the Prince speaks of no one else, and everyone regards him as something quite exceptional…What have you to say to that, pray?’
Flora smiled sadly: ‘I know it all. The hero of a season. Last winter there was that Mr Kazimierz, and a decade ago—I myself,’ she added quietly.
‘But who is he, after all? A tradesman…a tradesman!’
‘Bela,’ Flora replied, ‘I can remember seasons when our world was thrilled by circus acrobats. It will pass…’
‘I’m afraid of that man,’ Izabela murmured.
X
The Journal of the Old Clerk
SO—HERE we have a new store: five windows in front, two warehouses, seven clerks and a door-keeper. We also have a carriage that gleams like newly polished boots, a pair of brown horses, a driver and a footman in livery. And all this came upon us in early May, when England, Austria and even battered Turkey were arming as fast as they could!
‘My dear Staś,’ I said to Wokulski, ‘all the merchants are laughing at us for spending so much in such uncertain times.’
‘My dear Ignacy,’ Wokulski replied, ‘we shall laugh at them when more certain times come. Today is just the time for doing business.’
‘But a European war,’ I said, ‘is just around the corner. In that case bankruptcy is inevitable.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ said Staś, ‘all this uproar will die down in a few months, and in the meanwhile we shall have left our competitors far behind.’
Well, and there was no war. In the shop, the rush is like a market, goods come and go from our warehouses as if they were mills, and money flows like water into the safe. Anyone who didn’t know Staś would say he was a merchant of genius: but as I know him, I cannot refrain from asking myself what it is all for. ‘Warum hast Du denn das getan?’
It’s true I’ve been asked this myself. Can it be that I am already as old as the late Grossmutter, and do not understand either the spirit of the times or the intentions of men younger than I? It can’t be as bad as that…
I recall that when Louis Napoleon (later the Emperor Napoleon III) escaped from prison in 1848, all Europe was in a ferment. No one knew what was going to happen. But all sensible people prepared for something, and my uncle Raczek (who had married my aunt) kept saying: ‘I told you Bonaparte would come to the top and cause them trouble! The worst of it is that my legs ain’t what they was…’
The years 1846 and 1847 passed in great excitement. All sorts of pamphlets kept appearing, while people disappeared. Sometimes I’d wonder whether it wasn’t time to venture out into the great world? And when doubts and uneasiness came upon me, after the store was closed, I would go to my uncle Raczek and tell him what was troubling me, asking him to advise me as my father would have done: ‘You know,’ my uncle said, thumping his lame leg with his fist, ‘I shall advise you like a father. If you want to be off—then off with you: if you don’t—why then, stay here!’
Not until 1848, when Louis Napoleon was already in Paris, did my late father appear to me one night, looking as I’d seen him in his coffin. His coat was buttoned up to the chin, there was the earring in his ear, his moustaches were waxed up to a point (Mr Domanski did this so that my father should not appear at the Seat of Judgement looking like nothing on earth). He stopped in the door of my little room and said only: ‘Remember what I taught you, young scamp!’
‘Dreams deceive, in God believe…’ I reflected for several days afterwards. But the shop already disgusted me. I even lost my interest in the late Małgosia Pfeifer, and felt so cramped in my lodgings that I couldn’t bear it. So I went to my uncle Raczek for advice again. I recall that he was in bed, covered up with my aunt’s quilt, drinking herb tea to bring on the sweats. But when I told him the whole story he said: ‘Well, I’ll advise you just like your father would have. Go if you want to—if you don’t, why then—stay here. As for me, though, if it wasn’t for my poor old leg, I’d have been off long ago. Because your auntie, you know,’ and here he lowered his voice, ‘carries on so that I’d sooner listen to a battery of Austrian cannon
s than to her chattering. What she gives with her plasters and such, she takes away with her chatter…Have you any money?’ he asked after a pause.
‘I can lay my hands on a few hundred złoty.’
My uncle Raczek told me to lock the door (my aunt was out), then reached under his pillow for a key: ‘Here,’ he said, ‘open that there leather trunk. You’ll find a small box in it, on the right-hand side, and in it there’s a small purse. Give it to me…’ I brought out a thick, heavy purse. My uncle Raczek took it and, sighing, counted out fifteen half-imperials. ‘Take this money,’ said he, ‘for your journey, and if you must go—then be off with you. I’d give you more, but maybe my time is near…In any case, something must be left for the old lady so that she can find another husband if she has to…’
Weeping, we said goodbye. My uncle managed to raise himself in bed and, turning my face to the candle, whispered: ‘Let’s have another look at you…Because, you know, not everyone comes back from this kind of a ball. Besides, I’m getting past it, and a man’s fancies can kill as well as bullets…’
When I went back to the shop, despite the late hour, I talked to Jan Mincel, giving in my notice and thanking him for his hospitality. As we had been talking over these things for a year already, and he had always encouraged me to go and fight the Germans, it seemed to me that my plan would give him great pleasure. However, Mincel somehow grew sad. Next day he paid me the money he had been holding for me, even gave me a tip, promised to look after my bed-linen and trunk just in case I never came back. But his usual belligerence had evaporated and not once did he utter his favourite cry: ‘Ah, I’d give it to the Krauts if it weren’t for this shop of mine…’
But when, at about ten that evening, wearing my half-jerkin and thick boots, I embraced him, and lifted the latch to leave the room where we had lived together for so long, something strange came over Jan. Suddenly he got up from his chair, pressed his hands together and cried: ‘You blackguard…where are you off to?’ And he threw himself down on my bed, sobbing like a child.
I fled. In the passage, lit dimly by an oil-lamp, someone stopped me. I almost jumped out of my skin. It was August Katz, dressed as befitted a March journey: ‘August, what are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Waiting for you.’ I thought he wanted to see me off: so we went to Grzybowski Square in silence, for Katz never had anything to say. The Jew’s cart I was to travel in was awaiting us. I embraced Katz and he me.
I got in…he followed: ‘Let’s go together,’ he said.
Then, when we had already passed Mitosna, he added: ‘It’s devilish hard and shaking so a man can’t sleep…’
Our journey lasted unexpectedly long, right up to October 1849—do you remember, Katz, my never-to-be-forgotten friend? Do you recall long marches in parching heat, when we sometimes drank water from puddles: or that march through a bog, when we got our powder wet: or those night bivouacs in forests or meadows, when one of us would push the other’s head off the kit-bag and secretly tug over the coat that served as covering for us both? Do you remember the baked potatoes and bacon which four of us cooked in secret, away from the rest of the platoon? I have often eaten potatoes since, but none ever tasted so good. Even today I can smell them, the fragrance of the steam from the saucepan and I see you, Katz, as you said your prayers, ate the potatoes and lit your pipe at the fire simultaneously, so as not to waste time.
Katz, if there is no Hungarian infantry or baked potatoes in Heaven, then you will have hastened there in vain. And do you remember the battle which we looked forward to so, as we rested after a skirmish? I will never forget it to my dying day and if the Lord God ever asks me why I lived in the world, I will answer ‘So as to experience such a day as that!’ Only you, Katz, understand me, because we both saw it. Yet at the time it seemed—nothing…
Our brigade halted a day and a half beforehand near a Hungarian village, the name of which I forget. It was a sight for sore eyes to see how they regaled us. A man might have washed himself in the wine (though it was not very good), and we were so sick of pork and paprika that no one would have eaten it, had there been anything else. But the music and the girls! The gipsies play wonderfully, and the Hungarian girls are really stunning. There must have been twenty of them, and yet tempers grew so hot that our men stabbed and hacked three peasants to pieces, and the peasants killed one of our hussars with a pole.
God knows how this fine entertainment would have ended had not a gentleman driving a four-in-hand covered with foam ridden up to headquarters during the greatest uproar. Some minutes later the news spread that a great crowd of Austrians was in the vicinity. They blew bugles for parade, the uproar died down, the Hungarian girls disappeared and men began whispering in the ranks of a battle.
‘At last!’ you said to me.
That same night we moved on a mile, and next day another mile. Couriers were riding in every few hours, and later every hour. This showed that our headquarters was in the neighbourhood and that something big was in the air. That night we slept in the open, without even stacking our rifles. As soon as it was dawn, we moved on: first a squadron of cavalry with two light cannons, then our battalion, then a whole brigade with artillery and four guns, flanked by strong patrols. Couriers were dashing in every half-hour.
When the sun came up we saw the first traces of the enemy along the highway: remains of straw, stamped-out campfires, buildings that had been demolished for fuel. Then we began to meet more and more refugees: a gentleman with his family, priests of various denominations, finally peasants and gipsies. Fear was evident on all their faces: nearly all shouted in Hungarian, pointing in the direction from which they came.
It was close on seven when cannon shots were heard to the south-west. A murmur flew along our ranks: ‘Oho, it is beginning…’
‘No, that was a signal…’
Two more shots were fired, then two more. The squadron riding ahead of us stopped, two cannons and two tumbrils galloped past, several riders spurred their horses up the hill. We stopped and for some time there was a silence in which we could hear the hoofs of the adjutant’s mare catching up with us. Then she flew by, panting hard, her belly almost scraping the earth. This time a dozen or more cannons were to be heard, some closer, others further away; each shot could be distinguished from the others. ‘They’re feeling their distance,’ the old major exclaimed. ‘There must be about fifteen cannons,’ Katz muttered, becoming as always more talkative at such moments, ‘and as we have twelve, there will be some fun!’
The major turned to us on his horse and smiled under his grizzled whiskers. I understood what this meant when I heard a whole arpeggio of shots, as if someone were playing on an organ. ‘There are more than twenty…’ I said to Katz.
‘You asses…’ the captain laughed, and spurred on his horse.
We were on a hill where we could see the brigade coming up behind. A red cloud of dust marked them as they moved along the highway for two or three kilometres. ‘What a huge crowd!’ I whispered, ‘where will they find room for them all?’
Trumpets sounded and our battalion broke up into four companies, flank to flank. The first platoons moved ahead, we remained in the rear. I looked back and saw that two more battalions had moved away from headquarters; they had left the highroad and were running across the fields, one to our right, the other to our left. Within fifteen minutes they drew level with us, halted for another fifteen minutes, then all three battalions moved on, in step.
Meanwhile the cannonade had intensified so that two or even three shells could be heard exploding simultaneously. To make things worse, a sort of stifled voice rose with them, like continuous thunder. ‘How many cannons are there, comrade?’ I asked a non-commissioned officer, in German, as he came up behind me.
‘Must be a hundred, nearly,’ he replied, shaking his head, then added, ‘but they’re doing good business, for they all fired off together.’
We were pushed off the highroad along which two squadrons of hussars and four
cannons then passed at a canter; a few minutes later, the tumbrils followed. Then some of the men in my column began crossing themselves: ‘In the name of the Father…’ Here and there others drank from water-bottles.
To our left the noise grew louder: single shots could no longer be distinguished. Suddenly there was shouting in the forward ranks: ‘Infantry!…Infantry!…’ I automatically seized my rifle, thinking the Austrians had appeared. But there was nothing ahead except a hillock and some sparse undergrowth. However, against the background of the cannon shots which had almost stopped worrying me, I now caught the sound of a crash like a heavy downpour of rain, only much more powerful. ‘The battle!…’ someone in front shouted out, in a wailing voice. I felt my heart stop beating for a moment, not from terror, but as though in response to those two words which had made such a strange impression on me ever since my childhood.
Although we were still marching, the ranks grew restless. Wine went from hand to hand, rifles were cleaned, someone said that in half an hour at most we should be under fire and, above all, the Austrians were mocked in a coarse manner, because they were not doing well just then. Someone began whistling, another hummed under his breath; even the stiff formality of our officer gradually changed into comradely intimacy. We did not quiet down until the command ‘March at attention’ was given.
We fell silent and the somewhat straggling ranks drew up. The sky was clear, only here and there was a motionless white cloud: not a leaf was stirring in the undergrowth as we passed, not a single startled lark was heard over the fields of new grass. Only the heavy tread of the battalion was audible, the swift breathing of the men, sometimes the clank of rifles jarring or the penetrating voice of the major as, riding ahead, he shouted to the officers. And there to our left, a herd of cannons was roaring, and a rain of bullets falling. A man who has not heard such a storm out of a clear sky, brother Katz, knows nothing about music!…Do you remember how strange we felt just then? It wasn’t fear, but something more like grief and also curiosity…