And how quick-witted he is! When I heard at the Stock Exchange of Hodl’s attempt to assassinate Emperor Wilhelm, I came back to the shop and, looking into his eyes sharply, said: ‘You know, a certain Hodl has shot at the Emperor Wilhelm…’
He, as if unconcerned, replied: ‘A madman, evidently.’
‘But,’ say I, ‘they will cut the madman’s head off.’
‘And quite rightly,’ he replied, ‘he will not live to increase the lunatic species…’
Not even a muscle quivered as he said this. I turned to stone in the face of such sang-froid.
Dear Staś, you are quick-witted, but I am not a blockhead either. I know more than you suppose, and it only pains me to see you have no confidence in me. The advice of a friend and an old soldier might protect you from more than one folly, if not from stains on your reputation…But why should I express my own views? Let events speak for me.
Early in May we moved into the new store, which occupies five huge rooms. In the first, to the left, are Russian textiles: calico, cretonnes, silks and velvets. The same textiles occupy half the second, and oddments of apparel the other half: hats, collars, ties, umbrellas. In the front room are the most elegant goods: bronzes, majolicaware, crystals, ivory. The next room, to the right, holds toys, wood and metal merchandise, and in the last room, to the right, are rubber and leather goods.
I arranged it this way myself; I do not know if I did it properly, but, as God is my witness, I meant well. Then I asked Staś Wokulski his views: but instead of advising me, he merely shrugged and smiled as if to say: ‘What does it have to do with me?’
Strange man! A plan of genius comes into his head, he carries it out in a general way, but does not care in the least for the details. He had the shop moved, made it a centre for trade in Russian textiles and foreign haberdashery; he organised the entire administration. But since this was done, he has never interfered in the shop; instead, he pays calls on great gentlefolk, or drives in his carriage to the Łazienki park, or disappears somewhere without trace, appearing in the shop for only a few hours each day. In addition, he is absent-minded, irritable, as if he were waiting for something or afraid of something.
But what a kind heart he has, all the same!
I am ashamed to admit I was rather reluctant to move into the new store. That was not all: I certainly prefer to serve in a huge store, on the Parisian model, rather than in a booth like our previous shop. What I regretted was my room, where I had lived twenty-five years. As our old lease was good until July, I stayed in my little room to mid-May, looking at its walls, the grating which reminded me of agreeable times in Zamość, and at the old furniture. ‘How can I move all these things, how shall I get away, merciful Heaven?’ thought I.
But one day about the middle of May (rumours of peace were circulating just then), Staś came to me just before the store closed, and said: ‘You, know, old man, it’s time to move to your new abode.’ I felt my blood turn to water. Then he went on: ‘Come along, I’ll show you the new apartment I have rented for you in this very house.’
‘How so?’ I asked, ‘I must first discuss the rent with the landlord.’
‘It’s already paid,’ he replied. So he took my arm and led me through the back door of the shop into the hall.
‘But,’ said I, ‘this is rented…’
Instead of replying, he opened a door on the far side of the hall…I go in…my goodness!…a drawing-room!…Furniture covered in tapestry, albums on the tables, flower-pots in the window…a book-case by the wall…‘Here,’ said Staś, showing me richly bound books, ‘three histories of Napoleon I, the lives of Garibaldi and Kossuth, the history of Hungary…’
I was delighted with the books but I must admit that the drawing-room made a disagreeable impression. Staś noticed this and suddenly, with a smile, opened another door.
My goodness me!…this second room was my room, the room where I had lived twenty-five years. Barred windows, the green curtain, my black table…and by the wall opposite, was my iron bed, my rifle and the box containing my guitar. ‘How is this?’ I asked Staś, ‘so they have moved me already?’
‘Yes,’ Staś replies, ‘every single thing, even Ir’s sheet…’
It may seem comical, but I had tears in my eyes…I looked at his stern face and unhappy eyes, and could hardly believe that this man could be so thoughtful and have such delicacy of feeling. For I had never breathed a word to him…He himself had guessed that I might pine for my former abode, and had himself supervised the moving of my bits and pieces. Happy will be the woman he marries (I even have a suitable party in mind for him): but he won’t marry, for sure. Some kind of wild dreams possess him, but they are not, alas, concerned with marriage…Goodness knows how many respectable people come into our shop, purportedly to buy something but in reality matchmaking for Staś—yet nothing comes of it. There is Mrs Sperling, who has a hundred thousand roubles in cash and a distillery. What hasn’t she bought in our store, all in order to inquire: ‘Well, isn’t Mr Wokulski getting married, then?’ ‘No, madam.’ ‘That’s a shame,’ said Mrs Sperling with a sigh, ‘a fine store, a big fortune, but it will all go to rack and ruin for want of a lady in the house. Now, if Mr Wokulski were to choose a respectable and well-to-do lady, his credit would even go up.’ ‘Madam, you never said a truer word,’ I said. ‘Adieu, Mr Rzecki,’ said she (putting twenty or fifty roubles on the cash desk), ‘but pray do not mention to Mr Wokulski that I said anything about marriage, he may think the old girl is after him…’ ‘On the contrary, I will not omit to mention it…’
And I thought to myself that if I were Wokulski, I’d marry this rich widow in a moment. That figure of hers, my goodness!
Or there is Schmetterling, the saddler. How often, when paying his bills, has he not said: ‘Why, sir, couldn’t such a man as Wokulski, sir, get married? A fine fellow, sir, spirited, sir, shoulders like a bull. May the devil take me if I wouldn’t let him have my own daughter and ten thousand a year dowry, sir…Hm?’
Or Councillor Wroński. Not wealthy, quiet, yet he buys a pair of gloves every week, and each time he says: ‘Good God, how can Poland help going to the dogs when a man like Wokulski doesn’t marry? Good God, he’s a man who doesn’t even need a dowry, so he could find a young lady who can play the piano, look after the house-keeping and knows foreign languages…’
Dozens of such suitors pass through our store. Some mothers, aunts or fathers simply bring their eligible young ladies to us. The mother, aunt or father will buy something for a rouble, and meanwhile the young lady walks about the store, sits down, shows off her figure, puts forward her right foot, then her left, displays her hands…All with the aim of trapping Staś, who, more often than not, isn’t even in the store, or—if he is—doesn’t even look at the property, as much as to say: ‘Mr Rzecki is in charge of appraisals…’
Poor Staś is not liked, except by families with grown-up daughters, widows and eligible young ladies, who seem bolder than Hungarian infantry. Not surprising, though—he has set all the silk and wool manufacturers, and the tradesmen who sell their own products, against him.
One Sunday (this rarely happens), I went to a café for my breakfast. A glass of anisette and a portion of herring at the counter, then a small portion of tripe and a carafe of porter at my table—quite a feast! I paid nearly a rouble, but how much smoke I swallowed, and what I overheard! It was enough to keep me going for several years.
In a room as stuffy and dark as a smoked-herring factory, where they served me my tripe, some six gentlemen were sitting around a table. They were portly and well-dressed individuals; certainly tradesmen, landowners or perhaps manufacturers. Each looked as if he had from three to five thousand roubles income a year.
As I did not know any of these gentlemen, and they certainly did not know me, I cannot accuse them of deliberately bedevilling me. However, just fancy the coincidence—at the moment I entered, they were talking about Wokulski! I could not see who was speaking on account of the s
moke, and I dared not look up from my plate.
‘He done very well for himself,’ said a coarse voice. ‘When he was young, he used to wait on the likes of us, but now he’s doing well he prefers to dance attendance on great gentlefolk.’
‘These gentlemen of today,’ an asthmatic individual put in, ‘are no better than he is. Would they have been at home to an ex-tradesman at a Count’s house in the old days? And an ex-tradesman who made his fortune by marrying…Why, it’s laughable…’
‘Never mind about the marrying,’ the coarse voice replied, after coughing a little, ‘a good marriage is nothing to be ashamed of. But those millions he made in war supplies have an unsavoury smell about them.’
‘Yet he apparently never cheated anyone,’ a third remarked, in an undertone.
‘That’s the only way to make millions,’ the bass voice thundered, ‘and anyhow why does he turn up his nose at the likes of us?…why try to elbow his way among the aristocracy?’
‘People say’, another voice added, ‘that he wants to form a trading company of nobility alone…’
‘Aha! He’ll skin them, then bolt,’ the asthmatic individual interrupted.
‘No,’ said the bass, ‘he’ll never wash off the stain of those war supplies, not even with kitchen soap. A haberdasher in military supplies, indeed! A Warsaw tradesman going to Bulgaria, indeed!’
‘Yet your brother, the engineer, went even further after profit,’ said the undertone.
‘Of course,’ the bass interposed, ‘but at least he never imported calico from Moscow…Confound the man, he’s ruining our industry.’
‘Ha ha!’ chuckled a voice hitherto silent, ‘that is no longer any concern of a tradesman. A tradesman’s aim is to import cheaper goods and make more profit for himself. Isn’t that so? Ha ha!’
‘However that may be, I wouldn’t give you a penny for his patriotism,’ the bass declared.
‘Yet it seems to me,’ the low voice said, ‘that Wokulski has shown his patriotism by more than words…’
‘So much the worse for him,’ said the bass, ‘he showed it when he was penniless, but has cooled off now that he has roubles in his pocket…’
‘Come now, do you always have to accuse people either of treachery to Poland or dishonesty? That’s not nice…’ the low voice said, vexed.
‘How is it that you stand up for him so strongly?’ asked the bass, pushing back his chair.
‘I defend him because I’ve heard a little about him,’ the low voice replied, ‘a certain Wysocki, who drives carts for me, was starving to death until Wokulski put him on his feet.’
‘With money he made from military supplies in Bulgaria? There’s a benefactor for you!’
‘Other people, my dear sir, enriched themselves on Polish money—and nothing was said. So there!’
‘In any case, he’s a dubious character,’ the breathless voice concluded, ‘he’s always rushing here and there, importing calico, not looking after his shop, as if to coax the gentry…’
As the waiter was bringing them more bottles, I quietly bolted. I did not interrupt their conversation, because—knowing Staś since his boyhood as I do—I could only have said three words: ‘You abject creatures!’ And there they were talking like this while I was in fear and trembling for his future, while I asked myself morning and evening: ‘What is he doing? What is he doing it all for? And what will come of it?’
And to think that they can say such things about him today, in my presence, after I’d seen the carter Wysocki kneel at his feet only yesterday to thank him for arranging the transfer of his brother to Skierniewice, and for giving him help…He’s a simple man, yet how honest. He’d brought his ten-year-old son with him and pointed to Wokulski as he said: ‘Look at the gentleman, Pietrek, he is our greatest benefactor…If he ever asks you to cut off your right hand for him, do it, though even then you will not have repaid him…’
Or consider the girl who wrote to him from the Magdalenes: ‘I have remembered a childhood prayer so as to pray for you…’ These are simple people, immoral girls: yet do they not possess more nobility of feeling than we in our frock-coats, extolling ourselves all over town for virtues none of us believes in? Staś is right to concern himself with these poor people, though I wish he would do so in a less excitable manner.
The truth is that his new acquaintances alarm me. I recollect, early in May, a very dubious individual (red whiskers, hateful eyes) came into the shop, placed his visiting card on the cash desk and said in broken Polish: ‘Pray tell Mr Wokulski I come seven o’clock…’ And that was all.
I glanced at his card, which read ‘William Collins, teacher of English’. What kind of a joke was this? Surely Wokulski is not going to learn English? But I understood it all when news arrived the next day of Hodl’s assassination.
Not to mention another acquaintance, a certain Mrs Meliton, who has been honouring us with visits ever since Staś returned from Bulgaria. She’s a skinny creature who chatters away like the proverbial mill-race, though you feel she is only saying what she wants to say. She called once at the end of May: ‘Is Mr Wokulski here? Of course not, I thought as much…Am I addressing Mr Rzecki? I thought so…What a charming dressing-case…Fine wood, I appreciate such things. Pray tell Mr Wokulski to send it to me, he knows my address—and tell him to be in the Łazienki park tomorrow, around one o’clock.’
‘Where did madam say?’ I asked, vexed by her effrontery.
‘You’re a fool…in the park,’ said the lady.
Well, and Wokulski sent her the case and went to the park. When he came back, he said that a congress was to meet in Berlin, to bring the Eastern war to an end—and so it did!
The same lady called a second time on—as I recall—June the first. ‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, ‘what a charming vase…Majolica, I’ll be bound, I appreciate such things…Tell Mr Wokulski to send it (and here she added in a whisper) also tell him that the day after tomorrow, around one o’clock…’
When she had gone, I said to Lisiecki: ‘You may be sure that we shall have important political news the day after tomorrow.’ ‘On the third of June?’ he replied with a smile. Pray imagine our expressions when news came of Nobiling’s assassination in Berlin. I thought I would drop dead on the spot. Lisiecki has since stopped making unsuitable jokes about me, and what is worse, now always asks me for political news…It is true that a great reputation can indeed be a terrible thing. For ever since Lisiecki has started appealing to me as an ‘informed source’ I have stopped sleeping and lost what was left of my appetite. And as for what must be happening to poor Staś, who is in constant touch with this Mr Collins and Mrs Meliton!…Heaven help us!
As I have gone on this far (I am becoming quite a gossip, to be sure) I may as well add that an unhealthy unrest prevails in our emporium. Apart from myself, there are now seven clerks altogether (would old Mincel ever have dreamed of this?)—but there is no unity among them. Klein and Lisiecki, as the seniors, keep together and treat the rest of their colleagues in a manner which I can hardly call contemptuous, but which is certainly rather haughty. And the three new clerks, in the haberdashery, metal and rubber departments respectively, only mix with one another, and are stiff and sulky towards the others. Admittedly, honest Zięba, in his desire to bring them together, trots from old to new and seeks to placate them, but the poor man has such a heavy hand that the opponents merely glower at one another still more fiercely after each attempt at placation.
Perhaps if our emporium (it certainly is an emporium and a first-rate one into the bargain) had developed gradually, if we had taken on one new clerk a year, the new man would have mingled with the old and there would be harmony. But to take on five new clerks at once, so that one will often get in the way of another (for the merchandise cannot be properly arranged, nor the sphere of each man’s duties defined in such a short time)—why then, it is natural enough that disagreements would occur. But why should I criticise my principal’s activities, and he a man who has more sense t
han the rest of us put together…
Only on one point do the old and the new gentlemen agree, and here Zięba is even a help—in teasing our seventh clerk, Szlangbaum. This Szlangbaum (I have known him for years) is of the Hebraic persuasion, but an honest fellow for all that. Small, dark, bent, unshaven—in a word, you would not give tuppence for him when he sits at the cash desk. But as soon as a customer comes in (Szlangbaum works in the department of Russian textiles), good gracious, how he twirls like a top! Now he is at the highest shelf on the right, now at the lowest on the left. When he begins hurling rolls of cloth about, he resembles a steam-engine rather than a man; when he begins unfolding and measuring, I think he has three pairs of hands. Also he is a born salesman, and when he starts recommending goods, making suggestions, guessing taste, all in an exceedingly grave tone, then I give my word that not even Mraczewski comes anywhere near him. It is too bad, though, that he is so small and plain; we shall have to get him a stupid but handsome young man as assistant with the ladies. For although it is true that ladies linger longer with a handsome clerk, yet they also complain and bargain less. (Heaven protect us from lady customers! Perhaps I lost my taste for marriage by seeing ladies in the shop all the time. The Creator, when He formed that miracle of Nature known as Woman, cannot have realised the misfortune He would bring down upon tradesmen.)