‘Believe me when I say that good will come of it.’
The old Jew suddenly put one finger to his nose. His eyes sparkled and so did his pearly teeth: ‘Aha,’ he cried, ‘well, this just shows how old I am—not to guess it directly! You give Mr Łęcki thirty thousand roubles, and he does business with you worth perhaps a hundred thousand…Gut! I shall find you a bidder who will send up the price—and for the fee of only fifteen roubles. A very respectable gentleman, a Catholic too, only one must not give him an advance on the fee…I shall also provide you with some very respectable ladies, who will bid for you too…I can also give you a couple of Jews, at five roubles each…It will be such an auction that you could pay a hundred and fifty thousand for that house, and nobody would be any the wiser.’
Wokulski was rather embarrassed: ‘In any case, the matter will remain confidential?’ he said.
‘Mr Wokulski,’ replied the Jew solemnly, ‘you had no need to say that. Your secret is mine. You protected my little Henryk; you do not persecute the Jews…’
They said good-day, and Wokulski went home. There he found Maruszewicz, with whom he went to the riding-school to inspect the horse he had purchased.
The riding-school consisted of two connected buildings arranged in the form of a diamond-cutter. The round part held the school, the long part the stables. When Wokulski and Maruszewicz entered, a riding lesson was in progress. Four gentlemen and a lady were riding one behind the other around the wall of the ring; in the middle stood the director of the establishment, a man with a military air, wearing a blue jacket, tight white breeches and high boots with spurs. This was Mr Miller; he was instructing the riders and assisting himself in this activity with a long whip, which he cracked from time to time in the direction of a clumsily handled horse, whereupon its rider grimaced. Wokulski noticed first that one of the men, riding without stirrups, with his right hand behind his back, looked like a villain; that the second was trying to occupy a seat on his horse somewhere between its neck and tail, while the fourth looked as if he were continually on the verge of dismounting, and would never, no matter how long he lived, master the equestrian art. Only the lady in a riding-habit rode boldly and competently, making Wokulski think that, in the whole world, no position was uncomfortable or dangerous for a woman.
Maruszewicz introduced his companion to the director. ‘I was waiting for you, gentlemen, and am at your service…Mr Schultz!’
Mr Schultz ran in, a young fair-haired man also wearing a blue jacket, but still taller top-boots and tighter breeches. He took the emblem of directorial power with a military bow and before Wokulski left the ring, he saw that despite his youth, Schultz could yield the whip still more energetically than the director himself. For the second gentleman puffed, and the fourth began protesting querulously.
‘Sir,’ said the director to Wokulski, ‘you are taking over the Baron’s horse with all appurtenances: saddles, blankets and so forth?’
‘Of course…’
‘Then I must ask you for sixty roubles for stabling, which Baron Krzeszowski has not paid.’
‘It can’t be helped…’
They went into a small stable as airy as a living-room, even adorned with carpets, though not valuable ones. The stall was brand-new and full, and the ladder too; fresh straw was lying on the ground. All the same, the director’s sharp eye observed something wrong, for he shouted: ‘What does this mean, Mr Ksawery?…Upon my soul! D’you keep such things in your bedroom at home, then?’
A second assistant appeared for a moment. He took a look, disappeared, then in the corridor shouted: ‘Wojciech! What the devil’s this? Clean it up at once, or I will make you eat it…’ ‘Stefan, you booby,’ came a third voice from behind a partition, ‘if you leave the stable in this state once more, you young puppy, I’ll make you lick it up…’ Several loud thumps were heard at the same time, as if someone had seized someone else’s head and was banging it against a wall. Soon Wokulski saw through the stable window a young man with metal buttons on his jacket, who ran into the yard for a broom and, having found one, accidentally struck a staring Jew on the head with it. Being a natural scientist, Wokulski was surprised by this variation on the law of the preservation of energy, by which the director’s anger was vented upon a person not connected with the riding-school at all.
Meanwhile, the director ordered the horse to be brought into the passage. It was a beautiful animal with slim legs, small head and eyes which looked both clever and wistful. As she came out, the mare turned her head to Wokulski, sniffing at him, and snorting, as if she recognised her master.
‘She knows you already,’ said the director, ‘give her a lump of sugar…A beautiful mare!’ With this, he brought a piece of some grubby substance, smelling rather of tobacco, out of his pocket. Wokulski gave it to the mare, who ate it without more ado.
‘I’ll wager fifty roubles she will win,’ the director cried, ‘are you game?’
‘Of course,’ Wokulski replied.
‘She is bound to win. I’ll give her a first-rate jockey, and have him ride according to my instructions. Had she remained the property of Baron Krzeszowski—devil take me, but she’d have come in last, mark my words. But then, I would not have kept her in the stables, even.’
‘The director is still upset,’ Maruszewicz interrupted with a sweet smile.
‘Upset!’ the director cried, flushing with rage, ‘let Mr Wokulski judge whether I could keep on good terms with anyone who tells people I sold a horse in Lublin which had cholera! Such things,’ he exclaimed raising his voice still more, ‘are not easily forgotten, Mr Maruszewicz. And if the Count had not smoothed the matter over, then Baron Krzeszowski would have a bullet in his rump today…Me sell a horse with cholera! Even if I have to pay a hundred roubles out of my own pocket, that mare will win…Even if she is going to die…the Baron will see for himself…A horse with cholera, indeed! Ha ha ha!’ and the director burst into a fiendish laugh.
After looking at the mare, the gentlemen went into the office, where Wokulski settled the account, vowing privately never to refer to any horse as having cholera.
On leaving, he said: ‘Would it be possible to race the horse anonymously?’
‘It will be done…’
‘But…’
‘Pray put your mind at rest,’ the director replied, pressing his hand, ‘discretion is a gentleman’s middle name. I expect Mr Maruszewicz too…’
‘Yes indeed,’ Maruszewicz confirmed, nodding and gesticulating in such a way as to make it clear that the secret was buried in his breast.
Returning past the ring, Wokulski heard the cracking of the whip again, whereupon the fourth rider began complaining to the director’s deputy. ‘That is indelicate, my good man!’ the fourth rider cried, ‘my breeches will split…’ ‘Not them,’ Mr Schultz replied phlegmatically, cracking his whip in the direction of the second rider.
Wokulski left the riding-school. When he had said goodbye to Maruszewicz and was getting into a droshky, a strange thought occurred to him: ‘If the mare wins, then Izabela will fall in love with me…’
Suddenly he turned back; the mare, a matter of indifference a little while ago, had now become sympathetic and interesting. Going back into the stable, he again heard the unmistakable thump of a human head being banged against a wall. Just then a very red-faced stable-boy Stefan ran out of the next stall, his hair standing on end as if someone’s hand had just been removed from it, and immediately after him, the coachman Wojciech appeared too, rubbing his somewhat grubby hands on his jacket. Wokulski gave the elder three roubles and a rouble to the younger, and promised them a tip in future, providing no harm came to the mare. ‘Sir, I will look after her better than if she was my own wife,’ Wojciech replied with a low bow, ‘no harm will come to her, sir—of course not. And in the race, sir, she’ll go like the wind…’
Wokulski went into the stable and contemplated the mare for a quarter of an hour. Her fine, delicate legs made him uneasy and he was alarm
ed to see shivers passing across her velvet skin, for he thought perhaps she was falling ill. Then he put an arm around her neck and when she leaned her head on his shoulder, he kissed her and whispered:
‘If only you knew how much depends upon you…If only you knew…’
After that he visited the ring several times a day, fed the mare with sugar and caressed her. He felt that something not unlike a superstition was beginning to take shape in his practical mind. When the mare greeted him gaily, he took it as a good omen: but when she was unhappy, then unease troubled his heart. For, on the way to the stables he said to himself: ‘If I find her cheerful, then Izabela will fall in love with me.’
Sometimes common sense awoke within him; then anger gained hold of him, and self-contempt: ‘What is this?’ he thought, ‘is my life to depend on the caprices of one woman? Will I not find a hundred others? Has not Mrs Meliton promised to introduce me to three or four equally beautiful women? Once and for all, I must wake up!’ But instead of waking up, he plunged still more deeply into his obsession. It seemed to him in moments of awareness that witches must still exist on the earth, and that one had cast a spell on him. And then he thought fearfully: ‘I am not the man I was…I am becoming someone else…It is as if someone had changed my soul…’
Then again, the naturalist and psychologist spoke within him: ‘Here’, their voices whispered somewhere in the depths of his mind, ‘this is how nature is revenged for violations of her laws. As a young man, you despised your heart, you mocked love, you sold yourself as husband of an old woman—and now look at you! Your capital, hoarded over many years, is coming back to you with interest today!’
‘Very well…’ he thought, ‘but if this is so, then I ought to change into a libertine; why is it that I think only of her?’
‘The devil alone knows,’ his antagonists answered, ‘perhaps it is precisely this woman who suits you best. Perhaps it is true, as the legend says, that once, centuries ago, your souls were one?’
‘In that case, she should love me too,’ Wokulski said. Then he added: ‘If the mare wins the race, that will be a sign that Izabela will fall in love with me…Oh, you old fool, madman…what are you coming to?’
A few days before the races, the ‘English’ Count he had met during the gathering at the Prince’s house paid him a call. After the customary salutations, the Count sat down stiffly on a chair and said: ‘This visit has another purpose too. Dear me, yes! May I go on?’
‘Pray do, Count.’
‘Baron Krzeszowski,’ the Count continued, ‘whose mare you have bought, very correctly of course—dear me, yes—ventures to ask you very kindly to let him have her back…The price is of no consequence. The Baron has placed large bets…He will offer twelve hundred roubles.’
Wokulski turned cold: Izabela might despise him if he were to sell the mare. ‘What if I have my own plans for the horse, Count?’
‘In that case, you have priority, dear me, yes,’ the Count lisped.
‘You have decided the matter for me,’ Wokulski said with a bow.
‘Really? I am very sorry for the Baron, but you have prior rights.’
He rose from his chair like a dummy on springs and added, as he said goodbye: ‘When are we to go to the notary with our partnership, my dear sir? On thinking matters over, I have decided to contribute fifty thousand roubles…dear me, yes.’
‘It all depends on you gentlemen.’
‘I very much hope to see our country flourishing and so, my dear Mr Wokulski, you have all my sympathy and respect, dear me, yes, despite the disappointment you will cause the Baron. I was quite sure you would yield the mare to him…’
‘I cannot.’
‘I understand you,’ the Count concluded, ‘a true gentleman, even under the skin of a tradesman, cannot but reveal himself on such an occasion. However, if you will pardon my boldness, you are primarily a gentleman, and in the English style too, such as each one of us should be.’
He shook him warmly by the hand and left. Wokulski admitted to himself that this eccentric, who pretended to be a dummy, had many likeable qualities, nevertheless. ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘it is more agreeable to live with these gentlemen than with tradespeople. They really are beings made from a different clay.’
Then he added: ‘Is it surprising that Izabela despises a man like me—brought up, as she has been, among men like these? Yet what good do they do in the world and for the world? They respect people who can give them fifteen per cent on investments…But that is not of merit, after all.
‘The devil take it,’ he muttered, cracking his fingers, ‘but how do they know I’ve bought the mare? Never mind…After all, I bought it from Baroness Krzeszowska through Maruszewicz…Besides, I frequent the stables too much, they all know me there…Yes, I am beginning to commit follies, I am incautious…I didn’t care for that Maruszewicz, though.’
XIII
Gentlefolk at Play
AT LAST the day of the races came, it was fine but not too hot: just as it should be. Wokulski rose at five and at once went to visit his mare. She received him somewhat indifferently, but was well, and Mr Miller was full of encouragement.
‘What’s this?’ he laughed, digging Wokulski in the ribs, ‘you’re excited, eh? The sportsman in you is coming out. The likes of us, my dear sir, are in a fever throughout the racing season. Our little bet of fifty roubles still stands, eh? It’s like having the money in my pocket already—you might as well pay me now.’
‘I’ll pay it with the greatest of pleasure,’ Wokulski replied, and thought: ‘Will the mare win? Will Izabela ever fall in love with me? Suppose something happens? What if the mare breaks a leg?’
The morning hours dragged as if harnessed to snails. Wokulski called at the shop for a moment only, could not eat his lunch, then went to Saski park, continually thinking: ‘Will the mare win and Izabela fall in love with me?’ But he mastered his excitement, and did not leave home until five o’clock.
There was already such a throng of carriages and droshkies in Aleje Ujazdowskie that in places they had to crawl: at the toll-gate a real jam occurred, and he had to wait fifteen minutes, devoured by impatience, before his carriage finally turned into the Mokotow race-course.
At the gate Wokulski leaned out and surveyed the track through a cloud of yellowish dust which was settling heavily on his face and clothes. Today the stadium seemed immeasurably large and disagreeable, as if the phantom of uncertainty were looming over it. Far ahead, he saw a long line of people in a semi-circle which was continually increasing as newcomers arrived. Finally he gained his place, and then some ten minutes passed before his servant came back with a ticket.
A throng of non-paying spectators pressed around his carriage, and the uproar of a thousand voices made it seem to Wokulski that they were all talking of nothing but his mare and were mocking this tradesman playing at horse-racing.
At last his carriage was admitted into the ring. Wokulski jumped out and hurried to find his mare, trying to preserve the aspect of an indifferent spectator. After a long search he saw her in the centre of the enclosure, with Messrs Miller and Schultz beside her, as well as a jockey with a large cigar in his mouth, wearing a blue and yellow cap and a greatcoat over his shoulders.
His mare, against the background of this huge place and innumerable crowds, seemed to him so small and pitiful that, in despair, he was ready to toss away everything and go home. But Messrs Miller’s and Schultz’s countenances were illuminated with hope. ‘Here you are, at last,’ the director of the riding-school cried, and with a glance at the jockey, added: ‘May I introduce you—Mr Young, the best jockey in the country—Mr Wokulski.’
The jockey lifted two fingers to his blue and yellow cap, then, removing the cigar from his mouth with his other hand, he spat through his teeth. ‘Just tell us, Mr Young, shall she win?’ the director asked.
‘Ach,’ the jockey replied.
‘The other two horses aren’t bad, but our mare is first-rate.’ said the d
irector.
‘Ach,’ the jockey agreed.
Wokulski took him aside and said: ‘If we win, I’ll owe you fifty roubles over and above the agreement.’
‘Ach,’ the jockey replied, then, after eyeing Wokulski, he added: ‘You’re a real sportsman, but you’re still a bit too excited. Next year you’ll take it easier.’ He spat the distance of a horse and went off toward the grandstand, while Wokulski, saying goodbye to Messrs Miller and Schultz and patting the mare, went back to his carriage.
Now he began looking for Izabela.
He walked down a long line of carriages placed along the track, eyed the horses, servants, peeped under parasols at ladies, but could not find Izabela. ‘Perhaps she isn’t coming,’ he thought, and it seemed to him that the whole place full of people might as well sink into the ground, taking him along with it. Fancy throwing away so much money—if she was not going to be there! Perhaps Mrs Meliton, the old intriguer, had lied to him in a plot with Maruszewicz?
He went up the steps leading to the judges’ stand and looked around in all directions. In vain…When he was coming down, two gentlemen with their backs to him were barring the way: one was tall, with the bearing of a sportsman, and he was saying in a loud voice: ‘I’ve been reading for the past ten years how they accuse us of extravagance so I was ready to mend my ways and sell off my stable. Then I see that a man who made his money yesterday is running a horse in the races today…So I think to myself, aha—that is the sort of bird you are, is it? You preach to us, but when you succeed you behave just as we do…So I refuse to mend my ways, will not sell my stable, will not…’
Catching sight of Wokulski, his companion nudged the speaker, who suddenly broke off. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Wokulski sought to pass them, but the tall gentlemen prevented him: ‘Excuse me,’ he said, touching his hat, ‘for venturing to make such a remark…My name is Wrzesinski…’