‘Yes, and she has to draw all the curtains,’ the agent replied.
‘It’s the old man who draws them, not her,’ the student replied with a gesture, ‘she peeps through the chinks in the curtains. Anyway, my dear sir, if Miss Leokadia is allowed to vex the whole yard, then surely Maleski and Patkiewicz have the right to walk about as they choose in their room?’
As he spoke, the young man strode up and down. Whenever his back was turned, the agent winked at me and made grimaces denoting great desperation. After a pause he said: ‘You gentlemen owe us four months’ rent.’
‘Oh, you’re back to that again!’ the young man cried, putting his hands in his pockets, ‘how often must I tell you not to talk to me of this nonsense, but to Patkiewicz or Maleski? After all, it’s easy enough to remember — Maleski pays for even months, February, April, June — while Patkiewicz pays for the odd, March, May, July …’
‘But none of you ever pays!’ the agent exclaimed impatiently.
‘Whose fault is it if you don’t come at the proper time?’ the young man roared, clapping his hands together, ‘you’ve been told a hundred times to come to Maleski in even months, to Patkiewicz in odd …’
‘What about you?’
‘Me? Not at all,’ the young man exclaimed, threatening us, ‘I don’t pay rent on principle. Whom am I to pay? And what for? Ha ha! Serve you right.’
He began walking still more rapidly about the room, laughing and scowling by turns. Finally he began whistling and looking out of the window, impudently turning his back to us …I lost my temper: ‘Allow me to remark,’ I exclaimed, ‘that this disregard of an agreement is more than somewhat strange …A person supplies you with a dwelling, but you see fit not to pay for it.’
‘Who gives me a dwelling?’ cried the young man, sitting on the window sill and swinging himself about as if he intended throwing himself down from the third floor. ‘I took this apartment and will stay here till they throw me out. Agreement, indeed! They make me laugh with their talk of agreements …If society wants me to pay for a place to live, society should pay me enough for the lessons I give to suffice for rent. It’s laughable! For three hours teaching a day I get fifteen roubles a month; they take away nine for food, three for laundry and services — and what about my clothes, and fees! Yet they still want me to pay rent …Throw me out into the street,’ he said angrily, ‘let the dog-catcher shoot me …You have a right to that, but not to make comments and complain …’
‘I fail to understand your excitement,’ said I, calmly.
‘I have good reason to be excited,’ the young man replied, swinging more and more in the direction of the yard, ‘as society didn’t kill me at birth, as it wants me to study and pass dozens of exams, it has put itself under an obligation to give me work that will ensure my survival …Yet it either refuses me work, or cheats me out of payment for it …And if society does not keep its agreement with me, why should it expect me to keep mine to it? But what’s the use of talking, I don’t pay rent as a matter of principle, and basta! The more so because the present owner of the house didn’t build it: he didn’t bake the bricks, nor make the lime, lay the walls, risk breaking his neck. He came with money, possibly stolen, and paid someone else, who had perhaps robbed another person, and on that principle he wants to make me his slave. Such reasoning makes me laugh!’
‘Mr Wokulski never robbed anyone,’ I said, rising, ‘he made his fortune by hard work and saving.’
‘Be quiet,’ the young man interrupted, ‘my father was a competent doctor, he worked night and day and made what you might call good pay, and he saved …three hundred roubles a year! As your house cost ninety thousand roubles, my father would have had to live and write prescriptions for three hundred years. I don’t believe the new landlord worked for three hundred years …’
My head began spinning with these arguments: but the young man went on, ‘You can turn us out, of course. Then you’ll see what you’ve lost. All the laundry-girls, all the cooks in the house will lose their tempers, and Madame Krzeszowska will begin to torment her neighbours unchallenged, to count each visitor who calls and every spoonful of flour they use …By all means throw us out! Then Miss Leokadia will start singing her scales and vocalises in a soprano voice mornings and contralto in the evenings …And the devil will take this house where we’re the only ones to keep order.’
We made to leave: ‘So you definitely will not pay the rent?’ I asked.
‘Certainly not!’
‘Perhaps you would at least start paying from next October?’
‘No, sir. I have not much longer to live, so I hope to introduce at least one principle — if society wants individuals to respect agreements, then let society carry out its agreements with individuals. If I have to pay rent to anyone, then let others pay me as much for lessons to suffice for that rent. D’you understand me, sir?’
‘Not entirely, sir,’ I replied.
‘That is not surprising,’ said the young man, ‘in old age the brain withers away and is incapable of accepting new ideas.’
We bowed to one another, and the agent and I went out. The young man shut the door behind us, but after a moment he ran out to the stairs and shouted: ‘And tell the agent to bring two policemen with him, for they will have to eject me by force!’
When the unusual young man had finally gone back to his apartment and locked the door on us in a manner which made it plain he regarded his conference with us as over, I stopped halfway down the stairs and said to the agent: ‘I see you have coloured window-panes, here?’
‘Oh, certainly …’
‘But they need cleaning.’
‘Yes, so they do,’ said the agent.
‘And I think,’ I added, ‘that this young man will keep his word regarding not paying rent?’
‘Sir, that’s nothing,’ the agent exclaimed, ‘he says he won’t pay, and he doesn’t; but the other two don’t say anything and don’t pay either. They’re extraordinary tenants, Mr Rzecki …But they never let me down.’
I shook my head involuntarily, though I felt that if I were the landlord of such a house, I’d be shaking my head all day long. ‘So no one here pays, or at least not regularly?’ I asked the former landowner.
‘That’s not surprising,’ Mr Wirski replied, ‘in a house where the rent has been collected for so many years by creditors, the most honest tenant grows spoiled. Nevertheless, we have some regular ones, such as Baroness Krzeszowska, for instance.’
‘Who?’ I exclaimed, ‘ah, yes the Baroness lives here …She even wanted to buy the house.’
‘And she will,’ the agent whispered, ‘unless you gentlemen hold fast. She’ll buy it even if it costs her entire fortune. And it’s a good-sized fortune, though the Baron has demolished it greatly.’
I was still standing halfway down the stairs, under a window with red, green and blue panes. I was recollecting the Baroness, whom I had only seen a few times in my life, and who had always struck me as a very eccentric person. She knew how to be pious and stubborn, humble and vulgar, at one and the same time …
‘What sort of person is she, Mr Wirski?’ I asked.
‘She’s an unusual person, sir …Like all hysterical females,’ the former landowner muttered, ‘she lost her daughter, her husband left her …Nothing but angry scenes.’
‘Let us call on her, sir,’ I said, going down to the second floor. I felt so bold that the idea of the Baroness did not alarm me, but almost attracted me. But when we stopped at her door and the agent rang, I felt a cramp in my calves. I was rooted to the spot, and that was the only reason why I didn’t bolt. In a moment my courage left me, and I recalled the scenes at the auction.
A key turned, the latch clattered and the face of a young girl, wearing a white cap, appeared in the half-open door: ‘Who is it?’ the girl asked.
‘Me, the agent.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m here with the owner’s representative.’
‘And
what does he want?’
‘He’s the representative …’
‘Who am I to say, then?’
‘Tell your mistress,’ said the agent, by now rather irritated, ‘that we have come to discuss the apartment.’
‘Aha …’
She closed the door and went away. Some two or three minutes passed before she came back and, after unlocking several locks, showed us into an empty drawing-room.
This drawing-room had a strange appearance. The furniture was draped with ash-coloured coverings, so was the piano and the chandelier suspended from the ceiling: even the columns in corners, holding statues, wore the same ash-coloured garments. All in all, it gave the impression of a room whose owner had gone away, leaving behind only servants who were most meticulous about tidiness.
Beyond the door a conversation between a woman’s and a man’s voice was audible. The woman’s voice was that of the Baroness: I recognised that of the man, but could not place it.
‘I could swear,’ said the Baroness, ‘he maintains relations with her. The other day he sent her a bouquet by special messenger …’
‘Hm …hm …’ the other man’s voice interposed.
‘A bouquet which that detestable coquette has thrown out of the window, on purpose to deceive me …’
‘Yet the Baron is in the country, far from Warsaw,’ the man replied.
‘But he has friends here,’ the Baroness cried, ‘and if I didn’t know you, I’d suspect that you were the go-between for these shameful acts.’
‘But, madam …’ the man’s voice protested, and at this moment the sound of two kisses were heard, on the hand, I believe.
‘Come, Mr Maruszewicz, none of your sentimentality! I know your kind! You smother a woman in caresses until she trusts you, then you squander away her fortune and ask for a divorce …’
So it is Maruszewicz, I thought: a fine pair!
‘Not at all,’ said the man’s voice behind the door, more quietly, and again two kisses were heard, certainly on the lady’s hand.
I glanced at the former landowner. He lifted his gaze to the ceiling, and his shoulders went up almost to his ears: ‘Scoundrel!’ he whispered, indicating the door.
‘You know him?’
‘Hm …’
‘So,’ said the Baroness in the other room, ‘take these three roubles to the Holy Cross Church and pay for three votive masses, so that God may bring him back to his senses …Or, no,’ she added, in a somewhat different tone, ‘pay one votive mass for him, and two for the soul of my poor little girl …’
Suppressed sobbing interrupted her words: ‘Pray calm yourself,’ urged Maruszewicz, mildly.
‘Go, please go now,’ she replied.
Suddenly the drawing-room door opened and Maruszewicz halted on the threshold as though turned to stone, while behind him I saw the yellowish face and bloodshot eyes of Madame the Baroness. The agent and I rose. Maruszewicz withdrew into the depths of the other room and evidently left by another door, while the Baroness exclaimed crossly: ‘Marysia! Marysia!’
In ran the girl in white cap, black dress and white apron. This get-up would have made her look like a nurse, if her eyes had not sparkled so mischievously.
‘How could you bring these gentlemen in here?’ the Baroness asked.
‘You told me to …’
‘Blockhead! Off with you,’ the Baroness hissed. Then she turned to us: ‘What do you want, Mr Wirski?’
‘Mr Rzecki here is the representative of the landlord,’ the agent replied.
‘I see. Very well,’ said the Baroness, coming into the drawingroom slowly without asking us to be seated. This is what she looked like: a black dress, yellowish face, livid lips, eyes red from weeping and hair tightly combed back. She folded her arms like Napoleon, looked at me and said: ‘I see. So you’re the representative of…let me see — Mr Wokulski, isn’t it? Pray tell him from me, sir, that either I leave this apartment, for which I pay him seven hundred roubles very regularly, — do I not, Mr Wirski?’
The agent bowed. ‘Or,’ the Baroness went on, ‘Mr Wokulski rids his house of all this dirt and immorality …’
‘Immorality?’ I inquired.
‘Yes, sir,’ the Baroness insisted, nodding, ‘those laundry-girls who sing vile songs all day long in the yard, and laugh upstairs in the evenings with those …students. Those criminals, who throw cigarettes down at me, or pour dirty water …And finally that Mrs Stawska, who is goodness knows what — a widow, a divorcée, who lives on goodness knows what …That woman seduces the husbands of virtuous, terribly unfortunate wives …’
She began blinking, then burst into tears: ‘It’s monstrous,’ she sobbed, ‘to be chained to such a hateful house by the memory of a child which will never be erased from my heart. She used to run through these very rooms …She used to play down there in the yard …And she looked out of the windows which I, her bereaved mother, am not allowed to look out of…They want to drive me away …They all want to drive me out …I am in everybody’s way …Yet I cannot move from here, for each plank on the floor bears traces of her little feet …Her tears and her laughter are associated with every wall …’
She sank onto the sofa and burst into sobs: ‘Ah!’ she wept, ‘men are worse than beasts. They want to drive me away from this place where my little girl breathed her last …Her little bed and all her toys are still in their place. I dust her room myself, so that not the smallest thing is moved. I have been over every inch of the floor on my knees, I have kissed every trace of my little girl, yet they want to drive me out. You will drive out my suffering, my longing, my despair sooner!’
She covered her face and sobbed in a heart-rending manner. I noticed that the agent’s nose was turning red and could feel tears in my own eyes. The Baroness’s grief for her dead child so disarmed me that I had not the courage to mention raising the rent. Her weeping unnerved me so that, had it not been the second floor, I would surely have jumped out of the window.
So, in my anxiety to console the sobbing woman at any price, I remarked with the utmost mildness: ‘Madam, pray calm yourself. What would you have us do? Can we help at all?’
There was so much sympathy in my voice that the agent’s nose turned even redder. One of the Baroness’s eyes dried up, though the other continued weeping, as a sign that she did not consider her argument closed, nor me defeated.
‘I demand …I demand …’ said she, sighing, ‘I demand that I am not driven from the place where my child died …where everything reminds me of her …I cannot, no, I cannot tear myself away from her room …I cannot move her things and her toys…It is vile to exploit misfortune in this way.’
‘Who is exploiting misfortune?’ I inquired.
‘Everyone, starting with the landlord, who makes me pay seven hundred roubles …’
‘Pardon me, madam,’ the agent exclaimed, ‘seven fine rooms, two kitchens the size of drawing-rooms, two closets …Why don’t you let someone else have three of the rooms? There are two front doors, after all.’
‘I will not let anyone else have them,’ she replied firmly, ‘because I am convinced my wandering husband will come to his senses any day now, and come back to me …’
‘In that case, you must go on paying seven hundred roubles …’
‘If not more,’ I murmured.
The Baroness looked at me as though she wanted to shrivel me up into a cinder and drown me in her tears. Oh, what a very grand woman, to be sure …It makes my flesh creep to think of her.
‘Never mind about the rent,’ she said.
‘Very sensible,’ Wirski praised her, bowing.
‘Never mind about the landlord’s demands …But I cannot pay seven hundred roubles for an apartment in a house like this.’
‘What do you expect?’ I inquired.
‘This house is a disgrace to respectable people,’ she exclaimed with a gesture, ‘it is not for myself, but for decency’s sake that I beg …’
‘What?’
‘T
hat those students who live upstairs be removed …They won’t let me look out of the windows and demoralise everyone …’ Suddenly she jumped up from the sofa: ‘There, do you hear that?’ she cried pointing to the door which led to the room overlooking the yard. In fact, I heard the voice of the eccentric dark-haired young student, who was shouting from the third floor: ‘Marysia! Marysia, come up here …’
‘Marysia!’ the Baroness cried.
‘Here, madam …What is it?’ the girl answered, rather red in the face. ‘Don’t stir from this apartment! There you are, sir,’ said the Baroness, ‘it is like this for days at a time. And in the evenings the laundry-girls go up there …Sir!’ she exclaimed, pressing her hands together piously, ‘drive those nihilists out, they are a source of depravity and danger to the whole house. They keep tea and sugar in human skulls …They poke the samovar with human bones! They want to bring a whole corpse into the house …’
She began crying again so that I thought she would have hysterics: ‘Those gentlemen,’ I said, ‘do not pay their rent, so it is very possible that …’
The Baroness dried her eyes: ‘But of course,’ she interrupted, ‘you must get rid of them …But sir,’ she exclaimed, ‘although they are wicked and depraved, that …that Stawska female is even worse …’
I was amazed to see the flame of hatred which glittered in the eyes of madame the Baroness, at the mention of the name ‘Stawska’.
‘Mrs Stawska lives here?’ I asked involuntarily, ‘that pretty …’
‘Ah, another of her victims!’ the Baroness cried, pointing at me, and she began speaking in a deep voice, her eyes flashing: ‘Grey-haired old man, mind what you are at! For she is a woman whose husband, accused of murder, has run away abroad …So how does she live? How does she manage to dress so well?’
‘She works like a Trojan,’ the agent whispered.
‘You too!’ the Baroness exclaimed, ‘my husband — I am convinced it is he — sends her bouquets from the country. The agent of this house is in love with her, and collects her rent at the end of the month …’