‘Mr Klein will not be working for me after July,’ replied Szlangbaum, ‘you’d better speak to Mr Rzecki, they’ve known one another longest.’
Maruszewicz called on me in turn, and again told his story of the students who call him a card-sharp or compromise ladies visiting him. ‘Fine ladies!’ thought I, while I replied aloud, ‘Mr Klein is in the store all day, so he cannot be responsible for his friends.’
‘Yes, but Mr Klein has some secret understanding with them; he persuaded them to move back into the house; he visits them and receives them in his apartment.’
‘A young man,’ I replied, ‘naturally prefers to keep company with other young men.’
‘But I don’t want to suffer on that account! Let him keep them quiet … Or I’ll start a court case against them all.’
What a hope — that Klein should pacify the students, or unite them in sympathy for Maruszewicz! However, I warned Klein and added that it would be very unpleasant if he, a clerk of Wokulski’s, were to have a court case involving students’ antics. Klein heard me out, then shrugged. ‘What’s it to do with me?’ he replied, ‘I might hang such a scoundrel, but I don’t shoot peas at his windows, or call him a card-sharp. What are his card parties to me?’
He was right. So I didn’t say another word.
I must be off … away! If only Klein doesn’t get mixed up in some foolishness. It’s terrible how childish they are; they’d like to rebuild the world, but at the same time they perform such silly antics.
Either I am quite mistaken, or we are on the eve of extraordinary events. One day in May, Wokulski travelled with Mr and Miss Łęcki to Cracow, and told me clearly that he didn’t know when he would be back — perhaps not for a month.
Yet he returned, not within a month, but on the very next day, so wretched-looking that he was pitiful to see. It was terrible to see what had come over this man in the course of twenty-four hours. When I asked him what had happened, and why he’d come back, he first of all hesitated, then said he’d received a telegram from Suzin and was leaving for Moscow. But within the next twenty-four hours he changed his mind and declared he wasn’t going.
‘But if it’s important business?’ I asked.
‘May the devil take business,’ he muttered and shrugged.
Now he doesn’t leave his house for whole days at a time, and for the most part he lies down. I visited him, but he received me irritably; I learned from the butler that he refuses to see anyone. I sent Szuman to him, but Staś wouldn’t even talk to Szuman, and merely told him he needed no doctors. This didn’t satisfy Szuman; as he is something of a busybody he began inquiries on his own account, and learned strange things.
He said that Wokulski had left the train around midnight, at Skierniewice, pretending he’d received a telegram, that afterwards he’d disappeared from the station and didn’t return until dawn, covered with mud, apparently tipsy. At the station, they think he got drunk and spent the night in a field. This explanation didn’t convince either Szuman or me. The doctor declares that Staś must have broken with Miss Łécka, and perhaps even attempted something preposterous … But I think he really did have a telegram from Suzin. In any case, I must travel for my health’s sake. I am not yet an invalid, and cannot renounce my future on account of a temporary enfeeblement.
Mraczewski is here and is staying with me. The lad looks like a Bernardine Father, has grown manly, sunburnt, plump. And how much of the world he’s seen in the last few months! He went to Paris, then Lyons; from Lyons he went to Częstochowa, to Mrs Stawska, and they came to Warsaw together. Then he took her back to Częstochowa, stayed a week and apparently helped her arrange the store. Then he went to Moscow, from where he returned to Częstochowa and Mrs Stawska, stayed a while and at present is with me.
Mraczewski declares that Suzin did not telegraph to Wokulski, and in addition he is certain that Wokulski has broken with Miss Łęcka. He must even have said something to Mrs Stawska, since that angelic woman, while in Warsaw a few weeks ago, was kind enough to visit me and inquire very sincerely about Staś: ‘Is he well? Is he very changed and sad? Will he never recover from his despair?’
Despair? Even if he’s broken with Miss Łęcka, thank God there are still plenty of other women, and if he wants to, Staś could marry Mrs Stawska. A priceless little woman, how she loved him — and who knows whether she still does? Good God, I’d be delighted if Staś were to go back to her. So pretty, so noble, so much devotion … If there is still any order in the world (which I sometimes doubt), then Wokulski ought to marry Mrs Stawska. But he must make haste, for unless I am very much mistaken, Mraczewski is starting to think of her. ‘Sir,’ he sometimes says to me, wringing his hands, ‘what a woman, what a woman! If it weren’t for her unfortunate husband, I’d have proposed to her already.’
‘But would she accept you?’
‘I don’t know …’ he sighed.
He sank into a chair so that it trembled, and said: ‘When I met her the first time after her departure from Warsaw, it was as though I’d been struck by lightning, I liked her so …’
‘Well, and she made an impression on you even earlier.’
‘But not of this sort. After travelling from Paris to Czestochowa, I was drowsy, but she looked so pale, with such sad eyes, that I immediately thought: suppose I succeed? So I tried flirting with her. But she rejected me after the first words, and when I fell on my knees to her and swore I loved her — she burst into tears! Ah, Ignacy, those tears … I lost my head entirely … If the devil would take her husband once and for all, or if I had the money for a divorce … Ignacy! After a week of living with this woman, I’d either die or take to my bed. Yes, sir … Only today do I feel how much I love her.’
‘But suppose she is in love with somebody else?’ I asked.
‘With whom? Wokulski, may be? Ha! Ha! … Who would fall in love with that gruff old bear? … A woman needs to be shown feelings, passions, to be spoken to of love, to have her hands pressed, and if possible, also … But could that lump of clay do anything of the kind? He made up to Izabela like a pointer to a duck, because he thought he would enter into contact with the aristocracy and that the young lady had a dowry. But when he saw how things were, he ran away from her at Skierniewice. Oh sir, one can’t treat women so!’
I admit I don’t care for Mraczewski’s raptures. When he starts hurling himself at her feet, whining, sobbing, then in the end he’ll turn Mrs Stawska’s head. And Wokulski may regret it, because — on my word of honour as an ex-officer — she was the only woman for him.
But let us wait, and in the meantime — be off!
Brr! So I left. I bought a ticket to Cracow, got into the train at the Warsaw—Vienna railroad station and then, after the third departure bell had rung, I jumped out again. I can’t leave Warsaw and the store even for a little while. I got my luggage back from the railroad on the next day, it had gone as far as Piotrków. If all my plans go like this, I must congratulate myself.
XXXVI
A Soul in Lethargy
LYING or sitting in his room, Wokulski mechanically recalled his return from Skierniewice to Warsaw. Around five that morning, he had bought a first-class ticket at the railroad station, though he was uncertain whether he had asked for it or whether it had been given to him without his asking. Then he got into a second-class compartment, and there he found a priest, who looked out of the window for the entire journey, also a red-haired German who took off his spats and slept like a log, with his feet (in dirty socks) on the opposite seat. Finally, facing him, had been an old lady, who had such a bad toothache that she didn’t even object to the behaviour of her neighbour in the socks.
Wokulski wanted to calculate the number of persons travelling in the compartment, and with great difficulty he noticed that, without him there were three, and with him — four. Then he began wondering why three persons plus one person makes four altogether — and he fell asleep.
In Warsaw, he didn’t come to himself until he was r
iding in a droshky in Aleje Jerozolimskie. But who had carried his valise for him, and how had he got himself into the droshky? This he did not know, and it didn’t even matter to him.
He got into his apartment after ringing for half an hour, though it was already nearly eight in the morning. A sleepy servant opened the door, undressed, alarmed by his sudden return. On entering the bedroom, Wokulski realised that the faithful servant had been sleeping in his own bed. He did not reproach him, merely ordered tea.
The servant, wide-awake but also embarrassed, hastily changed the bed linen and pillow-cases, and when he saw the newly made bed Wokulski did not drink the tea, but undressed and lay down to sleep. He slept until five that afternoon and then, after washing and dressing to go out, he sat down involuntarily in an armchair in the drawing-room and dozed until evening. When the street lamps were lit, he ordered a lamp and a steak from a restaurant. He ate it greedily, drank wine and went to bed again around midnight.
Next day Rzecki visited him, but he didn’t recall how long he stayed, or what they talked about. Not until the following night, when he woke up for a moment, did he seem to see Rzecki with a very worried expression. Then he lost count of time entirely, did not notice any difference between day and night, did not consider whether the hours were passing too fast or too slow. In general he didn’t concern himself with time, which — as it were — did not exist for him. He only felt an emptiness within himself and around him, and was not certain whether his apartment hadn’t grown larger.
Once, he envisioned himself lying on a high catafalque, and he began thinking about death. It seemed to him he must inescapably die of paralysis of the heart; but this neither alarmed nor consoled him. Sometimes his legs hurt from the constant sitting in the armchair, and then he thought that death was coming and he calculated with indifferent wonder how fast the pain would reach his heart. These observations gave him a sort of temporary pleasure, but they soon dissolved into apathy again.
He told the servant not to let anyone in; nevertheless, Dr Szuman visited him a few times. During the first visit, he took his pulse and told him to show his tongue.
‘In English?’ asked Wokulski, but at once recollected himself and took his hand away. Szuman gazed sharply into his eyes. ‘You are unwell,’ he said, ‘what ails you?’
‘Nothing. Have you gone back to practising medicine?’
‘I should say so!’ Szuman exclaimed, ‘and the first cure I made was myself; I healed myself of dreaming.’
‘Very nice,’ Wokulski replied. ‘Rzecki mentioned something of your cure to me.’
‘Rzecki is an imbecile … an old Romantic. That’s a dying breed! Anyone who wants to live must look at the world soberly. Pay attention, and close each eye in turn … When I tell you … the left … the right … Cross your legs.’
‘What are you doing, my dear fellow?’ Wokulski inquired.
‘Examining you.’
‘Oh? And you hope to find something?’
‘I expect so.’
‘And then?’
‘I shall cure you.’
‘Of dreaming?’
‘No, of neurasthenia.’
Wokulski smiled and said after a moment: ‘Can you take out a man’s brain and provide him with another in its place?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well, in that case let me alone.’
‘I can give you other desires.’
‘I already have them. I should like to sleep under the earth, as deep as … the well in the Zasław castle. And also I’d like them to heap me with ruins, me and my fortune, and even any trace of the fact that I ever existed. These are my desires, the fruit of all the ones that went before.’
‘Romanticism!’ exclaimed Szuman, patting him on the shoulder, ‘but that too will pass.’
Wokulski made no reply. He was angry with himself for his own last phrase, and was surprised: whence had that sudden frankness come? Why had he said that? Why had he exposed his own wounds, like some shameless beggar?
After the doctor had gone, he observed that something within him had changed; against the background of his previous apathy, some sort of feeling had appeared. It was at first a nameless ache, very small, but which rapidly increased and reached its medium. To begin with, it might have been compared to the delicate pricking of a pin, but later to a sort of obstruction in the heart, no bigger than a hazelnut. He already regretted the apathy, when Feuchtersleben’s phrase crossed his mind: ‘I was glad of my pain, for it seemed to me I could see within myself that fruitful struggle which created and still creates everything in this world, where infinite forces are everlastingly in conflict.’
‘All the same, what can it be?’ he asked himself, feeling that in his soul the place of apathy was being taken by dull pain. At once he replied: ‘Yes, it is the awakening of consciousness.’
Slowly, in his mind, an image which seemed hitherto to have been veiled in mist began to appear. Wokulski watched it curiously, and saw — the shape of a woman in a man’s embraces. This image at first had the pale gleam of phosphorescence, then it grew pink — yellow — greenish — finally as black as velvet. Then it disappeared for a few moments and again began appearing by turn in all the colours, starting with phosphorescence and ending in black. At the same time the pain intensified. ‘I suffer, therefore I am,’ thought Wokulski, and he smiled.
Thus several days passed in watching that image change colour and in pain which varied in intensity. Sometimes it disappeared altogether, reappeared as minute as an atom, grew, filled his heart, his whole being, the entire world … And at the moment when it exceeded all bounds, it again faded and yielded to absolute tranquillity and amazement.
Slowly something new began to be born in his soul; the desire to rid himself of these pains and the image. This was like a spark glowing in the night. A sort of feeble consolation gleamed for Wokulski. ‘Am I still capable of thinking?’ he asked himself. In order to check this, he began recalling the multiplication tables, then multiplying two figures by one, and two figures by two. Not believing himself, he wrote down the results of his sums and checked them … The multiplication on paper agreed with those in his head, and he sighed with relief. ‘I haven’t yet gone out of my mind,’ he thought joyfully.
He began imagining to himself the arrangement of his own apartment, the streets of Warsaw, of Paris … His spirits revived, for he saw that not only could he remember precisely but that these exercises brought him a certain kind of relief. The more he thought of Paris, the more clearly he could see the traffic, buildings, markets, museums and the more firmly that image of the woman in the man’s embraces was obscured.
He began walking about his apartment and his glance fell on a pile of illustrated books. There were books from the Dresden and Munich art galleries, Don Quixote illustrated by Doré, Hogarth engravings … He recalled that men condemned to the guillotine spent their time most tolerably in looking at pictures … And from then on, he passed whole days looking at drawings. Finishing one book, he set about another, a third … then he came back to the first again.
The pain grew numb; the spectres appeared less frequently, his spirits revived … Most often he looked at Don Quixote, which made a powerful impression on him. He recalled the strange story of a man living for years in the sphere of poetry — just as he had done, who had hurled himself at windmills — like him, who was shattered — like him, who had wasted his life pursuing an ideal woman — like him, and found a dirty cow-girl instead of a princess — as he had done!
‘All the same, Don Quixote was happier than I,’ he thought. ‘He didn’t begin to awaken from his illusions until the brink of the grave. But I?’
The longer he looked at the engravings, the more familiar he grew with them — the less they absorbed his attention. Behind Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and Doré’s windmills, behind Hogarth’s Cock-fight and Drunkenness, there began to appear to him the interior of the compartment, the vibrating window-pane and, in it, the indistinct image of Stars
ki and Izabela. Then he threw aside the engravings and began reading books he had known in his childhood, or in Hopfer’s cellar. With deep emotion he revived in his memory the Life of St Genevieve, the Rose of Tannenburg, Rinaldini, Robinson Crusoe and, finally, The Thousand and One Nights. Once again it seemed to him that neither time nor reality existed any longer, and that his wounded soul had escaped from the earth to wander in magic lands where only noble hearts beat, where vice did not dress up in the mask of deceit, where eternal justice ruled, curing pain and rewarding injustices.
And here one strange point impressed him. Whereas he had drawn the illusions which had terminated in the dissolution of his own soul from Polish literature, he found solace and peace only in foreign literatures. ‘Are we really a nation of dreamers?’ he wondered in alarm, ‘and will the angel who touched the pool at Bethesda, surrounded by sick people, never descend upon us?’
One day he was brought a thick letter. ‘From Paris?’ he thought, ‘yes, from Paris. I wonder what it can be?’ But his curiosity was not strong enough for him to open and read it: ‘Such a thick letter! Who the devil writes so much nowadays?’
He threw the packet on his desk, and took to reading the Thousand and One Nights again. What a delight they were to his weary mind, those palaces of precious stones, trees whose fruit was jewels! The magic words, at which walls gave way, magic lamps by which enemies could be confounded or a man could move hundreds of miles in the twinkling of an eye! And the powerful magicians! What a shame that such power fell into the hands of wicked and vile people!
He put down the book and, smiling at himself, dreamed he was a magician who possessed two trifles: power over the forces of Nature, and the power to make himself invisible. ‘I believe,’ he thought, ‘that after a few years of my rule, the world would look different … The greatest scoundrels would change into Socrates and Plato.’