‘So there are things that cannot be forgiven?’ she inquired softly.
‘Who is to forgive whom? Mr Starski will never take offence over such matters, and will perhaps even recommend her to his friends. For the rest, people with so many and such choice friends need not care.’
‘A last word,’ said Mrs Wąsowska, rising. ‘May I know your intentions?’
‘I wish I knew them myself.’
She gave him her hand: ‘Goodbye, sir.’
‘I wish you every happiness, madam.’
‘Ah …’ she sighed, and quickly went into the next room.
‘It strikes me,’ thought Wokulski, as he went downstairs, ‘that at this moment I’ve settled two matters. Who knows but that Szuman wasn’t right?’
From Mrs Wąsowska’s he drove to Rzecki’s apartment. The old clerk was very haggard and could barely rise from his armchair. Wokulski was deeply touched by the sight of him. ‘Are you angry, old fellow, because I haven’t been to see you for so long?’ he asked, shaking him by the hand.
Rzecki shook his head sadly. ‘As if I didn’t know what was happening to you,’ he replied. ‘There’s misery in the world … Misery … Worse and worse …’
Wokulski sat down, thoughtfully. Rzecki went on: ‘You know, Staś, I have a notion it’s time for me to join Katz and my other comrades in the infantry, who are angry with me for defaulting. I know that whatever you decide to do with yourself will be wise and good, but … Wouldn’t it be practical to marry Mrs Stawska? After all, she is your sacrifice, as it were.’
Wokulski clutched his head. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, ‘when am I to pay off these women? One flatters herself I am her victim, another is my victim, a third would like to be my victim, and there are dozens of others, each of whom would accept me and my fortune as her victim … An amusing country, this, to be sure, where the women play first violin, and there are no matters of interest, apart from happy or unhappy love!’
‘Well, well,’ Rzecki replied. ‘I am not forcing you. Except, d’you see, Szuman told me you urgently need romance in your life.’
‘Ugh! No! I need a change of scene, and have already prescribed that medicine for myself.’
‘Are you leaving?’
‘The day after tomorrow at the latest I go to Moscow, and then … Where God wills.’
‘Have you anything in mind?’ asked Rzecki, mysteriously.
Wokulski pondered. ‘I don’t know yet: I’m as uncertain as though I were on a swing ten storeys high. Sometimes it seems to me I’ll do something for this world …’
‘As for that …’
‘But sometimes such despair overcomes me, that I’d like the earth to swallow me up and everything I have ever touched.’
‘That’s foolish … Foolish,’ Rzecki interposed.
‘I know it is. Yet I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t make a stir at some future time — or close all my accounts with the world.’
They sat on until late that evening. Some days later, the news spread that Wokulski had left suddenly, and for good.
All his property, from the furniture to his carriage and horses, was acquired lock, stock and barrel by Szlangbaum, at a quite low cost.
XXXVII
The Journal of the Old Clerk
FOR SEVERAL months the rumour has been circulating that on 26 June last year Prince Louis Napoleon, the son of the emperor, perished in Africa. And, what is more, that he died fighting a savage nation, about whom we know neither where they live nor what they are named. For no nation can possibly be called Zulu.
So everyone is saying. Even the Empress Eugénie was supposed to have gone over there and brought her son’s body back to England. I do not know if such is the real state of affairs, for I have not read a newspaper since June and do not care to talk politics.
Politics is stupid! There were no telegrams and leading articles in days gone by, and yet the world moved forwards and every reasonable man could orientate himself in the political situation. But today there are telegrams, leading articles, and the latest news, but it all serves to confuse heads.
But they do worse than cause confusion, they deprive people of their hearts. And if it were not for Kenig or honest Sulicki, then a man would cease to believe in divine justice. Such things they write in the newspapers today!
As for Prince Louis Napoleon, then he may well have died, but he might also have hidden himself from the agents of Gambetta. I pay no attention to rumours.
Still no sign of Klein, and Lisiecki has moved to Astrakhan on the Volga. On departing, he told me that soon only Jews would remain here, and the rest would turn Jewish.
Lisiecki always was a hothead.
My health isn’t what it was. I get tired so easily that I don’t go into the street without my cane. There’s nothing the matter with me, only sometimes I have a strange pain in the arms and get out of breath. But this will pass, and if it doesn’t, then it’s all the same to me. The world is changing for the worse, so that soon I shan’t have anyone to talk to, or anything to believe in.
At the end of July, Henryk Szlangbaum celebrated his birthday as owner of the store and director of the trading company. Although he didn’t get ahead half as well as Staś did last year, all Wokulski’s friends and enemies gathered and drank the Szlangbaums’ health … until the windows rattled.
Oh, mankind! They’d go into the sewers for a full plate and a bottle, and I don’t know where — for a rouble.
Fie, fie! Today I was shown a newspaper, in which Baroness Krzeszowska was called one of the most eminent and benevolent of our ladies, for giving two hundred roubles to some orphanage. Clearly they’ve forgotten her court case against Mrs Stawska and those squabbles with her lodgers. Can it be that her husband has broken the old hag in?
Bad feeling against the Jews is still mounting. There are even rumours that Jews trap Christian children and bake them in matzos. My goodness, when I hear such tales, I rub my eyes and ask myself whether I’m tossing in a fever, and whether my youth was a dream? But what angers me most, is Dr Szuman’s relish at the ferment.
‘Serves the Kikes right,’ he says, ‘let them make a row, let them learn sense. They may be a race of genius, but they’re such scoundrels that you won’t break ’em in without using whip and spurs.’
‘But, doctor,’ I replied, for I had lost patience, ‘if the Jews are such scoundrels as you say, even spurs won’t help.’
‘Maybe spurs won’t improve them, but they’ll drive more sense into them, and teach them to hold hands tighter,’ he replied. ‘Once the Jews have solidarity …’
That doctor is an odd fellow. Honest he certainly is, and intelligent too: but his honesty doesn’t come from feelings, but from — how shall I say it? — from habit, perhaps: and his sense is of such a kind that it’s easier for him to mock and destroy a hundred things than build one. Sometimes it occurs to me, when I’m talking to him, that his soul is like a sheet of ice: it may reflect fire, but will never warm of its own accord.
Staś has left for Moscow, to settle his accounts with Suzin, I suspect. He has some half million roubles with him (who would have supposed anything like this two years ago?), but I cannot imagine what he will do with so much money.
But Staś always was eccentric, and went in for surprising people. Is he going to do it again? I am almost afraid he may …
Meanwhile Mraczewski has proposed to Mrs Stawska and, after a brief hesitation, she accepted. If they open a store in Warsaw as Mraczewski plans, I would go into the company and live with them. And, my goodness, I’d nurse Mraczewski’s children, though I used to think I would only carry out such an office with Staś’s children … Life is painfully hard.
Yesterday I gave five roubles for a mass for Prince Louis Napoleon. Only that, for perhaps he has not died, though everyone says so … If, on the other hand … I know nothing of theology, but it is always safer to make some good connections for him in the other world. For who knows? …
I really am poorly
, although Szuman says everything is going well. He has forbidden me beer, coffee, wine, walking fast, getting vexed … All very well for him! I too could write out a prescription like that: but just you try and carry it out!
He talks to me as though he suspects I’m uneasy as to Staś’s fate. Comical of him! Isn’t Staś a grown man, and wasn’t I once parted from him for seven years? The years passed, Staś came back, and got into trouble again.
This time it will be the same: just as he suddenly disappeared, so he will suddenly return. And yet it is difficult to live in this world. Sometimes I ask myself whether there’s really any plan according to which all mankind is moving towards better things, or whether it isn’t all the work of chance, and whether mankind isn’t going in the direction in which a greater force is pushing? If good people are on top, the world moves towards better things, but if rascals are stronger, then it goes to the dogs. And the last limit of good and evil is a handful of dust.
If this is so, I am not surprised at Staś, who sometimes said he would like to perish as soon as possible and to destroy all traces behind him. But I have a premonition it isn’t so.
Although … Didn’t I have a premonition that Prince Louis Napoleon would become Emperor of France? Hm! Let us go on waiting, because that death of his in a battle with naked blackamoors, looks strange to me, somehow …
XXXVIII
… ? …
MR RZECKI really was sinking: in his view from want of something to do; in Szuman’s from heart disease which had suddenly developed and was proceeding apace under the influence of some mortification or other.
He had little to do. In the mornings he strolled to Wokulski’s former store, now Szlangbaum’s, but he only stayed until the clerks began arriving, and especially the customers. For the latter, goodness knows why, eyed him with amazement, and the clerks who were now all Jews with the exception of Mr Zięba, not only refused to show him any respect, but even treated him with contempt.
This being so, Ignacy thought more and more often of Wokulski. Not because he feared any mishap would befall him, but just because he did. In the mornings around six, he wondered whether Wokulski was getting up or still asleep at this time of day, and where he was? In Moscow, or had he perhaps already left Moscow for Warsaw? In the afternoons, he recalled those times when there had been hardly a day when Staś didn’t eat his dinner with him and then, in the evenings, especially on going to bed, he would say: ‘Staś is certainly at Suzin’s. I bet they are enjoying themselves! Or perhaps at this moment he’s on the way back to Warsaw and going to bed in a sleeping car.’
But whenever he went into the store, and he did so several times a day, despite the animosity of the clerks and the irritating civility of Szlangbaum, he always thought that it had been different in Wokulski’s day. It mortified him, though not very much, that Wokulski gave no sign of life. He regarded this as nothing more than his usual eccentricity: ‘He never was much of a one for writing, even when he was well, so what about now that he is so low?’ he thought. ‘Ach, those women, those women …’
On the day when Szlangbaum acquired Wokulski’s furniture and carriage, Ignacy took to his bed. Not because the incident pained him, for after all the carriage and excess furniture were entirely superfluous things, but because such commerce is done only after someone has died. ‘But Staś, thank God, is well,’ he told himself.
One evening, as Ignacy was sitting in his dressing gown and wondering how he would arrange Mraczewski’s store so as to put Szlangbaum out of business, he heard a violent ringing at the front door and a peculiar racket in the passage. The servant, who was going to bed, opened the door.
‘Is your master in?’ asked a voice known to Rzecki.
‘He’s sick.’
‘How so — sick? He’s hiding from people …’
‘Perhaps, Councillor, we’re being a nuisance,’ exclaimed another voice.
‘Nuisance, indeed! If a person don’t want a nuisance at home, why don’t he come to the tavern?’
Rzecki rose from his chair and at the same moment Councillor Węgrowicz and the commercial traveller Szprott appeared at the bedroom door … Behind them rose a curly head and not particularly clean countenance. ‘The mountain wouldn’t come to the Mahomets, so the Mahomets have come to the mountain,’ cried the councillor. ‘Mr Rzecki! Ignacy! Whatever are you doing? Since we last saw you, we’ve discovered a new brand of beer … Put it here, there’s a good fellow, and come back tomorrow,’ he added, turning to the sooty-faced and curly-headed individual.
At this, the curly-headed man, who wore a great apron, deposited a basket of slender bottles and three tankards on the washstand. Then he disappeared, as if he were a being composed of air and mist, not a body of some 200 pounds.
Ignacy was startled to see the slender bottles, though this feeling was in no way disagreeable.
‘What has been happening to you, for Heaven’s sake?’ the councillor began again, stretching out his arms as if to take the entire world into his embrace, ‘it’s been so long since you were with us that Szprott had forgotten what you looked like, and I thought you’d taken offence at your old friend with the bees in his bonnet.’
Rzecki grew sombre.
‘So this very day,’ the councillor pursued, ‘when I won a basket of a new brand of beer from Deklewski in a bet on your friend, I say to Szprott here: ‘You know what, my dear sir, let’s take the beer and call on the old boy, and maybe he’ll feel better.’ … Come now, aren’t you even going to ask us to take a chair?’
‘Pray do,’ Rzecki replied.
‘And there’s a table,’ said the councillor, looking around, ‘and the room, I see, is cosy. Aha! We’ll be able to drop in on the patient for a game of cards or two every evening … Szprott, young fellow, find an opener, and get to work. Let the old boy taste this new brand.’
‘What was the bet you won, Councillor?’ Rzecki inquired, his countenance beginning to brighten.
‘On Wokulski. This is how it was. Back in January last year, when Wokulski was adventuring in Bulgaria, I told Szprott that Stanisław was crazy, that he’d go bankrupt and come to a bad end. But today, just imagine, Deklewski declares that he was the one who said that. Of course we bet a basket of beer, Szprott decided in my favour, and here we are!’
During this, Mr Szprott was arranging three tankards on the table and uncorking three bottles. ‘Now, just look, Ignacy,’ said the councillor, raising a brimming tankard, ‘the colour of old mead, froth like cream and it tastes like a sixteen-year-old girl. Try it … What taste and flavour! If you shut your eyes, you’d vow it was ale … Ah, you see! Before drinking beer like this, a man should rinse out his mouth. … Tell me, now — did you ever drink anything like it?’
Rzecki drank half a tankard. ‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘But — what put it in your head that Wokulski has gone bankrupt?’
‘Everyone in town is saying it. After all, if a man has money, some sense in his head and doesn’t owe anyone anything, he wouldn’t run away God knows where.’
‘Wokulski has gone to Moscow.’
‘Come now! He told you that to cover his tracks. But he gave himself away as soon as he renounced his money.’
‘What money?’ asked Ignacy, already agitated.
‘The money he has in the bank, and the investment with Szlangbaum. It comes to some two hundred thousand roubles … Who’d leave that sort of money behind without any instructions, just throw it in the mud? … He’s either crazy … or has something worked out, and doesn’t want to wait for the payment date … All over town, there’s unanimous indignation about that … that … I won’t call him by his proper name.’
‘Councillor, you forget yourself!’ Rzecki exclaimed.
‘You, Mr Rzecki, are going out of your mind by concerning yourself with such a man,’ the councillor replied crossly. ‘Just consider. Where did he go to make his fortune? To the Crimean war! The Crimean war! Do you understand the significance of those words? He made a fortune
there, but in what manner? How could a man make half a million roubles in six months?’
‘He had a turnover of ten million roubles,’ Rzecki answered, ‘so he made even less than he might have done.’
‘But whose millions were they?’
‘Suzin’s … A merchant’s … His friend.’
‘Just so! But never mind that: let us suppose that he didn’t do anything underhand this time. But what sort of business was he up to in Paris and later in Moscow, when he also made a great deal of money? Was it right to kill our industry in order to pay eighteen per cent interest to a few aristocrats, in order to make his way into their society? And wasn’t it fine of him to sell the whole company to the Jews, then finally to bolt for it, leaving behind hundreds of people in poverty or insecurity? Is that what a good citizen and honest man does? Well, drink up, Ignancy!’ he cried, clinking his tankard with his own. ‘To our bachelor friend … To Mr Szprott, who will show you what he can do … Don’t give the game away to our patient.’
‘Hey, there!’ exclaimed Dr Szuman, who had been standing for several moments on the threshold, without taking his hat off. ‘Hey, there! And who may you be, my fine fellows? Are you agents for an undertaker, that you treat my patient in this manner? Kazimierz!’ he called to the servant. ‘Take these bottles into the passage. And I must beg you gentlemen to bid goodbye to my patient. A hospital, even for one person, is not a tavern. Is this how you carry out my instructions?’ he turned to Rzecki, ‘with a heart ailment, you have a drinking spree! Why not invite some young ladies too? Goodnight to you, gentlemen,’ he said to the councillor and Szprott, ‘and next time, don’t open a beer house here, or I’ll charge you with murder.’
Messrs Węgrowicz, the councillor, and the commercial traveller Szprott took themselves off so fast that, had it not been for the dense smoke of their cigars, no one would have supposed there had been anyone in the room.