The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [106]
Dusk was already falling on the Botanical Gardens and the Łazienki park. ‘Madman or genius?’ Wokulski whispered, feeling highly unstrung, ‘what if he were a genius?’ He rose and walked into the depths of the park, amidst the strollers. It seemed to him that a divine terror was lurking on the hillock from which he had fled.
The Botanical Gardens were almost crowded: streams, groups or at least rows of promenaders crowded every alley, each bench groaned under a throng of persons. They stepped in Wokulski’s way, trod on his heels, elbowed him; people were talking and laughing on every side. The Aleje Ujazdowskie, the wall of the Belvedere park, the fences on the hospital side, the less frequented alleys, even the fenced-off paths—everywhere was crowded and lively. As nature grew darker, so it grew noisier and more crowded amidst the people.
‘Already there’s beginning to be no room in the world for me,’ he murmured.
He reached the Łazienki park and found a calmer refuge here. Some stars were glittering in the sky, through the air from the Boulevard came the rustle of passers-by, and dampness rose from the lake. Sometimes a noisy cockchafer flew overhead, or a bat flitted silently by; a bird was mournfully chirping in the depths of the park, calling in vain to its mate; the distant splash of oars and the laughter of young women hung over the lake. Opposite, he saw a couple close together, whispering. They moved off and hid in the shadows.
He was overcome with pity and derision: ‘Happy lovers, those,’ he thought, ‘they whisper and glide away like criminals. The world is well arranged, to be sure! I wonder how much better it would be if Lucifer were king? Or if some robber stopped me and killed me here, in this corner?’
And he imagined how agreeable the cold of a knife would be, plunged into his feverish heart. ‘Unfortunately,’ he sighed, ‘people aren’t allowed to kill other people nowadays, only themselves: providing it is done at one blow, and well done.’
The recollection of such an effective means of escape calmed him. Gradually he fell into a sort of solemn mood; it seemed to him that the time was coming when he would have to reckon with his conscience, or draw up a general balance sheet of his life.
‘Were I the highest judge of all,’ he thought, ‘and if I were asked who is more worthy of Izabela—Ochocki or Wokulski—I would have to admit that Ochocki is. Eighteen years younger than I am (eighteen years!…) And handsome…At the age of twenty-eight, he has graduated from two faculties (at that age I had only just begun studying…) and has already three inventions to his credit (I—none!). Above all, he is the instrument by which a great invention is to come. Odd—a flying machine: yet he has found the only possible point of departure—by genius! A flying machine must be heavier than air, not lighter, like a balloon is: for everything which flies, from insects to an enormous vulture, is heavier than air. He has the right starting-point: a creative mind, as he has proved by his microscope and lamp, so who knows but that he will succeed in building a flying machine? If he does, he will be more significant in the history of mankind than Newton and Napoleon together…Am I to compete with him? If the question ever arises as to which of us ought to back down, then should I hesitate? What hell it would be to tell myself that I must sacrifice my nullity to a man who, in the end, is like myself—mortal, suffering illnesses, committing errors and, above all, so naive—for he talked like a child…’
Indeed, it was odd. When Wokulski had been a clerk, in the grocery store, he dreamed of perpetual motion: a machine that would operate by itself. But when he entered the Preparatory College, he discovered that such a machine was out of the question, whereupon his most secret and favourite ambition had been to invent some way of guiding balloons. What had been only a fantastic notion for Wokulski, as he strayed along false tracks, had already acquired the form of a practical problem for Ochocki.
‘The cruelty of fate!’ he thought