The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [107]
‘Well—he is surpassing me in every sphere, though after all I have the same feelings, the same awareness of my predicament, and my work is certainly greater…’
Wokulski knew men, and often compared himself to them. But wherever he was, he always saw himself as a little better than the rest. Whether as a clerk, who spent his nights studying, or as a student who strove for knowledge despite his poverty, or as a soldier under a rain of bullets, or as an exile who studied science in a snow-covered hut—he always had an idea in his soul that reached beyond the next few years. Others lived from day to day, to fill their bellies or pockets.
Not until today had he met a man higher than he was, a madman who wanted to build a flying machine.
‘But don’t I too today have an idea for which I have been working over a year? Have I not acquired a fortune, do I not help people and make them respect me?…Yes, but love is a personal feeling: all good deeds accompanying it are merely fish caught in a cyclone. If that one woman and my memories of her were to disappear from the earth, then what would I be?…Nothing but a capitalist who plays cards at the club out of sheer boredom. Whereas Ochocki has an idea which will always draw him on, unless his mind gives way…
‘Very well, but suppose he does nothing and finishes up in a lunatic asylum instead of building a flying-machine? I will at least accomplish something and that microscope or electric lamp will certainly not signify more than the hundreds of people to whom I give an existence. Whence this ultra-Christian humility in me, then? Who knows what any man will accomplish? I am a man of action; he a dreamer. Let us wait a year…’
A year! Wokulski awoke. It seemed to him that at the end of the road called a ‘year’ he saw only a bottomless abyss, which engulfed everything but contained nothing…Nothing?…Nothing!
He looked around instinctively. He was in the depths of the Łazienki park, on a pathway to which no sound penetrated. Even the clumps of immense trees were silent.
‘What’s the time?’ a hoarse voice suddenly asked.
‘The time?’ Wokulski rubbed his eyes.
A shabby man appeared before him out of the dusk. ‘When you’re asked politely,’ said the man, and came closer, ‘you should answer politely.’
‘Kill me, you will see for yourself,’ Wokulski retorted. The shabby man drew back. A few human shapes became visible to the left of the path.
‘You fools!’ Wokulski cried, walking on, ‘I have a gold watch and some hundred roubles cash. I won’t defend myself…’
The shapes drew among the trees and one of them said in a stifled voice: ‘The likes of him turns up, confound him, just where he ain’t wanted…’
‘You animals! Cowards!’ Wokulski shouted almost madly. The thunder of retreating footsteps was the only reply.
Wokulski pulled himself together: ‘Where am I? In the Łazienki…But—whereabouts? I have to go the other way…’ He had turned several times and no longer knew which direction he was going. His heart began beating violently; a cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and for the first time in his life he was afraid of the night and of losing his way…For a few minutes he hurried along aimlessly, almost breathless: wild notions whirled through his brain. Finally he saw a wall to his left, then a building: ‘Ah, the Orangery…’
Then he came to a small bridge, where he rested and leaned on the parapet, thinking: ‘So I have come to this, then? A dangerous rival…my nerves in disorder…It seems to me that today I might write the last act of this comedy…’
A straight path led to the lake, then to