The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [111]
As he walked along the right-hand pavement, Wokulski caught sight, more or less half-way down the street, of a house on the left side of unusually bright yellow. Warsaw has many yellow houses; it is probably the yellowest city in the world. However, this house seemed more yellow than the others, and would certainly have gained first prize in an exhibition of yellow objects (such as we may expect to see, one day). Going closer, Wokulski realised he was not alone in paying attention to this particular house: even the dogs, here more than on any other wall, had left their visiting-cards.
‘Well I never,’ he murmured, ‘I believe this is the very house…’
And in fact it was the Łęcki property.
He began to survey it. The house had three floors; it had a few iron balconies and each floor was in a different style. The architecture of the gate was dominated by a single motif, to wit—a fan. The upper part of the gate was in the form of an open fan, which an antediluvian giantess might have used for cooling herself off. On both sides of the gate were sculptured enormous squares, which were also adorned with open fans. But the finest adornment of this gate were two sculptures in the centre of its wings, representing nail-heads so enormous that it looked as if they nailed the gate to the house and the house to Warsaw.
The entrance passage was peculiar in that it had a wretched floor but fine landscapes painted on the walls. There were so many hills, woods, rocks and streams that the tenants of the house need never go away for the summer. The yard inside, surrounded by the three-storey wings, looked like the bottom of a deep well, full of smelly air. In every corner was a door, in one there were even two: a dustbin and waterpump stood under the window of the caretaker’s apartment.
Wokulski glanced up the main staircase, to which a glass door led. The stairs looked very dirty; however, there was a niche at the side, holding a broken-nosed nymph with a jug on her head. As the jug was purple in colour, the nymph’s face yellow, her bosom green and legs blue it was plain to see that she was standing opposite a stained-glass window.
‘Well, well…’ Wokulski murmured in a tone which did not express very much relish.
At this moment a pretty woman with a little girl came out of the right-hand block. ‘Are we going to the park now, mama?’ the child asked.
‘No, dear, we’re going to the store, and to the park after lunch,’ the lady replied in a very agreeable voice. She was a tall brunette with grey eyes and classical features. She and Wokulski glanced at each other, and the lady turned pink.
‘Where have I seen her before?’ Wokulski wondered, going out into the street again. The lady looked around, but turned away again when she saw him. ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘I saw her in church in April, and later in the store. Rzecki drew my attention to her, and said she has pretty legs. So she has…’
He went back into the gate-way again and began reading the list of tenants: ‘What’s this? Baroness Krzeszowska on the second floor! And Maruszewicz in the left-hand block, on the first floor? A strange coincidence, indeed. Third-floor front—students. Who can that attractive woman be? Right-hand block, first floor—Mrs Jadwiga Misiewicz, retired, and Helena Stawska and daughter. That must be she.’
He went into the yard and looked around. Almost all the windows were open. In the rear block, on the ground floor, was a laundry describing itself as ‘Parisian’, on the third floor could be heard the beating of a shoemaker’s hammer, and below, on a parapet, a couple of pigeons were cooing, while on the second floor of the same block the monotonous sounds of a pianoforte and a shrill soprano singing scales could be heard: ‘Do re me fa…’
High above, on the third floor, Wokulski heard a strong masculine bass voice, which said: ‘There, she’s been taking cascara again…The tape-worm’s coming out…Marysia, come up here!’
At the same time, the head of a woman looked out of