The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [117]
After looking at the mare, the gentlemen went into the office, where Wokulski settled the account, vowing privately never to refer to any horse as having cholera.
On leaving, he said: ‘Would it be possible to race the horse anonymously?’
‘It will be done…’
‘But…’
‘Pray put your mind at rest,’ the director replied, pressing his hand, ‘discretion is a gentleman’s middle name. I expect Mr Maruszewicz too…’
‘Yes indeed,’ Maruszewicz confirmed, nodding and gesticulating in such a way as to make it clear that the secret was buried in his breast.
Returning past the ring, Wokulski heard the cracking of the whip again, whereupon the fourth rider began complaining to the director’s deputy. ‘That is indelicate, my good man!’ the fourth rider cried, ‘my breeches will split…’ ‘Not them,’ Mr Schultz replied phlegmatically, cracking his whip in the direction of the second rider.
Wokulski left the riding-school. When he had said goodbye to Maruszewicz and was getting into a droshky, a strange thought occurred to him: ‘If the mare wins, then Izabela will fall in love with me…’
Suddenly he turned back; the mare, a matter of indifference a little while ago, had now become sympathetic and interesting. Going back into the stable, he again heard the unmistakable thump of a human head being banged against a wall. Just then a very red-faced stable-boy Stefan ran out of the next stall, his hair standing on end as if someone’s hand had just been removed from it, and immediately after him, the coachman Wojciech appeared too, rubbing his somewhat grubby hands on his jacket. Wokulski gave the elder three roubles and a rouble to the younger, and promised them a tip in future, providing no harm came to the mare. ‘Sir, I will look after her better than if she was my own wife,’ Wojciech replied with a low bow, ‘no harm will come to her, sir—of course not. And in the race, sir, she’ll go like the wind…’
Wokulski went into the stable and contemplated the mare for a quarter of an hour. Her fine, delicate legs made him uneasy and he was alarmed to see shivers passing across her velvet skin, for he thought perhaps she was falling ill. Then he put an arm around her neck and when she leaned her head on his shoulder, he kissed her and whispered:
‘If only you knew how much depends upon you…If only you knew…’
After that he visited the ring several times a day, fed the mare with sugar and caressed her. He felt that something not unlike a superstition was beginning to take shape in his practical mind. When the mare greeted him gaily, he took it as a good omen: but when she was unhappy, then unease troubled his heart. For, on the way to the stables he said to himself: ‘If I find her cheerful, then Izabela will fall in love with me.’
Sometimes common sense awoke within him; then anger gained hold of him, and self-contempt: ‘What is this?’ he thought, ‘is my life to depend on the caprices of one woman? Will I not find a hundred others? Has not Mrs Meliton promised to introduce me to three or four equally beautiful women? Once and for all, I must wake up!’ But instead of waking up, he plunged still more deeply into his obsession. It seemed to him in moments of awareness that witches must still exist on the earth, and that one had cast a spell on him. And then he thought fearfully: ‘I am not the man I was…I am becoming someone else…It is as if someone had changed my soul…’
Then again, the naturalist and psychologist spoke within him: ‘Here’, their voices whispered somewhere in the depths of his mind, ‘this is how nature is revenged for violations of her laws. As a young man, you despised your heart,