The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [14]
‘You’ll see, you unbeliever,’ my aunt sometimes lamented, ‘you’ll roast in Hell for these notions …’
‘The Emperor won’t let them do me an injustice,’ my father replied.
Often my father’s old comrades came to see us: Mr Domański, who was also a doorman at the Treasury, and Mr Raczek who had a vegetable stand on the Dunaj. They were simple people (Mr Domański was even fond of absinthe), but thoughtful politicians. All of them, not excluding my aunt, held as firmly as possible to the belief that though Napoleon I had died in captivity, the Bonaparte family would rise again. After the first Napoleon, a second would be found, and even if he came to a bad end, another would come along, until the world had been put to rights.
‘We must always be ready for the first summons!’ said my father.
‘For no one knows the day, nor yet the hour,’ Mr Domański would add.
And Mr Raczek, pipe in mouth, signified his approval by spitting as far as my aunt’s door.
‘Spit in my wash-tub, and I’ll give you what for!’ my aunt cried.
‘I daresay, but I won’t take it,’ Mr Raczek muttered, spitting in the direction of the fireplace.
‘Oh, what ruffians these Grenadiers are …’ my aunt said crossly.
‘You always fancied Hussars, I know, I know …’
Later on, Mr Raczek married my aunt.
Wishing me to be quite ready when the hour of justice struck, my father himself worked on my education. He taught me reading, writing, gumming envelopes and — most important — drill. He started me drilling very early, when my shirt was dangling out of my knickerbockers. I remember how my father would shout: ‘Right turn!’ or ‘By the left — quick march!’ and would tug me in the proper direction by the tail of that garment.
They were very strict lessons.
Sometimes at night my father would awaken me with the cry ‘To arms!’ and would drill me then and there despite the cries and sobs of my aunt. He would end by saying: ‘Ignacy, be prepared, my child, for we do not know the day nor yet the hour … Remember that God sent the Bonapartes to put the world to rights and as long as there is no order and no justice in the world, then the Emperor’s last testament will not have been carried out.’
I cannot say that my father’s unshakeable trust in the Bonapartes and in justice was shared by his two comrades. Sometimes when Mr Raczek’s leg hurt him, he would curse and groan and say: ‘Eh, old man, you know we’ve been waiting too long for a new Napoleon. I’m turning grey and I’m not the man I was, and there’s still no sight nor sound of him. Soon they’ll turn us all into beggars at the church door, and I daresay Napoleon will join us for vespers.’
‘He’ll find young men.’
‘What kind of young men, eh? The best of them are in their graves and the youngest are — worth nothing. Some have never even heard of Napoleon.’
‘My boy has, and will remember,’ said my father, winking in my direction.
Mr Domański was still more dispirited.
‘The world is going to the dogs,’ he declared, shaking his head. ‘Food’s getting more expensive, a man’s wages are gobbled up in rent and even absinthe isn’t what it was. In the old days a glass would set a man right, but now you need a whole tumblerful and yet you’re still as empty as if you’d been drinking water. Even Napoleon himself wouldn’t live to see justice done!’
To this my father would reply: ‘Justice will be done even if Napoleon doesn’t come. But a Napoleon will be found all the same.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ muttered Mr Raczek.
‘And what if he is found, what then?’ my father asked.
‘We shall not live to see that day.’
‘I will,’ said my father, ‘and Ignacy will live still longer.’
Even then my father’s phrases engraved themselves deep in my mind, but later events gave them a miraculous and almost prophetic character.
Mr Raczek visited him every day, and once — looking at his skinny hands and sunken cheeks — whispered: