The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [202]
It is painful to think how hard life was. He grew thin, gloomy, morose …But he did not complain. Only once, when he was told there was no work for the likes of him, he whispered: ‘I’ve been cheated …’
Just then Jan Mincel died. His widow buried him in a Christian manner, remained shut up in her room for a week, then summoned me in for a talk. I thought we should discuss the shop, the more so as I noticed a bottle of good wine on the table. But Mrs Mincel did not mention the fate of the shop. She burst into tears at the sight of me, as if I reminded her of her late husband, already buried a week, and poured me a generous glass of the wine, saying in a tearful voice: ‘When my poor dear angel passed away, I thought only I was unhappy …’
‘Angel?’ I asked suddenly, ‘Jan Mincel, perhaps? Excuse me, madam — although I was a true friend of your late husband, I wouldn’t think of referring to a person who weighed two hundred pounds as an angel …’
‘He weighed three hundred when he was alive,’ the inconsolable widow interposed. Then she again veiled her face with a handkerchief and sobbed: ‘Oh, will you never learn to be tactful,
Mr Rzecki? What a blow it was! It’s quite true that my late lamented was never an angel, to be precise, particularly of late, but I have always been terribly unfortunate …Oh, lamentable, irreplaceable …’
‘Of course, for the last six months …’
‘Six months, what are you saying?’ she cried, ‘poor Jan was sick three years and for eight or more he … Alas, Mr Rzecki, what a source of misery that hateful beer is in marriage! It is eight years, sir, since I had a proper husband …But what a man he was, Mr Rzecki! Only now do I feel the whole weight of my misfortune …’
‘Worse things can happen,’ I ventured to interpose. ‘Oh yes,’ the poor widow sighed, ‘you are perfectly right, worse things can happen. For example, there’s Wokulski, who is supposed to be back now …Is it true he still has not found a post?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Where does he eat? And live?’
‘Where does he eat? I don’t even know that he does. And for where he lives — nowhere.’
‘Terrible,’ Mrs Mincel burst into tears. ‘It seems to me,’ she added after a moment, ‘that I should be carrying out the last wish of the late lamented if I ask you to …’
‘At your service, madam …’
‘To give him lodgings in your apartment, and I’ll send you down two dinners and two breakfasts …’
‘Wokulski would not accept that,’ I remarked. On this, Mrs Mincel burst into tears again. From despair at her husband’s death, she was transformed into such a ferocious rage that she called me a scoundrel three times, a man ignorant of life, a monster …Finally she told me to be off, and she would manage the shop herself. Then she apologised and vowed on all that was holy that I must not be vexed by words dictated by her sorrow.
From that day on I often met our lady proprietor. Then, six months later, Staś told me …he was going to marry Mrs Mincel.
I stared at him …He shrugged: ‘I know,’ he said, ‘that I’m a swine. But …even so, less than many of those who enjoy public esteem here.’
After a riotous wedding which many of Wokulski’s friends attended (I don’t know where they came from, but how the wretches ate …and drank the health of the happy couple — from tankards!), Staś moved upstairs to his wife’s apartments. To the best of my recollection, all his possessions consisted of four parcels of books and scientific instruments, and as for furniture — a bubble-pipe and hat-box.
The clerks laughed (in corners, of course) at their new boss: I, however, was sorry he had broken with his heroic past and poverty so abruptly. For human nature is odd: the less we tend to martyrdom ourselves,