The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [209]
‘Who gives me a dwelling?’ cried the young man, sitting on the window sill and swinging himself about as if he intended throwing himself down from the third floor. ‘I took this apartment and will stay here till they throw me out. Agreement, indeed! They make me laugh with their talk of agreements …If society wants me to pay for a place to live, society should pay me enough for the lessons I give to suffice for rent. It’s laughable! For three hours teaching a day I get fifteen roubles a month; they take away nine for food, three for laundry and services — and what about my clothes, and fees! Yet they still want me to pay rent …Throw me out into the street,’ he said angrily, ‘let the dog-catcher shoot me …You have a right to that, but not to make comments and complain …’
‘I fail to understand your excitement,’ said I, calmly.
‘I have good reason to be excited,’ the young man replied, swinging more and more in the direction of the yard, ‘as society didn’t kill me at birth, as it wants me to study and pass dozens of exams, it has put itself under an obligation to give me work that will ensure my survival …Yet it either refuses me work, or cheats me out of payment for it …And if society does not keep its agreement with me, why should it expect me to keep mine to it? But what’s the use of talking, I don’t pay rent as a matter of principle, and basta! The more so because the present owner of the house didn’t build it: he didn’t bake the bricks, nor make the lime, lay the walls, risk breaking his neck. He came with money, possibly stolen, and paid someone else, who had perhaps robbed another person, and on that principle he wants to make me his slave. Such reasoning makes me laugh!’
‘Mr Wokulski never robbed anyone,’ I said, rising, ‘he made his fortune by hard work and saving.’
‘Be quiet,’ the young man interrupted, ‘my father was a competent doctor, he worked night and day and made what you might call good pay, and he saved …three hundred roubles a year! As your house cost ninety thousand roubles, my father would have had to live and write prescriptions for three hundred years. I don’t believe the new landlord worked for three hundred years …’
My head began spinning with these arguments: but the young man went on, ‘You can turn us out, of course. Then you’ll see what you’ve lost. All the laundry-girls, all the cooks in the house will lose their tempers, and Madame Krzeszowska will begin to torment her neighbours unchallenged, to count each visitor who calls and every spoonful of flour they use …By all means throw us out! Then Miss Leokadia will start singing her scales and vocalises in a soprano voice mornings and contralto in the evenings …And the devil will take this house where we’re the only ones to keep order.’
We made to leave: ‘So you definitely will not pay the rent?’ I asked.
‘Certainly not!’
‘Perhaps you would at least start paying from next October?’
‘No, sir. I have not much longer to live, so I hope to introduce at least one principle — if society wants individuals to respect agreements, then let society carry out its agreements with individuals. If I have to pay rent to anyone, then let others pay me as much for lessons to suffice for that rent. D’you understand me, sir?’
‘Not entirely, sir,’ I replied.
‘That is not surprising,’ said the young man, ‘in old age the brain withers away and is incapable of accepting new ideas.’
We bowed to one another, and the agent and I went out. The young man shut the door behind us, but after a moment he ran out to the stairs and shouted: ‘And tell the agent to bring two policemen with him, for they will have to eject me by force!’
When the unusual young man had finally gone back to his apartment and locked