The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [212]
So, in my anxiety to console the sobbing woman at any price, I remarked with the utmost mildness: ‘Madam, pray calm yourself. What would you have us do? Can we help at all?’
There was so much sympathy in my voice that the agent’s nose turned even redder. One of the Baroness’s eyes dried up, though the other continued weeping, as a sign that she did not consider her argument closed, nor me defeated.
‘I demand …I demand …’ said she, sighing, ‘I demand that I am not driven from the place where my child died …where everything reminds me of her …I cannot, no, I cannot tear myself away from her room …I cannot move her things and her toys…It is vile to exploit misfortune in this way.’
‘Who is exploiting misfortune?’ I inquired.
‘Everyone, starting with the landlord, who makes me pay seven hundred roubles …’
‘Pardon me, madam,’ the agent exclaimed, ‘seven fine rooms, two kitchens the size of drawing-rooms, two closets …Why don’t you let someone else have three of the rooms? There are two front doors, after all.’
‘I will not let anyone else have them,’ she replied firmly, ‘because I am convinced my wandering husband will come to his senses any day now, and come back to me …’
‘In that case, you must go on paying seven hundred roubles …’
‘If not more,’ I murmured.
The Baroness looked at me as though she wanted to shrivel me up into a cinder and drown me in her tears. Oh, what a very grand woman, to be sure …It makes my flesh creep to think of her.
‘Never mind about the rent,’ she said.
‘Very sensible,’ Wirski praised her, bowing.
‘Never mind about the landlord’s demands …But I cannot pay seven hundred roubles for an apartment in a house like this.’
‘What do you expect?’ I inquired.
‘This house is a disgrace to respectable people,’ she exclaimed with a gesture, ‘it is not for myself, but for decency’s sake that I beg …’
‘What?’
‘That those students who live upstairs be removed …They won’t let me look out of the windows and demoralise everyone …’ Suddenly she jumped up from the sofa: ‘There, do you hear that?’ she cried pointing to the door which led to the room overlooking the yard. In fact, I heard the voice of the eccentric dark-haired young student, who was shouting from the third floor: ‘Marysia! Marysia, come up here …’
‘Marysia!’ the Baroness cried.
‘Here, madam …What is it?’ the girl answered, rather red in the face. ‘Don’t stir from this apartment! There you are, sir,’ said the Baroness, ‘it is like this for days at a time. And in the evenings the laundry-girls go up there …Sir!’ she exclaimed, pressing her hands together piously, ‘drive those nihilists out, they are a source of depravity and danger to the whole house. They keep tea and sugar in human skulls …They poke the samovar with human bones! They want to bring a whole corpse into the house …’
She began crying again so that I thought she would have hysterics: ‘Those gentlemen,’ I said, ‘do not pay their rent, so it is very possible that …’
The Baroness dried her eyes: ‘But of course,’ she interrupted, ‘you must get rid of them …But sir,’ she exclaimed, ‘although they are wicked and depraved, that …that Stawska female is even worse …’
I was amazed to see the flame of hatred which glittered in the eyes of madame the Baroness, at the mention of the name ‘Stawska’.
‘Mrs Stawska lives here?’ I asked involuntarily, ‘that pretty …’
‘Ah, another of her victims!’ the Baroness cried, pointing at me, and she began speaking in a deep voice, her eyes flashing: ‘Grey-haired old man, mind what you are at! For she is a woman whose husband, accused of murder, has run away abroad …So how does she live? How does she manage to dress so well?’
‘She works like a Trojan,’ the agent whispered.
‘You too!’ the Baroness exclaimed, ‘my husband — I am convinced it is he — sends her bouquets from the country. The agent of this house is in love with her, and collects her rent at the end of the month …’
‘But, madam …’ the former landowner protested, and his face