The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [217]
Stifled sobbing interrupted her words. Wirski and I looked at one another and said goodbye to the elderly lady.
‘Madam,’ I said, leaving, ‘before the year is out, I will bring news of your son-in-law. And perhaps,’ I murmured, with an involuntary smile, ‘matters will work out so that…we shall all be pleased …All of us, even some who are not present …’
The old lady looked at me inquiringly, but I said nothing. I bade goodbye to her once more, and went out with the agent, not inquiring about Mrs Stawska.
‘Drop in and see us any evening you like,’ the elderly lady called when we were already in the kitchen. Of course I will! But will my trick with Staś work out? Heaven knows. Calculations do not work when the heart is at stake. But I will at least try to unfasten that woman’s hands, and that will be something.
On leaving the apartment of Mrs Stawska and her mother, I quitted the agent, in mutual pleasure. But when I returned home I pondered over the results of my survey of the tenants until my head was spinning.
I was supposed to settle the finances of the house, and here I have done so in such a manner that the income will certainly decrease by three hundred roubles a year. Hm! Perhaps Staś will reconsider and sell his acquisition, which was not in the least necessary, after all.
Ir is still poorly.
Politics are still much the same: continual uncertainty.
XXII
Grey Days and Baneful Hours
WITHIN fifteen minutes of leaving Warsaw by the Bydgoszcz railroad, Wokulski felt two peculiar, though completely different sensations: he was enveloped in fresh air, while he himself fell into a strange lethargy. He could move about freely, was sober; he thought clearly and rapidly, but nothing concerned him —neither his fellow travellers nor his destination. This apathy grew as the distance from Warsaw increased. Beyond Pruszków, he almost relished the drops of rain entering through the open window into the compartment; later, he was somewhat stirred by a violent thunderstorm on the far side of Grodzisk: he even longed for a thunderbolt to strike him dead. But, when the storm had passed, he sank into apathy again and did not concern himself with anything, not even with the fact that the neighbour on his right had gone to sleep against his shoulder, nor that the passenger opposite had taken off his boots and was resting his feet almost on Wokulski’s knees, in socks that were at least clean.
Around midnight, something like a dream descended upon him, or perhaps it was merely a still more profound apathy. He drew a curtain over the compartment lamp, shut his eyes and thought that this peculiar apathy would pass with the sunrise. But it did not; indeed, it intensified towards morning, and continued to increase. It made him feel neither good nor wretched: only indifferent.
Then his passport was collected, he had breakfast, bought another ticket, had his luggage moved to another train, and they travelled on. Another railroad station, another change of trains, another departure …The compartment rattled and shook; the engine whistled now and again, kept stopping …People speaking German began getting into the compartment in twos and threes …Then the Polish-speaking people disappeared altogether, and the compartment filled entirely with Germans.
The landscape changed too. Woods surrounded by dikes appeared, consisting of trees standing equidistant from one another, like soldiers. The wooden huts thatched with straw disappeared, and more two-storey houses with tiled roofs and gardens began coming into view. Another stop, another meal …An enormous city …Berlin, probably …Another departure …German-speaking people kept getting in and