The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [233]
Only one incident, one person could bring him back to Poland and keep him there…But this incident hadn’t happened, and indeed, others had occurred to detach him more and more from Warsaw and attach him increasingly to Paris.
XXIII
An Apparition
ONE DAY he was conducting business as usual with clients in the reception room. He had just dismissed an individual who offered to fight duels on his behalf, another who was a ventriloquist and wanted to take part in diplomacy, and a third, who promised to reveal to him the treasures buried by Napoleon’s general staff at Berezina, when a footman in a blue frock-coat announced: ‘Professor Geist!’
‘Geist?’ Wokulski repeated, and he experienced a peculiar sensation. It occurred to him that iron, in the vicinity of a magnet, must feel such sensations: ‘Ask him in.’
A moment later in came a very small and skinny man, with a face as yellow as wax. He had not a single grey hair on his head.
‘How old might he be?’ thought Wokulski. Meanwhile, the visitor was eyeing him sharply, and they sat thus for a minute or perhaps two, appraising one another. Wokulski was seeking to estimate the age of the newcomer. Geist appeared to be examining him.
‘Your orders, sir?’ Wokulski finally exclaimed.
Geist shifted in his seat: ‘What can I order?’ he replied with a shrug, ‘I have come here to beg, not to give orders.’
‘What can I do for you?’ inquired Wokulski, for his visitor’s face seemed strangely likeable to him.
His guest rubbed his head: ‘I came here with one thing,’ he said, but I’m going to talk of something else. I wanted to sell you a new explosive…’
‘I won’t buy it,’ Wokulski interrupted.
‘Won’t you?’ asked Geist, ‘and yet I was told you gentlemen are seeking something of the sort for the navy. But never mind…I have something else for you…’
‘For me?’ asked Wokulski, surprised not so much by Geist’s words as by his looks.
‘Did you not at one time fly a captive balloon?’ said his guest.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You are wealthy and an expert in natural sciences.’
‘Yes,’ Wokulski replied.
‘And there was a time when you meant to jump off a bridge?’ asked Geist. Wokulski pushed his chair back.
‘Do not be surprised,’ said his visitor. ‘In my life I have seen some thousand natural scientists, while I have had four suicides in my laboratory, so I am an expert in this type of person. You have glanced at the barometer too often for me not to have recognised a natural scientist, while even schoolgirls recognise a man thinking of suicide.’
‘What can I do for you?’ Wokulski asked again, wiping the sweat from his face.
‘I won’t say much,’ Geist declared. ‘Do you know what organic chemistry is?’
‘It’s the chemistry of carbon compounds…’
‘And what do you think of the chemistry of hydrogen compounds?’
‘There is no such thing.’
‘There is,’ Geist replied, ‘but instead of volatiles, fats, aromatic bodies, it gives new products…New products, Monsieur Suzin, with very interesting properties.…’
‘What does that have to do with me,’ said Wokulski dully, ‘I’m a tradesman.’
‘You are not a tradesman, sir, but a desperado,’ Geist replied. ‘Tradesmen don’t think of jumping out of a balloon…As soon as I saw you, I thought, “This is the man for me.” But you vanished from my sight as soon as you left the porch…Today chance has brought us together again…Mr Suzin, we must discuss the hydrogen compounds, and if you are wealthy…’
‘In the first place, I am not Suzin.’
‘No matter, since all I need is a wealthy desperado,’ said Geist.
Wokulski gazed at Geist almost fearfully. Questions flashed through his mind: is he a conjuror or secret agent, a madman or perhaps he’s really a spirit? Who knows that Satan is only a myth and doesn’t appear to people at certain times? The fact is, however, that this old man of indeterminate age had tracked down the most secret thought of Wokulski who had recently been dreaming about suicide, but so timidly