The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [234]
His visitor continued gazing at him and smiled with tranquil irony: but when Wokulski opened his mouth to ask him something, he interrupted: ‘Don’t trouble yourself, sir. I have already spoken with so many people regarding their own characters and my inventions that I can tell in advance what you wish to know. I’m Professor Geist, an old madman, as they say in all the cafés around the university and polytechnic. Once I was called a great chemist, until…until I went beyond the boundary of scientific knowledge in force, today. I reported articles, I produced inventions in my own name or in the names of my collaborators, who even shared the profits with me conscientiously. But since the time when I discovered phenomena not to be found in the annals of the Academy, I have been denounced not only as a madman but as a heretic and traitor…’
‘Here, in Paris?’ Wokulski whispered.
‘Aha!’ Geist laughed, ‘here, in Paris. In Altdorf or Neustadt, a heretic and traitor is the man who doesn’t believe in the clergy, Bismarck, the ten commandments and the Prussian constitution. Here one may mock Bismarck and the constitution, but you run the risk of apostasy if you don’t believe in the multiplication table, the theory of wave movement, the consistency of specific gravities and so forth. Show me, sir, one city in which men’s brains are not cramped by some dogma or other, and I’ll make it the capital of the world and the cradle of a new race of men…’
Wokulski cooled down: he was certain he was dealing with a maniac. Geist gazed at him and went on smiling: ‘I’m ending, Mr Suzin,’ he said. ‘I’ve made great discoveries in chemistry, I have created a new science, I have found new industrial products which people scarcely dared even to dream of before. But…I still need a few extremely important facts, and I have no more money. I’ve sunk four fortunes in my research, and used up a dozen or more men: so now I need another fortune and new men…’
‘Why this confidence in me?’ asked Wokulski, calm now.
‘That’s simple,’ replied Geist. ‘Thoughts of suicide come to a madman, a scoundrel or to a man of high worth, for whom the world is too small.’
‘But how do you know I am not a scoundrel?’
‘And how do you know that a horse isn’t a cow?’ Geist replied. ‘During my enforced vacations, which have lasted for several years, alas, I have been occupying myself with zoology and making a special study of the species, Man. In this single species, with its two hands, I discovered dozens of animal types ranging from oysters and earthworms to owls and tigers. What is more, I have discovered blends of these types: tigers with wings, serpents with the heads of dogs, falcons with the shells of tortoises, which of course the imagination of poetic geniuses had already divined. And amidst all this menagerie of beasts and monsters, here and there I have found a real man, a being with sense, heart and energy. You, Mr Suzin, have the unmistakable traits of a man and that is why I have spoken so frankly to you: you are one in ten, perhaps in a hundred thousand.’
Wokulski frowned. Geist burst out: ‘What? Perhaps you think I am flattering you to gain a few francs? I’ll call on you again tomorrow and you’ll see how unfair you are just now, and stupid.’
He jumped up, but Wokulski stopped him: ‘Don’t be angry, professor,’ he said, ‘I didn’t want to offend you. But here I am visited almost every day by various kinds of tricksters.’
‘Tomorrow I’ll convince you I am neither a trickster nor a madman,’ Geist replied. ‘I’ll show you something seen by only six or seven men who…are dead now. Ah, if only they were still alive!’ he sighed.
‘Why not until tomorrow?’
‘Because I live some distance away, and have no money for a horse-drawn cab.’
Wokulski pressed his hand: ‘You won’t be offended, professor?’ he asked, ‘if…’
‘If you give me the fare? No. After all, I told you to start with that I’m here to beg and am perhaps the most wretched beggar in Paris.’
Wokulski gave him a hundred francs. ‘For goodness sake,