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By Root 3496 0

to own it myself. Its name is Mimi. When Helena saw it the first time, she pressed her hands together and was quite turned to stone. And when Baroness Krzeszowska touched it, and the doll started talking, Helena cried: “Oh mama, how pretty she is, how clever … Can I give her a kiss?” And she kissed the tip of its enamelled shoe. Since then, she’s been talking about the doll in her sleep: as soon as she wakes, she wants to go to the Baroness’s apartment, and when she’s there, she’s perfectly happy to spend the whole day gazing at the doll, with hands pressed together as though she were praying. Indeed,’ Mrs Stawska concluded in an undertone (Helena was playing in the other room), ‘I’d be very happy if I could buy her a doll like that.’

‘It must certainly be a very expensive toy,’ Mrs Misiewicz remarked.

‘That’s not the point, mama. Who knows whether I shall ever be able to bring her as much happiness as I might today, by one doll,’ Mrs Stawska replied.

‘I think,’ said I, ‘that we have just such a doll in the store. If you would deign to call …’

I dared not make her a present, realising it would be more agree-able if she herself helped make the child happy. Although we were talking in lowered voices, Helena evidently overheard us speaking of the doll, and she ran in from the other room with sparkling eyes. To turn her attention elsewhere, I asked, ‘Well now, Helena, so you like the Baroness?’

‘Quite well,’ the child replied, leaning against my knees and looking at her mother. (Oh Lord, why aren’t I her father?)

‘And does she talk to you?’

‘Not very much. Once she asked me if Mr Wokulski kisses me a lot.’

‘Did she, now! And what did you say to that?’

‘I said I didn’t know who Wokulski is. And then the Baroness said … Oh, how loudly your watch ticks. Show me!’

I took out my watch and gave it to Helena: ‘And what did the Baroness say?’ I asked.

‘The Baroness said: “How is it that you don’t know who Mr Wokulski is? Why, he’s the man who visits you with that deb … debchee, Rzecki.” Ha ha ha! You’re a chee! Show me the inside of your watch.’

I glanced at Mrs Stawska. She was so taken aback, that she even forgot to scold Helena. After tea and dry rolls (for, as the servant girl said, there was no butter to be had that day), I bade the excellent ladies farewell, vowing to myself that if I were in Staś’s shoes, I wouldn’t let the Baroness have the apartment house for less than two hundred thousand roubles.

Meanwhile, after exhausting various influential people and fearing lest Wokulski either put up the price or sell the house to someone else, that serpent finally decided to buy it for a hundred thousand. She’s supposed to have been furious for several days, to have gone into hysterics, beat the servant girl, insulted her attorney in the surveyor’s office, but she finally signed the deed of acquisition. For the next few days after the purchase of our house there was peace.

Peace, that’s to say, in that we heard nothing of the Baroness, though her lodgers called on us with complaints. First came the tailor, the one on the third-floor back, whining that the new owner was raising his rent by thirty roubles a year. When I explained to him for a half hour that this was nothing to do with us, he wiped his eyes, scowled and bade me goodbye with the words: ‘Obviously Mr Wokulski doesn’t have God in his heart, if he can sell the house to a person who injures other people.’

Did you ever hear the like? Next day the owner of the Parisian laundry appeared. She wore a velvet salope, had much dignity in her gestures and even more firmness in her expression. She sat down on a chair in the store and looked around as though she fully intended to purchase several Japanese vases, then began: ‘Well, thank you, sir! You have behaved very well to me, to be sure … You bought that house in July and sold it in December, just like a tradesman, without warning anyone.’

She grew red in the face and went on: ‘Today that trollop sent some booby to me, with notice to leave. I don’t know what’s got into her, after all I pay regular … And here she turns