The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [310]
The judge turned to Baroness Krzeszowska: ‘So you, madam, don’t want to keep these gentlemen on?’
‘Not at any price,’ the Baroness lamented. ‘All night long they roar, howl, stamp and whistle … There isn’t a servant girl in the house they haven’t inveigled into the apartment. Oh, Lord!’ she cried, turning away her head.
The judge was startled by this exclamation, but not I … For I’d seen that Mr Patkiewicz, without removing his hands from his chest, had suddenly turned up his eyes and dropped his jaw so that he looked like a living corpse. His face and entire attitude would indeed have appalled even a healthy man.
‘The most dreadful thing is that these gentlemen pour some liquid or other out of their windows …’
‘On you, madam?’ asked Mr Maleski, impudently.
The Baroness turned livid with rage, but was silent: she was ashamed to admit it.
‘What more?’ said the judge.
‘The very worst of all (which has brought me into a nervous decline) is that these gentlemen knock on my windows several times a day with a human skull …’
‘Do you indeed, gentlemen?’ asked the judge.
‘Allow me the privilege of explaining to your honour,’ replied Maleski, with the attitude of a man about to dance a minuet, ‘we are looked after by the caretaker of the house, who lives downstairs; so as not to waste time going up and down to the third floor, we have a long piece of string, and we tie to it whatever comes to hand (sometimes it may even be a human skull) … and we knock on his window with it,’ he concluded, in such dulcet tones that no one could be alarmed by an equally delicate tapping.
‘Oh Heavens!’ cried the Baroness, tottering.
‘A sick woman, evidently,’ Maleski muttered.
‘Not so,’ the Baroness cried, ‘pray hear me, your honour! I can’t bear to see that other one … He keeps making faces like a dead body … I lost my daughter not long ago,’ she concluded in tears.
‘On my word of honour, the lady is seeing things,’ said Maleski, ‘who here looks like a dead body? Patkiewicz? A handsome young fellow like Patkiewicz?’ he added, pushing forward his colleague who, at this very moment, was pretending for the fifth time to be a dead body.
Everyone burst out laughing: to preserve his gravity, the judge buried himself in documents and, after a long pause, decreed that laughing was not allowed and anyone disturbing the peace would be fined.
Taking advantage of the confusion, Patkiewicz tugged his colleague by the sleeve and gloomily whispered: ‘What’s this, you beast, are you making fun of me in public, Maleski?’
‘Well, but you’re handsome, Patkiewicz. Women go crazy over you.’
‘Not on that account, though,’ Patkiewicz muttered in a much more tranquil tone.
‘Well, now — will you gentlemen pay the twelve roubles fifty kopeks for the month of January?’ asked the judge.
This time, Mr Patkiewicz imitated a man who had a cataract and the left side of his face paralysed. Mr Maleski plunged meanwhile into deep meditation. ‘If we could stay until the vacation,’ he said after a moment, ‘then … But no! Let the Baroness take away our furniture!’
‘No, I don’t want any more, I don’t … Just move out, gentlemen! I won’t claim any rent!’ the Baroness cried.
‘How that woman is compromising herself,’ our lawyer whispered. ‘Venturing into the law courts with a scoundrel like that adviser of hers!’
‘But we have claims against you, madam, for damages and loss,’ Maleski cried. ‘Who ever heard of a person refusing lodgings to respectable people at this time of year? Even if we find lodgings, they’ll be so wretched that two of us at least will die of consumption.’
Mr Patkiewicz, no doubt with a view to adding greater weight to the speaker’s words, began moving his ears and the skin on the top of his head, which provoked a new attack of mirth in the court.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’ said our lawyer.
‘Such a court case?’ asked Wokulski.
‘No — that fellow moving his ears. He’s an artist!’
Meanwhile the judge entered sentences and announced