The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [324]
‘Four … five days ago,’ I replied, ‘you’ll understand, sir, that I don’t want to interrupt Wokulski, and I advise you not to, either. A young lady and a gentleman reach an understanding faster than we old folks.’
‘If you please, sir!’ Wirski interrupted, ‘a man of fifty ain’t old: he’s ripe.’
‘Like an apple falling off a tree.’
‘You’re right, sir: a man of fifty is very prone to falling. If it weren’t for his wife and children … Mr Ignacy! Devil take me, if I wouldn’t like to compete with the young fellows! But, sir, a man who’s married is a cripple: women don’t look at him, although … Mr Ignacy!’
At this point his eyes sparkled, and he performed such a pantomime that if he’s truly pious, he’ll go to confession tomorrow.
I’ve already noticed, generally speaking, that the gentry are such that they’ve no head for scholarship, nor yet for business, you never get them to work, but they’re always ready for the bottle, for fighting and chasing women, even if they get to them in a coffin. Profligate creatures!
‘That’s all very well,’ say I, ‘but what were you going to tell me, Mr Wirski?’
‘Aha, what was I thinking of?’ says he, his cigar smoking like a barrel of tar, ‘well, now — you remember those students in our apartment house, who lived above the Baroness?’
‘Maleski, Patkiewicz and the third one. How can I help remembering such young devils? Jolly fellows!’
‘Oh, very,’ Wirski agreed, ‘may God be my witness if we could keep a young cook more than eight months, not with those rascals in the house. Mr Rzecki! I may tell that the three of them would populate all the orphanages … Evidently that’s what they teach ’em at the University. In my time, in the country, if a father with a young son gave away three or four cows every year … Tut-tut! Even the priest was vexed then, for they depraved his flock. As for them, sir …’
‘You were about to tell me of the Baroness,’ I interposed, for I don’t like it when nonsense occupies a grizzled pate.
‘Just so. Well, now … The worst scoundrel was that Patkiewicz, who pretended to be a dead body. When evening came, and that monster got out on the stairs, then I may tell you, there was such squealing you’d think a whole pack of rats was passing by.’
‘But the Baroness …’
‘Just so, indeed … Well, now, my dear sir … Well, and Maleski was there too! Now, as you know, sir, the Baroness got a court order for the lads to move out by the 8th. But they don’t budge … The 8th, 9th, 10th … There they still are, and the Baroness’s spleen quite swelled up with vexation. In the end, after taking advice from her so-called lawyer and Maruszewicz, on February 15th she brings in a bailiff, with the police.
‘So up this bailiff goes to the third floor — bang, bang! The lads’ door is locked, but they ask “Who’s there?” from inside.
“‘Open in the name of the law,” says the bailiff.
“‘The law is all very well,” say they, inside, “but we don’t have the key. Someone has locked us in, the Baroness no doubt.”
“‘You gentlemen are making fun of the police,” says the bailiff, “but you know you ought to move out.”
“‘Certainly,” they say, inside, “but after all, we can’t get out through the keyhole. Not unless …”
‘So of course the bailiff sends the janitor for a carpenter, and waits on the stairs with the police. In about a half hour, along comes the carpenter; he opens the regular lock with a pick-lock, but can’t do anything about the English snap-latch. He twists and turns, but in vain … So off he goes for tools, which takes him another half hour, and in the meantime there’s running and banging in the yard, and the Baroness on the second floor gets a most terrible attack of the spasms.
‘The bailiff is still waiting on the stairs, when Maruszewicz rushes up: “Sir!” he shouts, “just take a look at what they’re up to!” So the bailiff runs out into the yard, and sees this: the