The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [344]
She had never before encountered such violent feelings. Surely he must have fallen in love with her at first sight, madly, eternally. Had he not whispered to her in the end (which obliged her to leave the table) that he would not hesitate to give his life for a few days spent with her. ‘What did he not risk by saying such a thing?’ Izabela thought. It did not occur to her that at most he had risked her quitting his society before supper was over.
‘What feelings…what passion…’ she repeated inwardly.
For two days, Izabela did not go out, nor did she see callers. On the third day, Apollo, though still resembling Molinari, sometimes recalled Starski. That afternoon she received Messrs Rydzewski and Pieczarkowski, who declared that Molinari was already leaving Warsaw, that he had offended society, that his album of press-cuttings was a fraud, because unfavourable notices had been left out of it. Finally they added that only in Warsaw would such a second-rate violinist and common individual receive such an ovation.
Izabela was indignant, and reminded Mr Pieczarkowski that he and none other had praised the musician. Mr Pieczarkowski, in surprise, appealed to Mr Rydzewski, who was present and to Szatalski (who wasn’t) to bear witness that he had mistrusted Molinari from the start.
For the next two days, Izabela regarded the great musician as the victim of jealousy. She kept telling herself that he alone deserved her sympathy and that she would never forget him. Meanwhile, Szatalski sent her a bouquet of violets, and Izabela noticed, not without some misgivings, that Apollo was beginning to look like Szatalski, and that Molinari was rapidly being erased from her memory.
Almost a week after the concert, when she was sitting in her boudoir in the dark, a long-forgotten vision appeared before her eyes. She seemed to be travelling in a carriage with her father down from a mountain into a valley full of clouds of smoke and steam. A huge hand emerged from the clouds, holding a card, at which Tomasz gazed with agitated curiosity. ‘With whom is Papa playing?’ she thought. At this moment, the wind blew and from the clouds appeared Wokulski’s face, also huge.
‘I had this same vision a year ago,’ said Izabela to herself. ‘What can it mean?’
Only now did she realise that Wokulski hadn’t been to see them for a week.
After the Rzezuchowskis’ party, Wokulski had gone home in an unusual state of mind. The attack of frenzy passed, and yielded to apathetic tranquillity. Wokulski did not sleep all night, but this did not strike him as disagreeable. He lay still, without thinking of anything, merely listening curiously for the hours. One…Two…Three…
Next day he rose late, and kept listening to the clock as he drank tea, until afternoon. Eleven…Twelve…One…How boring! He wanted something to read, but did not feel like going to the library for a book; so he lay down on the chaise-longue, and began thinking about Darwin’s theory: what is natural selection? The result of a struggle for existence, in which beings that don’t possess certain attributes perish, and talented ones survive. What is the most important attribute? Sexual attraction? No, the horror of death. If horror of death didn’t put a brake on man, this wisest of animals would not drag the chain of life. There are traces in ancient Indian poetry that once a human race existed, with less horror of death than we have. And that race perished, and its descendants are either slaves or ascetics.
What is horror of death? A natural instinct based on illusion. There are people with a horror of mice, which are very innocent creatures, and even of strawberries, which are very delicious (when did I last eat strawberries?…Yes, at Zasławek, last September…What a charming place Zasławek is; I wonder if the Duchess is still alive, and whether she has a horror of death?).
For what, after all, is the horror of death? An illusion! To die means not to