The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [361]
Wherever he looked among the pines, scraps of grey sky peered in, each of which changed into the vibrating window of the train, and in which could be seen the pallid reflection of Izabela in Starski’s embrace.
Wokulski could no longer withstand the visions; they dominated him, devoured his will-power, distorted his thoughts and poisoned his heart. His soul lost all its independence; any impression dominated him, reflected in thousands of increasingly sombre and painful forms, like echoes in a deserted building.
He stumbled over another stone, and this insignificant fact awoke horrifying thoughts in him; it seemed to him that he himself had once, once…been a cold, blind, senseless stone. But as he had lain proud in his deadness, which the greatest of earthly cataclysms had not been able to disturb, a voice spoke within or above him, asking: ‘Dost wish to become a man?’
‘What is a man?’ the stone had asked.
‘Dost wish to see, hear, feel?’
‘What is feeling?’
‘Dost wish something entirely new? Dost wish an existence which in one moment can experience more than all stones through millions of ages?’
‘I do not understand,’ the stone replied, ‘it is all the same to me.’
‘But if,’ the supernatural voice had asked, ‘if, after this new existence, you are left with eternal sorrow?’
‘What is sorrow? It is all the same to me.’
‘Become a man, then,’ had been the reply.
And he had become a man. He lived a few dozen years, and in the course of them he longed and desired more than the dead world could know in all eternity. Rushing in pursuit of one desire, he encountered thousands of others; in fleeing from one suffering, he plunged into an ocean of suffering, and felt, pondered and absorbed so many unconscious forces that in the end he awoke all Nature against him. ‘Enough!’ voices began calling on all sides, ‘enough! Make way for others at the spectacle! Enough…Enough,’ the stones call, with the trees, wind, earth and sky: ‘Make way for others…Let them experience this new existence.’
Enough!…So once more, he was to become nothing, and this at the very moment when his higher existence, like a last souvenir, was giving him nothing but despair for what he had lost, and grief for what he had not attained…
‘If only the sun would rise,’ Wokulski whispered, ‘I’ll go back to Warsaw…I’ll set myself to work at something or other and put a stop to all these stupidities which are shattering my nerves. Does she want Starski? Let her have Starski! Have I lost my bet on her? Very well! For all that, I won on other things…A man can’t have everything.’
For some moments he had been aware of a clammy moisture on his moustache. ‘Blood?’ he thought. He wiped his mouth, and by the light of a match saw froth on his handkerchief: ‘Am I going insane, or what?’
Then, in the distance, he saw two lights slowly approaching him: behind them loomed a dark mass, above which was flying a thick cloud of sparks. ‘A train?’ he said to himself, and it seemed to him this was the same train in which Izabela was travelling. Once again he saw the drawing-room car illuminated by a lamp screened with blue silk, and in the corner he caught sight of Izabela in Starski’s embrace.
‘I love her so…I love her so…’ he whispered, ‘and I can’t forget…’
At this moment he was overwhelmed with an anguish which human language cannot express. His exhausted thoughts, his painful feelings, his shattered will, his entire being tormented him. And suddenly he no longer felt any desire, only a hunger and thirst for death.
The train was steadily drawing nearer. Without realising what he was doing, Wokulski fell across the track. He was shuddering, his teeth chattered, he gripped the sleepers with both hands, his mouth was full of froth…The lamplight fell across the track which began quietly drumming under the approaching locomotive. ‘God be merciful…’ he whispered,