The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [373]
A moment of silence followed. ‘What are you thinking of doing with the trading firm?’ Szlangbaum inquired, ‘for you speak as though you wanted to withdraw from that too.’
‘That’s very likely.’
Szlangbaum turned red, wanted to say something, but left well alone. They chatted for a while of unimportant matters and Szlangbaum left after bidding him goodbye very cordially.
‘Evidently he intends to take over everything from me.’ thought Wokulski. ‘Well, let him … The world belongs to those who take it.’
Szlangbaum talking to him of business interests at this moment seemed comical. ‘Everyone in the store complains of him,’ he thought, ‘they say he is stuck-up, that he’s exploiting them. Though it’s true they used to say the same of me.’
His glance again fell on the desk where the letter from Paris had been lying for several days. He picked it up, yawned, but finally broke the seal. It was a letter from the Baroness with diplomatic contacts, also several official documents. He glanced through them and realised they were proofs of the death of Ernest Walter, otherwise Ludwik Stawski, who had died in Algeria.
Wokulski reflected: ‘If I’d received these papers three months ago, who knows what might have happened? Stawska — pretty and above all, so noble … so noble. Goodness knows but perhaps she really loved me? Stawska me, and I — that other one. The irony of fate!’
He cast the papers to the desk and recalled that small, tidy drawing-room in which he had spent so many evenings with Mrs Stawska, and where he had felt so tranquil.
‘Well,’ he thought, ‘and I rejected happiness which fell into my hands of its own accord. But can anything that we don’t want be called happiness? And if she suffered even for a single day as I’ve suffered?’
The order of the world, in which two people unhappy for the same reason, cannot help each other, is cruel.
The papers regarding Stawski’s death lay there several days, but Wokulski could not decide what to do with them. At first he didn’t think about them at all, but later, when they began catching his eye with increasing frequency, he began experiencing pangs of conscience. ‘After all,’ he thought, ‘I obtained them for Mrs Stawska, so they must be given to her; but where is she? I don’t know … It would be diverting if I married her. I’d have company. Helena is a sweet child … I’d have a purpose in life. Well, but she herself wouldn’t get much out of it. What could I tell her, after all? That I’m ill, need a nurse, and so am offering thousands of roubles a year … I’ll even let you love me, though as for me … I’ve had enough of love.’
Day followed day, but Wokulski could not conceive a way of sending the papers to Mrs Stawska. He would have to find out where she was living, write a registered letter, have it taken to the post office … Finally he realised that the simplest way would be to summon Rzecki (whom he had not seen for several weeks), and hand the papers over to him. But to summon Rzecki he would first have to ring for the butler, send him to the store …
‘Oh, never mind,’ he muttered.
He took to reading again, this time travel books. He visited the United States, China — but Mrs Stawska’s documents gave him no peace. He knew something must be done but felt that he couldn’t do it himself. This state of mind began surprising him. ‘I’m thinking logically,’ he said, ‘well, as long as memories don’t interrupt. I feel in accordance with logic … even too much so. Only … I don’t feel like settling this business, and in any case … This, therefore, is today’s fashionable sickness of the will. A splendid invention! But I never followed fashion, after all. What’s fashion to me?’
He had just finished a journey to China when it occurred to him that if he had will-power then he would sooner or later be able to forget certain incidents and certain persons. ‘But it tortures me so … has tortured me so …’ he whispered. He had entirely lost track of time.
One day Szuman insisted on entering the apartment. ‘Well, how are you?’ he inquired. ‘We’ve been reading, I see … Novels? Very well … Travel?