The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [374]
‘You’ve had enough of yours for ten years,’ Wokulski retorted.
‘You’re right. But I was busy, I was studying human hair and thinking of fame. Above all, though, I didn’t have other people’s and my own business on my shoulders. In a few weeks there’s to be a meeting of the company for trading with the Empire.’
‘I shall resign from it.’
‘As you please … A capital idea,’ said Szuman ironically. ‘And, so that they learn to appreciate you better, let them take on Szlangbaum as director. He will fix things for them! As he did for me. These Jews are a race of genius, but what scoundrels they are!’
‘Come now …’
‘Don’t defend them in my presence!’ cried Szuman angrily, ‘for I both know and can sense them … I’d give my word that at this moment, Szlangbaum is digging a trap for you in that company, and I’m certain he will worm his way into it, for how could Polish gentry get along without a Jew?’
‘I see you don’t like Szlangbaum.’
‘On the contrary, I do — and would like to imitate him, but can’t. Just now the instincts of my forebears are beginning to awaken in me … a tendency to business. Oh, Nature! How I wish I had a million roubles, in order to make another million, and a third … And become Rothschild’s younger brother. Meanwhile, even Szlangbaum is deceiving me. I’ve moved for so long in your world that in the end I’ve lost the most valuable attributes of my own people … But they’re a great people; they will conquer the world, and not by common sense, but by cheating and boldness.’
‘So break with them and become a Christian.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. In the first place, I won’t break with them even if I became a Christian, and then again, I myself am such a phenomenal Jew that I don’t like trickery. In the second place, if I didn’t break with them when they were weak, I won’t today, now that they are powerful.’
‘It seems to me that now they are weaker,’ Wokulski interposed.
‘Is that because people begin to hate them?’
‘Come, hate is too strong a word.’
‘For goodness sake, I’m not blind or stupid … I know what is being said about Jews in the workshops, saloons, stores, even in the newspapers … And I am certain that new persecutions will break out any year now, from which my brothers in Israel will emerge still more clever, still stronger and in still greater solidarity. And how they will repay you all, at some future time! They are scoundrels, but I must admit their genius and cannot rid myself of a sneaking liking for them … For me, a dirty Jew-boy is dearer than any well-scrubbed young lordling; and when I looked into a synagogue for the first time in twenty years and heard the singing, there were tears in my eyes, upon my word … But what’s the use of talking? Israel in triumph is beautiful, and it’s pleasant to think that this triumph of the oppressed is partly my handiwork.’
‘Szuman, you seem to have a fever.’
‘Wokulski, I’m certain you have a mote — not in your eye, but in your brain.’
‘How can you speak of such things?’
‘I do so because first of all, I don’t want to be a snake in the grass, and then … you, Staś, won’t fight against us. You’re a broken man, and broken by your own people into the bargain. You’ve sold your store, you’re abandoning the company … Your career is finished.’
Wokulski hung his head.
‘Think, too,’ Szuman went on, ‘who is on your side today? I, a Jew, as despised and ill-used as you are … And by the same people … By the aristocracy.’
‘You’re growing sentimental,’ Wokulski interrupted.
‘This isn’t sentimentality! They have thrown their greatness in your face, they have proclaimed their own virtues, they have told us to adopt their ideals … But today, just tell me, what are these ideals and virtues worth, where’s their greatness which had to draw on your pocket? You only lived on equal footing with them, as it were, for a year — and what have they done to you? So just think what they must have done to us, whom they have oppressed and kicked