The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [381]
A week before the meeting that was to decide the fate of the trading company, visits to Wokulski became increasingly frequent. Merchants called, so did aristocrats, lawyers — all urging him not to abandon his position, and not to threaten an institution that was, after all, his own work. Wokulski received his callers with such icy indifference that they didn’t even feel like setting out their arguments: he said he was tired and sick, and must resign. The callers left, without hope: each admitted, however, that Wokulski must be gravely ill. He had lost weight, spoke briefly and brusquely, and fever burned in his eyes.
‘He has killed himself with avarice!’ said the merchants.
A few days before the final date, Wokulski summoned his attorney and asked him to inform the shareholders that in accordance with the agreement he had with them, he was withdrawing his capital and leaving the company. The others might do likewise.
‘And the money?’ asked the attorney.
‘It’s already in the bank for them: I have accounts with Suzin.’
The attorney withdrew, upset. On the very same day, the Prince called on Wokulski: ‘I’ve been hearing the most extraordinary things!’ the Prince began, shaking him by the hand. ‘Your attorney is behaving as though you really intended to desert us.’
‘Do you think I am joking, Prince?’
‘Well, no … I think you have observed something dishonourable in our agreement, and …’
‘And am bargaining, so as to force you to sign another, which will lessen your interest and increase my income?’ Wokulski caught him up. ‘No, Prince, I am perfectly serious about resigning.’
‘You will disappoint your partners.’
‘How so? You gentlemen entered into the company for only a year, and you yourselves asked that the business be conducted so that each partner might withdraw his investment within a month of dissolving the agreement. That was your plain request. I, on the other hand, have infringed it inasmuch as I will repay the money, not within a month, but within an hour of dissolving the company.’
The Prince sank into an armchair. ‘The company will continue,’ he said quietly, ‘but the Hebrews will enter in your place.’
‘That is your own choice.’
‘The Jews in our company!’ sighed the Prince. ‘They will speak Hebrew at committee meetings … Our unhappy country! Our unhappy language!’
‘No fear of that,’ Wokulski interrupted. ‘The majority of our shareholders are in the habit of speaking French at committee meetings, but nothing has happened to Polish, so surely it won’t be damaged by a few phrases in Yiddish.’
The Prince blushed: ‘But Hebrews, sir … A foreign race … Now, too, there’s general hostility towards them.’
‘Hostility by the crowd proves nothing … But who is preventing you gentlemen from collecting sufficient capital, as the Jews do, and entrusting it, not to Szlangbaum, but to one of the Christian merchants?’
‘We don’t know a single one we can trust.’
‘But you know Szlangbaum?’
‘In any case, we haven’t sufficiently gifted men of our own kind,’ the Prince interrupted. ‘They are clerks, not financiers.’
‘And what was I? I was a clerk, too, even a pantry-boy in a restaurant at one time; yet the company brought in the expected profits.’
‘You’re an exception.’
‘How do you know you wouldn’t find more exceptions in wine-cellars or behind counters? You must search for them.’
‘The Jews come to us of their own accord.’
‘So that’s it!’ Wokulski exclaimed. ‘The Jews come to you, or you will go to them, but a Christian parvenu cannot even come to you, because of the obstacles he encounters on the way. I know something of this. Your doors are so tightly closed to tradesmen and industrialists that they must either bombard them with hundreds of thousands of roubles in order to open them, or must squeeze through like a bug. Open your doors a little, and perhaps