The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [387]
‘What next?’ asked Ochocki, lowering his voice. ‘One Sunday, the Baron went with his wife and Starski on an outing to Zasław. What happened there? I don’t know, but the result is as follows. The Baron insisted he would not let the will be invalidated, and that’s not all … The Baron has decided on a separation from his adored wife (did you know that? … And that’s not all: ten days ago, the Baron had a duel with Starski and got a bullet across the ribs. It was as though someone had ripped the skin off his chest from right to left with a hook … The old man is furious, he roars and curses, is feverish, but he told his wife to go back to her family immediately, though I’m certain they won’t receive her … There’s a hard fellow for you! But the old devil is so determined that he ordered his nurse, on his sick-bed, to dye his hair and beard for him, to spite his wife, and today he looks like a twenty-year-old corpse.’
Wokulski smiled. ‘He did well with the woman,’ he said, ‘but he needn’t have painted himself.’
‘He needn’t have got it in the ribs, either,’ Ochocki put in. ‘He very nearly put a bullet through Starski’s brains. Bullets are always blind. I can tell you, sir, that the incident made me quite ill.’
‘Where is our hero now?’ asked Wokulski.
‘Starski? He has bolted abroad, not so much from the coldness he began getting in society, as from his debtors. What an artist he is! He has some hundred thousand roubles of debts.’
A long silence followed. Wokulski was sitting with his back to the window, his head bowed. Ochocki pondered, whistling quietly. Suddenly he came to and began speaking, as if to himself: ‘What a strange muddle human life is! Who’d have expected a booby like Starski to do so much good? And just because he’s a booby!’
Wokulski raised his head and looked inquiringly at Ochocki.
‘Strange, is it not?’ Ochocki went on, ‘and yet that’s how it is. If Starski were a respectable, decent man and hadn’t had an affair with the Baron’s young wife, Dalski would certainly have supported his claim against the will — bah! He’d even have given him money for the law-suit, because his wife would have profited by that too. But because Starski is a booby, he offended the Baron … And saved the will. So even unborn generations of Zasławek peasants ought to bless Starski for flirting with the Baroness.’
‘A paradox!’ Wokulski put in.
‘A paradox! These are facts, after all. And don’t you think Starski has done the Baron a favour by ridding him of a wife like that? Between ourselves, she’s not a woman, but an animal. All she thought of were clothes, parties and flirtations, and I don’t know whether she ever read anything, or looked attentively at anything … Nothing but a lump of flesh and bone, who pretended to have a soul, but had nothing but a stomach … You didn’t know her, you can’t imagine what a dummy she is, nor how there was nothing human under that façade of humanity. By realising what she is, the Baron has won a great lottery prize.’
‘Merciful Heavens!’ Wokulski murmured.
‘What did you say?’ asked Ochocki.
‘Nothing …’
‘But the salvation of the late Duchess’s bequest, and the liberation of the Baron from such a wife are only a part of Starski’s services.’
Wokulski shifted in his chair.
‘Pray imagine, sir, that this booby may, by his flirtation, have contributed to a really important fact,’ said Ochocki. ‘This is how the land lies. I sometimes urged Dalski (and, in fact, anyone with money) that it would be worthwhile to establish an experimental laboratory in Warsaw for chemical and mechanical technology. For, as you know, sir, we have