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By Root 3802 0

no inventions in the country, primarily because there is nowhere to make them. Of course, the Baron heard my plea with one ear and let it out the other. However, something must have lodged in his brain, for now that Starski has wounded his heart and ribs, the Baron, wondering how to disinherit his wife, talks to me for days at a time about a technological workshop. What purpose would it serve? Would people really become wiser and better if they were provided with a workshop? And how much would it cost, and would I undertake to organise such an institution? When I came away, things were at the point of the Baron calling in an attorney and drawing up a document of some sort which, as far as I can make out from hints, concerns the workshop. Moreover, Dalski asked me to select for him fellows able to direct such a business. Well now, isn’t this an irony of fate — that such a nonentity as Starski, a mere piece of public property for consoling bored wives, should be the source of a technological workshop? Nobody is going to convince me, after this, that there’s anything superfluous in the world!’

Wokulski wiped the sweat from his face which, compared with his white handkerchief, looked almost ashen.

‘But perhaps I’m tiring you?’ Ochocki asked.

‘Please go on … Although I think you overestimate the services of this … man, somewhat, and you entirely forget …’

‘What?’

‘That the technological workshop will grow from the sufferings, the ruins of human happiness. And you don’t even ask yourself the question as to how the Baron passed from love for his wife to a workshop.’

‘What’s that to me?’ cried Ochocki, shrugging. ‘The purchase of social progress at the cost of the sufferings of individuals, however terrible — is well worth it.’

‘Do you know what the sufferings of the individuals are like, at least?’ asked Wokulski.

‘Indeed I do! After all, I had the nail taken off my toe without chloroform, and off my big toe, into the bargain.’

‘A toe nail?’ Wokulski repeated thoughtfully. ‘Do you know the old saying: “Sometimes the human soul rends and fights itself”? Who knows whether that isn’t worse than pulling off a toe nail, or even ripping off the entire skin.’

‘Hm … That’s some unmanly ailment,’ Ochocki replied, with a grimace. ‘Perhaps women experience something of the sort when having a baby … But a man …’

Wokulski laughed aloud. ‘You laugh at me?’ asked Ochocki.

‘No, at the Baron! As for you, why didn’t you undertake to organise the workshop?’

‘Oh, come! I prefer travelling to established workshops, not creating a new one, the fruits of which I wouldn’t live to see, and so waste myself. One needs administrative and pedagogic talents for that, and it would have nothing to do with flying machines.’

‘Well?’ asked Wokulski.

‘What do you mean? Once I’ve collected the little capital I still have on a mortgage, which I haven’t been able to lay hands on for three years despite my request, I shall set off abroad and start work seriously. Here a man can only idle, and grow stupid and embittered.’

‘A man can work anywhere.’

‘You’re joking,’ Ochocki replied. ‘Even putting aside the absence of a workshop, we don’t have a scientific climate here. This is a city of careerists, among whom a real scholar passes for a boor or madman.

‘People here don’t study for knowledge, but for a position; and they acquire a position and celebrity through social contacts, women, parties, goodness knows what else! I’ve bathed in that pond. I know genuine scholars, even men of genius, suddenly brought to a halt in their development, who have taken to giving lessons or writing popular articles which no one reads or, if they do, they fail to understand. I’ve talked to great industrialists, thinking I would persuade them to support research, if only for the sake of practical inventions. But do you know what I discovered? They have about as much idea of science as geese of logarithms. Do you know the sort of inventions that would interest them? Only two: one which would increase their dividends, and the other to teach them how to cheat their fellow businessmen,