The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [390]
‘In that case, I’ll move.’
The landlord was somewhat surprised by Wokulski’s readiness, but bade him goodbye much gratified. Wokulski laughed. ‘Obviously he regards me as an eccentric,’ he thought, ‘or a bankrupt. So much the better! Quite honestly, I can live very well in two rooms, instead of eight.’
But a moment came when, without knowing why, he regretted his haste in yielding the apartment. Then he recalled Węgiełek and the Baron. ‘The Baron,’ he thought, ‘has separated from his wife because she flirted with another man: Węgiełek took a dislike to his just because he saw one of her former lovers with his own eyes. So what should I do?’
Once again he set about his experiments, seeing with pleasure that he hadn’t lost much of his skill.
These occupations filled his time up very well indeed. Sometimes he didn’t think of Izabela for several hours at a time, and then he felt that his weary brain was really relaxing. His fear of other people and the streets died away, and he began going into town more often.
One day he went as far as the Lazienki park: he did even more, for he looked into the alley along which he had once walked with Izabela. Then the swans, alarmed by someone, spread their wings and flew to the shore, striking the water. This commonplace sight made a terrible impression on Wokulski: he recalled Izabela’s departure from Zasławek … He fled the park like a madman, hurried into a droshky and drove home with his eyes closed.
That day he did not occupy himself with anything and in the night he had a strange dream. He dreamed that Izabela was standing before him, with tears in her eyes, asking why he had abandoned her … After all, that journey to Skierniewice, the conversation with Starski and the flirtation had only been a dream. He had only dreamed it.
Wokulski hurriedly sat up in bed and lit the lamp. ‘Which was the dream?’ he asked himself. ‘The journey to Skierniewice, or her grief and reproaches?’
He could not sleep until dawn — questions and doubts of the utmost significance were tormenting him. ‘Could people sitting in a badly lit compartment be reflected in the window?’ he thought, ‘and was what I saw merely a hallucination? Do I know enough English to be sure I didn’t misunderstand the meaning of some phrases? What must she think of me, to insult her so terribly for no reason? After all, cousins who have known each other since child-hood can carry on even quite outspoken conversations without betraying anyone else’s confidence … What have I done, wretched man that I am, if I was mistaken, influenced by unjustified jealousy! Moreover, that Starski is in love with the Baroness, Izabela knew it, and surely she wouldn’t degrade herself by flirting with someone else’s lover …’
Then he remembered his present life, so empty, so terribly empty! He stopped his experiments, broke with people and no longer had anything before him. What next? Read fantastic books? Carry out pointless experiments? Travel? Marry Stawska? But whatever of these he chose, wherever he went, he would never rid himself of his grief, nor of his feelings of loneliness!
‘But what of the Baron?’ he said to himself. ‘He married his Ewelina — and look what came of it! Today he’s thinking of establishing a workshop, he who probably doesn’t even know the meaning of technology.’
The daylight and a shower gave Wokulski’s thoughts yet another turn: ‘I have thirty or forty thousand roubles a year: I spend two or three thousand on myself; what shall I do with the rest, and with the fortune which only overwhelms me? With this money I could ensure the existence of a thousand families: but what of it, if some will be as unhappy as Węgiełek, and others repay me as the railroad man Wysocki did?’
Again he recalled Geist and his mysterious workshop in which the embryo of a new civilisation was developing. There the investment of work and a fortune would be rewarded a million times over. There was both a colossal goal and a way to occupy one’s time, and the prospect of such glory and power as had never been seen