The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [397]
‘What if she shows me the door? Why did she flirt with me? I knew all along that she didn’t dislike me, well and I fancy her, which is something.’
Just then, a dark girl with violet eyes and the face of a child passed him, and Wokulski realised with amazement that he liked her too.
A few yards from his apartment, he heard someone shouting: ‘Hey! Hey! Staś!’
Wokulski looked around and caught sight of Szuman under the canopy of a café. The doctor abandoned an uneaten portion of ice cream, threw down a silver coin and hurried to him. ‘I was on my way to see you,’ said Szuman, taking his arm. ‘You know, you haven’t looked so well for a long time. I’ll be bound that you’re coming back into the firm, and will drive those Yids out … What a look! What an eye! At last I recognise the old Staś!’
They passed the gateway and stairs and went into the apartment. ‘And I was just thinking that a new sickness was threatening me,’ said Wokulski, with a smile. ‘Would you like a cigar?’
‘Why should it?’
‘Just imagine, for perhaps an hour past, women have been making a tremendous impression on me … I’m shocked.’
Szuman laughed out loud: ‘Capital! … Instead of giving a dinner party to celebrate his happiness, he’s afraid … Do you think you were in a healthy state of mind when you were crazy about one woman? You’re well today, when you like them all, and have nothing more important to do then to strive for the favours of the woman who suits your taste best.’
‘Hm … But suppose she were a great lady?’
‘So much the better … Great ladies are far more appetising than chambermaids. Femininity gains greatly by chic and intelligence, and by pride above all. What ideal conversations await you, what trusting looks … They’re worth ten times more, let me tell you.’
A shadow flitted across Wokulski’s face.
‘Aha!’ cried Szuman, ‘I can see the long ears of that creature on which Christ rode into Jerusalem … Why do you grimace? Flirt with great ladies only, they’re the ones who are interested in democracy.’
The bell rang in the vestibule and Ochocki came in. He glanced at the excited doctor and inquired: ‘Do I interrupt you gentlemen?’
‘No,’ Szuman replied, ‘you may even be helpful. For I am just advising Staś to cure himself by having a love affair, though … Not an ideal one. Enough of those!’
‘Well, sir, I would like to attend the lecture too,’ said Ochocki, lighting the cigar offered him.
‘Now for an argument!’ Wokulski muttered.
‘Not at all,’ Szuman declared. ‘A man with your money could be completely happy, all that is needed for rational happiness are — to eat different dishes every day, have clean linen and to change one’s residence and one’s mistress every three months.’
‘There wouldn’t be enough women to go around,’ Ochocki interposed.
‘Leave that to the women, sir, and they’ll make sure there is no shortage,’ the doctor replied, scoffingly. ‘After all, the same diet applies to women as well.’
‘A quarterly change of diet?’ asked Ochocki.
‘Certainly. Why should they be any worse off than we?’
‘But the tenth or twentieth change of diet wouldn’t be interesting.’
‘Prejudice! Prejudice!’ said Szuman. ‘You’ll never notice or guess, especially if they assure you that you are only the second or fourth, and in any case you’re the man they truly love and have been waiting for.’
‘Weren’t you at Rzecki’s?’ Wokulski suddenly asked Szuman.
‘Well, I’m not writing him prescriptions for love,’ the doctor replied. ‘The old man is going to rack and ruin.’
‘That’s so, he looks terrible,’ Ochocki put in.
The conversation shifted to Rzecki’s state of health, then to politics, finally Szuman bade them goodbye.
‘A cynical devil, that,’ Ochocki muttered.
‘He doesn’t care for women,’ Wokulski added, ‘and besides, he sometimes has bad days, and then he talks like a heretic.’
‘Not without justice, sometimes,’ Ochocki said. ‘He hit the mark with those observations … For only an hour ago I had a solemn talk with my aunt, who