The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [399]
The hand reached five minutes, and Wokulski rose without haste, but also without hesitation. He let the water into the bath himself, bathed, dried, dressed, and within half an hour was entering the Lazienki.
He was struck by the fact that all this time he had not thought of Izabela, but of Mrs Wąsowska. Obviously something had changed in him since yesterday; perhaps some paralysed cells in his brain had started functioning. The thought of Izabela had lost its domination over him.
‘What an extraordinary thing,’ he thought. ‘Mrs Wąsowska has ejected that other woman, but any woman may replace Mrs Wąsowska. So I’m genuinely cured of my madness …’
He walked to the lake and gazed indifferently at the boats and swans. Then he turned down the path leading to the Orangery, where they had been together, and he told himself that … he would make a hearty breakfast. But as he was coming back the same way, rage overcame him and he rubbed out his own footsteps with the fierce joy of a mischievous urchin: ‘If only I could erase everything thus … That stone, and the ruins … Everything!’
At this moment he felt an unconquerable urge to destroy certain things awakening in him: but at the same time he realised it was an unhealthy symptom. It also gave him great satisfaction to be able to think calmly about Izabela, and even do her justice. ‘What did I get so angry about?’ he asked himself. ‘If it hadn’t been for her, I’d never have made a fortune … If it hadn’t been for her and Starski, I wouldn’t have gone to Paris for the first time, or met Geist, and wouldn’t have cured myself of my stupidity at Skierniewice. After all, they are my benefactors, the pair of them. I ought even to have acted as a go-between for the fine pair, or at least facilitated their rendezvous. And to think that Geist’s metal will one day emerge from such dirt!’
It was quiet and almost deserted in the Botanical Gardens. Wokulski passed the well and began slowly ascending the shadowy hill where, over a year ago, he had talked to Ochocki for the first time. The hill seemed to him to be the foundation of those enormous stairs, at the summit of which a statue of the mysterious woman had appeared to him. He could see her now, and noticed with emotion that the clouds surrounding her head had drawn aside for a moment. He caught sight of her stern face, loose hair and under her brass brows were living, leonine eyes, gazing at him with an expression of overwhelming might. He withstood that look, and suddenly felt he was growing … That already his head surpassed the highest trees in the park, and almost attained the naked feet of the goddess.
Now he realised that this pure and eternal beauty was Fame, and that on her summit there is no comfort other than work and danger.
He returned home more sorrowful, yet was still tranquil. It was as though a bond had been formed during his stroll between his future and that distant past, when he as a shop assistant had constructed machines for perpetual motion, or balloons that could be steered. But the last few years had only been an interruption and waste of time. ‘I must go away,’ he told himself, ‘I must rest, then later … We’ll see.’
That afternoon he sent a long telegram to Suzin in Moscow.
Next day, around one o’clock, when Wokulski was eating lunch, Mrs Wąsowska’s footman entered and informed him she was waiting in the carriage. When he hurried into the street, Mrs Wąsowska told him to get in. ‘I am carrying you off,’ said she.
‘To lunch?’
‘No, merely to the Łazienki. It will be safer for me to talk to you in front of witnesses, and in the open air.’
But Wokulski was sombre and said nothing.
In the park, they got out of the carriage, walked around the palace terrace and began strolling along the path adjacent to the amphitheatre.
‘You must go out among people, Mr Wokulski,’ Mrs Wąsowska began. ‘You must rouse yourself from your apathy, otherwise a charming