The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [405]
If this is so, I am not surprised at Staś, who sometimes said he would like to perish as soon as possible and to destroy all traces behind him. But I have a premonition it isn’t so.
Although … Didn’t I have a premonition that Prince Louis Napoleon would become Emperor of France? Hm! Let us go on waiting, because that death of his in a battle with naked blackamoors, looks strange to me, somehow …
XXXVIII
… ? …
MR RZECKI really was sinking: in his view from want of something to do; in Szuman’s from heart disease which had suddenly developed and was proceeding apace under the influence of some mortification or other.
He had little to do. In the mornings he strolled to Wokulski’s former store, now Szlangbaum’s, but he only stayed until the clerks began arriving, and especially the customers. For the latter, goodness knows why, eyed him with amazement, and the clerks who were now all Jews with the exception of Mr Zięba, not only refused to show him any respect, but even treated him with contempt.
This being so, Ignacy thought more and more often of Wokulski. Not because he feared any mishap would befall him, but just because he did. In the mornings around six, he wondered whether Wokulski was getting up or still asleep at this time of day, and where he was? In Moscow, or had he perhaps already left Moscow for Warsaw? In the afternoons, he recalled those times when there had been hardly a day when Staś didn’t eat his dinner with him and then, in the evenings, especially on going to bed, he would say: ‘Staś is certainly at Suzin’s. I bet they are enjoying themselves! Or perhaps at this moment he’s on the way back to Warsaw and going to bed in a sleeping car.’
But whenever he went into the store, and he did so several times a day, despite the animosity of the clerks and the irritating civility of Szlangbaum, he always thought that it had been different in Wokulski’s day. It mortified him, though not very much, that Wokulski gave no sign of life. He regarded this as nothing more than his usual eccentricity: ‘He never was much of a one for writing, even when he was well, so what about now that he is so low?’ he thought. ‘Ach, those women, those women …’
On the day when Szlangbaum acquired Wokulski’s furniture and carriage, Ignacy took to his bed. Not because the incident pained him, for after all the carriage and excess furniture were entirely superfluous things, but because such commerce is done only after someone has died. ‘But Staś, thank God, is well,’ he told himself.
One evening, as Ignacy was sitting in his dressing gown and wondering how he would arrange Mraczewski’s store so as to put Szlangbaum out of business, he heard a violent ringing at the front door and a peculiar racket in the passage. The servant, who was going to bed, opened the door.
‘Is your master in?’ asked a voice known to Rzecki.
‘He’s sick.’
‘How so — sick? He’s hiding from people …’
‘Perhaps, Councillor, we’re being a nuisance,’ exclaimed another voice.
‘Nuisance, indeed! If a person don’t want a nuisance at home, why don’t he come to the tavern?’
Rzecki rose from his chair and at the same moment Councillor Węgrowicz and the commercial traveller Szprott appeared at the bedroom door … Behind them rose a curly head and not particularly clean countenance. ‘The mountain wouldn’t come to the Mahomets, so the Mahomets have come to the mountain,’ cried the councillor. ‘Mr Rzecki! Ignacy! Whatever are you doing? Since we last saw you, we’ve discovered a new brand of beer … Put it here, there’s a good fellow, and come back tomorrow,’ he added, turning to the sooty-faced and curly-headed individual.
At this, the curly-headed man, who wore a great apron, deposited a basket of slender bottles and three tankards on the washstand. Then he disappeared, as if he were a being composed of