The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [406]
Ignacy was startled to see the slender bottles, though this feeling was in no way disagreeable.
‘What has been happening to you, for Heaven’s sake?’ the councillor began again, stretching out his arms as if to take the entire world into his embrace, ‘it’s been so long since you were with us that Szprott had forgotten what you looked like, and I thought you’d taken offence at your old friend with the bees in his bonnet.’
Rzecki grew sombre.
‘So this very day,’ the councillor pursued, ‘when I won a basket of a new brand of beer from Deklewski in a bet on your friend, I say to Szprott here: ‘You know what, my dear sir, let’s take the beer and call on the old boy, and maybe he’ll feel better.’ … Come now, aren’t you even going to ask us to take a chair?’
‘Pray do,’ Rzecki replied.
‘And there’s a table,’ said the councillor, looking around, ‘and the room, I see, is cosy. Aha! We’ll be able to drop in on the patient for a game of cards or two every evening … Szprott, young fellow, find an opener, and get to work. Let the old boy taste this new brand.’
‘What was the bet you won, Councillor?’ Rzecki inquired, his countenance beginning to brighten.
‘On Wokulski. This is how it was. Back in January last year, when Wokulski was adventuring in Bulgaria, I told Szprott that Stanisław was crazy, that he’d go bankrupt and come to a bad end. But today, just imagine, Deklewski declares that he was the one who said that. Of course we bet a basket of beer, Szprott decided in my favour, and here we are!’
During this, Mr Szprott was arranging three tankards on the table and uncorking three bottles. ‘Now, just look, Ignacy,’ said the councillor, raising a brimming tankard, ‘the colour of old mead, froth like cream and it tastes like a sixteen-year-old girl. Try it … What taste and flavour! If you shut your eyes, you’d vow it was ale … Ah, you see! Before drinking beer like this, a man should rinse out his mouth. … Tell me, now — did you ever drink anything like it?’
Rzecki drank half a tankard. ‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘But — what put it in your head that Wokulski has gone bankrupt?’
‘Everyone in town is saying it. After all, if a man has money, some sense in his head and doesn’t owe anyone anything, he wouldn’t run away God knows where.’
‘Wokulski has gone to Moscow.’
‘Come now! He told you that to cover his tracks. But he gave himself away as soon as he renounced his money.’
‘What money?’ asked Ignacy, already agitated.
‘The money he has in the bank, and the investment with Szlangbaum. It comes to some two hundred thousand roubles … Who’d leave that sort of money behind without any instructions, just throw it in the mud? … He’s either crazy … or has something worked out, and doesn’t want to wait for the payment date … All over town, there’s unanimous indignation about that … that … I won’t call him by his proper name.’
‘Councillor, you forget yourself!’ Rzecki exclaimed.
‘You, Mr Rzecki, are going out of your mind by concerning yourself with such a man,’ the councillor replied crossly. ‘Just consider. Where did he go to make his fortune? To the Crimean war! The Crimean war! Do you understand the significance of those words? He made a fortune there, but in what manner? How could a man make half a million roubles in six months?’
‘He had a turnover of ten million roubles,’ Rzecki answered, ‘so he made even less than he might have done.’
‘But whose millions were they?’
‘Suzin’s … A merchant’s … His friend.’
‘Just so! But never mind that: let us suppose that he didn’t do anything underhand this time. But what sort of business was he up to in Paris and later in Moscow, when he also made a great deal of money? Was it right to kill our industry in order to pay eighteen per cent interest to a few aristocrats, in order to make his way into their society? And wasn’t it fine of him to sell the whole company to the Jews, then finally to bolt for it, leaving behind hundreds of people in poverty or insecurity? Is that what a good citizen and honest man does? Well, drink up, Ignancy!’ he cried,