The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [407]
‘Hey, there!’ exclaimed Dr Szuman, who had been standing for several moments on the threshold, without taking his hat off. ‘Hey, there! And who may you be, my fine fellows? Are you agents for an undertaker, that you treat my patient in this manner? Kazimierz!’ he called to the servant. ‘Take these bottles into the passage. And I must beg you gentlemen to bid goodbye to my patient. A hospital, even for one person, is not a tavern. Is this how you carry out my instructions?’ he turned to Rzecki, ‘with a heart ailment, you have a drinking spree! Why not invite some young ladies too? Goodnight to you, gentlemen,’ he said to the councillor and Szprott, ‘and next time, don’t open a beer house here, or I’ll charge you with murder.’
Messrs Węgrowicz, the councillor, and the commercial traveller Szprott took themselves off so fast that, had it not been for the dense smoke of their cigars, no one would have supposed there had been anyone in the room.
‘Open the window,’ the doctor said to the servant. ‘Oh, come,’ he added, looking ironically at Rzecki, ‘your face is on fire, eyes glassy, your pulse beats so that one can hear it in the street.’
‘Did you hear, sir, what he was saying about Staś?’ Rzecki asked.
‘He was right,’ Szuman replied. ‘The whole town is saying the same thing, though they are wrong to call Wokulski bankrupt, for he is merely a nincompoop of the type I call the Polish Romantics.’
Rzecki gazed at him, almost alarmed.
‘Don’t stare at me so,’ Szuman went on, in a calm tone, ‘you’d do better to decide whether I am right or not. After all, the man never acted rationally once in his life. When he was a clerk, he thought about inventions and the university. When he entered the university, he got involved in politics. Later on, instead of making money he became a scholar, and came back here so poor that if it hadn’t been for Mrs Mincel, he’d have starved to death. Finally he began making a fortune, not as a tradesman, but as the admirer of a young woman who had the established reputation of a coquette. That wasn’t all, for as soon as he had both the girl and the money in his hands, he threw them away, again, and today what is he doing, where is he? Tell me, sir, is he wise? He’s a nincompoop, an out-and-out nincompoop,’ said Szuman, gesticulating. ‘A thoroughbred Polish Romantic, always searching for something outside reality.’
‘Will you say this to Wokulski, doctor, when he comes back?’ Rzecki asked.
‘I’ve already told him a hundred times, and if I don’t tell him again, it’ll only be because he isn’t coming back.’
‘Not coming back?’ whispered Rzecki, turning pale.
‘He isn’t coming back, for either he’ll blow out his brains somewhere, if he comes to his senses, or he’ll set himself some new Utopian goal … Perhaps the inventions of that mythical Geist, who must be an out-and-out lunatic.’
‘But did you never chase after Utopias, doctor?’
‘Yes, but I was poisoned by the atmosphere that the lot of you caused. I came to my senses in time, however, and that enabled me to make a very precise diagnosis of similar cases … Well, take off your dressing gown, sir, let’s see the results of an evening spent in jovial company.’
He examined Rzecki, told him to go straight to bed and not to turn his apartment into a tavern in future. ‘You’re another example of a Romantic — except that you had less opportunity to commit follies,’ the doctor concluded.
After which he departed, leaving Rzecki in a very depressed frame of mind. ‘That chatter of his has done me more harm than the beer,’ Rzecki thought, and a moment later he added in an undertone: ‘Yet Staś might at least drop me a line … Goodness only knows the thoughts that find their way into a man’s brain!’
Confined to bed, Ignacy was excruciatingly bored. So, to pass the time, he read the history of the Consulate for goodness knows how many times, or meditated on Wokulski.
But both these pastimes, instead of calming him,