The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [408]
For some time, vague yet foreboding premonitions had been troubling Mr Rzecki. His dream after Rossi’s performance when he saw Wokulski leap after Izabela from the Town-hall tower came to his mind. Then, again he recalled Staś’s strange and foreboding phrase: ‘I should like to die alone, and destroy all traces of my existence!’
How easily a wish of that kind may be carried out by a man who says only what he feels, and knows how to carry out what he has said!
Dr Szuman, visiting him every day, did not add to his ease of mind at all, and almost bored him by repeating one and the same comment: ‘Really, a man must be either a complete bankrupt or a lunatic to leave so much money behind in Warsaw, without giving any instructions and not even letting anyone know where he is!’
Rzecki either argued with him or privately admitted he was right.
One day the doctor called on him at an unusual time, to wit, ten o’clock in the morning. He threw his hat on the table and cried: ‘Well, now — wasn’t I right to say he’s a nincompoop?’
‘What has happened?’ asked Ignacy, knowing in advance to whom he was referring.
‘What has happened is that that madman left Moscow a week ago and … Guess his destination!’
‘Paris?’
‘Certainly not … He went to Odessa, and from there he plans to go to India, from India to China and Japan, then across the Pacific to America! I can understand him taking a journey around the world, I’d have recommended it myself. But not to write a single word, leaving people who like him and some two hundred thousand roubles behind in Warsaw. To do that, my goodness, a man must have a highly developed psychosis.’
‘Whence this news?’ asked Rzecki.
‘From the best of all sources — Szlangbaum, to whom it is very important that he should find out Wokulski’s plans. After all, he has to pay him a hundred and twenty thousand roubles early in October … If dear Staś shoots or drowns himself, or dies of yellow fever … D’you see, sir? Then we may go to the Devil for the whole sum, or at least use it for six months interest-free. Surely you know Szlangbaum by this time? It was he, after all, who wanted to cheat … me, of all people!’
The doctor hurried about the room and gesticulated as though he himself were touched by the initial stages of a psychosis. Suddenly he stopped in front of Ignacy, gazed into his eyes and seized him by the hand: ‘What’s this? Your pulse is over a hundred. Did you have a temperature today?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Not yet, indeed! I can see …’
‘Less of this,’ Rzecki interrupted. ‘Can it be that Staś has done anything like that?’
‘That old Staś of ours, despite his romanticism, perhaps wouldn’t have, but this Mr Wokulski, in love with her ladyship Miss Łęcka, might do anything. As you see, he’s doing his best …’
After this visit from the doctor, Ignacy began to admit to himself that he was poorly. ‘It would be absurd,’ he thought, ‘if I were to kick the bucket now … Pooh! It’s happened to better men than me. Napoleon the First … Napoleon the Third … little Lulu … Staś. But — why Staś? After all, he’s travelling to India.’
He pondered, rose from bed, dressed properly and went to the store, much to the dismay of Szlangbaum, who knew Ignacy had been forbidden to get out of bed. On this account, Ignacy felt much worse next day: so he stayed in bed twenty-four hours, and went to the store again for a few hours.
‘Does he think that the store is a morgue, then?’ said one of the