The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [416]
On Saturday, after the clerks had gone home in the evening, Ignacy took the key to the back door of the shop from Szlangbaum so as to arrange the display in the windows for the coming week. He lit one lamp, and helped by Kazimierz, took a jardinière and two Saxon vases out of the main window, replacing them by Japanese vases and an old Roman-style table. Then he told the servant to go to bed, for he was in the habit of arranging the smaller articles, especially the mechanical toys, by himself. Besides, he didn’t want the simple man to know that he played with the store toys.
As always, he brought them all out, filled the entire counter with them, and wound them all up. For the thousandth time in his life he listened to the tunes of the musical snuff-boxes, watched the bear scramble up and down its pole, watched the glass water turning the mill-wheels, the cat running after the mouse, the peasants dancing and the jockey riding his horse. And, as he watched the movements of the inanimate objects, he repeated for the thousandth time: ‘Puppets! … All puppets! They think they are doing as they choose, but they only do what the springs command, blind as they are!’
When the jockey fell over on the dancing couples, Mr Ignacy mourned. ‘No one can help others be happy,’ he thought, ‘but they can ruin other lives just as well as people.’
Suddenly he heard a noise. He looked into the depths of the store and caught sight of a human form emerging from under a counter. ‘A thief?’ flashed through his mind.
‘Excuse me, Mr Rzecki … I was just passing,’ exclaimed an individual with olive face and black hair. He ran to the door, opened it hastily and disappeared.
Mr Rzecki couldn’t get up: his hands were powerless, his legs refused to obey him. Only his heart was sounding within him like a cracked bell, and a darkness came before his eyes. ‘What in the world am I so scared of?’ he murmured, ‘that was only Isidor Gutmorgen … a clerk here. Obviously he stole something and ran away … But why am I so scared?’
Meanwhile Mr Isidor Gutmorgen, after an absence of some time, came back into the store, which astonished Mr Rzecki greatly. ‘What are you doing here? What do you want?’ Ignacy asked him.
Mr Gutmorgen seemed very embarrassed. He lowered his head like a guilty party and rubbing one finger along the counter said: ‘Excuse me, Mr Rzecki, maybe you think I was stealing? Pray search me …’
‘But what are you doing here?’ asked Rzecki. He wanted to rise from the chair, but could not.
‘Mr Szlangbaum told me to spend the night here …’
‘What for?’
‘Well, sir, Mr Rzecki, you see … That Kazimierz comes with you, to arrange things … So Mr Szlangbaum told me to watch lest he takes anything … But because I felt poorly, so … I apologise, sir.’
Rzecki had already risen from his seat. ‘Ah, you scoundrels!’ he exclaimed in a paroxysm of fury, ‘so you all regard me as a thief! Because I work for you without pay!’
‘Excuse me, Mr Rzecki, sir,’ put in Gutmorgen, humbly, ‘but why do you work without pay?’
‘May a million devils take you all!’ cried Ignacy. He hurried out of the store and carefully locked the door behind him. ‘Stay there until morning, serve you right for being poorly … You can leave your boss a souvenir,’ he muttered.
Ignacy couldn’t sleep all night. And as his apartment was only divided from the store by a partition, he heard a quiet knocking inside the store about two in the morning, and the stifled voice of Gutmorgen:
‘Mr Rzecki, pray open the door, sir … I’ll be back right away.’
Soon, however, all fell silent. ‘Oh, you blockheads,’ thought Rzecki, turning and tossing in his bed, ‘so