The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [418]
‘If you please, sir … Something has happened to my master …’
Szlangbaum came into the apartment cautiously, looked at the chaise-longue and retreated: ‘Run for Dr Szuman,’ he exclaimed, ‘I don’t want to go in there …’
At this moment, Ochocki was with the doctor, telling him he had returned from St Petersburg that morning and that he was taking his cousin, Izabela Łęcka, to catch the Vienna express that evening, as she was going abroad. ‘Just think of it,’ he concluded, ‘she is going into a convent.’
‘Izabela?’ Szuman inquired. ‘Come, does she intend to flirt with the Almighty Himself, or merely to relax after all this excitement, so as to get married with a firmer step?’
‘Less of that … She’s a strange woman,’ Ochocki murmured.
‘They all seem strange to us,’ the doctor replied in an irritable voice, ‘until we find out they are only stupid or wretched … Have you heard anything of Wokulski?’
‘As a matter of fact …’ he began. Then he suddenly stopped and said no more.
‘Do you know anything of him? Or are you going to make a state secret of it?’ the doctor persisted.
At this moment Kazimierz rushed in, exclaiming: ‘Doctor, something has happened to my master. Quickly, sir!’
Szuman jumped up, Ochocki with him. They hailed a droshky and hurried to the house in which Rzecki lived. Maruszewicz, wearing a very worried look, stopped them in the gateway. ‘Well, just imagine this,’ he cried to the doctor, ‘I had important business to discuss with him … It is a question of my honour … And now he’s gone and died!’
The doctor and Ochocki, followed by Maruszewicz, went into Rzecki’s apartment. In the first room they found Szlangbaum, Councillor Węgrowicz and the commercial traveller Szprott.
‘If he’d drunk light beer,’ said Węgrowicz, ‘he’d have lived to be a hundred. But now …’
Seeing Ochocki, Szlangbaum seized him by the arm: ‘Must you withdraw your money this week?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why so fast?’
‘I’m leaving.’
‘For long?’
‘Perhaps for good,’ he replied sharply, and went with the doctor into the room where the remains lay.
The others followed on tiptoe.
‘A terrible thing,’ the doctor exclaimed, ‘men such as he perish, you others are leaving. Who will be left here in the end?’
‘We will!’ replied Maruszewicz and Szlangbaum, simultaneously.
‘There will be no lack of men,’ Councillor Węgrowicz declared.
‘No, there won’t … But in the meantime, pray be off with you,’ the doctor cried.
The whole group, manifesting their indignation, retreated to the vestibule. Only Szuman and Ochocki remained.
‘Just look at him, sir,’ said the doctor, indicating the remains. ‘The last Romantic! How they betake themselves off … How they betake themselves …’
He tugged his moustache and turned to the window.
Ochocki took Rzecki’s already cold hand and leaned over as though to whisper something in his ear. Suddenly he caught sight of Węgiełek’s letter protruding from the side pocket of the dead man, and he automatically read aloud the words written in large letters: ‘Non omnis moriar …’
‘You’re right,’ he said, as if to himself.
‘I am?’ asked the doctor, ‘I’ve known that for a long time.’
Ochocki said nothing.
Appendix: A censored passage
Most of the passages excised by the Tsarist censor have been restored to the main text. The following passage could not be restored, since Prus rewrote Chapter XIX, from which it came, introducing some new details which play a role in the subsequent narrative. It remains an interesting example of what Tsarist censorship found objectionable.
Almost at the same time that Rzecki was following the auction of the Łęcki house, two gentlemen were conferring in his own apartment: one of them was Wokulski and the other was the Moscow merchant, Suzin.
Suzin was a short giant, with a powerful head, powerful shoulders, and even more powerful hands; he gave the impression of a strong ox dressed in a badly cut frock-coat of very thin cloth.