The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [46]
‘I’ll give up the shop and the company and go abroad,’ he thought.
‘But what about the disappointment you will cause these people who have placed their hopes in you?’
‘Disappointment? … Haven’t I too been disappointed?’
He felt uncomfortable as he walked along, then realised he was irritated by continually stepping aside for the passers-by; so he crossed the street, where there was less traffic.
‘But that Mraczewski is infamous!’ he thought. ‘How can he say such things in the shop? “In a few days I’ll get a note and then—a rendezvous …” Ha, she has only herself to blame, one should not flirt with fools. Ah well, it is all the same to me.’
He felt a strange emptiness in his soul and, at its very depths, something like a drop of stinging bitterness. No force, no desires, nothing—only that drop, so small that it could barely be perceived, and so bitter that the whole world could be poisoned by it.
‘A momentary apathy, exhaustion, lack of stimulation … I think too much about business,’ he said.
He stopped and looked around. It was the eve of a holiday and the fine weather had enticed many people out on to the city’s streets. A string of carriages and a motley, undulating crowd between the statues of Copernicus and Zygmunt III looked like the flock of birds which were rising at that very moment above the town, heading north.
‘How singular,’ he said. ‘Every bird above and every man below imagines that he goes where he pleases. And only someone observing from the sidelines sees that everyone is being pushed forward together by some ill-starred current, stronger than their expectations and desires. Perhaps the very one that tosses up the streaks of sparks blown out at night by the locomotive? They glitter for the twinkling of an eye, only to be extinguished for all eternity, and that is called life. “Human generations pass like waves on a wind-tossed sea; and their joys leave no memories, and their sorrows are beyond recall.” Where did I read that?… No matter.’
The constant rumbling and murmuring was intolerable to Wokulski, and terrible his internal emptiness. He wished to occupy himself with something and remembered that one of the foreign capitalists had requested his opinion regarding the question of avenues along the banks of the Vistula. He had already formed his opinion: the whole vastness of Warsaw was weighing and shifting down towards the Vistula. If the banks were to be reinforced with avenues, it would become the most beautiful part of the city: buildings, shops, boulevards…
‘I must go over and see how it would look.’ Wokulski murmured and turned into Karowa.
By the gate leading in that direction he saw a barefoot porter, all hung about with string, drinking straight from the water fountain. He had splashed himself from head to toe but had a most pleased expression and laughing eyes.
‘There’s someone who has what he desired. Scarcely have I approached my source, when I see that not only has it disappeared, but my very desires begin to wither. And yet I am envied and he is to be pitied. What a monstrous misunderstanding!’
He rested a moment on Karowa. It seemed to him that he was like the chaff already discarded by the mill of big city life, and that he was floating slowly downwards in the gutter between these ancient walls.
‘And what of the avenues?’ he thought. ‘They may stand for a time, then they will begin to crumble, overgrown and dilapidated, like these walls here. Those who laboured so to build them had other aspirations also: health, security, wealth, and fun, perhaps, caresses. And where are they now?…a few cracked walls is all that’s left of them, like the shell of a long-gone snail. And the only profit this heap