The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [48]
‘Are you she—or not?’ he asked in his soul, unable to look away from her.
Henceforth he concerned himself little with the store or his books, but kept seeking opportunities to see Izabela at the theatre, concerts or lectures. He would not have called his feelings ‘love’, and in fact was not sure whether human language had a word to express them. All he knew was that she had become a mystic point where all his memories, longings and hopes coincided, a hearth without which his life would have neither sense nor meaning. His work in the grocery store, the university, Siberia, marriage to Mincel’s widow, finally his involuntary visit to the theatre when he had not in the least wanted to go—all these were but pathways and stages through which fate had led him to catch sight of Izabela.
From then on, his time consisted of two phases. When he was looking at Izabela he felt completely calm and somehow greater; away from her, he thought about her and yearned for her. Sometimes it seemed there was a sort of error deep within his feelings, and that Izabela was not the centre for his soul at all, but an ordinary and perhaps even very commonplace eligible young lady. But then a strange plan came into his head.
‘I shall make her acquaintance, and ask her point-blank: “Are you she for whom I have been waiting all my life? If not, I will go away without bearing you any grudge or being unhappy.”’
A little later he saw that this plan showed mental aberration on his part. So he laid aside his inquiry as to what she was or was not and decided, come what may, to make the acquaintance of Izabela. Then he realised there was no one among his acquaintances able to introduce him into the Łęcki home. Worse still: Mr Łęcki and the young lady were customers in his store, but this relationship, instead of facilitating a meeting, made it more difficult.
Gradually he formulated the conditions required for making Izabela’s acquaintance. In order simply to talk frankly to her, he must not be in trade, or be a very rich merchant; must be of genteel birth at least, and be acquainted with aristocratic circles; above all, however, he must have a great deal of money.
It had not been difficult to prove his genteel birth. Last May he set about the matter, which his journey to Bulgaria had expedited so that by December he already had the necessary certificate. It had been more difficult to make a fortune, but Fate had helped.
At the beginning of the Eastern War, a rich Muscovite, Suzin, a friend of Wokulski’s from Siberia, passed through Warsaw. He called on Wokulski and forcefully urged him to go in for army supplies. ‘Get together as much money as you can, Stanisław Piotrovich,’ he had said, ‘and I give you my word you’ll make a million.’ Then, in an undertone, he revealed his plans.
Wokulski had listened. He wanted nothing to do with some of them, others he accepted, though hesitantly. He regretted leaving the city where he at least saw Izabela from time to time. But when she left Warsaw in June for her aunt’s estate, and when Suzin began urging him on with telegrams, Wokulski made up his mind, and drew out all his late wife’s cash, amounting to thirty thousand roubles, which the lady had kept untouched in her bank.
Some days before his departure, he visited a doctor of his acquaintance, Szuman, whom he rarely saw despite a mutual liking. The doctor was Jewish, an old bachelor, yellow and tiny, with a black beard and the reputation of an eccentric. As he had private means, he practised medicine for nothing, and only as much as was necessary for his ethnographical studies; to his friends, however, he would give a piece of advice, once and for all: ‘Take any medicine you like, from the smallest dose of castor oil to the largest of strychnine, and