The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [49]
When Wokulski rang the doctor’s doorbell, the doctor was busy classifying the hair of various individuals of the Slavic, Teutonic and Semitic races, measuring the largest and smallest cross-sections through a microscope.
‘So it’s you…’ he said to Wokulski, looking round. ‘Light your pipe if you want to, and sit down on the sofa, if you can find room.’ His visitor did as instructed, the doctor went on with his own business. For a time both were silent, then Wokulski said: ‘Tell me this: does medical science know of a state of mind in which it seems to a man that all his previously scattered knowledge…and feelings have become concentrated, as it were, into one organism?’
‘Of course. Continuous mental work and good food can form new cells in the brain or join together old ones. And then one unity is formed out of the various sections of the brain and various spheres of knowledge.’
‘But what is the meaning of that state of mind in which a man grows indifferent to death, or begins to feel the need of legends of eternal life?’
‘Indifference to death,’ the doctor replied, ‘is a trait of mature minds, and the desire for an eternal life is the sign of approaching old age.’
Again they fell silent. The visitor smoked his pipe, the doctor concerned himself with the microscope.
‘Do you think,’ Wokulski asked, ‘that it’s possible…to love a woman ideally, without desiring her?’
‘Of course. It is a kind of mask, in which the instinct to preserve the species likes to disguise itself.’
‘Instinct…species…the instinct for preserving something, and—preserving the species…’ Wokulski repeated. ‘Three phrases and four pieces of nonsense.’
‘Make a sixth,’ said the doctor, not looking away from his eyepiece, ‘and get married.’
‘The sixth?’ asked Wokulski, rising, ‘where’s the fifth?’
‘You have already done it; you have fallen in love.’
‘Me? At my age?’
‘Forty-five years old—that is the period for a man’s last love, and the most serious.’
‘Experts say first love is the worst,’ Wokulski murmured.
‘Not so. After the first, a hundred others are waiting, but after the hundredth there’s nothing. Get married; that is the only cure for your ailment.’
‘Why didn’t you ever marry?’
‘My fiancee died,’ the doctor answered, leaning back in his chair and eyeing the ceiling. ‘So I did all I could: I took chloroform. This was in the provinces… But God sent me a good colleague, who broke down the door and saved me. The worst kind of charity! I had to pay for the door he smashed, and my colleague inherited my practice by pronouncing me insane.’
He turned back to the hairs and the microscope.
‘But what moral significance am I to draw from your remarks about last love?’
‘That one should never interfere with a suicide,’ the doctor replied.
Wokulski stayed another fifteen minutes, then rose, put his pipe away, and leaned over to embrace the doctor. ‘Goodbye, Michał.’
The doctor rose. ‘Well?’
‘I am leaving for Bulgaria.’
‘What for?’
‘To go in for military supplies. I have to make a large fortune,’ Wokulski replied.
‘Or else…?’
‘Or else—I shall not come back.’
The doctor gazed into his eyes, and shook his hand firmly.
‘Sit tibi terra levis,’ he said calmly. He took him to the door and returned to his work.
Wokulski was already on the stairs when the doctor ran after him and called over the banister: ‘If you come back, don’t forget to bring me specimens of hair: Bulgarian, Turkish and so on, of both sexes. But remember—in separate packets, with notes. You know how it’s done…’
… Wokulski aroused himself from these old memories. The doctor and his house weren’t there, and he had not even seen either of them for ten months. This was muddy Radna Street, and that was Browarna. Above him, behind the naked trees, the yellow buildings of the university were looking down: below were one-storey houses, empty spaces and fences, and further off—the Vistula.
Near him, a man with a red beard, in a worn greatcoat, had halted. He took off his hat and kissed Wokulski’s hand. Wokulski looked at him more closely.