The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [51]
Wokulski smiled. ‘Had I come here by night, they would certainly have cured me of melancholia. Tomorrow I’d be resting under this garbage which, after all, is as comfortable a grave as any. In the town there’d be a fuss, these honest folk would be run to earth and excommunicated—yet they might have done me a favour…
‘For they do not know, as they slumber in their tombs, the heavy cares of this life, and their souls no longer struggle with desires, yearning, powerless…
‘But am I really growing sentimental? My nerves must be thoroughly disordered. But a boulevard wouldn’t do away with these Mohicans: they’d move over the river to Praga or beyond, go on with their business, make love like that pair, even increase and multiply. What fine children you will have, my homeland, born and brought up in this garbage heap, with a mother covered in sores and a father with no nose!…
‘My own children would be different; they would have her beauty, my strength… Yes, but they will never be. In this country only disease, poverty and crime find a marriage bed and shelter for their offspring. It is terrible to think what will happen here within a few generations. Yet there is a simple remedy: compulsory labour, properly renumerated. That alone can bring forth better individuals and wipe out evil without a fuss… We would have an active population where today we have hungry or sick people…’
Then, without knowing why, he thought: ‘What does it matter if she flirts a little? Coquetry in a woman is like colour in flowers. It’s their nature to want to please everyone, even a Mraczewski… She flirts with everyone else, but for me there’s only “Pay that gentleman!”… Perhaps she thinks I cheated them in buying the silver? That would indeed be amusing!’
A heap of planks was lying on the very edge of the Vistula. Wokulski felt tired, sat down and gazed around. The Saska Kępa district, already turning green, and the houses of Praga with their red roofs, were reflected on the smooth surface of the water. A barge stood motionless in the centre of the river. A ship Wokulski had seen on the Black Sea last summer motionless because its engines had broken down, had looked no bigger. ‘It was travelling along like a bird, then suddenly broke down; the engine had failed. I asked myself then, what if I too sometime come to a halt? And now I have done so. What commonplace engines they are that cause movement in the world: a little bit of coal moves a ship, a little bit of heart—a man.’
At this moment a premature yellow butterfly passed over his head, in the direction of the town, ‘Where did it come from, I wonder?’ Wokulski thought. ‘Nature has her caprices sometimes—and analogies,’ he added. ‘There are butterflies in mankind, too: prettily coloured, flitting over the surface of life, feeding on sweets without which they perish—such is their occupation. As for the worms—they undermine the earth and make it ready for sowing. The butterflies play; you labour: space and light exist for them—your only privilege is growing together again if someone carelessly steps on you…
‘Are you sighing for a butterfly, you fool? And surprised because you disgust her? What bond can exist between her and me?… Well, a caterpillar resembles a worm until it becomes a butterfly. Ah, so you are to become a butterfly, are you—you haberdasher! Why not, though? Continuous improvement is a natural law, and just consider how many merchant families in England have become Your Lordships.
‘In England! There a creative era still exists in society; there, everything is improving and moving up to a higher level. There, even the higher levels of society