The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [7]
Mr Deklewski, the carriage-manufacturer, who owed all his fortune and position to steady work in one and the same trade, and Councillor Węgrowicz, a lawyer who had for twenty years been member and patron of one and the same charitable institution, had known Wokulski longest and it was they who most vociferously predicted his ruin. ‘Ruin and insolvency’, said Mr Deklewski, ‘must finish off a man who never sticks to a trade and doesn’t know how to respect the gifts of Fortune.’ Whereas Councillor Węgrowicz added to each of his friend’s aphorisms: ‘A lunatic … a lunatic … an adventurer! Joe, another beer there! How many does that make?’
‘’Tis the sixth, sir … Coming!’ replied Joe.
‘The sixth already … How time flies, to be sure. He’s a lunatic, that’s what,’ Councillor Węgrowicz muttered.
To those who ate in the same restaurant as the lawyer, to its proprietor, the clerks and the waiters, the reasons for the disasters about to fall upon Wokulski and his haberdashery store were as clear as the gas-lights that illuminated the establishment. These reasons were rooted in his restless nature, in his adventurous life, not to mention the latest act of this man who — though he had an assured living in his grasp and the opportunity to frequent this respectable restaurant — had nevertheless quit the restaurant of his own free will, left his shop to the care of Providence and gone off with all the cash inherited from his late wife to make a fortune in the Russo-Turkish war.
‘Maybe he’ll do it … Army supplies is good business,’ said Szprot the travelling salesman, who was an infrequent visitor here.
‘He’ll do nothing!’ Deklewski retorted, ‘and in the meantime a reputable shop is going to the dogs. Only the Germans and the Jews get rich from Army trade; we Poles haven’t the brains for it.’
‘Maybe Wokulski has.’
‘He’s a lunatic, a lunatic …’ the lawyer muttered. ‘Here, Joe — another beer! How many does that make?’
‘The seventh, sir … Coming!’
‘The seventh already? … How time flies, to be sure …’
The travelling salesman, who needed extensive and exhaustive information about trade on account of his calling, carried his bottle and glass over to the lawyer’s table and gazed sweetly into the latter’s watery eyes as he asked in a low voice: ‘Excuse me, I beg … why call Wokulski a lunatic? Pray allow me to offer you a cigar … I know Wokulski slightly. He always strikes me as a secretive man, a proud man. And in business, secrecy is a great virtue, pride a fault. But I’ve never seen Wokulski show symptoms of lunacy.’
The lawyer accepted the cigar with no overt signs of gratitude. His red face, with clumps of grey hair on his temples, chin and cheeks, looked like a marrow framed in silver.
‘I call him a lunatic,’ he replied, as he slowly bit off the end of the cigar and lit up, ‘I call him a lunatic because I’ve known him for — let’s see, fifteen, seventeen, eighteen years. That was in 1860 … We used to eat at Hopfer’s then. Did you know Hopfer, sir?’
‘Hm …’
‘In those days, Wokulski was a waiter in Hopfer’s restaurant, and yet he was already over twenty.’
‘In the food and drink trade, eh?’
‘Just so. And like Joe here, he used to serve me my Beef Nelson and beer …’
‘Then he transferred from that line of business to the haberdashery trade?’ asked the travelling salesman.
‘Not so fast, if you please,’ the lawyer interrupted. ‘He transferred, certainly, but not to haberdashery. Instead he went to the Preparatory College and then to the City College — he wanted to become a scholar, d’you see?’
The commercial traveller nodded to express his surprise.
‘Just think of that!’ he said. ‘What put that into his head?’
‘Well, it was the same old business — he knew people at the Medical Academy and the School of Fine Arts … In those days everyone was crazy with ideas, and he didn’t want to be behind the rest of ’em. So by day he waited on customers in the restaurant, and did the accounts, and nights he studied.’
‘The service