The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [81]
My regards,
Jan Mincel,
February 16, 1853.
P.S. Old Raczek who married your aunt, you know he died, and she too, only before him. They left you some furniture and a few thousand złoty. Everything is at my place, only your sister’s coat is a little damaged because silly Kasia forgot the moth-balls. Franz sends you his greetings. Warsaw, February 18, 1853.
The Jew took me to his house, where I was given a bag containing a change of linen, clothes and shoes. They fed me goose soup, then stewed goose, then roast goose, which I could not digest until I had reached Lublin. He also presented me with a bottle of excellent mead, led me to a cart that was waiting but would not hear of any reward for his pains. ‘I’d be ashamed, that I would, to take money from a person back from exile,’ he replied to all my urging. Not until I was about to climb into the cart did he draw me aside and look around to see whether anyone was listening before whispering: ‘I’ll buy Hungarian ducats, sir, if you have any. I’ll pay a good price, I need ’em for my daughter, who’s getting married after the New Year…’
‘I have no ducats,’ I said.
‘In the Hungarian war but no ducats?’ he said, in surprise.
I had no sooner set my foot on the cart step when the same Jew again drew me aside: ‘Maybe you have some jewellery then?…Rings, watches, bracelets? I’ll pay you well, that I shall—it’s for my daughter….’
‘Brother, I have none, I give you my word…’
‘No?’ he echoed, his eyes wide open, ‘well, why did you go to Hungary then?’
We moved off but he stayed where he was, clutching his beard and shaking his head sorrowfully.
The cart had been engaged for me alone. But as soon as we turned the corner, the driver met his brother, who had urgent business to attend to in Krasnystaw. ‘Allow me to take him, honoured sir,’ he begged, doffing his cap to me. ‘If the road is bad, he will walk…’
The passenger got in. Before we had reached the fortress gate, a Jewish woman with a bag stopped us and began conferring noisily with the driver. It turned out that she was his aunt, who had a sick child in Fajslawice. ‘Allow her to get in, honoured sir…she is a very light person…’ the driver said.
Once past the city gate, three more relatives of the driver appeared at various points on the highroad, and he picked them all up on the pretext that the journey would be merrier. Somehow they edged me over the back axle of the cart, trod on my toes, smoked vile tobacco and squealed like the possessed. Nevertheless, I would not have exchanged my crowded corner for the most comfortable seat in a French stagecoach or an English coach-and-four. I was home.
For four days I seemed to be sitting in a metaphorical temple. At every halt, whenever a passenger got off, another took his place. Near Lublin a heavy bundle fell on me: it was a miracle I wasn’t killed. Near Kurów we stopped several hours on the roadside, because someone’s trunk had gone astray and the driver had to go back to a tavern for it, on horseback. During the entire journey I felt as though the quilt over my knees was more densely populated than Belgium.
On the fifth day we reached Praga at dusk. But as there were so many carts, and the swing bridge was crowded, it was not until nearly ten that we drove into Warsaw. I must add that all my fellow travellers disappeared like ether in Bednarska Street, leaving a powerful odour behind. But when I mentioned them to the driver upon settling accounts he opened his eyes very wide. ‘What passengers would they be, sir?’ he exclaimed in surprise, ‘You was the passenger—them was only kikes. When we stopped on the corner, even the watchman reckoned two of ’em at a złoty apiece. And you was thinkin’ they was passengers?’
‘So there was no one else?’ I replied, ‘yet where did all the fleas come from, that crept all over me?’
‘From the dampness, I daresay,’ replied the driver.
Convinced in this manner that there had been no one but myself