The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [87]
‘How is it that you stand up for him so strongly?’ asked the bass, pushing back his chair.
‘I defend him because I’ve heard a little about him,’ the low voice replied, ‘a certain Wysocki, who drives carts for me, was starving to death until Wokulski put him on his feet.’
‘With money he made from military supplies in Bulgaria? There’s a benefactor for you!’
‘Other people, my dear sir, enriched themselves on Polish money—and nothing was said. So there!’
‘In any case, he’s a dubious character,’ the breathless voice concluded, ‘he’s always rushing here and there, importing calico, not looking after his shop, as if to coax the gentry…’
As the waiter was bringing them more bottles, I quietly bolted. I did not interrupt their conversation, because—knowing Staś since his boyhood as I do—I could only have said three words: ‘You abject creatures!’ And there they were talking like this while I was in fear and trembling for his future, while I asked myself morning and evening: ‘What is he doing? What is he doing it all for? And what will come of it?’
And to think that they can say such things about him today, in my presence, after I’d seen the carter Wysocki kneel at his feet only yesterday to thank him for arranging the transfer of his brother to Skierniewice, and for giving him help…He’s a simple man, yet how honest. He’d brought his ten-year-old son with him and pointed to Wokulski as he said: ‘Look at the gentleman, Pietrek, he is our greatest benefactor…If he ever asks you to cut off your right hand for him, do it, though even then you will not have repaid him…’
Or consider the girl who wrote to him from the Magdalenes: ‘I have remembered a childhood prayer so as to pray for you…’ These are simple people, immoral girls: yet do they not possess more nobility of feeling than we in our frock-coats, extolling ourselves all over town for virtues none of us believes in? Staś is right to concern himself with these poor people, though I wish he would do so in a less excitable manner.
The truth is that his new acquaintances alarm me. I recollect, early in May, a very dubious individual (red whiskers, hateful eyes) came into the shop, placed his visiting card on the cash desk and said in broken Polish: ‘Pray tell Mr Wokulski I come seven o’clock…’ And that was all.
I glanced at his card, which read ‘William Collins, teacher of English’. What kind of a joke was this? Surely Wokulski is not going to learn English? But I understood it all when news arrived the next day of Hodl’s assassination.
Not to mention another acquaintance, a certain Mrs Meliton, who has been honouring us with visits ever since Staś returned from Bulgaria. She’s a skinny creature who chatters away like the proverbial mill-race, though you feel she is only saying what she wants to say. She called once at the end of May: ‘Is Mr Wokulski here? Of course not, I thought as much…Am I addressing Mr Rzecki? I thought so…What a charming dressing-case…Fine wood, I appreciate such things. Pray tell Mr Wokulski to send it to me, he knows my address—and tell him to be in the Łazienki park tomorrow, around one o’clock.’
‘Where did madam say?’ I asked, vexed by her effrontery.
‘You’re a fool…in the park,’ said the lady.
Well, and Wokulski sent her the case and went to the park. When he came back, he said that a congress was to meet in Berlin, to bring the Eastern war to an end—and so it did!
The same lady called a second time on—as I recall—June the first. ‘Ah!’ she exclaimed, ‘what a charming vase…Majolica, I’ll be bound, I appreciate such things…Tell Mr Wokulski to send it (and here she added in a whisper) also tell him that the day after tomorrow, around one o’clock…’
When she had gone, I said to Lisiecki: ‘You may be sure that we shall have important political news the day after tomorrow.’ ‘On the third of June?’ he replied with a smile. Pray imagine our expressions when news came of Nobiling’s assassination in Berlin. I thought I would drop dead on the spot. Lisiecki has since stopped making unsuitable jokes about me, and what is worse, now always asks me