The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [91]
Sometimes our emporium (as was our shop) is visited by a lady of extraordinary charm. Dark-haired, with grey eyes, wonderfully beautiful features, imposing stature and tiny hands and feet—perfection itself! I once saw her getting out of a droshky, and must say that what I caught sight of made me quite feverish…Oh, honest Staś would find great comfort in her, for she is well proportioned, her lips like ripe berries…and her bosom! When she comes in, dressed up to the nines, I think an angel has entered, its wings folded over its bosom…
I believe she is a widow, for I never see her with a husband, only with her little daughter Helena, who is pretty as a picture too. If Staś marries her, he would have to break once and for all with the Nihilists, because any time left over from looking after his wife, would be spent caressing her child. But such a wife would not leave him much free time.
I had already formulated my plan and was wondering how to make the lady’s acquaintance and introduce Staś to her, when suddenly the devil brought Mraczewski back from Moscow. Pray imagine my vexation when, on the day after his arrival, the young scamp came into the shop with my widow! And how he fussed around her, how he rolled his eyes, how he strove to guess her every thought…Fortunately I am not a stout man, for this impudent flirtation would surely have brought on an apoplectic stroke.
When he came in again a few hours later, I asked him with the most indifferent expression in the world who the lady had been. ‘You like her?’ he said, ‘champagne…not a woman,’ he added, winking shamelessly, ‘but she’s not for you, she’s wild about me…Oh, my dear sir, what temperament, what a figure! If you knew what she looks like in a peignoir.’
‘I thought as much, Mr Mraczewski,’ I replied, sternly.
‘But what have I said?’ he protested, rubbing his hands in a manner that struck me as lustful, ‘I’m saying nothing! The greatest virtue a man can have, Mr Rzecki, is discretion, particularly in the more confidential relationships…’
I interrupted him, feeling I would despise him if he went on. What times these are, what people! For had I the good fortune to attract the attentions of such a lady, I would not even dare to think of such things, let alone shout them at the top of my voice in a store the size of ours. But when in addition, Mraczewski unfolded to me his theory of the communality of wives, I at once thought: ‘Staś a nihilist, and Mraczewski a nihilist too…So let the first marry and the second will then introduce communality…But it would be a shame for Mraczewski to get a woman like that.’
At the end of May Wokulski decided to have our shop blessed. On this occasion I noticed once again how times are changing. In my young days too, merchants used to have their shops blessed, making sure that the ceremony was carried out by an elderly and pious priest, that there was genuine holy water, a new censer and an organist fluent in Latin. After the ceremony, during which almost every cupboard and object was sprinkled and prayed over, a horseshoe would be nailed over the threshold of the shop to attract customers. Only then did they think of something to eat and drink—usually a glass of vodka, sausages and beer. But nowadays (what would the contemporaries of old Mincel have had to say?) the first question is how many cooks and footmen will be required, how many bottles of champagne, how much wine and what sort of a dinner will be served? For the dinner was the main attraction of the ceremony, since the guests were not concerned with who is to perform the blessing, but what would be