The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [92]
The evening before the ceremony, a dumpy, sweating individual rushed into the shop: I could not say whether his collar had dirtied his neck, or vice versa. He produced a thick notebook from his worn overcoat, put on a greasy pince-nez and began walking about with an expression that alarmed me. ‘What the devil?…’ thought I, ‘can he be from the police, or is he the landlord’s secretary making an inventory?’ I crossed his path in order to ask him, as civilly as could be, what he wanted.
But the first time he muttered: ‘Please don’t interrupt,’ and the second he unceremoniously pushed me aside. My amazement was all the greater, for some of our gentlemen bowed to him very politely and rubbed their hands, as though in the presence of a bank-manager at least, and explained everything to him.
‘Well,’ said I to myself, ‘the poor devil can hardly be from the insurance company. They don’t employ such shabby fellows.’
Finally Lisiecki whispered to me that the gentleman was a very eminent journalist, who was going to describe us in the newspaper. I grew excited to think that I might see my own name in print, something which has only happened once before, when it appeared in the Police Gazette after I lost my identity papers. In a moment I realised that everything about this man was great: a great head, a great notebook and a very great hole in the sole of his left shoe. But he kept walking about the shop, puffed up like a turkey-cock, and writing away…
At length he said: ‘Hasn’t there been any kind of incident here lately? A small fire, a burglary, an embezzlement, a fight?’
‘God forbid,’ I ventured to put in.
‘That is a shame,’ he replied, ‘the finest advertisement for a shop would be if someone were to hang himself in it…’
I turned to stone on hearing this. ‘Perhaps the gentleman’, I ventured with a bow, ‘would select some small object or other which we shall send without obligation…’
‘A bribe?’ he asked, eyeing me as if I were Copernicus’s statue, ‘we are in the habit,’ he added, ‘of buying what we fancy: we take bribes from no one.’ He put on his greasy top-hat and walked out, with his hands in his pockets, like a minister. But when he was on the other side of the street I could still see the hole in his shoe.
I must revert to the blessing ceremony. The main part of the proceedings, i.e. the dinner, took place in the great hall of the Europejski Hotel. The hall was adorned with flowers, huge tables placed in a horseshoe, music brought, and at six that evening, some hundred and fifty people gathered. Who was not present! Mainly merchants and manufacturers from Warsaw, the provinces, Moscow, even Vienna and Paris. There were also two counts, a prince and a quantity of gentlefolk. I will not mention the drink, for I do not know which there was more of—leaves on the vegetation adorning the hall, or bottles. The entertainment cost us three thousand roubles, but the sight of so many people eating was truly impressive.
When the Prince rose and drank Staś’s health, when the music struck up (I don’t know what the tune was, but something very pretty), and a hundred and fifty people roared: ‘Long live Wokulski!’ then I had tears in my eyes. I hurried to him and whispered as I congratulated him: ‘See how they love you!’
‘They love the champagne,’ he replied. I saw that the cheers meant nothing to him. He did not even smile when one of the speakers (who must have been a literary gentlemen, for he said a great deal and made no sense) said that either in his own name or that of Wokulski (I forget which) this was the finest day of his life. I noticed that Wokulski mostly stayed near Łęcki, who is said to have frequented European royalty before his bankruptcy…Always these wretched politics…
At the start of the banquet everything was very seemly: now and then one of the guests rose and made a speech, as if to talk off the wine he had drunk and the food he had eaten. But as more and more empty bottles were removed, so the decorum disappeared in proportion, and finally there was so much din that it almost drowned the