The Doll (72 page)

‘Six hundred atmospheres of internal pressure,' Geist added, not noticing Wokulski's mishap.

The latter started on hearing this figure. ‘A volcano!' he murmured.

‘That is why I urged you to work here,' Geist replied, ‘As you can see, an accident is easily come by…Let us go upstairs.'

‘You leave the vat unattended?' Wokulski asked.

‘Oh, a nurse-maid isn't required for this work: everything functions by itself and there can be no surprises.'

Upstairs they found themselves in a large room with four windows. Its furniture consisted mainly of tables scattered with retorts, bowls and pipes of glass, porcelain and even lead or brass. A dozen or so artillery shells lay on the floor and in corners, including several exploded ones. Stone or brass bowls full of coloured liquids stood by the windows: a bench along one wall carried a huge electric pile. Not until he turned around did Wokulski notice an iron safe bricked into the wall near the door, a bed covered with a worn quilt from which dirty padding was emerging, a desk with papers by a window and an armchair, leather-covered but torn and shabby, by it.

Wokulski looked at the old man, like the poorest of labourers in his wooden sabots, then at the equipment, from which poverty stared out, and he thought that nevertheless this man might acquire millions for his inventions. But he had renounced them for the good of some future, better humankind…Geist at this moment reminded him of Moses leading an unborn generation into the Promised Land.

But the old chemist did not guess Wokulski's thoughts this time: he gazed gloomily at him and said, ‘Well, Mr Suzin, a sombre place, sombre labour. I have been living forty years like this. Several millions have already gone into these pieces of apparatus, and perhaps that is why their owner does not enjoy himself, has no servants and sometimes nothing to eat … It is no occupation for you,' he added with a gesture.

‘You are wrong, professor,' Wokulski replied, ‘and besides, the grave is certainly no more cheerful.'

‘What do you mean — “the grave”? … Rubbish, sentimental rubbish,' Geist muttered. ‘There are neither graves nor death in Nature; there are various forms of existence, some of which enable us to be chemists, others only chemical substances. Intellect consists of taking advantage of opportunities which arise, not of wasting time on nonsense, but in doing something.'

‘I understand that,' Wokulski replied, ‘but … forgive me, sir, your discoveries are so novel.'

‘I understand, too,' Geist interrupted, ‘my discoveries are so novel that … you regard them as trickery! In this respect the members of the Academy are no wiser than you, so you're in good company … Aha! Would you like to see my metals again, to test them? Very well …'

He hurried to the iron safe, opened it in a very complicated way and began bringing out, one after another, the blocks of metal heavier than platinum, lighter than water, and transparent … Wokulski examined them, weighed, heated, hit them, let electric currents pass through them, cut them with a knife. These tests took several hours: in the end, however, he decided that, physically at least, he was dealing with genuine metals.

When he had finished the tests, Wokulski sat down wearily in the armchair; Geist put away his specimens, closed the safe and asked, smiling: ‘Well, now — fact or illusion?'

‘I don't understand at all,' Wokulski murmured, clutching his head with both hands, ‘my head is reeling! A metal three times lighter than water … incomprehensible!'

‘Or a metal around 10 per cent lighter than air, what? …' laughed Geist. ‘Specific gravity refuted … The laws of nature undermined, what? Ha! Ha! … Not at all. The laws of Nature, in so far as they are known to us, will remain intact, even in the face of my metals. Only our ideas about the properties of bodies and their internal structures will be extended, as will the limits of human technology, of course.'

‘And specific gravity?' asked Wokulski.

‘Listen to me,' Geist interrupted, ‘and you will soon understand wherein the essence of my discoveries lies, although, I hasten to add, you will be unable to copy them. There are no miracles here, and no trickery; these are things so simple that an elementary school pupil could understand them.'

He took a steel cube from the table and handing it to Wokulski said: ‘Here is a ten-centimetre cube, solid, cast in steel; take it in your hand, how much does it weigh?'

‘Around eight kilograms …'

He handed over another cube of the same size, also steel, asking: ‘And this one?'

‘This one weighs around half a kilogram … But it is hollow …' replied Wokulski.

‘Excellent! And how much does this cubic frame of steel wire weigh?' asked Geist, handing it to Wokulski.

‘It weighs a dozen or so grams …'

‘So you see,' Geist interposed, ‘we have three cubes of the same size and the same substance, but which differ in weight. Why? Because the solid cube has most steel particles, the hollow one fewer, and the wire the least of all. Imagine, then, that instead of using
complete particles
I succeeded in constructing something made of the
frames of particles
, and you will understand the secret of the discovery. It depends on a change in the internal structure of materials, which is no novelty even for contemporary chemistry. So, what do you think? …'

‘When I see the specimens, I believe you,' replied Wokulski, ‘but when I leave this place …' He made a gesture of despair.

Geist reopened the safe, looked in and produced a small fragment of metal reminiscent of bronze, which he handed to Wokulski: ‘Take this as an amulet against doubting my reason or veracity. This metal is some five times lighter than water, and it will remind you of our meeting. Moreover,' he added with a smile, ‘it has one great property: it need fear no chemical reactions … It will vanish sooner than betray my secret … And now, be off, Mr Suzin, rest and ponder what you are going to do with yourself.'

‘I'll come here,' Wokulski murmured.

‘No, no — not yet,' Geist replied, ‘you have not yet settled your accounts with the world; and, as I have money for the next few years, I don't insist … Come back when nothing remains of your earlier illusions.'

He shook him impatiently by the hand, and led him to the door. On the stairs he said goodbye once more and returned to the laboratory. When Wokulski emerged into the yard, the gate was already open, and when he passed through and stood opposite his horse-drawn cab, it slammed shut.

Returning to town, Wokulski first of all bought a golden medallion, placed the fragment of new metal inside it and suspended it around his neck like a scapula. He wanted to go for a stroll, but noticed that the traffic tired him: so he went to his room. ‘Why have I come back here?' he thought, ‘why don't I go to Geist's?'

He sat down in an armchair and lost himself in memories. He saw the Hopfer establishment, the dining-room and the customers who jeered at him: he saw his perpetual motion machine, and the model balloon he tried to steer. He saw Kasia Hopfer who had wasted away for love of him … ‘To work! Why don't I set to work?' His gaze mechanically fell on the table, where lay his recently purchased book of Mickiewicz's poetry: ‘How often I used to read this,' he sighed, picking it up. The book opened of its own accord, and Wokulski read: ‘I start up, I learn by heart phrases with which to curse your cruelty, learned and forgotten for the millionth time … But when I see you, I cannot understand why I am once again so calm, colder than clay, only to burn again, be silent as before …'

‘I know, now, by whom I am bewitched.'

He felt tears in his eyes, but controlled himself and they did not fall: ‘All of you poets have wasted my life … You have poisoned two generations,' he whispered, ‘these are the results of sentimental views on love …'

He closed the book and hurled it into a corner, so that the pages fell apart. It bounced back from the wall, fell into the wash-stand then slithered with a mournful rustling to the floor. ‘Serves you right! That's the place for you,' Wokulski thought, ‘for who but you presented love to me as a holy mystery? Who taught me to despise ordinary women, and seek an unattainable ideal? Love is the joy of the world, the sun of life, a cheerful melody in the wilderness, but what did you make of it? A mournful altar, in front of which obsequies are sung over trampled human hearts!'

Then the question struck him: ‘If poetry has poisoned your life, who poisoned poetry? And why did Mickiewicz only yearn and despair, instead of laughing and rejoicing like the French street singers?

‘Because he, like I, loved a high-born lady who was to be the prize not of reason, labour, devotion and sacrifice even of genius but … of money and a title.

‘Poor martyr,' Wokulski thought, ‘you gave of your finest to the nation, but what fault is it of yours that, in pouring out your own soul, you also poured out the sufferings with which it impregnated you? It is they who are guilty of your, my and our unhappiness.'

He rose and reverently picked up the scattered pages: ‘It is not enough that you were tortured by them, but are you to answer for their crimes as well? It is they who are guilty that your heart, instead of singing, groaned like a cracked bell.'

He lay down on the sofa and again thought: ‘What a strange country mine is, in which two entirely different races have for so long been living side by side: the aristocrats and the commoners. One claims to be a noble plant which has the right to drain dry the clay and manure, and the other either accedes to such claims, or else lacks the strength to protest against the injustice.

‘How did this all work out for the perpetuation of one class and the strangling in the embryo of every other! They believed so strongly in noble birth, that even the sons of artisans and dealers either bought coats of arms or pretended to be impoverished noble countrymen. No one had the courage to declare himself the child of his merits, and even I, fool that I am, spent several hundred roubles on the purchase of a noble patent.

‘Am I to go back there? What for? Here at least I have a nation living by all the talents with which man is endowed. Here the foremost places in society are not occupied by the mildew of dubious antiquity, but by essential forces which strive onwards — labour, intellect, will-power, creativity, knowledge, skill and beauty, and even sincere feelings. There, on the other hand, labour stands in the pillory, and depravity triumphs! He who makes a fortune is called a miser, a skinflint, a parvenu; he who wastes money is called generous, disinterested, open-handed … There, simplicity is eccentric, economy is shameful, artistry symbolised by shabby elbows. There, in seeking to acquire the denomination of a man, one must either have a title and money, or a talent for squeezing into drawing-rooms. Am I to go back there?'

He began to pace the room and count: ‘Geist is one, I am a second, Ochocki a third … We will find at least another two such, and after four or five years we will have exhausted the eight thousand experiments necessary to discover a metal lighter than air. And then what? … What will happen to today's world at the sight of the first flying machine, without wings, without complicated mechanisms, and durable as an armoured ship?'

It seemed to him that the hum of the street outside his windows was growing and spreading, engulfing the whole of Paris, France, and Europe. And that all human voices melted into a great cry: ‘Glory! … Glory! … Glory! …'

‘Have I gone mad?' he muttered. Hastily he undid his waistcoat, brought out the golden medallion from beneath his shirt and opened it. The scrap of metal, like brass and as light as a feather, was in its place. Geist had not deceived him; the door to the great invention was open. ‘I'll stay,' he whispered. ‘Neither God nor man would forgive me for neglecting this cause.'

Dusk was falling. Wokulski lit the gas lamp over the table, brought out paper and pen, and began writing: ‘Dear Ignacy, I want to discuss very serious matters with you, but as I am not coming back to Warsaw, please …'

Suddenly he thrust the pen aside: fear overcame him at the sight of the words he had written — ‘as I am not coming back to Warsaw …'

‘Why not go back?' he whispered. ‘Yet — why should I? To meet Izabela again, to lose myself again?

‘I must settle these stupid accounts once and for all.'

He walked about, thinking: ‘There are two ways open: one leads to incalculable reforms for humanity, the other to pleasing and perhaps even winning the hand of a woman. Which shall I choose? For it is a fact that every new and important material, every new force has meant a new stage in civilisation. Bronze created classical civilisation, iron the Middle Ages; gunpowder completed the Middle Ages, and coal began the nineteenth century. Why hesitate: Geist's metal could initiate a civilisation previously only dreamed of, and who knows whether it might not actually ennoble the human species …

‘And, on the other hand, what do I have? … A woman, who would not hesitate to bathe in the presence of a parvenu such as I. What am I in her eyes beside those
élegants
, for whom empty conversation, a happy idea, and a compliment constitute the most important things in life? What would that pack, not excluding herself, say at the sight of the ragged Geist and his immense discoveries? They are so ignorant, it would not even surprise them.

‘Let us suppose, in the end, that I married her, what then? … The salon of the parvenu would immediately be inundated with all open and secret admirers, cousins of varying degrees, and I don't know who else! … And once again, I would have to close my eyes to their glances, deafen myself to their compliments, discreetly move away from their confidential conversations — about what? … About my shame or stupidity? …

‘A year of such existence would debase me to the point of lowering myself to suffer jealousy of such individuals …