The Doll (82 page)

‘Don't say that! You degrade human values, and it's not in accord with Holy Writ. God gave man the earth to dwell on, and vegetation and animals for his food.'

‘In a word, you think Nature should serve people, and people should serve the privileged and titled classes. No, madam. Both Nature and man live for themselves alone, and only those who possess more strength and who work more have the right to rule. Strength and work are the only privileges in this world.'

Izabela was vexed: ‘You can say what you like, sir,' she declared, ‘and here I believe you, for I see your allies all around us.'

‘Will they never be your allies?'

‘I don't know … Perhaps … I hear of them so often, nowadays, that, some day, I may come to believe in their power.'

They emerged into a field enclosed by hills, on which grew drooping pines. Izabela sat down on the stump of a felled tree, and Wokulski on the ground near her. At this moment Mrs Wąsowska appeared with Starski on the edge of the field. ‘Bela,' she cried, ‘won't you relieve me of this cavalier?'

‘I protest,' Starski exclaimed, ‘Izabela is quite content with her companion, and I with mine.'

‘Are you, Bela?'

‘Yes, she is,' Starski cried.

‘So be it,' Izabela said, trifling with her parasol and gazing at the earth. Mrs Wąsowska and Starski disappeared over the hill, Izabela trifled more and more impatiently with her parasol. Wokulski's pulses were ringing like bells in his head. As the silence was lasting a little too long, Izabela broke it: ‘Almost a year ago, I was at a September picnic, here. There were some thirty people from the neighbourhood. They lit a bonfire over there …'

‘Did you enjoy yourself more than today?'

‘No. I was sitting on this same tree-trunk … Something was missing … And, though this rarely happens to me, I was wondering what would happen in a year's time.'

‘How strange,' Wokulski murmured, ‘I, too, was living in a forest camp, more or less a year ago, though it was in Bulgaria. I was wondering whether I'd still be alive in a year's time.'

‘And what else? What were you thinking of?'

‘Of you.'

Izabela shifted uneasily, and turned pale. ‘Me?' she asked, ‘did you know me?'

‘Yes. I've known you for several years, though sometimes it seems to me I've known you for centuries. Time expands enormously when we continually think of a person, awake and asleep …'

She rose from the tree-trunk as though to flee. Wokulski rose too: ‘Pray forgive me if I have caused you any pain. Perhaps in your eyes, a man such as I hasn't any right to think of you. In your world, such a prohibition is possible. But I belong to a different world. In my world, the fern and the moss have as much right to look at the sun as the pines have, or … the mushrooms. So pray tell me outright, madam, whether I may or may not think about you? Today I shall ask nothing more.'

‘I scarcely know you,' whispered Izabela, evidently confused.

‘I ask nothing of you today. I'm only inquiring whether you regard it as offensive that I think of you — nothing more. I know the views of the class in which you were brought up towards men such as I, and I know that what I am saying at this moment might be called impertinence. So pray tell me frankly, and if there is such a great difference between us, then I will no longer strive for your favour … I'll leave today or tomorrow, without shade of resentment, indeed — completely cured.'

‘Every man has the right to think …' Izabela replied, in still greater confusion.

‘Thank you, madam. By that phrase you have shown me that, in your eyes, I stand no lower than the Messrs Starski, the marshals and such-like … I understand that even under these conditions, I still may never win your affection … That is still far off… But at least I know I have human rights, and from now on, you will judge me by my actions, not by titles I don't possess.'

‘You are a gentleman, and the Duchess says you are as good as the Starskis, even the Zasławskis.'

‘Indeed I am, even more so than many of the people I meet in the drawing-rooms. My misfortune is that, in your eyes, I'm also a tradesman.'

‘Well, you don't have to be, that depends on you,' said Izabela, more boldly.

Wokulski considered this. At that moment the others began calling and hallooing in the wood, and within a few minutes all the company, with servants, baskets and mushrooms, appeared in the meadow.

‘Let's go back,' said Mrs Wąsowska, ‘mushrooms bore me, and it's time for luncheon.'

The next few days passed in a strange manner for Wokulski: had he been asked what they meant to him, he would surely have replied they were a dream of happiness, one of those periods in life for which, perhaps, nature brought man into the world.

An indifferent observer might have thought the days monotonous, even boring. Ochocki sulked from morning to night, glued together and launched ingenious forms of gliders. Mrs Wąsowska and Felicja read, or worked on an altar cloth for the local priest. Starski played cards with the Duchess and Baron.

So Wokulski and Izabela were entirely isolated, and even had to be together continually. They walked in the park or in the meadows, they sat under an ancient linden tree in the courtyard, but mostly they boated on the lake. He rowed, she from time to time threw a crust to swans which swam silently after them. More than one passer-by paused on the highroad and gazed in wonder at the unusual group formed by the white boat, with two people seated in it, and the two white swans with their wings raised like sails.

Later, Wokulski could not even recollect what they talked about at such moments. Mostly they were silent. Once, she asked him how snails could move under the surface of the water: then again — why do clouds have different colours? He explained, and it seemed to him he was gathering all nature from earth to sky in his arms and placing it at her feet.

One day it occurred to him that if she were to order him to plunge into the water, and perish, he would have died blessing her.

During these excursions on the lake and also during their walks in the park, and whenever they were together, he felt an immeasurable peace within him, and the whole world from east to west was full of tranquillity, in which even the rattle of carriages, barking dogs or rustling leaves were wonderfully beautiful melodies. He seemed no longer to be walking, but floating across an ocean of mystical bemusement, he was no longer thinking or feeling or desiring — only loving. The hours disappeared like lightning flashes that blaze and perish on a distant horizon. No sooner was it morning, than it was already afternoon, then evening — and a night, full of restlessness and sighs. Sometimes he thought the day had been divided into two unequal parts: a day briefer than the twinkling of an eye, and a night longer than the eternity of damned souls.

One day the Duchess summoned him: ‘Be seated, Stanisław,' she said, ‘well, are you enjoying yourself here?'

He shuddered like a man suddenly aroused. ‘Me?' he asked.

‘Are you bored?'

‘I'd give my life for a year of such — boredom.'

The old lady shook her head. ‘Sometimes one thinks so,' she replied. ‘I don't know who it was that said man is happiest when he sees around him that which he carries within himself. But never mind asking why one is happy, providing one is. Forgive me if I awaken you.'

‘Pray continue, madam,' he replied, involuntarily turning pale.

The Duchess was still gazing at him, shaking her head slightly: ‘Well, you needn't think I shall awaken you with bad news. I'll do it in the ordinary way. Have you considered the sugar-factory they want me to build here?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Well, no hurry. But you've completely forgotten your uncle. And he, poor soul, lies not far from here, three miles away, at Zasław. Perhaps you might go there tomorrow? It's a pretty district, and there are the castle ruins. You might spend some time very pleasantly, and do something about the memorial stone. You know,' the old lady added, sighing, ‘I've changed my mind. There's no need to demolish the stone near the castle. Leave it where it is, and arrange to have these words engraved on it: “In every spot, and at every moment …” You know them?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘More people visit the castle than the cemetery, they will read it, and perhaps think of the final limits of everything in this world, even of love …'

Wokulski left the Duchess in great agitation: ‘What did that conversation mean?' he wondered. Fortunately he met Izabela walking toward the lake, and forgot everything else.

Next day, the whole company went to Zasław. They passed woods, green hillocks, valleys with yellow paths. The region was pretty, the weather even better, but Wokulski, lost in unhappy thoughts, paid no attention to anything. He was no longer alone with Izabela as he had been the day before: he was not even sitting near her in the brake, but opposite to Felicja, and above all … But this was merely an illusion, he even smiled inwardly at his own premonitions. Starski seemed to be glancing at Izabela in a strange way, so that she blushed.

‘Oh nonsense,' he told himself, ‘why should she deceive me. I'm not even her fiancé …'

He roused himself, and was only slightly displeased that Starski was sitting next to Izabela. But only slightly … ‘Well, after all, I can't prevent her,' he thought, ‘from sitting with whom she chooses. And I won't degrade myself by jealousy which in any case is a vile feeling, and most often founded merely on appearances. Besides, if she and Starski wanted to exchange melting looks, they wouldn't behave so obviously. I'm a madman.'

A few hours later, they arrived. Zasław, formerly a small town but now only an insignificant settlement, stands in a valley surrounded by marsh-land. All the buildings are one-storeyed, wooden and old, apart from the church and former town hall. In the middle of the market-place, or rather square, filled with booths and taverns, stands a great pile of rubbish and a well, its ramshackle roof supported on four rotting posts. As it was the sabbath, the market was empty and all the booths shut. A mile outside the town, to the south, lay a group of hills. On one stood the ruins of the castle, consisting of two hexagonal towers from whose tops and windows was hanging copious vegetation: a group of old oak trees grew on another.

When the travellers halted in the market-place, Wokulski got out in order to call on the priest, while Starski took command. ‘So we,' he said, ‘shall go in the brake to those oaks, and eat what God provides and the cooks prepare. Then the brake can come back for Mr Wokulski.'

‘No, thank you,' replied Wokulski, ‘I don't know how long I'll be, and prefer to walk. In any case, I must visit the ruins too.'

‘I'll come with you,' Izabela exclaimed, ‘I want to see the Duchess's favourite stone,' she added in a lower voice, ‘so please let me know how long you'll be.'

The brake moved off, Wokulski entered the presbytery and finished his business within fifteen minutes. The priest told him that no one in the town would object if an inscription were made on the castle stone, providing it was not indecent or impious … On learning it concerned a memorial for the late captain Wokulski, whom he had known personally, the priest offered to help facilitate the matter. ‘We have here,' he said, ‘a certain Węgiełek, a lively young scamp, partly a smith and partly a joiner, so perhaps he will be able to engrave on the stone. I'll send for him.'

Soon Węgiełek appeared, a fellow in his twenties, with a cheerful and intelligent face. On learning from the priest's servant that he might be able to earn some money, he had put on a grey top-coat with flaps and tails down to the ground, and had rubbed his hair copiously with grease.

As Wokulski was in a hurry, he bade goodbye to the priest and walked towards the ruins with Węgiełek. When they reached the settlement boundary, Wokulski asked the young man: ‘Can you write well, my good man?'

‘Indeed I can, sir. They've sometimes given me copying from the magistrate's court, though I haven't a light hand. And those verses the agent at Otrocz used to write to the forester's daughter were all my own work. He only bought the paper, and he still hasn't paid me forty groszy for my writing. And he also wanted curlicues …'

‘Could you write on stone?'

‘Concave, not convex? Why not? I'd undertake to write on iron, or even glass, and in any kind of letters you like — script, printed, Gothic, Hebrew … For it was I, without boasting, who painted all the shop boards in town.'

‘And that Cracovian, hanging above the inn?'

‘Of course.'

‘And where did you see such a Cracovian?'

‘Mr Zwolski has a carter who's from those parts, so I took a look at him.'

‘And did you see that he had two left feet?'

‘I beg pardon, sir, it's not feet people from the provinces take notice of but the bottle. When they see the bottle and the glass, then they'll reach Szmul's place and no mistake.'

Wokulski liked the enterprising lad more and more: ‘Aren't you married yet?' he asked.

‘No. I won't marry them that wear kerchiefs, and the ones that wear hats don't fancy me.'

‘What do you do when there are no shop signs to paint?'

‘Well, sir — a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and sometimes nothing. Before, I went in for carpentry, and had more work than I could handle. In a few years I'd saved a thousand roubles. Then my place burned down, and I still haven't got over it. All the wood, the workshop, everything was reduced to ashes, and I can tell you, sir, that the hardest of my files melted just like pitch. When I looked at the heap of ashes, I was really angry, but today I'm sorry about it.'

‘Did you rebuild? Do you have a workshop now?'

‘Ah, sir … I've built a shed in the garden, so my mother has a place to cook, but the workshop … For that, sir, I'd need five hundred roubles cash, honest to God I would … Look how many years my late father had to slave before he could set up house and collect tools.'