The Doll (109 page)

Wokulski wanted to calculate the number of persons travelling in the compartment, and with great difficulty he noticed that, without him there were three, and with him — four. Then he began wondering why three persons plus one person makes four altogether — and he fell asleep.

In Warsaw, he didn't come to himself until he was riding in a droshky in Aleje Jerozolimskie. But who had carried his valise for him, and how had he got himself into the droshky? This he did not know, and it didn't even matter to him.

He got into his apartment after ringing for half an hour, though it was already nearly eight in the morning. A sleepy servant opened the door, undressed, alarmed by his sudden return. On entering the bedroom, Wokulski realised that the faithful servant had been sleeping in his own bed. He did not reproach him, merely ordered tea.

The servant, wide-awake but also embarrassed, hastily changed the bed linen and pillow-cases, and when he saw the newly made bed Wokulski did not drink the tea, but undressed and lay down to sleep. He slept until five that afternoon and then, after washing and dressing to go out, he sat down involuntarily in an armchair in the drawing-room and dozed until evening. When the street lamps were lit, he ordered a lamp and a steak from a restaurant. He ate it greedily, drank wine and went to bed again around midnight.

Next day Rzecki visited him, but he didn't recall how long he stayed, or what they talked about. Not until the following night, when he woke up for a moment, did he seem to see Rzecki with a very worried expression. Then he lost count of time entirely, did not notice any difference between day and night, did not consider whether the hours were passing too fast or too slow. In general he didn't concern himself with time, which — as it were — did not exist for him. He only felt an emptiness within himself and around him, and was not certain whether his apartment hadn't grown larger.

Once, he envisioned himself lying on a high catafalque, and he began thinking about death. It seemed to him he must inescapably die of paralysis of the heart; but this neither alarmed nor consoled him. Sometimes his legs hurt from the constant sitting in the armchair, and then he thought that death was coming and he calculated with indifferent wonder how fast the pain would reach his heart. These observations gave him a sort of temporary pleasure, but they soon dissolved into apathy again.

He told the servant not to let anyone in; nevertheless, Dr Szuman visited him a few times. During the first visit, he took his pulse and told him to show his tongue.

‘In English?' asked Wokulski, but at once recollected himself and took his hand away. Szuman gazed sharply into his eyes. ‘You are unwell,' he said, ‘what ails you?'

‘Nothing. Have you gone back to practising medicine?'

‘I should say so!' Szuman exclaimed, ‘and the first cure I made was myself; I healed myself of dreaming.'

‘Very nice,' Wokulski replied. ‘Rzecki mentioned something of your cure to me.'

‘Rzecki is an imbecile … an old Romantic. That's a dying breed! Anyone who wants to live must look at the world soberly. Pay attention, and close each eye in turn … When I tell you … the left … the right … Cross your legs.'

‘What are you doing, my dear fellow?' Wokulski inquired.

‘Examining you.'

‘Oh? And you hope to find something?'

‘I expect so.'

‘And then?'

‘I shall cure you.'

‘Of dreaming?'

‘No, of neurasthenia.'

Wokulski smiled and said after a moment: ‘Can you take out a man's brain and provide him with another in its place?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Well, in that case let me alone.'

‘I can give you other desires.'

‘I already have them. I should like to sleep under the earth, as deep as … the well in the Zasław castle. And also I'd like them to heap me with ruins, me and my fortune, and even any trace of the fact that I ever existed. These are my desires, the fruit of all the ones that went before.'

‘Romanticism!' exclaimed Szuman, patting him on the shoulder, ‘but that too will pass.'

Wokulski made no reply. He was angry with himself for his own last phrase, and was surprised: whence had that sudden frankness come? Why had he said that? Why had he exposed his own wounds, like some shameless beggar?

After the doctor had gone, he observed that something within him had changed; against the background of his previous apathy, some sort of feeling had appeared. It was at first a nameless ache, very small, but which rapidly increased and reached its medium. To begin with, it might have been compared to the delicate pricking of a pin, but later to a sort of obstruction in the heart, no bigger than a hazelnut. He already regretted the apathy, when Feuchtersleben's phrase crossed his mind: ‘I was glad of my pain, for it seemed to me I could see within myself that fruitful struggle which created and still creates everything in this world, where infinite forces are everlastingly in conflict.'

‘All the same, what can it be?' he asked himself, feeling that in his soul the place of apathy was being taken by dull pain. At once he replied: ‘Yes, it is the awakening of consciousness.'

Slowly, in his mind, an image which seemed hitherto to have been veiled in mist began to appear. Wokulski watched it curiously, and saw — the shape of a woman in a man's embraces. This image at first had the pale gleam of phosphorescence, then it grew pink — yellow — greenish — finally as black as velvet. Then it disappeared for a few moments and again began appearing by turn in all the colours, starting with phosphorescence and ending in black. At the same time the pain intensified. ‘I suffer, therefore I am,' thought Wokulski, and he smiled.

Thus several days passed in watching that image change colour and in pain which varied in intensity. Sometimes it disappeared altogether, reappeared as minute as an atom, grew, filled his heart, his whole being, the entire world … And at the moment when it exceeded all bounds, it again faded and yielded to absolute tranquillity and amazement.

Slowly something new began to be born in his soul; the desire to rid himself of these pains and the image. This was like a spark glowing in the night. A sort of feeble consolation gleamed for Wokulski. ‘Am I still capable of thinking?' he asked himself. In order to check this, he began recalling the multiplication tables, then multiplying two figures by one, and two figures by two. Not believing himself, he wrote down the results of his sums and checked them … The multiplication on paper agreed with those in his head, and he sighed with relief. ‘I haven't yet gone out of my mind,' he thought joyfully.

He began imagining to himself the arrangement of his own apartment, the streets of Warsaw, of Paris … His spirits revived, for he saw that not only could he remember precisely but that these exercises brought him a certain kind of relief. The more he thought of Paris, the more clearly he could see the traffic, buildings, markets, museums and the more firmly that image of the woman in the man's embraces was obscured.

He began walking about his apartment and his glance fell on a pile of illustrated books. There were books from the Dresden and Munich art galleries,
Don Quixote
illustrated by Doré, Hogarth engravings … He recalled that men condemned to the guillotine spent their time most tolerably in looking at pictures … And from then on, he passed whole days looking at drawings. Finishing one book, he set about another, a third … then he came back to the first again.

The pain grew numb; the spectres appeared less frequently, his spirits revived … Most often he looked at
Don Quixote,
which made a powerful impression on him. He recalled the strange story of a man living for years in the sphere of poetry — just as he had done, who had hurled himself at windmills — like him, who was shattered — like him, who had wasted his life pursuing an ideal woman — like him, and found a dirty cow-girl instead of a princess — as he had done!

‘All the same, Don Quixote was happier than I,' he thought. ‘He didn't begin to awaken from his illusions until the brink of the grave. But I?'

The longer he looked at the engravings, the more familiar he grew with them — the less they absorbed his attention. Behind Don Quixote, Sancho Panza and Doré's windmills, behind Hogarth's
Cock-fight
and
Drunkenness
, there began to appear to him the interior of the compartment, the vibrating window-pane and, in it, the indistinct image of Starski and Izabela. Then he threw aside the engravings and began reading books he had known in his childhood, or in Hopfer's cellar. With deep emotion he revived in his memory the
Life of St Genevieve
, the
Rose of Tannenburg, Rinaldini, Robinson Crusoe
and, finally,
The Thousand and One Nights.
Once again it seemed to him that neither time nor reality existed any longer, and that his wounded soul had escaped from the earth to wander in magic lands where only noble hearts beat, where vice did not dress up in the mask of deceit, where eternal justice ruled, curing pain and rewarding injustices.

And here one strange point impressed him. Whereas he had drawn the illusions which had terminated in the dissolution of his own soul from Polish literature, he found solace and peace only in foreign literatures. ‘Are we really a nation of dreamers?' he wondered in alarm, ‘and will the angel who touched the pool at Bethesda, surrounded by sick people, never descend upon us?'

One day he was brought a thick letter. ‘From Paris?' he thought, ‘yes, from Paris. I wonder what it can be?' But his curiosity was not strong enough for him to open and read it: ‘Such a thick letter! Who the devil writes so much nowadays?'

He threw the packet on his desk, and took to reading the
Thousand and One Nights
again. What a delight they were to his weary mind, those palaces of precious stones, trees whose fruit was jewels! The magic words, at which walls gave way, magic lamps by which enemies could be confounded or a man could move hundreds of miles in the twinkling of an eye! And the powerful magicians! What a shame that such power fell into the hands of wicked and vile people!

He put down the book and, smiling at himself, dreamed he was a magician who possessed two trifles: power over the forces of Nature, and the power to make himself invisible. ‘I believe,' he thought, ‘that after a few years of my rule, the world would look different … The greatest scoundrels would change into Socrates and Plato.'

Then he noticed the letter from Paris and recalled Geist's words: ‘Humanity consists of reptiles and tigers, amidst which barely one in the whole crowd is a human being. Today's misfortunes spring from the fact that great inventions fell into the hands of men and monsters indifferently … I shall not commit that error, and if I finally discover a metal lighter than air, I will pass it on only to real men. Let them equip themselves with arms for their own eyes: let their number multiply, and grow in power …'

‘It would undoubtedly be better,' he muttered, ‘if men like Ochocki and Rzecki were strong, not the Starskis and Maruszewiczes. There's a purpose for you!' he went on thinking, ‘if I were younger … Although … Well, even here there are people and there's a great deal to be done.'

Again he began reading a tale in the
Thousand and One Nights
, but noticed that it no longer absorbed him. The earlier pain had begun to fret his heart, and before his eyes the image of Izabela and Starski was sketched with increasing clarity. He recalled Geist in his wooden sandals, and his strange house surrounded by its wall. And suddenly it seemed to him that the house was the first step of a huge staircase, at the top of which stood a statue disappearing into the clouds. It represented a woman, whose head and bosom were out of sight, only the brass folds of her robe could be seen. It seemed to him that there was an inscription ‘Unchangeable and pure' on the step which her feet touched. He did not understand what this was, but felt that from the statue's feet there flowed into his heart some greatness full of tranquillity. And he was surprised that he, being capable of experiencing this feeling, should be in love or angry with Izabela, or jealous of Starski.

Shame struck him in the face, though there was no one in the room. The vision disappeared, Wokulski came to. Once again, he was only a man in pain, and feeble; but in his soul a powerful voice resounded, like the echo of an April storm, predicting resurrection and spring with its thunderclaps.

On June 1st, Szlangbaum visited him. He came with some embarrassment, but regained his spirits after surveying Wokulski. ‘I didn't visit you before,' he began, ‘because I knew you were unwell and didn't want to see anyone. Well, but now, thank God, everything has passed.'

He fidgeted in his chair and threw a furtive glance around the room; perhaps he had expected to find it in greater disorder.

‘Have you some business to discuss?' Wokulski asked him.

‘Not so much business, as a proposal … Just when I heard you were ill it occurred to me … You see, you need a long rest, respite from all business, so it occurred to me you might invest that hundred and twenty thousand roubles with me. You could have ten per cent with no trouble.'

‘Aha,' Wokulski interposed, ‘I paid my fellow investors fifteen per cent without any trouble, even to myself,'

‘But times are hard now … Well, I'll gladly pay you fifteen per cent, if you'll leave me your firm.'

‘Neither the firm, nor the money,' Wokulski replied impatiently. ‘Would to God the firm had never existed, and as for the money … I have so much that the interest which the papers alone give is enough. Too much, indeed.'

‘So you want to withdraw your capital by Midsummer Day?' asked Szlangbaum.

‘I can leave it with you until October, without interest — on condition you keep the men who want to stay in the store.'

‘That's a difficult condition, but…'