The Doll (32 page)

He put one hand on Wokulski's arm, looked at him with a sort of ecstatic and dreamy gaze, then asked: ‘You once had the idea of a flying machine, didn't you? Not a guided balloon, which is lighter than air, for that is nothing—but of the flight of a heavy machine, weighed down like a battleship. Do you appeciate what a turning-point for the world such an invention would be?…No more forts, armies, frontiers…Nations will disappear, while beings like angels or classical gods in heavenly vehicles will inhabit the earth. We have already harnessed the wind, heat, light, the thunderbolt. Do you not think, my dear sir, that the time has come for us to liberate ourselves from the bonds of gravity? It's an idea which is still in the womb of time…Other men are already working on it; it has only just seized me, but it holds me enthralled. What's my aunt to me, with all her good advice and laws of decorum? What are marriage, women, even microscopes and electric lamps? I'll either go mad—or give mankind wings…'

‘Suppose you do—what then?' Wokulski asked.

‘Fame—such as no man has ever yet attained,' Ochocki replied, ‘and that's the wife, the woman for me. Goodbye, I must go…' He shook Wokulski's hand, ran down the hill and disappeared between the trees.

Dusk was already falling on the Botanical Gardens and the Łazienki park. ‘Madman or genius?' Wokulski whispered, feeling highly unstrung, ‘what if he were a genius?' He rose and walked into the depths of the park, amidst the strollers. It seemed to him that a divine terror was lurking on the hillock from which he had fled.

The Botanical Gardens were almost crowded: streams, groups or at least rows of promenaders crowded every alley, each bench groaned under a throng of persons. They stepped in Wokulski's way, trod on his heels, elbowed him; people were talking and laughing on every side. The Aleje Ujazdowskie, the wall of the Belvedere park, the fences on the hospital side, the less frequented alleys, even the fenced-off paths—everywhere was crowded and lively. As nature grew darker, so it grew noisier and more crowded amidst the people.

‘Already there's beginning to be no room in the world for me,' he murmured.

He reached the Łazienki park and found a calmer refuge here. Some stars were glittering in the sky, through the air from the Boulevard came the rustle of passers-by, and dampness rose from the lake. Sometimes a noisy cockchafer flew overhead, or a bat flitted silently by; a bird was mournfully chirping in the depths of the park, calling in vain to its mate; the distant splash of oars and the laughter of young women hung over the lake. Opposite, he saw a couple close together, whispering. They moved off and hid in the shadows.

He was overcome with pity and derision: ‘Happy lovers, those,' he thought, ‘they whisper and glide away like criminals. The world is well arranged, to be sure! I wonder how much better it would be if Lucifer were king? Or if some robber stopped me and killed me here, in this corner?'

And he imagined how agreeable the cold of a knife would be, plunged into his feverish heart. ‘Unfortunately,' he sighed, ‘people aren't allowed to kill other people nowadays, only themselves: providing it is done at one blow, and well done.'

The recollection of such an effective means of escape calmed him. Gradually he fell into a sort of solemn mood; it seemed to him that the time was coming when he would have to reckon with his conscience, or draw up a general balance sheet of his life.

‘Were I the highest judge of all,' he thought, ‘and if I were asked who is more worthy of Izabela—Ochocki or Wokulski—I would have to admit that Ochocki is. Eighteen years younger than I am (eighteen years!…) And handsome…At the age of twenty-eight, he has graduated from two faculties (at that age I had only just begun studying…) and has already three inventions to his credit (I—none!). Above all, he is the instrument by which a great invention is to come. Odd—a flying machine: yet he has found the only possible point of departure—by genius! A flying machine must be heavier than air, not lighter, like a balloon is: for everything which flies, from insects to an enormous vulture, is heavier than air. He has the right starting-point: a creative mind, as he has proved by his microscope and lamp, so who knows but that he will succeed in building a flying machine? If he does, he will be more significant in the history of mankind than Newton and Napoleon together…Am I to compete with him? If the question ever arises as to which of us ought to back down, then should I hesitate? What hell it would be to tell myself that I must sacrifice my nullity to a man who, in the end, is like myself—mortal, suffering illnesses, committing errors and, above all, so naive—for he talked like a child…'

Indeed, it was odd. When Wokulski had been a clerk, in the grocery store, he dreamed of perpetual motion: a machine that would operate by itself. But when he entered the Preparatory College, he discovered that such a machine was out of the question, whereupon his most secret and favourite ambition had been to invent some way of guiding balloons. What had been only a fantastic notion for Wokulski, as he strayed along false tracks, had already acquired the form of a practical problem for Ochocki.

‘The cruelty of fate!' he thought bitterly. ‘Two people have been given the same aspirations, but one was born eighteen years earlier than the other: one born in poverty, the other in wealth; one could not even scramble up to the first floor of knowledge, the other lightly stepped up two floors.…He will not be diverted from his path by political storms as I was; he will not be interrupted by love, which he regards as a plaything; but for me, who spent six years in the wilderness, that feeling is essential and is salvation. Even more than that!…

‘Well—he is surpassing me in every sphere, though after all I have the same feelings, the same awareness of my predicament, and my work is certainly greater…'

Wokulski knew men, and often compared himself to them. But wherever he was, he always saw himself as a little better than the rest. Whether as a clerk, who spent his nights studying, or as a student who strove for knowledge despite his poverty, or as a soldier under a rain of bullets, or as an exile who studied science in a snow-covered hut—he always had an idea in his soul that reached beyond the next few years. Others lived from day to day, to fill their bellies or pockets.

Not until today had he met a man higher than he was, a madman who wanted to build a flying machine.

‘But don't I too today have an idea for which I have been working over a year? Have I not acquired a fortune, do I not help people and make them respect me?…Yes, but love is a personal feeling: all good deeds accompanying it are merely fish caught in a cyclone. If that one woman and my memories of her were to disappear from the earth, then what would I be?…Nothing but a capitalist who plays cards at the club out of sheer boredom. Whereas Ochocki has an idea which will always draw him on, unless his mind gives way…

‘Very well, but suppose he does nothing and finishes up in a lunatic asylum instead of building a flying-machine? I will at least accomplish something and that microscope or electric lamp will certainly not signify more than the hundreds of people to whom I give an existence. Whence this ultra-Christian humility in me, then? Who knows what any man will accomplish? I am a man of action; he a dreamer. Let us wait a year…'

A year! Wokulski awoke. It seemed to him that at the end of the road called a ‘year' he saw only a bottomless abyss, which engulfed everything but contained nothing…Nothing?…Nothing!

He looked around instinctively. He was in the depths of the Łazienki park, on a pathway to which no sound penetrated. Even the clumps of immense trees were silent.

‘What's the time?' a hoarse voice suddenly asked.

‘The time?' Wokulski rubbed his eyes.

A shabby man appeared before him out of the dusk. ‘When you're asked politely,' said the man, and came closer, ‘you should answer politely.'

‘Kill me, you will see for yourself,' Wokulski retorted. The shabby man drew back. A few human shapes became visible to the left of the path.

‘You fools!' Wokulski cried, walking on, ‘I have a gold watch and some hundred roubles cash. I won't defend myself…'

The shapes drew among the trees and one of them said in a stifled voice: ‘The likes of him turns up, confound him, just where he ain't wanted…'

‘You animals! Cowards!' Wokulski shouted almost madly. The thunder of retreating footsteps was the only reply.

Wokulski pulled himself together: ‘Where am I? In the Łazienki…But—whereabouts? I have to go the other way…' He had turned several times and no longer knew which direction he was going. His heart began beating violently; a cold sweat broke out on his forehead, and for the first time in his life he was afraid of the night and of losing his way…For a few minutes he hurried along aimlessly, almost breathless: wild notions whirled through his brain. Finally he saw a wall to his left, then a building: ‘Ah, the Orangery…'

Then he came to a small bridge, where he rested and leaned on the parapet, thinking: ‘So I have come to this, then? A dangerous rival…my nerves in disorder…It seems to me that today I might write the last act of this comedy…'

A straight path led to the lake, then to the Łazienki palace. Twenty minutes later he was on Aleje Ujazdowskie and got into a passing droshky; within a quarter of an hour he was in his own apartment. At the sight of the traffic and lights in the streets he regained his good spirits, even smiled and muttered: ‘What sort of vision was all that? Ochocki or someone…suicide…folly! I have got among the aristocracy after all, and as for what comes next—we shall see.'

When he entered his study, the servant gave him a letter, written on his own paper by Mrs Meliton: ‘The lady was here twice,' said the faithful servant, ‘once at five, then at eight o'clock…'

W
OKULSKI
opened Mrs Meliton's letter slowly, thinking of the recent incidents. It seemed to him that he could still see in the dark part of his study the thick clumps of trees in the Łazienki park, the vague outlines of the shabby men who had accosted him, and the hillock with the well, where Ochocki had confided in him. But the obscure pictures disappeared when he saw the lamp, with its green shade, a pile of papers and the bronze ornaments on his desk, and for a moment he thought that Ochocki with his flying-machine and his own despair were only a dream after all.

‘What sort of genius is he?' Wokulski asked himself. ‘He's only a dreamer…And Izabela is a woman like all the others. If she marries me—well and good; if she doesn't, it won't kill me.'

He opened the letter and read:

Wokulski drew a deep breath: both pieces of information were important. He read the letter again, considering Mrs Meliton's harsh style and smiling at the comments she made on her own sex. It was in Wokulski's nature to grasp people or opportunities fast: he would grasp everyone and everything by the scruff of the neck—except Izabela. She alone was a being whom he wanted to have absolute freedom, if not domination.

He glanced up: the servant was at the door. ‘Go to bed,' he told him.

‘I'm just going, sir, only there was a gentleman here,' the servant replied.

‘Who was it?'

‘He left his card, it's on your desk…'

On the desk lay Maruszewicz's visiting-card. ‘Aha…and what did he say?'

‘Nothing—that's to say, he asked when you would be home. So I says about ten in the morning, then he says he'll come tomorrow at ten, for a minute or two.'

‘Very well—goodnight to you…'

‘Goodnight, sir, thank you kindly.' The servant went out.

Wokulski felt completely sober. Ochocki and his flying-machine had lost their significance. Once again he felt an influx of the energy he had felt before leaving for Bulgaria. Then he had been going to make his fortune, but today he had the opportunity of throwing away his share for Izabela's sake. Mrs Meliton's phrase stuck in his memory: ‘…caught between poverty and marriage to the marshal…' No, she would never find herself in that situation…And she would not be elevated by some Ochocki or other, with the help of a machine, but by himself…He felt such strength within him that had the ceiling started to collapse, he could have kept it in place with his own two hands.