The Doll (33 page)

He took his notebook out of the desk and began reckoning: ‘A race-horse—nothing to it…I'll spend a thousand roubles at most, of which at least part will return…The house is sixty thousand, Izabela's dowry thirty thousand, making a total of ninety thousand. A trifle…almost a third of my fortune. Still, I'll get back sixty thousand roubles for the house, if not more. Well! I must persuade Łęcki to entrust me with the thirty thousand, I'll pay him five thousand a year interest. Surely that will be sufficient for him? I'll put the horse out to stables, they can enter it for the race. Maruszewicz will be here at ten, at eleven I'll go to the lawyer…I'll get the money at eight per cent—seven thousand two hundred a year: and will certainly get fifteen per cent. Yes, and the house will bring in some income…But what will my partners say? As if that mattered! I have forty-five thousand a year, which will decrease by twelve or thirteen thousand, leaving thirty-two thousand roubles. My wife need never be bored…During the year I'll dispose of the house again, even if I lose thirty thousand—which in any case will not be a loss, but her dowry…'

Midnight. Wokulski began undressing. Influenced by this clearly defined aim, his tense nerves calmed down. He turned off the light, lay down and looked at the curtains, which were stirred by a breeze passing through the open windows, then fell asleep like a log.

He rose at seven, so brisk and cheerful that the servant noticed it as he began moving about the room. ‘What is it?' Wokulski asked.

‘Nothing, sir…only, if you please, the porter—he don't dare trouble you to be godfather to his child at the christening.'

‘Ah! Did he ever ask if I wanted him to have the child?'

‘He never asked because you was at the war then.'

‘Very well, I'll be godfather.'

‘Perhaps then sir, you'll give me that old frock-coat, otherwise how can I go to the christening?'

‘Very well, take the frock-coat…'

‘And the mending of it, sir?'

‘Oh, don't bother me…have it done, though I don't know what…'

‘You see, sir, I want a velvet collar…'

‘Then have a velvet collar put on it, and go to the devil…'

‘You don't have to be angry, sir, it's in your honour not mine,' the servant replied, and slammed the door as he went out. He felt that his master was in an exceptionally good humour.

Dressed, Wokulski sat down to his accounts and drank tea. When he had finished, he wrote a telegram to Moscow for a bill for a hundred thousand roubles, and another to his agent in Vienna, instructing him to postpone certain purchases.

A few minutes before ten Maruszewicz came in. The young man looked still more run-down and bashful than the day before. ‘Allow me', said Maruszewicz after a few words of greeting, ‘to lay my cards on the table. This is concerned with an original proposition.'

‘I am prepared to listen to even the most original…'

‘Madame the Baroness Krzeszowska (I am a friend of both her and the Baron)', said the run-down young man, ‘wishes to dispose of a race-horse. I at once guessed that you, with your social life, may wish to own a good horse. There's an excellent chance of winning, for only two other horses, much weaker, are running in the race.'

‘Why does not the Baroness race the horse herself?'

‘She?…She's a mortal enemy of racing!'

‘Why did she buy the horse, then?'

‘For two reasons,' the young man replied, ‘firstly, the Baron needed money to pay off a debt of honour, and vowed to shoot himself if he didn't get eight hundred roubles, even if it meant selling his beloved horse—and secondly, the Baroness doesn't want her husband to have anything to do with horse-racing. So she bought the horse, but today the poor woman is quite ill with shame and despair, and is ready to dispose of it at any price.'

‘In other words?'

‘Eight hundred roubles,' the young man replied, looking away.

‘Where is the horse?'

‘At Miller's stables.'

‘And the papers?'

‘Here they are,' the young man replied more cheerfully, taking a packet of papers from his coat-pocket.

‘Perhaps we can finish the transaction at once?' Wokulski asked, glancing through them.

‘Immediately…'

‘And after lunch we might go and have a look at the horse.'

‘Oh, by all means…'

‘Please sign this receipt,' Wokulski said, and took money out of his desk.

‘Eight hundred? Of course…' the young man said. He took a sheet of paper and began writing. Wokulski noticed that the hands of the young man were trembling slightly and that his expression had altered. The receipt was written out formally. Wokulski laid down eight hundred roubles and put away the papers.

A little later the young man, still embarrassed, left the study. As he ran downstairs he thought, ‘I am a wretch, a wretch…But in a few days I'll give the old woman the two hundred roubles and say Wokulski added them when he saw the qualities of the horse. After all, he'll never meet—either the Baron or his wife, not that…tradesman. He told me to write the receipt myself—capital! How easy it is to recognise a tradesman and a parvenu. Oh, I am being cruelly punished for all my foolishness…'

At eleven, Wokulski went out, intending to call on his lawyer. But scarcely had he emerged from the gate than three droshky drivers whipped up their horses at the sight of his light-coloured topcoat and white hat. One was driving a hackney-cab, another an open droshky, while the third, as he tried to pass them, almost knocked over a porter carrying a heavy cupboard. An uproar started, a fight with whips, the whistling of policemen, people ran up, and in consequence, the two most spirited drivers were taken off in their own droshkies to the police-station. ‘A bad omen…' Wokulski thought, then suddenly clapped a hand to his forehead. ‘A fine business,' he said to himself, ‘I'm on the way to see the lawyer and buy a house without knowing what the house looks like, or even where it is.'

He went back to his apartment and, with his hat on and walking stick under his arm, began to go through the street-directory. Fortunately he had heard that the Łęckis' house was somewhere in the vicinity of Aleje Jerozolimskie; nevertheless, several minutes passed before he found the street and number. ‘I should have looked well,' he thought, going downstairs, ‘one day I am persuading people to entrust their money to me, and on the next buying a pig in a poke. Of course I would at once have embarrassed either myself—or Izabela.'

He jumped into a passing droshky and told the driver to go towards Aleje Jerozolimskie. He got out on a corner and walked down one of the side-streets.

The day was fine, the sky almost cloudless, the pavements free of dust. The windows of houses were open, some just washed: a lively breeze teased the skirts of servant girls, making it plain to see that the servant-girls of Warsaw find it easier to clean windows on the third floor than to wash their own feet. In many apartments pianos were playing; in many yards barrel-organs or the monotonous cries of sand-vendors, sweepers, rag-and-bone men and other street traders were to be heard. Here and there a door-keeper in a blue blouse was yawning in a gateway; several dogs trotted down the street (there was no traffic); little children were playing at pulling the bark off the chestnut trees, whose bright green leaves had not yet darkened.

All in all, the street looked clean, peaceful and gay. At the far end a fragment of the horizon and a clump of trees could even be seen; but this rural landscape, inappropriate to Warsaw, was veiled by scaffolding and a brick wall.

As he walked along the right-hand pavement, Wokulski caught sight, more or less half-way down the street, of a house on the left side of unusually bright yellow. Warsaw has many yellow houses; it is probably the yellowest city in the world. However, this house seemed more yellow than the others, and would certainly have gained first prize in an exhibition of yellow objects (such as we may expect to see, one day). Going closer, Wokulski realised he was not alone in paying attention to this particular house: even the dogs, here more than on any other wall, had left their visiting-cards.

‘Well I never,' he murmured, ‘I believe this is the very house…'

And in fact it was the Łęcki property.

He began to survey it. The house had three floors; it had a few iron balconies and each floor was in a different style. The architecture of the gate was dominated by a single motif, to wit—a fan. The upper part of the gate was in the form of an open fan, which an antediluvian giantess might have used for cooling herself off. On both sides of the gate were sculptured enormous squares, which were also adorned with open fans. But the finest adornment of this gate were two sculptures in the centre of its wings, representing nail-heads so enormous that it looked as if they nailed the gate to the house and the house to Warsaw.

The entrance passage was peculiar in that it had a wretched floor but fine landscapes painted on the walls. There were so many hills, woods, rocks and streams that the tenants of the house need never go away for the summer. The yard inside, surrounded by the three-storey wings, looked like the bottom of a deep well, full of smelly air. In every corner was a door, in one there were even two: a dustbin and waterpump stood under the window of the caretaker's apartment.

Wokulski glanced up the main staircase, to which a glass door led. The stairs looked very dirty; however, there was a niche at the side, holding a broken-nosed nymph with a jug on her head. As the jug was purple in colour, the nymph's face yellow, her bosom green and legs blue it was plain to see that she was standing opposite a stained-glass window.

‘Well, well…' Wokulski murmured in a tone which did not express very much relish.

At this moment a pretty woman with a little girl came out of the right-hand block. ‘Are we going to the park now, mama?' the child asked.

‘No, dear, we're going to the store, and to the park after lunch,' the lady replied in a very agreeable voice. She was a tall brunette with grey eyes and classical features. She and Wokulski glanced at each other, and the lady turned pink.

‘Where have I seen her before?' Wokulski wondered, going out into the street again. The lady looked around, but turned away again when she saw him. ‘Yes,' he thought, ‘I saw her in church in April, and later in the store. Rzecki drew my attention to her, and said she has pretty legs. So she has…'

He went back into the gate-way again and began reading the list of tenants: ‘What's this? Baroness Krzeszowska on the second floor! And Maruszewicz in the left-hand block, on the first floor? A strange coincidence, indeed. Third-floor front—students. Who can that attractive woman be? Right-hand block, first floor—Mrs Jadwiga Misiewicz, retired, and Helena Stawska and daughter. That must be she.'

He went into the yard and looked around. Almost all the windows were open. In the rear block, on the ground floor, was a laundry describing itself as ‘Parisian', on the third floor could be heard the beating of a shoemaker's hammer, and below, on a parapet, a couple of pigeons were cooing, while on the second floor of the same block the monotonous sounds of a pianoforte and a shrill soprano singing scales could be heard: ‘Do re me fa…'

High above, on the third floor, Wokulski heard a strong masculine bass voice, which said: ‘There, she's been taking cascara again…The tape-worm's coming out…Marysia, come up here!'

At the same time, the head of a woman looked out of a second-floor window, shouting: ‘Marysia, come back at once…Marysia!'

‘That must be Mme Krzeszowska,' Wokulski thought.

Then he heard an unmistakable sound, and a stream of water poured down from the third floor, hitting the outstretched head of the Baroness and splashing all over the yard. ‘Marysia, come up here!' the bass voice shouted.

‘You cads!' Baroness Krzeszowska cried, looking upwards. Another stream of water shot out of the third-floor window and cut off her words in midstream.

Simultaneously a young man with a black beard leaned out and, catching sight of Mme Krzeszowska's countenance, exclaimed in a bass voice: ‘Oh it's you, madam—pardon me, I beg…'

He was answered from within Mme Krzeszowska's apartment by the spasmodic sobbing of a female voice: ‘Oh woe is me! I vow it was that scoundrel himself who set those bandits upon me…He repays me thus for saving him from poverty, for buying that horse of his…'

Meanwhile, down below, the laundry-women ironed linen, the shoemaker was hammering on the third floor, and in the second-floor back, the pianoforte resounded and a shrill scale was heard: ‘Do re mi fa…'

‘A cheerful house, no doubt about it,' Wokulski thought, shaking off the drops of water which had fallen on his sleeve. He went out into the street, looked once again at the property of which he was to become owner, then turned back to Aleje Jerozolimskie. Here he took a droshky and drove to the lawyer's.

In the lawyer's waiting room, he found a couple of shabby Jews and an old woman with a kerchief around her head. Through the open door to the left were visible cupboards full of documents, three clerks writing rapidly and some city visitors, one of whom looked like a criminal, and the other two who looked very bored.

An old usher with grey whiskers and suspicious look took Wokulski's coat, and asked: ‘Will your business take long, sir?'

‘No, a very short time.'

He showed Wokulski into a room to the right: ‘Whom shall I announce?' Wokulski gave him his card and was left alone.

The room contained furniture covered in purple tapestry, as in first-class railway carriages, some ornamental cupboards with richly bound books which looked as though no one had ever read them, and a few magazines and albums on the table, which everyone had apparently handled. In one corner was a plaster statue of the goddess Temida, with bronze lips and grubby knees.