Rzecki made a gesture. ‘With your ideas and your money,’ he replied. ‘But never mind … From this, I see that Szuman belongs to one party and Szlangbaum to another, and they both need a man of straw.’
‘Clever of them!’ Wokulski murmured.
‘But I’ve lost my liking for them,’ Rzecki replied. ‘After all, I’m an old clerk, and I can tell you that as far as they’re concerned, everything depends on humbug, double-dealing and trash.’
‘Don’t insult them too much,’ Wokulski interposed, ‘for after all it was we who raised them up.’
‘It was not!’ Rzecki cried angrily. ‘Whenever one meets them — in Budapest, Constantinople, Paris, London — it’s always the same principle: give as little as possible, and take as much, both materially and morally. It’s deceit, always deceit.’
Wokulski began walking about the room. ‘Szuman was right,’ he said, ‘when he said that dislike of them is mounting, if even you …’
‘I don’t dislike them … I’m retiring from the game … But just look at what is happening here! Where don’t they worm their way in, where don’t they open stores, what don’t they reach out their hands for? And each one, as soon as he occupies some position brings in after him whole legions of his own people, by no means better than we are, often worse. You’ll see what they will do to our store; what sort of clerks there will be, what merchandise … And hardly have they seized the store, than they are making their way into the aristocracy, and already setting about your trading company.’
‘It’s our own fault … our own fault,’ Wokulski repeated. ‘We can’t refuse people the right to acquire positions, but we can defend our own.’
‘You yourself are leaving your position.’
‘But not on their account; they have behaved honourably towards me.’
‘Because they needed you. They made you and your social contacts into a ladder …’
‘Well, never mind that,’ Wokulski interrupted, ‘we shall never convince one another. But now … I have here the official papers confirming the death of Ludwik Stawski.’
Rzecki jumped to his feet. ‘Helena’s husband?’ he asked feverishly, ‘where? But this means salvation for us all!’
Wokulski handed him the documents, which Rzecki seized with a trembling hand. ‘Eternal rest and … praise be to God!’ he declared, reading. ‘Well, my dear Staś, now there are no obstacles. Marry her … Ah, if you only knew how she loves you … I’ll tell the poor thing immediately, and you shall take the papers to her and … propose on the spot. Now I see the company will be saved, and perhaps the store too. Several hundred people whom you protect from poverty and want will bless you both … What a woman! With her you will at last find peace and happiness.’
Wokulski stopped in front of him and shook his head. ‘And will she find happiness with me?’ he asked.
‘She loves you distractedly … You can’t even guess …’
‘But does she know what it is that she loves? Don’t you see that I’m nothing but a ruin, of the worst kind — a moral ruin? I can poison someone else’s happiness, but not give it. If I could give the world anything, it would be money perhaps, and work … But not for the people of today, and as far away from them as possible.’
‘Oh, stop that!’ Rzecki exclaimed. ‘Marry her, and you will at once see things differently.’
Wokulski smiled sadly: ‘Yes, get married … And break a good and innocent being’s heart, exploit the most noble feelings and be elsewhere in my thoughts all the time. And perhaps, in a year or two, reproach her because I abandoned great things for her sake.’
‘Political things?’ Rzecki whispered mysteriously.
‘Goodness, no! I’ve had plenty of time and opportunity to grow disillusioned with all that … There’s something more important than politics.’
‘Geist’s invention?’
‘How do you know?’
‘Szuman told me.’
‘Ah, yes … I forgot that Szuman must know everything. That’s a talent, too.’
‘And a very helpful one. In any case, though, I advise you to think about Mrs Stawska, because …’
‘You will take her from me?’ Wokulski smiled. ‘Do so, do! I promise you neither of you will be poor.’
‘Bah! For goodness sake! We’d never hear the end of it, if an old wreck like I were to think of such a woman. But there’s someone more dangerous … Mraczewski. He’s crazy about her, I tell you, and has already left to see her, for the third or fourth time. A woman’s heart is not a stone.’
‘Mraczewski? Has he stopped playing with Socialism?’
‘For goodness sake! He says that once a man has made his first thousand roubles and meets a pretty woman like Stawska, then politics blows out of his head.’
‘Poor Klein had different views,’ said Wokulski.
‘What has Klein got to do with it, the hothead? A good lad, but no clerk. Mraczewski, now, was a real treasure. Handsome, with a few words of French, and how he used to look at the lady customers, how he’d twirl that moustache! He’ll make his way in the world, and will seize Mrs Stawska from beneath your very nose. Mark my words!’
He started to leave, then stopped and said: ‘Marry her, Staś … marry her. You’ll make a woman happy, you’ll save the company, and perhaps the store too. What’s the use of inventions? I understand political plans in these times, when the most important incidents may take place. But flying machines? Although perhaps they’d be useful,’ he added, on reflection. ‘Ha! In any case, do as you wish, but make up your mind about Stawska, for I feel that Mraczewski won’t let sleeping dogs lie. He’s a dandy! Flying machines … Pooh!’
Wokulski was left alone. ‘Paris or Warsaw?’ he thought. ‘There — a great purpose, though uncertain; here — several hundred people … Whom I can’t bear the sight of,’ he added, after a moment.
He approached the window and looked out into the street for a while, simply in order to gain control of himself. But everything irritated him: the traffic of carriages, the hurrying pedestrians, their worried or grinning faces … Most of all, the sight of women unnerved him. It seemed to him that each was the personification of stupidity and falsity. ‘Each of them will find her Starski, sooner or later,’ he thought. ‘Each one is looking for him …’
Before long Szuman once again visited Wokulski.
‘My dear friend,’ he called from the threshold, smiling, ‘even if you were to throw me out, I would continue to persecute you with my visits …’
‘But of course, come as often as you like,’ replied Wokulski.
‘So you agree? … Splendid! … That is half the cure … Ah, what it means to have strength of mind! … After not quite seven weeks of severe misanthropy, already you begin to tolerate the human species, and in my person to boot … Ha, ha ha! … What would happen if one were to loose some chic woman into your cage …’
Wokulski paled.
‘Well, well … I know that is too soon … It is high time, though, that you began to show your face again. That would complete the cure. Take me as an example,’ Szuman declaimed. ‘While I sat within four walls I was as bored as a devil in a belltower; and today I have barely to show myself in the world and I have a thousand diversions. Szlangbaum wishes to hoodwink me and is taken continually by surprise, becoming convinced day after day that, although I have such a naïve expression, I had in advance foreseen all his moves. It has even gained me his respect …’
‘A modest enough sport,’ put in Wokulski.
‘Wait! Another pleasure is afforded me by my co-religionists in financial circles, for it seems to them that I have an exceptionally shrewd head for business, and yet despite this, that they will be able to steer me as it pleases them … I can imagine their painful disappointment when they realise that I am neither shrewd in business, nor stupid enough to become a pawn in their hands …’
‘And you tried so hard to persuade me to enter into partnership with them? …’
‘That was
different. I encourage you to do so still. No one ever lost out in an agreement with intelligent Jews, at least not financially. But it’s one thing to be a partner, and another to be a pawn as they wanted to make of me … Ah, those Jew-boys! … Always rogues, whether dressed in gabardines or dress-coats …’
‘Which, nevertheless, does not prevent you from admiring them, or even from associating with Szlangbaum? …’
‘Well, that’s another thing again,’ replied Szuman. ‘Jews, in my opinion, are the most talented race in the world, and my race besides, so I admire them and love them as a community. And as to my agreement with Szlangbaum … for heaven’s sake, Staś! Would it be sensible on our part to wrangle between ourselves when it is a question of saving a business as capital as a company trading with the Empire? … You are abandoning it, so it will either collapse, or the Germans will get it; either way the country will lose. But the other way, the country wins and we …’
‘I understand you less and less,’ interposed Wokulski. ‘The Jews are great, and the Jews are rogues … Szlangbaum should be expelled from the trading company, and then he should be taken in again … First the Jews gain by it, then the country gains … It is complete chaos! …’
‘You, Staś, have lost your wits … This is no chaos, it is the clear and simple truth … In this country, only the Jews create some kind of impetus in industry and trade, and so every economic victory of theirs is a clear gain for the country … Am I not right? …’
‘I shall have to think about it,’ replied Wokulski. ‘Well, what other delight do you bring? …’
‘The greatest. Imagine, that at the first news of my future financial successes, they want to marry me off already! … Me, with my Jewish mug and bald patch! …’
‘Who? … To whom? …
‘Our friends, of course, and to whom? … Whomsoever I wish. Even to a Christian girl, and of a good family, if I just get christened …’
‘And you?’
‘Do you know, I am almost prepared to do it out of curiosity. Simply in order to discover in what manner a beautiful, young, well-brought-up, Christian girl, above all from a respectable family, will convince me of her love? … Here would be a wealth of entertainment. I would be entertained watching her vie for my hand and heart. I would be entertained to hear her speak of her great sacrifice for the good of her family, or maybe even of her motherland. I would be entertained, finally, observing in what manner she would compensate herself for her sacrifice: would she deceive me using the old method, that is to say, in secret, or the new, that is openly, perhaps even requiring my permission? …’
Wokulski clutched his head. ‘Horrible …’ he whispered.
Szuman looked at him from the corner of his eye.
‘You old romantic! … You old romantic! …’ he said. ‘You clutch your head, because in your sick imagination there continues to linger the chimera of an ideal love, a woman with the soul of an angel … Of those there is barely one in ten, thus you have a nine to one chance that you will come across such a one … Do you wish to know the norm? … Look about you at human relationships. Either the man like a cock bustles around a dozen hens, or the woman like a she-wolf in February entices a whole pack of addle-brained wolves or dogs after her … I tell you, there is nothing more degrading than competing in such a pack, than dependence on a she-wolf … In such situations are fortunes lost, health, heart, energy, and, in the end, one’s reason … Shame upon him who cannot extricate himself from such a swamp!’
Wokulski sat in silence, with wide-open eyes. At last he said in a quiet voice, ‘You are right …’
The doctor caught him by the hand and, tugging it violently, cried: ‘Right? … That from your lips? … Well then, you are saved! … Yes, you’ll make a man yet … Spit on everything that has passed: on your own pain and on the infamy of others … Choose a goal, any goal, and begin a new life. Go on making your fortune, or miraculous discoveries, marry Stawska or set up another partnership, as long as you desire something and do something. Do you understand? And never let yourself be tied to a skirt … do you understand? Men of your energy give orders, they do not take them, they lead, they are not led … Whoever had the choice between you and Starski, and chose Starski, that one proved herself unworthy even of Starski … That is my formula, you understand? … And now fare you well and remain with your own thoughts.’
Wokulski did not detain him.
‘You are angry?’ said Szuman. ‘I am not surprised, I have engendered that deep flush; and that which is left will perish of its own accord. Goodbye.’
After the doctor’s departure Wokulski opened the window and unbuttoned his shirt. He found it stifling hot, and it seemed to him that he would have a stroke. He remembered Zasławek and the deceived baron, for whom he had once played almost such a role as Szuman had played for him today …
He began to dream, and alongside the image of Izabela in Starski’s arms, there now appeared to him a pack of breathless wolves pursuing a she-wolf over the snow … And he was one of them! …
Again pain swept over him, coupled with disgust and self-loathing. ‘How despicable and stupid I am! …’ he cried out, hitting his forehead. ‘To see so much, hear so much, and still sink to such degradation … I … I … vied with Starski and God knows with whom else.’
This time he resolutely recalled the image of Izabela; resolutely, he observed all its statuesque features, the ash-blonde hair, the iridescent eyes changing from blue to black. And it seemed to him that on her face, her neck, her shoulders and breast he saw the stamp, the traces of Starski’s kisses …
‘Szuman was right,’ he thought, ‘I am truly cured …’
But slowly, however, anger died in him, and its place was once again taken by grief and sorrow.
During the next few days, Wokulski read no more. He entered into a lively correspondence with Suzin and thought a great deal. He thought that in his present position, after being shut up in his study for almost two months, he had ceased being a man and was beginning to become something like an oyster which, stuck in the same spot, accepts from the world whatever chance happens to throw its way.
And what had accident given him?
First, he put aside the books, some of which had shown to him that he was Don Quixote, and others had aroused within him an interest in a marvellous world where men had power over the forces of Nature. So he no longer wanted to be Don Quixote, and desired power over the forces of Nature.
Then, in turn, Szlangbaum and Szuman had visited him, and he learned from them that two Jewish parties were struggling together to inherit his control of the trading company. There was no one else in the whole country able to develop his ideas; no one except the Jews, who had come forward with all their arrogance of race, their cunning, their ruthlessness, and yet they still expected him to believe that his decline and their triumph would be advantageous to the country.
In view of this, he felt such a horror for commerce, trading companies and profits of any kind that he was surprised by himself: in what manner had he been able to mix in such things for almost two years? ‘I gained a fortune for her,’ he thought, ‘Commerce … Commerce and I! It was I who acquired over half a million roubles in two years, I who mixed with economic card-sharpers, bet my life and work on a single card, well … And I won. I — an idealist, a scholar, I — who understand perfectly well that a man couldn’t earn half a million roubles in a lifetime, no, not in three lifetimes … And the only consolation I had from this card-sharping was the certainty that I, at least didn’t rob or cheat … Obviously, God looks after the stupid.’
Then again, chance had brought him news of Stawski’s death in the letter from Paris, and from that moment on memories of Mrs Stawska and of Geist in turn awoke within him. ‘To tell the truth,’ he thought, ‘I ought to return my exploited fortune to the community. Our country is full of poverty and ignorance, and these poor and ignorant people are at the same time the most admirable material … The only way to do so, howev
er, would be to marry Stawska. She certainly wouldn’t be frightened by my plans, but would be my most faithful helper. After all, she knows the meaning of work and poverty, and is so noble …’
Thus he reasoned, though he felt differently: he despised the people he wanted to render happy. He felt that Szuman’s pessimism had uprooted his passion for Izabela, but had also poisoned him. It was difficult for him to deny that the human race consisted either of hens flirting with a cockerel, or wolves chasing a she-wolf. And that whichever way he turned, the chances were nine out of ten that he would encounter an animal, rather than a man.
‘May the devil take him, suggesting that sort of cure,’ he murmured.
Then he began thinking about Szuman. Three men had observed strongly animal traits in the human species: he himself, Geist and Szuman. But he believed that animals in human form were exceptions, and that the community consisted of single individuals. Geist, on the contrary, claimed that the human community is animal, and good individuals are exceptions: Geist also believed that in time, the good people would multiply and dominate the earth — and for over a decade he had been working on an invention to bring about this triumph.
Szuman also claimed that the great majority of men are animals, but he neither believed in a better future, nor did he offer this consolation. For him, the human species was condemned to eternal animalism, in which only the Jews stood out like pike amidst minnows.
‘A fine philosophy, indeed,’ thought Wokulski. However, he felt that Szuman’s pessimism would soon flourish in his own wounded soul, as in a freshly ploughed field. He felt that love for Izabela was dying in him, and so was his anger. For if the whole world consisted of animals, there was no good reason to be insane about one of them, or to be angry because she was an animal, no better and certainly no worse than others.
‘A devilish cure!’ he kept thinking. ‘Yet who knows but it isn’t right? I have gone catastrophically bankrupt for my views: who will promise me that Geist isn’t wrong in his ideas, or that Szuman isn’t? Rzecki an animal, Stawska, Geist, I myself … Ideals — they are painted cribs in which there is painted grass that cannot feed anyone. So why sacrifice oneself for some people, or chase after others? I must cure myself, that’s all, and devour pork or pretty women by turns, and drink good wine into the bargain. Read a little, travel sometimes, go to a concert, and thus live to see old age.’
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