Wokulski closed his eyes.
Węgiełek went on in an angry voice: ‘When I heard that, sir, I thought I’d run after him and kick him to death on the spot, even in front of the Baroness. Such anger came over me … Then I asked myself: “Why did you marry her, you fool? You knew very well what sort of woman she was.” And at that moment my heart sank, so I was afraid to leave the spot, and couldn’t look at my wife at all.’
‘She says: “Are you angry?” and I say: “I suppose this is where you used to meet him?” — “God be my witness that I only saw him that once.” “You took a good look at one another!” say I, “would to God I’d been blinded before I saw you: would to God I’d died before I met you. …” And she asks me, weeping, “Why are you angry?” Then I told her, for the first and last time, “You’re an animal, that’s what …” Because I couldn’t control myself any longer.’
‘Then I see the Baron himself rush up, coughing till he went livid in the face, and he asks: “Did you see my wife, Węgiełek?” Something flashed through my mind then, so I said: “I saw her, Your Excellency, she went into the thicket with Mr Starski. He’s run short of money for buying girls, so now he’s chasing after married ladies …” Well, and the way he looked at me then, even though he’s a Baron!’
Węgiełek wiped his eyes surreptitiously: ‘Yes, that’s how my life is, sir. I was easy in my mind until I caught sight of that scoundrel; but now, no matter who I see, it seems to me that he’s my brother-in-law. And it turns me against my wife, although I don’t talk about it … It turns me against her, as if something had happened between her and me … I can’t even kiss her like I used to, and if it weren’t for the marriage vow, I can tell you, sir, that I’d have left home and gone off to the other end of the world. But it all comes from being attached to her. For if I didn’t love her, it wouldn’t matter. She’s a careful housekeeper, cooks nicely, sews beautifully and is as quiet as a mouse at home. So — let her have suitors! But the fact is that I loved her, and on that account I suffer such pain and anger, that everything in me is being burned to ashes.’
Węgiełek trembled with rage: ‘At first, sir, when we got married, I considered children differently, but it scares me, lest instead of my own son, I should see that of her lover. Everyone knows that once a she-wolf has puppies by a cur, then later on, even if she mates with the finest wolves, the cur will always speak out in the offspring, everyone can see that by looking.’
‘I have to go out,’ said Wokulski suddenly, ‘so goodbye. Call on me again before you go home.’
Węgiełek said goodbye to him very cordially, but in the hall he said to the butler: ‘Something ails your master. At first I thought he was all right, though he looked bad; but obviously he is weak … May God protect you all.’
‘Now, you see, I told you not to worm your way in there, and not to talk so much.’ the butler replied, pushing him into the porch.
After Węgiełek’s departure, Wokulski fell into a profound meditation. ‘They stood at my stone, and they laughed,’ he murmured. ‘He even had to profane a stone, a harmless stone.’
For a moment it seemed to him he had found a new purpose: all that was necessary was the choice — whether to shoot Starski dead after first enumerating to him a list of the people whose happiness he had destroyed, or whether to let him live but bring him to utter poverty and humiliation?
Then he had another idea, and it seemed childish, and even vulgar, to sacrifice his own fortune, work and peace of mind for revenge on that sort of man: ‘I’d sooner consider destroying a field mouse or cockroach, for they really are pests. But a man like Starski … God knows what he is! In any case it’s impossible that such a limited individual should be the only cause of so much misery. He’s merely a spark that sets fire to tinder.’
He lay down on the chaise-longue and thought: ‘He fixed things for me … Why? He had an accomplice who was entirely worthy of him, and another accomplice, too — my own stupidity. How was it possible not to recognise that woman instantly for what she is, but even to make a goddess out of her, simply because she posed as a higher being? He fixed things for Dalski too, but who can blame Dalski in his old age for going insane over a person whose morals would fit into a thimble? The cause of disasters in this world isn’t the Starskis or men like him, but primarily the stupidity of their victims. Then again, neither Starski nor Izabela nor yet Ewelina were born yesterday, it’s just that they were brought up in a certain sphere of society and in a given epoch, and amidst certain notions. They’re like a rash, which isn’t a disease, but is a symptom of sickness in society. What’s the use of being revenged on them, why destroy them?’
That evening, Wokulski went out into the street for the first time, and realised how enfeebled he was. His head reeled from the rattle of droshkies and the movement of passers-by, and he dreaded going too far from home. It seemed to him he would never reach Nowy Świat Boulevard, that he wouldn’t be able to find his way home, that despite himself he would cause some ridiculous incident. Above all, he dreaded meeting a familiar face.
He went home tired and agitated, but that night he slept well.
Ochocki called a week after Węgiełek’s visit. He had grown manly, was tanned and looked every inch a gentleman.
‘Where have you come from?’ Wokulski asked him.
‘Straight from Zasławek, where I sat around for nearly two months,’ Ochocki replied. ‘Confound it all, you’ll never guess what sort of a row I got myself landed in!’
‘You?’
‘Yes, sir — me, and innocently into the bargain. It’ll make your hair stand on end!’
He lit a cigarette, and went on: ‘I don’t know whether you heard that the late Duchess willed all her fortune, apart from a small amount, to charity. Hospitals, orphanages, schools, village halls and the like. And the Prince, Dalski and I are her executors … Very well! We’d already begun carrying out her wishes, or rather trying to probate the will, when (a month ago) Starski comes back from Cracow, and informs us that he — in the name of his ill-used family — was starting a law-suit to invalidate the will. Of course, neither the Prince nor I would hear of it; but the Baron, led on by his wife whom Starski had incited, the Baron started to soften … We argued several times on this account, and the Prince just wouldn’t have anything more to do with him.
‘What next?’ asked Ochocki, lowering his voice. ‘One Sunday, the Baron went with his wife and Starski on an outing to Zasław. What happened there? I don’t know, but the result is as follows. The Baron insisted he would not let the will be invalidated, and that’s not all … The Baron has decided on a separation from his adored wife (did you know that? … And that’s not all: ten days ago, the Baron had a duel with Starski and got a bullet across the ribs. It was as though someone had ripped the skin off his chest from right to left with a hook … The old man is furious, he roars and curses, is feverish, but he told his wife to go back to her family immediately, though I’m certain they won’t receive her … There’s a hard fellow for you! But the old devil is so determined that he ordered his nurse, on his sick-bed, to dye his hair and beard for him, to spite his wife, and today he looks like a twenty-year-old corpse.’
Wokulski smiled. ‘He did well with the woman,’ he said, ‘but he needn’t have painted himself.’
‘He needn’t have got it in the ribs, either,’ Ochocki put in. ‘He very nearly put a bullet through Starski’s brains. Bullets are always blind. I can tell you, sir, that the incident made me quite ill.’
‘Where is our hero now?’ asked Wokulski.
‘Starski? He has bolted abroad, not so much from the coldness he began getting in society, as from his debtors. What an artist he is! He has some hundred thousand roubles of debts.’
A long silence followed. Wokulski was sitting with his back to the window, his head bowed. Ochocki pondered, whistling quietly. Suddenly he came to and began speaking, as if to himself: ‘What a strange muddle human life is! Who’d have expected a booby like
Starski to do so much good? And just because he’s a booby!’
Wokulski raised his head and looked inquiringly at Ochocki.
‘Strange, is it not?’ Ochocki went on, ‘and yet that’s how it is. If Starski were a respectable, decent man and hadn’t had an affair with the Baron’s young wife, Dalski would certainly have supported his claim against the will — bah! He’d even have given him money for the law-suit, because his wife would have profited by that too. But because Starski is a booby, he offended the Baron … And saved the will. So even unborn generations of Zasławek peasants ought to bless Starski for flirting with the Baroness.’
‘A paradox!’ Wokulski put in.
‘A paradox! These are facts, after all. And don’t you think Starski has done the Baron a favour by ridding him of a wife like that? Between ourselves, she’s not a woman, but an animal. All she thought of were clothes, parties and flirtations, and I don’t know whether she ever read anything, or looked attentively at anything … Nothing but a lump of flesh and bone, who pretended to have a soul, but had nothing but a stomach … You didn’t know her, you can’t imagine what a dummy she is, nor how there was nothing human under that façade of humanity. By realising what she is, the Baron has won a great lottery prize.’
‘Merciful Heavens!’ Wokulski murmured.
‘What did you say?’ asked Ochocki.
‘Nothing …’
‘But the salvation of the late Duchess’s bequest, and the liberation of the Baron from such a wife are only a part of Starski’s services.’
Wokulski shifted in his chair.
‘Pray imagine, sir, that this booby may, by his flirtation, have contributed to a really important fact,’ said Ochocki. ‘This is how the land lies. I sometimes urged Dalski (and, in fact, anyone with money) that it would be worthwhile to establish an experimental laboratory in Warsaw for chemical and mechanical technology. For, as you know, sir, we have no inventions in the country, primarily because there is nowhere to make them. Of course, the Baron heard my plea with one ear and let it out the other. However, something must have lodged in his brain, for now that Starski has wounded his heart and ribs, the Baron, wondering how to disinherit his wife, talks to me for days at a time about a technological workshop. What purpose would it serve? Would people really become wiser and better if they were provided with a workshop? And how much would it cost, and would I undertake to organise such an institution? When I came away, things were at the point of the Baron calling in an attorney and drawing up a document of some sort which, as far as I can make out from hints, concerns the workshop. Moreover, Dalski asked me to select for him fellows able to direct such a business. Well now, isn’t this an irony of fate — that such a nonentity as Starski, a mere piece of public property for consoling bored wives, should be the source of a technological workshop? Nobody is going to convince me, after this, that there’s anything superfluous in the world!’
Wokulski wiped the sweat from his face which, compared with his white handkerchief, looked almost ashen.
‘But perhaps I’m tiring you?’ Ochocki asked.
‘Please go on … Although I think you overestimate the services of this … man, somewhat, and you entirely forget …’
‘What?’
‘That the technological workshop will grow from the sufferings, the ruins of human happiness. And you don’t even ask yourself the question as to how the Baron passed from love for his wife to a workshop.’
‘What’s that to me?’ cried Ochocki, shrugging. ‘The purchase of social progress at the cost of the sufferings of individuals, however terrible — is well worth it.’
‘Do you know what the sufferings of the individuals are like, at least?’ asked Wokulski.
‘Indeed I do! After all, I had the nail taken off my toe without chloroform, and off my big toe, into the bargain.’
‘A toe nail?’ Wokulski repeated thoughtfully. ‘Do you know the old saying: “Sometimes the human soul rends and fights itself”? Who knows whether that isn’t worse than pulling off a toe nail, or even ripping off the entire skin.’
‘Hm … That’s some unmanly ailment,’ Ochocki replied, with a grimace. ‘Perhaps women experience something of the sort when having a baby … But a man …’
Wokulski laughed aloud. ‘You laugh at me?’ asked Ochocki.
‘No, at the Baron! As for you, why didn’t you undertake to organise the workshop?’
‘Oh, come! I prefer travelling to established workshops, not creating a new one, the fruits of which I wouldn’t live to see, and so waste myself. One needs administrative and pedagogic talents for that, and it would have nothing to do with flying machines.’
‘Well?’ asked Wokulski.
‘What do you mean? Once I’ve collected the little capital I still have on a mortgage, which I haven’t been able to lay hands on for three years despite my request, I shall set off abroad and start work seriously. Here a man can only idle, and grow stupid and embittered.’
‘A man can work anywhere.’
‘You’re joking,’ Ochocki replied. ‘Even putting aside the absence of a workshop, we don’t have a scientific climate here. This is a city of careerists, among whom a real scholar passes for a boor or madman.
‘People here don’t study for knowledge, but for a position; and they acquire a position and celebrity through social contacts, women, parties, goodness knows what else! I’ve bathed in that pond. I know genuine scholars, even men of genius, suddenly brought to a halt in their development, who have taken to giving lessons or writing popular articles which no one reads or, if they do, they fail to understand. I’ve talked to great industrialists, thinking I would persuade them to support research, if only for the sake of practical inventions. But do you know what I discovered? They have about as much idea of science as geese of logarithms. Do you know the sort of inventions that would interest them? Only two: one which would increase their dividends, and the other to teach them how to cheat their fellow businessmen, either in price or merchandise. As long as they thought you would perpetrate a fraud on that company for trade, they called you a genius: but today they say you have softening of the brain, because you gave your partners three per cent more than you promised.’
‘I know,’ Wokulski replied.
‘So just try to work for science amidst such people. You will starve to death or become an idiot. But if you can dance, play an instrument, appear in amateur theatricals and — above all — amuse women, then you will forge a career for yourself. They’ll call you eminent at once, and you’ll gain a position in which your income will be ten times the value of your work. Parties and women, women and parties! But as I am not a footman to wear myself out at parties, and I regard women as very useful for bearing children, so I am getting away, even if I only go to Zurich.’
‘Wouldn’t you like to go to Geist?’ asked Wokulski.
Ochocki reflected. ‘I’d need hundreds of thousands of roubles there, which I don’t have,’ he replied. ‘Besides, even if I had, I’d first of all have to be convinced as to what that invention really is. A decrease in specific gravities looks like a fairy-tale to me.’
‘Yet I showed you that metal,’ said Wokulski.
‘So you did … Please let me see it again.’
A sickly flush appeared and rapidly disappeared on Wokulski’s face. ‘I don’t have it any longer,’ he said in a stifled voice.
‘What happened to it?’ Ochocki asked in surprise.
‘Never mind … You may suppose it fell down a drain somewhere … But would you go to Geist if, for example, you had the money?’
‘Certainly, but primarily to check on the facts. Forgive me, but from what I know of chemistry, it is impossible to believe in a theory of decreasing specific gravity beyond certain limits.’
Both fell silent, and soon Ochocki left.
Ochocki’s visit awoke a new line of thought in Wokulski. He felt the desire and even the urge to renew his chemical experiments, and that same day he hurried into town to b
uy a retort, pipes and test-tubes as well as various chemicals. Still influenced by this thought, he went boldly through the streets, even got into a droshky: he looked at people with indifference, and felt no vexation on seeing that some stared at him curiously, others didn’t recognise him, while yet others smiled maliciously at the sight of him.
But in the glass shop, and still more in the apothecary’s, he realised how much his vitality had ebbed, along with his independence — if all that was needed was a conversation with Ochocki to remind him of chemistry which he had not interested himself in for some years. ‘Never mind,’ he thought, ‘as long as it fills my time.’
Next day he bought a precision balance and some complex instruments, and set to work like a schoolboy at the commencement of his studies. First he obtained hydrogen, which reminded him of university days, when hydrogen had been made in a flask wrapped in a towel, using soot. What happy times they’d been! Then he recalled the balloons he had invented, and Geist, who held that the chemistry of hydrogen combines would change the history of mankind.
‘Suppose a man like me were to hit upon the metal Geist is looking for?’ he said to himself. ‘Geist claims that the discovery will depend on testing several thousand combinations: in other words, it’s a lottery, and I’m lucky … But if I discovered the metal, what would Izabela say?’
Rage boiled up within him at the memory. ‘Ah,’ he murmured, ‘I should like to be famous and powerful, so I could tell her how much I despise her.’
Then it occurred to him that contempt is not manifested in rage, nor yet in the desire to humiliate someone, and he set to work again. The elementary experiments with hydrogen gave him the most pleasure, so he repeated them most often.
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