Complete Works of Henryk Sienkiewicz

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  The man was out of joint and unhappy; but art saved the artist. From that moment, Kamionka existed by virtue of his calling. People who look at statues and images in galleries do not divine that artists may serve their art honestly or dishonestly. In this regard, Kamionka was without reproach. He had no wings at his shoulders, — he possessed only talent somewhat above the common, and perhaps, therefore, art could not fill out his life, or give him recompense for all losses; but he respected it deeply, and was ever sincere with regard to it. During the long years of his labor, he had never tempted it, and had never committed injustice regarding it, either in view of fame, profit, praise, or blame. He always did that which he felt. During his happy years, when he lived like other men, he was able to say things touching art which were quite uncommon, and after that, when people began to turn aside from him, he thought frequently of this art in his lonely studio, in a manner which was lofty and honest.

  He felt greatly abandoned; but in this there was no cause for wonder. People’s relations must have a certain medium measure in virtue of which the exceptionally unhappy are cut off from life. For that very reason, they are covered with as much strangeness and as many faults as a stone thrown up from a torrent is covered with moss, when it ceases to rub against others. Now when Kamionka was ill, no living soul looked into his studio, with the exception of a servant-woman, who came twice a day to make tea for him, and serve it. At every visit, her advice was to call in a doctor; but he, fearing the outlay, would not give his consent to this.

  At last he became very weak; perhaps for the reason that he took nothing into his mouth except tea. But he had no desire then for anything, either for eating, or work, or life. His thoughts were as if withered like those leaves on which he looked through the window; and those thoughts of his answered perfectly to that autumn, to that drizzle, to that leaden darkness. There are no worse moments in life than those in which a man feels that he has accomplished what he had to accomplish, that he has outlived that which he had to outlive; and that nothing more in this world belongs to him. Kamionka had lived almost fifteen years in continual dread that his talent would exhaust itself; now he was sure that it had, and he thought with bitterness that even art was deserting him. He felt therewith weariness and exhaustion in every bone of his body. He did not expect a sudden death; but he did not believe in a return to health. In general, there was not one spark of hope in him.

  If he wished for anything it was only that the weather would brighten, that the sun would shine into his studio. For he thought that in that case he might gain consolation. He had always been specially sensitive to slush and to darkness; such days had always deepened his sadness and depression, and what must it now be when that “hopeless time,” as Kamionka called it, was joined to his sickness!

  Every evening when the servant brought tea he inquired: “Is it not clearing on the edge of the sky somewhere?”

  “There is such a mist,” answered she, “that one man cannot see another.”

  Kamionka, hearing this answer, closed his eyes and lay motionless a long time.

  In the yard it was always quiet save that drops of rain pattered evenly and monotonously in the gutters.

  About three o’clock one afternoon it was so dark that Kamionka was forced to light a candle. And he was so weak that he did this with no little difficulty. Before he reached for a match he meditated a long time; then he extended his arm lazily; the thinness of this arm, evident through the shirt sleeve, filled him, as a sculptor, with repugnance and bitterness. When he had lighted the candle he rested again, without moving, till the evening arrival of the servant, listening with closed eyes to the drops sounding in the gutter.

  His studio looked strange then. The flame of the candle lighted the bed with Kamionka lying on it, and came to a focus in a shining point on his forehead with its skin dry and yellow as if polished. The rest of the room was sunk in darkness, which grew denser each moment. But as it grew dark outside the statues became more rosy and acquired life. The flame of the candle now sank, now rose, and in that quivering light the statues too seemed to sink and rise exactly as if they were rising on tiptoe to gain a better look at the face of the sculptor, and be convinced that their creator was living.

  And indeed there was a certain immobility of death in that countenance. But at times the blue lips of the sick man stirred with a slight movement, as if in prayer, or as if he were cursing his loneliness and those dreadful drops of moisture which measured with even monotony the hours of his sickness.

  One evening the woman came a little drunk, therefore more talkative than usual.

  “There is so much work on my head that I can barely look in twice a day,” said she; “if you would call a religious, a sister of charity costs nothing, and she would be better for a sick man.”

  This advice pleased Kamionka, but he, like others who are afflicted, had the habit of always opposing whatever advice people gave him; so he would not agree.

  But after the woman had gone he began to think thus: “A sister of charity costs nothing, but what aid she might give, and what comfort!” Kamionka, like every sick man left to himself, experienced much suffering and struggled with a thousand petty miseries, which annoyed him as much as they made him impatient. More than once he lay for whole hours with a crooked neck before he would move to arrange his own pillow. Often in the night he was cold and would have given God knows what for a cup of tea; but if it was difficult to light a candle, how was he to think of making tea? A sister of charity would do all this with the mild readiness usual to those sisters. Oh, how much easier to be sick if one had their assistance!

  The poor man came at last to think of sickness under such conditions as something desirable and pleasant, and he wondered in his soul if the like happiness were accessible to him even.

  It seemed, too, that if a sister were to come and bring with her a little joyousness and solace to the studio, perhaps the weather would clear up outside, and the sounding drops of water cease to pursue him.

  He regretted at last that he had not accepted the advice of the woman immediately. Night was approaching, long and gloomy, and the woman was to look in at him only next morning. He understood now that that night would be for him more grievous than all the nights which had ever preceded it.

  Then he thought what a Lazarus he was — and in distinction to his present wretchedness his former happy years stood before his eyes as if living. And as a moment before the thought of the sister of charity, so now the remembrance of those years joined itself in the same wonderful manner in his weakened brain, with the understanding of sun and light and fair weather.

  He began to think of his dead one, and to speak with her, as he had the habit of doing when he was ill. At last he wearied himself, felt that he was growing weak, and fell asleep.

  The candle was burning slowly. Its flame from being rosy was blue, then it gleamed brightly a number of times, and died. Deep darkness embraced the studio.

  But meanwhile in the yard drops of rain fell as evenly and gloomily as if by means of them darkness and grief were distilled through all nature.

  Kamionka slept long and lightly, but all at once he woke with a certain wonderful impression that something uncommon was happening in the studio. The morning dawn was in the world. The marbles and plasters of Paris began to grow white. The broad Venetian window opposite his bed was penetrated more and more with pale light.

  In this light Kamionka saw a figure sitting at his bedside.

  He opened his eyes widely and looked at the figure: it was that of a sister of charity.

  She was sitting motionless, turned slightly toward the window, with her head inclined. Her hands were laid on her knees, — and she seemed to be praying. The sick man could not see her face, but he saw plainly her white head-dress and the dark outline of her rather frail shoulders.

  His heart began to beat somewhat nervously, and these questions flew through his head, —

  “When could the servant have brought in thi
s sister of charity; and how did she enter?”

  Next he thought that perhaps something seemed to him thus because he was weak, then he closed his eyes. But after a while he opened them again.

  The sister of charity was sitting on the same spot, motionless as if sunk in prayer.

  A wonderful feeling composed of fear and delight began to raise the hair on the head of the sick man. Something attracted his eyes with incomprehensible power to that figure. It seemed to him that he had seen it somewhere, but where and when he could not remember. An irresistible desire to see her face seized him, but the white head-dress concealed it. Kamionka, without knowing why, did not dare to speak or to move, or hardly to breathe. He felt only that the sensation of fear and delight was possessing him more and more powerfully, and he asked with astonishment, “What is this?”

  Meanwhile there was perfect day. And what a marvellous morning that must be outside! Suddenly without any transition there came into the studio a light as powerful, bright, and joyous as if it were springtime and May.

  Waves of golden glitter, rising like a flood, began to fill the room, to overflow it so mightily that the marbles were drowned and dissolved in that brightness; the walls were covered with it and then disappeared altogether. Kamionka found himself as it were in some bright space without boundary.

  Then he noticed that the covering on the head of the sister began to lose its white stiffness, that it trembled at the edges, melted, dissolved like clear mist, and changed into light.

  The sister turned her face slowly toward the sick man, and then the deserted sufferer saw in the bright aureole the well-known hundred times beloved features of his dead wife.

  He sprang from the bed, and from his breast came a cry, in which all his years of sorrow, tears, suffering, and despair were united, —

  “Zosia! Zosia!”

  And seizing her, he drew her to him; she threw her arms around his neck.

  More and more light came into the room.

  “Thou didst not forget me,” said she at last, “hence I have come. I obtained an easy death for thee.”

  Kamionka held her in his arms all the time, as if in fear that the blessed vision would vanish from him together with the light.

  “I am ready to die,” answered he, “if thou wilt stay with me.”

  She smiled at him with her angelic smile, and taking one arm from his neck she pointed downward, and said, —

  “Thou art dead already. Look!”

  He looked in the direction of her hand, and behold, under their feet, he saw through the window in the ceiling of his own gloomy and lonely studio, and there on the bed lay his own corpse, with widely opened mouth, which in the yellow face seemed a dark hole as it were.

  And he looked on that emaciated body as something foreign. But after a while all began to vanish from his eyes, for that surrounding brightness, as if urged by a wind from beyond this world, went off somewhere into infinity.

  ON THE BRIGHT SHORE.

  CHAPTER I.

  THE artist was sitting beside Pani Elzen in an open carriage; on the front seat were her sons the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus. He was partly conversing with the lady, partly thinking of a question which required prompt decision, and partly looking at the sea. There was something to look at. They were driving from Nice toward Monte Carlo by the so-called Old Cornice; that is, by a road along impending cliffs, high above the water. On the left, the view was hidden by naked towering rocks, which were gray, with a rosy pearl tinge; on the right was the blue Mediterranean, which appeared to lie immensely low down, thus producing the effect of an abyss and of boundlessness. From the height on which they were moving, the small fishing boats seemed like white spots, so that frequently it was difficult to distinguish a distant sail from a seamew circling above the water.

  Pani Elzen had placed her hand on Svirski’s arm; her face was that of a woman delighted and forgetful of what she is doing; she gazed with dreamy eyes over the mirror of the sea.

  Svirski felt the touch; a quiver of delight ran through him, and he thought that if at that moment Romulus and Remus had not been in front of them, he might have placed his arm around the young woman, perhaps, and pressed her to his bosom.

  But straightway a certain fear seized him at the thought that hesitation would then have an end, and the question be settled.

  “Stop the carriage, please,” said Pani Elzen.

  Svirski stopped the carriage, and they were silent a moment.

  “How quiet it is here after the bustle of Monte Carlo!” said the young widow.

  “I hear only music,” answered the artist; “perhaps the bands are playing on the iron-clads in Villa Franca.”

  In fact, from below came at intervals muffled sounds of music, borne thither by the same breeze which brought the odor of orange-blossoms and heliotropes. Beneath them were visible the roofs of villas, dotting the shore, and almost hidden in groves of eucalyptus, while round about were large white spots formed by blossoming almond-trees, and rosy spots made by peach blossoms. Lower down was the dark-blue sunlit bay of Villa Franca, with crowds of great ships.

  The life seething there presented a marvellous contrast to the deep deadness of the naked, barren mountains, above which extended the sky, cloudless and so transparent that it was monotonous and glassy. Everything was dimmed and belittled amid that calm greatness; the carriage with its occupants seemed, as it were, a kind of beetle, clinging to the cliffs along which it was climbing to the summit with insolence.

  “Here life ends altogether,” said Svirski, looking at the naked cliffs.

  Pani Elzen leaned more heavily on his shoulder and answered with a drowsy, drawling voice, —

  “But it seems to me that here life begins.”

  After a moment Svirski answered with a certain emotion, “Perhaps you are right.”

  And he looked with an inquiring glance at her. Pani Elzen raised her eyes to him in answer, but dropped them quickly, as if confused, and, though her two sons were sitting on the front seat of the carriage, she looked at that moment like a maiden whose eyes could not endure the first ray of love. After that, both were silent; while from below came snatches of music.

  Meanwhile, far away at sea, at the very entrance to the bay, appeared a dark pillar of smoke, and the quiet of the company was broken by Remus, who sprang up, and cried, —

  “Tiens! le ‘Fohmidable’!”

  Pani Elzen cast a glance of displeasure at her younger son. She knew the value of that moment, in which every next word might weigh in her fate decisively.

  “Remus,” said she, “will you be quiet?”

  “But, mamma, it is the ‘Fohmidable’!” 13

  “What an unendurable boy!”

  “Pouhquoi?” 13

  “He is a duhen 13 [duren, a simpleton]; but this time he is right,” called out Romulus, quickly; “yesterday we were at Villa Franca,” — here he turned to Svirski. “You saw us go on velocipedes; they told us there that the whole squadron had arrived except the ‘Fohmidable,’ which was due to-day.”

  To this Remus answered with a strong accent on every last syllable, —

  “Thou art a duhen, 13 thyself!”

  The boys fell to punching each other with their elbows. Pani Elzen, knowing how Svirski disliked her sons’ style of speech, and generally the manner in which they were reared, commanded them to be silent.

  “I have told you and Pan Kresovich,” said she, “not to speak among yourselves in any language but Polish.”

  Kresovich was a student from Zürich, with incipient lung disease; Pani Elzen had found him on the Riviera, and engaged him as tutor for her sons, after her acquaintance with Svirski, and especially after a public declaration of the malicious and wealthy Pan Vyadrovski, that respectable houses had ceased to rear their sons as commercial travellers.

  Meanwhile the unlucky “Formidable” had spoiled the temper of the sensitive artist. After a time, the carriage, gritting along the stones, moved on.

  “
You took their part, and I brought them,” said Pani Elzen, with a sweet voice; “you are too kind to the boys. But one should be here during moonlight. Would you like to come to-night?”

  “I like to come always; but to-night there will be no moon, and of course your dinner will end late.”

  “That is true; but let me know when the next full moon comes. It is a pity that I did not ask you alone to this dinner — With a full moon, it must be beautiful here, though on these heights I have always a throbbing of the heart. If you could see how it throbs at this moment; but look at my pulse, you can see it even through the glove.”

  She turned her palm, which was confined so tightly in the Danish glove as to be turned almost into a tube, and stretched it to Svirski. He took the hand in both of his, and looked at it.

  “No,” said he; “I cannot see the pulse clearly, but perhaps I can hear it.”

  And, inclining his head, he put his ear to the buttons of her glove; for a moment he pressed the glove firmly to his face, then touched it lightly with his lips, and said, —

  “In years of childhood I was able sometimes to catch a bird, and its heart beat just this way. The beating here is just as in a captured bird!”

  She laughed, almost with melancholy, and repeated, “‘As in a captured bird.’ But what did you do with the captured birds?”

  “I grew attached to them, immensely. But they always flew away.”

  “Bad birds.”

  “And thus my life arranged itself,” continued the artist, with emotion; “I have sought in vain for something which would consent to stay with me, till at last I have lost even hope.”

  “Do not lose that; have confidence,” answered Pani Elzen.