‘Why didn’t you accept?’ the despondent Rzecki asked.
‘Because I have to go to the theatre tonight,’ Wokulski replied.
But genuine alarm seized Rzecki when on that same day the cashier Oberman came to him before seven and asked him to do the day’s figures: ‘Later on…after eight o’clock,’ Ignacy replied, ‘there isn’t time now.’
‘But I shan’t have time after eight,’ Oberman replied.
‘How so? What do you mean?’
‘Just that I have to go with the master to the theatre at seven-thirty,’ Oberman muttered, shrugging imperceptibly.
At the same moment in came Zięba, smiling, to say goodnight.
‘Are you going already, Mr Zięba? At six-fifteen?’ asked Ignacy in amazement, his eyes opening very wide.
‘I’m taking the bouquets for Rossi,’ the polite Zięba whispered, with a still more agreeable smile.
Rzecki clutched his head with both hands: ‘They’ve gone mad over this theatre!’ he cried, ‘perhaps they’ll even try to get me involved too…Not likely, though…’
Feeling that Wokulski might well try and persuade him to go as well, he rehearsed a speech in which he declared he would not go to the Italians and even made Staś think twice about it, in more or less these words: ‘For goodness sake, give over, please! What’s all this nonsense?’ and so on.
But instead of trying to persuade him, Wokulski came into the store around six, found Rzecki at the accounts and said: ‘My dear fellow, Rossi is playing Macbeth tonight, be so kind as to sit in the front row of the stalls (here’s your ticket) and hand him this album after the third act…’
And without more ado or even explaining, he handed Ignacy an album containing views of Warsaw and local young ladies, which must have cost fifty roubles!
Ignacy felt deeply hurt. He rose, frowned and had opened his mouth to protest, when Wokulski abruptly left the shop without so much as another look at him. So of course Ignacy had to go to the theatre, to avoid hurting Staś’s feelings.
In the theatre a whole series of surprises lay in wait for Ignacy. First of all, he went in by the gallery stairs, his usual entry in the good old days. An attendant had to remind him he had a ticket for the front row of the stalls and in doing so cast a look at him as if to say that Mr Rzecki’s dark-green frock-coat, the album under his arm and even his countenance à la Napoleon III appeared highly suspect to the lower hierarchy of the theatre authorities. Embarrassed, Ignacy went down to the front vestibule, clutching the album under his arm and bowing to all the ladies he had the honour of passing. This politeness, to which the good people of Warsaw were not at all accustomed, created quite a stir in the vestibule. People began asking who he was; and although no one recognised him, everyone at once noticed that his top-hat was ten years old, his tie five, while his dark-green frock-coat and striped trousers dated from an even earlier epoch. On the whole they took him for a foreigner; but when he asked an attendant the way to the stalls, people burst out laughing: ‘He must be a squireen up from Wolyn,’ the dandies said, ‘but what is that under his arm? His supper, I daresay—or a pneumatic cushion.’
Scourged by derision, drenched in cold sweat, Ignacy finally gained the much-longed for stalls. It was only just after seven, and the audience had barely started coming in: here and there people came to their seats with hats on, the boxes were empty, and only in the balcony was there a seething mass of people, while up in the gallery, the police were already being called for.
‘It looks as if the audience is going to be very lively,’ muttered the unhappy Ignacy with a pallid smile, taking his seat in the front row.
At first he gazed fixedly at the right-hand hole in the curtain, vowing he would not remove his eyes from it. However, a few minutes later his agitation cooled down, and he even plucked up enough courage to begin looking around. The auditorium looked rather small and dirty, and it was not until he began pondering over the reasons for this, that he realised he had last been in the theatre more or less sixteen years ago, to see Dobrski in Halka.
Meanwhile the auditorium was filling, and the sight of pretty women taking their places in the boxes completely emboldened Ignacy. The old clerk even brought out a small pair of opera-glasses and began gazing at their countenances: whereupon he made the sad discovery that he too was being looked at from the amphitheatre, from the stalls behind and even from the boxes…When he transferred his psychic talents from eye to ear, he caught phrases flying over his head like so many wasps: ‘Who on earth is that eccentric?’
‘Someone up from the provinces…’
‘But where in the world did he acquire that frock-coat?’
‘And just look at the trinkets on his watch-chain! How disgraceful!’
‘Whoever does his hair like that nowadays?’
Ignacy very nearly left his album and top-hat and fled bareheaded from the theatre. Fortunately he caught sight in the eighth row of a piemaker of his acquaintance, who left his seat in response to a bow from Ignacy and approached the front row.
‘For goodness’ sake, Mr Pifke,’ he whispered, drenched in sweat, ‘take my place and let me have yours…’
‘With pleasure, I’m sure,’ the red-faced pie-maker replied loudly, ‘what, don’t you like it? A splendid seat…’
‘Yes, it’s excellent, but I prefer being further back. It’s so hot…’
‘It’s the same back there, but I’ll change with you. What’s that packet you have?’
Only now did Rzecki recollect his duty: ‘Look, my dear Mr Pifke, an admirer of this…this Rossi…’
‘Bah, who isn’t an admirer of Rossi?’ Pifke replied, ‘I have the book of words to Macbeth, would you care for it?’
‘Certainly…but this admirer, you see, bought an expensive album from us and asked me to hand it to Rossi after the third act.’
‘I’ll do it with pleasure,’ the stout Pifke exclaimed, squeezing himself into Rzecki’s seat.
Ignacy passed a few more disagreeable moments. He had to extricate himself from the front row of the stalls, where dandies eyed his frock-coat and tie and his velveteen waistcoat with ironical smiles. Then he had to get into the eighth row of the stalls where, admittedly, they looked at his costume without any irony, but where he had to press the knees of seated ladies.
‘A thousand pardons,’ he said, embarrassed, ‘but it’s so tight…’
‘No need to use such expressions,’ one of the ladies replied, in whose rather painted eyes Ignacy observed quite the opposite of vexation for his squeezing. He was so embarrassed he would willingly have gone to confession, if only he could purify his soul of the stains left by those squeezes.
Finally he found his place and breathed again. Here at least no one paid any attention to him, partly because the theatre was already full and the performance was beginning.
The acting at first did not interest him, so he looked around the auditorium and caught sight of Wokulski. He was in the fourth row and was not gazing at Rossi at all, but at a box occupied by Izabela, Tomasz and the Countess. Rzecki had seen hypnotised people a few times in his life and he thought that Wokulski looked like a man hypnotised by that box. He was sitting there motionless, like a man asleep with his eyes wide open.
What could have charmed Wokulski so? Ignacy had no idea. He also observed something else; whenever Rossi was not on stage, Izabela gazed indifferently around the theatre or talked to her aunt. But when Rossi-Macbeth entered, she half-screened her face with a fan and seemed to be devouring the actor with those magnificent, dreaming eyes of hers. Sometimes the white feathers of her fan sank to her lap, and then Rzecki perceived on Izabela’s face the same hypnotised look which had so surprised him on Wokulski’s.
He saw something else too. When Izabela’s beautiful face expressed greatest admiration, then Wokulski rubbed the top of his head with one hand. And then, as if in response to an order, violent applause and noisy shouts were heard from the balcony and gallery: ‘Bravo, bravo Rossi!’ It even se
emed to Ignacy that somewhere in the chorus he could distinguish the weary voice of Oberman the cashier, which began yelling first and was the last to fall silent.
‘Upon my soul,’ he thought, ‘can Wokulski be directing a claque?’
But he at once abandoned this unworthy thought. For Rossi acted splendidly and everyone applauded with equal vigour. Mr Pifke, the jolly pie-maker, applauded most of all and, in accordance with the agreement, handed Rossi the album with a great deal of to-do after the third act. The celebrated actor did not even nod to Pifke, but he made a very deep bow in the direction of the box in which Izabela was sitting and perhaps—in that direction alone.
‘It’s a delusion! A fancy!’ thought Ignacy as he left the theatre after the last act, ‘after all, Staś would not be so stupid as to…’
In the end, however, Ignacy was not displeased with his visit to the theatre. Rossi’s acting delighted him; some scenes, such as the murder of King Duncan and the appearance of Banquo’s ghost had made a powerful impression on him, and he had also been quite delighted by the way Macbeth fought with his sword. So, as he left the theatre, he was not so vexed with Wokulski; on the contrary he even began wondering whether his dear Staś had invented all that business of handing Rossi a gift merely in order to give him pleasure. ‘He knows, does my honest Staś,’ he thought, ‘that I’d only go to the Italian actors if I were forced to. Well, and it turned out nicely after all. That fellow acts wonderfully well, I must see him again…Besides,’ he added after a moment, ‘anyone with as much money as Staś can give presents to actors if he chooses…I must say I’d prefer some nicely built actress, but I’m a man of another age; they even call me a Bonapartist and a Romantic…’
Thinking this, he muttered softly to himself, for he was fretted by another thought which he wanted to suppress: ‘Why had Staś stared so oddly at the box in which the Countess, Mr Łęcki and Miss Łęcka were sitting? Could it possibly be…? Oh, for goodness sake…Surely Wokulski had too much sense to suppose that anything could come of that…Any child could see that that girl, usually as cold as ice, was crazy about Rossi…How she looked at him, how she even sometimes forgot herself, and in the theatre too, in the presence of a thousand other people. No, that is nonsense. They are quite right to call me a Romantic…’
And he tried yet again to think about something else. He even went (despite the lateness of the hour) into a restaurant, where a band consisting of fiddles, a pianoforte and a harp was playing. He ate roast meat with potatoes and cabbage, drank a tankard of beer, then another, then a third and a fourth…not to mention a seventh. He even grew bold enough to put two 40-groszy pieces in the harpist’s tray and begin humming. Then it occurred to him he simply must introduce himself to four Germans eating tripe and onions at the next table. ‘But why should I introduce myself to them? Let them introduce themselves to me,’ thought Ignacy.
At this moment he was preoccupied by the idea that those four gentlemen ought to introduce themselves to him, because he was an older person, also a former officer of the Hungarian infantry which had well and truly defeated the Germans. He even summoned the waitress for the express purpose of sending her over to those four gentlemen eating tripe and onions, when all at once the band of fiddles, harp and pianoforte struck up—the ‘Marseillaise’!
Ignacy was reminded of Hungary, of the infantry, of August Katz and, feeling tears coming into his eyes, so that at any moment he would burst into sobs, he seized his antiquated top-hat from the table and throwing down a rouble, rushed from the restaurant. Not until the fresh air in the street enveloped him did he lean against a lamp-post and ask: ‘For goodness sake, am I tipsy? Impossible! Seven beers…’
He went home, trying to walk as straight as possible, and only now did he discover that Warsaw pavements are unusually uneven; for at every few yards he had to step aside into the gutter, or towards the house walls. Then (to convince himself that his intellectual capacities were unimpaired) he began counting the stars in the sky: ‘One…two…three…seven…seven what? Ah seven tankards of beer…Can I possibly?…What did Staś send me to the theatre for?’
He found his way home and reached for the bell. But after ringing for the door-keeper seven times, he felt the urge to lean against the corner between gate and wall, and tried to count—not because he had to, but just for his own benefit—how many minutes would pass before the door-keeper opened. With this in mind, he brought out his watch which had a second hand, and realised it was half-past one o’clock.
‘Confounded door-keeper,’ he muttered, ‘I have to get up at six, yet here he is keeping me out in the street at half-past one…’ Fortunately the door-man opened the gate at once, Ignacy passed through with a perfectly steady tread (it was more than steady, it was very steady) and crossed the entire yard, aware that his top-hat was a little crooked, though only a little.
Having found the door of his dwelling with no difficulty whatsoever, he tried several times to insert the key in the lock. He could feel the key-hole, he clutched the key as firmly as he could, but even so he could not get in: ‘Can I possibly…?’
At this moment the door opened, and at the same time his one-eyed poodle Ir barked several times: ‘Yap…yap…yap!’ ‘Shut up, confounded thing,’ Ignacy muttered and he undressed and went to bed without even lighting the lamp.
He had awful dreams. He dreamed, or had the illusion, that he was still in the theatre and could see Wokulski with his wide-open eyes, staring at a certain box. In this box the Countess, Mr Łęcki and Izabela were sitting. It seemed to Rzecki that Wokulski was looking at Izabela in that same manner as before: ‘It can’t be,’ he muttered, ‘Staś isn’t so stupid…’
Meanwhile (in his dream) Izabela rose from her seat and went out of the box, with Wokulski following her, still gazing like someone mesmerised. Izabela left the theatre, crossed Theatre Square and ran lightly up the Town Hall tower, with Wokulski following, still gazing like someone mesmerised. Then Izabela rose into the air like a bird and flew over the theatre, while Wokulski tried to fly after her but instead fell ten storeys to the ground.
‘Goodness! Goodness me!’ Rzecki exclaimed, starting up in bed.
‘Yap, yap…’ Ir barked in his sleep.
‘Well, obviously I am quite drunk,’ Ignacy muttered, lying down again and impatiently pulling up the quilt, under which he lay shivering. He kept his eyes open several minutes and again fancied he was in the theatre, just after the third act, when the pie-maker Pifke was to hand the album of Warsaw and its beauties to Rossi.
Ignacy watched closely (Pifke was his deputy, after all) and saw with the utmost horror that instead of the costly album, the infamous Pifke was handing the Italian some sort of a parcel done up in brown paper and carelessly tied with string.
And Ignacy saw something worse. For the Italian smiled ironically, untied the string, unwrapped the paper and in full view of Izabela, Wokulski, the Countess and a thousand other spectators—revealed a pair of yellow nankeen pantaloons with an apron attached in front and little straps on the bottom. Just like the ones Ignacy had worn at the time of the famous Sebastopol campaign!
To make these horrors still worse, the infamous Pifke bawled at the top of his voice: ‘This is a gift from Stanisław Wokulski and Ignacy Rzecki, his manager!’ The entire theatre burst out laughing: all the eyes, all the pointing fingers were directed at the eighth row of the stalls and at the very seat occupied by Ignacy. The culprit rose to protest, but felt his voice freeze in his throat, and that—to make matters even worse—he himself was falling. He was falling into a limitless, bottomless ocean of nothingness, in which he would rest forever and ever, without once being able to explain to the audience that the nankeen pantaloons with the little apron and straps had been stolen from his collection of personal souvenirs.
After a night restlessly spent, Rzecki did not wake till a quarter to seven. He could hardly believe his own eyes when he looked at his watch, though in the end he had to. He even had to believe that last n
ight he had been somewhat tipsy, to which a slight headache and general heaviness of his limbs attested.
But all these sickly symptoms alarmed Ignacy less than one terrible symptom: he didn’t feel like going to the shop. And, even worse, he felt not only lazy, but even completely lacking in pride, for instead of being ashamed of his decline and struggling against his slothful instincts, he, Rzecki, kept finding reasons for staying in his room as long as he possibly could.
First it seemed to him that Ir was poorly, then that his never-used rifle was rusty, then that there was something wrong with the green curtain that screened the window, and finally that his tea was too hot, and must be drunk more slowly than usual.
Consequently, Ignacy was forty minutes late to work and he sidled into the office with a lowered gaze. It seemed to him that each of the ‘gentlemen’ (as if to spite him, each had been punctual that day!) was staring with the utmost contempt at his bloodshot eyes, earth-coloured skin and slightly trembling hands.
‘Very likely they are thinking I have given myself up to dissipation altogether,’ the unhappy Ignacy sighed.
Then he brought out the ledgers, dipped his pen and made as if he were reckoning. He was certain he smelled of beer like an old barrel turned out of a vaults, and began very seriously to consider whether he ought not to resign from the store after having committed such a series of shameful acts…
‘I got drunk…came home late…got up late…I was forty minutes late to work…’
At this moment Klein came up with a letter: ‘It says “Very Urgent” so I opened it,’ said the starveling clerk, giving Rzecki the envelope. Ignacy took it and read:
‘Stupid man—or vile! Despite so many benevolent warnings you are nevertheless set on buying a house which will prove the tomb of your dishonestly gained fortune…’
Ignacy glanced at the last line but there was no signature: the letter was anonymous. He looked at the envelope; it was addressed to Wokulski. He went on reading:
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