I grew quite warm. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I exclaimed, ‘what do you mean?’
‘Nothing at all,’ he replied, ‘I don’t suppose you call on her by the window, but in the regular way. In any case, do as you please, but pray tell the ladies at your earliest opportunity that I’ve had a letter from Paris …’
‘In connection with Ludwik Stawski?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Have they finally found him?’
‘Not yet, but they’re on his track, and expect soon to solve the problem of his whereabouts.’
‘Maybe the poor devil is dead,’ I cried, pressing Wokulski’s hand, ‘please, Staś,’ I added, after cooling off somewhat, ‘do me a favour, visit these ladies and tell them the news yourself.’
‘I’m not an undertaker, to give people this kind of gratification,’ Wokulski said indignantly.
But when I began telling how respectable the ladies were, how often they inquired whether he would visit them one day … and when I also mentioned it would be worth while to take a look at the apartment house, he began to yield. ‘I care little for the house,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders, ‘I’m going to sell it any day now.’
In the end he let himself be persuaded, and we went there around one o’clock that afternoon. In the yard, I noticed the blinds drawn fast in Maruszewicz’s apartment. Obviously he had acquired a new set of furniture.
Staś glanced carelessly around at the windows of the house and listened to my report on the improvements without paying the slightest attention. We had laid a new floor in the gateway, mended roofs, painted walls, and had the stairs washed once a week. In a word, we have made a thoroughly presentable house out of a neglected one. Everything was in order, not excluding the yard and the drains: everything—except the rents.
‘In any case,’ I concluded, ‘your manager Mr Wirski will give you more detailed information. I’ll send the caretaker for him at once.’
‘Oh, never mind the rents and the manager,’ Staś muttered, ‘let’s call on this Mrs Stawska, then get back to the store.’
We entered the first floor of the left wing, where there was a strong smell of boiling cauliflower: Staś frowned and I knocked on the kitchen door. ‘Are the ladies home?’ I asked the plump cook.
‘As if they wasn’t, whenever you come,’ she replied, winking.
‘You see how they welcome us,’ I whispered to Staś in German. He nodded in reply, and thrust out his lower lip.
In the little sitting-room Mrs Stawska’s mother was, as usual, knitting a stocking: she rose from her chair and stared in surprise on seeing Wokulski. Little Helena peeped in from the other room: ‘Mama,’ she whispered so loudly that she must have been audible in the yard, ‘Mr Rzecki and some other gentleman have come.’
At this moment Mrs Stawska joined us. Seeing both ladies, I exclaimed: ‘Our landlord, Mr Wokulski, has come to pay his respects and give you news …’
‘Of Ludwik?’ Mrs Misiewicz caught on, ‘is he alive?’
Mrs Stawska turned pale, then blushed just as quickly. At that moment she was so pretty that even Wokulski gazed at her, if not with admiration, then at least with cordiality. I am certain he would have fallen in love with her on the spot, had it not been for that confounded smell of cauliflower wafting in from the kitchen.
We sat down. Wokulski asked the ladies whether they were content with their apartment, then told them that Ludwik Stawski had been in New York two years earlier and moved to London under an assumed name. He mentioned in passing that Stawski had been ill at that time, and he was expecting definite news within a few weeks. On hearing this Mrs Misiewicz referred several times to her handkerchief for help. Mrs Stawska was calmer, only a few tears trickled down her cheeks. To hide her emotion, she turned with a smile to her little daughter and said in a low voice: ‘Say thank you, Helena, to the gentleman for bringing us news of papa.’
Again her tears sparkled, but she controlled herself. Meanwhile, Helena made a curtsy to Wokulski and then, after gazing at him with wide-open eyes, suddenly put her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth. I will never forget the change which Staś’s countenance underwent at this unexpected embrace. To my knowledge, no child had ever kissed him before, and at first he drew back in surprise: then he put his arms around little Helena, gazed at her tenderly, and kissed her on the brow. I’d have sworn he was about to rise and say to Mrs Stawska: ‘Allow me, madam, to take the place of this dear little girl’s father …’
But — he didn’t; he lowered his head and fell into his usual brooding. I’d have given half my annual wages to know what he was thinking about then just. Of Miss Łęcka, perhaps? Ah, my age is telling again … What of Miss Łęcka? She can’t hold a candle to Stawska!
After a few minutes’ silence, Wokulski asked: ‘Do you ladies like your neighbours?’
‘Depends which ones you mean,’ Mrs Misiewicz said.
‘Of course we do, very much,’ Mrs Stawska interposed. As she spoke, she glanced at Wokulski and blushed.
‘Is Baroness Krzeszowska a pleasant neighbour?’ Wokulski asked.
‘Oh, sir! …’ Mrs Misiewicz cried, raising a finger.
‘She’s an unfortunate woman,’ Mrs Stawska interposed, ‘she has lost her daughter …’
Saying this, she twisted a corner of her handkerchief and tried to glance from beneath those magnificent eyelashes — not at me at all. But her eyelids must have been heavy as lead, for she blushed still more and became increasingly serious, as though one of us had vexed her.
‘And who might that Mr Maruszewicz be?’ Wokulski went on, as though not thinking of the two ladies present at all.
‘A ne’er-do-well, a scamp,’ Mrs Misiewicz replied hastily.
‘No, mama, he’s only eccentric in his ways,’ her daughter corrected her. At this moment her eyes were wide open, and their pupils enlarged as never before.
‘Those students are said to be very ill-behaved,’ said Wokulski, staring at the piano.
‘Like all young men,’ Mrs Misiewicz replied, blowing her nose loudly.
‘Mind, Helena, your bow has come undone again,’ said Mrs Stawska, leaning forward to her little daughter, perhaps to hide her embarrassment at the mere mention of the students’ misbehaviour.
By this time, Wokulski had irritated me with his conversation. A man must be either a half-wit or badly brought up to ask such a pretty woman about the other tenants! So I stopped listening to him, and began looking around the yard mechanically. And this is what I saw: in one of Maruszewicz’s windows, the blind had been moved aside, and through the gap someone was looking in our direction: ‘The confounded man is spying on us,’ thought I. I turned my gaze to the second-floor front. Goodness me! In the furthest room of the Baroness Krzeszowska’s apartment, both windows were open and in the depths could be seen … she herself in person, gazing at Mrs Stawska’s apartment through opera-glasses.
‘May God have mercy on the serpent!’ said I to myself, certain that scandal would result from all this peeping.
I did not pray in vain. Heavenly punishment was already suspended over the meddler’s head, in the shape of a herring dangling from a window on the third floor. A mysterious hand, attired in a navy-blue sleeve with a silver band, was holding the herring: beyond it, a thin face wearing a malicious smile kept appearing every few moments. My insight wasn’t needed to guess that this was one of the non-paying students, waiting for the Baroness to appear in her window so he could drop the herring on her. But the Baroness was more cautious, and the student grew bored. He shifted the providential herring from one hand to the other, and, no doubt to kill time, made very unpleasant grimaces at the girls in the Parisian laundry.
Just as I was deciding that the attack on the Baroness would come to nothing, Wokulski rose and began bidding the ladies goodbye.
‘Are you gentlemen leaving so soon?’ Mrs Stawska murmured, and at that moment she grew exceedingly embarrassed.
‘Perhaps you gentlemen will
call more often …’ Mrs Misiewicz added. But that milksop, Staś, instead of asking the ladies to let him call every day or to let him board there (which I would certainly have done in his place), this … this eccentric asked if they needed any repairs done in the apartment!
‘Oh, everything necessary has been done by kind Mr Rzecki,’ Mrs Misiewicz replied, turning to me with an agreeable smile (to be frank, I don’t care for such smiles from persons of a certain age). Staś paused a moment in the kitchen, and the smell of cauliflower clearly irritated him, for he said to me: ‘A ventilator or something must be installed here.’
On the stairs I couldn’t control myself any longer, and cried: ‘If you were to come here more often, you’d have seen for yourself what improvements are needed in the house. But what’s the house to you, or even such a pretty woman!’
Wokulski stopped in the passage and muttered, gazing at a gutter: ‘Hm! If I’d met her earlier, perhaps I’d have married her.’
Hearing this, I had a strange feeling: I was pleased, but it was also as though someone had stuck a pin in my heart: ‘So you’re not going to get married, then?’ I asked.
‘Who knows?’ he replied, ‘maybe I will … But not to her.’
Hearing this, I experienced an even stranger feeling: I was sorry Mrs Stawska wouldn’t get Staś as her husband, but at the same time, a burden seemed to have been lifted from my chest.
Hardly had we entered the yard when I looked up, and there was the Baroness, leaning out of her window and calling to us: ‘You, sir! … I beg …’
Suddenly she shrieked in a heartrending voice: ‘Ah! Nihilists!’ and retreated into the depths of her room. At that moment, a herring fell into the yard a few feet from us, whereupon the caretaker hurled himself upon it with such voracity that he didn’t even notice me.
‘Won’t you call on the Baroness?’ I asked Staś, ‘she seems anxious to see you about something.’
‘Why doesn’t she leave me alone, for goodness sake,’ he replied with a shrug. In the street he hailed a droshky and we went back to the store without speaking, but I am positive he was thinking of Mrs Stawska, and if it hadn’t been for those confounded cauliflowers …
I was so on edge, so vexed, that on closing the store I went out for a beer. There I met Councillor Węgrowicz, who was still busy tearing Wokulski’s reputation to shreds, but who has very happy political notions … and I argued with him until midnight.
Well, now — what did I set out to write about? Ah! Three or perhaps four days after our visit to Mrs Stawska, Staś comes into the store and hands me a letter addressed to himself: ‘Just read this,’ said he, with a smile. I opened it and read:
‘Mr Wokulski! Forgive me not addressing you as Dear sir, but I cannot bring myself to use such a form to a man from whom everyone is turning away in disgust. Unfortunate man! You have not yet rehabilitated yourself from your earlier misdeeds, but you are already disgracing yourself by new ones. Today the whole town is talking of nothing but your visits to a woman of bad reputation, Stawska. You have rendezvous with her in Town, you creep into her apartment nights, which might suggest you have not entirely lost all sense of shame, but you even visit her by broad daylight, in the presence of servants, young men and the respectable lodgers in that ill-famed apartment house.
‘Do not deceive yourself, wretched man, that you are alone in carrying on an intrigue with her. You are being helped by your manager, that wretch Wirski, and by your plenipotentiary, Rzecki, who has turned grey with dissipation.
‘I must add that not only is Rzecki deceiving you with your mistress, but is also robbing you of income from the house, for he had lowered the rents of certain tenants, firstly that Stawska. As a result, your house is worthless, you stand on the brink of ruin and, indeed, a noble benefactor would do you a great favour by buying that ruin of the Łęckis at a small loss to yourself.
‘If, therefore, such a benefactor could be found, then dispose of your burden, take what you can get, be grateful and flee the country before human justice chains you and throws you into a dungeon. Be on your guard! Beware! And take the advice of a well-wisher.’
‘Quite a woman, what?’ asked Wokulski, seeing I had finished.
‘May the devil take her!’ I exclaimed, guessing he meant the author of the letter. ‘So I have turned grey with dissipation, have I? I steal! I flirt! Damned serpent!’
‘Well, well…calm down, here is her lawyer,’ said Staś.
At this moment into the store came a little man in an old fur coat, a faded top-hat and huge galoshes. He entered, gazed around like a police spy, asked Klein when Wokulski would be there, suddenly pretended he had only just caught sight of us, approached Staś and whispered: ‘Mr Wokulski, is it not? May I have a few words with you, in private?’
Staś winked at me, and the three of us went into my apartment. The visitor removed his coat, whereat I noticed his trousers were still more frayed and his hair still more moth-eaten than his fur coat. ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ said he, stretching his right hand to Wokulski and his left to me, ‘I am lawyer — ‘
Here he mentioned his name and — stood thus with his hands in the air. By a strange coincidence, neither Staś nor I felt any desire to take them. He realised this, but was not abashed. Indeed, with the best face in the world, he wiped his hands together and said, with a smile: ‘You gentlemen don’t even ask what business brings me here?’
‘We suppose you will tell us yourself,’ Wokulski replied.
‘Right you are!’ the visitor cried. ‘I’ll be brief. There is here in town a certain rich though very miserly Lithuanian (the Lithuanians are very miserly people!), who has asked me to recommend some apartment house to him for purchase. I have some fifteen on my books, but out of respect for you, Mr Wokulski, for I know the good you are doing our country, I recommended your house, the one that used to be Łęcki’s, and after two weeks’ work on him, I achieved so much that he is now ready to pay … Guess how much, gentlemen? Eighty thousand roubles! A splendid offer, isn’t it, now?’
Wokulski flushed with anger, and for a moment I thought he was going to throw the visitor out of the house. However, he controlled himself and replied in that tone he has, that sharp and disagreeable tone: ‘I know this Lithuanian. His name is Baroness Krzeszowska.’
‘What’s that?’ cried the attorney in amazement.
‘That miserly Lithuanian won’t pay eighty thousand, but ninety thousand for my house, while you, sir, propose a lower price as so to make more profit for yourself.’
‘Ho ho ho!’ the attorney began chuckling, ‘who would do otherwise, my dear Mr Wokulski?’
‘Pray tell your Lithuanian, sir,’ Staś interrupted, ‘that I’ll sell the house, but for a hundred thousand. And that until New Year. After New Year, I’ll raise the price.’
‘But what you’re saying is inhuman,’ the visitor burst out. ‘You want to tear her last penny away from that wretched woman … What will the world say to this, pray consider!’
‘I don’t care what the world says,’ Wokulski declared, ‘and if the world wants to moralise to me as you do, sir, I’ll show it the door. Come, sir — there’s the door, d’you see!’
‘I’ll give ninety-two thousand, but not a penny more,’ the attorney replied.
‘Put your overcoat on, you will catch cold in the yard …’
‘Ninety-five th —’ the attorney interposed, and began putting on his coat hastily.
‘Well, goodbye to you, sir,’ said Wokulski, opening the door.
The lawyer bowed low and went out, adding sweetly from the threshold: ‘I’ll be back in a day or two. Perhaps you’ll be better disposed, sir …’
Staś shut the door in his face. After the horrible attorney’s visit, I knew what to expect. The Baroness was certainly going to buy Staś’s house, but would first use all manner of means to bargain for it. I know those means! One was the anonymous letter in which she blackened Mrs Stawska’s reputation and said I’d turned grey with di
ssipation. But as soon as she buys the house, she will drive out the students first of all, and certainly poor Mrs Helena too. If only her hatred would stop there!
Now I can narrate all the events that followed, post-haste. After the attorney’s visit, I felt an evil premonition. I decided to call on Mrs Stawska that very day, and warn her of the Baroness. Above all, though, I would tell them to sit at the windows as rarely as possible. For the ladies, apart from the virtues that adorn them, have the disastrous habit of sitting all day at the window. Mrs Misiewicz does it, so does Mrs Stawska, little Helena, and even the cook, Marianna. Not only do they sit there all day, but they sit there evenings too, by lamplight, and never think to pull down the blinds, except on going to bed. So everything that happens in their apartment can be seen as if they were inside a lantern.
To respectable neighbours, this way of passing the time would be the finest proof of their respectability: they demonstrate in every way that they’ve nothing to hide. But when I recalled that the ladies were constantly being spied on by Maruszewicz and the Baroness, and when I also thought that the Baroness hates Mrs Stawska — then I was seized by the worst forebodings. That very evening, I wanted to hasten to my noble friends and urge them by all I hold sacred not to sit all the time in their windows, and not expose themselves to the Baroness’s spying. However, at nine-thirty precisely I felt thirsty, and went for a beer instead of going to the ladies.
Councillor Węgrowicz was there, as well as Szprott the commercial traveller. They were just saying something about the house that collapsed in Wspolna Street, when suddenly Węgrowicz clinked his tankard against mine and said: ‘More than one other house will collapse before New Year!’
Szprott winked. I didn’t care for that wink, as I have never liked winking, so I asked: ‘What, pray, are those grimaces supposed to mean?’
He laughed foolishly, and said: ‘You know better than we do. Wokulski’s selling his store …’
Good God! … I’m surprised I didn’t hit him over the head with my tankard. Fortunately I restrained my first impulse, drank two tankards of beer in rapid succession, and asked in an outwardly calm voice: ‘Why should Wokulski sell his store — and who to?’
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