‘Are they such pretty toys?’ I asked, privately making a certain plan.
‘Perfectly lovely!’ said Mrs Stawska, animatedly, ‘especially one enormous doll with dark hair, and when you press her … here, under the bodice,’ she added, blushing.
‘Don’t you mean on the stomach? … forgive me, madam,’ I inquired.
‘Yes,’ she said hastily, ‘then the doll moves its eyes and cries “Mama!” How charming it is, I’d like to own it myself. Its name is Mimi. When Helena saw it the first time, she pressed her hands together and was quite turned to stone. And when Baroness Krzeszowska touched it, and the doll started talking, Helena cried: “Oh mama, how pretty she is, how clever … Can I give her a kiss?” And she kissed the tip of its enamelled shoe. Since then, she’s been talking about the doll in her sleep: as soon as she wakes, she wants to go to the Baroness’s apartment, and when she’s there, she’s perfectly happy to spend the whole day gazing at the doll, with hands pressed together as though she were praying. Indeed,’ Mrs Stawska concluded in an undertone (Helena was playing in the other room), ‘I’d be very happy if I could buy her a doll like that.’
‘It must certainly be a very expensive toy,’ Mrs Misiewicz remarked.
‘That’s not the point, mama. Who knows whether I shall ever be able to bring her as much happiness as I might today, by one doll,’ Mrs Stawska replied.
‘I think,’ said I, ‘that we have just such a doll in the store. If you would deign to call …’
I dared not make her a present, realising it would be more agree-able if she herself helped make the child happy. Although we were talking in lowered voices, Helena evidently overheard us speaking of the doll, and she ran in from the other room with sparkling eyes. To turn her attention elsewhere, I asked, ‘Well now, Helena, so you like the Baroness?’
‘Quite well,’ the child replied, leaning against my knees and looking at her mother. (Oh Lord, why aren’t I her father?)
‘And does she talk to you?’
‘Not very much. Once she asked me if Mr Wokulski kisses me a lot.’
‘Did she, now! And what did you say to that?’
‘I said I didn’t know who Wokulski is. And then the Baroness said … Oh, how loudly your watch ticks. Show me!’
I took out my watch and gave it to Helena: ‘And what did the Baroness say?’ I asked.
‘The Baroness said: “How is it that you don’t know who Mr Wokulski is? Why, he’s the man who visits you with that deb … debchee, Rzecki.” Ha ha ha! You’re a chee! Show me the inside of your watch.’
I glanced at Mrs Stawska. She was so taken aback, that she even forgot to scold Helena. After tea and dry rolls (for, as the servant girl said, there was no butter to be had that day), I bade the excellent ladies farewell, vowing to myself that if I were in Staś’s shoes, I wouldn’t let the Baroness have the apartment house for less than two hundred thousand roubles.
Meanwhile, after exhausting various influential people and fearing lest Wokulski either put up the price or sell the house to someone else, that serpent finally decided to buy it for a hundred thousand. She’s supposed to have been furious for several days, to have gone into hysterics, beat the servant girl, insulted her attorney in the surveyor’s office, but she finally signed the deed of acquisition. For the next few days after the purchase of our house there was peace.
Peace, that’s to say, in that we heard nothing of the Baroness, though her lodgers called on us with complaints. First came the tailor, the one on the third-floor back, whining that the new owner was raising his rent by thirty roubles a year. When I explained to him for a half hour that this was nothing to do with us, he wiped his eyes, scowled and bade me goodbye with the words: ‘Obviously Mr Wokulski doesn’t have God in his heart, if he can sell the house to a person who injures other people.’
Did you ever hear the like? Next day the owner of the Parisian laundry appeared. She wore a velvet salope, had much dignity in her gestures and even more firmness in her expression. She sat down on a chair in the store and looked around as though she fully intended to purchase several Japanese vases, then began: ‘Well, thank you, sir! You have behaved very well to me, to be sure … You bought that house in July and sold it in December, just like a tradesman, without warning anyone.’
She grew red in the face and went on: ‘Today that trollop sent some booby to me, with notice to leave. I don’t know what’s got into her, after all I pay regular … And here she turns me out of the house, the hussy, and even casts aspersions on my establishment … She says my young ladies make eyes at the students, which is a lie, and she thinks … she imagines I’ll find another place in the middle of winter … that I’ll move out of the house my customers have got used to. But I stand to lose thousands of roubles by this, and who will compensate me?’
I grew hot and cold by turns as I listened to this speech, uttered in a powerful contralto voice in the presence of several customers. I hardly had time to pull the female into my room, and implore her to start proceedings against us for damage and loss.
A few hours after this female — lo and behold, in comes a student, the one with a beard who didn’t pay rent on principle: ‘Ah, how are you?’ says he, ‘is it true that the devilish Krzeszowska has bought the house from you?’
‘It is,’ said I, privately certain he’d start to strike me.
‘Confound it!’ said the bearded student, ‘but that Wokulski was a fine landlord (N.B. Staś hasn’t had a penny piece out of them for their apartment), and now he’s sold the house. So Krzeszowska can turn us out of that hole?’
‘Hm … Hm …’ I replied.
‘And she will, too,’ he added, sighing, ‘we’ve already had some German with the demand that we move out. But I’ll go to the devil before they get rid of us without court proceedings, or if they do … We’ll give the whole house something to talk about! Good-day, sir.’
‘Well,’ thought I, ‘that one at least has no complaints against us. Evidently they’re really prepared to give the Baroness something to think about …’
Finally, next day, Wirski rushes in: ‘You know what, colleague?’ he said, indignantly, ‘the old girl has sacked me, and ordered me to move out by New Year.’
‘Wokulski has already made provision for you,’ I replied, ‘you’ll get a post in the trading company.’
By thus listening to some, calming others and comforting yet others, I survived the main attack, somehow. I also understood that the Baroness was sowing disaster amidst the tenants like Tamerlaine, and I felt an instinctive uneasiness regarding the pretty and virtuous Mrs Stawska.
During the second half of December, I looked up one day — the door opened, and in came Mrs Stawska. As pretty as ever (she is always pretty when unhappy and when she looks worried). She gazed at me out of her charming eyes and said quietly: ‘Would you be kind enough to show me the doll?’
The doll (and three similar ones) had long been ready, but I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t find them for a few minutes. Klein is absurd with those grimaces of his: he’s ready to think I’m in love with Mrs Stawska. Finally I extricated the boxes — there were three large dolls, a brunette, a blonde and one with chestnut hair. Each had real hair, each blinked its eyes when pressed in the tummy, and uttered a sound which Mrs Stawska took to be ‘Mama’, Klein to be ‘Papa’, and I to be ‘Uhu’.
‘Lovely,’ said Mrs Stawska, ‘but they must be very expensive.’
‘Madam,’ said I, ‘these are goods we want to dispose of, so we can let them go very cheaply. I’ll see my boss …’
Staś was working behind the cupboards, but when I told him Mrs Stawska had come and what she wanted, he dropped his accounts and hurried into the store in an affable mood. I even noticed that he gazed at Mrs Stawska as cordially as though she had made a powerful impression on him. Well, finally! Thank goodness!
‘A bargain’s a bargain,’ we told Mrs Stawska, adding that the dolls were damaged goods for which there was no demand, so we cou
ld dispose of them for three roubles.
‘I’ll take this one,’ she replied, choosing the chestnut, ‘because it is exactly like the Baroness’s. Helena will be delighted.’
When it came to paying, Mrs Stawska was again seized by scruples: she thought such a doll must be worth at least fifteen roubles, and only the combined efforts of Wokulski, Klein and me succeeded in convincing her that we still had a profit on three roubles.
Wokulski went back to his business, and I asked Mrs Stawska the news from the house, and what her relations with the Baroness were like?
‘I have none,’ she replied, blushing, ‘Baroness Krzeszowska made such a scene because she had to pay a hundred thousand for the house on account of my not interceding with Mr Wokulski on her behalf, and so forth … that I said goodbye to her, and won’t go there any more. Of course, she’s given us notice to quit by New Year.’
‘Did she pay you what she owed?’
‘Oh …’ Mrs Stawska sighed, dropping her muff, which Klein instantly retrieved.
‘So — she didn’t?’
‘No … She said she hadn’t any money just then, and wasn’t sure if my bill was right.’
Mrs Stawska and I smiled at the Baroness’s eccentricities, then said goodbye hopefully. As she was going out, Klein opened the door for her so gallantly that either he regards her as our boss’s future wife — or is in love with her himself! He also lives in the Baroness’s house, and sometimes visits Mrs Stawska: but during his visits he sits there so dejectedly that little Helena once asked her grandma: ‘Didn’t Mr Klein take his castor oil today?’ He’s a dreamer! But who wouldn’t dream of such a woman?
Now I will describe the tragedy, the mere recollection of which stifles me with rage.
On the day before Christmas Eve in the year 1878, I was in the store when I got a letter from Mrs Stawska, asking me to go there that evening. The letter impressed me as being marked by emotion, so I thought perhaps she had had news of her husband. ‘He’ll certainly come back,’ I thought, ‘may the devil take lost husbands who find themselves after a few years.’
Towards evening, in rushes Wirski, breathless and confused: he dragged me into my room, shut the door, threw himself into the armchair without taking his coat off, and said: ‘Do you know why Krzeszowska stayed in Maruszewicz’s apartment till midnight yesterday?’
‘Till midnight — in Maruszewicz’s apartment?’
‘Yes, and with that scoundrel, her attorney, too. The blackguard Maruszewicz looked out of his window and saw Mrs Stawska dressing a doll, and the Baroness went into his apartment with her opera-glasses to check.’
‘What then?’ I asked.
‘Why, a doll belonging to the Baroness’s late daughter disappeared from her apartment a few days ago, and today that madwoman is accusing Mrs Stawska of …’
‘Of what?’
‘Of stealing the doll!’
I crossed myself. ‘Think no more of it,’ I said, ‘that doll was bought in our store.’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘but at nine o’clock this morning the Baroness rushed into Mrs Stawska’s apartment with a policeman, ordered him to seize the doll and write out a charge. The charge has already gone to court …’
‘Are you mad, Mr Wirski? After all, the doll was bought here!’
‘I know, I know — but what does that signify when there’s already a scandal?’ said Wirski. ‘The worst of it is (I know this from the policeman) that, because Mrs Stawska didn’t want Helena to find out about the doll, she didn’t want to show it at first, begged them to speak quietly, burst into tears … The policeman says he was embarrassed, because in the first place he didn’t know why the Baroness had brought him into Mrs Stawska’s apartment. But when the serpent began shrieking: “She robbed me! The doll disappeared on the very day when Stawska was in my apartment for the last time … Arrest her, for I will answer with my entire fortune that the charge is just!” — so then my policeman took the doll to the police station, and asked Mrs Stawska to go with him … A scandal, a dreadful scandal!’
‘And what did you do then?’ I asked, furious with rage.
‘I wasn’t home at the time. Mrs Stawska’s servant made matters worse by calling the policeman names in the street, for which she is now sitting in the jail herself … While that owner of the Parisian laundry, hoping to curry favour with the Baroness, called Mrs Stawska names … The only satisfaction we have is that the honest students poured something so nasty on the Baroness’s head that it can’t be washed out …’
‘But the court! What about justice?’ I cried.
‘The court will find Mrs Stawska not guilty,’ he said, ‘that is obvious. But as for the scandal, well … The poor lady is ruined: today she dismissed her pupils, and didn’t go to any lessons. She and her mother sat weeping.’
Of course, I hastened to Mrs Stawska without waiting for the store to close (this is happening ever more often nowadays), and I even took a droshky. On the way, I was struck by the happiest of thoughts — to inform Wokulski of the matter. So I called on him, uncertain whether he would be home, for he spends more and more time dancing attendance on Miss Łęcka.
Wokulski was in, but somehow absent-minded: his courting is obviously not doing him any good. However, when I told him my tale of Mrs Stawska, the Baroness and the doll, the young fellow livened up, raised his head and his eyes flashed (I have sometimes noticed that the best cure for our own troubles are those of someone else).
He heard me out attentively (his mournful thoughts took flight), and said: ‘The Baroness is a damned nuisance … But Mrs Stawska needn’t worry: her case is as clear as daylight. Is she the only person that human baseness strikes?’
‘It’s all very well for you to talk,’ I replied, ‘for you’re a man and, above all, have plenty of money. She, on the other hand, has lost all her lessons, poor thing, as a result of this incident or rather — she’s declined them herself. So, what is she going to live on?’
‘Oh!’ Wokulski cried, striking his forehead, ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
He walked up and down the room several times (frowning hard), stumbled against a chair, drummed on the window-pane and suddenly halted in front of me. ‘Very well,’ he said, ‘go to the ladies, and I’ll be there within the hour. I have an idea we’ll do some good business with Mrs Miller.’
I looked at him with admiration. Mrs Miller recently lost her husband, who had been a haberdashery merchant like us; all her store, property and credit depended on Wokulski. So I almost guessed what Staś was going to do for Mrs Stawska.
I galloped along the street in a droshky, going like three steam-engines, and rushed like a positive sky-rocket to the beautiful, noble, unhappy, abandoned Mrs Stawska. I had my lungs full of cheerful exclamations, and on opening the door felt like shouting with a laugh: ‘Think nothing of it, ladies!’
Then I went in — and all my good humour stayed outside the door.
Just imagine what I found. Marianna in the kitchen with her head wrapped up, and a swollen face — certain proof she had been in a police cell all day. The stove had gone out, the dinner dishes were unwashed, the samovar not ready, while around the poor swollen creature sat the janitor’s wife, two servant girls and the milk-woman, all with funereal expressions.
A chill went down my spine, but I walked into the drawing-room. An almost identical sight met my eyes. In the middle was Mrs Misiewicz in her armchair, also with her head tied up and around her were Mr and Mrs Wirski, also the owner of the Parisian laundry who had quarrelled with the Baroness again, and several other ladies, who were talking in undertones but, for all that, blowing their noses a whole octave higher than usual. To crown it all, I noticed Mrs Stawska by the stove, sitting on a little stool, as pale as a sheet.
In a word — a tomb-like atmosphere, faces pale or greenish, eyes tear-stained and noses red. Only little Helena was surviving somehow. She was sitting at the piano, with her little old doll, hitting the keys with its hands from time to time an
d saying: ‘Quiet, Zosia, quiet! Don’t play the piano, mama’s head aches.’
Pray add to this the dimmed lamplight which was smoking a little and … the blinds up — and anyone will understand the feelings that seized me. On seeing me, Mrs Misiewicz began pouring out what must have been all that was left of her tears: ‘Ah, so you’ve come, noble Mr Rzecki! Aren’t you ashamed of poor women overcome with disgrace? No, don’t kiss my hand … Our wretched family! Ludwik sentenced, now it’s our turn … We shall have to move to the world’s end. I’ve a sister near Częstochowa, we will go there to end our broken lives …’
I whispered to Wirski tactfully to invite the other guests to leave and drew nearer to Mrs Stawska. ‘I wish I were dead,’ she said to me, in greeting.
I must confess that after being there a few minutes I got the horrors. I’d have sworn that Mrs Stawska, her mother and even these friends of hers were really in disgrace and that there was nothing left for anyone of us but death. The desire for death did not, however, prevent me from turning down the smoking lamp, which had already started sprinkling the room with fine but very black soot.
‘Well, ladies,’ Mr Wirski exclaimed suddenly, ‘let’s be off, for Mr Rzecki has something to discuss with Mrs Stawska.’
The visiting ladies, whose sympathy had not lessened their curiosity, declared they would discuss it with us. But Wirski began giving them their wraps so vigorously that the poor embarrassed creatures, after kissing Mrs Stawska, Mrs Misiewicz, Helena, and Mrs Wirski (I thought they’d start kissing the chairs before they’d finished), finally removed themselves and took Mr and Mrs Wirski with them.
‘A secret’s a secret,’ said the most determined of the ladies, ‘and you’re not needed here either.’
Another outburst of farewells, kisses, comfortings followed, and the whole crowd almost came to blows, fussing at the door and on the stairs. Sometimes I think the Lord created Eve to spoil Adam’s stay in Paradise.
Finally we were left in the family circle, but the little drawing-room was so full of soot and sorrow that I lost all my vitality. In a querulous voice I asked Mrs Stawska to permit me to open the window, and in a tone of involuntary reproach advised her at least to draw the blind in the windows from now on. ‘Don’t you recollect, madam,’ said I to Mrs Misiewicz, ‘that I remarked on those blinds long ago? If they’d been down, Baroness Krzeszowska wouldn’t have been able to spy on what was going on in your apartment.’
The Doll Page 69