Izabela gazed at him, wide-eyed. At this moment she saw something entirely novel about him, and he interested her. ‘What a profound character,’ she thought.
In the course of a few moments Wokulski had, for no reason, grown powerful in her eyes, while Starski seemed small and ludicrous. ‘Why is he staying? Where did that telegram come from?’ she wondered, and the ill-defined uneasiness gave place to terror.
Wokulski went back to the buffet for a porter to get his things out, and met Starski.
‘What’s wrong?’ Starski exclaimed, staring at him in the light from the waiting-room. Wokulski seized his arm and dragged him along the platform. ‘Don’t be angry at what I say, Mr Starski,’ he said in a dull voice. ‘You are mistaken about yourself…There’s as much of the devil in you, as there is poison in a match-head…And you have none of the qualities of champagne…Your attributes are closer to those of overripe cheese which stimulates poor digestions which a plain flavour might cause to vomit…Excuse me.’
Starski listened, dumbfounded. He didn’t understand a word, yet he seemed to understand something. He began supposing he had a madman on his hands.
The second bell rang, a crowd of travellers hurried out of the buffet to the carriages. ‘And let me give you a piece of advice, Mr Starski. In taking advantages of the affections of the fair sex, traditional caution is better than more or less devilish impudence. Your boldness unmasks women. But, as women don’t like being unmasked, you may lose credit with them, which would be a misfortune for both you and your pupils.’
Starski still didn’t understand what this was all about. ‘If I have offended you in some way,’ he said, ‘I’m ready to give you satisfaction.’
The third bell rang: ‘Gentlemen, all aboard!’ cried the conductors.
‘No, sir,’ said Wokulski, escorting him back to the Łęckis’ compartment, ‘if I wanted satisfaction from you, you’d be dead already, without any extra formalities. It is you, rather, who have the right to demand satisfaction from me, for daring to enter the garden where you cultivate your flowers…In any case, I shall be at your disposal…You know my address?’
They drew near the carriage, by which the conductor was already standing. Wokulski forced Starski to mount the step, thrust him into the compartment, and the conductor slammed the door. ‘What’s this, aren’t you going to say goodbye, Stanisław?’ asked Tomasz in surprise.
‘A pleasant journey,’ he replied, bowing.
Izabela stood in the window. The station-master blew his whistle, the locomotive responded. ‘Farewell, Iza, farewell,’ Wokulski cried, in English.
The train moved off. Izabela threw herself into the seat opposite her father. Starski went to the other corner of the compartment.
‘Well, well,’ Wokulski muttered to himself, ‘the pair of you will come together again before you reach Piotrkow.’
He watched the train moving away and laughed.
He stood alone on the platform and listened to the roar of the departing train; sometimes the roaring decreased, sometimes it fell silent, then again grew stronger, until it finally stopped. Then he heard the footsteps of the station staff going home, the moving of little tables in the buffet; the lights began going out inside the buffet and a yawning waiter locked the glass door, which squeaked expressively.
‘They lost my metal while looking for the medallion!’ Wokulski thought. ‘I’m sentimental, and a bore…She must have champagne as well as the daily bread of respect and the cake of adoration…The cake of adoration, that’s witty! But what sort of champagne does she like? Ah, the champagne of cynicism…That’s witty too. Well, learning English has paid off, at any rate.’
Wandering aimlessly on, he walked between two rows of goods wagons. For a moment he didn’t know which way to go—and suddenly he had a hallucination. He seemed to be standing inside a huge tower which was silently collapsing. It did not kill him, but was surrounding him on all sides with a wall of ruins, from which he could not extricate himself. There was no way out!
He shuddered, and the vision disappeared. ‘Obviously sleep is overcoming me,’ he thought. ‘Properly speaking, nothing that has happened has been a surprise; it could have been foretold, I even foresaw it all…What was she interested in? Balls, parties, concerts, clothes.…What did she love? Herself. It seemed to her that the whole world existed for her sake, and she herself in order to have a good time. She flirted…yes, that’s the word—she flirted in the most shameless manner with all men; she fought with all the women for beauty, tribute, toilettes…What did she do? Nothing. She adorned drawing-rooms. The only thing by which she could acquire a material existence was her love—false merchandise! And that Starski!…What’s he? A parasite, like she is. He was merely an incident in her life, which has been full of such incidents. I can’t hold it against him; like called to like. Yes, she’s a Messalina of the imagination! Any man who wanted to, could embrace her and seek for the medallion, even that Starski, poor wretch, who had to become a seducer for lack of anything better to do: ‘I used to believe that here on earth, are angels with bright wings…’ Fine angels, indeed! Bright wings! Mr Molinari, Mr Starski and God knows how many more of them. This is the result of knowing women through poetry.
‘I should have learned about women, not through the spectacles of Mickiewicz or Krasiński or Słowacki’s poetry, but through statistics, which teach us that every angel is one-tenth a prostitute; well, and if I’d been disillusioned, at least it would have been pleasant…’
At this moment, there was a roaring noise of some sort; water was being poured into a boiler or tank. Wokulski stopped. It seemed to him that in this long-drawn and melancholy sound he could hear an entire orchestra, playing the Invocation from Robert le Diable: ‘You who repose beneath the cold clay…’ Laughter, weeping, sorrow, squeaks and weird cries all resounded together, and above them rose a powerful voice full of hopeless grief.
He could have sworn he heard an orchestra, and again he had a hallucination. He seemed to be in a cemetery, among open graves from which hideous shadows were flitting out. After a moment, each shadow became a beautiful woman, among whom Izabela cautiously moved, beckoning to him with her hand and gaze…He was overwhelmed with such terror that he crossed himself, and the phantoms disappeared. ‘Enough,’ he thought, ‘I shall go out of my mind here…’
And he decided to forget Izabela.
It was already two at night. A lamp with a green shade was burning in the telegraph office, and the tapping of the apparatus could be heard. A man was walking past the station, he touched his cap: ‘When does the train leave for Warsaw?’ Wokulski asked him.
‘At five o’clock, sir,’ the man replied, making as if to kiss his hand. ‘If you please, sir, I’m…’
‘Not until five!’ Wokulski echoed. ‘Horses, perhaps…What time does the next train from Warsaw get in?’
‘In forty-five minutes. If you please, sir…’
‘Three-quarters of an hour…’ Wokulski murmured. ‘Quarters.…Quarters…’ he repeated, sensing that he was not articulating the letter ‘r’ properly. He turned away from the unknown man and walked by the flower-beds, in the direction of Warsaw. The man watched him, shook his head and disappeared into the darkness.
‘Quarters…Quarters…’ Wokulski muttered. ‘Is my tongue refusing to function? What an extraordinary muddle; I studied how to win Izabela, but have learned how to lose her. Or Geist. He produced a great invention, and entrusted me with a sacred deposit, so that Mr Starski might have one more reason for researches…She has deprived me of everything, even my last hope…If I were asked at this moment whether I really knew Geist, or saw his strange metal, I wouldn’t be able to reply, and I don’t even know whether it wasn’t all an illusion. Oh, if only I could stop thinking about her…For a few minutes…
‘Well, I won’t think about her…’
The night was starry, the fields dark, signal lamps glowed at great distances along the track. Walking along in a ditch, Wokulski trippe
d over a large stone and at that moment there stood before his eyes the ruins of the castle at Zasław, the stone on which Izabela had been seated, and her tears. But this time a look of deceit gleamed behind her tears.
‘I won’t think about her…I’ll go to Geist, I’ll work from six in the morning to eleven at night, I shall have to observe every change of pressure, temperature, current…It won’t leave me a spare moment.’
He had the impression that someone was coming after him. He turned around, but saw nothing. However, he noticed that his left eye saw less well than the right, and this began to irritate him immeasurably. He wanted to go back to people, but felt he wouldn’t be able to endure the sight of them. Merely thinking was a torture, painful. ‘I never knew how much a man’s own soul can weigh,’ he muttered. ‘Ah, if only I could stop thinking…’
Far away in the east, a glimmer showed and the thin sickle of the moon appeared, enveloping the landscape in an indescribably sombre light. And suddenly another vision appeared to Wokulski. He was in a silent and deserted forest; the pine trunks were slanting in a peculiar manner, not a bird uttered, the wind did not stir the smallest twig. There was no light, only a mournful dusk. Wokulski felt that this dusk, sorrow and grief were flowing from his heart, and that it would all end surely with death, if it ever did…
Wherever he looked among the pines, scraps of grey sky peered in, each of which changed into the vibrating window of the train, and in which could be seen the pallid reflection of Izabela in Starski’s embrace.
Wokulski could no longer withstand the visions; they dominated him, devoured his will-power, distorted his thoughts and poisoned his heart. His soul lost all its independence; any impression dominated him, reflected in thousands of increasingly sombre and painful forms, like echoes in a deserted building.
He stumbled over another stone, and this insignificant fact awoke horrifying thoughts in him; it seemed to him that he himself had once, once…been a cold, blind, senseless stone. But as he had lain proud in his deadness, which the greatest of earthly cataclysms had not been able to disturb, a voice spoke within or above him, asking: ‘Dost wish to become a man?’
‘What is a man?’ the stone had asked.
‘Dost wish to see, hear, feel?’
‘What is feeling?’
‘Dost wish something entirely new? Dost wish an existence which in one moment can experience more than all stones through millions of ages?’
‘I do not understand,’ the stone replied, ‘it is all the same to me.’
‘But if,’ the supernatural voice had asked, ‘if, after this new existence, you are left with eternal sorrow?’
‘What is sorrow? It is all the same to me.’
‘Become a man, then,’ had been the reply.
And he had become a man. He lived a few dozen years, and in the course of them he longed and desired more than the dead world could know in all eternity. Rushing in pursuit of one desire, he encountered thousands of others; in fleeing from one suffering, he plunged into an ocean of suffering, and felt, pondered and absorbed so many unconscious forces that in the end he awoke all Nature against him. ‘Enough!’ voices began calling on all sides, ‘enough! Make way for others at the spectacle! Enough…Enough,’ the stones call, with the trees, wind, earth and sky: ‘Make way for others…Let them experience this new existence.’
Enough!…So once more, he was to become nothing, and this at the very moment when his higher existence, like a last souvenir, was giving him nothing but despair for what he had lost, and grief for what he had not attained…
‘If only the sun would rise,’ Wokulski whispered, ‘I’ll go back to Warsaw…I’ll set myself to work at something or other and put a stop to all these stupidities which are shattering my nerves. Does she want Starski? Let her have Starski! Have I lost my bet on her? Very well! For all that, I won on other things…A man can’t have everything.’
For some moments he had been aware of a clammy moisture on his moustache. ‘Blood?’ he thought. He wiped his mouth, and by the light of a match saw froth on his handkerchief: ‘Am I going insane, or what?’
Then, in the distance, he saw two lights slowly approaching him: behind them loomed a dark mass, above which was flying a thick cloud of sparks. ‘A train?’ he said to himself, and it seemed to him this was the same train in which Izabela was travelling. Once again he saw the drawing-room car illuminated by a lamp screened with blue silk, and in the corner he caught sight of Izabela in Starski’s embrace.
‘I love her so…I love her so…’ he whispered, ‘and I can’t forget…’
At this moment he was overwhelmed with an anguish which human language cannot express. His exhausted thoughts, his painful feelings, his shattered will, his entire being tormented him. And suddenly he no longer felt any desire, only a hunger and thirst for death.
The train was steadily drawing nearer. Without realising what he was doing, Wokulski fell across the track. He was shuddering, his teeth chattered, he gripped the sleepers with both hands, his mouth was full of froth…The lamplight fell across the track which began quietly drumming under the approaching locomotive. ‘God be merciful…’ he whispered, and he closed his eyes.
Suddenly he felt a hasty and violent pull which dragged him off the track…The train thundered past a few inches from his head, scattering him with steam and hot ashes. For a moment, he lost consciousness and when he came to he found a man sitting on his chest and holding him by the hands.
‘What in heaven’s name are you doing, sir?’ said the man. ‘Whoever heard of such a thing? After all, God…’
He did not finish, Wokulski thrust him off, seized him by the collar and with a single movement hurled him to the ground. ‘What do you want of me, wretch?’ he cried.
‘Sir…Respected sir…I’m Wysocki…’
‘Wysocki? Wysocki?’ Wokulski repeated. ‘You’re lying. Wysocki is in Warsaw.’
‘But I’m his brother, the railroad man. It was you, sir, who found me my job last year, after Easter. How could I stand by and watch such a thing happen? Besides, sir, people aren’t allowed to throw themselves under the train.’
Wokulski reflected and let him go. ‘Everything turns against me, whatever I do,’ he whispered. He was very weary, so he sat down on the ground by a wild pear tree no bigger than a child, growing in this spot. Just then a wind blew and moved the leaves of the tree, making a sound which for some unknown reason reminded Wokulski of old times. ‘Where’s my happiness?’ he thought.
He felt a pressure in his chest, which gradually mounted into his throat. He wanted to draw a deep breath, but could not; he thought he would suffocate, and seized the tree with both hands as it went on rustling. ‘I’m dying…’ he exclaimed. It seemed to him his blood was boiling, his chest exploding, he writhed in pain and suddenly burst into tears. ‘Merciful God! Merciful God!’ he kept repeating, amidst sobs.
The railroad man crouched over him and cautiously put one hand under his head. ‘Weep, sir,’ he said, leaning down, ‘weep, sir, and call upon God…You will not call on Him in vain. He who puts himself into God’s hands and sincerely trusts in Him, no terrible fear shall fall upon him…He will save you from the devil’s traps…What’s wealth, or the greatest treasure? Everything betrays a man, only God will not desert him.’
Wokulski pressed his face to the earth. It seemed to him that with every tear, a little pain, disappointment and despair fell from his heart. His disordered mind began finding its way back to equilibrium. He already realised what he had been doing, and he understood that in a time of misery, when everything else had betrayed him—the earth, a simple man and God remained faithful to him.
Gradually he grew calmer, sobs tore his chest less often, he felt weak all over and fell into a deep sleep.
When he woke, day was dawning; he sat up, rubbed his eyes, saw Wysocki beside him and remembered everything. ‘Did I sleep long?’ he asked.
‘Fifteen minutes…Maybe a half hour,’ the railroad man answered.
Wokulski brought out his wallet, produced several hundred-rouble notes, and giving them to Wysocki, said: ‘Mind…yesterday I was drunk. Tell no one what happened here. Take this…For your children…’
The railroad man kissed his hand. ‘I thought you had lost everything, sir, and that was why…’ he said.
‘You are right,’ Wokulski replied thoughtfully, ‘I’ve lost everything…except my fortune. I won’t forget you, although…I’d rather be dead.’
‘I thought right away, sir, that a gentleman like you wouldn’t go looking for trouble, even if you lost all your money. Human wickedness was the cause.…But an end will come to that, too…God works slow, but He is just, you will see, sir.’
Wokulski got up from the ground and began walking to the station. Suddenly he turned back to Wysocki. ‘When you are in Warsaw,’ he said, ‘come to me…But not a word of what happened here.’
‘I won’t say a word, so help me God,’ Wysocki replied, and he took off his cap.
‘But a second time,’ Wokulski added, putting a hand on his arm, ‘a second time…If you meet another man…You understand me? If you meet another man, don’t save him…When a man wishes to stand before God’s judgement with his injuries, don’t stop him! Don’t!’
XXXV
The Journal of the Old Clerk
THE POLITICAL situation grows increasingly serious. Now we have two coalitions. Russia and Turkey on one side, Germany, Austria and England on the other. And if this is so, then it means that a war may break out at any moment, during which important, very important questions will be resolved.
But will there really be a war? For we always like to delude ourselves. This time yes, without fail. Lisiecki tells me that I predict war each year and have never been right. Pardon me, but he’s a fool…It was one thing in those years, another today.
I read in the papers, for example, that in Italy Garibaldi is agitating against Austria. Why is he agitating? Because he expects a great war. And that’s not all, for a few days later I heard that General Turr is entreating Garibaldi, calling Heaven to witness, not to make trouble for the Italians…
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