Then he noticed the letter from Paris and recalled Geist’s words: ‘Humanity consists of reptiles and tigers, amidst which barely one in the whole crowd is a human being. Today’s misfortunes spring from the fact that great inventions fell into the hands of men and monsters indifferently … I shall not commit that error, and if I finally discover a metal lighter than air, I will pass it on only to real men. Let them equip themselves with arms for their own eyes: let their number multiply, and grow in power …’
‘It would undoubtedly be better,’ he muttered, ‘if men like Ochocki and Rzecki were strong, not the Starskis and Maruszewiczes. There’s a purpose for you!’ he went on thinking, ‘if I were younger … Although … Well, even here there are people and there’s a great deal to be done.’
Again he began reading a tale in the Thousand and One Nights, but noticed that it no longer absorbed him. The earlier pain had begun to fret his heart, and before his eyes the image of Izabela and Starski was sketched with increasing clarity. He recalled Geist in his wooden sandals, and his strange house surrounded by its wall. And suddenly it seemed to him that the house was the first step of a huge staircase, at the top of which stood a statue disappearing into the clouds. It represented a woman, whose head and bosom were out of sight, only the brass folds of her robe could be seen. It seemed to him that there was an inscription ‘Unchangeable and pure’ on the step which her feet touched. He did not understand what this was, but felt that from the statue’s feet there flowed into his heart some greatness full of tranquillity. And he was surprised that he, being capable of experiencing this feeling, should be in love or angry with Izabela, or jealous of Starski.
Shame struck him in the face, though there was no one in the room. The vision disappeared, Wokulski came to. Once again, he was only a man in pain, and feeble; but in his soul a powerful voice resounded, like the echo of an April storm, predicting resurrection and spring with its thunderclaps.
On June 1st, Szlangbaum visited him. He came with some embarrassment, but regained his spirits after surveying Wokulski. ‘I didn’t visit you before,’ he began, ‘because I knew you were unwell and didn’t want to see anyone. Well, but now, thank God, everything has passed.’
He fidgeted in his chair and threw a furtive glance around the room; perhaps he had expected to find it in greater disorder.
‘Have you some business to discuss?’ Wokulski asked him.
‘Not so much business, as a proposal … Just when I heard you were ill it occurred to me … You see, you need a long rest, respite from all business, so it occurred to me you might invest that hundred and twenty thousand roubles with me. You could have ten per cent with no trouble.’
‘Aha,’ Wokulski interposed, ‘I paid my fellow investors fifteen per cent without any trouble, even to myself,’
‘But times are hard now … Well, I’ll gladly pay you fifteen per cent, if you’ll leave me your firm.’
‘Neither the firm, nor the money,’ Wokulski replied impatiently. ‘Would to God the firm had never existed, and as for the money … I have so much that the interest which the papers alone give is enough. Too much, indeed.’
‘So you want to withdraw your capital by Midsummer Day?’ asked Szlangbaum.
‘I can leave it with you until October, without interest — on condition you keep the men who want to stay in the store.’
‘That’s a difficult condition, but…’
‘As you choose …’
A moment of silence followed. ‘What are you thinking of doing with the trading firm?’ Szlangbaum inquired, ‘for you speak as though you wanted to withdraw from that too.’
‘That’s very likely.’
Szlangbaum turned red, wanted to say something, but left well alone. They chatted for a while of unimportant matters and Szlangbaum left after bidding him goodbye very cordially.
‘Evidently he intends to take over everything from me.’ thought Wokulski. ‘Well, let him … The world belongs to those who take it.’
Szlangbaum talking to him of business interests at this moment seemed comical. ‘Everyone in the store complains of him,’ he thought, ‘they say he is stuck-up, that he’s exploiting them. Though it’s true they used to say the same of me.’
His glance again fell on the desk where the letter from Paris had been lying for several days. He picked it up, yawned, but finally broke the seal. It was a letter from the Baroness with diplomatic contacts, also several official documents. He glanced through them and realised they were proofs of the death of Ernest Walter, otherwise Ludwik Stawski, who had died in Algeria.
Wokulski reflected: ‘If I’d received these papers three months ago, who knows what might have happened? Stawska — pretty and above all, so noble … so noble. Goodness knows but perhaps she really loved me? Stawska me, and I — that other one. The irony of fate!’
He cast the papers to the desk and recalled that small, tidy drawing-room in which he had spent so many evenings with Mrs Stawska, and where he had felt so tranquil.
‘Well,’ he thought, ‘and I rejected happiness which fell into my hands of its own accord. But can anything that we don’t want be called happiness? And if she suffered even for a single day as I’ve suffered?’
The order of the world, in which two people unhappy for the same reason, cannot help each other, is cruel.
The papers regarding Stawski’s death lay there several days, but Wokulski could not decide what to do with them. At first he didn’t think about them at all, but later, when they began catching his eye with increasing frequency, he began experiencing pangs of conscience. ‘After all,’ he thought, ‘I obtained them for Mrs Stawska, so they must be given to her; but where is she? I don’t know … It would be diverting if I married her. I’d have company. Helena is a sweet child … I’d have a purpose in life. Well, but she herself wouldn’t get much out of it. What could I tell her, after all? That I’m ill, need a nurse, and so am offering thousands of roubles a year … I’ll even let you love me, though as for me … I’ve had enough of love.’
Day followed day, but Wokulski could not conceive a way of sending the papers to Mrs Stawska. He would have to find out where she was living, write a registered letter, have it taken to the post office … Finally he realised that the simplest way would be to summon Rzecki (whom he had not seen for several weeks), and hand the papers over to him. But to summon Rzecki he would first have to ring for the butler, send him to the store …
‘Oh, never mind,’ he muttered.
He took to reading again, this time travel books. He visited the United States, China — but Mrs Stawska’s documents gave him no peace. He knew something must be done but felt that he couldn’t do it himself. This state of mind began surprising him. ‘I’m thinking logically,’ he said, ‘well, as long as memories don’t interrupt. I feel in accordance with logic … even too much so. Only … I don’t feel like settling this business, and in any case … This, therefore, is today’s fashionable sickness of the will. A splendid invention! But I never followed fashion, after all. What’s fashion to me?’
He had just finished a journey to China when it occurred to him that if he had will-power then he would sooner or later be able to forget certain incidents and certain persons. ‘But it tortures me so … has tortured me so …’ he whispered. He had entirely lost track of time.
One day Szuman insisted on entering the apartment. ‘Well, how are you?’ he inquired. ‘We’ve been reading, I see … Novels? Very well … Travel? Excellent. Don’t you feel like going out for a walk? It’s a fine day, and surely you’ve had enough of your apartment after some five weeks.’
‘You’ve had enough of yours for ten years,’ Wokulski retorted.
‘You’re right. But I was busy, I was studying human hair and thinking of fame. Above all, though, I didn’t have other people’s and my own business on my shoulders. In a few weeks there’s to be a meeting of the company for trading with the Empire.’
‘I shall resign from it.’
‘As you please …
A capital idea,’ said Szuman ironically. ‘And, so that they learn to appreciate you better, let them take on Szlangbaum as director. He will fix things for them! As he did for me. These Jews are a race of genius, but what scoundrels they are!’
‘Come now …’
‘Don’t defend them in my presence!’ cried Szuman angrily, ‘for I both know and can sense them … I’d give my word that at this moment, Szlangbaum is digging a trap for you in that company, and I’m certain he will worm his way into it, for how could Polish gentry get along without a Jew?’
‘I see you don’t like Szlangbaum.’
‘On the contrary, I do — and would like to imitate him, but can’t. Just now the instincts of my forebears are beginning to awaken in me … a tendency to business. Oh, Nature! How I wish I had a million roubles, in order to make another million, and a third … And become Rothschild’s younger brother. Meanwhile, even Szlangbaum is deceiving me. I’ve moved for so long in your world that in the end I’ve lost the most valuable attributes of my own people … But they’re a great people; they will conquer the world, and not by common sense, but by cheating and boldness.’
‘So break with them and become a Christian.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. In the first place, I won’t break with them even if I became a Christian, and then again, I myself am such a phenomenal Jew that I don’t like trickery. In the second place, if I didn’t break with them when they were weak, I won’t today, now that they are powerful.’
‘It seems to me that now they are weaker,’ Wokulski interposed.
‘Is that because people begin to hate them?’
‘Come, hate is too strong a word.’
‘For goodness sake, I’m not blind or stupid … I know what is being said about Jews in the workshops, saloons, stores, even in the newspapers … And I am certain that new persecutions will break out any year now, from which my brothers in Israel will emerge still more clever, still stronger and in still greater solidarity. And how they will repay you all, at some future time! They are scoundrels, but I must admit their genius and cannot rid myself of a sneaking liking for them … For me, a dirty Jew-boy is dearer than any well-scrubbed young lordling; and when I looked into a synagogue for the first time in twenty years and heard the singing, there were tears in my eyes, upon my word … But what’s the use of talking? Israel in triumph is beautiful, and it’s pleasant to think that this triumph of the oppressed is partly my handiwork.’
‘Szuman, you seem to have a fever.’
‘Wokulski, I’m certain you have a mote — not in your eye, but in your brain.’
‘How can you speak of such things?’
‘I do so because first of all, I don’t want to be a snake in the grass, and then … you, Staś, won’t fight against us. You’re a broken man, and broken by your own people into the bargain. You’ve sold your store, you’re abandoning the company … Your career is finished.’
Wokulski hung his head.
‘Think, too,’ Szuman went on, ‘who is on your side today? I, a Jew, as despised and ill-used as you are … And by the same people … By the aristocracy.’
‘You’re growing sentimental,’ Wokulski interrupted.
‘This isn’t sentimentality! They have thrown their greatness in your face, they have proclaimed their own virtues, they have told us to adopt their ideals … But today, just tell me, what are these ideals and virtues worth, where’s their greatness which had to draw on your pocket? You only lived on equal footing with them, as it were, for a year — and what have they done to you? So just think what they must have done to us, whom they have oppressed and kicked for whole centuries? This is why I advise you to join with the Jews. You’ll double your fortune, and as the Old Testament says, you’ll see your enemies grovelling before you. For your firm and your good name, we will give you all the Łęckis, Starski and someone else, too, as bad. Szlangbaum is no partner for you, he’s a fool.’
‘And when you finish off these great lords, what then?’
‘We shall of necessity join with your common folk, we shall be the intelligentsia which today they don’t have … We shall teach them our philosophy, our politics, our economics, and they will certainly come out better with us than they have done with their leaders hitherto … Leaders!’ he added, with a smile.
Wokulski made a gesture. ‘It seems to me,’ he said, ‘that you, who wish to cure everyone else of dreaming, are a dreamer yourself.’
‘That again?’ asked Szuman.
‘Yes … You have no ground to stand on, yet you want to seize hold of others … You’d better think of honest equality with other people, not of conquering the world, and don’t try to cure other people’s faults before curing your own, which only make more enemies for you. Besides, you yourself don’t know what to hold on to; once you despised the Jews, now you evaluate them too highly.’
‘I despised individuals, I respect the strength of the community.’
‘Just the opposite to me, who despise the community but sometimes respect individuals.’
Szuman pondered. ‘Do as you please,’ he said, taking his hat, ‘but the fact remains that if you leave your company, it will fall into the hands of Szlangbaum and a whole pack of wretched Jews. But if you stay, you might bring in honest and respectable people who have not many faults, and all the Jewish contacts.’
‘In either case, the Jews will dominate the firm.’
‘But without your help, orthodox and reactionary Jews will do it, while with your help, university-trained ones would.’
‘Isn’t it all the same?’ Wokulski replied, with a shrug.
‘Not at all. We’re linked with them by race and a common position, but our views divide us. We have education, they — the Talmud; we, sense — and they, cunning; we are rather cosmopolitan, they are particularists, who see nothing beyond their synagogue and council. As far as common enemies are concerned, they are excellent allies, but when it’s the progress of Judaism … then they are an intolerable burden to us. This is why it is in the interests of civilisation that the guidance of affairs be in our hands. The others can only dirty the world with their gabardines and garlic, but not move it ahead … Think of that, Staś!’
He pressed Wokulski’s hand and left, whistling the air: ‘Oh Rachel, when the Lord in His mysterious goodness …’
‘So,’ thought Wokulski, ‘a conflict is brewing up between progressive and reactionary Jews over us, and I am to take part in it as an ally for one or the other side. A fine role! Oh, how it bores and wearies me!’
He began dreaming, and again he saw Geist’s house surrounded by walls and an infinite number of steps, at the summit of which was the statue of the brass goddess, with her head in the clouds, bearing the enigmatic inscription: ‘Unchangeable and pure’. For a moment, as he looked at the folds of her robe, he wanted to laugh at Izabela, at her triumphant admirer and at his own sufferings. ‘Is it possible? Is it possible?’ he thought, ‘that I …?’
But at once the statue vanished and the pain returned and settled in his heart like a great conqueror no one could match.
A few days after Szuman’s visit, Rzecki appeared at Wokulski’s. He was very poorly, leaning on a stick, and the ascent to the second floor tired him so much that he sank out of breath into a chair and spoke with difficulty. Wokulski was shocked. ‘What’s the matter with you, Ignacy?’ he cried.
‘Oh, it’s nothing. Partly old age, partly … Nothing at all.’
‘But you need treatment, my dear man, you ought to go away somewhere.’
‘I tell you, I tried to … I even went to the railroad station … But I felt so lonesome for Warsaw, and … for our store …’ he added, more quietly, ‘that … Ah, never mind! Excuse me for coming.’
‘You apologise to me, my dear old fellow? I thought you were angry with me!’
‘Me with you?’ replied Rzecki, gazing at him fondly, ‘Me with you? For goodness sake! Business and a difficult problem have brought me here.’
‘Problem?’
‘Just think of it — Klein has been arrested.’
Wokulski drew back.
‘Klein and the other two … you remember? That Maleski and Patkiewicz.’
‘What for?’
‘They were living in Baroness Krzeszowska’s house, well, and it’s true they harassed that Maruszewicz somewhat. He threatened them, but they went one better … In the end, he went to the police station with a complaint. The police came, some trouble occurred, and all three were taken off to jail.’
‘Stupid boys! Stupid boys!’ Wokulski murmured.
‘I said precisely the same,’ Rzecki continued. ‘Of course, nothing will happen to them, but it’s an unpleasant business all the same. That donkey Maruszewicz is alarmed, too … He called on me, swore he wasn’t to blame … I couldn’t help myself, and replied: “I’m sure you’re not to blame, but it’s also true that these days the Good Lord protects scoundrels … For in reality it’s you who ought to be locked up for forging signatures, not those frivolous lads.” He almost burst into tears. He swore that from now on he will keep to the straight and narrow path and that if he hasn’t done so hitherto, it was your fault. “I was full of the noblest intentions,” he said, “but Mr Wokulski, instead of giving me his hand, instead of believing in my good intentions, put me off with contempt.”’
‘An honest soul, to be sure,’ Wokulski smiled. ‘What else?’
‘People are saying in town,’ Rzecki went on, ‘that you’re leaving the company.’
‘Yes …’
‘And that you are handing it over to the Jews.’
‘Well, after all, my fellow members are not an old wardrobe that I am throwing away,’ Wokulski exploded. ‘They have money, they have heads on their shoulders … Let them find other men, and make do.’
‘Who can they find, and even if they could, whom will they trust, if not the Jews? And the Jews are seriously thinking of this business. Not a day passes but Szuman or Szlangbaum visits me, and each tries to persuade me to manage the company after you.’
‘In fact, you are doing so.’
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