The Doll

by Bolesław Prus

  Wokulski reflected. ‘What would be the harm in marrying?’ he said in an undertone.

  ‘For Heaven’s sake! … I couldn’t support a poor wife, a rich one would make a sybarite out of me, and either would mean the end of my plans. What I need is some odd woman who would work in the laboratory with me, and where am I to find one?’

  Ochocki seemed highly agitated, and made to leave.

  ‘So, my dear sir,’ said Wokulski, bidding him goodbye, ‘we will discuss the matter of your capital. I’m prepared to pay you off.’

  ‘As you wish … I am not going to ask you to do it, but should be most grateful.’

  ‘When are you leaving for Zasławek?’

  ‘Tomorrow, I called to say goodbye to you.’

  ‘So the matter is settled,’ Wokulski ended, pressing his hand. ‘You shall have the cash in October.’

  After Ochocki’s departure, Wokulski lay down to sleep. He had experienced so many powerful and conflicting impressions this day that he was unable to set them in order. It seemed to him that since the moment of his break with Izabela he had entered upon some terrible elevation, surrounded by precipices, and that only today had he gained its heights, or had emerged on a second level where he could see still unclear but totally new prospects.

  For some time, hosts of women moved before his eyes, and especially Mrs Wąsowska: then again, he saw crowds of labourers and workmen, asking him what he had given them in exchange for his income. Finally he fell asleep.

  He woke at six next morning, and his first impression was a feeling of freedom and vitality. He didn’t really want to get up, but he was not suffering and he did not think about Izabela. That’s to say, he thought of her, but he didn’t have to: in any case, the recollection of her did not ravage him in its previous painful manner.

  Then this absence of suffering alarmed him. ‘Is it a premonition?’ he wondered. He recalled the events of the previous day: his memory and logic served him well. ‘Perhaps I am regaining my will-power,’ he murmured.

  For an experiment, he decided he would get up in five minutes, bathe, dress and then go at once for a walk in the Łazienki park. He gazed at the moving hands of his watch and inquired uneasily: ‘Perhaps I shan’t be able to do it?’

  The hand reached five minutes, and Wokulski rose without haste, but also without hesitation. He let the water into the bath himself, bathed, dried, dressed, and within half an hour was entering the Lazienki.

  He was struck by the fact that all this time he had not thought of Izabela, but of Mrs Wąsowska. Obviously something had changed in him since yesterday; perhaps some paralysed cells in his brain had started functioning. The thought of Izabela had lost its domination over him.

  ‘What an extraordinary thing,’ he thought. ‘Mrs Wąsowska has ejected that other woman, but any woman may replace Mrs Wąsowska. So I’m genuinely cured of my madness …’

  He walked to the lake and gazed indifferently at the boats and swans. Then he turned down the path leading to the Orangery, where they had been together, and he told himself that … he would make a hearty breakfast. But as he was coming back the same way, rage overcame him and he rubbed out his own footsteps with the fierce joy of a mischievous urchin: ‘If only I could erase everything thus … That stone, and the ruins … Everything!’

  At this moment he felt an unconquerable urge to destroy certain things awakening in him: but at the same time he realised it was an unhealthy symptom. It also gave him great satisfaction to be able to think calmly about Izabela, and even do her justice. ‘What did I get so angry about?’ he asked himself. ‘If it hadn’t been for her, I’d never have made a fortune … If it hadn’t been for her and Starski, I wouldn’t have gone to Paris for the first time, or met Geist, and wouldn’t have cured myself of my stupidity at Skierniewice. After all, they are my benefactors, the pair of them. I ought even to have acted as a go-between for the fine pair, or at least facilitated their rendezvous. And to think that Geist’s metal will one day emerge from such dirt!’

  It was quiet and almost deserted in the Botanical Gardens. Wokulski passed the well and began slowly ascending the shadowy hill where, over a year ago, he had talked to Ochocki for the first time. The hill seemed to him to be the foundation of those enormous stairs, at the summit of which a statue of the mysterious woman had appeared to him. He could see her now, and noticed with emotion that the clouds surrounding her head had drawn aside for a moment. He caught sight of her stern face, loose hair and under her brass brows were living, leonine eyes, gazing at him with an expression of overwhelming might. He withstood that look, and suddenly felt he was growing … That already his head surpassed the highest trees in the park, and almost attained the naked feet of the goddess.

  Now he realised that this pure and eternal beauty was Fame, and that on her summit there is no comfort other than work and danger.

  He returned home more sorrowful, yet was still tranquil. It was as though a bond had been formed during his stroll between his future and that distant past, when he as a shop assistant had constructed machines for perpetual motion, or balloons that could be steered. But the last few years had only been an interruption and waste of time. ‘I must go away,’ he told himself, ‘I must rest, then later … We’ll see.’

  That afternoon he sent a long telegram to Suzin in Moscow.

  Next day, around one o’clock, when Wokulski was eating lunch, Mrs Wąsowska’s footman entered and informed him she was waiting in the carriage. When he hurried into the street, Mrs Wąsowska told him to get in. ‘I am carrying you off,’ said she.

  ‘To lunch?’

  ‘No, merely to the Łazienki. It will be safer for me to talk to you in front of witnesses, and in the open air.’

  But Wokulski was sombre and said nothing.

  In the park, they got out of the carriage, walked around the palace terrace and began strolling along the path adjacent to the amphitheatre.

  ‘You must go out among people, Mr Wokulski,’ Mrs Wąsowska began. ‘You must rouse yourself from your apathy, otherwise a charming prize will slip through your hands.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Certainly. All the ladies are interested in your sufferings, and I wager that more than one would like to console you.’

  ‘Or amuse herself with my alleged sufferings, like a cat with a hurt mouse? No, madam — I need no ladies to console me, because I’m not suffering at all, or at least not through the fault of a woman.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Mrs Wąsowska exclaimed. ‘Anyone might suppose you really hadn’t received a blow from tiny hands …’

  ‘They’d be right,’ Wokulski replied. ‘If anyone dealt me a blow, it was certainly not the fair sex … But I really don’t know what … Fate, perhaps.’

  ‘Through the medium of a woman, all the same.’

  ‘Through my own naivety, above all. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been looking for some great and unknown thing: and since I used to see women through the eyes of the poets, who flatter them too much, I thought that woman was that great and unknown thing. I was wrong, and there lies the clue to my temporary lack of balance which, however, helped me make a fortune.’

  Mrs Wąsowska halted: ‘Come, sir, you surprise me! We haven’t met since yesterday, but you now give me the impression of an entirely different man, a sort of old grandfather who despises women.’

  ‘It’s not contempt, but observation.’

  ‘You mean?’ asked Mrs Wąsowska.

  ‘That there’s a species of woman in this world whose purpose is to torment and excite the passions of men. In this way they confound sensible people, bring about the downfall of the honest, while fools can keep their heads. They have many admirers and because of that they exert the same influence on us as harems do in Turkey. So, madam, you see that ladies have no cause to sentimentalise over my sufferings, and no right to amuse themselves at my expense. I am outside their field of reference.’

  ‘And you are even breaking with love, sir?’ asked M
rs Wąsowska, ironically.

  Anger surged up within Wokulski. ‘No, madam,’ he replied, ‘only I have a pessimistic friend, who explained to me that it’s far more profitable to purchase love for four thousand roubles — and faithfulness for five thousand — than to pay with what we call our feelings.’

  ‘There’s faithfulness for you!’ Mrs Wąsowska murmured.

  ‘At least we know what to expect.’

  Mrs Wąsowska bit her lip and turned back in the direction of the carriage: ‘You should start propagating your new ideas.’

  ‘I think it would be a waste of time, madam, for some people will never understand them, and others never believe them, without personal experience.’

  ‘Thank you for your lecture,’ she said, after a moment. ‘It has made such a powerful impression on me that I won’t even ask you to see me home. Today you’re in an exceptionally bad mood, but I trust it will pass. But … Here’s a letter,’ she added, handing him an envelope. ‘Pray read it. I am committing an indiscretion, but I know you will not betray me, and I have decided once and for all to clear up the misunderstanding between you and Bela. If my plan succeeds, burn the letter: if not, bring it with you to the country, when you come. Adieu!’

  She entered her carriage and left Wokulski on the garden road.

  ‘Confound it, can I have offended her?’ he said to himself. ‘A pity, for she’s enticing.’

  He walked slowly in the direction of Aleje Ujazdowskie, and thought about Mrs Wąsowska: ‘Nonsense! I’m not going to tell her I’ve taken a fancy to her! Besides, even if I picked a good moment to do so, what could I give her in return? I couldn’t even tell her I love her?’

  Not until Wokulski reached home did he open the letter from Izabela. At the sight of the once-loved writing, a lightning flash of grief passed through him: but the scent of the paper reminded him of those long-past times when she was encouraging him to arrange the ovations for Rossi. ‘He was one of the beads in the rosary Izabela uses for praying,’ he whispered, with a smile.

  He began reading: ‘Dear Kazia, I am so discouraged about everything, and still can’t collect my thoughts, and only today have I found the energy to tell you what has occurred since you left.

  ‘I know now how much aunt Hortensja has left me: it is sixty thousand roubles — so altogether we have ninety thousand roubles, which the good Baron has promised to invest at seven per cent, bringing in some six thousand a year. Never mind, we shall have to learn economy.

  ‘I can’t begin to tell you how bored I am, or perhaps I’m merely yearning … But that too will pass. This young engineer keeps visiting us every few days. At first he entertained me with talk about iron bridges, and now he tells me he was in love with a woman who married someone else, that he despaired, lost hope of falling in love again, and longs to regain his health by a new, better love. He also confided in me that he sometimes writes poetry, in which he only sings the charms of Nature however … Sometimes I want to burst into tears out of sheer boredom, but as I would die without society, I pretend to be listening and sometimes let him kiss my hand …’

  The veins stood out in Wokulski’s forehead. He paused, then read on: ‘Papa is still feebler. He weeps several times a day, and whenever we are alone for five minutes, he reproaches me, in connection with you know whom! You can’t think how it upsets me.

  ‘I visit the Zasław ruins every few days. Something draws me there, I don’t know whether it is the beauty of Nature, or loneliness. When I am very unhappy, I write various things in pencil on the ruined walls, and joyfully think that the first rain will wash them all away.

  ‘But there! I was forgetting the most important thing. You must know that the marshal wrote my father a letter in which he very formally asked for my hand in marriage. I cried all night, not because I may become Her Excellency, but … because it may so easily happen!

  ‘The pen is dropping from my hand. Farewell, and recall your unhappy Bela sometimes.’

  Wokulski crushed the letter: ‘I despise her so, and … I still love her,’ he murmured.

  His head was on fire. He walked to and fro with fists clenched, and smiled at his own dreams.

  Towards evening he received a telegram from Moscow, after which he at once sent a telegram to Paris. But he spent the next day, from morning to late at night, with his lawyer and agent.

  Going to bed, he thought: ‘Am I committing a folly? Well, I will see how things are on the spot … Whether a metal lighter than air can exist is another question, but there is something in it, no doubt of that. Besides, in searching for the philosopher’s stone, chemistry developed: so who knows what will be discovered-next? In the end, it’s all the same to me, provided I get myself out of this mud.’

  Not until the following afternoon did a reply arrive from Paris, which Wokulski read through several times. A moment later he was handed a letter from Mrs Wąsowska, with a likeness of the Sphinx in place of seal. ‘Yes,’ Wokulski muttered, smiling, ‘a human face and the body of an animal: and our imagination lends you wings.’

  ‘Pray call on me for a few moments,’ Mrs Wąsowska wrote, ‘I have some very important business and hope to leave today.’

  ‘Let us see what this important business is,’ he said to himself. Half an hour later he was at Mrs Wąsowska’s: trunks, ready packed, were standing in the vestibule. The lady of the house received him in her workroom, where not a single thing recalled work.

  ‘This is very civil of you,’ Mrs Wąsowska began, in an offended tone. ‘I was waiting for you all day yesterday, but you didn’t appear.’

  ‘You forbade me to come here, after all,’ replied Wokulski, in surprise.

  ‘How so? Didn’t I clearly invite you to the country? But never mind this, I will attribute it to your eccentricity … My dear sir, I have some very important business to discuss with you. I want to go abroad soon and should like your advice: when is the best time to buy francs — now, or before I leave?’

  ‘When are you leaving?’

  ‘Ah … In November … December,’ she replied, blushing.

  ‘Before your departure would be the best time.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘That is what everyone else does.’

  ‘I don’t want to do as everyone else does!’ Mrs Wąsowska exclaimed.

  ‘Then buy them now.’

  ‘But what if the franc goes down between now and December?’

  ‘Then postpone your purchase until December.’

  ‘Well, sir, you know you’re the only person who can advise me … Black is black, white white. What sort of man are you? A man ought to be firm all the time, or at least know what he wants … Well, have you brought me Bela’s letter?’

  Wokulski silently handed her the letter.

  ‘Really!’ she exclaimed, vivaciously, ‘so you don’t love her? In that case, a talk about her ought not to distress you. For I have to reconcile you both or … Put the poor girl out of her misery. You are prejudiced against her … You are doing her an injustice. That is dishonest … A man of honour would not behave thus, would not worm his way into her affections, then throw her aside like a faded bouquet.’

  ‘Dishonest!’ Wokulski repeated. ‘Kindly tell me, madam, what sort of honesty can be left in a man who has been nurtured on suffering and humiliation, or humiliation and suffering!’

  ‘You had other moments, too.’

  ‘Oh, yes indeed — a few kind looks and kind words, which now have the one fault in my eyes that they were … trickery.’

  ‘Today she regrets that, and if you were to return …’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To gain her heart and her hand.’

  ‘Leaving the other hand for both known and unknown admirers? No, madam, I have had enough of those races, in which I was outstripped by Messrs Starski, Szastalski and the devil knows how many others besides! I cannot play the role of a eunuch in the presence of my ideal, and see a happy rival or undesirable cousin in every man.’

&nb
sp; ‘How low that is!’ Mrs Wąsowska exclaimed. ‘So for one mistake — and an innocent one, moreover — your are rejecting the woman you once loved?’

  ‘Allow me to have my own idea of the number of the mistakes, madam: and as for innocence. … Merciful heavens! What a wretched position I am in, since I don’t even know how far their “innocence” went.’

  ‘Can you suppose? …’ Mrs Wąsowska asked, coldly.

  ‘I suppose nothing,’ Wokulski replied, quietly. ‘All I know is that, in my view, a flirtation of the commonest sort was going on under the cover of indifferent liking, and … that sufficed. I can understand a wife deceiving her husband: she may explain away her actions by the bonds which marriage has placed upon her. But that a free woman should deceive a stranger … Ha ha ha! That is a different kind of sport, for Heaven’s sake! After all, she had the right to place Starski — and all of them — above me. But no! She also needed to have a fool in her suite of followers, a fool who truly loved her, who was prepared to sacrifice everything for her sake. And for the final degradation of human nature, it was I and I alone that she wanted to use as a screen for herself and her admirers … Don’t you know how those people must have laughed at me, heaped with cheaply purchased attentions? And do you realise what a Hell it is, to be as ludicruous as I was, and yet at the same as unhappy, to realise my own decline and yet to know too that it was undeserved?’

  Mrs Wąsowska’s lips trembled: she was restraining tears with difficulty. ‘Isn’t it all imagination?’ she interposed.

  ‘Oh, no, madam … Betrayed self-respect isn’t imagination.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What is the alternative?’ Wokulski replied. ‘I realised in time, I got myself out, and today I at least have the satisfaction of knowing that my rival’s victory is not complete, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘That is irrevocable?’

  ‘If you please, madam … I understand a woman surrendering herself for love, or selling herself out of poverty. But I cannot conceive this spiritual prostitution, carried out without any need, in cold blood, keeping up an appearance of virtue.’