Rzecki's story about Wokulski from "The Doll" (Lalka) by Bolesław Prus

We have just watched the new film adaptation of "Lalka" (The Doll") directed by Maciej Kawalski. Comparing to Netflix production, this version really can amaze.

However, what I missed in both: the film and the Netflix series, is the lack of Rzecki's narration.  His memoirs is important part of the novel. Thanks to it we can get to know those times and people. I'd like to quote a fragment of this memoirs about the hardship of Wokulski's youth: 

  

[...] the story of Staś’s youth came before me as if it were yesterday.

I recollect (it was in 1857 or ’58) that I walked once into Hopper’s, where Machalski was working. ‘Where’s Jan?’ I asked the lad.

‘In the cellar.’ So I went down into the cellar. Behold, there was Jan by the light of a tallow candle, siphoning wine from a barrel into bottles, and in the recess I saw two shadows lurking; a grey-haired old man and a young lad with cropped hair and the countenance of a brigand. They were Staś Wokulski and his father.

I sat down quietly (Machalski didn’t like to be interrupted when drawing wine) and the grey-haired old man in a sand coloured frock-coat was going on in a querulous voice to the lad:

‘Why spend your money on books? Give it to me, because if I have to drop the law-suit, then everything will be wasted. Books won’t extricate you from the humiliation you are now in, only the law-suit can do that. When I win and when we get back our estate, which grandfather left us, then people will remember that the Wokulskis are old-established gentlefolk and relatives will turn up . . . Last month you spent twenty zloty on books, yet that was just the amount I needed for a lawyer . . . Books, nothing but books! As long as you work in a shop they will spurn you, even if you are as wise as Solomon and although you are a gentleman and your grandfather on your mother’s side was a chancellor. But when I win that law-suit, when we move into the country . . .’

‘Let’s go away,’ the lad muttered, glancing sideways at me.

Obedient as a child, the old man wrapped his papers up in a red kerchief and went out with his son, who had to help him up the stairs. 

‘Who were those simpletons?’ I asked Machalski, who had just finished his work and sat down on a stool. ‘Ah,’ he made a gesture, ‘the old man isn’t all there in the head, but the lad is bright. His name is Stanisław Wokulski. A bright rascal!’ 

‘What can he do?’ I asked.

Machalski snuffed the candle, poured me a glass of wine and said: ‘He’s been with us four years. Not much use in the shop or cellar, though . . . But as a mechanic! He constructed a sort of machine that pumps water, and then pours it on a wheel which works the pump. A machine like that could go on pumping until judgement Day, but something went wrong, so it only worked fifteen minutes. It was up there in the dining-room and attracted

customers for Hopfer, but six months ago it broke.’

‘So that’s the kind of lad he is,’ said I.

‘Well, not quite,’ Machalski replied, ‘there was a professor from the Technical College here, he had a look at the pump and said it was good for nothing, but that the lad was bright and ought to study. From that day on we’ve had pandemonium in the place. Wokulski has grown conceited, mumbles at customers, by day he looks half asleep but for all that he studies nights and buys books.

On the other hand his father would sooner spend the money on a law-suit over some estate or other left by their grandfather. You

heard what he said . . .’

‘What does he hope to achieve by this studying?’ I said. 

‘He says he’ll go to Kiev, to the University. Ha, let him!’

Machalski declared, ‘perhaps for once it will make a man of a shop-clerk. I don’t interfere with him, I don’t make him work: when he’s in the cellar, he can read if he likes. But upstairs the other clerks and customers plague him.’

‘What does Hopfer think of it?’

‘Nothing,’ Machalski went on, putting another candle into the iron holder, ‘Hopfer doesn’t want to turn him away, for Kasia Hopfer dotes on Wokulski and maybe the lad will get his grand-father’s estate back after all.’

‘Does he dote on Kasia?’ I inquired.

‘He never so much as looks at her, ungovernable young rascal that he is,’ Machalski replied.

I at once guessed that a lad with such a brain, who bought books and cared nothing for girls might do well as a politician, so I made the acquaintance of Staś that very day and from then on we have got on well together . . .

Staś was at Hopfer’s three more years and during that time he made many acquaintances among the students and young officials who outdid one another in providing him with books so that he might take the university entrance exam. Among these young men was a certain Mr Leon, a lad still (he wasn’t twenty yet), handsome and clever – but an enthusiast! He was, as it were, my assistant in Wokulski’s political education; for when I talked about Napoleon and the great mission of the Bonapartes, Mr Leon would talk about Mazzini, Garibaldi and other eminent persons. And how well he could inspire the soul!

‘Work hard,’ he sometimes said to Staś, ‘and have faith, because

faith can stop the sun in its course, not to mention improving the

lot of mankind.’

‘Maybe it will send me to the university?’ Staś asked.

‘I’m positive,’ replied Leon, his eyes flashing, ‘that if you have the faith the first apostles had, even for a while, you’d be at the university already.’

‘Or in a lunatic asylum . . .’ Wokulski muttered. 

Leon began striding about the room, waving his arms. ‘How despicable,’ he exclaimed, ‘if even a man like you has no faith. Just remember what you have already achieved in such a short time: you know so much that you might sit for the examination today . . .’

‘But what shall I do there?’ Staś sighed.

‘Not much – by yourself. But some dozen, some hundreds like you and me . . . do you know what we might do?’

His voice broke off at this point. Leon went into convulsions. We could hardly calm him.

On another occasion, Leon reproached us for lacking the spirit of

sacrifice. ‘Don’t you know,’ he said, ‘that Christ alone saved mankind through the power of sacrifice? How much better the world would be, if there had always been individuals prepared to sacrifice their lives . . .’

‘Am I to sacrifice my life for customers who treat me like a dog, or for those lads and clerks who plague me?’ Wokulski asked.

‘Don’t try to wriggle out of it!’ Leon cried, ‘Christ died for the sake of his executioners. But there is no spirit in you. Your spirit is rotting away . . . Listen to what Tyrteus said: “Sparta, perish! Ere the Messinian hammer crumble the monument of your greatness, and the tombs of your ancestors and scatter their revered bones as prey to the dogs and banish the shades of your forefathers from the gates . . .

Oh ye people, ere the enemy claps you in fetters, smash your fathers’ weapons on the threshold of your home and hurl yourselves into the abyss. Let not the world know what swords were yours, but that your hearts were wanting.” Hearts!’ Leon repeated.

Even then, Staś was very cautious in accepting Leon’s theories; but the lad could influence people as well as any Demosthenes. I remember a crowded meeting one evening, when we all – young and old alike – burst into tears when Leon spoke to us of a perfect world in which stupidity, poverty and injustice would disappear: ‘From that time on,’ he said in great excitement, ‘there will be no differences between people. Gentry and bourgeois, peasants and Jews – all will be brothers.’

‘And clerks?’ Wokulski asked from his corner.

But this interruption did not upset Leon. He suddenly turned to Wokulski, enumerated all the unpleasantness which Staś had been subjected to in the shop, the obstacles put to his studies, and wound up: ‘So that you believe like a brother, so that you cast out anger from your heart – here I kneel to you, and beg your forgiveness in the name of mankind.’

And he actually knelt down before Staś and kissed his hand. The people present grew still more moved, lifted Staś and Leon up and vowed that each would give his life for such men as they.

Today, when I remember those goings-on, it sometimes seems like a dream. Certainly I never met such an enthusiast as Leon before or after.

Early in 1861, Staś resigned from Hopfer’s. He lived with me (in my room with a barred window and green curtains), dropped trade and at once began attending academic lectures as an auditor. His farewell to the shop was strange: I remember it because I was there myself. He embraced Hopfer, then went into the cellars to embrace Machalski, where he stayed a few minutes. Sitting in the dining room, I heard a noise, the laughter of the customers and shop lads, but didn’t suspect a joke.

Suddenly (the opening leading into the cellar was in the same room) I beheld a pair of red hands emerging from the cellar. These hands clutched at the floor and were immediately followed by Staś’s head which appeared once and then again. The customers and lads were laughing.

‘Aha!’ one waiter exclaimed, ‘see how difficult it is to get out of a cellar without the steps? And here you are hoping to jump out of the shop and into the university at one go! If you are so clever, come on out!’

Staś extended his arms from below again, grabbed the edge of the opening and pulled himself half-way up. I thought he would burst a blood vessel.

‘Here he comes! Just look at him . . . He’s doing it!’ a second waiter cried.

Staś got one leg to the floor and in a moment was in the room. He was not angry, but he refused to shake hands with any of his colleagues, merely took his bag and went to the door.

‘Come now, aren’t you saying goodbye to the customers, Herr Doktor?’ Hopfer’s waiters shouted after him.

We walked along the street without uttering a word. Staś was biting his lips and it occurred to me that getting out of the cellar like that was a symbol of his life, which had led him to tearing up his roots from Hopfer’s shop and setting out into a wider world. 

A prophetic incident! For to this very day Staś always comes out on top. And God knows what such a man might …

P.S. The piece comes from "The Doll" by Bolesław Prus translated from Polish by David Welsh. It was published by New York Review Book with the introduction by Stanisław Barańczak, New York, 1996