I could see that Katz was very sick. I went to him and made him lie down on the pea-pods: ‘Come, August, come…’
‘Where to?’ he replied, conscious for a moment. Then he added: ‘They have driven us out of Hungary, I won’t join the Huns…’ Nevertheless he lay down. The fires went out. We finished off the liquor, then lay down in a row, our pistols within reach. The wind howled through the cracks of the hut, as if all Hungary was weeping, and sleep overcame us.
I dreamed I was a little boy again, and it was Christmas. A tree was glittering on the table, as poor in decoration as we were, and around it were my father, aunt, Mr Raczek and Mr Domański, singing in high-pitched voices the carol: ‘God is born, the powers tremble…’
I awoke sobbing for my childhood. Someone tugged at my arm. It was a peasant, the owner of the hut. He pulled me out of the heap of pea-pods, pointed in alarm to Katz and said: ‘Look there, Mr Soldier…something is wrong…’ He picked up a twig from the hearth and lit it. I looked. Katz was lying hunched up, with his spent pistol in one hand. Red flashes flew before my eyes and it seems I fainted.
I came to my senses in a cart, just as we were arriving at the Sava river. Day was breaking, a clear day was coming: a penetrating dampness rose out of the water. I rubbed my eyes, counted…There were four of us in the cart, and the fifth was the driver. But there ought to be five…no, six! I looked for Katz, but could not see him. I did not inquire about him: a sob caught my throat and I thought it would choke me. Liptak was dozing, Stein rubbing his eyes and Szapary was looking away, whistling the Rakoczy march though he kept hitting wrong notes.
Eh, Katz, what did you do? Sometimes now it seems to me you have found the Hungarian infantry and your platoon in Heaven…Sometimes I hear again the rattle of drums, the brisk rhythm of the march, and the order: ‘Present arms!’ and I think it must be you, Katz, going to change the guard before the Heavenly Throne…For He would be a poor Hungarian God if he did not recognise you…
… But I have been wandering, for goodness sake…I was thinking about Wokulski, yet here I am writing about myself and Katz. So I will now return to my subject.
A few days after Katz’s death, we reached Turkey and for two years I—alone now—wandered through Europe. I was in Italy, France, Germany, even England, and everywhere I was troubled with poverty and devoured by home-sickness. Sometimes it seemed to me I would go out of my mind listening to the flood of foreign tongues and seeing faces that were not ours, costumes not ours, earth not ours. Sometimes I’d have given my life just to see a pine wood and some straw-thatched huts. Sometimes I cried out in my sleep like a child: ‘I want to go home…’ and when I awoke, bathed in tears, I would dress and run along the streets, for it seemed to me that these streets just certainly led to the Old City or Podwale. I might even have done away with myself in despair, had it not been for frequent news of Louis Napoleon, who had become President and was thinking of becoming Emperor. It was easier for me to bear poverty and to stifle outbursts of grief when I heard of the triumphs of a man who was to execute the will and testament of Napoleon I, and bring back order into the world. Admittedly he did not succeed in doing so—but he left his son. And Rome, after all, was not built in a day…
Finally I could bear it no longer and in December 1851 I crossed Galicia and stopped at the Tomaszow frontier post. Only one thought troubled me: ‘Suppose they drive me away from here too?’ I shall never forget my joy when I heard I could travel on to Zamość. Not that I travelled much, for I walked mostly, yet what a relief it was!
I stayed over a year in Zamość. And because I was handy at chopping wood, I was in the open air every day. I wrote a letter to Mincel, and got a reply from him, even some money: but with the exception of the receipt, I do not recall details of this incident. It seems, however, that Jan Mincel did something more, though to his dying day he never referred to it, and did not want to mention it. He visited several generals who had fought in the Hungarian campaign, and told them that after all they ought to save a comrade in misfortune. And so they did: in February 1853 I was allowed to travel to Warsaw. Even my officer’s patent was returned to me: the one souvenir I brought back from Hungary, not counting two wounds in my chest and leg. The officers even gave me a dinner, at which we drank copiously to the health of the Hungarian infantry. From that time, I have always believed that the closest friendships are formed on the battlefield.
Hardly had I left my temporary abode in Zamość, as penniless as a Turkish beggar, when an unknown Jew stopped me and handed me a letter with money in it. It said:
My dear Ignacy,
I am sending you herewith two hundred złoty for your journey. Come straight to my shop in the Krakowskie Przedmieście, not to Podwale. Heaven forbid you should go there as that scoundrel Franz is living there, whom a self-respecting dog would not shake hands with.
My regards,
Jan Mincel,
February 16, 1853.
P.S. Old Raczek who married your aunt, you know he died, and she too, only before him. They left you some furniture and a few thousand złoty. Everything is at my place, only your sister’s coat is a little damaged because silly Kasia forgot the moth-balls. Franz sends you his greetings. Warsaw, February 18, 1853.
The Jew took me to his house, where I was given a bag containing a change of linen, clothes and shoes. They fed me goose soup, then stewed goose, then roast goose, which I could not digest until I had reached Lublin. He also presented me with a bottle of excellent mead, led me to a cart that was waiting but would not hear of any reward for his pains. ‘I’d be ashamed, that I would, to take money from a person back from exile,’ he replied to all my urging. Not until I was about to climb into the cart did he draw me aside and look around to see whether anyone was listening before whispering: ‘I’ll buy Hungarian ducats, sir, if you have any. I’ll pay a good price, I need ’em for my daughter, who’s getting married after the New Year…’
‘I have no ducats,’ I said.
‘In the Hungarian war but no ducats?’ he said, in surprise.
I had no sooner set my foot on the cart step when the same Jew again drew me aside: ‘Maybe you have some jewellery then?…Rings, watches, bracelets? I’ll pay you well, that I shall—it’s for my daughter….’
‘Brother, I have none, I give you my word…’
‘No?’ he echoed, his eyes wide open, ‘well, why did you go to Hungary then?’
We moved off but he stayed where he was, clutching his beard and shaking his head sorrowfully.
The cart had been engaged for me alone. But as soon as we turned the corner, the driver met his brother, who had urgent business to attend to in Krasnystaw. ‘Allow me to take him, honoured sir,’ he begged, doffing his cap to me. ‘If the road is bad, he will walk…’
The passenger got in. Before we had reached the fortress gate, a Jewish woman with a bag stopped us and began conferring noisily with the driver. It turned out that she was his aunt, who had a sick child in Fajslawice. ‘Allow her to get in, honoured sir…she is a very light person…’ the driver said.
Once past the city gate, three more relatives of the driver appeared at various points on the highroad, and he picked them all up on the pretext that the journey would be merrier. Somehow they edged me over the back axle of the cart, trod on my toes, smoked vile tobacco and squealed like the possessed. Nevertheless, I would not have exchanged my crowded corner for the most comfortable seat in a French stagecoach or an English coach-and-four. I was home.
For four days I seemed to be sitting in a metaphorical temple. At every halt, whenever a passenger got off, another took his place. Near Lublin a heavy bundle fell on me: it was a miracle I wasn’t killed. Near Kurów we stopped several hours on the roadside, because someone’s trunk had gone astray and the driver had to go back to a tavern for it, on horseback. During the entire journey I felt as though the quilt over my knees was more densely populated than Belgium.
On the fifth day we reached Praga at dusk. But as ther
e were so many carts, and the swing bridge was crowded, it was not until nearly ten that we drove into Warsaw. I must add that all my fellow travellers disappeared like ether in Bednarska Street, leaving a powerful odour behind. But when I mentioned them to the driver upon settling accounts he opened his eyes very wide. ‘What passengers would they be, sir?’ he exclaimed in surprise, ‘You was the passenger—them was only kikes. When we stopped on the corner, even the watchman reckoned two of ’em at a złoty apiece. And you was thinkin’ they was passengers?’
‘So there was no one else?’ I replied, ‘yet where did all the fleas come from, that crept all over me?’
‘From the dampness, I daresay,’ replied the driver.
Convinced in this manner that there had been no one but myself in the cart, I of course paid for the entire journey myself, which so affected the driver that, when he learned my address, he promised to bring me smuggled tobacco every two weeks. ‘Even now,’ he whispered, ‘I’ve a hundred kilograms of it in the cart. Will I bring you a few pounds, sir?’
‘Go to the devil,’ I muttered, seizing my bag, ‘it would be the last straw if I were to be arrested for smuggling…’
Hurrying along the street, I looked about at the city, which struck me as dirty and crowded after Paris, and the people wretched. I found the shop of J. Mincel in Krakowskie Przedmieście easily enough; but the sight of the familiar places and signs made my heart pound so that I had to rest a while.
I gazed at the shop—almost as it had been in Podwale: the tin sabre and the drum (perhaps the very one I had seen as a child)—the window containing plates, the horse and the jumping Cossack…Someone opened the door and inside I saw the bladders of paint, the nets full of corks and even the stuffed crocodile.
Behind the counter and near the window was sitting Jan Mincel in his old chair, pulling at the string of the Cossack…Trembling like jelly I went in and stopped in front of Jan. Catching sight of me (he was already growing fat), he rose heavily from the chair and blinked. Suddenly he shouted to one of the shop-boys: ‘Wicek! Run and tell Małgosia the wedding will be just after Easter…’ Then he stretched out both hands to me over the counter and we embraced lengthily in silence.
‘You gave them Krauts a good hiding! I know, I know,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘Sit you down,’ he added, showing me a chair. ‘Kazik! Run and tell Grossmutter that Mr Rzecki is here!’
I sat down and again we said nothing. He shook his head mournfully, I looked away. We were both thinking of poor Katz and our deluded hopes. At length Mincel blew his nose noisily and, turning to the window, muttered: ‘Well now, just fancy…’
Wicek, out of breath, came back. I noticed that the lad’s topcoat was shiny with grease. ‘Did you go there?’ Mincel asked him.
‘I did. Miss Małgorzata said all right.’
‘So you are getting married?’ I asked Jan.
‘Humph…what else can I do?’.
‘And how is Grossmutter?’
‘The same as ever. She only falls sick when they break one of her coffee-pots.’
‘And Franz?’
‘Don’t mention that scoundrel to me!’ Jan Mincel exclaimed, ‘only yesterday I vowed never to set foot in his house again…’
‘Why, what has he done this time?’
‘The cowardly Kraut keeps making fun of Napoleon! He says he broke his promise to the Republic, that he’s nothing more than a conjurer whose tame eagle has spit in his top-hat…No,’ said Jan Mincel, ‘I can’t get on with the man at all.’
During our conversation, the two lads and the clerk were serving customers to whom I paid no attention. Then the back door of the shop squeaked and an old lady in a yellow dress emerged from behind the cupboards, with a little jug in one hand: ‘Gut Morgen, meine Kinder…Der Kaffee is schon…’
I hurried to her, unable to utter a word, and kissed her dry little hands: ‘Ignaz!…Herr Jesas!…Ignaz!…’ she exclaimed, embracing me, ‘wo bist Du so lange gewesen, lieber Ignaz?’
‘You know perfectly well, Grossmutter, that he’s been away at the wars. Why ask him where he’s been?’ Jan interrupted.
‘Herr Jesas!…Aber Du hast noch keinen Kaffee getrunken?…’
‘Of course he didn’t,’ Jan replied on my behalf.
‘Du lieber Gott! Es ist ja schon zehn Uhr…’
She poured me a mug of coffee, handed me three fresh rolls and disappeared as always.
Then the main door opened with a bang and in ran Franz Mincel, fatter and redder than his brother: ‘How are you, Ignacy?’ he shouted embracing me.
‘Don’t shake hands with that fool, he is the disgrace of the Mincel family,’ Jan said to me.
‘Oj! Oj! what kind of a family is this?’ Franz replied with a smile, ‘our father came here with nothing but a barrow and two dogs…’
‘I’m not speaking to you!’ Jan bellowed.
‘And I’m not speaking to you either, but to Ignacy,’ Franz retorted.
‘Our uncle,’ he went on, ‘was such a blockhead of a Hun that he crept out of his coffin to get his night-cap, which they’d forgotten to put on him…’
‘You are insulting me in my own house!’ Jan shouted.
‘I didn’t come to your house, but to the shop, to buy something…Wicek!’ Franz turned to the boy, ‘give me a groszy worth of corks…Wrap them up nicely in paper…Goodbye, my dear Ignacy, come and see me this evening, we will talk over a bottle of good wine. And perhaps that gentleman will come with you,’ he added from the threshold, pointing to Jan who was livid with rage.
‘I will not set foot in the house of a rotten Hun!’ Jan shouted. But this did not prevent him from being with me that evening at Franz’s.
I ought to mention that not a week went by without the Mincel brothers quarrelling and making up at least twice. What was even odder was that the cause of their disagreements had never anything to do with matters of a business nature. Despite their squabbles, the two brothers always guaranteed each other’s receipts, lent one another money and paid their debts together. The cause was rooted in their natures.
Jan Mincel was romantic and enthusiastic, Franz was phlegmatic and bad-tempered; Jan was an enthusiastic Bonapartist, Franz a republican and special foe of Napoleon III. Finally, Franz admitted his German origin, whereas Jan solemnly declared that the Mincels were descended from the ancient Polish family of Mientuses, who had settled among the Germans perhaps under the Jagiellon dynasty or under the elected kings.
A single glass of wine sufficed to set Jan Mincel banging the table or his neighbours’ backs with his fists, and bellowing: ‘I feel ancient Polish blood in my veins! No German woman could have given birth to me! Besides, I have proof…’ And he would show very trusted persons two old documents, one of which referred to a certain Modzelewski, a merchant in Warsaw in the Swedish times, and the other to a certain Miller, a lieutenant in Kosciuszko’s army. What sort of link there was between these persons and the Mincels—to this day I still do not know, though I heard the explanation more than once.
A disagreement even arose between the brothers on account of Jan’s marriage: he had equipped himself for the ceremony in an amaranthine overcoat with split sleeves, yellow top-boots and a sabre, whereupon Franz announced he would not tolerate such a masquerade at a wedding, even if he had to complain to the police. On this, Jan vowed he would kill the informer if he caught him, and for the wedding breakfast he donned the attire of his ancestors, the Mientuses. Yet Franz was present at the ceremony and at the breakfast, and though he would not speak to his brother, he danced the latter’s wife off her feet and drank himself silly on his wine.
Even Franz’s death from a boil in 1856 did not pass without an angry scene. During the last three days, both brothers vowed twice in a very solemn manner to disinherit one another. Nevertheless, Franz bequeathed all his property to Jan and for several weeks afterwards Jan pined away with grief for his brother and assigned half the fortune he had inherited (about twenty thousand złoty) to three orpha
ns whom he looked after to the end of his days.
A strange family, indeed!
But here again I have wandered from my subject: I meant to write about Wokulski, but am writing about the Mincels. If I didn’t feel as breezy as I do, I might suspect myself of the loquacity which is a symptom of old age.
I have said that I do not understand many things in the behaviour of Staś Wokulski, and every time I want to ask: ‘What is it all for?’
When I went back to the shop, we gathered in Grossmutter’s room upstairs almost every evening: Jan and Franz Mincel, and sometimes Małgosia Pfeifer. Małgosia and Jan used to sit in the window seat and hold hands as they gazed at the stars; Franz would drink beer from a large tankard (which had a metal lid); the old lady knitted socks and I used to tell tales of my few years spent abroad. Most often, we naturally talked about the yearnings of exile, the discomforts of a soldier’s life, or of battles. At such times, Franz would drink twice as much beer; Małgosia snuggled up to Jan (no one has ever snuggled up to me in that way…) and Grossmutter would drop stitches. When I had finished, Franz would sigh as he sat sprawling on the sofa; Małgosia kissed Jan and he her, while the old lady would shake her head and say: ‘Herr Jesas!…wie ist das schrecklich…Aber, sag mir, lieber Ignaz, wozu also bist Du denn nach Ungarn gegangen?’
‘Oh goodness me, surely you understand he went there to fight, Grossmutter!’ Jan interrupted crossly.
But the old lady would shake her head in amazement and mutter: ‘Der Kaffee war ja immer gut und zu Mittag hat er sich doch immer vollgegessen…Warum hat er denn das getan?…’
‘Oh, you think of nothing but coffee and dinner,’ Jan told her impatiently.
As when I spoke of the last moments and terrible death of Katz, the old lady burst into tears admittedly, for the first time since I had known her. Yet when she had wiped the tears away and set to work on her knitting again, she would whisper: ‘Merkwürdig! Der Kaffee war ja immer gut…Warum hat er denn das getan?’
Even so, today, almost every hour, I wonder the same thing about Staś Wokulski. He had a good living after his wife’s death, so why did he go to Bulgaria? He made a fortune there so he would wind up the shop; so why has he now enlarged it? He had an excellent income from the new shop, so why is he creating a new trading company? Why has he rented a huge apartment? Why has he bought a carriage and horses? Why is he striving to get into the aristocracy and avoiding tradesmen, who will never forgive him for it? And why has he concerned himself with the carter Wysocki and his brother, the railwayman? Why has he established workshops for several poor apprentices? Why is he taking care of that harlot who, although she lives at the Magdalenes, is doing his good name so much harm?