“No, Pani,” answered he; “I occupy myself with that as Pan Bigiel does with music,—in free moments, and for my own amusement.”
“I do not believe this,” said Marynia.
And she was right not to believe, for it was not true at all. Zavilovksi’s reply was lacking also in candor, for he wished to let it be known that he desired beyond all to pass as the correspondent of a commercial house, and to be considered an employee, not a poet. He gave a title to Bigiel and Pan Stanislav, not through any feeling of inferiority, but to show that when he had undertaken office work he considered it as good as any other, that he accommodated himself to his position, and would do so in the future. There was in this also something else. Zavilovski, though young, had observed how ridiculous people are, who, when they have written one or two little poems, pose as seers, and insist on being considered such. His great self-esteem trembled before the fear of the ridiculous; hence he fell into the opposite extreme, and was almost ashamed of his poetry. Recently, when suffering great want, this feeling became almost a deformity, and the least reference by any one to the fact that he was a poet brought him to suppressed anger.
But meanwhile he felt that he was illogical, since for him the simplest thing would have been not to write and publish poems; but he could not refrain. His head was not surrounded with an aureole yet, but a few gleams had touched it; these illuminated his forehead at one moment, and then died, in proportion as he created, or neglected. After each new poem the gleam began again to quiver; and Zavilovski, as capable as he was ambitious, valued in his heart those reflections of glory more than aught else on earth. But he wanted people to talk of him only among themselves, and not to his eyes. When he felt that they were beginning to forget him, he suffered secretly. There was in him, as it were, a dualism of self-love, which wanted glory, and at the same time rejected it through a certain shyness and pride, lest some one might say that too much had been given. And many contradictions besides inhered in him, as a man young and impressionable, who takes in and feels exceptionally, and who, amidst his feelings, is not able frequently to distinguish his own personal I. For this reason it is that artists in general seem often unnatural.
Now came dinner, during which conversation turned on Italy, and people whom the Polanyetskis had met there. Pan Stanislav spoke of Bukatski and his last moments, and also of the dead man’s will, by which he became the heir to a fairly large sum of money. By far the greater part was to be used for public objects, and touching this he had to confer with Bigiel. They loved Bukatski, and remembered him with sympathy. Pani Bigiel had even tears in her eyes when Marynia stated that before death he had confessed; and that he died like a Christian. But this sympathy was of the kind that one might eat dinner with; and if Bukatski had, in truth, sighed sometimes for Nirvana, he had what he wanted at present, since he had become for people, even those near him, and who loved him, a memory as slight as it was unenduring. A week longer, a month, or a year, and his name would be a sound without an echo. He had not earned, in fact, the deep love of any one, and had not received it; his life flowed away from him in such fashion that after even a child like Litka, there remained not only a hundred times more sorrow, but also love and memorable traces. His life roused at first the curiosity of Zavilovski, who had not known him; but when he had heard all that Pan Stanislav narrated, he said, after thinking a while, “An additional copy.” Bukatski, who joked at everything, would have been pained by such an epitaph.
Marynia, wishing to give a more cheerful turn to conversation, began to tell of the excursions they had made in Rome and the environs, either alone, with Svirski, or the Osnovskis. Bigiel, who was a classmate of Osnovski, and who from time to time saw him yet, said,—
“He has one love,—his wife; and one hatred,—his corpulence, or rather, his inclination to it. As to other things, he is the best man on earth.”
“But he seems quite slender,” said Marynia.
“Two years ago he was almost fat; but since he began to use a bicycle, fence, follow the Banting system, drink Karlsbad in summer, and go in winter to Italy or Egypt to perspire, he has made himself slender again. But I have not said truly that he has a hatred for corpulence; it is his wife who has, and he does this through regard for her. He dances whole nights, too, at balls, for the same reason.”
“He is a sclavus saltans. “Svirski has told us of this already.”