Immediately on my arrival the shop was closed and we went into the house. A small table with a chair on either side stood under the only window of the little room. Close behind the chairs there was a bed along one wall, and a small wooden sofa along the other. A narrow opening opposite the table led to the kitchen where Maciej lived. We sat down to consult what to write. Not only the shoemaker, but even Maciej, was in an extremely serious mood; both evidently attached no little importance to the writing of letters. The shoemaker fetched from a trunk a large parcel tied up in a sheet of paper, and, having taken out the last letters from his wife and son, handed them carefully to me. Maciej squeezed himself into the kitchen, and did not return to us. A moment later, however, his head with the large red face—but his head only—showed like the moon against the dark background of the opening.
"Why do you go so far away, Maciej?" I asked.
"Eh, you see, sir, it's not comfortable sitting in there. I've knocked a bench together here that's a bit stronger."
The shoemaker mumbled something about breaking the chairs, but Maciej busied himself with his pipe and did not hear, or pretended not to hear.
We began to read the letters. The letter from his wife contained the usual account of daily worries, interspersed with wishes for his return and the hope of yet seeing him. The letter from his son, who had finished his apprenticeship as journeyman joiner half a year ago, was sufficiently frivolous. After telling his father that he was now free, he wrote that, as he could not always get work, he was unable to make the necessary amount of money to buy himself a watch, and he begged his father to send him thirteen roubles or more for this purpose. I finished reading this, and looked at the shoemaker, who was carefully watching the impression the letter was making on me. I tried to look quite indifferent; whether I succeeded to any extent I do not know, for I did not look straight at him. But I was convinced after a moment that my efforts had been vain, for I heard the anxious question: "Well, and what else, sir?" It was clear that his son's letter was very painful to him, even more so than I had supposed.
"Here am I, trying and working all I can, so that in case I return there may be something to live upon and I mayn't have to beg in my old age, and that fool——"
We both began to remonstrate with him that it was unnecessary to take this to heart, and that his son was probably—in fact, certainly—a very good lad, only perhaps a little spoilt, especially if he was the only child.
"Of course he is the only one, for I have never even seen him."
"How—never?"
"Yes, really never; because—I remember it as if it were to-day—it was five o'clock in the evening. I was doing something in the backyard, when my neighbour, Kwiatkowski, called out to me from behind the wooden fence: 'God help you, Stanisław, for they are coming after you!' I only had time to run up to the window and call out: 'Good-bye, Basia; remember St. Stanisław will be his patron!' That's all I said. Basia was confined shortly after, but I didn't see her again. So it was a good thing I said it, for now there'll always be something to remember me by."