THE RETURNING WAVE
By BOLESŁAW PRUS (ALEXSANDER GŁOWACKI)
Chapter I
If Pastor Boehme's worthiness could have been weighed on a pair of scales, the reverend gentleman would have been obliged to travel on a goods truck. But as worthiness cannot be classified under any of the three mathematical dimensions, but comes under the fourth, which does not belong to the world of realities, he travelled in a little one-horse britzka instead.
To the fat, well-groomed pony, the flies, the heavy collar, the sultry day, and the dusty road were of much greater interest than the virtues of his master, or even his whip. His master took the whip with him only for fear of being laughed at, for he never used it. In fact, he would have been unable to use it; for when he exhibited his worthy personality, with its short whiskers, panama hat, and white and pink percoline coat, on the roads, he had to hold the reins firmly in one hand to prevent the old pony from stumbling, and with the other he poured out continual and benevolent, but ineffectual blessings on all passers-by. For they all took off their caps to him; regardless of religious differences they liked the "worthy German."
On this particular July afternoon the reverend gentleman was on his way to perform one of his minor spiritual duties, namely that of first grieving his neighbour and then comforting him. In short, he was going to see his friend Gottlieb Adler, to inform him that his son, Ferdinand, had run into debt abroad, and subsequently to exhort the father to forgive his prodigal son.
Gottlieb Adler was the owner of a cotton-mill. The road along which the pastor was driving connected the mill with the railway-station; it was a well-kept road, though it had not been planted with trees. A little country town lay on the left, and the factory on the right, at some distance. The black and red roofs of the workmen's cottages peeped from the sheltering plane-trees, limes and poplars; behind them lay a large four-storied building in the shape of a horseshoe. This was the factory. A thicker clump of trees close by indicated Adler's garden; it surrounded an elegant villa with some farm buildings attached. The sun was flooding everything with golden light. The tall red-brick chimney sent out thick, curling smoke, and had the wind been in his direction the pastor would have heard the busy roar of the engines and the noise of the power-looms. But as it was, nothing disturbed the peaceful silence except the whistle of a distant train and the rattling of his own cart. A quail diving into the corn was singing its little song.
The constant attention needed to prevent the fat pony from stumbling at last wore out the pastor; so trusting to the mercy of Him who delivered Daniel from the lions' den and Jonah from the whale's belly, he tied the reins to the back of the seat, and folded his hands as in prayer. Boehme loved to dream, and a gentle doze helped to open memory's enchanted gates. He now recalled (probably for the hundredth time that year and at the same spot) another factory, somewhere in the plains of Brandenburg, where he and his friend Gottlieb Adler had spent their childhood. They were sons of fairly well-to-do master-weavers, were born in the same year, and went to the same elementary school. A quarter of a century passed after they left it before they met again. Boehme had finished his theological studies at the University of Tübingen, and Adler had amassed some twenty thousand thalers.
On Polish soil, far away from their Fatherland, they met again. Boehme had been appointed pastor of a Protestant parish, and Adler had set up a little cotton-mill. Another quarter of a century had now passed, during which they had never been separated; they visited each other several times every week. Adler's little mill had grown into a huge factory which at the moment employed some six hundred workmen, and brought him in a clear profit of several thousand roubles a year. Boehme had remained poor except for the profit of several thousand blessings yearly.
The two friends also differed in other respects. The pastor had a son who was now finishing his studies at the technical college at Riga, and who looked forward to supporting himself, his parents and his sister for the rest of their lives. Adler's only son had never even completed his school course; he was now travelling abroad, and his only concern was to get as much as he could for himself out of his father's money. While the pastor was fairly satisfied with his several thousand blessings a year, and only wondered sometimes whether his daughter, aged eighteen, would marry well, Adler was ever impatient for his banking account to reach the desired sum of a million roubles as quickly as possible, and he often worried himself with thoughts as to what would ultimately become of his son.