Here he fumbled with his eyeglass, and then added: "Judging by the face, or rather by the photograph (sometimes one makes mistakes, but I have had some practice), hers is a thoroughly loyal nature. Women of this type are in love with the whiteness of their plumage. God bless you, my boy! I like her very much, this Aniela of yours. I used to be afraid you might end by marrying a foreigner let it be Aniela."
I came up close to him and he put his arm round my neck.
"I should like to see my future daughter before I die."
I assured him that he would certainly see her shortly. Then I unfolded my plans of bringing Aniela and her mother over to Rome. After a betrothal by letter I might expect as much, and the ladies would not refuse, if only out of consideration for my father. In this case the marriage ceremony would take place at Rome, and that very soon.
My father was delighted with the plan; old and sick people like to see around them life and motion. I knew that Aniela would be pleased with this turn of affairs, and let my thoughts dwell upon it with more and more pleasure. Within a few weeks everything would be settled. Such quick decision would be against my nature, but the very idea that I could exert myself if I wished raised my spirits. I already saw myself escorting Aniela about Rome. Only those who live there understand what a delight it is to show to anybody the endless treasures of that city, a much greater delight when the somebody is the beloved woman.
Our conversation was interrupted by a visit from Mr. and Mrs. Davis, who come every day to see my father. He is an English Jew, and she an Italian nobleman's daughter who married him for the sake of his wealth. Mr. Davis himself is a valetudinarian, who took out of his life twice as much as his poor organization could bear. He is ill, threatened with softening of the brain, indifferent to everything that goes on around him, one of those specimens of mankind one meets at hydropathic establishments. Mrs. Davis looks like a Juno; her eyebrows meet on her forehead, and she has the figure of a Greek statue. I do not like her; she reminds me of the leaning tower at Pisa, leans but does not fall. A year ago I paid her some attentions; she flirted with me outrageously, that was all. My father has a singular weakness for her; I thought at times he was in love with her. At any rate, he admires her from a thinker and artist's point of view; for beautiful she is, there can be no two opinions as to that, and of more than average intelligence. Their conversations, which my father calls "causeries Romaines," are endless, and they never seem to get tired of them; maybe these discussions about life's problems with a beautiful woman appear Italian to him, poetical, and worthy of the times of the Renaissance. I very seldom take part in these conversations because I do not believe in Mrs. Davis' sincerity. It seems to me that her intellect is merely a matter of brain, and not of soul, and that in reality she does not care for anything except her beauty and the comforts of life. I have often met women who seem full of lofty aspiration; upon closer acquaintance it seems that religion, philosophy, art, and literature, are only so many items of their toilet. They dress themselves in either as it suits their style of beauty. I suppose it is the same with Mrs. Davis; she drapes herself in problems of life, sometimes in Greek and Roman antiquities, in the Divina Commedia, or the Renaissance, the churches, museums, and so forth. I can understand a powerful intellectual organism making itself the centre of the universe; but in a woman, and one who is bent upon futile things, it is mere laughable egoism and vanity.
I ask myself what makes Mrs. Davis so fond of my father; and I fancy I know the reason. My father, with his fine head of a patrician philosopher, and his manners reminding one of the eighteenth century, is for her a kind of objet d'art, and still more, a grand intelligent mirror, in which she can admire her own beauty and cleverness; besides, she feels grateful that he never criticises her, and likes her very much. Upon this basis has sprung up a friendship, or rather a kind of affection for my father which gradually has become a necessity of her life. Moreover, Mrs. Davis has the reputation of a coquette, and coming here to see my father every day, she says to the world: "It is not true; this old man is seventy, and nobody can suspect me of flirting with him, and yet I show him more attentions than to any one else." Finally, though she herself comes from an old family, Mr. Davis, in spite of his wealth, is a mere nobody, and their friendship with my father strengthens their position in society. There was a time when I asked myself whether these daily visits were not partly for my sake and who knows? At any rate, it is not my qualities which attract her, nor any real feeling on her part. But she feels that I do not believe in her, and this irritates her. I should not wonder if she hated me, and yet would like to see me at her feet. I might have been, for she is a splendid specimen of the human species; I would have been, if only for the sake of the meeting eyebrows and the Juno shoulders, but at a price she does not feel inclined to pay.
Soon after the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Davis my father began a philosophical discussion, which, going from one question to another, concluded with an analysis of human feelings. Mrs. Davis made several very shrewd remarks. From the studio we went to the terrace overlooking our gardens. It is only the tenth of March, and here spring is at its best. This year everything is much advanced, fierce heat in the daytime, the magnolias covered with snow-white blossoms, and the nights as warm as in July. What a different world from that of Ploszow. I breathe here with all my lungs.
Mrs. Davis on the terrace with the moon shining upon her was beautiful as a Greek dream. I saw she was under the influence of that indescribable Roman night. Her voice was softer, even, and more mellow than usual. Perhaps even now she only thinks of herself, is impressed because it is herself who feels it, dresses herself in moonbeams, restfulness, and magnolia scent as in a new shawl or bonnet. But all the same the dress suits her splendidly. Were it not that my heart is full of Aniela, I should fall under the spell of the picture. Besides this, she said things which not many could have conceived.
All the same, whenever I am present at these causeries Romaines I have always a feeling that my father, I, such as Mrs. Davis, and generally speaking, all the people of the so-called upper classes do not live a true, real life. Below us something is always going on, something always happens; there is the struggle for life, for bread, a life full of diligent work, animal necessities, appetites, passions, every-day efforts, a palpable life, which roars, leaps, and tumbles like ocean waves; and we are sitting eternally on terraces, discussing art, literature, love, woman, strangers to that other life far removed from it, obliterating, out of the seven, the six work-days. Without being conscious of it, our inclinations, nerves, and soul are fit only for holidays. Immersed into blissful dilettantism as in a warm bath, we are half awake, half dreaming. Consuming leisurely our wealth, and our inherited supply of nerves and muscles, we gradually lose our foothold upon the soil. We are as the down, carried away by the wind. Scarcely do we touch ground, when the real life pushes us back, and we draw aside; for we have no power of resistance.
When I think of it I see nothing but contradictions in us. We consider ourselves the outcome and highest rung of civilization, and yet have lost faith in ourselves; only the most foolish believe in our raison d'être. We look out instinctively for places of enjoyment, gayety, and happiness, and yet we do not believe in happiness. Though our pessimism be wan and ephemeral as the clouds from our Havanas, it obscures our view of wider horizons. Amidst these clouds and mists we create for ourselves a separate world, a world torn off from the immensity of all life, shut up within itself, a little empty and somnolent. If this merely concerned the aristocracy, whether by descent or wealth, the portent would be less weighty. But to this isolated world belong more or less all those who boast of a higher culture, men of science, literature, and art. This world does not dwell within the very marrow of life, but parting from it creates a separate circle; in consequence withers within itself and does not help in softening down the animalism of those millions which writhe and surge below.
I do not speak as a reformer, because I lack the strength. Besides, what matters it to me? Who can avoid the inevitable? But at times I have the dim presentiment of a terrible danger which threatens the cultured world. The great wave which will wash us from off the surface of the earth will carry off more than that one which washed away hairpowder and shirtfrills. It is true that to those who perished then it seemed that with them the whole civilization was perishing.
In the mean while it is pleasant to sit on moonlit terraces and talk in subdued tones about art, love, and woman, and look at the divine profile of such a woman as Mrs. Davis.
10 March.
Mountains, towers, rocks, the further they recede from our view, appear as a mere outline through a veil of blue haze. There is a kind of psychical blue haze that enfolds those who are removed from us. Death itself is a removal, but the chasm is so wide that the beloved ones who have crossed it disappear within the haze and become as beloved shadows. The Greek genius understood this when he peopled the Elysian fields with shadows.
But I will not enlarge upon these mournful comparisons, especially when I want to write about Aniela. I am quite certain my feelings towards her have not changed, but I seem to see her a long distance off, shrouded in a blue haze and less real than at Ploszow. I do not feel her through my senses. When I compare my present feelings with those I had at Ploszow, she is more of a beloved spirit than a desired woman. From a certain point of view it is better, as a desired woman might be even such a woman as Mrs. Davis; but on the other hand this is not one of the reasons that have prevented me from writing to Aniela. Doubtless that profile of Mrs. Davis which I still see before me is a mere passing impression. When I compare these two women my feeling for the other becomes very tender; and yet I leave her in cruel suspense and uncertainty.
To-day my father wrote to my aunt, setting her mind at rest as to his health, and I added a postscript from myself, sending kind regards to Aniela and her mother. I could not say much in a few lines, but I might have promised them a longer letter. Such a promise would have comforted Aniela and the elder ladies. I did not do it because I could not. To-day my spirits are at a very low ebb. My wish for another life, and my trust in the future have retreated into the farthest distance; I can see them no more, see only the barren, sandy wilderness. I cannot get rid of the idea that I can only marry Aniela if I can conscientiously believe that our union would lead to mutual happiness. I cannot represent it otherwise to Aniela without uttering a lie; for I have none of that belief, and instead of it an utter hopelessness almost a dislike of life. She is ill at ease with longing and uncertainty, but I am worse, all the more so because I love her.
11 March.
Mrs. Davis, to whom, during our causerie on the moonlit terrace, I unfolded my view as to the all-powerfulness of love, more or less as I have written it down, called me Anacreon, and advised me to crown my head with vine leaves, and then said more soberly, "If such be your opinions, why play the part of pessimist? Belief in such a deity ought to make any man happy."
Why? I did not tell her, but I know why. Love conquers death, but saves from it only the species. What matters it to me that the species be preserved, when I, the individual, am sentenced to a merciless, unavoidable death? Is it not rather a refined cruelty that the very affections, which can be felt only by the individual, should serve the future of the species only? To feel the throbbing of an eternal power, and yet to die, that is the height of misery. In reality there exists only the individual; the species is an abstract idea, and in comparison to the individual, an utter Nirvana. I understand the love for a son, a grandson, a great grandson, for the individual, in fact, that is sentenced to perish, but to profess love for one's species one needs be insincere, or a fanatical sectarian. I can understand now how centuries after Empedocles there came Schopenhauer and Hartmann.
My brain feels as sore as the back of the laborer who carries burdens beyond his strength. But the laborer stooping to his work earns his daily bread and is at peace.
I still seem to hear Sniatynski's words: "Do not philosophize her away, as you have philosophized away your abilities and your thirty-five years of life." I know it leads to nothing, I know it is wrong, but I do not know how not to think.
13 March.
My father died this morning. He was ill only a few hours.
PELI, VILLA LAURA, 22 March.
Death is such a gulf, and though we know that all have to go thither, yet when it swallows up one of our dear ones, we who remain on the brink are torn with fear, sorrow, and despair. On that brink all reasoning leaves us, and we only cry out for help which cannot come from anywhere. The only solace and comfort lies in faith, but he who is deprived of that light gets well-nigh maddened by the impenetrable darkness. Ten times a day it seems to me impossible, too horrible, that death should be the end of everything, and then again, a dozen times I feel that such is the case.
23 March.
When I arrived from Ploszow I found my father so much better that it never even entered my mind that the end could be so near. What strange twists there are in the human mind. God knows how sincerely I rejoiced when I found my father so much better than I had thought, and yet because throughout that anxious journey I had fancied him sick unto death, and already saw myself kneeling at his coffin, I was sorry for my wasted anxieties. Now the memory of this fills me with keen remorse.
How thoroughly unhappy is the individual whose heart and soul have lost their simplicity. Thus not less bitter, not less of a reproach is the remembrance that at my father's deathbed there were two persons in me: one of them the son full of anguish, who gnawed his hands to keep back his sobs; the other the philosopher, who studied the psychology of death. I am unutterably unhappy because my nature is an unhappy one.
My father died with full consciousness. Saturday evening he felt a little worse. I sent for the doctor, that he might be at hand in case we should want him. The doctor prescribed some physic, and my father, according to his habit, disputed the point, demonstrating that the physic would bring on a stroke. The doctor calmed my fears, and said though there was always fear of another stroke, he saw no immediate danger, and that my father most likely would live for many years to come. He repeated the same to the patient, who, hearing of the many years to come, incredulously shook his head and said: "We will see." As he has always been in the habit of contradicting his doctors, and proving to them that they know nothing, I did not take his words seriously. Towards ten at night, when taking his tea, he suddenly rose and called out:
"Leon, come here, quick!"
A quarter of an hour later he was in his bed, and within an hour he was dying.
24 March.
I am convinced that people preserve their idiosyncracies and originality to the last minute of their life. Thus my father, in the solemn dignity of thoughts at the approaching end, still showed a gratified vanity that he, and not the doctor, had been right, and that his unbelief in medicine was well founded. I listened to what he said, and besides, read his thoughts in his face. He was deeply impressed with the importance of the moment; there was also curiosity as to the future life, not a shadow of doubt as to its existence, but rather a certain uneasiness about how he would be received, joined to an almost unconscious, unsophisticated belief that he would not be treated as a mere nobody in particular. I shall never die like this, because I have no basis to uphold me in the hour of death. My father parted with his life in absolute faith and the deep contrition of a true Christian. At the moment when he received the last sacraments he was so venerable, so purely saintly, that his image will remain with me always.