Once again, Prince Stanisławczyk was dreaming he was the King of Poland. He was prancing about in a carmine and ermined peignoir, a cerulean-blue caftan with large buttons and amaranth-purple culottes! His head bore aloft a twin-sided cadenette sprinkled with powdered sugar, upon which sat the Royal crown. Somehow his noggin managed to hold it all up. On either side of the palace enfilade, the terrified gentry from all across the province were beating the floor with their foreheads. Stanisławczyk walked along, beaming with glory and accepting tributes; upon some he granted favors, upon others he rained curses, and then all at once a nude African with a ring in his nose—as big as a firkin!—came leaping out from the-devil-knows-where, as if he’d emerged from the bowels of the earth. He held a black monkey on a chain and poked it with a stick.
“Why poke him thus?” asked a fuming Stanisławczyk, the noble King of Poland, for he thought it to be his gift from a Padishah in Brazil, and with all that poking his gift would surely get damaged. Suddenly he saw that the monkey on the chain was Niemczyk all shrunken up, and in his hairy palm he clutched a message bearing seals. Stanisławczyk understood that this message would be his undoing! Anon, he began shuffling his feet and waving his hands, he sought to flee post-haste, to hide from said undoing, from death, and thus he fled to the attic. On the way he lost his crown, and when he’d made it to the attic he caught sight of himself with neither crown nor powdered hair. On his head was his own hair, and it was aflame!
Then he launched himself from the uncharted depths of the dream, he came popping like a cork through the calm surface of the day. He awoke with bulging eyes.
“Dream scare us, Lord spare us!” he breathed, drenched in sweat. “How could I become the King of Poland? Why am I forever dreaming that I’m to become the King of Poland?”
He pawed at his head, groping to see if he’d grown any lumps or horns; he ran his fingers across his nightshirt. He grabbed the mirror from his dressing table and looked into it askance, fearfully. From the crystalline depths a rumpled face with a handlebar moustache, framed with ruddy mutton chops, leapt out to meet him; there was a birdlike stare in its dark, bulbous eyes—normally bright and penetrating, now filled with a mad terror—and predaciousness in the pointed nose, its shiny bridge, and the thin lips. All of this he touched, poking around here and there, and concluded that it was no one but himself.
“What kind of King of Poland am I?” he fumed. “And why all these dreams? If it’s my destiny then let it come true; and if it’s only a dream, then off with it, and let it haunt me no more.”
Dejected, he set the mirror to one side and fixed the bedroom drapes with his gaze. The sun gently backlit the dun, torn, faded fabric.
“Better off a senator. Or a minister,” he muttered. “Less of an honor, but at least nobody takes you for a madman.”
He got up. He had another look in the mirror.
“Hmph!” he muttered again. “But a king’s a king!” He went over to the window and pulled the broken string, parting the drapes.
As far as the eye could see, meadows fanned out, growing all about with clumps of hazel and the occasional tree. The green grain fields swayed back and forth like emerald water. It was still far from harvest time. Invisible skylarks tinkled from where they hung in the hot air, sparrows warbled in the violet lilac bushes outside the manor. High poplars guarded Stanisławczyk’s land like sentries.
He leaned out of the window, knocking off a jagged shard of plaster and spooking the birds. They flapped off in a helter-skelter flock. A sound came from a cuckoo bird inhabiting the speckled iron tree trunk in the corner of the bedroom. Stanisławczyk counted the hours. It was broken; it cuckooed sixteen times, a spring twanged, and the cuckoo retired, content with its cuckooing.
“I’ve been had,” he snorted. “Who ever heard of so many cuckoos? Italian craftsmanship, indeed!”
He propped his telescope up to one eye. Far off yonder, beyond the wall of poplars, stretched Sztorch’s property. He lorded over his neighbors, he had no iron cuckoo, and he brought in a tutor to teach his children botany and the constellations. Closer, on his own haystack, the prince spotted a falcon drying its wings from the night’s dew. His tongue felt for the gap in his teeth; one had fallen out as he’d gnawed a chicken bone the night previous. There was no predicting what could happen! The falcon flapped its wings and flew off. A cart of peasants armed with pitchforks and rakes arrived at the tilled meadow. The women hiked up their skirts. His men were good-for-nothing, unruly, and idle. He liked to punish the peasants, and severely at that. He put down the telescope and retired from the window. He spent a time studying the tooth on the table with a magnifying glass. The tooth was gray with brown and green flecks, and even a red one.
A servant knocked at the door.
“Who’s there?”
“The Jew from town, my Lord!”
“Tell him to wait!”
Stanisławczyk threw on a Turkish robe and studied himself in the upright mirror. He assumed a commanding posture.
“Come in!”
A short, plump Jew in pince-nez appeared in the doorway.
“You called, my Prince?” he said with a bow.
Stanisławczyk pointed a finger at the table.
“Look good and hard, Grajcewer.”
The Jew went to the table and inclined over the place indicated by the prince’s finger.
“A tooth?” he asked uncertainly—for there were a thousand other things scattered on the table.
“My tooth.”
“A marvelous tooth! Ay!” The Jew clapped his little, puffy hands. “A wisdom tooth. A rare tooth! An extraordinary specimen!”
“I wish to have it mounted. As a souvenir of a miserable youth. A souvenir of smothered hopes. What’s your advice, Grajcewer? I thought a breastpin of some sort, what say you? For a shirtfront? Or a stickpin?”
“A most refined choice!”
“Becoming, wouldn’t you say?” Stanisławczyk turned toward the mirror, pressing the tooth to his nightshirt.
Grajcewer scurried up on his little legs and stood behind the prince.
“A capital choice!” he cried.
The prince wound the tooth in a scrap of his robe that had torn off only the day before—as if the robe and tooth had been in cahoots—and gave it to Grajcewer. Then he went to the window and put the telescope to his eye.
“So be it. On a stickpin, correct?” he asked slyly.
“A breastpin, as the Good Prince suggested.”
“You’re a scoundrel, Grajcewer. A stickpin would come out cheaper.”
“A breastpin is senatorial, my Good Prince.”
“But the stickpin is cheaper!” the prince bellowed.
“A capital . . .”
“Cheaper! Tell me at once!” yelled the prince, jamming the telescope painfully to his eye, for the peasants were racing about the meadow. The farmhands were chasing the wenches. They never raced to work.
“Cheaper, my Good Prince,” said the Jew with a hurt expression.
“You double-dealt me last time on that turquoise button, which was purportedly from the royal treasury!” Stanisławczyk turned his furious face to the Jew.
“It was, my Good Prince!” Grajcewer said, placing a hand over his heart. “Passed through the Dawłowiczes to the late Urszula Sieńczycka!”
“From one crook to another! Villain! I’ll have you run out of town! It’s as regal as you are honest! You want to reduce me to beggary! Suck my last drop of blood! You want to do a breastpin!” His bulging eyes bored into Grajcewer, as if seeking to plough through to his most deeply buried, infamous intentions.
Stanisławczyk, as usual, had decided that he would not be taken for a fool.
“You wound me, my Prince,” the Jew dryly complained.
“As though I could wound one of your ilk! Whatever the case, you always come out on top! Your house burns down, all your livestock are slaughtered, and you turn the ashes to gold! You make me a stickpin, and make sure you count out every last gram! And that clock! What kind of clock did you sell me? Italian craftsmanship! How you praised it, boasted that it was just like the ones in the Warsaw salons—and it doesn’t run properly! The cuckoo cuckooed sixteen times! It’s preposterous!”
Grajcewer stared flustered at the clock, carved to resemble a trunk with a hollow. “I’ll take it in for repairs. That Italian scoundrel.”
“You’re the scoundrel. And now look here!” the prince tapped a book lying on the table. “Here’s a picture of a stickpin. Take the magnifying glass. Do you have a magnifying glass? Go, and get it right this time, lest I run you out of town. Indeed.” Stanisławczyk sighed. “Did you bring me some baubles?” he asked, tossing a glance at the battered sack by the door.
“Allow me to show you!”
Grajcewer ran over to the sack, and plucked out a flat saffian box. This he opened and passed to Stanisławczyk.
“What’s this?”
“The Chain of King Sigismund August.”
“Why isn’t it intact?” asked the disappointed prince, taking it into his hands. “It’s only a piece of it. There’s no clasp.”
“Thus has it weathered the tides of history,” explained Grajcewer, wiping the perspiration from his pince-nez.
“And how can you be sure it’s from the Jagiellonian Dynasty?”
“Take the magnifying glass, your majesty, and study the medal. There it is: Sigismundus Augustus Rex Poloniae.”
The prince took the magnifying glass and the chain over to the window. He had a look and gave it some consideration. He muttered something under his breath.
“Where did you get it?”
“A Jew brought it to me.”
“And where did he get it?”
Grajcewer raised his brows. He gave his head neither a nod nor a shake, as if to say: “How should I know? Why ask? One answer is as good as another.”
“Crooks. Crooks, pure and simple,” the prince muttered, turning the chain over in his hands.
“What kind of jewels are these?”
“Rubies and opals. Beautiful, pure. Rare.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. The chain isn’t intact. How could I wear it? Haven’t they noted in the public journal that you’ve stolen it?”
“Not a word! A widow found it in her deceased husband’s cabinet!”
Grajcewer covered his mouth. He’d said too much, now the prince wouldn’t let him get away with it.
“No respect from the widow. Not even for the deceased. What was this cabinet?”
“It had a secret drawer.”
“Nothing else inside?”
“Nothing. Just bedbugs.”
“Only bugs, you say. Who really knows? I won’t be checking, will I? How much do you want?”
“The widow found it. She’s a modern widow.”
“The widow’s a swine. Why did the man hide his fortune? She must have tormented him to death.”
“A torment indeed,” Grajcewer agreed. “A torment in her subtile ways. The husband of such a lady is sent packing to the next world all the quicker, by his wife’s modern schooling.”
The prince gave this some thought, for he too had a modern wife. He sighed. A wise man, this Grajcewer.
“How much do you want?”
“Ten rubles?”
“Not on your life!” bellowed Stanisławczyk, retreating a step.
The merchant spread his little hands.
“Let Your Lordship quote the price. You are the Lord, and I merely a foolish Jew, at your service.”
“Take five, or I’ll run you out of town! You and those sons of yours, and those daughters of yours . . . !”
The Jew nodded his head. He raised his hands and his eyes toward the ceiling.
“Agreed! Agreed! Only God knows a Jew’s pain. Will you have me replace the rest of the chain?”
“Replace it. What good is the thing without the rest? You must. I’ll pay when it’s all ready. And take the clock.”
Grajcewer bowed and left, taking the tooth, the chain, and the clock with him.
“The crook,” Stanisławczyk muttered. “The rogue.”
He went back to watching the peasants load hayricks onto carts. There was too much laughter ringing out. But just enough of the girls’ thighs flashing from under their hiked skirts. He felt hungry. Going to the mirror, he stared for a long time into the cracked, matte surface, as blue as ice on water. He opened his mouth, tilted his head, and studied the gap where his tooth had been. He pulled a gnawed toothpick from his robe pocket and poked it into the hole. It hurt.
“The crooks. No mercy.”
He bared his teeth, counting those that remained.
“Plenty left,” he muttered.
A soft knock sounded. He didn’t respond at once. He crossed slowly to the window, ran his fingers over the telescope, and returned to the table. He brooded. His servants were good-for-nothing, dirty, and idle. Crooks, the lot of them. The artful widow had found a secret drawer in the cabinet. The prince felt ill at the thought that, after his demise, his wife too would find the secret drawer in his desk. Perhaps he should drill a hole in the table leg? But the leg was too skinny! What could he keep there? His children would have no respect, they’d find it and then drink, gamble, and carouse it all away! One man after another would come malingering round the widow, there’d be a widower too, and they’d pair up at his grave! But it didn’t even have to be a widower! It could be a bachelor! Bachelors were the most despicable! There was never enough money for them! And if he could dance a jig or play the guitar, there was no widow in the world who could resist! And if he could slip a word or two of French into the conversation! If he said he’d spent some time in France, the son-of-a-bitch, at the cabarets!
The servant knocked for the second time.
“Come in!”
The prince had the kind of servants who helped deceive the husband.
A tall, barefoot girl entered the room. She had blonde hair, fulsome lips, and deep, twinkling eyes. The prince’s ward. She was the only one who never deceived. She came in when she wanted, and left when she wanted. What kind of creature she was—this the prince did not know. She was carrying a letter on a dented tray. She tossed the tray onto the table. Then she moved as if to leave. But leave she did not.
“Hold on! What goes on in the village, eh?” the prince blurted out.
He breathed in the smell of feminine sweat, lye, and wood smoke. The scent of hay drifted in through the window. The prince ran his eyes over the girl’s breasts, her hips, her bare arms. They came to rest on her dirty feet and broken toenails.
“Why aren’t you off carting the hay, eh?” he asked, drawing nearer to the creature, placing a hand on her breast and squeezing. His fingers skimmed the stiffening nipple.
“I’m in the kitchen.” She leaned her hip on the table and sloped her body forward.
“And what goes on in the kitchen? What’s for lunch?” He ran his hand over her belly and quickly plunged it between her legs.
The girl seemed to have been waiting for this. She giggled. She pressed her thighs together, clasping the prince’s hand. From this trap he could not escape! All was lost!
“Capon and dumplings,” she purred.
“And soup?”
She nodded her head.
“And a golden sauce?”
“Golden,” she replied, and stared at the prince with golden eyes.
And he pulled back his hand, but it would not come free! She gave a quiet laugh. At last, however, she had mercy on the poor thing and spread her legs enough for him to escape. The prince’s round eyes glazed over.
“I am your captive,” he moaned.
“You are only your own captive.”
He hung his head, for he, too, was a humble servant of love.
The girl left with a smile that sent a shiver of both delight and dread through the prince! Only a goddess smiled thus, so that a mortal man dreamed of sweet death in her arms, as though it were not death at all, but salvation and eternal happiness.
“Come later,” her lips breathed.
Stanisławczyk silently moved his own lips. Luckily a piece of plaster tore free and fell onto the window ledge, restoring the prince to his senses. He sat down to read the letter. Slupcyn was inviting him to town for a game of cards. What other matters concerned Slupcyn, indeed, apart from cards? Perhaps wine and women as well. The arch-scoundrel, the whoremonger, the son-of-a-bitch! He’d smash the desk to smithereens with an axe to find the secret drawer! He’d waste no time in figuring it out, in hunting down the hidden spring! He amused Stanisławczyk, because he could stick his mouth into a glass of wine, and drink like a hog while wiggling his ears. He was big, flabby, and hairy. Slupcyn was somebody—he had a great deal of power. His letter mentioned that he’d sent old Wypcza packing for his no-good son’s political intrigues, and he asked if the prince wouldn’t care to buy something for a pittance before the auction; Slupcyn would falsify some documents and spook Wypcza’s distant relations. Imbecile! How could he write such things in a letter? Just think who else might have opened it! The local gentry would find out! No breeding, no fear of God! The scoundrel sought to profiteer on human suffering! “Screw yourself, Pyotr Pyotrovich!” the prince thundered. He burned the letter in the oven. He burned all the letters from Slupcyn, replied to none of them, and sent back all his gifts. Slupcyn liked to laugh:
“You, Stanisław, are a flea. No one can see you, yet you cling to my collar, and there’s no shaking you off.”
“Up your ass!” muttered the prince, staring at the ashes.
He spit. He staved off all such unpleasant thoughts. And what were these gifts Slupcyn had sent? A square-shaped folding comb, toothpicks, a flute, a dried tiger’s paw—but a small one, a cat’s, seemingly—a ship in a bottle, some dirty illustrations and poems. He had a look at the drawings and read the poems, of course, then sent them back. None of it made much of an impression, though Slupcyn had raved: “They’ll make you ram your head against the wall all night, until you bash a hole in it!” For a week he pondered how the ship might have been squeezed into the bottle. He took out the cork, prodded it with a finger, blew at the sails. He surmised the ship had been put in when it was the size of a seed; then it was watered, and grew like a pumpkin. And so he poured water into the bottle and waited to see if the ship would come bursting through the glass, it would grow gigantic and Stanisławczyk would cast it off to sea, sailing to Brazil; but everything just got wet, came unglued, fell apart. In a fury he corked it back up and sent it back to Slupcyn without so much as a word.
TRANSLATED FROM POLISH BY SOREN A. GAUGER AND MARCIN PIEKOSZEWSKI