Marta. Eliza Orzeszkowa
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For every ill there must be a remedy. Some see it in one thing and some in another, but no prescription cures the sickness.
Not long ago, one of the most justly respected writers in our country (Mr. Zachariasiewicz in his novel Albina) stated publicly that women are morally and physically ill because there is a lack of great love among them (for men, naturally).
Heavens! What a great injustice!
May the rosy god Eros fly to our aid and affirm that our entire life is nothing more than incense burned incessantly in his honor!
Since we were knee-high, we have heard that our destiny is to love one of these lords of creation. As young girls we dream of this lord and master every evening when the moon shines or the stars twinkle; and every morning when snowy lilies open their fragrant goblets to the sun, we dream and sigh.
We sigh until the moment when we are free to turn, like lilies to the sun, toward the one who, in our imaginations, emerges from the misty morning clouds or the flood of moonlight as the figure of Adonis sleeping in secrecy. Then . . . what then? Adonis steps down from the clouds, he becomes a man, we exchange rings with him and we marry. This is also an act of love, although the author mentioned above, in his nonetheless beautiful novels, insists that it is always and unalterably a mere act of calculation.
We do not entirely agree with him. It may be an act of calculation in exceptional circles and circumstances, but it is most commonly an act of love. What kind of love? This is a different and very delicate matter requiring much discussion, but it is enough to say that when we go to the altar, veiling our diffident faces in white muslin and coils of tulle, the charming Eros flies before us, brandishing a torch with rosy flames above our heads.
And then? What then? We love again . . . if not the lord of creation who revealed himself in a dream to a young girl and put a wedding ring on a virgin’s finger, then a different one, and if we do not love anyone, then we long to love. We dry up, we develop consumption, we become termagants because of our desire to love.
And what comes of all that? Some of us indeed fly through our whole lives enfolded in the wings of the god of love, honest, virtuous, and happy. But others more numerous, by far more numerous, walk on earth with bleeding feet, struggling for bread, peace, and virtue, weeping copiously, suffering greatly, sinning sorely, falling into the abyss of shame, dying from hunger.
The remedy embodied in the word “l o v e,” then, does not cure all illnesses.
It may be that one more ingredient should be added for the remedy to be effective.
What ingredient?
Perhaps a page from a woman’s life will tell.
* * *
On a beautiful autumn day not many years ago, Graniczna Street, a lively street in Warsaw, was filled with people. They were walking and riding, hurrying as business or pleasure dictated, without glancing to the left or to the right—without paying any attention at all to what was happening in one of the adjacent courtyards.
The courtyard was clean and quite large, surrounded by high brick buildings on all four sides. The building farthest from the street was the smallest, yet its large windows and wide entrance, set off by a handsome porch, suggested that the dwelling inside was comfortable and attractively decorated.
A young woman with a very pale face, dressed in mourning, stood on the porch. She was not wringing her hands, but they dangled helplessly, as if she were profoundly sad and distressed. A four-year-old girl, equally pale and also in mourning, clung to them.
Over the wide, clean stairs leading from the upper floor of the building, people in heavy clothes and heavy, dusty shoes descended continuously. They were porters carrying furnishings from a residence that was not large and elegant, but had been pleasant and tastefully appointed. There were mahogany beds, couches and armchairs covered in crimson woolen damask, graceful wardrobes and chests, even several consoles inlaid with marble, a few large mirrors, two enormous oleander trees in pots, and a datura on whose branches a few white blossoms still hung like chalices. The porters carried all these things down the stairs, passing the woman on the porch. They arranged them on the pavement of the courtyard, placed them on two wagons standing near the gate, or carried them out to the street.
The woman stood motionless, glancing at every piece of furniture that was being taken from her. It was clear that the objects she was leaving behind had not only material value for her; she was parting with them as with the still-visible signs of the vanished and irretrievable past, the mute witnesses of lost happiness. The pale, dark-eyed child pulled harder at her mother’s dress.
“Mama!” she whispered. “Look! Papa’s desk!”
The porters carried a large, masculine desk down the stairs and put it on a wagon. It was handsomely carved, adorned with a gallery back, and covered in green cloth. The woman in mourning looked at it for a long time and the child pointed to it with a thin finger.
“Mama!” whispered the girl. “Do you see that big black stain on Papa’s desk? I remember how it got there. Papa was sitting in front of the desk holding me on his knees, and you, Mama, came in and wanted to take me away from him. He laughed and did not hand me to you. I was playing and spilled the ink. Papa was not angry. He was good. He was never angry at me or at you . . .”
The child whispered these words with her little face hidden in the folds of her mother’s mourning dress and her tiny body huddling up to the woman’s knees. It was evident that memories were exerting their power over her childish heart, wrenching it with pain of which she was not fully aware.
Two large tears fell from the woman’s eyes, which had been dry until now; her child’s words had evoked the memory of a moment once lost among millions of similar everyday moments. Now she smiled at the unhappy child—smiled with a mixture of delight and bitterness at the thought of that lost paradise. It may even have occurred to her that the freedom and joy of that moment were being paid for today with the last bites of bread that were left for her and her child, and would be paid for tomorrow with hunger; the ink stain that had appeared amid the laughter of the child and the kisses of her parents would lower the value of the desk by more than a dozen złotys.
After the desk, a Krall piano appeared in the courtyard, but the woman in mourning looked at it indifferently. Probably she was not a musician, and the instrument awakened the fewest regrets and memories. But when a small mahogany bed with a colorful yarn quilt was taken out of the house and put on a wagon, her eyes were riveted to it, and the child burst into tears.
“My bed, Mama!” she cried. “Those people are taking my bed and the coverlet you made for me! I do not want them to take it! Mama, take my bed and my coverlet back from them!”
The woman’s only reply was to press the head of the crying child more firmly to her knees. Her beautiful black, deep-set eyes were dry again and her pale, delicate lips were pursed and silent.
The child’s pretty bed was the last piece of furniture to be taken out. The gate was open wide; the wagons filled with furniture were driven out into the pleasant street, followed by porters carrying the remaining items on their shoulders. Behind the windows of the neighboring houses, the heads of people who had been looking curiously at the courtyard vanished.
A young woman in a coat and hat came down the stairs and stood in front of the person in mourning.
“Madam,” she said, “I have taken care of everything. I paid those who were supposed to be paid. Here is the rest of the money.” And she handed the woman a small roll of banknotes.
The woman slowly turned her head toward her.
“Thank you, Zofia,” she said quietly. “You have been very good to me.”
“Madame, you were always good to me!” the girl cried. “I have worked for you for four years and no place was ever better, or ever will be better, than with you.”
She rubbed her wet eyes with a hand on which the marks of the needle and the iron were visible, but the woman seized her rough hand and pressed it