The season ended. Cabinski was leaving for Plock with an entirely
new company, for Topolski had taken away his best forces and the
rest had scattered among various companies.
In the pastry shop on Nowy Swiat, Krzykiewicz, who had broken with
Ciepieszewski, was organizing a company of his own. Stanislawski was
also starting a small company on a profit-sharing basis. Topolski
was already preparing his company for its trip to Lublin.
The local garden-theaters were all closed for the season and a
deathly silence reigned over them. The stages were boarded up and
the dressing-rooms and entrances locked. The verandas were strewn
with broken chairs and rubbish. The autumn leaves fluttered from the
trees and torn scraps of programs of the last performances rustled
about sadly in the breeze. The season was over.
Nobody visited the theater any more, for the migratory birds were
preparing for their flight, only Janina from force of habit, still
would come here, gaze a moment at the deserted haunts and return
again.
Cabinska wrote her a very cordial letter, inviting her to her home.
Janina went there and found that they were already packing up for
their journey. Immense trunks and baskets stood in the middle of the
rooms, a large pile of various stage paraphernalia together with
mattresses and bedding lay on the floor the entire outfit of a
nomadic life.
In Cabinska's room, Janina no longer found either the wreaths or the
furniture, or the canopied bed; there shone only the bare walls with
the plaster broken here and there by the hasty removal of pictures
and the pulling out of hooks. A long basket stood in the middle of
the room and the nurse, perspiring from her exertion, was packing
into it Pepa's wardrobe. Cabinska, with a cigarette in her mouth,
directed the packing and continually scolded the children, who were
tumbling in great glee over the mattresses and the straw strewn
about the packages.
She greeted Janina with exaggerated cordiality and said: "There is
such a dust in here that it is unbearable. Nurse, be careful how you
pack, so that you don't crush my dresses. Let us go out on the
street," she said to Janina, putting on her coat and hat.
She pulled Janina along to her pastry shop and there, over a cup of
chocolate, began to apologize to her for the discourtesy that
Cabinski had shown her at the box office.
"Believe me, the director was so excited that he really did not know
what he was saying. And can you wonder at it? He was giving his best
efforts and even pawning his personal effects, only that the company
might lack nothing and, in the meanwhile, along comes Topolski,
creates a rumpus and breaks up his company. Even a saint would lose
patience in those circumstances and, moreover, Topolski told my
husband that you were going to join his company."
Janina answered nothing, for she was now entirely indifferent toward
the whole matter, but when Cabinska told her that on that very
afternoon they were leaving for Plock and that she should
immediately pack her things, for the expressman would call for them
directly, she answered with decision: "Thank you for your kindness,
Mrs. Directress, but I shall not go."
Cabinska could scarcely believe her ears and cried out in amazement:
"Have you already secured an engagement and where?"
"Nowhere, nor do I intend to," answered the girl.
"How is that! Are you going to abandon the stage? You who have a big
future before you!"
"I have had more than enough of acting," answered Janina with
bitterness.
"Come now, don't reproach me with it, you know it's your first year
on the stage and they wouldn't give you big roles at once,
anywhere."
"Oh, I am no longer going to try for them."
"And I had already been planning that in Plock you would live
together with us and that would not only make it easier for you, but
my daughter also could derive more benefit from it. Please think it
over and I, on my part, assure you that you will also get roles."
"No, no! I have enough of poverty and have absolutely no more
strength left to bear it any further and, moreover, I cannot, I
cannot . . ." answered Janina quietly, with tears in her eyes, for
that proposal flashed before her mind like the dawn of a better
future and awakened for a moment her old enthusiasm and dreams of
artistic triumph. But immediately she thought of her present
condition and the sufferings that she would have to endure on that
account, so she added with even greater emphasis: "No, I cannot! I
cannot!"
But she could not hold back the tears which continued to stream
quietly down her face until even Cabinska was touched and, drawing
nearer to her, whispered with sincere sympathy, "For God's sake what
is the matter with you? Tell me, perhaps I shall be able to help
you."
In reply Janina blushed faintly, warmly clasped Cabinska's hand, and
hastily left the pastry shop.
Tears were stifling her; life was stifling her.
Immediately afterward Stanislawski came to Janina and urged her to
leave with him for the small provincial towns. He was organizing a
company of from eight to nine persons in which each was to hold a
share. He offered Janina leading roles and spoke in glowing terms of
the certain success that awaited them in the provincial towns. He
enumerated all those whom he was engaging: all young people and
novices, full of energy, zeal, and talent. And he promised himself
that he would lead them along the path of true art, that his company
would be in the nature of a school for drama and that he would be a
real teacher and father, who would make of these people true artists
worthy of the theater and its traditions.
Janina refused Stanislawski briefly. She thanked him heartily for
the kindness he had shown her during the summer and took leave of
him cordially, as though forever.
When he had gone, she determined finally to end it all. She had not
yet told herself decisively: "I will die!" So far, if someone had
told her that she was contemplating suicide she would have denied it
sincerely, but already that thought and desire were lurking in the
subconscious depths of her mind.
Janina knew when the Cabinskis were leaving, so she went down to the
steamboat landing. She stood upon the bridge and watched them steam
away. She gazed at the gray waves of the Wisla splashing against the
sides of the pier and at the distant horizon veiled in autumn mists,
and such an intense sadness and grief overwhelmed her that she could
not move from the spot, or tear her eyes away from the water.
Night fell and Janina still stood there, gazing before her. The rows
of lights on the river banks sprang up from the darkness like golden
flowers and dotted the rocking, greenish surface of the water with
quivering gleams. The din and hum of the city echoed dimly behind
her, the hacks sped with noisy clatter across the bridge, the bells
of the tramcars clanged incessantly, crowds of people passed by with
laughter; sometimes the echo of a song reached Janina, or the merry
tones of a hand organ, then again, a warm breath of wind, saturated
with the raw odor of the river, fanned her feverish face. All these
sights and sounds beat against her as against a lifeless statue and
rebounded again without making any impression on her.
The water in its depths began to pass through ever stranger
transformations: it turned black, but that blackness was interwoven
with gleams of light, flames of red, streaks of violet, and rays of
yellow, like the glowing flame of pain. There, in those silent
depths, there seemed to be a better and fuller life, for the waves
murmured so joyously, broke against the piers and stone bulwarks
and, as though with frenzied laughter, united again, blended,
tumbled over one another and flowed on. Janina seemed almost to hear
their care free laughter, their calling to one another and their
voice of mighty joy.
"What are you doing here?" suddenly said a voice behind her.
Janina trembled and turned around slowly. Wolska was standing before
her and curiously and uneasily watching her.
"Oh, nothing, I was just gazing about."
"Come with me, the air here isn't healthy," said Wolska, taking
Janina by the arm, for she read in her dimmed eyes a suicidal
intent.
Janina allowed herself to be led away and only after they had gone
some distance, she asked quietly, "So you have not left with
Cabinski?"
"I couldn't. You see, my Johnnie's health is again worse. The doctor
has forbidden me to move him from bed and I believe that it would
kill him," whispered Wolska sadly. "I had to stay, for, of course, I
can't send him to the hospital. If it comes to the worst, we shall
die together, but I will not forsake him. The doctor still gives me
some hope that he will recover."
Janina gazed with a strange feeling at the face of Wolska which,
though worn and faded, beamed with a deep motherly love. She looked
like a beggar woman in her dark, stained cloak and gray dress,
frayed at the bottom; she wore a straw hat and black mended gloves
and carried a parasol which was rusty from continual use. But
through all this poverty there shone, as bright as the sun, her love
for her child. She saw and heeded nothing else, for all that did not
concern her child had no meaning for her.
Janina walked alongside of her, gazing with admiration at this
woman. She knew her story. Wolska was the daughter of a rich and
intelligent family. She fell in love with an actor, or else with the
theater itself, and went on the stage and, although later her lover
abandoned her and she suffered poverty and humiliation, she could
not tear herself away from the theater and now, she centered all her
love and all her hopes upon her child that had been seriously ill
since the spring.
"Where does she get all her strength?" thought Janina and then,
turning to Wolska, she asked: "What are you doing now?"
Wolska shuddered, a faint blush flitted over her worn face and her
lips quivered with a painful expression as she answered: "I
sing . . . What else could I do? I must live and must earn enough to
pay Johnnie's doctor bills. I must. Although it fills me with shame
to do it, I must. Alas, such is my fate, such is my fate!" she
moaned complainingly.
"But I don't know what you mean," said Janina, who could not
understand why Wolska should feel ashamed to earn a living by
singing.
"Because, you see, Miss Janina, I don't want anybody to know about
it. . . . You will keep it to yourself, won't you?" she begged with
tears in her eyes.
"Certainly I give you my word. Moreover, whom would I tell? . . . I
am all alone in the world."
"I sing in a restaurant on Podwal St.," said Wolska in a low and
hurried voice.
"In a restaurant!" whispered Janina, standing stock-still in
amazement.
"What else could I do? Tell me, what else could I do? I need money
for food and rent. How else could I earn it, when I don't even know
how to sew? At home I knew how to play on the piano a bit and could
speak a little French, but of course, that would not bring me a
penny now. I saw an advertisement in the Courier for a singer, so I
went there and got the position. They pay me a ruble a day together
with meals and . . ." but tears choked her voice and she grasped
Janina's hand and pressed it feverishly. Janina returned the
hand-clasp with a similar one and they walked on in silence.
"Come along with me, won't you? It will make me feel a little more
at ease," said Wolska.
Janina willingly agreed.
They entered the restaurant "Under the Bridge" on Podwal St. It was
a long and narrow garden with a few miserable trees. At the very
entrance there was a well. A whitewashed fence on the left side of
the garden divided it from the neighboring property which must have
been a lumberyard, for piles of beams and boards could be seen
looming above the fence. A few kerosene lanterns illuminated the
place. A number of little white tables with varnished tops and
around them three times that number of rough-hewn chairs constituted
the entire furnishings of that summer restaurant. A small office on
the ground floor and the top of the neighboring house enclosed the
right side of the garden, while at the back there arose a high,
rough brick wall with small, dirty, and barred windows; it was the
rear of the former Kochanowski Palace, standing on the corner of
Miodowa and Kapitulna Streets.
Near the fence, a small stage shaded by a canvas roof with its two
open sides facing toward the audience, formed a sort of niche, the
walls of which were covered with a cheap, blue paper dotted with
silver stars. The smoking kerosene footlights on one side of the
stage cast a drab light upon a musician with a disheveled gray beard
and grease-stained coat, who was pounding away at the keyboard of a
wretched piano with an automatic motion of his arms and head.
The garden was filled with a public of working-class people and
those from the poorer section of the city.
Janina and Wolska pushed their way through the crowd to that little
office building in which there was a dressing-room for the
performers, divided into a men's and women's compartment by a red
cretonne curtain.
"I am already waiting!" came a hoarse, drunken voice from behind the
curtain.
"You can begin your part, I will come right away!" answered Wolska,
dressing herself in feverish haste in a grotesque, red costume.
In a few minutes she was all ready for her appearance. Janina
followed her out and took a seat facing the stage. Wolska, all
flushed with hurrying and still closing the last buttons and hooks
of her costume, appeared on the stage, greeting the public with a
long bow. The musician struck the yellow keys and at the same moment
there arose the tones of a song:
Once upon a stump among the hills, Between the oaks there sat two
turtle-doves, And I know not for what sport of love's They kissed
each other with their bills.
The strains of the old, sentimental song from The Cracovians and the
Mountaineers floated on, interrupted only by frequent bursts of
applause, the banging of beer glasses against the tables, the
clatter of plates, the slamming of doors and the reports or rifles
in the shooting galleries. The lanterns diffused a hazy and muddy
light; girls in white aprons and with their hands full of beer
glasses, passed in and out among the tables, flirted with the
drinking men and flung cynical remarks and answers at those who
accosted them. Ribald laughter and coarse jokes flew around like
fire-works and were immediately answered by broad, thoughtless
merriment.
The public expressed its satisfaction with the singing by shouting,
beating time with their canes, and banging their beer glasses. At
moments the wind would entirely drown out the singing, or bend the
few wretched trees with a rustling sound and scatter the leaves over
the stage and the heads of the public.
Wolska continued to sing. Her red vaudeville costume, with low-cut
front, gleamed like a gaudy spot against the blue background of the
stage and excellently accentuated her thin, thickly painted face,
her sunken and pale eyes, and her sharp features which looked like
the skeleton-like face of a starving man. She swayed from side to
side with a heavy motion to the measure of the song:
"Such ardent love took hold of me, I embraced Stach most tenderly."
Her voice floated through the garden with a hollow, rasping sound
and added to the din made by that noisy and drunken crowd. Brutal
laughs broke out in sharp, penetrating scales, and those bravos
emitted by the drunken threats of a Sunday public and interrupted by
hiccoughs, beat against the stage with a hoarse and hollow roar
together with the biting jibes that were not spared the singer. But
she heard nothing and sang on, indifferent and cold to all that
surrounded her. She flung forth tones, words, and mimicry with the
automatism of a hypnotized woman, only at moments, her eyes would
seek Janina's as though they were begging for pity.
Janina grew pale and red by turns, unable to endure any longer that
alcohol-saturated atmosphere and that drunken din which filled her
with aversion and disgust.
"I would rather die!" she thought. Oh, no, she would never be able
to amuse such a public. She would spit in its eyes and scorn herself
and then . . . if there were no other way out . . . drown herself in
the Wisla!
Wolska finished her song and her partner, dressed in a Cracovian
costume, went about among the drinking crowd with his notes in his
hand, collecting money. Remarks that froze one with their cynicism
and brutal frankness, were hurled into his face, but he only smiled
with the dull smile of a habitual drunkard, nervously twitched his
lips and humbly bowed his thanks for those ten-copeck pieces that
were thrown on his notes.
Wolska, with closed eyes, stood beside the piano, nervously tugged
at the golden lace of her waist and, groaning with painful anxiety,
counted in her mind the number of copecks which her partner placed
together with the notes beside her. The pianist again struck the
keys and Wolska and her partner began to sing together some comic
couplets, interwoven with a kind of "Krakowiak" which they danced in
a half dreamy manner.
Janina could hardly wait for the end of the performance and, without
saying anything about the impression that that drinking den had made
on her, she took leave of Wolska and fairly ran away from that
garden, that public, and that degradation.
During the entire day following, she did not leave her home. She ate
nothing and hardly thought at all, but lay in bed and gazed blankly
at the ceiling, following with her eyes, the last fly that crept
drowsily and half dead over it.
In the evening, Sowinska came in, sat down on a trunk and, without
any introduction, said harshly: "The room is already rented to
another tenant, so to-morrow you can clear out of here. And since
you owe us fifteen rubles, I will keep all your duds and give them
back to you only when you pay me the money."
"Very well," answered Janina and she looked at Sowinska
indifferently, as though nothing out of the ordinary were at stake.
"Very well, I shall go!" she added in a quieter tone and arose from
the bed.
"You will doubtlessly manage to help yourself in some way, won't
you? You will yet come to see me in a carriage, eh?" said Sowinska
and an ugly, hostile light gleamed in her owlish eyes.
"Very well," repeated Janina in the same mechanical way and began to
pace up and down the room.
Sowinska, growing tired of waiting for some kind of reply, left the
room.
"So all is ended!" whispered Janina in a hollow voice and the
thought of death became a conscious reality in her mind and shone
alluringly.
"What is death? A forgetting, a forgetting!" she answered herself
aloud, standing still and sinking her eyes in those murky deeps that
opened up before her soul.
"Yes, a forgetting, a forgetting!" she repeated slowly and for a
long time sat motionless, gazing at the flame of the lamp.
The night dragged on slowly, the house became quiet, the lights were
gradually extinguished in the long rows of windows and an ever
deeper silence spread itself about, until everything became steeped
in this drowsy silence.
The gray light of dawn was already beginning to streak the horizon
and to illumine the faint outlines of the housetops when Janina
awoke from her torpor and gazed about the room. She felt fully
determined, so she sprang up from her chair and, driven on by some
thought that lit up her eyes with a strange fire, walked quietly to
the door and opened it. But the noisy click of the latch which she
closed after her penetrated her with such a strange, sharp fear that
she reeled back against the frame of the door and breathed heavily
for a few moments. Finally, she quietly pulled off her shoes and
boldly, but with the utmost caution, passed through the hall and
entered a large room adjoining the kitchen which was used as a
dining room and a workroom in the day time and as a sleeping room
for Mme. Anna's apprentices at night. The close and heavy air of the
room almost suffocated Janina. With outstretched hands and bated
breath, she stole toward the kitchen so slowly that those minutes
seemed an eternity to her. At moments, she paused and, overcoming
her trembling that awful trembling listened to the loud breathing
and snoring of those sleeping there and then went on again, setting
her teeth with a desperate strength. Large drops of perspiration
rolled down her forehead from exertion and fear and her heart beat
so slowly and painfully that she almost felt the pulsation of it in
her throat. The kitchen door was open and Janina passed through it
like a shadow, but she stumbled against the bed of the servant-girl,
which stood very near the door. She grew numb with fear and for a
long time stood motionless and breathless, almost in a state of
suspended animation, gazing with terrified eyes at the bed whose dim
outlines she could scarcely make out in the darkness. But finally,
rallying all her strength and courage, she walked boldly to the
shelf upon which stood various kitchen utensils and supplies and
felt one after another with the greatest caution, until finally, her
hand rested upon a flat oblong bottle containing essence of vinegar.
She had seen it here a few hours ago and now, having found it, she
snatched it up so violently from among the other articles that a tin
cover fell with a crash upon the floor. Janina unconsciously bent
her head in terror, for the clash of the falling cover resounded
with such a tremendous echo in her brain that it seemed as though
the whole world were crashing down on her.
"Who's there?" called the servant, awakened by the noise. "Who's
there?" she repeated in a louder voice.
"It is I . . . I came for a drink of water," answered Janina with a
choking voice, after a long while, nervously pressing the bottle to
her breast. The servant indistinctly mumbled something and did not
speak again.
Janina ran to her room, as though pursued by the furies of madness,
no longer caring whether anyone heard her or might awaken and,
having reached it, locked the door and only then collapsed, half
dead from, exhaustion and trembled so violently that she thought she
would fall to pieces. The tears, which she did not even feel, began
to stream down her face. They gave her so great a relief that she
fell asleep. In the morning Sowinska again reminded her that it was
time to move and, brutally opening the door before her, told her to
get out. Janina dressed hastily and, without answering a word, left
the house.
She walked along the streets, feeling nothing but her homelessness
and that dizziness in her head which was engulfing all her thoughts.
She passed through Nowy Swiat and the Ujazdowskie Allees and did not
stop until she reached the lake in Lazienki Park.
The trees stood dying and their yellow leaves spread a golden carpet
over the paths. The tranquillity of an autumn day hung in the air
and only now and then a flock of sparrows flew by with a noisy
twitter, or the swans upon the lake cried out mournfully and beat
with their wings the muddy-green water that looked like worn velvet.
All around could be seen the destruction wrought by the hand of
golden autumn. Wherever it touched the trees, there the leaves
withered and fell to the ground, the grass dried up and the last
autumn asters bent their lifeless heads and dripped with dew, as
though weeping tears after death.
"Death!" whispered Janina, pressing in her hands the bottle that she
had secured on the previous night and she sat down, perhaps on the
same bench on which she had sat that spring. It seemed to her that
she was slowly drowsing away and that her thoughts were fading, for
her consciousness had begun to disintegrate and she was already
ceasing to feel and to know. Everything was falling away from her
and dying, like the nature about her that also seemed to be burning
out and drawing its last breath.
A rapturous feeling, full of peace and calm, filled Janina's heart,
for the entire past was vanishing from her memory; all her miseries,
all her disappointments, and all her struggles faded away, paled and
dispersed, as though absorbed by that pale autumn sun that hung over
the park. It seemed to her that she had never passed through them,
never felt anything, never suffered anything. It seemed to her that
she was curling up within herself, growing smaller and shrinking,
like that withered leaf that hung upon the barbed wire of the fence,
all ready to drop and be hurled down into the abyss of death by that
light breath of wind. Then again it seemed to her that she was
ripping to pieces, like that spider web that tangled itself about
the grass and floated in glistening filaments through the air; that
she was unwinding into such gossamer strands, into ever finer and
finer filaments, until she had vanished away into infinity and lost
all consciousness of herself. This feeling moved her strongly and a
strange tenderness and pity for herself filled her heart with
sorrow.
"Poor girl! How unhappy she is!" whispered Janina, as though she was
speaking of some other person.
Janina's soul was so rapidly disintegrating in its agony that she no
longer had a full and clear conception of what the miseries were
that had vanquished her, what misfortunes had broken her, nor did
she know why she was weeping or who she was.
"Death!" she repeated mechanically and that word found a deep and
unconscious echo in her brain and nerves and pressed only a few
tears from her eyes.
She stopped, without knowing why, before the marble figure of the
dancing Faun. The rains had darkened his stony body and rusted the
locks of his hair that curled like hyacinths, and his face, furrowed
by streams of water, seemed to have grown longer since the spring,
but in his eyes there gleamed and burned that same mockery and his
crooked legs continued their mad dance. "Lo! lo! lo!" he seemed to
sing, shaking his flute, laughing and jeering at everything, and
raising boldly to the sun his head which was crowned as though with
a bacchantic wreath by the withered leaves that had fallen on it.
Janina gazed at him, but being unable to remember or understand
anything, she passed on.
On Nowy Swiat, in one of the chambres garnies, she asked for a room,
ink, letter-paper, and envelopes. When everything had been supplied,
Janina locked herself up in the room and wrote two letters: one
brief, dry, and painfully ironical letter to her father and another
longer and entirely calm one to Glogowski. She notified them both of
her suicide. She addressed the letters with the greatest accuracy
and laid them in a conspicuous place.
Afterwards Janina calmly took from her pocket the bottle with the
poison, uncorked it, held the liquid up to the light and then,
without thinking or hesitating any longer drank it to the very
dregs.
Suddenly, she stretched out her arms, a gleam of terror shot across
her face, her eyes closed, as though blinded by some measureless
void that opened before, and she fell prone upon the floor, in
dreadful convulsions of pain.
A few days later, Kotlicki, having returned from Lublin where he had
installed Topolski's company, was sitting in a coffee-house, looking
over the newspapers, and by some strange chance his eye fell upon
the following item among the local accidents of the day:
"THE SUICIDE OF AN ACTRESS"
"On Tuesday, in the chambres garnies on Nowy Swiat, the servants
were aroused by moans issuing from one of the rooms which an hour
ago had been engaged by an unknown woman. They broke open the door
and a dreadful sight met their eyes. Upon the floor lay writhing in
pain a young and beautiful woman. Two letters left behind by her
revealed that she was a certain Janina Orlowska, a former chorus
girl who appeared last season in the N. N. Theater under Cabinski's
management.
"A physician was called and the unconscious woman was taken to the
Hospital of the Infant Jesus. Her condition is serious but it still
holds forth some hope. Miss Orlowska poisoned herself with essence
of vinegar, as is attested by the bottle that was found in her room.
The cause of her desperate act is unknown, but an investigation is
being made. . . ."
Kotlicki read this over several times, knitted his brows, tugged at
his mustache, read it again and, finally, crumpled up The Courier
and threw it in anger upon the floor.
"A comedienne! A comedienne!" he whispered scornfully, biting his
lips.