The Comedienne Part 50

"I need the money right away!"

"You will have it . . . in an hour!" answered Janina, making some sudden determination; she glanced with such scorn at Mme. Anna that the latter left without a word, slamming the door after her.

From her companions Janina had heard something about the p.a.w.nshop and she immediately went there to p.a.w.n her gold bracelet, the only one that she possessed.

On returning home she immediately paid Mme. Anna, who was surprised, but not very polite.

Having done that Janina added: "I will have my meals at the restaurant; I don't want to trouble you."

"Just as you like. If things here don't suit you, you are free to do as you please!" whispered the deeply humiliated Mme. Anna.

By that one act Janina incurred the enmity of the whole house.

"I will sell everything I possess . . . even to the last b.u.t.ton!"

she said to herself with bitter resolve.

And Janina calculated that for one half of what she had been paying Mme. Anna she could get all the food that she needed. Wolska directed her to a cheap lunch-room and she went there for her dinners; when she had not money enough for that, a roll with a sardine had to suffice her for the entire day.

But one day the theater was closed, for there were only twenty rubles in the treasury; on the following day the performance was postponed because of a heavy downpour. Janina, like everyone else, did not receive a single copeck from Cabinski and during those two days had absolutely nothing to eat.

This first hunger which she could not appease because she had nothing to appease it with had a fearful effect upon her. She felt within herself a strange and unceasing pain.

"Starvation! Starvation!" Janina whispered to herself in terror.

Hitherto she had known it by its name only. Now she wondered at that sensation of hunger within her. It seemed strange to her that she felt like eating and hadn't the money even to buy herself a roll!

"Is it possible that I have nothing to eat?" Janina asked herself.

From the kitchen there was wafted to her the smell of frying meat.

She shut the door tightly for that smell nauseated her.

Janina remembered with a strange emotion that the majority of great artists in various ages also suffered poverty and hunger. The thought consoled her for a while. She felt as though she were anointed with the first pang of martyrdom for art's sake.

She smiled in the mirror with a melancholy look at her yellowish and worn face. She tried to read to rid herself, as it were, of her own personality, but she could not, for she constantly felt that growing hunger.

She gazed out of the window at the long yard surrounded on all sides by the high windows of the adjoining houses, but she saw how in a few houses people were sitting down to the table and saw the workmen in the yard also eating their dinner from small clay pots. She quickly drew back from the window for she felt hunger like a steel hand with sharp claws tearing her even more violently.

"Everybody is eating!" Janina said to herself as though this was the first time that she had taken note of that fact.

Later she lay down and slept until the evening without going either to the rehearsal or to Cabinska's home, but she felt even weaker upon awaking and had a painful dizziness in her head, while that keen and constant sapping sensation within herself tormented her so that she wept.

In the evening in the dressing-room a boisterous gayety possessed Janina; she laughed continually, joked and made fun of her companions quarreled over some trifle with Mimi and then flirted from the stage with the occupants of the front row of seats.

When the counselor appeared behind the scenes right after the first act with a box of candy, Janina greeted him joyously and pressed his hand so tightly that the old man became confused. Afterwards she sat down in some dark corner, waiting for the stage-director to cry: "Enter!" When the darkness and silence enveloped her, she broke into convulsive sobbing.

After the performance Janina received a quadruple payment on account two whole rubles. Cabinski gave them to her himself in secret so that the others might not see it.

Janina went out for supper on the veranda and became intoxicated with one gla.s.s of whiskey so that she herself requested Wladek to escort her home.

From that evening Wladek followed her like a shadow and began openly to show her his love, paying no attention to the fact that his mother was asking everybody in the theater about him and constantly tracking both him and Janina.

One day Glogowski came rus.h.i.+ng into Janina's home and cried out already from the doorway: "Well, I have come back again to my Zulus! . . ."

He flung his hat on a trunk, sat on the bed and began to roll a cigarette.

Janina gazed at him calmly and thought how strange it was that the coming of this friend who had interested her so deeply in the past should now leave her so indifferent.

"So you do not weep with joy at seeing me again, eh? Ha! I'll have to resign myself to it. No doubt the dogs alone will weep over me!

May the deuce take me! But don't you happen to know what is the matter with Kotlicki? He does not come to the theater any more and I can't find him anywhere. He must have journeyed somewhere."

"I have not seen him since the night of that supper," answered Janina slowly.

"There must be some reason for his disappearance! Probably some adventure, some love affair, some . . . But why should I bother about such a green monkey, eh? Isn't that true?"

"Indeed it is!" whispered Janina, turning her face toward the window.

"Oh! and what does that mean?" he cried, glancing sharply into her eyes. "Goodness, how you have changed! Sunken and gla.s.sy eyes, yellowish complexion, sharpened features. . . . What does it all mean?" he asked in a quieter tone.

Suddenly he struck his hand to his forehead and began to run up and down the room like a maniac.

"What an idiot I am. What a monster! Here I am parading about Warsaw, while here real, artistic poverty has quartered itself in earnest! Miss Janina," he cried, taking her hand and looking steadily into her eyes, "Miss Janina! I want you to tell me everything as at confession. May the deuce take me, but you must tell me!"

Janina was silent; but seeing his honest face and hearing that sympathetic voice whose accents had a strange way of gripping one's heart, she suddenly felt overcome by feeling, and tears stood in her eyes. She could not speak for emotion.

"Well, well, there's no use crying, for I shall depart anyway," he said jokingly to hide his own emotion. "Now, just listen to me . . .

but without any protests or loud opposition, for I detest parliamentarism! I see you are in poverty and theatrical poverty in the bargain. . . . Well, I happen to know what it's like. Now, for goodness' sake, stop blus.h.i.+ng. Poverty that is honestly acquired is not anything to be ashamed of! It's nothing but an ordinary smallpox which all people who are worth anything in this world have to pa.s.s through. Ho! ho! I have been playing blindman's buff with troubles since many a year! Well, I shall end what I am saying in a gallop.

Let us do this . . ."

He turned around, took from his pocketbook thirty rubles, that is, all the money that had been sent him for his journey, placed it under Janina's pillow and returned to his former seat.

"'Now we are agreed, are we not, my cousin . . .' said Louis XI after beheading the Duke of Anjou. I will accept no appeal and if you dare to . . ."

He grasped his hat and extending his hand, said softly: "Good-bye, Miss Janina."

With a desperate motion, Janina hastily barred the door with her body.

"No, no! Do not humiliate me! I am unfortunate enough as it is," she whispered, firmly holding his hand.

"There you have a woman's philosophy! May the deuce take me, but that which I did is as natural as the fact that I will some day blow out my brains and that you will become a great actress!"

Janina began to expostulate with him, and finally to urge him to take back his money, saying that she did not need it, that she would not accept it, and showing a deep aversion to being helped.

Glogowski became gloomy and said roughly: "What! May the deuce take me, but of the two of us I certainly am not the fool! But no! I refuse to get provoked about it. I shall sit down calmly and talk it over with you seriously. I don't want you to get angry at me over such an empty thing as money. You don't want to take it, although you need it, and why? Because a false shame deters you, because you have been taught that such simple human things as helping one another lowers one's pride. Such conceptions are already becoming putrid. To the museum with them! Those are foolish and evil prejudices. May the deuce take me, but it requires a European brain and hysterical subtlety to hesitate to accept money from a human being like yourself when you are in need. Why and to what purpose do you think the human herd unites itself into some form of society? Is it mutually to devour and rob one another or mutually to help one another? I know you will tell me that it is otherwise, but I answer you that that is precisely why we have so much evil in this world.

And once we recognize a thing as evil we ought to shun it. Man ought to do good. That is his duty. To do good is the wisest mathematics.

But Great Scott! What's the use of my making so much ado about it!"

he cried in irritation.

He continued to speak for a long while yet, scoffed, swore occasionally, shouted: "May the deuce take me," and raged fiercely, but in his voice there was so much sincere and deep friendliness, such heartfelt kindness, that Janina, although she was not at all convinced, accepted his proffered aid with a grateful handclasp only because she did not wish to offend him by refusing.