The Comedienne Part 52

"But it is more alien to human beings and not so necessary to life as is love. Without art the world could exist, but without love . . . never! Moreover, art causes more painful disappointments than love."

"But it also gives greater joys. Love is an individual emotion; art is a social emotion, a synthesis. One loves it with one's humanity, one suffers for it, but only through art does one sometimes become immortal!"

"Those are dreams. Thousands have given their lives to become convinced of that and thousands have cursed that unattainable mirage."

"But those thousands had their lives filled with that mirage and felt more than one can feel, who dreams about nothing."

"But since they were not happy, what is it all worth?"

"And are most people happy?"

"A thousandfold more so than we!"

Wladek emphasized that "we" significantly.

"Never!" cried Janina, "for our happiness lies in pain as it does in joy, in dejection as well as ecstasy. Even this in itself is happiness: to be able to develop one's self spiritually; to reach far out into infinity with the arms of desire; to create new worlds in our mind, larger and more beautiful than those surrounding us; to chant, even through tears and pain, hymns to beauty and immortality; to dream, but to dream so intensely as to forget about life entirely and to live in dreams alone!"

Janina felt so great a flood of happiness and inspiration flowing into her soul that she spoke, as it were, only in periods of her thought, so that she might express herself at least in part. She spoke, entirely forgetful of the fact that some one was listening to her and spun out aloud ever grander and ever more evanescent dreams.

Wladek at first listened attentively, but later grew impatient.

"A comedienne!" he thought with irony. And he was sure that Janina was unfurling before him the peac.o.c.k feathers of fervor and enthusiasm merely to fascinate and conquer him. He did not answer or interrupt her, for it finally began to bore him.

"That role of 'Mary' is a trifle too sentimental . . ." added Janina after a longer silence.

"To me it seemed merely lyrical," answered Wladek.

"I should like some time to play 'Ophelia.'"

"Are you familiar with Hamlet?" asked Wladek, somewhat surprised.

"During the last two years I have read nothing but dramas and dreamed of the stage," she answered simply.

"Truly it is worth bending the knee before such enthusiasm!"

"Why? All that is necessary is to help it, to give it a field, an opportunity. . . ."

"If I only could. . . . Believe me when I say, that with my whole heart I desire to see you reach the heights of art."

"I believe you," Janina answered in a quieter tone. "And I thank you very much for Doctor Robin."

"May I copy out the role for you?"

"I will copy it myself; it will give me a certain pleasure."

"While you are learning it, I could act as a prompter for you, if you like."

"Oh, I should not want to take up any of your time . . ."

"Exclude a few hours each day for the performance and the rest of my time is yours to dispose of as you will," he said with fervor.

They gazed at each other a moment.

Janina gave Wladek her hand; he held and kissed it for a long time.

"Beginning with to-morrow I shall start to learn the part for I have a day off," said Janina.

"I also do not appear on the stage to-morrow."

Wladek went out a little angry at himself, for although he called Janina a "comedienne" she had made him feel abashed with her simplicity and enthusiasm. Moreover, he felt in her a certain intellectual and artistic superiority.

Janina feverishly applied herself to the study of Doctor Robin. In a few days she knew not only the role of "Mary," but had memorized the entire play. So intensely eager was she to play the role, that it seemed as though she were staking her whole life on this performance. Her former dreams that had been subdued a bit by poverty and the feverish life of the theater now again burst forth with a flaming intensity that dazzled and hypnotized her. The theater again took so powerful a hold on Janina that there was no room in her consciousness for anything else. In her hours of ecstasy it appeared to her like a mystic altar suspended high above the gray vale of everyday life and glowing with flames like a second burning bush of Moses; it seemed to her like a miracle that endured eternally.

Wladek came to see Janina each day in the interval between the rehearsal and the performance, although he was already beginning to be immensely bored by her endlessly repeated raptures and was growing impatient over the fact that in her mad absorption in art she did not pay much attention to him. He could not penetrate her morbid enthusiasm, as he called it, with his love, but he nevertheless continued to go to her.

He began to desire Janina's love ever more strongly. He was invited by her naivete and by the talent which he felt she possessed.

Moreover, he had long since desired just such an elegant and educated mistress. He wanted by all means to possess this refined and genteel girl, who was so different from his former mistresses and who captivated him by the charm of her superiority. His triumph would be all the greater, he told himself, because of the fact that she seemed to him one of those ladies of the fas.h.i.+onable world upon whom he would often cast covetous glances in the Ujazdowskie Allees.

Janina had not told Wladek that she loved him, but he already saw it in her eyes and spun an ever stronger web about her made up of smiles, pa.s.sionate words, sighs, and exaggerated respect.

For Janina this was the most beautiful period that she had known in her life. Poverty she treated with scorn, as though it were only a temporary thing that would soon pa.s.s away.

Sowinska, after Wladek's frequent visits, became more intimate and friendly with Janina and advised her to sell those parts of her wardrobe which she did not need, even offering to do it for her.

And so life went on for Janina who was oblivious to everything else but that performance of Doctor Robin which she awaited with the greatest impatience. She lived, as it were, in a troubled dream.

Through the prism of dreams the world again appeared brighter to her, and people kind. She forgot about everything, even about Glogowski, whose recent letter she laid away only half read, for she now lived entirely in the future. She fortified herself against the present with dreams of what was to come.

Furthermore, Janina loved Wladek. She did not know how it had come about, but she now knew that she could not do without him. She felt very happy and peaceful, when, leaning on his arm, she walked along the streets and listened to his low, melodious voice. The soft velvety glances of his dark eyes made her glow with pa.s.sion and a sweet helplessness . . . .

Everything about him attracted her. He appeared so beautiful upon the stage! He acted with such fervor and lyricism the parts of unhappy lovers in the melodramas! He spoke, moved about and posed with such charming simplicity. He was the favorite of the public; even the press bestowed frequent praises upon him and predicted a brilliant artistic future for him.

It pleased Janina to see him applauded on the stage. And so skillfully did he know how to exhibit the resources of his brain, that he was generally taken for an educated man, while in reality he possessed only cleverness and the brazenness of a Warsaw loafer and trickster. Moreover, for Janina he was the first and only man to whom she had ever surrendered herself. It seemed to her that this bound them for all time and indissolubly.

It happened, as it were, of itself, after one of the rehearsals of Doctor Robin in which Wladek acted as a subst.i.tute in the role of "Garrick." When they had left the theater he spoke or rather declaimed to her about love with a volcanic outburst of pa.s.sion and accentuated his emotion with such pathos that he stirred her to the very depths of her soul. She felt sudden tears of tenderness welling up in her eyes; and a desire for tremendous happiness through life and death remained in her dreaming heart. Her whole soul was absorbed in the desire for love.

Janina did not even know what was happening to her, for she could not resist the fascination of his voice. That musical pleading of love, those burning kisses, and those pa.s.sionate glances flooded her entire being with an overwhelming and mad desire for joy. She abandoned herself to him with the pa.s.siveness of a fascinated creature, without a word of protest or resistance, but also without a consciousness of what she was doing; in a word, she was hypnotized.

She did not even know what it was in him that she loved: the actor masterfully playing upon her emotions and enthusiasm, or the man.

Janina did not think of this. She loved him because she loved him and because he personified the theater and art for her.

It seemed to Janina that through his eyes she saw farther and deeper. Her soul was growing (as the peasants describe certain stages in the development of youth), so besides her distant plans of fame in the future, she needed something for herself alone, she needed to strengthen herself and support herself on some loving heart which would at the same time serve as a stepping-stone for her own elevation. She no longer felt lonely, for she could now reveal to Wladek her most secret thoughts, dreams, and projects for the future and go over various heroic roles together with him. He was a sort of physical complement of her, and outlet for her excessive energy and dreams.

Janina did not submerge and lose herself in Wladek's being, but rather absorbed him into herself. And not for one moment did she think that she had surrendered herself to him, that he was henceforth her lover and lord and that she belonged to him! She did not even consider whether he had a soul or not. It sufficed her to know that he was handsome, popular, that he loved her and that she needed him. Even in her most intimate confidences and whispers of love there was a tone of unconscious superiority. She spoke with him continually but almost never asked him for his opinion and very seldom listened to his replies. Wladek could not understand this, but he was conscious of it and it acted as an unpleasant restraint upon him, for in spite of their intimate relation, he could not feel at ease with her in his own way. It wounded his self-love, but he had no way of remedying it. He possessed her body, but not her soul that mysterious something, that love that gives itself for life and eternity and makes of itself a footstool for the lover. This att.i.tude of Janina's irritated him, but nevertheless attracted him so irresistibly that he doubled his pretenses of love, thinking that by a larger dose of sentimental falsehood, and a better acting of emotion he would at last captivate and conquer her completely.

However, he did not succeed in doing so.

Janina, aside from this love, gradually renounced everything, yet in spite of that she felt content. She often suffered hunger, but it was enough for her to have Wladek at her side and to become absorbed in her role, to forget about the whole world.

The performance of Doctor Robin was postponed from day to day, for the amateur who was to make his debut in it became ill. In the meanwhile, other plays had to be given; so Janina was forced to content herself with waiting. She was consumed by impatience and the ambition to rise at once above the throng of her companions and was also impelled by the hope of ending her poverty by this means and finally, by the need of her own soul which had formed its own conception of the character of "Mary" and had to give it forth.