that lent charm to every moment and peace to each new day. To each? No, only to the next. Jan Świcki did not have the foresight to think of the distant future at the expense of the present.
Young, strong, hard-working, he counted on his youth, strength, and industriousness, never dreaming that these riches would be depleted. But they were, and too quickly. He was taken with a sudden, serious illness from which neither his doctors’ advice nor his frantic wife’s efforts could save him. He died. His death not only put an end to Marta’s domestic happiness but pulled from under her the base of her material welfare.
So the marriage altar did not render the young woman forever immune to the misery of loneliness and the hazards of poverty. The axiom, old as the world, which states that nothing on earth is permanent proved itself as true in her case as it ever is. For it is not completely true. Everything that comes to a person from the outside passes, changing around him under the influence of thousands of currents that become entangled as they move forward, currents in which social relationships and laws take form. All these are subject to the frequent intervention of what is the most terrible force of all, because it is unpredictable and impossible to figure into one’s calculations: blind chance. Yet a man’s destiny in this world would indeed be regrettable if all his strength, his inner riches and his truth resided only in those external elements, which are mutable and fleeting as waves governed by wind.
Indeed, there is nothing permanent on earth besides what a man possesses in his heart and head: knowledge that shows him his paths and how to walk in them, work that brightens solitude and keeps poverty at bay, experience that tutors him, and elevated feelings that shelter him from evil. This permanence is only relative; it is broken by the sullen, unyielding power of illness and death. But as long the process of movement, thought, and feeling called life continues, and develops soundly and durably, a man does not lose himself but provides for himself, helps himself, supports himself with what he managed to accumulate in the past. It serves him as a weapon in his struggle with the complications of life, the fickleness of fate, and the cruelty of chance.
All the external forces that had befriended and sheltered Marta until now had failed her, leaving her abandoned. But her fate was not at all exceptional. Her misfortune was not caused by some bizarre adventure or astonishing disaster rare in the annals of human history. Financial ruin and death had destroyed her peace and happiness. What is more common everywhere in our society than the first? What is more inevitable, more frequent and inescapable, than the second?
Marta had found herself face to face with what happens to millions of people, millions of women. Who has not met, many times in life, people weeping by the rivers of Babylon in which the ruins of a lost fortune are floating? Who counts how many times he has seen widows’ mourning clothes, pale faces, and orphans’ eyes wearied with tears?
Everything that had been part of the young woman’s life had been taken from her, had slipped away, but she still had herself. What could she be only for herself? What had she managed to accumulate for herself in the past? What tools of knowledge, willpower, and experience could serve her in the struggle with complicated social issues, poverty, chance, and loneliness? Among these questions lay the enigma of her future, the issue of her life and death—and not only hers, but her child’s.
The young mother had no material wealth, or almost none. Her entire fortune consisted of a few hundred złotys from the sale of her furniture after the payment of some small debts and the costs of her husband’s funeral, some underlinen, and two dresses. She had never had any expensive jewelry, and what she had had she had sold during her husband’s illness to pay for worthless medical advice and equally worthless medicines. Even the cheap furniture that filled her new residence did not belong to her. She had rented it together with the room in the attic, and was obliged to pay for it on the first of each month.
That was the sad, unvarnished reality of the present, but it was clearly defined. The future remained undefined. One had to take possession of it—almost to create it.
Did the young, beautiful woman with the slim waist, white hands, and silky raven hair flowing over her shapely head have the strength for conquest? Had she taken anything from her past that would enable her to create her future? She thought about this as she sat on a low wooden stool by the glowing coals in the fire. Her eyes, filled with a look of unspeakable love, were fixed on the face of her child, who was sleeping peacefully among white pillows.
“For her,” she said after a while, “for myself, for bread, peace, and a roof over our heads, I will work!”
She stood in front of the window. The night was dark. She did not see anything: neither the steep roofs bristling below the high attic with all its stairs and landings, nor the dark smoke-stained chimneys above the roofs, nor the streetlamps whose blurred light did not reach her little window. She did not even see the sky because it was covered with clouds and no star was shining. But the noise of the great city reached her ears incessantly; even the nocturnal noise was deafening, though it was muffled by distance. It was not late; on the wide, splendid boulevards as in the narrow, dark alleys, people still walked, drove, and ran about in the pursuit of pleasure or the search for profit—ran where curiosity, some desire of the heart, or the hope of gain called them.
Marta lowered her head onto her clasped hands and closed her eyes. She listened to the thousand voices merged into one enormous voice that was unclear and monotonous and yet full of feverish outbursts, sudden silences, dull shouts, and mysterious murmurs. In her imagination the great city assumed the form of a huge hive in which a multitude of human beings moved, surging with life and joining in a race. Each one had his own place for work and for rest, his own goals to reach, and his own tools to forge a way through the crowd. What sort of place for work and rest would there be for her, a woman who was poor and cast into a boundless sea of loneliness? In which direction should she proceed? Where would tools be found to pave a way for a penniless, abandoned woman?
How would those human beings treat her, those people who chatted endlessly on the streets, who exuded this feverish murmur, rising and falling like a wave, in which she immersed her hearing? Would they be just or cruel to her, compassionate or charitable? Would those tightly closed phalanxes that were crowding toward happiness and wealth open before her? Or would they shut even more tightly, so the newcomer’s arrival would not leave less room for others, would not forestall them in this strenuous race?
Which laws and customs would be favorable to her, and which would be adverse? Would there be more of the former or the latter? Above all, would she be able to overcome hostile elements and exploit friendly ones every moment, with every heartbeat, with every passing thought? Would she be able to consolidate every vibrant fiber of her being into wise, persevering, unwearying strength, strength that would ward off poverty, preserve her dignity in the face of humiliation, and shield her from fruitless pain, despair, and starvation?
Marta’s entire soul was fixed on these questions. Memories that were both delightful and agonizing, memories of a woman who had once been a carefree, radiant girl walking lightly through the fresh grass and colorful flowers of her family’s country home, then spent joyful days, free of worry and sadness, at her beloved husband’s side, and now stood in a widow’s gown near a small window in this attic with her pale forehead lowered onto her tightly clasped hands—through all this day these memories had been swarming around her like phantoms that lured her, only to leave her torn and bleeding. Now they flew away before the stern, mysterious, but tangible reality of the present.
This reality absorbed her thoughts but did not seem to frighten her. Did she draw courage from the maternal love that filled her heart? Did she have the pride that despises fear? Or was she ignorant of the world and herself?
She was not afraid. When she lifted her face, there were traces of tears shed profusely for several days, and there was a look of sorrow and longing, but there was no fear or doubt.
* * *
The day after her move into the attic, Marta was in town at ten in the morning.
It was crucial for her to reach her destination. A burning thought, an anxious hope must have been driving her forward, because she walked quickly and slowed her steps only when she reached Długa Street. Here she walked more and more slowly, a weak blush