In a garden of feelings
VI. The town’s inhabitants
The most obvious and typically disease-related symptoms stemming “from a body abandoned to decay and disintegration” are experienced by patients visited by Lucjan Dolewski, the town’s only doctor. Many fall ill because they cannot maintain hygiene, a point strongly emphasized by the principled doctor: “cleanliness is essential for health, and that is precisely why you fall ill and die so often, because you refuse to maintain it in your homes” (part I, chapter VII). The reflections on hygiene, which dominate the novel’s opening chapters, correspond to a positivist program, and using specific examples, Dolewski illustrates the consequences of both neglecting this sphere of life and not following recommendations. He scolds some: “If you don’t sweep the rooms and change the sick woman’s underwear […] I can’t help it, and your mother will undoubtedly die” (part I, chapter VII), while he praises others: “Or does Lejba, the tailor, have no children? And yet his rooms are clean, and that’s why a year has passed since no one in his family was sick” (part I, chapter VII). He always emphasizes the connection between a good and healthy life and cleanliness. Orzeszkowa highlights this in her descriptions of rural homes, emphasizing order: the house was small “with only four, but well washed, windows” (part I, chapter VII; emphasis – A.K.), “The room was sad and poor, but clean and tidy. There was a cleanly made bed.” (part I, chapter VII; emphasis – A.K.).
The positivist program of sobriety education is also not omitted in the novel. Dolewski speaks openly about the risk of death due to alcohol abuse: “the more times your husband has been better, the more times you have brought him vodka from the tavern. It’s a true miracle that he is still alive” (part I, chapter VII). And alcoholism – unlike poor hygiene – does not become an ailment attributed exclusively to one social class. The elder of the Harasimowicz brothers is a secret alcoholic, carrying a bottle in his inside pocket,
which Mr. Dionizy would never have touched with his lips in public, and when someone invited him for a glass of vodka before dinner or breakfast, he would excuse himself, assuring him that his doctors had forbidden him, under pain of death, to consume any alcohol. But, protesting thus, he would silently lean into another room and there, with delight, press the glass neck of his constant companion to his lips. Traces of his ardent and secret love for it were reflected in a bloody blush on his nose and plump cheeks (part II, chapter III).
The theme of alcoholism appears in the novel in the context of three characters, and each time, presenting their stories, the author emphasizes that it is a terminal illness. Orzeszkowa illustrates this through the biographical elements of her characters, including the death of Judge Grodzicki, who “liked to sip from the bottle, and therefore ruined his farm and business” (part I, chapter VII). The figure of Harasimowicz, who “fell victim to love for his glass mistress, dying of delirium tremens” (part II, Epilogue), also has a defining meaning here, revealing a terrifying aspect of the dichotomy of alcohol addiction. The connection between physical death and the death of the soul annihilates all being. Orzeszkowa understands this process because she is a part of it: she experiences a slow death from sadness, which is as systematically debilitating as alcoholism. It is common to say about alcoholism that it is suicide in instalments, and about depression we read: “The state of melancholy in the clinical sense is a specific mental state of suicide.”
However, Orzeszkowa goes beyond the realm of fatal illnesses, as if at the patient’s request. We also find infectious diseases in the town. A girl suffers from a childhood ailment, measles:
“How is my little patient feeling today?” Lucjan asked with a smile, sitting by the patient’s bed and taking her feverish hand.
The beautiful child, unmarred even by measles, turned her face toward him with a look of trust (part I, chapter VII).
Another patient, afflicted with typhus, can also count on the doctor’s dedication, watching over him until the most dangerous symptoms subside. Lucjan doesn’t scold these patients. He is their patient companion, helper, and physician. This mission is more important to Dolewski than attending Sunday Mass or arriving on time for the parish priest’s name day, as Lucjan’s mother proudly emphasizes at the meeting: “He hasn’t returned from Mr. B., who has typhus, and God knows when he will return” (part II, chapter IV). All these patients suffer from illnesses described in medical textbooks; their symptoms and treatments are easy to identify. Lucjan is a doctor who knows his profession and genuinely helps those who need him.
