Poland

by James A. Michener

  ‘Seems to me,’ Feliks said, ‘it’s already perishing.’

  ‘I mean the real Poland … the countryside … what you see here, whether it’s ruled by Austria or Russia, it goes on and on.’

  ‘Will Lancut go on and on?’ Feliks asked, and now she grasped his two hands, saying sternly: ‘You ask dangerous questions, young man, and if you persist, you will end in an Austrian prison or a Russian mine. With France in flames and America inviting others to mimic her revolution, the rulers of these parts are not going to be lenient with radical young men whose radical fathers had to be gunned down in the streets of Warsaw to prevent revolt.’

  At the height of the musical festivities, when more than sixty guests crowded the castle bedrooms, two horsemen galloped in from the east with the exciting news that Kleofas Granicki was riding west with his camels at the whirlwind conclusion of his investigations in the Ukraine; in addition to this information, they handed Lubomirska a written message, which she crumpled with joy, shouting: ‘Yes! Yes!’ And for the rest of that day there was vast excitement at the palace, with the hundred and fifty servants dashing about inside and the forty-seven gardeners raking the lawns outside and gathering huge garlands of summer flowers. Three teams of rural musicians were sent for—bagpipes, fiddle, drum—and the many cooks were put to baking.

  Lubomirska would not reveal what had been in Granicki’s note, but on the morning of the next day, when the wild man arrived at the head of six cameleers firing their rifles, Feliks and the others watched with amazement and delight as a team of eight gaily decorated camels drew a huge, improvised wagon through the palace gates, bearing inside a young couple who were obviously to be married at Lancut.

  It was the lovely Katarzyna Granicka and the handsome, witty young Ryszard Lubomirski, who had been denuded at Radzyn Castle. They formed an imposing pair, she seventeen, he twenty-three, inheritors of power and wealth, and Feliks was not the least bit envious. Years and years ago, it seemed, he had loved Katarzyna for one reverberating spring when flowers filled the steppe, but now he was so infinitely older and wiser that she seemed like an unformed little girl whom he wished well.

  To Roman he said, as the couple passed in their flower-packed wagon: ‘I thought you would marry her,’ to which young Lubonski replied: ‘Two years from now I would.’

  As was fitting in such surroundings, the wedding was a sumptuous affair, but it was also the occasion for an unusual performance to surprise and amuse the guests. The groom was a relative not of Lubomirska herself, for she was not of his family, but of her dead husband’s, and thus it was proper for him to borrow Lancut palace as the site for his festivities. At the big dinner on the evening prior to the wedding, when Katarzyna was not allowed to be present, young Lubomirski appeared in old-style Polish dress. ‘I wear this in honor of my father-in-law, Kleofas, and out of respect for his ideals.’ He bowed low toward where the old warrior was sitting, then to the astonishment of all, he began to undress, right where he stood, and when he was down to the briefest possible underclothes he whistled for his servant, who brought in a stack of French-style dress, and ceremoniously he donned one item after another until he stood forth a handsome young fellow who would have been at home in either Paris or London.

  Gravely he lifted from the floor the old dress, placing each piece on the extended arms of his servant, and when the pile was complete he turned to Kleofas and said: ‘From tomorrow on I must obey your daughter’s wishes.’ And he again bowed low.

  It was in the noisy conversation which followed this daring act that Feliks Bukowski first heard the name of Tadeusz Kosciuszko; Kleofas Granicki was bellowing: ‘I heard from St. Petersburg that our young hero Kosciuszko is making an ass of himself in Paris.’

  ‘Not surprising,’ Lubomirska said. ‘He was totally corrupted in America.’

  ‘What’s he up to?’ an Austrian baron asked.

  Kleofas had imperfect reports: ‘He’s fighting, of course … he’s always fighting for some cause or other. He supports the revolution and may even be a general in it.’

  ‘That poor fool,’ Lubomirska said with real sorrow. ‘He comes from a good family, you know. Was desolated by the First Partition in 1772. Went to America … fell in with men like Tom Jefferson, whom I never liked—’

  The Austrian baron, an officer in the Habsburg cavalry, interrupted: ‘We had strong reports of him as General Washington’s right-hand man—engineering, fortifications, things like that.’

  ‘Can the American experiment last long?’ Granicki asked.

  ‘No,’ the Austrian said, and in this manner Kosciuszko was dismissed.

  At the end of the sixth week of the Lubonski visit, Princess Lubomirska started her servants on the task of packing for her departure; she would move on to her great castle at Wisnicz, which she had not visited during the past three years and where one hundred and sixty servants and thirty-eight gardeners awaited her arrival. The last concerts were given—sixteen separate arias from Mozart operas, backed by the entire chorus—and a last tour of the ninety major European paintings was made, with Lubomirska herself explaining to the two young men why this artist was first class and that one not. The endless flower vases were wrapped in cloth and stored, and the machines that delivered water to the nine spouting fountains were halted.

  There were tears as different groups of the sixty guests departed, and special ones when the Lubonskis went: ‘My dearest Count, give the Mniszechs my love. Roman and Feliks, find yourselves good wives. Goodbye, goodbye, and may we remember this glorious summer when the music played.’ She walked with them to where they mounted their horses and pulled each man down for a farewell kiss, for she suspected that she might not return to Lancut for several years, her problems at the rebuilding of her other castles and palaces requiring her attention.

  The Lubonski company rode diligently in a southwesterly direction for several days, making far less progress than before, since now they were entering the low foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, but as the first cold winds of autumn struck at them from the south, they came to the ancient town of Dukla guarding the passes into Hungary.

  The young men were almost disappointed in what they found, for the ancestral seat of the mighty Mniszech clan was a shabby affair, neither bold and big like the Granicki castle nor sumptuous like Lancut. It was a frontier fortress occupied by defenders of the frontier, and as such it had importance, for as Count Lubonski warned his charges when they rode up to the gloomy affair: ‘Without the Mniszechs down here wrestling with Hungary and Russia, there’d have been no Poland.’ And he reminded them that Cyprjan Lubonski, the first to wear the title Count, had been vastly aided by his youthful marriage to Zofia Mniszech, who had more or less established the style of the Lubonskis and had mothered the unforgettable Barbara who perished in the fall of Krzyztopor: ‘The Mniszechs are a notable family, and if their young Elzbieta is as lovely as they say, we will have made a good journey.’

  Alas, Elzbieta was not in residence; she had traveled with her father, Ignacy, to a remote castle on the Hungarian frontier, where the Lubonskis were invited to follow after due rest at Dukla. Obviously the young men, excited by reports of Elzbieta’s beauty and liveliness, were disappointed, but the enforced layover in Dukla turned out to be one of the high points of their journey, for they fell into the hands of an extraordinary Mniszech woman, Urszula, widow of a great warrior, who told stories of her family with all the ardor and joy that Sophocles and Aeschylus had shown when telling of the House of Atreus. She was in her sixties that autumn, and for five enchanted weeks she narrated wild and glowing accounts of what the Mniszechs had done when they wandered into Poland out of the Czech lands, of how they had battled bears with their hands, and fought against the Russians, and then with the Russians against the Tatars, but always, to the delight of the young men, she returned to stories featuring the young women of the clan, whom she referred to in the feminine form of their name, Mniszchowna, and she pronounced this with such mystery, clot
hing the women in romances so alluring, that Roman and Feliks had to conclude: A Mniszchowna must be irresistible.

  ‘In 1589, Jerzy Mniszech and his wife, Jadwiga, who was born a Tarlowna, gave birth to a beautiful child they christened Maryna, and she grew to become the fairest young woman of these mountains. Her fame was widespread and men drew portraits of her. One fell into the hands of the youth who was to be the Czar of Russia, Dmitri by name, although there were some who called him False Dmitri because his claim to the throne was contested by Boris Godunov.

  ‘This Dmitri, always seeking the throne, came here to Dukla, lured by the portrait he had seen of Maryna, and in this little town Maryna’s uncles and brothers and men of the Tarlows schemed to make him czar, and believe it or not, they succeeded, and he became Czar of All the Russias, and in grand ceremonies at Krakow, attended by kings and princes from Europe, he married our Maryna, and she became czarina, at the age of fifteen.

  ‘Short happiness. There was an evil Russian called Prince Shuiski who wanted to be czar, so after less than two years he assassinated Dmitri, and our poor Maryna was left a defenseless widow in Moscow. But a beautiful woman is never truly defenseless if she uses her head, which our Maryna did. She found another young prince, also named Dmitri, who also claimed to be czar, the first Dmitri having been little less than a fraud.

  ‘So our Maryna married this second Dmitri, and for the second time she reigned as czarina, but this one, too, was assassinated, so that Prince Shuiski regained the throne, but if I remember right, he was also assassinated. Ugly things happen in Russia.’

  ‘What happened to Maryna?’ Feliks asked, and Urszula’s eyes glowed with delight at what she must report next:

  ‘Alone, widowed, heartbroken with grief, Maryna met a Cossack hetman and ran away with him into the steppes of Russia, where together they planned a big rebellion, but it never amounted to much. As I recall, they were captured by the real czar’s army, a Romanoff I think, and Maryna and her Cossack were taken back to Moscow and beheaded publicly. But she was a true Mniszech and spat at them from her scaffold.’

  That night Count Lubonski told his charges: ‘Much of what she said was true, you know. Maryna was czarina twice, and I think she did run away with the Cossack, but I doubt she was beheaded.’

  ‘What else was false?’ Feliks asked.

  ‘Her beauty. I’ve seen portraits of her, from that time, and she had two rather big warts. Also, she was quite small. When the czar’s soldiers tried to arrest her the first time, she huddled down and hid herself under the skirts of her nurse.’

  ‘You spoiled the story,’ Roman protested, and his father said: ‘I believed it when my mother, who had Mniszech blood, told it to me. You choose what part you want to accept, because in essence it’s true.’

  Urszula never mentioned a Mniszech woman without assuring her listeners that the subject of her tale was extraordinarily beautiful, so that Roman and Feliks came to accept this as an essential characteristic of the family.

  ‘I was living, you know, when Ludwika, the daughter of Josef Mniszech and a different Tarlowna, married Josef Potocki, and you must keep these names straight, for another Potocki, not a very nice one, comes along later. Ludwika was the most beautiful girl in these parts and painters drew portraits of her which show her to be quite heavenly, a word I use with careful meaning.

  ‘The young couple went to live at the big castle north of Przemysl, I always forget the name, and one day when Ludwika was in the bell tower, though why she was there I could never understand, a horseman came dashing into the courtyard, which is as big as all of Dukla, crying: “The young master is killed. He fell from his horse and is killed!” With a scream of despair Ludwika threw herself from the bell tower and died.

  ‘Now, at midnight when there’s a full moon, she stalks the towers of Krasiczyn, I remember the name now, dressed in flowing robes and mourning the death of her beloved. The ugly part of this beautiful story is that Josef Potocki wasn’t dead at all. He rode back home as good as you or me, buried his wife, and promptly married an Ossolinska, I believe it was, and she and he lived in the castle very happily, I’m told.’

  Count Lubonski said with some pride: ‘I believe our castle at Gorka is the only one in Poland that doesn’t have a female ghost in a filmy gown walking the battlements at midnight. Lubonski women are too clever to waste their time that way. If you ask me, they probably stay close to heaven, listening to good music and drinking mead.’

  ‘But was her story true?’ Roman asked.

  ‘They were real people. We passed by their castle on our way to Lwow.’

  ‘I should like to believe it was true,’ Roman said, and his father replied: ‘I’m quite pleased with you on this trip, Roman. Young men ought to believe—in the Crucifixion, in the goodness of ancient Athens, in Charlemagne’s ability. Such fixed bases help you to sort things out.’

  ‘That’s the second time you’ve used that phrase,’ Roman said, and his father replied: ‘I’ve spent my life trying to sort things out.’

  ‘Have you succeeded?’

  ‘No. I’ve lived in an age of disaster. And I came here to Dukla to talk about it with Ignacy Mniszech. I’m terribly disappointed about his absence, and I think we should move west to catch him at Niedzica.’

  ‘I’d like to stay here. These tales captivate me.’ And Feliks said that he, too, was enjoying himself, so they lingered, hoping each day that Elzbieta would return, and it was fortunate that they did, for this enabled them to hear from Urszula a harrowing tale of events that had occurred in the last generation of Mniszechs:

  ‘Jerzy August, who was the brother of that Ludwika who threw herself from the bell tower at the castle, he took his second wife, a rich and powerful German girl named Maria Amalia Bruhl, of the great Bruhl family that came into Poland with our Saxon kings, amassing huge fortunes from the careless Poles.

  ‘Well, Maria Amalia was like a bolt of lightning. I knew her well and was terrified by her. German this and German that, but beautiful and able. She had a daughter Jozefa of my age, and I adored her. Intelligent, she could read before any of us. Traveled to Italy and could sing like a bird. I was in this room when her parents announced that she was to marry the most dashing man in the countryside, Szczesny Potocki, and there was great feasting, I can tell you, for this was a match made in heaven. Mniszech money and Potocki lands.

  ‘But before the wedding could take place, this bastard man Szczesny falls in love with a rather attractive daughter of a minor gentry, Gertruda Komorowska, miles and miles inferior to our Jozefina. He married her, insulting all of Dukla, and he got her pregnant, very big pregnant I was told.

  This was not the kind of insult that we Mniszechs would tolerate, and especially when Maria Amalia Bruhl with German stubbornness was involved. So one night when pregnant Gertruda was returning home in a sleigh, a gang of Cossacks hired by Maria Amalia dashed out, stopped the horses, dragged the pregnant wife onto the snow, strangled her, cut off her head, and pitched her body into the San River. That taught her to steal a husband intended for the Mniszechs.’

  Roman, obsessed by the history of this violent family, asked what followed, and the old woman rocked back and forth, savoring the gory details of an affair in which she had participated:

  ‘Mniszech men, indebted to the Cossacks, gave their leader, Berezow, one of their villages in the Ukraine and two thousand extra serfs. His son became Count Berezowski and married one of the Potocki girls. But the interesting part is that the same Mniszech men forced the disgraceful Szczesny Potocki to marry our Jozefina, as originally intended, and Maria Amalia told him at the wedding that if he ever mistreated her, she herself would strangle him.

  ‘Well, the Komorowskis were pretty distressed by this whole affair, as you might imagine … their beautiful daughter strangled by a bunch of Cossacks and she with child. They brought suit in the Krakow courts for revenge, but the Mniszechs were too powerful. Our side bought off the judges, my husband delivering the money,
and the Komorowskis were told in effect to go to hell.

  ‘The Komorowskis were not powerless, and although they were not of senior category, they were gentry, so one night three of their young men, I knew them all, crept into the home of Szczesny Potocki and killed our Jozefina. Killed her dead.

  ‘Maria Amalia Bruhl thought for a while that maybe Potocki himself had killed her, and she warned him: “If you ever remarry, you dog, I will personally strangle your wife.” I think this scared him, for he never remarried. Instead he took up with a beautiful Greek dancer named Zofya and they are very happy, I’m told.’

  Roman was entranced by this story, but Feliks expressed some doubts, which infuriated Urszula, who took him by the hand and led him, with Roman following, to a roughly built but imposing stone church, Santa Maria Magdalena, which dominated Dukla’s central square. In its largest chapel she sat Feliks down on a bench from which he could study a professionally carved sarcophagus which stood against a wall. On its base of black marble reposed the gleaming white recumbent statue of Countess Maria Amalia Mniszchowa, dead at the age of thirty-six, the mother of four children. Across her placid face drifted a benign Christian smile.

  There lies one of the most powerful women I was ever to know,’ Urszula said. ‘Harsh at times but very capable.’

  ‘Is Elzbieta like her?’ Roman asked, and Urszula replied: ‘All Mniszech women are like her.’

  The journey from Dukla well west to Niedzica was an experience totally different from any the young men had previously experienced, for the rugged pathway traversed turbulent mountain streams, gorges and small mountains which at times seemed impassable. Feliks, noting with growing interest the altered terrain, told Roman one evening as the sun sank behind hills: ‘Old Urszula’s yarns were a good preparation for land like this,’ to which Roman snapped: ‘They weren’t yarns. They happened.’ And it was he who now rode ahead to catch the first glimpse of each new and exciting vista.