Poland

by James A. Michener

  Count Lubonski, clapping with restraint, looked at Paderewski with gentle compassion. Whispering to his Lithuanian and Ukrainian guests, he confided: ‘The man’s pretty well run his course. We’re told he’ll be quitting Poland shortly.’

  ‘That will be bad for all of us,’ Vondrachuk whispered back. ‘It could mean war, you know, if your hotheads like Pilsudski gain a free hand.’

  ‘There will not be war,’ Lubonski insisted. ‘None of us, not you, not you, not me, could support a new war so soon after the old one.’

  ‘Then keep your pianist in Warsaw,’ Vondrachuk advised.

  Paderewski, having offered the group the best music of which he was capable, walked to the wings of the little stage and brought forth Krystyna Szprot, dressed as always in a white dress with the embroidered waistline coming just below her breasts. She was still an enchanting figure, with a beguiling way of enlisting the sympathies of her audience: ‘For the master of this house, whom I once knew in Vienna, I shall play two études of Frederic Chopin, and I must tell you that he wrote some wonderful words to this music, words which have stayed with me for a quarter of a century, for they said verbally what I have tried to say musically, that Poland will always survive.’

  The audience cheered, whereupon Wiktor rose to bow, but Marjorie noticed that Krystyna went carefully to the second piano and not the one that Paderewski had used; that was his and she would allow no other hands to touch it. Then, with her powerful fingers, Krystyna started to hammer out the eight notes of ‘Winter Wind,’ that haunting composition which alternated the wild fury of a Polish storm with mournful echoes of the soil, and it seemed that she was too small to play this music, except that under her command, it soared from the piano.

  Then, subtly, she proceeded to the final étude, and a chill went down Wiktor’s back as those wonderful chords began to echo through the theater, wandering ones at first and then the thirteen which had once moved him so deeply and which he had carried with him for so many years. It was as if he were himself a tautly drawn string that reverberated harmonically with this music, and he almost choked with emotion as he recalled the revolutionary words which had miraculously come true:

  ‘Home!

  The fields are green,

  The woods are clean,

  My soul serene …’

  One could scarcely believe that Poland had attained the freedom of which this song had prophetically dreamed, but it had happened through the efforts of men like Paderewski and Lubonski and of women like Krystyna Szprot and Marjorie Trilling of Chicago. It was a miracle, and he was overcome.

  Krystyna now told the audience: ‘Maestro Paderewski and I will give two formal concerts on the next two nights, so I don’t want to play anything heavy in this brief introduction. But I think you might enjoy a selection from Chopin’s mazurkas.’ The people applauded, and she delighted them with a dozen of these intriguing little dances.

  Dinner was served for sixty-six in the grand banquet hall lined with mirrors at each end and the two gigantic paintings along the main walls. It was a lavish affair, with fifty-three waiters who served silently from gold and silver platters, and all was overseen by Miroslawa Bukowska, who did not eat with the guests but watched from various vantage points. Four different wines were served by six butlers, one of whom was Seweryn Buk, dressed like the others in a sergeant’s dark-gray, light-blue uniform.

  After dinner, when the red-and-gold-brocaded chairs were pushed back along the walls, Lubonski suggested that Paderewski and Bukowski join him in an informal session with the delegates, but the prime minister deemed it best to avoid direct participation in the negotiations, so he accompanied Madame Bukowska to a salon, where they enjoyed tea and whiskey with the guests.

  This left Lubonski and his neighbor Bukowski to talk with the Lithuanian and the Ukrainian, and the four continued their discussion till three in the morning. Taras Vondrachuk, whose grandfather had been a Dnieper Cossack in rebellion against the czar, established the tone of the argument:

  ‘We Ukrainians have got to think, Count Lubonski, that you Poles wish to talk about a possible union of our lands only so that you magnates can win back your estates in courts of law, and lord it over us in the future as you did in the past. The union you propose would be everything for Poland, nothing for Ukraine. And even so, it would be nothing for the people of Poland, everything for you magnates.’

  To this, Lubonski replied: ‘Do you think that in three hundred years we’ve learned nothing?’ and both the Lithuanian and the Ukrainian said eagerly: ‘That’s exactly what we think.’

  Lubonski then reminded them that for thirty-two years, from 1885 to 1917, he had served in Austria’s Ministry for Minorities, and did they not suppose that during that time he had learned about the inalienable rights of minorities, to which they replied: ‘You, yes. But Poland, no.’

  Toward midnight Witold Jurgela, an extremely bright fellow with two years of study in Germany, took from his pocket a small piece of paper. ‘Lubonski, undoubtedly you know your fellow Pole landowner Gustaw Prazmowski.’

  The count threw up his hands and cried: ‘Don’t speak to me about that scoundrel,’ but the Lithuanian negotiator proceeded:

  ‘In Vilnius [which was how he pronounced the name of the city the Poles called Wilno] we had an opportunity to observe how Prazmowski dealt with people for whom he had little respect, namely, us Lithuanians, and I have here the notes I made one day when he was being especially offensive: “As a friend treacherous, as an enemy venomous. Able in all things, reliable in nothing. Uses words to obscure truth and truth to obstruct justice. Bathed in self-pity, he envies everyone who does better than he. A cruel master, a contentious equal and a craven subordinate. Has a lust for property and an aversion to working for it. Worst of all, his petty, screwed-up face and narrow suspicious eyes constantly betray his confused inner passions. He is a man to be avoided, for he can never be trusted.” ’

  Carefully Jurgela folded his condemnatory document, returned it to his pocket, and asked: ‘Do you seriously recommend that we Lithuanians trust our security to people like him?’

  Without blanching at this savage description of a type of frontier Pole with whom other nations were familiar, Lubonski asked quietly: ‘Do you describe me in those phrases … when you discuss our meetings with your superiors in Wilno?’

  ‘You’re an Austrian, Lubonski, no longer a Pole.’

  Vondrachuk joined in support of his colleague: ‘Count, do you remember an agent you employed to run your estates east of Lwow? Man named Szypowski? A raging tyrant, worse than the man Witold described. And he was your man, Lubonski, working under your orders.’

  ‘In my employ, Vondrachuk, not under my orders.’

  ‘The supreme drawback to your proposal of a three nation union, Lubonski, is that both Lithuania and Ukraine have seen your magnates in action. All those graspers want is to reclaim their lost estates, their lost serfs. Justice is not in them, and you know it.’

  As always, Lubonski retreated to his maps, spreading before the men a large one which encompassed the region that lay between Berlin and Moscow, and with ice-hard logic he began to speak, indicating every area as he did:

  ‘Let’s start with facts we can all accept. Poland, lost in this sea of steppe and forest, a land with no natural boundaries east, north or west, is an orphan. Caught between Russia and Germany, it can exist only briefly unless it makes friends and establishes some kind of self-defense union with other powers.

  ‘Our most propitious union would be with what we now call Czechoslovakia, but three things make this impossible. First, the Carpathian Mountains restrict normal discourse. Second, Czech leadership is stubbornly Protestant, we just as stubbornly Catholic. Third, we’re engaging in near-war with them over Cieszyn, so that peaceful discussions are not possible. Any dream of a Czech-Pole or Hungarian-Pole or Czech-Hungarian-Pole union is unattainable, and will never come to pass, to the detriment of us all.

  ‘So that leaves only some
kind of reinstitution of the ancient patterns, the ones that served us so well in the past. Lithuania-Poland-Ukraine, united in one grand confederation which can sustain itself. I beg you to forget past differences between us and devote your energies to the only solution which will allow us to survive.’

  When Jurgela protested: “There’s no quarrel between the Ukrainians and the Lithuanians, it’s only with both of us against you domineering Poles,’ Lubonski replied: ‘You have no Lithuanian-Ukrainian quarrel because you have no common borders. You fight with us because we touch you and are available for the fight. Believe me, gentlemen, if you were neighbors, you would fight each other just as much as you fight us. But now we seek a new order, when fighting between neighbors falls out of fashion.’

  At this point Bukowski indicated that he wished to leave the discussion, but did not reveal why: he desperately wanted to talk with Krystyna Szprot and learn how she had spent the years since that night when he proposed to her in Vienna, but as he moved toward the door Count Lubonski almost commanded him to stay: ‘In the next round of talks on the merger of our three nations, I shall request you as my aide, Wiktor. You must familiarize yourself with the problems.’ And with that the four men settled down to deal with the real problems which would face their peoples in the decades ahead. Lubonski was free to use advanced concepts because both Jurgela and Vondrachuk had always spoken Polish as their language of learning and external commerce, regardless of what they spoke at home; so he spelled out the difficulties:

  ‘I’m an old man now, and I’ve spent my life grappling with problems of nationalism, and it has become increasingly clear to me that a body of people needs two conditions before it can graduate into nationhood.

  ‘The first requirement is the easiest defined. A coherent land mass big enough to survive as a unit, occupied by people similar enough to have common interests and numerous enough to constitute a viable economy. On these criteria we three fare rather well. The total land mass would be enormous and of enormous importance, much bigger than any existing European nation. And the people are reasonably homogeneous, three different home languages, one common language for intercourse.

  ‘The population is big enough, too. Lithuania, perhaps three million; Poland, twenty-seven; the Ukraine, twenty, and depending upon boundaries, maybe as much as thirty million. Again, we’re bigger than any existing European nation.’

  ‘But not Russia,’ Vondrachuk broke in, to which Lubonski countered: ‘I never think of Russia as European.’ Now, as he reached the difficult part of his argument, he rose and moved about the room which Marjorie Bukowska had decorated with such elegance: the Holbein portrait on one wall, a suit of armor against another, a large Polish tapestry covering a third:

  ‘The second requirement is not so easy. To justify becoming a nation, the land and the people must have produced a unifying culture. [Both Jurgela and Vondrachuk began to protest that their people did possess a culture, as of course they did, but Lubonski was thinking on a higher plane.] By culture I do not mean folklore, cooking patterns or nationalistic myths. I mean music which all respond to. I mean architecture which constructs buildings of spatial and utilitarian importance. I mean conscious poetry, not doggerel. I mean great novels which generate and define a people’s aspirations. And above all, I mean the creation of a philosophy which will underlie all acts passed by your parliaments, all utterances made by your teachers and professors.

  ‘Gentlemen, the accumulation of such a culture requires time and the dedication of men and women who know what they’re doing. [Here he paused, almost afraid to make his next statement. Then, walking briskly back to face his visitors, he spoke.] You Ukrainians have not had time to build such a culture, and if you try to establish a state of your own with inadequate foundations, it will collapse. Vondrachuk, I assure you, it will collapse, probably within ten years, because you lack the cohesive background upon which to build. You lack the music, the architecture, the beautiful town squares, the great novels. I concede, the poetry you have, thanks to one man who would understand what I’m saying, your fellow Shevchenko, who almost single-handedly gave the Ukraine a soul.’

  Vondrachuk could not suppress his indignation: ‘Why do you always say the Ukraine? You don’t refer to Poland as the Poland.’ But Count Lubonski interrupted: ‘One does, however, refer to The Hague.’ Now Vondrachuk instinctively reverted to his native language to express his deep convictions: ‘But Ukraina is a nation! It’s true, Pan Lubonski, we may be lacking in cultural refinements. By preference, we do not even use titles in our forms of address. And Shevchenko is only a beginning … a taste of freedom. Your point may be well taken geographically, but Poland will never permit us to grow as a nation and we refuse to continue to be subservient to the whims of Polish magnates.’

  ‘Vondrachuk, you cannot make it alone. You can only exist as one of three. But let me continue.

  ‘As for Lithuania, I’m afraid it’s too small in its present state. Not enough people. Not enough land. Not enough commerce. You have the history and the common interests, Jurgela, but you will never be able to exist for very long as a free nation. Either Germany will engulf you from the south or Russia will gobble you up from the east. There is no hope.’

  To this gloomy prediction Witold Jurgela had to protest, and he made a vivid defense of Lithuanian patriotism and culture, pointing to the antiquity of both and to the noble traditions of the past, when Lithuania was the master nation in this part of the world, more powerful than Russia, more extensive than Poland. The room sang with echoes of Lithuanian deeds and a present yearning for a reestablished sovereignty.

  Lubonski allowed the flood of rhetoric to pass on, then said quietly: ‘In the Austrian Empire forty units like yours, Jurgela, constructed justifications for their freedom—’

  ‘And many got it,’ Vondrachuk interrupted. ‘Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Yugoslavs and you Poles.’

  ‘The more important question will be: How many will retain it? Even the big ones. As for the infants …’ With sadness and concealed contempt he rattled off the names of tiny units whose patriots had pestered him with their claims: ‘Bosnia, Slovakia, the Banat of Temesvar, Transylvania.’ He put his hands to his head and almost moaned; then he returned to his map and pointed to the tiny area of Cieszyn, a short distance southwest of Krakow: ‘We cannot even settle among ourselves the disposition of this tiny corner. We are seriously considering a major war to determine its destiny.’

  Now Jurgela took possession of the map, and with delicate strokes of his right forefinger he outlined what he proposed as four new nations which would cluster on the western flank of Russia: ‘Up here, Finland, a very cohesive group of people. Here, Estonia with its own language. Here Latvia, very solid patriots. And down here, free once more, the Republic of Lithuania with its own historic culture …’

  He was about to say more, when Lubonski with an extended left hand covered that entire section of the map, erasing it from sight: ‘In one week Russia would envelop you all, and we would never hear of you again.’ Then he slapped his right hand over the proposed Ukrainian state: ‘And you, too, Vondrachuk, would vanish.’

  It was Jurgela, trained in debate, who countered this devastating prediction: ‘And what about you, Lubonski? Do you consider yourself invulnerable?’

  Lubonski lifted his hands, freeing the satellites for their brief days of glory, then pointed with left and right forefingers to his own endangered country: ‘Poland is the most vulnerable of all, because whenever either Germany or Russia seeks to move, each nation will have to settle with Poland first …’ With devastating thrusts of his fingers he slashed at his exposed country, indicating ancient enemies in new dress as their armies whipped across the flatlands of Poland.

  ‘I sometimes think, gentlemen, that Poland needs you far more than you need us, because if we unite in a strong three-part republic, we can protect ourselves. If we go separately, we perish.’

  It was Vondrachuk—grandson of an ataman, a man whos
e Cossack father had commanded seven villages, deeming himself greater than the King of Spain and willing to fight to the death against the Cossack who commanded eight neighboring villages—who spoke the words that ended this long discussion:

  ‘The time comes in the history of a people when they believe they’re ready for freedom … for nationhood. When that moment arrives, anyone who opposes the public will is swept aside. We Ukrainians are convinced that our time for nationhood has arrived, and we don’t need your music and architecture and philosophy to justify us. We’ve done that with our swords, our horses, our conquest of the steppe. We are a nation, and we require no instruction from Poland, who has been our timeless enemy. You go your way, we’ll go ours, and I pray we can have peace between us.’

  ‘I understand we’re to meet at Brest-Litovsk,’ Lubonski said, using out of respect to his visitors their name for Brzesc Litewski. ‘Let us each review his positions before that final meeting.’

  But as Bukowski watched the three negotiators separate he felt no assurance that when they did meet again, their individual animosities would be altered: Lubonski, the proud Pole who had stood in the halls of the mighty and who now fought to reverse centuries of history; Professor Jurgela, who felt the blood of the entire Lithuanian nation, past and future, coursing through his veins, and who was determined to revive eras of greatness; and tough, uneducated but very wise Taras Vondrachuk—named after one of Ukraine’s legendary revolutionaries—battling to establish a nation which lacked books or buildings or any memory of self-government, and never doubting that will power, plus swift horses and the Greek Catholic religion, would be sufficient base for a modern state.