by Susan Sontag
“Well, at least they are my friends. But now there are people I don’t know in that so-called hotel old Czarniak has opened. Zakopane with a hotel!”
“Where you go everyone follows,” he said, smiling.
“And the foreigners. Don’t tell me they are here because of me. English, God be praised.” She paused, she dramatized. “If one must have tourists, let them be English. At least we don’t have any Germans.”
“Just wait,” he said. “They’ll come.”
* * *
THIS YEAR’S stay was different. For one thing, they had arrived much earlier, and they were not on holiday. Bogdan had proposed they assemble everyone involved in the plan—their plan: it had not been hard to bring Bogdan around again. Maryna thought they should invite just a few friends, those who were wavering. Ryszard and the others on whom she already knew they could count need not come.
After journeying to Kraków, and recovering Piotr—two years earlier Maryna had sent the child away from Warsaw, where the language of instruction in schools was Russian, to live with her mother in Kraków, where the more lenient Austrian rule permitted Polish-language schooling—Maryna and Bogdan spent a week of afternoons in Stefan’s flat, often joined by the guardedly reassuring Henryk. Stefan was now confined to bed much of the time. The morning after their arrival Bogdan himself went to the food market square to arrange everything with one of the highlanders sure to be loitering there after selling off his load of mutton and cheese. Familiar faces crowded around him, offering their services, their wagons. Bogdan picked a tall fellow with lank black hair who spoke a shade more intelligibly than the others and, in his comical farrago of educated Polish and highlander patois, instructed the man to tell the old widow whose hut they’d rented last September to ready it now for the arrival of himself and his wife and stepson with five others. The man, a Jędrek, was to be prepared to bring them to the village one week from today. He declared that it would be an unforgettable honor to carry the Count and the Countess and their party in his wagon.
They had known only the summer, when the mountains above the tree line look clear of snow and the meadows have gone bare of flowers. The high mountains now were still covered with snow—winters are long and harsh in the Tatras—but as the wagon passed along green meadows carpeted with purple crocuses, purple with a dash of dark blue, Jędrek’s passengers could hardly refuse to call it spring. Maryna reached the village excited, then edgy—feelings she identified as the elation that follows the making of a great decision and the restlessness that succeeds the familiar discomforts of the journey. It could not be a headache, she was sure, although this giddiness and pointless energy were not unlike what she would feel, sometimes, three or four hours before the onset of one. No, it could not be a headache. But as she stood with Bogdan admiring the sunset, she had to acknowledge that there was something wrong with the way she was seeing, it had become full of dazzles and zigzags and flicker and sprays of light, the sun seemed to be boiling, and she could no longer deny the throbbing in her right temple and the pressure in the nape of her neck. She who had never canceled a performance because of a headache collapsed for twenty-four hours, lying in the dim sleeping chamber with a towel wrapped tightly around her head in a leaden stuporous daze. Piotr tiptoed in and out, and asked when she was going to get up and clearly needed to be comforted, and she made the effort to keep the child with her for a while. It was all right if she patted his hair and kissed his hand with her eyes squeezed shut. Whenever she opened them, Piotr seemed very small and far away, as did Bogdan, crouching by the bed, asking again what he might bring her—they seemed to have lattices on their faces. There were faces enough peering out of the dark knots in the beams that supported the ceiling, which seemed to be just above her, pressing down on her, shimmering, scintillating. All she wanted was to be left alone. To vomit. To sleep.
The headache she had later in their stay was mild compared to this, one of the worst Maryna could remember. But after she recovered she was very fretful. There were long insomniac nights watching the shadows on the wall (she kept one oil lamp lit) and listening to Piotr’s adenoidal breathing, Józefina’s snoring, Wanda’s coughing, a sheepdog barking. Once a night Piotr would crawl into her bed to tell her that he needed to use the outhouse and she had to come with him because a horrible witch lived in the yard who looked like old Mrs. Bachleda. And when they returned to the sleeping chamber, he would want to get back into her bed because, he explained, the witch would try to kill him in his dreams. Useless for Maryna to tell Piotr he was far too big to have such childish fears. But soon, hearing the noisy mouth-breathing that signified sleep, she could carry him to his mattress and go outside again to gaze up at the blackness spattered with stars. Then, finally, a few hours before dawn, it was her turn to sleep. And to have odd dreams, too: that her mother was a bird, that Bogdan had a knife and hurt himself with it, that something terrible was hanging from a tree.
She was often tired. And some days she would feel “dangerously well,” as she put it, for any exceptional energy or high spirits might be a sign that she was to have one of her disabling headaches the following day. The antic thoughts, the uncontrollable urge to laugh or sing or whistle or dance—she would pay for these. Convinced the headaches were due to a slackening of effort, she took more strenuous walks than ever; it seemed that she had gathered her friends around her mostly in order to leave them.
She walked partly to exhaust herself—and had no need of company. Bogdan helped her dress, tenderly booted her, and watched her until she disappeared, heading southwest. From the village to the higher meadow leading to Mount Giewont was about seven kilometers. From there she crossed into the forest and followed the trail that brought her, breathless, to a still higher plateau with grass, dwarf shrubs, and Alpine flowers; in giddy homage to the murder of Adrienne Lecouvreur by the gift of poisoned flowers, she picked a bunch of edelweiss, kissed the odorless blossoms, and lifted her face to the sun. She would have liked to climb to the crest of the Giewont, which she’d done in previous summers with Bogdan and friends and a guide from the village. But, afraid of the dark fancies crowding her mind, she didn’t dare attempt it alone. Even to venture into the foothills through patches of melting snow, and partly up the slopes, she wanted Bogdan, Bogdan only, to accompany her.
Bogdan’s stride was faster than Maryna’s, and she didn’t mind walking behind him. That way she could feel both accompanied and alone. But sometimes she had to bring him to her side, when she saw something he might be missing. A crow in a tree. The silhouette of a hut. A cross on a hill. A grouping of chamois or an ibex on a nearby crag. The eagle swooping down on some luckless marmot.
“Wait,” she would cry, “did you see that?” Or: “I want to show you something.”
“What?”
“Up there.”
He would look in the direction she pointed.
“From here. Come back here.”
He would come halfway and look again.
“No, right here.”
She would take his arm and bring him back to where she had stopped to admire, so he could place his booted feet just … there. Then, standing at his side, she could watch him seeing what she had seen and, thoughtfully, not moving for a minute to show he really had seen it.
What a tyrant I am, Maryna did sometimes think. But he doesn’t seem to mind. He’s so kind, so patient, so husbandly. That was the true liberty, the true satisfaction of marriage, wasn’t it? That you could ask someone, legitimately demand of someone, to see what you saw. Exactly what you saw.
* * *
FROM A LETTER that Maryna entrusted to one of the highlanders leaving for the market in Kraków, to post as soon as he arrived:
Ryszard, what have you been doing, thinking, planning? Given your habitual fine opinion of yourself, perhaps I shouldn’t confide that you have been missed here by all of us. Do not feel too self-important, however. For this may be because our usual occupations have been taken from us. First it was sno
wing for two days—yes, snow in May! And now we’ve had three days of cold rain, so Bogdan and I and the friends have had no choice but to decree ourselves housebound. And now I remember what it was like to be a child in a large family who has been denied permission to go out. For, thus cooped up, we have tired of all subjects of conversation, even that most on our minds, and despite the extreme interest of what Bogdan has told us about a colony in one of the New England states called Brook Farm. Well then, you’ll say, amuse yourselves. But we have! I have devised charades for those who wanted to exercise their acting skills (it wouldn’t have been fair for me to participate)—Bogdan has beaten Jakub and Julian at chess—we have composed songs both jolly and sad (Tadeusz is learning to play the gęśle, that fiddle-like instrument we’ve heard at the shepherds’ encampments)—we have recited Mickiewicz to each other and got through all of As You Like It and Twelfth Night. And, yes, it’s still raining.
Guess what we did today. We were reduced to entertaining ourselves by killing flies. Truly! This morning among Piotr’s toys I found two tiny bows, Julian made arrows of matches with a needle at the end, and we took turns aiming at the drowsy flies ornamenting the wooden walls of the room where we sit, applauding as one by one our victims fell at our feet. What do you say to such an occupation for Juliet or Mary Stuart?
Nevertheless, don’t suppose it’s because I am bored that I am inviting you to join us. We’re certain to remain at least another two weeks, in which time the weather is bound to improve and much could be discussed, and it occurs to me that since Julian now seems quite committed and eager, you should be here too, so that we may settle some details of the new plan in which you have a leading role. And you can reassure Wanda, who is distressed over their impending separation, that you will keep an eye on her husband and make sure he does not court any unnecessary danger, although, knowing you both, I think it should be the other way around! So, consider yourself invited—if (yes, there is an if) you give me your word on one delicate matter. What does dear Maryna want of me that I would not willingly grant her, you will be thinking. I know your warm heart. But I also know something else about you. Will you forgive my frankness? You must promise to behave like a gentleman with the local girls. Yes, Ryszard, I am aware of your bad habits. But not in Zakopane, I beg you! You are my guest. I may yet come back here, I have made a commitment to these people. Do we understand each other, my friend? Yes? Then come, dear Ryszard.
* * *
MORTIFIED WHEN he received Maryna’s letter, and determined to do anything and everything she asked of him, Ryszard left Warsaw the next day. Arriving in Kraków, he called on Henryk to ask his help in arranging the trip to the village. Henryk not only accompanied him to the market to assist him in finding a reliable driver but decided impulsively that he would go, too. Surely Stefan’s condition could not significantly worsen if he were gone for only ten days. If Ryszard were invited, and by Maryna herself, how could he stay away?
Ryszard took his room in the hut of the village bard, partly to continue the task begun last summer of making a compilation of the old man’s tales, partly to escape Maryna’s vigilant eye if, despite his best intentions, he should succumb to the unwashed charms of one of the village girls.
“Ah, communal life,” Henryk said to Bogdan when told there was a mattress waiting for him in the men’s sleeping room. “Please don’t be offended if I stay at Czarniak’s place.”
“The hotel?” said Bogdan. “You can’t be serious. I trust you carry a disinfectant in your physician’s satchel for the mattress you’ll be given there.”
Except when he was called to some medical emergency (a breech birth, a smashed leg, a ruptured appendix), Henryk was almost always at the hut, available to Maryna, entertaining Piotr. The boy seemed bright to him, and so he decided to teach him about the new doctrines of evolution.
“If I were you,” he said to Piotr, “I’d think twice before you tell the priests at school that a friend of your illustrious mother has even mentioned the name of that great Englishman, Mr. Darwin.”
“But I can’t tell them,” said the boy. “Mama says I’m not going back to that school anymore.”
“And do you know why you’re not going back?”
“I think so,” said Piotr.
“Why?”
“Because we’re going on a ship.”
“And what will you do on the ship?”
“See whales!”
“Which are what kind of creature?”
“A mammal!”
“Excellent.”
“Henryk!” It was Ryszard, who had just sauntered over. “Don’t fill the lad’s head with useless facts. Tell him stories. Stimulate his imagination. Make him bold.”
“Oh, I’d like a story,” cried Piotr. “Tell one about a witch and how she gets killed. Fried. In a stove. And then she—”
“You should be telling the stories,” said Ryszard.
“I have stories, too,” said Henryk. “But they don’t make me bold.”
* * *
SHE WAS GROWING silent, she who had always been so talkative. How those who had gathered here wanted to please her!
Maryna watched Tadeusz and Ryszard watching her with adoring eyes. She wished she were in love, for being helplessly in love awakens one’s better self. But when marriage puts an end to that, it is a deliverance. Love makes men strong, self-confident. It makes women weak.
Friendship, though … that was another matter. Friends make you strong. How was she to do without Henryk? They were in the forest sitting on the stump of a fir tree near a berry patch. Piotr was playing with his full-size bow and arrows nearby.
“I’ve never liked forests,” said Henryk. “But I’m starting to. All I have to do is imagine that each tree is a fellow creature. Stuck in this gloomy forest. Rooted here. Waving its leaves about. Help! Help! cries the tree, I’m—”
“Don’t be pathetic, dear Henryk.”
“Why not? I’m enjoying myself.”
“Be pathetic, dear Henryk.”
“Good. Where was I? Oh, my trees. No Birnam Wood to Dunsinane for them. And then they’re cut down, which is not the escape they had in mind. Try some of this.”
Maryna took the proffered flask of vodka.
“Imagine,” she said after a while, “what it is to have got in your head that there is something your Fate has willed, that you must obey your star. Whatever others think.”
“Maryna, you speak about yourself as if you were completely alone. But what strikes me is how set you are on bringing others along with you.”
“One can’t do plays without other people.”
“Actually, I was thinking of Zakopane. You are vexed that you can’t keep the Zakopane you discovered, but you have to know it can’t remain what it was. I think it shouldn’t. The lives of people here are hard. But they’re not a tribe of nomadic Indians in North America. They’re a hemmed-in settlement of shepherds in Europe whose miserable livelihood is shrinking. The land has always been too poor for serious farming, and you know, don’t you, the iron mine is bound to close within the next few years. How will they live then if they don’t peddle their humble finery and wooden geegaws, their mountains, the views, the good air?”
“Do you really imagine I don’t care about—”
“And, as I’ve often pointed out,” he continued heatedly, “you, abetted by the dear indispensable Bogdan, set all that in motion. Though it was bound to happen anyway. How could more and more people not hear about Zakopane? You wanted others around you. Your community.”
“You think me naïve.”
He shook his head.
“You think I’m being pretentious.”
“Oh”—he laughed—“there’s nothing wrong with being pretentious, Maryna. I confess to the adorable failing myself. It’s a Polish specialty, like idealism. But I do think you shouldn’t confound a spartan house party with a phalanstery.”
“I know you don’t like Fourier.”
“It’s not fo
r me to like or dislike your utopian sage. I can’t help it if I know something about human nature. It’s hard for a doctor to avoid that.”
“And you think I could be the actress I am without knowing something about human nature?”
“Don’t be angry with me.” He sighed. “Maybe I’m jealous, because … I can’t be a member of your party. I have to stay here.”
“But if you wanted, you could, when we—”
“No, I’m too old.”
“What nonsense! How old are you? Fifty? Not even fifty!”
“Maryna…”
“Do you think I don’t feel old? But that doesn’t stop me from—”
“I can’t.” He raised his hand. “Maryna, I can’t.”
* * *
THE WEATHER turned warmer, and the whole party, except for Henryk and Ryszard, had spent the afternoon in the forest and were now assembled outside the hut in the failing light. Pleasantly tired, more than a little talked out, they were looking forward to their dinner of soup and two kinds of mushrooms, the delicately shriveled brown ones they had found in a grove of firs today and the savory dark-orange pickled rydz they had harvested on forest excursions last September. Bogdan had laid down a track on the grass for Piotr to play with his wooden trains. Maryna was writing a letter at a little table by the oil lamp Tadeusz had lit for her: a crescent moon and a pair of planets had appeared in the pale sky. Wanda was changing the buttons on an embroidered flax shirt she had purchased for Julian. Józefina and Julian were having a whispered dispute over a card game. Jakub was sketching the cardplayers. The screech of an owl heralded the baaing of some wayward sheep, while from indoors came the sound of sizzling butter in Mrs. Bachleda’s crude skillet—delicious noise!
Henryk had strolled over, poured himself some arrack, sat down in the extra chair at the cardplayers’ table, and was trying to concentrate on a book. Ryszard, who’d elected to spend his forest day with his landlord (killing animals in the company of another man was the most enjoyable way of staying clear of the temptations alluded to by Maryna), arrived last. He had pulled up a chair to Maryna’s table, taken out his notebook, and was writing up a hunting tale the old man had told him after they’d shot their second fox.