Nathan Linden, a man whose false confidence already made me nervous, shook the Pole’s hand and went inside.
10
THE MAN AT THE DOOR INTRODUCED HIMSELF AS PROFESSOR Stanisław Załuski. “On behalf of the entire History Department,” he said, “I wish to apologize for Professor Dombrowski, that he could not bring you to my home this evening and that he will miss our reception. His father’s illness, you see.”
Nathan adopted a look of concern and nodded understandingly.
“He was looking forward to greeting you personally after these many months.” As Załuski spoke he escorted Nathan to the center of the small apartment, where about thirty people mingled, packed together in small groups. The place was uncomfortably warm, and no one wore a jacket. Nathan wished he could remove his own. The cramped quarters, lined from floor to ceiling with books, every available surface cluttered with photographs and knickknacks, had the feel of a temporary storage unit.
“Professor, please let me introduce you to my wife, Anna, and to some members of our faculty,” Załuski said.
One by one, with great formality, Załuski introduced his wife, a woman whose delicate face was framed by an elegant pair of amber earrings, and each of the assembled Poles. They all shook his hand and, to Nathan’s great relief, greeted him in English. Several people expressed admiration for his theories on constitutional paradigms. Others apologized for Dombrowski’s failure to escort him to the reception. Nathan accepted a glass of sherry from a young man in jeans. With a conspiratorial wink, Załuski handed his guest a hot cheese blintze on a delicately decorated china plate. “My wife makes the best naleniki z serem in Poland,” he said.
Nathan stared at the cheese blintze, which until that moment he believed was of Jewish origin. He bit into the soft dough and discreetly admired Załuski’s shock of thick blond hair, which swept majestically away from his broad, high forehead. The Pole’s drooping blue eyes gave him an air of aristocratic ease. You could watch a man like this and be convinced that blintzes are every bit as refined as French crepes, he thought. “They are delicious.” He smiled at Anna and followed his host to one of the few chairs that had been scattered about. Załuski motioned for him to sit. Nathan could not politely refuse, although he felt more comfortable observing the gathering from the perimeter walls than from the center of the room.
“I hope you will enjoy your first trip to Poland, Professor Linden. I think you will find we are a more complex people than most Westerners think, Polish jokes notwithstanding.” Załuski winked again.
Nathan smiled agreeably as he watched his host light a cigarette and slowly inhale. A moment later he realized that he too was being closely observed. “I think that can be fairly said of all peoples, that they are complex, don’t you agree?” he said. “At least, that’s been my experience, and it’s part of the challenge of devising constitutional paradigms.”
“With all due respect, Professor Linden,” Załuski said in a voice that resonated throughout the room and caught the attention of all its occupants, “I think you Americans put too much stock in creating systems of one sort or another. I don’t think the world can be that easily reduced.” Załuski slowly exhaled through his nose. He paused, gazed around the room, and narrowed his eyes. His audience quieted as he continued. “I believe there are irrational forces in all societies that cannot be tamed or reasoned away. They are the enemies of democracy, the dark, magical side of human nature if you will, and a hundred of your perfectly drafted, duly adopted constitutions will not diminish their power.”
“Perhaps, but a constitution can control them,” Nathan responded without a second thought.
“Only to a point. In your own country, did the post-Civil War amendments abolishing slavery and promising equal protection under the law end the apartheid mentality, if not the practices, of your southern brethren? I think not.”
Nathan was not used to this level of skepticism about the foundations of his life’s work. He raised his eyebrows in what he hoped would convey a neutral, slightly bemused attitude, and smiled back. But his jaw was locked, and his teeth were clenched.
The two men regarded each other. Then Załuski leaned back in his chair and gave Nathan a half smile. He pulled an ashtray from a bookshelf and twirled the burning tip of his cigarette into the glass until it was crushed. He paused, inspected the stub, then looked directly at Nathan.
“Excuse me for my curiosity, but what kind of name is Linden?” he asked.
A tight, pulsing sensation shot across Nathan’s stomach. “An American name,” he said.
“But of what derivation?”
“European. American families don’t generally come from just one place. My family came from all over Europe.” He quickly turned his face away.
“Forgive me,” Załuski said, “but I ask you about your name only because I don’t recognize its origin, and I have a fascination with such things. In this country, you see, one’s origin is of singular importance. My own family, the Załuskis, for example, traces its Polish lineage to the fifteenth century. The name is my Polish birthright, more significant to me than the memory of Germans arresting my father or the Communists seizing our ancestral home to make us outcasts in our own country. We are still Załuskis, of the Kingdom of Poland.”
Nathan gave his host a short nod. “I’m aware of Poland’s history of invasion,” he said. “I suppose it’s the lot of a nation that stands between Western and Eastern Europe without the protection of natural borders.”
“Yes, an old story,” Załuski concurred. “We are the Christ of Nations. But now, about your family?”
“I’m afraid that, like most Americans, my origins are obscure,” Nathan offered, hoping to put a quick end to the discussion. “In any case, my origins are not of much interest to me or to anyone else in my family.”
Załuski looked genuinely shocked. “How do you know who you are if you don’t know where your family came from?”
All around the room people appeared to regard Nathan with new interest. He rose from his chair and fixed Załuski with one of those ironic professorial smiles that worked so well at confusing his students back home. “Perhaps that’s the great American dilemma,” he said. But as he looked about hopefully for support, not one person returned a sympathetic gaze.
Załuski’s wife, Anna, pressed a steaming dish toward him. “Another naleniki, Professor?”
“I would love one,” he replied, smiling at her gratefully. But as she placed the delicacy on his plate, Nathan was reminded of the far less elegant blintzes frying in the Brooklyn kitchen of his childhood. He remembered the steam on the window, the fire escape, and the brick wall. He had set the course of his entire life to break free from that kitchen and the boundaries of Brooklyn. To succeed, he had even left his name and his parents, Sadie and Isaac (née Itzik) Leiber, behind. How, in God’s name, had Załuski guessed?
11
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, THE HISTORY DEPARTMENT’S LECTURE hall was packed with scholars and government officials. Professor Dombrowski, temporarily freed from his domestic difficulties, introduced Nathan, in Polish and English, in a warm and highly laudatory manner. To much applause, Nathan ascended the steps, grasped each side of the wooden podium, and addressed his respectful listeners.
“The great American philosopher Morris Rafael Cohen once said, ‘No man can stand in front of an audience without pretending that he knows more than he does.’” He waited a beat, with an expectant smile. “And I am no exception.”
The audience tittered politely. Nathan leaned over his prepared text like an athlete warming up and launched into his theory of constitutional genesis and the paradigms for progress, aware of the appreciative sounds that punctuated his remarks. He focused briefly on the first row, where an impressionable-looking young woman, seated on the aisle, was making a point of showing off her superb calves. She needn’t have bothered for Nathan’s sake. He was merely using eye contact to assert his dominion at the lectern. His wife, Marion, was t
he only woman who’d ever really succeeded in gaining his sexual attention. And even she suspected that his devotion was almost as much out of gratitude for the way she protected the sanctity of his study and helped him battle his dyslexia, as for love.
Nathan transitioned smoothly into his discourse on the principle of separation of powers, implied limitations on government, and the fundamental rights outlined in the American Bill of Rights. The microphone hissed. He tapped it. “Let me say, in conclusion, that for a Polish constitution to survive in a new Polish democracy, the common man must believe it is a living document, not a relic to be paraded around for state occasions.” He watched with satisfaction as scores of hands furiously scribbled his advice, marvelously unaware that the man who they subsequently applauded had spent his youth pushing garment racks down Seventh Avenue by day so he could take classes at City College, the poor man’s Harvard, at night.
A breeze floated through the hall, rustling papers, causing feet to shuffle. Nathan collected his notes and sensed an unusual charge in the atmosphere. He felt a bit off center, as if one of his ears was filled with water. When he pulled on his earlobe to clear it, he heard what sounded like a far off voice humming an indistinct tune. Dombrowski stepped up to the podium and shook his hand. People crowded the front of the hall to meet him. But the eerie sensation and the voice lingered and robbed him of his customary post-lecture high.
A faculty member proposed a project between Harvard and a multidisciplinary group of Polish scholars. He tried to look interested, but he couldn’t shake the fluttering sound in his ears. Disturbed, he made his excuses and left the hall, hoping to escape further contact with the Poles until he could reclaim his sense of equilibrium.
“It seems my colleagues were highly impressed with your constitutional paradigms, Professor Linden.”
The deep, rolling voice, directed at his back, gave Nathan a start. He turned. The sounds in his ears stopped when he saw Stanisław Załuski standing at the exit door of the lecture hall. Feeling immediately improved, he regarded Załuski with the confidence of a man who’d just bested his enemy. “I guess not everyone shares your belief in the dark side of human nature,” he said.
Załuski squinted into the sunlight and lit a cigarette. “Laugh if you like at my way of expressing my opinions,” he said, approaching Nathan, “but it is my duty to speak frankly because you are a man of some influence, and I am a man who loves his country.”
Flattered and slightly curious, Nathan waited for Załuski to continue.
“You are a Jew, Professor Linden.”
An electric sensation stung Nathan at the back of his neck. He clenched his jaw. “What of it?”
Załuski’s smile creased the corners of his heavy eyelids. “They say we Poles have a sixth sense about Jews. We always know. So let us understand each other. It is not wartime, after all.” He took another drag of his cigarette and gave Nathan a meaningful look. “A Jew should understand what I say. A Jew knows he has reason to fear man’s dark impulses.”
Nathan went taut with fury. How dare Załuski presume he was a Jew before he was a scholar, as if he, Nathan Linden, had some primitive tribal obligation to represent the Jews.
“In March 1968 this country went into something of an anti-Jewish madness,” Załuski continued evenly. “Extremists openly said Jews were German sympathizers during the war. Three million people were responsible for their own deaths, they said. They pushed Jews from their livelihoods. Some they beat, some they robbed. The Jew was used as an excuse to brutalize students who demonstrated for more democracy on this campus.” He pointed his finger at the spot where they stood.
Nathan was upset to hear this. But he did not trust where Załuski might be trying to lead him. He cleared his throat. “I certainly remember there was trouble in Poland during that period, but I wasn’t under the impression that things were quite as serious as you say.”
The lines on Załuski’s face deepened with irritation. “Then let me inform you, that when it was over, twenty-five thousand, including almost all the young Jews we had left here, had packed their bags and run. Some of our best minds went out the door that year.”
His voice, thick with emotion, attracted the attention of passersby, but he ignored the scene he was creating. “None of this,” he said vehemently, “could have been accomplished if it were not for the willingness of an enslaved nation to embrace its dark and ancient hatreds rather than reflect on what they had seen with their own eyes during the war, the genocide against the Jews.”
Flushed, he took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled sharply. “It has been my life’s work since that time to say to anyone who will listen that if the Poles don’t begin to question themselves they will always be slaves, downtrodden and spiteful. I say this, you understand, out of love for my people. They don’t know it, but to be rid of this mania about Jews would be a relief.”
Nathan was at a complete loss. “What does this have to do with me?”
Załuski’s face hardened. “We are at the beginning of a new era in Polish history. We have achieved sovereignty. This we paid for with our blood and centuries of unimaginable suffering. You, Professor Linden, were invited here to speak to us about creating a constitution. But what I say to you is that we don’t need Utopian schemes that will send us back into the grip of the tyrants. We need someone who understands that the Poles’ dark impulse to lay the blame outside enslaves them. Build individual responsibility, a presumed duty to reflect, into every corner of your constitutional paradigm and we will have something useful from you, a real contribution to history.” He took a long, uneven drag on his cigarette.
Nathan knew what Pop would say to this. He’d say, “Listen, Mister College Professor, a Pole is a Pole. You can’t do nothing with him unless he’s a socialist. Then he’s a brother.” Pop had a whole arsenal of truisms like this, one more obscure than the next.
“So, until tomorrow then?” Załuski said.
“Tomorrow?”
“I am to give you a tour of the city.”
“Actually,” Nathan said, hoping to conceal his distaste for the plan, “I think I’d rather get out of the city and take a look at this country of yours. Can you arrange for me to have a car and driver for the day?”
Załuski smiled. If he’d been surprised or disappointed by Nathan’s request, it didn’t show. “If you would prefer, I’m sure this can be arranged,” he said with a slight bow. “I’ll call you with the details later this evening.” Then he headed off in the direction of Kazimierz Palace, smoke fanning out behind him like a cloud.
12
WARSAW! BEAUTIFUL WARSAW! THAT CITY WAS NO MORE. I could not find the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street, or mark my way to Plac Grzybowski by the smell of hot chickpeas. But still sweet was the smell of grass growing in Saxon Garden.
Warsaw’s air smelled of a burnt stew of elements Nathan could not identify. It was also permeated by dust and gasoline exhaust, which irritated his eyes. But after the morning’s events, he felt so agitated he decided to take a walk, despite the added threat of rain. He passed under the university’s decorative wrought-iron gate, with its Polish eagle on top, and walked north, intending to visit the Gothic postwar reconstruction called Old Town. He had read somewhere that although small in size, it was quite charming.
But somehow he managed to take a wrong turn, and he found himself instead at a pleasant but unremarkable park identified in his tour book as the Saxon Garden. According to the book, a building called the Blue Palace could be found on the far end of the Garden. The name intrigued him, but the guide said the original building, with its extensive art and book collections, had burned during the war, that it had been rebuilt as the headquarters of the municipal transport enterprise and now wasn’t worth a visit.
Nathan retraced his steps, and with a sudden desire for the taste of something sweet, he drifted south toward the cafés on the elegantly reconstructed Nowy wiat. He sat down in a café that had a large display of doughnuts in the
window. Of all things to find in Poland, he thought. He ordered a sugar-sprinkled one with a tea, in the best Polish he could manage from his tour book.
The waiter looked sympathetic as Nathan struggled to pronounce pczek the word for doughnut. “That is very good Polish,” said the waiter, although it was clear to them both that Nathan had just about reached the limit of his abilities in the language.
“You speak English,” Nathan said gratefully.
“A little,” the young man offered.
Nathan noted how even in jeans and a T-shirt, the Pole retained that intangible difference that marked him as non American, as if some trace of ancestral formality prevented his wearing casualness well. “Can you tell me what that church is over there with the two towers?” he asked.
The waiter bent slightly at the waist as he set up the table. “That’s Kociól witego Krzya, the Holy Cross Church,” he said. “Inside it was almost destroyed, from bombs, in the Second War. During the great Warsaw Uprising there was much fighting there between our people and the Nazis.”
“Well, it certainly is beautiful on the outside.”
The young man straightened proudly. “Before the war, all Warsaw was beautiful. It was the most beautiful city in Europe. Not like this.” He motioned vaguely at the city beyond the reconstructed zones of Nowy wiat and Old Town. “Horrible, no?”
Nathan knew better than to agree. It was one thing for a Pole to disparage his city, quite another for a foreigner to do so. “It’s no wonder you love your beautiful churches then,” he said amicably.
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