“I might as well ask you now,” Ellen said. “The company doesn’t seem exactly thrilled that I’m here. Is there something I should know?”
Pronaszko threw back his head dramatically and looked up at the uneven double towers of Saint Mary’s Church across the square. “They are not thrilled that you have joined us. Not thrilled at all.”
Drunk or not, his bluntness hurt her. “Why?” she said.
“They had the idea I should pick one of them to choreograph a dance, not someone from outside, especially not someone from America. I disagreed, so they are upset.” He shrugged, as if the company’s desires were merely a nuisance.
They passed a small bakery. Ellen caught a glimpse of their reflection in the glass and thought of her grandfather. He would have called her a scab, working for Pronaszko when the company wanted to do its own choreography. “You’re a parasite of the boss,” he’d have told her.
“You must understand,” Pronaszko said, “under communism we had no worthwhile cultural exchanges, nothing was permitted in the open. The country was a suffocating hole. How difficult it is to grow as an artist in such an atmosphere. My dancers don’t understand that. They are too young to understand that my job is to give them fresh air.”
Ellen studied her mentor’s profile—the short nose, the strong chin jutting out resentfully—and wasn’t sure if it would serve any useful purpose to argue with him about communism. But she was troubled by his attitude toward his dancers. “Maybe they feel they also have a right to make choices,” she said.
“And what would they choose? These are, almost all of them, children from the country. They are not city people. When I take them on tour, they stay together like sheep and don’t go out to explore the places where they have been so fortunate to have been taken. Do not be fooled by their modern clothes. If I let them, they would choose this dead, stupid Soviet ballet. That is what they know. But I know what we need. We need fresh influences, new passions. So I do not care what they want.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” Ellen said carefully. “But do you think the company will give their best creatively if they’re so angry?”
“That is for you to work out. Certainly, they will resist you. You don’t know the Polish character as I do.” He stopped and turned to her. “For all our European pretensions, we are a peasant people. Subservient. A people deformed by invasion. You want to know why they smile at you in class one minute and whisper about you the next? It is because they are all two-faced servants.” His eyes flitted up to the statue of Adam Mickiewicz as Ellen tried to recall when the dancers were whispering about her.
“Ellen.” He ran his forefinger back and forth over the length of his nose. He seemed hesitant. “You remember your improvisation of the statue, of Adam Mickiewicz?”
She rolled her eyes. “That was a big mistake.”
“No. I have given this some thought. You have a sense. You could not have chosen better, even without knowing him. Mickiewicz is the national poet, yes. Ask any schoolchild. And this is because when the nations around us cut us into parts and made Poland disappear from the map of Europe, we needed to believe in the poems of this man, our Polish patriot.” He squinted, as if appraising the statue in Rynek Główny. “But the truth is our national poet lived abroad most of his life. He died in Istanbul. The statue of him in the main square, that is our little Polish joke. Because Mickiewicz was never in his life in Kraków.” He lowered his voice, as if others might be listening. “And the rest of the joke? That is for you to enjoy. Now that our communist friends are not rewriting history anymore, I can tell you that it has long been believed that our Polish Shakespeare, our hero to the faithful, had a Jewish mother. Ha! There is something they did not tell us when we were memorizing Pan Tadeusz!”
Ellen was conscious of holding her breath, of not wanting to misspeak in the face of a man’s rebuke of his own people.
But Pronaszko apparently did not share her sense of delicacy. “We are becoming free to say the truth,” he said, with some belligerence. “And truth can be very difficult for Polish people. We operate in the fantasy of ourselves.”
Ellen didn’t think there was a politic way to respond to this, so she merely offered a smile.
He gave her a wink. “Nothing is what it seems, yes?”
She nodded weakly at this man with whom she still felt so awkward.
He took her by the elbow and began walking again. “They do not like strangers. What they don’t know is that they need them. The stranger will teach them who they are. Hundreds of years ago, strangers built our economy. Our princes, our King Kazimierz Wielki invited them to come here, from Germany mostly. Just as I invited you.”
Ellen was unsure how much of this speech was being randomly driven by drink and how much was his trying to tell her something he thought was important.
“And ever since the Jews left this country, we have suffered, even though some of them who survived were very powerful in the government. Jewish communists are the worst, you know. They really believe.”
She felt the pressure of his fingers along her arm, and prickles ran up and down her spine. She remembered her father’s warning not to tell Pronaszko that she was Jewish. But was he an anti Semite? What did he mean, she wondered, by the phrase “since the Jews left”? Had he meant the Jews who had emigrated, like her grandfather, at the turn of the century, or was he referring to the Holocaust? And if he meant the Holocaust, how could he call that leaving?
At that peculiar moment, she noticed that the taller of Saint Mary’s two towers was ringed by a gilded royal crown. It made her think of the odd phrase on the plaque in Szeroka Square—“sixty five thousand Polish citizens of Jewish nationality.” She hadn’t been able to articulate what had bothered her about it. But now, looking at the tower, she realized that in a country where church and state were one, a Polish Jew was regarded as having a different nationality. She felt cold.
They turned off the square, onto the narrow stone sidewalks of a side street, and headed toward Malٹ Rynek, the small market square behind Saint Mary’s. Ellen listened to the rhythm of their feet on the pavement and worked hard at pulling herself together so that she could face what she knew was going to be a difficult dinner.
“Ah, well.” Pronaszko sighed, waving their subject away. “All this is for another day. Tonight, perhaps I am more pessimistic than usual.” He guided her toward a wood-gated doorway, which led to a rough cubbyhole of a restaurant. “The food here is excellent,” he said, dismissing the plain surroundings with the easy manner of a connoisseur.
The restaurant’s owner, a short man with a mustached face as round and red as an apple, greeted Pronaszko with excited deference and seated them at a center table where, unfortunately for Ellen, the cigarette smoke seemed thickest. The place was crowded with locals, a few of whom stared at Pronaszko, then at Ellen. Pronaszko leaned toward her and said softly, “You see, some of us recognize an interesting beauty when we see one!”
Ellen took this as encouragement, not as a come on. “Thanks.” She smiled and examined the jeans and thick soled black shoes on the young Poles at the next table, wondering if Pronaszko’s dancers didn’t have a point in objecting to an outsider choreographing for them. Maybe it wasn’t outside influences they needed. From New York to Kraków, everyone was starting to dress alike, as if they were all shopping in the same friends’ closets. In a way, there was something sweet about it, but she had an uncomfortable sense they might all be surrendering too much of themselves.
“I’ll order you the beetroot soup and the pierogi. They are specialties here. You will like it.” Pronaszko called the owner over and with great élan, and without asking her permission, ordered their dinner. She was offended but, for the sake of the subject they were about to discuss, she let it pass.
“How do I get your dancers to loosen up and try things?” she asked him.
“This is their problem,” he said, frowning. “They know same, same, same. No color, no variet
y. I wanted you to make them see how you use improvisation in your choreographic work, to show them the process.”
Ellen smiled, relieved to know the reason he had chosen her to do the first improvisation. “How do you get to the point where you don’t mind their resentment?” she asked.
“You ignore it. You do what is best for the company, for its art. You do not need them to like you. You need them to work so that they learn to live with the terror of creativity.”
She laughed at his dramatics. “And you call yourself an anti-communist?”
He answered with what she thought of as the European continental smile, head bowed in a show of false modesty, while the eyes reveal a practiced cynicism. “So, what do you have in mind for us?” he said, jerking his head up suddenly and returning to his professional demeanor.
She pulled out her notebook and began to flip nervously through the pages. “The piece I worked on for you in New York is called Four Corners. It has the sound of something very basically American to me, like the old town squares up in New England, or an Amish quilt pattern, or square dancing. I like the idea of superimposing that on a Polish sensibility. Obviously, a lot will get influenced by the way your dancers move.”
Pronaszko nodded slightly.
“My idea is to pull images and sounds of very different types of people from the four corners of the stage. They appear successively, each interacting with one or more of the other corners. I have three hip hop types coming together with a superslow whirling dervish, each with their own music. There’s interplay with the music too. You get one style, one beat, then the other. The volume of each musical identity goes up and down and fuses as they interact.”
Pronaszko’s eyebrows rose, but Ellen couldn’t yet tell if he was interested. “I have leaping, tumbling gymnastic types who dance to Japanese Kodo music. They come together with smooth, gliding types, dancing to country western music. The whole piece plays with the idea of diversity.”
Pronaszko played absentmindedly with his silverware. “Unfortunately, I do not believe in the melting pot,” he said, sniffing. “I like the title Four Corners. It evokes something. But to just introduce types and treat them like puppets, what is the point? This sort of thing is done all the time. I don’t like it. I think we should try for something bigger.”
Ellen wasn’t prepared to have him brush off her work without more discussion, but she liked that he was pushing her. “Not big enough?” she repeated, amused. She took a sip of water.
Pronaszko sighed and pulled out a cigarette. When their dinner arrived, he became more interested in extolling the virtues of the sour beetroot soup with minced meat raviolis—ears, he called them—and the wild mushroom pierogis, than he was in hearing about the thought process behind her work. He cut a pierogi in half and pushed it around his plate. Then he put down his fork. “I want to hear a point of view,” he said slowly. “I want to hear a cry of passion, a subject from your soul. You talk about types. I am not interested in types for types’ sake. I did not bring you here to play with mere concepts. That is for the timid.” He slammed his open palm on the table, jangling the silverware, startling her. “I am interested in evoking response.”
“Response to what?”
“That is for you to decide.”
A silence fell between them. Pronaszko studied her face. “Ellen Linden, I chose you because you have a certain pure American fire. You do not know how that looks to us, how exciting, how alive. You have that gift of passion without intellectual self-consciousness. We cannot get enough of that here.”
Ellen was surprised to hear a European admit this.
“All right.” He lifted his hand slightly from the table and returned the two of them to a lesser state of tension. He pointed his forefinger at her. “I want something new out of you. I want something freshly dug.” He returned to his food, stabbed a few pierogi, and bit them off his fork. “When you have worked out an idea and you want to see how it looks on some dancers, let me know.”
Ellen realized she would have to start over. The pressure felt like a knee against her spine. Yet she was exhilarated.
They exchanged careful smiles.
“How about a vodka?” he said.
How confidently she raises her glass and drinks to him in Polish. This Ellen Linden is no fool. Not for her to make herself sick with vodka like her grandfather. Poor soul, trying to impress Hillel and that Pole Piotr in Warsaw.
28
THAT NIGHT IN HER HOTEL ROOM, ELLEN FOLDED HERSELF INTO the formidable wingback armchair at the foot of her bed. For a long time she hugged her knees and rocked back and forth, hoping for inspiration. But the longer she rocked, the harder focusing on her piece became. A few indistinct themes flickered through her head, but she dismissed them quickly as dry and lightweight, nothing that would impress the sort of people who’d created the fabulous posters plastered all over the city.
At one in the morning she gave up and went to bed, disgusted and scared at her own emptiness. A half moon shone through the open French window, and a soft wind blew at the curtains. She closed her eyes and listened to the hourly trumpet call, the hejnalج from Saint Mary’s Church. Its regularity was now almost a comfort. But the thought of the church’s spire and the crown gave her a chill again.
Eventually, she fell asleep and dreamed of Marek Gruberski, the musician from the Ariel café. He appeared in a swirl of sand, his features emerging like a developing photograph. The long brown hair fell gracefully at his shoulders. When he saw her, he began to sing the “For-a-GirlTune.” They approached a wide river, the Vistula perhaps, but with a classical setting, like a painting. Marek held a rod over his head and beckoned until she came to him, wearing bells and harmonizing the song. Together, they stepped into white light; then Marek was gone. Ellen’s foot hit a cobbled stone on Szeroka Square. She ran to the Ariel café, but the door was locked. She sang the “For-a-GirlTune” at the clouds that floated in the windows around the square, trying to call him back.
On the second floor of a brick building, at an open French window, sat a striking gray haired old woman wrapped in a fringed plaid blanket. The woman rocked back and forth in time to the “For-a-GirlTune.” She nodded and smiled at Ellen. The room behind her was filled to the ceiling with bright green cut grass.
“From your mouth to God’s ear,” the woman said. The Yiddish accent was thick, but clear enough for Ellen to understand. “Such a lovely voice you didn’t get from Itzik.”
Ellen awoke the next morning so perplexed by her dream she was determined to return to Szeroka Square that day.
It was late afternoon by the time she arrived. She walked the perimeter of the wide, rectangular street, searching for the French window where the old woman had sat. She couldn’t find it, or not the exact one. Instead, she noticed that even in Jewish Kazimierz, the highest airspace was silhouetted with church steeples, not synagogues. She wondered if the architectural dominance was intentional, or if she was becoming as paranoid as Sy Messner’s tour group.
She walked over to the Ariel café.
A paunchy older man was doing paperwork at the reception table. “Are any of the musicians here yet?” she asked him.
A chair in the second room scraped the rough wooden floor, and Marek looked around the partition. A smile sprang to his face. “Hello again!” he called to Ellen.
“Hi!” Ellen couldn’t believe her luck at finding him.
There was an awkward pause. Neither of them seemed to know how to pick up from where they’d left off.
“I’m just replacing a string,” he said, holding up his guitar with its hanging string as if proof was required. “You came for the tape?”
She remembered how slowly his face had come into focus in her dream. “Sure, if you have it!” she said. She liked his street clothes, the blue jeans and the black T shirt.
He looked hesitant. “One of the members of our group is bringing it, but he will not be here until later.”
“That’s okay.” She
smiled. “I can wait. I’m going to be in Kraków for about two months.”
He tilted his head with a happy look. “That is a long time for a tourist.”
“I’m working with the Pronaszko Dance Theatre.”
He looked puzzled.
“I’m a visiting choreographer,” she explained. “I’m working on a piece for the company. They’ll be performing it, I hope, at the end of August.”
Marek tugged at the tuft of hair in the middle of his chin and smiled broadly. “I thought there was something different about you. You are not like the other Jews who come here.”
“What do you mean?” she asked testily.
“I don’t know,” he said, averting her gaze. “Most Jews come here to cry. They don’t see Poland. They see Auschwitz.”
She wondered if this was his payback for the remarks about the menorah, or the survivor, Mr. Landau, saying, “All Poles are anti Semites. It’s in their blood.” Maybe he also heard that woman, another survivor, say, “The Poles were worse than the Germans!”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Not all Jews think that way.”
He shrugged. “There were a lot of Poles in Auschwitz too. Jews don’t own suffering. In my family, we also had people there.”
Ellen didn’t like the way he seemed to be challenging her to condemn Jews for complaining. “Have you ever been to Auschwitz?” she asked, as a kind of defense.
“Sure, I went when I was in school, but I don’t go to those places now.” Marek waved the subject away. He turned back to his guitar and began to thread the string through the peg. “American Jews say we are anti Semites, but that is not how it is with us at all.”
Genuinely curious, Ellen asked, “How is it then?”
“I will tell you one thing,” he said, turning the peg. “After the war, we stayed, with the Russians and everything. The Jews left.”
Ellen lost her attraction to him. “What do you mean left?” she said, remembering Pronaszko’s same use of the word.
A Day of Small Beginnings Page 25