"Yes," said Kalina dubiously. "I know all that. There's that famous painting too, that's in all the history books. I forget by whom. Where Zygmunt is sitting by Barbara's bed at her last illness, looking so sad. I used to like that when I was younger."
'When you were younger,' thought Hania in amusement, but she didn't say anything and Kalina was continuing:
"Now I don't believe in all that stuff anymore."
"You mean you don't believe in romance?" Hania had a little difficulty keeping a straight face. Kalina's tone was so worldly-wise and weary sounding.
"No. I don't believe in it. Do you?"
Hania was taken aback. "Well...of course, not for me, maybe. But I like to think that love exists, yes." What else was there of any value in the world? Even music was only a consolation for people without, or an enrichment for those who had––but that was a sacrilegious thought, and she suppressed it.
"Well it doesn't." Kalina's tone was very flat, and Hania was looking at her with concern, but she suddenly jumped up and ran after the other children. What was wrong with her? Hania wondered, feeling that there was something about Kalina she should understand but that, like a word on the tip of her tongue, just eluded her.
Konstanty had sent an email attachment with a miniature thought to be Barbara, showing a blonde young woman in an amber velvet doublet, large slashed sleeves, and a cap with a swirling plume. She had a delicate narrow face and a lively, almost impish expression. Hania looked at the picture for a moment.
Love didn't exist? For Barbara it had. Hania went to the window and stood looking out at the fields. The rain had almost ceased, only here and there an occasional drop still spread a ring on the green water of the frog pond. Beyond the grain the pines were dark and wet. Just so the countryside must have looked to Barbara when she stood in a doorway in Vilnius.
The damp had brought the snails out. Big and small they littered every bare surface, leaving sticky trails of slime. "Look pani," said Patricia with a giggle, pushing Maks into the room, "Look at Maks." Hania looked and shuddered. "Maks! Take that snail off your nose at once! Oh, yuck."
Respected Madam,…Some of your questions rather startle me. They're perfectly legitimate, but I never heard them asked before. You wonder if the country would have been worse off if conquered by the Turks? It's too large a question. Does anyone like foreign rule? But offhand, I suppose for the serfs not much would have changed, and the nobles––would have moved to Paris.
I'm glad you like Zygmunt August. He's rather a favorite of mine.
Respected Sir,…Any ruler of Poland has my sympathies. When I look around the neighborhood it seems incredible that a system based on consensus could have worked and even more incredible that Poland had reached a civilizational level allowing it to pass so mildly through a period where opinions differed so much on matters of such weight. No––I don't quite mean that as harshly as it sounds. I'm always very admiring when people can manage to be tolerant, to compromise.
7
It's a bad habit Poles have
Of slapping each other about the faces…
– Mikołaj Rej (1505-1569)
You built the heavens
And embroidered them with gold stars…
– Jan Kochanowski,
'Hymn,' c.1553
I could happily stay here for a long time, thought Hania, sitting on her bed one late evening. From here she could listen to the sound of the night outside her open window and see a pale moon rise over the pines. Here, when she got up in the morning and found an email from Konstanty, she could almost believe her imaginary romance was real. Not that she let her dreaming go very far. Some sense of self preservation stopped her from that––only she could imagine, a little, that he liked her, that he enjoyed their exchange of ideas, that some feeling of empathy reached out toward her. It was that feeling that was her romance––nothing more. She would set it to music as she sat there. So much music was night music. There were Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été, John Field's nocturnes, Chopin's––she ran through Opus 9, no. 2, the one in E flat major, in her mind, feeling her hands move on the keyboard; then Debussy's Clair de Lune; and afterwards the romanza from Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusic. She lay down, and with her eyes closed, she began to play the Moonlight Sonata in her mind––dum da da, dum da da––and as she dropped off to sleep it was intersected by the croaking of frogs. Dum da da ker-oak.
When she woke in the morning it was to all the farmyard sounds: the crowing of roosters, the clanking of feed buckets, the ring of a wrench striking the pavement, the curses of Pan Gieniek as he tinkered endlessly with his tractor, the voices of the women as they moved off to work in the potato patch or to find a neighbor to gossip with.
And yet, she became aware that the neighbors quarreled too, passionately at times and hopelessly, since circumstances forced them to continue meeting constantly, forced side-taking amongst their relatives and acquaintances, and spread angry ripples of long-lasting dissent through village politics. Patricia's parents, she learned, did not speak to Yola's, and had not done so for sixteen years. "You don't want to have anything to do with those Kruczaks," Pan Wieboda had said, shaking his head righteously. "They'll take advantage of you––you're from Warsaw, you aren't on the look-out for their tricks. Those are very primitive people."
"But Pani Ola keeps the house beautifully––and the garden," Hania had tried to defend her neighbor.
"You wait," the man had said, "she's just biding her time. She's like a fox that one." Hania said nothing and also listened in silence when Pani Ola brought over the present of a head of lettuce and a warning against the Wiebodas.
"Don't have anything to do with them. Those are low, mean, sly, despicable people––every one of them. It's a bad family. Stay away from them."
"It's like this," explained her neighbor from across the road, a large bald man with a walrus moustache who had waylaid her early in her stay to set her straight on all the village intrigue. Pan Piotrek always left off tying dahlia stalks or sweeping a walkway to chat with her when she came out of the house. "Pani Ola and Pan Wojtek are cousins––the same grandparents. And there was a dispute about the inheritance. You see that fence line on Pan Wojtek's? According to Pani Ola it's supposed to run not to that tree but to the next post over there––oh, that one there." He pointed. "For a year after the grandfather––God rest his soul––passed on we lived in daily anticipation of a massacre. One day Pani Ola was chasing Pan Wojtek with a kitchen knife, the next he was hollering below their windows that he was going to burn the house down. Ah," he waved a hand with a slight air of disappointment, "they've calmed down a lot since then."
"But," said Hania, looking at the markers he'd pointed out, "the difference isn't half a meter's worth––and there's all this space about…"
Pan Piotrek gave her an intent look. "It's the principle of the thing, pani––the principle. You have to defend what's yours. You can't just lie down and let someone walk all over you. Why I––when there was an inheritance in my family...My brother-in-law––may lightning strike him! tried....God's wounds..." Suddenly his eyes were dilating and he was beginning to swipe angrily at the flower beds with his broom. She quickly changed the subject.
A curious flaw, she thought as she walked back to the other house, in many Poles' characters; they were usually argumentative but not physically aggressive––until one touched them in certain ways, and then everything flared up, unreasonably, and boiled over.
Respected Madam,…It's not only in the village that people get so unreasonable over things that don't matter. Some of my colleagues at the hospital had their scalpels out the other day over the way their titles were listed on a board. It's rather surprising here how the instant someone disagrees with someone else that other becomes 'uncultured' and 'uncivilized.' It's quite true, as you say, that we have only to open the newspapers to see how the spirit of spite and envy can overrule the ability to see the larger picture or to value issues at their true worth.
Have you got to the Socinians yet? I don't mean to hurry you, only I had an idea in connection with the Museum of Polish History. Sorry, my thoughts are jumping about but I know you'll be able to follow. (Hania read this line ten times). I think I'll suggest a room dedicated to alternative solutions. Perhaps my sister could get involved in the funding; she's good at that sort of thing.
Hania wrote to Konstanty again that evening. Here in the village there was no lack of material; something was always happening that seemed to her strange, worthy of comment, or illustrative of some quality already revealed in Konstanty's writing. That morning, for instance, a police car had taken up its station at one end of the village, hidden in a ditch, with waiting radar. As the neighborhood had been much bothered by the speed with which tourist cars zipped along the paved road between the houses, it was viewed with mild approval. But when elderly, very elderly Pan Józek hobbled to the other end of the village on his cane, and sat down on a bench there, lifting a slow bony hand to each passing driver in warning of the police car ahead, his public spirit was even more strongly approbated.
Respected Madam,…yes, we like our rebels. My heart warms to Pan Józek, I admit. In Poland we're allowed to defy any authority but convention...Do I talk too much about 'in Poland?'––it's only that coming from some years spent abroad, I am struck by certain facets of my own country, and think perhaps the situation is the same for you...And speaking of rebels, how is Maks?
Hania made a quick check. Maks was playing some game in the dirt with the other children, so that was all right then. Kalina was sleeping in a chaise longue. She went back to her typing. The disaster was to come later in the day.
…One group which was eventually subjected to persecution and chased out of Poland in the 17th century were the Socinians, later called Arians, who became forerunners of the Unitarians in America. Although their total numbers were not large, one historian lists over forty of the major Lithuanian magnatic families who were followers, and they also found converts amongst the gentry. They were anti-trinitarians and pacifists: they did not believe in eternal damnation or original sin; they objected to spilling blood, to war, to capital punishment, to carrying weapons (some nobles wore symbolic wooden swords); they believed in equality before the law, and, as some members became more radical, the return of the land to the peasants. They believed in applying reason to the Bible and attempting to live by the teachings of the Evangelists, and even their enemies had to admit that the Socinians were 'characterized by virtue, devoutness, and scholarship.' According to a contemporary, Archbishop Tillotson, 'they could be taken as a model of the manner for honest disputation and touching on religious questions without excitement and indecorous slander of their opponents…'
Maks came into the house looking disgusted. "What's wrong, Maksiu?" said Hania, guessing that he had quarreled with his friends. This happened fairly frequently; words would fly, maybe a slight blow or push or two, noses would go up in the air, there would be a cooling-off period, and then everything would be forgotten and everyone would be best friends again. It puzzled Hania a little, accustomed as she was to the permanent falling-outs and lasting animosities of American childhood. Maks flung himself into a chair and crossed his arms, "They're all a bunch of rooster eggs."
"Maks, roosters…" Hania began and then stopped, not certain how to proceed.
"They're pond scum."
"Okay, well, why don't you just cool off a little. I want to finish what I'm doing here, all right?"
He shrugged and took himself off angrily.
…'They ordinarily argue with moderation and seriousness, without excitement and temper…clearly and precisely, carefully, skilfully, and decently, sometimes with a subtle emphasis or moderate enthusiasm, but without rude or cutting comments…Some Protestant writers, all Catholic polemicists, and particularly Jesuit writers…are bunglers in comparison with them.'
Hania came to the end of the section and paused, feeling uplifted and encouraged. Yes. There were people in the world––even back then––who were capable of behaving like rational beings.
Her pleasant reverie was shattered by an ear piercing shriek. Aaaaaaeeee! Heeeeellpp! And sobs. She surged from her chair, the laptop flew off and hit the floor with a crash, and she tore in the direction of the shrieks. Aeeeeeiiii!
She reached the kitchen. Water was spraying everywhere. Maks was leaning across the sink on his stomach and had his finger in the faucet. Aaeeeeiiiii!!! The spray soaked her as she pushed through it to the sink.
"My finger. My finger's stuck!"
Hania grabbed for the knob and turned it but nothing happened; the water continued to gush and spray. She tried to reach for Maks' finger and got such a quantity of water in her face that she was momentarily blinded.
"Pull it out!" she gasped.
"Aaiiiii!" Maks sobbed, "I can't."
She caught his finger and tried to wiggle it out, but Maks screamed louder. "Stop! It hurts! It hurts!"
Water shot to the ceiling, hit the floor, spattered like machine gun fire along the wall. She was soaking wet and so was Maks.
A gaggle of children's faces appeared in the open window, then ducked in unison with loud screeches as the water flew in their direction.
"Run!" Hania said to the group collectively, trying to hold Maks so he wouldn't slide off the sink, "someone call someone to help!"
A moment later and the room was full of people, Pan Gienek, Pan Piotrek, Pan Wieboda, Pani Ola, and many others, each one giving advice, cursing and dodging the water. "Where's the shut-off valve, kurcze blade?" No one knew.
Someone said it was under the sink, cholera jasna. Pan Gienek dived under the sink and in a moment emerged with a piece of pipe in his hands.
"Idiot!" shrieked someone, "that's the catch-basin, what'd you take that off for?"
"Kurcze, the knob won't work," said someone.
"It's a faulty washer, cholera," said someone.
"Get a hacksaw," said someone.
"Noooooo!!!!" screamed Maks in a panic.
"Blllaaagh!" said Hania as the water caught her full in the mouth.
"Cholera take the washer!" said Pan Gienek, applying his wrench to the base of the faucet. A second later and the top of the faucet came loose, and Hania could pull Maks away from the sink. He still had the spout stuck on his finger, and from the decapitated water inlet the water now pumped into the sink, down through the dismembered run-off pipe, and onto the floor.
Maks waved the pipe around and cried. Someone said to pour soap on it. They poured dishwashing liquid on it and pulled till Maks screamed. No luck.
"Try oil," said someone, as they all stood about Maks in a quarter-inch of running water.
Someone found the oil. Pop! His finger came out.
"Kurde, it was I, I who said to use oil," said someone in a pleased voice.
"Oh thank you, thank you," said Hania in relief, as the participants began to depart. "Thank you so much."
"Thank you, thank you."
And then, as the last one went out the door. "But, but…wait, wait a moment! Please!"
Pan Piotrek turned. "Yes?"
Hania gestured towards the faucet, where the water was still pumping vigorously over the floor. It made a flood out the back door and was creating a pool in the yard.
"The water…"
Pan Piotrek shrugged. "Have to call a plumber, I guess."
"Do you know a plumber?"
"No. We do all our own, here in the village."
"But…" Hania clung to him as her last hope, "where will I find a plumber?"
"I can't help you." He shrugged, then, as if touched a bit by her despair, he added, "You can walk to the grocery at the crossroads; they might be able to tell you. But around here…" He shook his head and took himself off.
Late that evening Hania sank exhausted into a chair and closed her eyes. She was too tired even to get undressed and go to bed.
After Pan Piotrek disappeared, she had left a reluctant Kalina
minding a bucket placed under the sink and had trudged along the road to the end of the village and along the highway to the grocery store. It had been hot, the sun had beat down on them, Maks had whined about the heat and complained about his finger, and dawdled so that she had to catch his hand and practically drag him along with her.
They'd passed the two policemen by the radar car. "Could use her as a roadblock," she'd heard one of them snigger behind her back. Of course, he hadn't meant her to hear.
When she had come in through the door of the grocery the plump fiftyish woman behind the counter had looked up and asked where she'd come from and told her she shouldn't have walked there at that time of day, it was very bad for the health to go out in the noonday sun, and "pani being so fat and all" it wasn't a good idea at all, and what could she do for her? A plumber? She had looked doubtful, taken a step or two into the room behind, and had a loud, shouted conversation with someone in the back purlieus. "Kowalczyk?" and the reply, "Niiiee, he's a rascal, that one."
The woman's voice again. "Stąpek?" and the reply, "Nie, he's a cad, that one."
"How about Zbyszek?"
An explosion of anger from the man: "That skurwysyn! He still owes me ten złoty." A pause, then, "There's Włodek might be willing, but I wouldn't trust him…"
A moment later the woman reappeared and handed Hania a piece of paper on which a name was written in ill-formed block letters. "STĄPEK." The cad. Great, Hania thought.
A phone number? No, the woman didn't have it, but she could tell Hania where he lived. It was the next village over––only a matter of two kilometers or so.
The cad, however, when they'd arrived panting at his gate, had got up out of a lawn chair and said he couldn't come that day. "But the water is pouring all over the floor," said Hania.
The cad had rubbed his head, and looked into the distance, and said that it was hardly worth his while, but if she wanted to pay emergency rates he could come the next day.
Swans Are Fat Too Page 9