I asked if she really saw it as a vanished Eden.
‘In a way, I do.’
‘But it’s a savage place.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that as well. A savage, damaged paradise.’
6
LATER THAT WEEK, Zofia and I went down to Lida to try and find the house of her grandparents. We found a sovkhoz, a vast collective farm. A sign marked the entrance with a name that had echoed through Zofia’s childhood: KLEPAWICZE. The sign was a fine piece of Soviet kitsch, painted in a silvery, zinc-like paint and decorated, in bas relief, with a blooming flower, a wheat sheaf, a milk churn, a fat cow and a sickle.
Concrete buildings marked the core of the sovkhoz and on top of the largest was a digital read-out. The read-out changed every half minute or so – the time changed to the temperature, and the temperature changed to an enigmatic ‘10’.
‘What’s 10?’ we asked.
‘Not too bad…”
‘No, what’s it measuring?’
‘Radiation – Chernobyl.’
‘Ugh!’ said Zofia.
Off to one side of the new buildings was a small island of grass and lilac. In the middle of the island was a concrete bust of Lenin. He was in profile, thrusting out his chin towards the long classical front of a dwór.
‘Yes, that’s it,’ said Zofia. ‘That’s the house!’
We stepped inside. To the right was the old drawing room. The walls were hung with purple drapes; there was a stage and a bank of electronics and two large speakers. On the purple drapes was fixed a series of plaster-cast images of more wheat sheaves, more fat cows, more milk churns.
The room, we were told, was the sovkhoz Marriage Palace. In other rooms were a dance floor, a clinic, and offices. Kind-faced women sat at empty desks, eager to make us tea, to talk, and to complain.
Upstairs was another series of offices. These had already been abandoned. Cabinets lay open, spilling years of files and quotas over the floor. In one of them, they lay so thickly you could not even see the boards. Dozens of posters, extolling the wonder of potatoes, the sin of drinking, lay among them. A pigeon had got into the room and flew hopelessly backwards and forwards: towards the light of the window, back into the darkness, towards the light, back into the dark. Several days of its droppings lay scattered over the sovkhoz files.
When we left the sovkhoz, the radiation clock read ‘12’.
Helena arrived at Klepawicze, for the first time, in the summer of 1914. She was sixteen. In the horse-drawn carriage, the leather seats were hot from the sun. The springs creaked beneath them. Every now and then a newspaper rustled opposite her, the newspaper of Pan Stanisław Broński, owner of Klepawicze. Grunts and pipe smoke rose above the paper; one shiny boot swung irritably back and forth beneath it.
Helena was furious. Her mother had announced to her only that morning that she was to spend two weeks with the Brońskis, a family she considered barbaric, medieval. But she knew she had no choice; such things were decided for her.
They drove on through the march of the Broński estate. When the forests thinned and the fields began, Pan Broński put down his paper and addressed Helena.
‘Now, girl, what do you know of country things?’
‘A little,’ she said.
He stabbed a finger out of the window. ‘So, what’s that bird?’ he asked.
Helena saw a large grey-white bird flying low, with a wavelike flight. ‘A hen harrier?’
He nodded. ‘A female. And the crop?’
Nothing was yet higher than a few inches, and all looked like young green grass.
‘Rye.’
‘Not barley?’
‘No. It would not be up yet.’
Pan Broński raised an eyebrow and nodded. ‘So she’s no fool!’
The carriage pulled out of a long avenue of chestnuts and the road touched, like a tangent, the outer bend of the river. It was in spate: Helena could see the quick flow wrinkle as it buffed the near bank. One or two willows leaned over the water like shaggy anglers; beyond them were meadows, and the red-and-white cows knee-deep in sedge. Far downstream, the river made a deep ‘V’ in the forest.
‘Oh, it’s beautiful!’ she cried and put a hand to her mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’
Pan Broński glanced at her; he almost smiled.
The road headed towards a low wall and a pair of griffin-topped gate-posts. Running beneath them, the carriage crunched across the gravel. There was an oval of lawn in front of the house.
The horses came to a halt. The four Broński brothers, dressed alternately in dark coats and army uniforms, had lined up to meet them. Two sisters stood on the terrace behind them. Pan Broński stepped down from the carriage and his sons took it in turns to kiss his hand.
‘Had I known then,’ Helena wrote, years later, ‘that one of those boys, fawning on their father, would end up as my husband, I think I would have gone to find the nearest convent.’
At dinner that evening Helena sat next to Pan Broński. His boyar-like presence dominated the room. The meal was almost over when he turned to Helena for the first time, smiled, and asked her about her interests.
‘Reading,’ she said. ‘I enjoy history.’
‘Reading’s no good for a woman. You want to know the three qualities for a really good wife?’ He held up three fingers and counted them off. ‘Ugly, poor and stupid.’
The table fell silent.
He continued. ‘Ugly, so no other man will look at her; poor, so she will need you for money; and stupid so she will not outwit you!’
Half-way down the room came a hiss of black silks, and Pan Broński’s wife stood and ran in tears from the table.
Broński took up his glass. ‘Dear me,’ he said, ‘whatever is the matter with her?’
The hours at Klepawicze marched past Helena with the precision of a military parade. Everything was strictly ordered. She spent what time she could out of doors: her love for the outdoors just about compensated for the darkness inside. On the third morning she left the house and entered the woods.
The ground was thick with summer growth. One or two mushrooms stood out like shot silk from the ivy below. Stepping through it, Helena listened to the wind flowing through the oak, to the chatter of finches, the caw of a crow and, from deep among the trees, the sound of a cuckoo. She was swept up in a surge of high spirits and, leaping into an exuberant dance, broke into song:
Karolina Niemka,
To nasza panienka!
Karolina rączkę daje
Pojedziemy w cudze kraje.
A voice came through the trees. ‘What a pretty, fluffy little gosling!’ And from behind a beech appeared Wincenty Broński. He was grinning. Without a word Helena ran back to the house.
The Broński brothers stalked the corners of Klepawicze like satyrs. Wincenty was the third son. He spent much of the day in his wicker chair, reading. He had caught pneumonia when studying in Kiev: his father had refused him money for a winter coat. The pneumonia had become TB, and he had recently lost a lung. Two years after her visit, wrote Helena, he had died.
Of the three other brothers, Adam was the eldest. He paid little attention to Helena. He would walk up and down the lime avenues lost in thought, or play the piano for hours on end. Being the eldest he had not been called to the army, but was required instead to oversee his land.
Theodore, on the other hand, lived for his Uhlan regiment. He had learned some spectacular tricks, and passed much of the day practising them, leaping up on a cantering horse, plucking stakes from the ground at a gallop, standing in the saddle while clapping his hands.
On one occasion he managed to catch Helena, scoop her up in front of his saddle-bow, and whisk her off to the smokehouse. There, among the brick-red hams and bacon flitches he subjected her to a smoky kiss. He then locked her in. Only a passing gardener who heard her cries after three hours ensured her release, but her white dress was ruined by the smoke.
Ignatius, the youngest, did not register Helena’s presence at all. He was tacitur
n and moody. Exempt from military duty on account of a paralysed arm, he ran through the corridors, chasing his sisters with a horse-whip. His deformity, wrote Helena, was the result of his father forcing him to ride an unbroken stallion. Pan Broński had also killed Ignatius’s pet rabbit when he was seven. Grown too fond of it, he explained, then forced the boy to eat it.
Such was the currency of affection at Klepawicze.
Helena spent most of the fortnight either on her own or with the two Broński sisters – Ziuta and Wanda. One day they rose early and set off on a long ride. It was a bright morning and the sand martins were flying high above the river.
Ziuta led them through the meadows and up on to the high banks beyond. One or two skiffs arced across the river, loaded with cattle feed and fencing posts, and one with a large red-and-white bull.
At the first bend, the three of them cut inland. They cantered past the sprouting rye fields, kicked up saucers of dried mud from the track, then took a green path which wound in amongst the trees.
All morning they rode deeper into the forest. They saw only a few woodmen and loggers, and after an hour no one at all. It was about midday when through the trees came the ‘thud, thud’ of an axe. They entered a clearing. Three wagons were arranged side-on around a large fire. Sooty-faced children ran up to the horses and beat their legs with sticks.
‘Stop that!’
On the steps of the nearest wagon was an elderly woman in a brightly coloured apron; a large lump of amber swung from her neck as she stepped down.
Ziuta whispered, ‘It is Marucha! She is a famous clairvoyant!’
Marucha peered up at them. ‘What have you got for me?’
The Brońskas each produced a silver rouble. Helena fumbled in her pocket and came out with the gold five-rouble piece her mother had given her for the return journey. Marucha took it and turned it over. Then she smiled and pointed to a bench beside the fire.
Helena was worried her gold coin would prejudice the gypsy’s verdict, but in years to come, when she thought of that gypsy camp, and what was said, she discovered a strange truth in Marucha’s predictions.
‘You have a hand with all the graces and saving signs.’ Marucha traced her finger across Helena’s palm. ‘I see a pine alone on the steppe, strong and unafraid, but a lonely pine, always lonely. There is a small copse of saplings around it, and now there comes a great fire. There are men with axes, but I cannot see their faces. They do not reach the saplings, and the fire remains a little way off.’
Next she took Ziuta’s hand and said it showed an identical life and identical upbringing. ‘But here the pine is twisted and crowded by others. And now, the fire comes and also the men with axes, and the crooked pine is gone.’
Helena gripped Ziuta’s arm and said, in English, ‘Don’t worry. It is just nonsense!’
But when the great fire did come, more than a quarter of a century later, Ziuta, the wife of a Polish general, was captured and died in a damp Soviet cell.
Marucha produced a pack of cards. She handed them to Helena who cut them and handed them back.
‘Think of who is in your heart, girl, and then think of a card.’
Ziuta leaned forward. ‘Who is it? Please, Hela, whisper!’
Helena mentioned Józef, their cousin, an intense, dark-haired man who had danced twice with her and taken her skating once in Wilno. To her, this was unquestionably love.
Marucha scanned the cards. When she stretched out her hand it fell on the Jack of Clubs.
‘You chose him?’
Helena nodded. ‘How did you know?’
‘On ciebie do ołtarza poprowadzi. This man,’ she waved the card, ‘will lead you to the altar.’
On the day of Helena’s wedding in 1920, Wilno was taken by the Red Army. Few were able to reach the church at Platków. It fell to Józef, the Broński’s cousin, to lead Helena up the aisle, and give her away to her husband.
From Klepawicze, Zofia and I drove on into the forest. After several kilometres we reached a cemetery. On an obelisk, in the middle of the cemetery, were chiselled the names of Brońskis – Władysławs and Józefs, Marias and Irenas.
‘Aunts and uncles,’ said Zofia vaguely.
‘But here, Zosia, Stanisław Broński. Isn’t that your grandfather?’
‘Yes…’ Yet she was looking not at the obelisk, but at the steps below it which led down towards the vault.
‘Philip dear, will you go down? I don’t think I could manage with my plastic hips.’
I started down the steps. At the bottom was a broken wooden door, some fallen masonry and beyond it, darkness.
‘What can you see?’ Zofia shouted.
‘Nothing. It’s pitch dark!’
I pushed past the door and waited a moment while my eyes became used to the dark. Underfoot, the ground was covered in rubble; the blocks moved as I stepped over them and into the mouth of the vault.
‘Anything at all?’ cried Zofia.
‘Nothing.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing, Zosia! I can’t see anything!’
‘Oh!’
I knew she was still curious. I tore some pages from my notebook and, twisting them into faggots, went further into the vault. The tomb had been looted; that had been clear when we first saw it. Zofia had shrugged it off. What can you expect? That the old world had been shattered the moment she left, she accepted now as something inevitable.
I lit the paper. The flame sent a yellow light into the darkness. It flickered on the low ceiling and cast deep shadows beyond the broken masonry on the floor. Slatted shelves ran along one wall. But they were broken too, and in the corner their half-burned timbers fanned out from the ashes of an old fire.
‘Philip!’ Zofia’s cries were more distant now. ‘Can you see?’
‘Yes!’
‘What is there?’
‘Wait…’
‘Any bones?’
My feet slid between the blocks. To one side, amidst the masonry, was a pile of copper coffins.
‘Coffins, Zosia!’
Stepping over the debris, I could see the detailing, the swags on the patinaed lids, the panelling on the sides. I could also see the large holes that had been blasted in the copper shells.
Zofia’s voice came echoing down into the vault: ‘Are they open or closed?’
‘Open.’
‘Have a look inside, will you?’
Inside? I took another rolled-up paper, lit it from the first and held it over one of the holes. In order to see in I had to press my chin down almost to the metal, and holding the flame as close as possible, peer sideways at the interior. After several seconds, the shapes inside began to take on form. There were bones: ribs and vertebrae and the tatters of ancient cloth. I looked into the others; the same thing.
Back at the surface, Zofia said, ‘What do you think, Philip? We could take some of the bones with us. Maybe we could bury them again in Cornwall?’
I pictured going back in and extracting them; I pictured Soviet customs; I pictured a plot in some benign creek-side Cornish graveyard, thousands of miles from here, a world away from these trampled borderlands. I suggested we leave them.
Zofia looked up into the trees. She was smiling. ‘You know, I think I can hear them all laughing – all the ghosts of my ancestors looking down at us, and laughing!’
7
THOSE WEEKS in Belorussia passed quickly. They were brightly coloured, packed with a strange intensity. Each encounter, each story seemed to contain in it a lifetime of incident. Often, looking out of the car window as we drove, Zofia would shake her head and say, ‘I can’t believe this. I can hardly believe I’m here.’
Before returning to Minsk we managed to spend one more afternoon at Mantuski. It was a hot day. We walked down to Philosophers’ Corner and sat in the shade of the birch trees. The Niemen slid idly past our feet. We opened the bottle of expedition vodka and drank and talked of various things. Then I dozed off and woke to find that Zofia had
written a sonnet. I asked her to translate it.
She cleared her throat. ‘“I sit by the Niemen and look” – no, “gaze – at the boats… offspring of crows cackle behind me… same woods, same meadows… decades have gone… and now this wordless enchantment – this loss, this sadness, this surprise –”’
She glanced up from the page. ‘No… “zdumienie”. It’s stronger than surprise… “amazement”.’ She read on: ‘“…what became of that water, what became of the time… spell-binding – self-absorbed – full flood tickling my stars and my fish. I hurry on to the sea, as this is my fate.”’
She looked at the river. ‘It’s odd. Here I seem to be able to write only in this canon of loss. And only in Polish.’
Later in the evening, our friends the doctor and his family came over from Iwje for a picnic. We drove through the forest, coming out of the trees further upstream. Kolkhoz cattle were scattered in the meadows on the opposite bank. The doctor’s wife unloaded food from the car; the rest of us went into the forest to collect wood.
The doctor was in high spirits. ‘In your country, you cannot do this. You cannot come and take wood from the forest! Everything belongs to someone, am I not right? But here we have socialism! Socialism! After all, who can such a forest belong to?’
I winked at Zofia. ‘You!’
It was dusk by the time the fire was hot enough to cook the potatoes. The smoke rose in the still air and tangled in the fringes of the forest. The doctor’s wife unwrapped from newspaper a Niemen pike; the doctor bit the plastic stopper off a bottle of vodka and spat it out. The kolkhoz cows were driven up out of the meadows, onto drier pasture. The river pressed on to the west.
A little later, full of pike and potatoes, and full of vodka, Zofia and I left the others and walked along the river. The moon was red and bulbous above the forest. The soft croaking of a woodcock came from the trees; the only other sound was the distant chatter from around the fire.
Zofia stopped, looking up along the banks. ‘Fifty years I have struggled to keep this place alive…’
The Bronski House Page 4