Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Wearing the amber necklace, the girl left the dressing room and stepped easily to the head of the stairs, and when she looked down she saw with relief that Roman Ossolinski did not have two heads and three ears, and he, looking up, gasped. But it was her mother, Zofia, who was most affected. My God, she said to herself, those beads never looked that good on me! And the chancellor thought: That girl would grace any castle in Poland—and before Barbara had reached the foot of the stairs he had dispatched one of his servants to fetch the diagrams he had brought with him across the river.

  As the two powerful magnates stepped forward to greet Barbara, they formed an image of Poland, for their exact likenesses could not have been found in any other country. They were both tall and robust, with heavy bodies enclosed in fine cloth from Turkey or France or Russia, marked especially by long, sweeping coats encrusted with the richest embroidery. They wore boots into the tops of which were tucked white linen trousers, swords which they handled with much ritual and gracefulness, and the invariable mark of their caste: a very long, extremely wide sash which they doubled and wore about their capacious bellies. This sash, a mark of rank, was excessively ornamented, Cyprjan’s having been woven in three bold colors, red, green, gold, and studded with silver bolts which made it and him glisten.

  But the memorable aspect of the two men came from the extraordinary appearance of their hair: Ossolinski had a copious beard which engulfed his broad face; Cyprjan, no beard but enormous, flowing mustaches which gave him both a noble and a sinister look. Each man had directed his barber to dress his hair in the fashion then popular with the Polish magnates: from cheekbone to almost the top of the head, everything was clean-shaven—temples, sides of the head, most of the crown—except that straight through the middle, from forehead over the top and down to the nape in back, a stretch of thick hair about an inch and a half wide was left.

  Once when Barbara was a little girl she saw in a picture book from Germany a drawing of an American Indian whose hair had been cut this way—completely bald except for that running ridge—and she had cried: ‘Look! They have Papa in the book!’ and when her elders came to see, they also exclaimed at the similarity. This strange hair style, coupled with the huge beard of Ossolinski or the wild mustaches of Cyprjan, imparted a sense of exciting barbarism to any assembly of magnates. They were not Frenchmen, nor Spaniards, nor Austrians. They were Poles and proud of it.

  At dinner three pleasant things happened. Ossolinski recognized Lukasz’s name when introductions were made, and cried with some excitement: ‘Can I see your otter and your bear?’ and Cyprjan was pleased when Lukasz said with a gracefulness not expected: ‘Sire, they told me when I left that they await your coming!’ And the chancellor cried: ‘Tomorrow at nine! Have them groomed!’

  At the seating, Ossolinski halted proceedings to stand and admire the service which Zofia had acquired some years earlier from Paris. It stood on a pedestal in the center of the table, about twice the size of a large melon, and it was constructed of white silver and a very light gold, an intricate sculpture representing the arrival of a Chinese emperor at a pavilion in the middle of a lake. Springs tightly wound in advance moved swans over the golden water and caused drooping willows to drift in the wind, and all was of such an appropriate delicacy that diners had to be captivated by it.

  ‘I have never seen a better service,’ Ossolinski averred, and then turned to his son and asked: ‘Have you, Roman?’ but the young man was paying attention only to Barbara, whose cheeks now showed a color livelier than that of the amber beads.

  Zofia interrupted to announce: ‘You must choose, roast of pork done in the French style, or roll of pork done Polish style with roasted kasha.’

  ‘I will take some of each,’ Ossolinski said, and at the conclusion of the copious meal, which ended with Hungarian wine and German-style cookies, the chancellor said: ‘Now may we leave the wonderful service in the center of the table and clear away the rest, because I want to ask Panna Barbara some questions.’ The girl blushed, not because she was afraid of questioning, for after the good Hungarian wine she was afraid of nothing, but because this was the first time in her life she had been addressed as Panna and it marked a growing up.

  When the table was cleared, the chancellor looked directly at Barbara and asked: ‘Are you interested in building things? In sending life forward?’

  ‘I expect to have children,’ she said with no embarrassment.

  ‘All women have children,’ he replied with no embarrassment. ‘But I mean additional construction? The heavy work of life?’ And with that he unfurled two rolls of paper on which architects had done much planning, and to his startled audience he disclosed the wild plans which preoccupied him:

  ‘I am going to build nothing less than the grandest castle in Europe. See! It will have one glorious tower representing the unity of God. It will have these four huge towers, each one—you will forgive me for saying, Cyprjan—larger than your castle here. They represent the four seasons of the year.

  ‘We have inside seven major edifices—living area, guests, warehouses—representing the days of the week. We have twelve corridors for the months of the year and fifty-two separate rooms for the weeks. If you cared to count, you’d find three hundred and sixty-five windows plus this little one here for Leap Year.

  ‘See the mighty bulwarks we plan around the entire, the moat, and the two drawbridges. These steps going down, down, down lead to the subterranean well, which assures us of water during the sieges we can expect, and the interior is large enough to hold three normal villages, with space for the occupants of ten villages plus a good-sized town.

  ‘That is what I propose to build, starting next month, Panna Barbara, and would you like to engage yourself in such a task?’

  Pointing at the plans, she said in a low voice, as if apologizing for what she considered her brazenness: ‘But, Sire, you have no church or chapel inside the walls?’ He burst into laughter, shouting: ‘Cyprjan, by God, your filly’s an architect!’ And he pointed to a large structure which he had overlooked in his catalogue: ‘A church bigger than any in this region until you reach Krakow.’

  He then disclosed the second drawing, snowing how the great castle would fit into its countryside, and this had been done as if the castle already existed, so that she could see how the four towers and one spire and the moat and the trees fitted together, and it was a staggering concept, for the artist had sketched beside the walls four men and two cows, and they seemed like specks against that massive structure.

  ‘Can you build it?’ Cyprjan asked, and Ossolinski almost shouted: ‘It’s my life’s work,’ and Barbara asked: ‘What’s it to be called?’ and Ossolinski replied: ‘Krzyztopor, the Battle Axe of the Cross.’

  That sounds ominous,’ Barbara said, and he boasted: ‘We build it to confuse the pagans. It stands there as Christ’s axe against all infidels, outside and in.’ In the silence that followed, for in these years no man knew when the infidels would strike again, the chancellor looked at Barbara and asked quietly: ‘Would you be interested in helping me to build this great castle?’ and she replied: ‘I would.’

  When Castle Gorka went to sleep that night it was understood that Barbara Mniszech had agreed to marry Roman Ossolinski, even though neither had spoken a serious word to the other. Early next morning everyone was awakened by the chancellor’s merry shout: ‘We go to see the tame otter!’ and immediately after breakfast they all went over to Bukowo, where Zofia called out as they neared the little castle: ‘Lukasz, dress your bear, for we are here.’

  When the gate opened, the Ossolinskis were amazed by the bear that trundled over to greet them, but they were astonished to find the otter and the fox playing with the big dogs, biting at their heels, then scampering away when the dogs pretended to snap at them.

  They stayed with the animals so long that Lukasz invited them all to stay for lunch. His wife, Danusia, had begun to make meat pierogi from the forequarters of the hogs that Cyprjan had given he
r, and everyone crowded into the kitchen to watch the final preparation of this admirable dish.

  ‘We find ourselves with meat only rarely,’ Danusia confessed, ‘so when we get some I chop it fine.’ She showed them how with great deftness she sliced the cooked pork, mixing it with spices and shreds of cabbage.

  She liked, she explained, to make four different kinds of pierogi at once, ‘so as to conserve what meat we have,’ and she displayed the three other fillings: stewed cabbage, roasted kasha with plenty of onion, and the favorite of everyone, extremely acid sauerkraut with mushrooms.

  When the four fillings were lined up, she rolled out her dough while Zofia helped, for the Mniszech woman loved such impromptu experiments in the kitchen; it was she who put the salted water on to boil and looked for the two cutters that were so important in the making of this delicacy. She could not find them, and the clutter she made irritated Danusia, who shouted: ‘Everybody out of here! I’m busy!’ But no one left, for Chancellor Ossolinski said: ‘I want my son to see how this is done.’

  With the dough flat upon the board and not too thick, Danusia produced from a hidden corner what might be called the jewels of her kitchen, the two pierogi cutters. One was a small circle about four fingers in diameter, and with this she cut out rounds of thin dough, one after another, and as soon as they stood clear upon the board, Zofia and Barbara spooned little mounds of filling in the middle of each round, and then Danusia applied her second instrument, a semicircle of iron whose edge had been curiously cut. It had a heavy wooden handle, and as soon as one of the rounds of dough was properly filled, she deftly folded it in half, pressing the half-moon edges together and crimping them with the tool, so that they formed beautiful puffed-up semicircles of delicious food.

  Now the miracle happened. The pierogi at this point were a brownish color of no great appeal, but once they were thrown into the boiling water, the dough was transformed into a lovely translucent covering that revealed the contents inside. ‘Better yet!’ Lukasz cried as he heated fat in a skillet. ‘When some of them are fried, they’re doubly delicious.’

  So Lukasz of Bukowo, a petty knight with four horses of his own and a ruined castle, fried pierogi for the chancellor of the nation, who could not decide whether he liked the boiled ones better than the fried, or the pork ones better than the cabbage. But finally all agreed that fried or boiled, the pierogi that contained the bitter sauerkraut and the delicate mushrooms were the best.

  At the height of the little feast Ossolinski announced: ‘Panna Barbara has consented to marry my son Roman, and together we shall build the greatest castle in Poland, and everyone will be invited to its christening.’

  When Jan of the Beech Trees brought the package of haslet home to his wife, Anulka, and she turned back the wrapping and saw that she was to have real meat, and in such unbelievable quantity, she started to cry, for it had been more than a year since she and her husband had eaten anything but cabbage and kasha and beets, with now and then a slab of fat containing no meat whatever, and she could scarcely credit the good luck that had befallen her family.

  There it was, in some ways the best part of the hog: the liver, the kidneys, the feet, the heart, the tongue, the brains, the meat still on the head and neck, the sweetbreads—the whole inside and history of the hog, meat so precious that it must be treated with reverence. For a moment she had a fright: ‘They didn’t give us the intestines!’ But at the bottom of the package Jan found the long strings of guts, and now she was ready.

  First she carefully examined the treasure for whatever choice pieces of meat could be cut, and set them aside, catching every precious drop of blood. She then singed the skin, and carefully cut away the fat that remained close to it. Next she went to the river, where she washed the intestines and singed portions until they gleamed.

  She now had three pots boiling, each at its appropriate speed, and had she owned a fourth, she would have kept it busy boiling the kasha. From the fields she gathered the herbs she would need, and after a long day’s work she was ready to begin the serious business of making her kielbasa. She carefully seasoned whatever choice meat she had with generous amounts of garlic, pepper, herbs and spices. Then, having tied one end of an intestine with a thread, she took a wooden spoon and carefully fed her mixture into the free opening, pressing it along with her fingers but taking great care never to compress the mixture too tightly lest it burst the skin at later cooking. The whole was then carefully tied into links, which Jan hung in the chimney for smoking. After the kielbasa was properly cured, Anulka would apportion it sparingly, a little piece here, another when the children were good. The fatback was salted and stored in a wooden container. It would be used in the preparation of almost any meal, or eaten with bread to provide nourishment during the long winter months. The blood was mixed with the kasha, spices and onions, spooned carefully into the larger intestines, baked at mealtime, and was called kiszka. The knuckles were cooked with spices and other remaining bones, until even the most minute shred of meat had been loosened, and this became a tangy gelatinous delicacy. Nothing was wasted.

  In this prudent way every portion of the Castle Gorka hogs was utilized: the good cuts for the banquet, the tougher ones in Pani Danusia’s pierogi, the haslet in Anulka’s kielbasa. This good husbandry was symbolic of the rational way in which Poland had organized itself in the year 1646, when magnates, gentry and peasants were about as happy as they had ever been.

  The wedding was a joyous affair. It started one Wednesday when peasants from four of Cyprjan’s villages arrived, bringing what carts they had, the horses decked in flowers, and each person dressed in the one good garment she or he owned. The peasants wore shoes, which they had carried to the festivities, heavy dark trousers and jackets for the men, brightly colored dresses and headgear for the women. Girls of marriageable age, to which the wedding was a special treat because here they could review the young men of the district, wore particularly attractive skirts, heavily embroidered bodices and scarfs of the brightest color; they moved in groups, laughing and teasing, and seemed at times like little flocks of spring birds chirping with delight.

  One village provided a rustic band: an old man with bagpipes, a young man with a fiddle, and a man of middle age with a wooden flute that he himself had carved. They played country tunes with which everyone was familiar: krakowiaks (the dance of Krakow) and chodzonys (a strolling dance) and gonionys (a chasing dance). The musicians, who were occasionally joined by two or three men who performed wonders with the jew’s-harp, played incessantly, stopping only when someone slipped them a mug of beer, and this encouraged dancing day and night.

  The visiting villagers were housed in various barns on the estate; the largest one was reserved for the dancing, the eating and the general assembling. Here shy young men studied the groups of girls, joshing and pushing each other until one gained the courage to approach them, to be invariably rebuffed with loud squeals and left standing foolishly in the middle of the barn. But as the afternoon waned, each boy somehow subtracted from the groups of girls someone with whom he wished to dance or talk, and then the remaining young women would fall silent for a moment, watching to see how the young man behaved himself.

  The peasants were fed from a central kitchen area at which older women prepared feasts from such foods as they had brought with them—cabbages, beets, kasha, onions, a few eggs—but during the first two days there was no meat. For about six hours each day they were supposed to work at tasks set them by the castle, and this they did with generosity and even pleasure, for it was known that beginning with the third day, Friday, the magnate would provide them with meat, or at least fish and chicken, and this was a boon worth working for.

  The villagers from Bukowo, who now pertained to Lukasz of the small castle, were brought en masse to Cyprjan’s to help with decorating the large castle, and Lukasz came with them to supervise their efforts. As one subservient to Cyprjan, it was prudent for him to perform well, and considering the exalted position of
some of the guests, he realized that someone dependable like himself was a necessity.

  On Thursday the other gentry who served Cyprjan’s extensive holdings began to arrive, mothers, fathers, children, principle servants, and since many of them came from great distances, even from the Ukrainian estates, they had to be housed in the castle itself, except that two of the gentry who were actually Ukrainian and not Polish were sent to the little castle at Bukowo.

  Now the pace of festivity increased, and its quality too, because Cyprjan had imported from Krakow two orchestras of skilled musicians who played violins, basses, real flutes, horns and a small drum. One group was Jewish, dressed in their traditional Galician garb: black shoes and white stockings, black pants which came just below the knee, long black coat which came just above the knee, flat hat with wide brim which they wore indoors and out, and beards fancifully cut so that long curls descended about the ears.

  ‘No wedding would be official,’ Cyprjan said, ‘without the Catholic priest and the Jewish orchestra,’ and since the latter would play about eighteen hours a day for the next six days, except on their Sabbath, he had provided a small special cooking area for them in which they could prepare their own dishes in their own traditional ways. Although the Poles did not look kindly on then-Jews, who had known Jesus and rejected Him, they did tolerate them and, indeed, expressed pleasure whenever it was announced that a Jewish orchestra would be appearing.

  The Jews played good music, sophisticated dances from Hungary and Germany, Ukrainian folk songs of high quality, and at special moments, which they announced to the audience in accented Polish, ‘music which has come to us from Italy, where it is highly regarded.’ But mostly they played the excellent Polish music that was being composed throughout Poland and performed in the inns and homes of Warsaw or Krakow. Exciting moments came when they played some fine Jewish dance from Moldavia or Hungary, or from Poland itself, because then the listeners had a sense of the forbidden, or the mysterious, which intensified their pleasure. The musicians did not mingle with the guests, or eat of their food, or drink their beer. They were apart and were content to be so, but they were also a treasured component of the festivities, and they knew it.