Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘It’s an honor to talk with someone who knows where it is.’

  ‘And now I must help my wife prepare for the concert.’

  ‘May the music echo with the sounds of Christmas,’ Pilic said as he went down to the courtyard, where a surprise awaited him.

  ‘I’ve asked my coachman to return you to your hotel,’ Lubonski said, and he watched with real pleasure as the little man climbed into the exquisite carriage and settled back against the cushions as the two gray Lippizaners clip-clopped their way upon the oaken blocks that softened the sound of their going.

  The gala Christmas concert was held in a theater that seated more than a thousand, but for the first part of the evening the guests looked less at the stage than at the imperial box, where the Emperor Franz Josef sat. The emperor—sixty-five years old, with heavy white sideburns and mustache—was married to one of the most glamorous women in Europe, and one of the most neurotic. Empress Elizabeth, a German of the House of Wittelsbach, had lived with young Franz Josef long enough to bear him three daughters and a son, but had then sought refuge from the intense boredom of the court by traveling incessantly—Greece, Italy, France, England—by building a vast palace for herself on the island of Corfu, by attaching to herself a series of what she called ‘my attendants’—a Greek professor, an English hunting gentleman, an impecunious teacher—and by writing impassioned letters to other men under one of her pseudonyms: Gabrielle, the Countess von Hohenembs, Mrs. Nicholson.

  No other supreme emperor in history had ever been so poorly served by his wife as Franz Josef. Empress Elizabeth’s behavior was a scandal and her lavish expenditure of public funds a threat to the monarchy, but Franz Josef could do nothing to discipline her. Instead, he sought refuge in a bizarre way: a forty-year alliance with one of the most ordinary mistresses an emperor had ever selected, and on this night she was visible to the Viennese public.

  Kamarina Schratt, deserted wife of a minor Hungarian landowner, had made herself into a popular actress in comic roles. Not pretty, not gifted, not blessed with any unusual talent, she had developed a rowdy style of comedy which exactly suited her bubbly personality and her rather plump form. She was, in fact, an Austrian hausfrau converted into a most ordinary actress, and it was because of her commonplace appearance and behavior that the emperor had chosen her as his companion and confidante.

  This was reasonable, since Franz Josef, this all-powerful emperor of a sprawling empire which embraced all of central Europe, was himself a most ordinary man. He read no books, appreciated none of the great plays then available in Vienna, understood no music except German military marches, and failed even to comprehend the vast political movements which agitated his empire. Unable to control his beautiful empress, who saw him only a few days each year when she returned to Vienna from her interminable travels with other men, he found consolation with Frau Schratt, but in what precise way, not even the intimates of the court could say.

  ‘Is the little Schratt his mistress?’ a Bohemian politician asked Count Lubonski during a painful set of negotiations. It was customary in Vienna to use the phrase ‘the little Uspanski’ or ‘the little Kraus’ to refer to any reasonably presentable young woman who was unattached: it depersonalized her, making her fair game for the men of the city.

  ‘The little Schratt? Who knows? I certainly don’t,’ Lubonski said, and when on another occasion Wiktor Bukowski asked the same question, Lubonski reprimanded him: ‘It is not proper for a man your age to inquire into such matters.’

  On this evening Frau Schratt had come into the concert hall with the emperor, but she was not seated in his box, for that honor was reserved for the absent empress, but in a nearby box occupied by two noble families from the countryside west of Vienna. The buxom little actress refrained from looking at the emperor and he kept his eyes on the stage, but the pair caused great excitement among the Christmas gathering.

  The program was in that heroic mold made popular in Beethoven’s day, when an evening’s entertainment might consist of two or three symphonies, a concerto or maybe two, improvisations by the pianist and perhaps a half-dozen songs. The Viennese loved music, and on this night they would enjoy a substantial treat.

  A conductor well known in Berlin would lead the local orchestra in Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, a jolly, holiday affair, after which a Berlin pianist would join the orchestra to present Mozart’s delectable Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467. After an intermission, a group of singers from Munich would offer Brahms’ glorious Liebeslieder Waltzes, with the Berlin pianist and one from Vienna as dual accompanists. Then the same singers with their pianists would venture a radical presentation: Gustav Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer, scored not for contralto as originally composed, but for a quartet. Then would come a second intermission, after which a young Polish pianist from Paris, Krystyna Szprot, would offer a selection of pieces by the Polish composer Frederic Chopin. As the program, embellished with angels and Christmas ornaments, explained: ‘Mlle. Szprot will announce her selections from the stage.’

  When the Count and Countess Lubonski came down the aisle to their seats—as a conservative Pole working among Germans who distrusted him, he deemed it imprudent to take a box in which he would be conspicuous—his quick eye saw several things: the emperor had none of his family with him; the little Schratt was properly off to one side; young Wiktor Bukowski was in place, properly dressed, in the seat next to his; and Herr Pilic from the Banat of Temesvar had purchased himself a seat with other visitors from protesting provinces.

  He also saw that the hall was resplendent in the Viennese style: glittering uniforms like his own, which often made the Austrian officers more beautiful than their women; at the last three European competitions Austrian uniforms had won first prizes for color, for design and for overall grandeur, but the military men wearing them had won medals for nothing. In its last four wars the Austrian army had been humiliated.

  When the orchestra was seated, the Berlin conductor walked stiffly onstage, bowed to the emperor, then to the other boxes, and finally to the orchestra itself, and with a quick flash of his baton, sent the players into Beethoven’s rollicking little master-work, composed not far from where the musicians sat. The orchestra did not play the music, they danced through it, appreciating the fact that no other symphony in the repertoire would have fitted so perfectly the mood of this Christmas season.

  But just when Lubonski was most attentive to the masterful way in which Beethoven was bringing his little gallop to a pleasing conclusion, he felt Bukowski nudging him; the young man was pointing to the imperial box, where the emperor had fallen asleep.

  ‘Keep your eyes on the stage!’ the count said in sharp rebuke, and by the time the German conductor reached the final coda Franz Josef was awake.

  Bukowski, a difficult young man to repress, said as six husky stage personnel pushed a large piano into position: ‘If that thing ever started slipping …’

  ‘It’s their job to see it doesn’t,’ Lubonski said. ‘Do you know the Mozart they’re playing?’

  ‘No. But I’ve heard both the Brahms songs and the Mahler. I’m waiting for them.’

  ‘You’ll soon hear some splendid music, Wiktor. Listen carefully.’

  Bukowski was not much impressed with the first movement of the concerto and judged that the German pianist did not strike the piano keys hard enough; in fact, his mind wandered and he began to scout the various boxes to see which of Vienna’s beautiful young ladies were in attendance, and at one point, when the piano and orchestra were marching through some undistinguished routines, he again nudged Lubonski and whispered: ‘That box next to the little Schratt? Who has it tonight?’

  Lubonski was irritated by the interruption, but he was also interested in who might be attending in official capacity, and he followed Bukowski’s discreet pointing. ‘That’s the American ambassador. A boor, but extremely rich. From Chicago, I believe.’

  ‘And is that his daughter?’

  ‘I sup
pose so,’ Lubonski said without looking. He loved this Mozart concerto and had picked it out on his piano to the extent that he could follow the music, but Bukowski, interested as he should have been in attractive young women, stared at the American box and tried to deduce what kind of person the ambassador’s daughter might be: She could be his niece. Or just a visitor. Not what you’d call pretty. But striking. Yes, striking, and I’ll wager that gown came from Paris, not Chicago.

  He was engaged in such assessments when the first movement of the concerto ended with an agitated succession of sounds and a coda of some brilliance. ‘Wasn’t that inspiring?’ Lubonski asked, and the young man said: ‘One of the best, Your Excellency.’

  And then, as he still gazed at the American box, the orchestra began the second movement with a soft but very marked waltz beat 1-2-3, 1-2-3 in the winds, horns and cellos, atop which came the violins in a theme so delicate and lambent that he turned his full attention to the stage, where that obsessive 1-2-3 continued, with the violins producing an even more enchanting melody. Then, when he was not noticing the piano, that instrument broke in gently with its own statement of ravishing melody.

  ‘Oh!’ he whispered, but Lubonski did not hear. He was captivated by the elegance exhibited onstage: waltz beat, violin melody, piano statement, all fused into one of the miracles of music, a perfect harmony of composition and performance. This second movement of Concerto No. 21 was one of the most ingratiating ever composed, and Vienna accepted it warmly on this festive night. But Bukowski noticed that the emperor was again asleep. However, when he sought to point this out to Lubonski, the box was empty. Franz Josef had slipped away from this boring fiddling, as he called it, and after a decent interval Frau Schratt followed.

  They would return to the palace, where in the emperor’s private quarters she would make him a cup of hot chocolate and talk to him as he munched biscuits and warmed himself, after which he would be in bed by nine, for in the morning he must be up at four, reading carefully every report placed before him, making brief notes on the margins, altering nothing, commanding nothing, just working his way through another day at the head of his vast empire.

  During the intermission Count Lubonski wanted to talk about the scintillating Mozart and the magical manner in which the three parts of the second movement were held in balance, but Bukowski was eager to see if he could manage in some way or other an introduction to the American ambassador and his entourage. He failed, but when the conceit resumed he found a gratification he could not explain from the fact that the ambassador’s daughter or niece was still in attendance.

  The Liebeslieder Waltzes of Johannes Brahms had been written in Vienna for Vienna: to the lively accompaniment of two pianos a mixed quartet sang of the joys and despairs of love. Both Bukowski and his count knew these songs, so very popular in the city, and each had certain selections he preferred; Lubonski regarded the lovely apostrophe to the Danube, ‘Am Donaustrande,’ a perfect evocation of the city in which he spent most of his time these days, and he was especially fond of the song to the little bird, ‘Ein kleiner hübscher Vogel,’ for it reminded him of the pleasures he had known in the Vienna Woods in which the bird lived.

  Bukowski, for his part, liked the cry of the tenor and baritone as they sang of their love for women in general, ‘O die Frauen, O die Frauen.’ This was a song which he himself might have sung, for he was fearfully confused about women; he cherished them, dreamed of them, wondered which one he would marry and whether she would agree to live half the year in Vienna, the rest in his rather gloomy half-mansion on the Vistula. During the twelve months of 1894 he thought he had been desperately in love six times, with six totally different young women, two Austrians, two Poles, one Hungarian and the niece of an English lord to whom he had never spoken, and this year had been no better.

  Now he closed his eyes, allowing the rich sounds to flow over him with their heavy burden of longing, their promise of ultimate fulfillment, and the blending of the four voices, the extreme manliness of the baritone, the feminine apotheosis of the soprano, seemed to him the most powerful statement of sexuality he had ever heard. The vanished emperor was forgotten, the bright uniforms, the glitter of the boxes, the shimmering quality of the concert hall, all were gone and he was in some timeless setting. ‘O die Frauen!’ he whispered.

  ‘Hush!’ Lubonski snapped, poking him sharply with an elbow. The count liked Bukowski, for the young Pole showed promise of becoming an excellent official, qualified to hold some important position in the Austrian government. A man of significance, especially a minority official like Lubonski, had to be careful whom he sponsored, because many young Poles had made asses of themselves in the capital. They’d proved themselves provincial yokels, bringing scorn upon all Poles, and until a young fellow had been tested, there was no way of predicting how he would meet the challenge of a great city like Vienna. A man could be of some significance in Krakow, yet prove himself a fool when posed against sophisticated Germans and Frenchmen.

  Bukowski looked promising. He spoke German, French and some English, knew how to dress, flattered women easily and made small conversation with their husbands. But the real Bukowski had yet to show himself, and Lubonski would prudently mark time before pressing the imperial government to promote him.

  The young fellow was unaware of the count’s speculations, for the two women singers were uniting in a song which tore at his heart:

  ‘A bird will fly afar

  Seeking the proper glade.

  So a woman must find a man

  Before her life can flourish.’

  He was convinced that this was true, and he wondered when the seeking woman would find him, so that her life could blossom. Where was she? How did one locate the woman?

  When applause for the singers ended, Lubonski told Bukowski and the countess: ‘This next is rather daring, you know. Mahler, whom you met at the opera, wrote these wayfaring songs for solo voice. Now four are singing them, but you know …’ He paused to nod to Herr Pilic, who had moved so as to attract Lubonski’s attention. ‘You know that Mahler later borrowed the songs to use as the base for his first symphony.’

  ‘And very good it was,’ Bukowski offered.

  ‘If you like Jewish music. The songs won’t be light and dancing like Brahms, I can tell you that.’

  After only a brief pause the singers rearranged themselves and the two pianists began a slow and mournful theme, to which the voices soon added a lament, but now the spirit changed, and a broad swelling movement developed, in which Bukowski could visualize himself striding over bleak, empty spaces … alone. In the rich sadness of late youth he indulged his passion for romanticism, spurred on by the changing, driving imagery of the Mahler songs. Count Lubonski had been right; this music had little to do with Brahms, or Beethoven either, yet it was passionately Viennese, the almost majestic inheritor of the great tradition.

  ‘It’s very Jewish,’ Lubonski whispered to his wife, ‘but I must say I like it.’

  Throughout the cycle the two pianos and the four voices created an increasing sensation of persons lost in vast expanses, wandering forever toward some goal undefined and never to be realized. It was music for the year 1895, on a snowy night, in central Europe.

  There is the key! Bukowski thought. I’m on the plains of Poland, Russian Poland that I saw once from the train. It’s my land, my Poland, and I’ve never really seen it or been part of it.

  Now his music-driven footsteps became longer, for he was striding toward something, toward a homeland which he had never appreciated when living in Bukowo as a child. As the music swirled about him, its marvelous minor harmonies inflamed his imagination, and he became for a moment the romantic Pole lost in a vast horizon.

  ‘Do you like what they’ve done?’ Lubonski asked. ‘The four voices, I mean?’ When he looked at his young friend he realized that Bukowski was not in the concert hall but adrift in some wandering fantasy land, where a young man should sometimes be.

  It was
in this dreamlike state that Bukowski wandered through the salon of the theater during the second intermission, and at some distance from the bar, where servants in red uniform were pouring champagne, he encountered the American ambassador and the two women who could be presumed to be his wife and daughter. Lacking an introduction, Wiktor could not speak to them, but to his delight the young woman said to him in French: ‘It’s very daring, the four voices I mean,’ and he replied in English: ‘Very powerful statement, is it not, yes?’

  ‘You speak English!’ the young woman said, reaching for the older woman’s arm. ‘Mother, this young man speaks English.’

  ‘The newspapers, I mean from London, one reads them, you know.’

  ‘And what do you do?’ the American woman asked forthrightly.

  ‘Wiktor Bukowski, to your service, Ministry of Agriculture,’ he said. ‘And my sponsor, Count Lubonski of Minorities, told me that you were the American ambassador’s family, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ the older woman said. ‘Where did Oscar go?’ Looking around for her husband, she said, ‘Well, he’s missing. This is my daughter, Marjorie.’

  ‘Miss …’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m Mrs. Trilling. This is Marjorie Trilling.’

  ‘I saw you enjoying the Mahler,’ the girl said, and Bukowski blushed like a schoolboy who had been complimented, deeming it incredible that this young woman from a foreign land should have noticed him particularly.

  ‘You are beware that Mahler used these songs in his symphony?’

  ‘Aware,’ the girl corrected with no embarrassment, and she did it so forthrightly that Wiktor was not affronted.

  ‘I speak French a little better,’ he said, and she replied in French: ‘I knew about the Mahler. We played his symphony in our orchestra.’

  ‘You played?’ he asked.

  ‘Flute,’ she said, but before he could ask what orchestra, she was summoned by her father, who led his women back to the third part of the concert.