Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  She had played this strange passage defiantly, hammering out the ugly chords with great passion, then leaping to her feet as if to challenge the world to say anything against Chopin or his music.

  Herr Dr. Henzzler was ready: ‘It illustrates what I’ve always said. Your Chopin is admirably fitted for rather delicate drawing-room fantasies. But in a big hall like tonight, or with the traditional sonata form … nothing.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ came a voice in stern German. It was Wiktor Bukowski, not known as a music critic. ‘Are you saying that Frederic Chopin cannot compose?’

  ‘Not at all!’ Henzzler said with heavy emphasis. ‘A little waltz, yes. What you call a mazurka, yes. But I think you will agree He turned and reached for Krystyna Szprot’s hand, drawing her back to the piano. ‘Please, Fräulein, play the last movement of your little sonata again.’

  Abashed by this sudden command, she sat down and ripped off almost angrily the series which lasted for eighty seconds, of mixed chords and broken rhythms, after which Henzzler threw up his hands and asked: ‘Now, who can make anything of that?’

  ‘I can,’ she cried in French. ‘Some great man has lived a fine life, as in the first two movements. He’s buried with the admiration of the world, as in the third. And in the fourth, the mourners hurry away from the grave, talking and drinking and belching and laughing lest their hearts break.’

  There was silence in the huge room, broken when Count Lubonski started to say: ‘Ladies—’ He was interrupted by Herr Dr. Henzzler, whose professional dignity had been offended by this snippet of a Polish refugee from Paris. Striding to the piano, he commanded Herr Limbrecht to take the stool and play themes as he directed: ‘Now listen to what a proper sonata is. The opening, please,’ and Limbrecht dutifully played the first theme of the Appassionata, after which Henzzler stated: ‘Everything must march in order. First theme, development. Second theme, development. Contrast, coda and a nice conclusion.’ He nodded approvingly as Limbrecht banged out the illustrations.

  ‘The second movement? Slow, dignified, not too much development, or it grows tedious. Show them, Limbrecht,’ and the visiting pianist complied. ‘Now the third movement, and there can be only three, the law of the sonata says that. We want a strong theme but not elaboration, or we overshadow the first movement, which is the important one.’

  He explained how in the classical sonata all things were kept in balance, all things in order, arriving on time as they had always done, with nothing helter-skelter. That was the way Beethoven and Mozart had done it, as Herr Limbrecht so ably demonstrated.

  ‘But your Chopin,’ he said, almost with contempt. ‘What does he do?’ He beckoned to Krystyna Szprot, drew her to the piano again, and directed her to give him the broken, scattered themes of the first movement: ‘Who can grasp anything of such chaos?’ He held an equally low opinion of the second movement, but as she played the somber theme of the funeral march he said sternly: ‘It’s the middle movement that should be slow. Not the third. Never the third. And listen, the theme is too important for a last movement. And listen to the second theme. Much too powerful.’

  He then directed his pianist to play a few bars of the final movement, after which he gave his pronouncement: ‘Nobody in this world could make anything of that jumble. Our pretty pianist attempted an explanation, but that was literature, not music. No,’ he said, dismissing her, ‘I think we must agree that Chopin knew nothing about the sonata.’

  From the rear of the big room came a loud voice, quivering with rage: ‘And I think we can agree that you, Herr Dr. Henzzler, are a pig’s ass.’

  It was Wiktor Bukowski, unable to bear the humiliation visited upon his countrywoman and her Polish composer. Breaking through the crowd, he ran from one woman to another, crying: ‘Have you a glove?’ and when he was offered none, he snatched a large napkin from one of the tables on which the supper would be served, and with this waving in his right hand, he rushed at Herr Dr. Henzzler and slapped him across the face with it: ‘Beckmesser, I challenge you to a duel!’

  Henzzler brushed the napkin away and started to ask: ‘What have I—’ but the enraged Bukowski shouted: ‘You’ve insulted this lady. You’ve insulted the memory of a great musician. And you’ve insulted Poland. Name your seconds.’

  Henzzler, who was accustomed to conducting his vendettas in the columns of his newspaper, had not the slightest intention of accepting or even acknowledging this young fellow’s preposterous challenge. ‘Come,’ he said to his German musicians, ‘we’re not wanted here,’ and he stalked toward the door, followed by the two pianists and the man who had conducted the orchestra. But the four singers, having seen the food that was about to be served, did not wish to leave without something solid to eat; they could not dine heavily before a concert lest their diaphragms constrict, and now they were extremely hungry.

  ‘Come!’ Henzzler commanded, and the two men obeyed, lest he castigate them in the Berlin press, and they prevailed upon the contralto to follow, but the soprano, the one who had wept after telling Bukowski that all men were donkeys, refused to leave before being fed, and when Bukowski saw her defiance he broke away from the men who were restraining him and ran to her, clasping her hands and bringing them to his lips. ‘Madame, you are heroic.’

  Henzzler had seen enough disgraceful behavior this night, so he grasped the soprano’s arm and pulled her out into the hall, where he turned to the crowded room and delivered his final judgment: ‘You Poles have Chopin, a manufacturer of confections. We Germans have real musicians, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert …’ He hesitated, then added with great contempt: ‘Not to mention Johann Sebastian Bach.’ And he was gone.

  Count Lubonski, standing apart and watching the offended Germans leave, was worried. A fracas like this must be reported to the emperor, who was doing his futile best to placate the hot-headed young Kaiser Wilhelm, who had ascended to the German throne before his character had formed, and there could be repercussions, except that one lucky aspect of the affair might clothe it in humor rather than tragedy. Very clearly, at the climax of the fray, young Bukowski had chosen a most fortunate name: Beckmesser. By equating the insufferable Herr Dr. Henzzler with the comic villain of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nümberg, Bukowski had given the brawl a broadly humorous coloration, and Lubonski was relieved to see that his guests were already laughing at the young Pole and repeating: ‘Beckmesser, I challenge you!’ By tomorrow afternoon all Vienna, the city being the gossip center it was, would be chuckling over the discomfiture of the pompous Herr Dr. Henzzler, and perhaps even the emperor himself would laugh when Frau Schratt explained Beckmesser during their early-morning breakfast at which she cooked sausages for him.

  Now waiters appeared with huge trays of food—French, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Polish—with wines from the first three countries. In his dashing Hungarian uniform the count moved from table to table, greeting his guests and apologizing for the disturbance, about which they continued to laugh.

  When the feast ended he rose at his table and said: ‘No one could have performed better this night than our guest from Paris, Krystyna Szprot. But I wonder if she would grace us with a repeat of that wonderful scherzo, so that we might sing with her and announce Christmas properly?’

  The guests applauded, and Bukowski, aflame with emotion, leaped to his feet and escorted the beautiful artist to the big piano, where she said in French: ‘ It is an honor to bring the country fields of Poland into the heart of this magnificent city.’ And when she played the magic chords presaging the coming of the lullaby, everyone rose and all the Poles sang:

  ‘Lulaj-że, Jezuniu, moja perełko,

  Lulaj-że, Jezuniu, me pieścidełko …’

  (Rockabye, little Jesus, my little pearl,

  Rockabye, little Jesus, my sweet little one …)

  But when the scherzo ended, with no applause and many tears, Bukowski, who had remained close to the piano, said almost pleadingly: ‘Mademoiselle Szprot, I was deeply moved by your pla
ying of the last étude.’ And she looked up with melting eyes and said: ‘If you liked that, you’re a true musician.’

  Following Krystyna Szprot’s little additional concert, a professional Viennese pianist was brought forward to play for those guests who wished to dance, and a series of local waltzes filled the salon while men in gala uniform whirled about with women in silvery dress. It was quite beautiful, but toward two in the morning Lubonski announced that still another pianist, a Pole this time, would play mazurkas for dancing and that he and the countess and their Polish friends would remind the other guests how to perform this delightful dance, popular in much of Europe.

  So the room was cleared even more than for the waltzes, and the mazurka began: bold country music from the piano; a 1-2-3 beat with a marked rubato on the second note; men on one side, women on the other; graceful patterns; swift exchange of partners; lively steps; much masculine posturing; much feminine coquetry.

  Because she no longer had to play for the guests, Krystyna was free to dance, and on several occasions Wiktor Bukowski maneuvered to be her partner, so that she had to know that he was captivated by her, and she in turn liked him for his Polish manliness and the bold manner in which he had sprung to her defense. It was a heady mazurka they danced that night, the gold-and-silver brocades of the room quivering with the excitement.

  At one point in the dancing, when Countess Lubonska was instructing a visitor from Moravia in how he must manage his feet to do the mazurka properly, the lines became entangled and Bukowski found to his embarrassment that he was at the center of a trio of beautiful women, unable to decide who his proper partner should be: there was the countess, a member of the Zamoyski family powerful in Polish history; there was a charming unmarried Viennese girl, daughter of a banker; and there was Panna Krystyna Szprot, the exile from Paris; and they each moved toward him as their partner.

  ‘I have ruined the dance!’ he moaned, not knowing which way to turn.

  ‘The mazurka can do that sometimes,’ the countess said, laughing. And as the snow fell on the espaliered pyracantha and dawn approached over the Danube, the Polish exiles danced.

  In the western part of Vienna, well beyond the Ringstrasse and not far from where the new railway station was to be built, there was a flat, spacious open area known by the curious name of Die Schmelz. For decades it had been used as a parade ground for military maneuvers and equestrian displays, and during recent years had been the site of festive gatherings between Christmas and New Year’s. In 1895, when a springlike sun had dispersed the snow clouds, the army decided upon a gala to honor some event or other in the life of their perdurable emperor. The empress, of course, would not be present; she was in Greece, trying to sell the enormous palace she had built on Corfu only a few years before at a cost of millions.

  Those who frequented the cafés looked forward eagerly to the event because it was rumored that the young Polish nobleman who had challenged the insufferable Herr Dr. Henzzler over his love for a lady pianist would be riding, and it was said that since he was an excellent horseman, the affair might be exciting.

  Wiktor Bukowski had been invited to ride in the formal exhibition and to participate as well in the informal races, and there was a good chance that he would do well. When he reported to the ministry in Vienna, he had brought down from his establishment at Bukowo three of his best horses, Arabians strengthened by Polish stock, and they were regarded as the equal of any of the Austrian steeds.

  Bukowski lived about as far north of St. Stephen’s Cathedral as Count Lubonski lived south, but in a much more modest fashion. Concordiaplatz was a stolid paved square rimmed with handsome, conservative five-story buildings whose character was invariable. On the ground floor, small and expensive shops. On the first floor, known as the Nobeletage, the owner’s family. On the second floor, the occupant who paid the most rent. On the third floor, some once-rich widow with her sister from the country. And on the top floor, reached by four flights of tiring stone steps, a large, almost impoverished family or collection of families. In the basement, of course, dark and often damp, lived the servants.

  Bukowski rented the second floor, two of the rooms being assigned to his Polish servant Buk, who had come with him from the Vistula. The other six were sparely decorated and rather gloomy in their general effect. On the nights when he entertained, he instructed Buk to fill the big main room with flowers, polish the piano, which came with the apartment, and to use many lights in an effort to achieve a sense of gaiety and even grandeur, both of which escaped him.

  His three horses lived rather better than he. They were stabled on the north side of the Danube Canal, only a few blocks from where he lived, and were exercised by an Austrian who loved horses and recognized these as exemplars. Bukowski did not use his horses in the city, reserving them for times when either he or his friends wanted to take a canter through the parks or in the Prater, which lay not far away. Slight of build, erect posture, he made a good figure upon his favorite mount, Mustafa, named after the famous Turkish general who had conducted the siege of Vienna in 1683 and from whom an earlier Bukowski had acquired the horses that had formed the basis for the Bukowo line.

  In the city, Wiktor utilized a public fiacre, but he did it with such consistency, riding in it to work every morning, then relying upon it to carry him to Landtmann’s coffeehouse in the afternoon, and to whatever affair he might be engaged in at night, that what was normally a public conveyance became in effect his private carriage. The driver was a dour Serbian who viewed his employer impersonally, disliking him because he was a Pole, respecting him because he paid promptly.

  Wiktor Bukowski was not a wealthy man, but he did have a small, steady income from his Vistula estate, plus a gratifying salary from his ministry, so he lived well. Had he been willing to dispense with his horses, he could have converted his bleak and mournful rooms into one of the finer bachelor quarters in the city, but this he refused to do: ‘A Polish nobleman without horses? Intolerable.’

  He continued in his rather depressing quarters because at age twenty-seven he supposed that some day he would encounter the young woman who would change his life, and he would leave to her the furnishing of his rooms. Also, there was the reasonable chance that the woman who entered his life might be wealthy, with a house of her own, a palace perhaps, in which case he would abandon Concordiaplatz—just walk out and leave it, but of course he would take his three horses to her stable, to be cared for by her footmen.

  His great pleasure, which he indulged almost every day, was visiting Landtmann’s, sitting in a brocaded booth, talking with friends, reading either the Paris or London papers, holding them conspicuously so that others could see that he had mastered languages, and having the café’s famous hot chocolate. He did not like coffee, finding it too acrid, and since he exercised rather vigorously with his horses, he did not have to worry about gaining weight from the chocolate and the small sandwiches which Landtmann’s provided. Prudently, he did not indulge in sweet cakes or pastries. Nor did he read books.

  Into a life like this a public gala at Die Schmelz came like a burst of winter sunshine, and on the day after Christmas he directed Buk to have the horses in top condition for the exhibition. Twice he went to the stables to apply saddle soap to his leather fittings and polish the silver chains. The horses were curried, their hoofs blackened and their nails trimmed. They and their master would be ready.

  But when he reached the coffeehouse this afternoon he found a young Austrian awaiting him with a message that Krystyna Szprot was playing that afternoon for a few friends and would be pleased if Pan Bukowski would attend. As soon as he heard these magical words, the chords of the Christmas scherzo began to resound in his head, and with great anticipation he called for his fiacre and invited the young Austrian to join him on the ride to the house at which Panna Szprot would be playing. And as he left the coffeehouse he could hear that whispering so sweet to a young man unsure of himself: That’s Bukowski. The Polish nobleman who challenged
the German. Over love for a lady pianist. Gallant devil.’

  Krystyna had been staying with the other artists in a small and dismal hotel, but with the departure of the German singers, she was free to find her own quarters and had moved in with some young Polish students, at whose apartment she was going to play. It lay well beyond the Ring in the vicinity of the university, Alserstrasse, where students sought inexpensive quarters.

  The apartment, shared by two couples, did have a piano, and when Wiktor arrived Krystyna was seated at it, running through some Chopin waltzes for which she apparently had little regard. After listening for some minutes, Wiktor went to her and said in English: ‘I am he who spoke for you … other night.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied in French. ‘My champion.’

  ‘Would you be so very kind,’ he asked in his good German so that the others could hear, ‘to explain for me how the chords progress in the first part of the scherzo? So that we know the lullaby is coming?’

  ‘That would be interesting!’ one of the students cried, and several gathered about the piano, but Krystyna gave her attention only to Wiktor, as if she had already formed an interest in him which she would explain at some later time.

  Although Wiktor could not understand fully the words she used, he certainly grasped the musical meaning of her illustration, and was enchanted by the tricks Chopin had used to lead listeners like him into the exact trap intended: ‘He uses a chromatic progression, inserting chords of great importance which alert you to the coming of a significant passage. Listen, dominant to dominant by three simple stages. How beautiful! And now a seventh, half a tone higher. C sharp, this is E, G, an added seventh, then this aching half-tone higher, now back to B major. And now …’

  With the subtlest artistry she drifted like a delicate cloud into the heavenly notes of the Christmas carol. But she played only a few notes, then crashed the keys in a dissonance and said sternly: ‘Let’s go over it again. What you must know is that Chopin uses not a single note by accident. He is leading us along by the nose, as if we were children.’ And she repeated her instruction, but at the crucial point in the progression Wiktor cried: ‘Stop! There’s the magic. How does he do it?’