Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  They rose early so as to make entry in good light, and when the carriages at last reached the huge central square surrounded by arcaded houses such as might be found in Bologna, Marjorie cried: ‘Mother, it’s like the Campo in Siena,’ and it was, except that it showed a northern touch. The surrounding houses were square and made of solid stone; and each seemed to have been built by the same hand, which was the case. The town walls were thick enough to have withstood eleven sieges and looked as if they were ready for eleven more. But the most ingratiating aspect was the gloriously ugly central palace.

  Tall, massive, it looked as if some inspired Italian had wrestled with the northern landscape and lost. Its proportions were wrong: its tower blended with nothing in the huge square; its windows were jammed together impossibly; and the final effect was of a pile of massive stones not yet assembled into a real building. But even as Marjorie laughed, she saw to the left the very old church in which she would be married, and it looked as if it had been placed there by God Himself, so perfect was its appearance.

  She wanted very much to see how the church looked on the inside, but the countess restrained her: ‘Bad luck!’

  The party of Russian officials, who had come down from Lublin to the north, saw the Lubonski group and hurried across the great square to greet them; they were led by the son of the grand duke who governed Russian Poland, and he was gracious in his welcome. He appreciated the fact that Ambassador Trilling had come so far; he was pleased that Minister Lubonski was gracing the affair; and he was delighted to meet the countess and Madame Ambassador; but his real charm was reserved for Marjorie, whom he invited to be his companion at dinner.

  It was an affair which only the son of a Russian grand duke could have arranged, for it seemed as if the entire population of Zamosc was engaged. Many of the townspeople remembered that it had been a Zamoyski who had built this fortress on the frontier, and they were honored to have a member of that distinguished family choose their town for this occasion; others of lower caste wanted to see the visitors from America, for they had relatives who had emigrated there to escape the gnawing poverty of these Russian lands.

  Some eighty residents of the area attended the dinner; some hundred and eighty townsmen and peasants worked to make it possible—and when the exhausting affair was over and the nineteen Jewish musicians had gone home, Marjorie asked her mother, on the last night of her spinsterhood: ‘Can this go on much longer? I mean the extravagant wealth? The grinding poverty we saw in the countryside?’

  ‘Nothing can go on forever,’ Mrs. Trilling replied. She, too, had attended Oberlin College in Ohio and had absorbed its liberal cast. ‘Now go to sleep and don’t talk politics on your wedding eve.’

  Suddenly Marjorie broke into tears. ‘It was gorgeous. It was simply gorgeous. A wedding party that no one …’ She clasped her arms across her breast and shivered. ‘But the contrast is too much to absorb. I wonder if I’m capable …’

  ‘We make ourselves capable, Marjorie.’ Her mother pulled her onto the bed and sat beside her. ‘I was the daughter of a farmer. All he ever read was the almanac. How could I possibly have prepared myself for Vienna? For a grand duke’s reception like this in Zamosc, a town I never heard of? Marjorie, we make ourselves capable, and if you don’t, I’ll be forever ashamed of you.’

  ‘But in a fortress city like this I hear the sound of drums.’

  ‘That’s why they made it a fortress.’

  The wedding was held at ten in the morning, before three Russian priests, and it seemed as if all Zamosc was at the church, for the countess had arranged for twelve little girls to scatter flowers and eighteen others to sing as Marjorie came down the aisle on the arm of her father. The Russian diplomats occupied the major seats, Auntie Bukowska the place of honor to the right. Countess Lubonska was not visible, for she was stage-managing everything, and when sixteen young officers in full uniform, Russian and Austrian, marched out to accompany Wiktor, the ancient church was filled with music and flowers and brightness.

  But when Marjorie received her wedding certificate she was not pleased: ‘It’s in Russian! And I had dreamed of learning Polish from my own certificate.’ Countess Lubonska consoled her: ‘Zamosc is Russian now. I feel the contradiction as much as you.’ But she would say no more, and she halted Marjorie when the latter tried to protest further.

  The first days of Marjorie’s marriage to Bukowski were more pleasant than she had anticipated. Wiktor was proving to be considerate and warm-hearted, a young man without any conspicuous fault, but after she had been in residence at Bukowo for two weeks, with her parents down the river at Castle Gorka with the Lubonskis, she stumbled upon two aspects of her future life which rather disturbed her.

  The first came as the result of a picnic excursion organized by the indefatigable countess, who seemed never to enjoy herself unless six or eight carriages were involved. ‘My dear child, you simply must see Krzyztopor. It’s magnificent and played a major role in my husband’s history … that is, the history of his family.’ And she prevailed upon the count to relate the story of Barbara Lubonska and the building of the Ossolinski castle.

  He related the tragic affair with quiet simplicity: ‘She was, by all accounts, the most beautiful child our family had ever produced, and she married the son of the richest magnate in the country. For her he built the finest castle ever seen in Poland, and they enjoyed it for seven years. Then Swedes came down and destroyed it, and killed Barbara and her husband and her children, then came here to knock down my castle and burn Bukowski’s—and the land was desolate.’

  ‘You must see Krzyztopor,’ the countess said, ‘to understand Poland.’

  So a traditional Countess Lubonska excursion was planned, with six carriages this time ferried across the Vistula for the relatively short ride to the castle ruins, and once again Janko Buk drove the Bukowski carriage, with Jadwiga attending the new mistress.

  It was a pleasurable ride up the left bank of the Vistula as compared to that somber journey through the stricken Russian areas leading to Zamosc, for in the Austrian section the fields were rich and the prosperity obvious, but toward dusk the Americans saw looming ahead the gaping ruins of what once had been a tremendous castle. It was staggering in size, many times bigger than Gorka or even the better castles around Vienna, and although most of the walls were now heaps of rubble, enough remained standing to create the impression that armed knights could come riding out at any moment.

  ‘We’ll camp here tonight,’ the countess said, and her servants began pitching tents and preparing a country supper.

  They spent that night discussing castles and the incursions which had destroyed them, and Marjorie found it impossible to go to her bed, for she felt correctly that she was at last catching an insight into the heart of Poland, that vanished land which somehow refused to vanish, and under the stars her father took her aside to reassure her: ‘Marjo, darling, you can have as much money as you need to rebuild Bukowo. Your mother and I can see that you’re going to be very happy here. We’re buying for ourselves, after the ambassadorship ends, a small but very comfortable place on Annagasse, not far from the Lubonskis. They found it for us, across the little street from where they are. You and Wiktor can have it whenever you like, so between the two places … But, Marjorie, rebuild Bukowo. Make it something we’ll all be proud of.’

  Marjorie kissed her father ardently. ‘You dear! I’ve already told Wiktor to start. The workmen arrived yesterday and I saw them spreading their tools.’

  But when the excursion to Krzyztopor ended three days later, Marjorie found that the twenty workmen Wiktor had hired were executing plans not for the house but for new stables, which would cost $180,000, and she realized for the first time that her husband was going to remain exactly what he was when she first met him: a young Polish nobleman with no money of his own, no common sense, and a great love for horses. When the stables were completed and the horses properly housed, there would be time to work on the Bukowo mansion.
>
  Her second discovery involved a situation inherently more significant but also more easily dismissed; Wiktor’s shallowness would be a lifelong problem, but what she now learned about him was, she trusted, a one-time thing.

  It evolved from her determination to learn Polish, and this meant that she would be spending more time with Jadwiga Buk, and when Auntie Bukowska saw that the two women were forming more than the mere acquaintance customary between a mistress and a servant, she felt that a stop must be put to it, out of deference to the Bukowski reputation.

  She spoke no English and Marjorie was still totally deficient in Polish, but each woman had acquired a few kitchen words, and with these and agitated gestures Auntie tackled the problem of informing the mistress: ‘Jadwiga … no.’

  ‘I like her.’

  ‘Not good.’ Auntie conveyed this meaning in six or seven different ways, but each of the maid’s disqualifications was some characteristic that Marjorie especially appreciated, like her outspokenness, her lack of humility, so that Auntie was driven back and back until the truth had to be told.

  Puffing out her own belly and patting it to indicate Jadwiga’s pregnancy, she started to tell Marjorie how that pregnancy came to be, when the American woman interrupted: ‘It’s good. Baby born, study with your daughter Miroslawa.’

  When Auntie deciphered this startling news and realized what profane thing the mistress was saying—that Jadwiga’s child would learn to read, and with Miroslawa—she became downright terrified at the revolution which threatened, and she cried loudly and with gestures that could not be misinterpreted: ‘Baby in belly. Whose? Not Buk. Bukowski.’

  Marjorie looked at the housekeeper and tried not to understand what the woman was saying, but Auntie’s graphic repetitions made ignorance impossible, and finally she had to ask: The baby? Wiktor’s?’ and Auntie replied with stubborn satisfaction: ‘Yes.’

  Marjorie went to her room and sat by the window, looking out at the castle ruins and the Vistula beyond, and she saw for the first time that in a human life there were many ruins which remained, giving the landscape meaning, and that like the great river, life flowed on, coming out of the mountains, seeking the ocean of which it was a part. And everything one did entailed the creation of ruins and involved one in the implacable movement of the ongoing river.

  She heard a sound at the courtyard door and Auntie’s voice raised to a high pitch, and she remembered that Jadwiga was supposed to come at eleven for a language lesson, and Marjorie very much wanted to inspect her in this new light, so she ran downstairs and interrupted the scene: ‘Come in, Jadwiga.’

  ‘She knows!’ Auntie shouted in Polish, but who knew and what, Marjorie could not decipher.

  She led Jadwiga upstairs to the study room, and they talked in their horribly broken manner, Marjorie awakened to the fact that whereas she was learning very little Polish, Jadwiga was becoming rather skilled in acquiring a workable English vocabulary. And then Marjorie realized what an average lesson was like: she would ask Jadwiga the Polish name for something and the girl would give a quick answer, followed by patient questioning: ‘How you say in English?’ Jadwiga was teaching Marjorie ten minutes in the hour, but Marjorie was teaching Jadwiga forty or fifty minutes, and in a perverse way the American girl was pleased that if her husband had to have an affair before their marriage, and with a servant at that, it was reassuring that he had at least picked an intelligent girl.

  When the lesson ended and Jadwiga left, Marjorie found herself quite perplexed, especially when Auntie stormed back with garbled information as to how Jadwiga and her husband had maneuvered to get their new cottage, their field and their corner of the forest. This information was so complex that Marjorie could not digest it all, but there was evidence that it must be accurate, so she asked for a carriage and Buk to drive it, and off she went to talk with the countess, who seemed by far the most knowledgeable person in these parts, and to that sagacious woman she spread forth the entire situation.

  Katarzyna Zamoyska had not reached the age of forty without having observed many such escapades in her own robust family and in that of her husband’s. ‘I find nothing unusual. No murders. No infants slain at night. No treason, with man and woman fleeing across the border. Marjorie, I see no problem that ought to concern you.’

  ‘In my own house …’

  ‘She doesn’t have to be in your house. You keep her there, as your maid, from what you tell me.’

  ‘I like her. She’s a bold, intelligent woman, and I like her.’

  ‘But wouldn’t you agree that if you continue keeping her, your husband might …’

  ‘I’ve wondered about that.’

  ‘Wiktor Bukowski is one of the luckiest men alive, Marjorie. You came along to save his life … in numerous ways. He was doomed to be just another habitué of the coffeehouses. You made a man of him, and he knows it. I’d gamble that he appreciates this and will never touch her again. But if you insist upon having her in the house …’

  ‘You think it’s folly?’

  ‘Of the worst sort.’

  ‘But the child?’

  ‘In Poland, children come and go.’

  ‘But this child … of a good mother …’

  ‘They come and go, Marjorie.’

  On the drive back she sat hunched up in a corner of the carriage, staring at Buk as he drove the horses, and she wondered by what tricks he had connived at getting possession of the best cottage and a field of his own, and her mind began to construct so many possibilities, none more exciting than actuality, that she grew almost to approve of this clever peasant. Her grandfather, in dealing with the New York bankers who tried to destroy him, had been much like Janko Buk, and although she admitted the wisdom of what the countess had advised, she felt that in losing Janko and his clever wife, she was suffering a real deprivation. But they would not accompany the Bukowskis back to Vienna; Wiktor could jolly well find himself another groom and she would look elsewhere for her language instruction.

  Without Jadwiga, her learning of Polish lagged; she found the language much more difficult than French or German, and Wiktor was of little help. Eager to improve his English, he rarely spoke to her in his native tongue, and when she implored him to do so, he told her: ‘Most of our life will be spent in Vienna, so you will have little need for Polish.’

  She startled him by voicing openly for the first time a conclusion she had reached after much thoughtful assessment: ‘Poland will be united again before we die.’

  ‘You mustn’t talk like that. You saw what happened to the Polish pianist from Paris who talked like that. Whisk! Out of the country!’

  ‘Countess Lubonska told me that you came very close to eloping with her. Running away to join the revolution.’

  ‘I was in love with her. I was in love with twenty-six different girls, I think, till you came along.’

  ‘Weren’t you in love with her ideas?’

  ‘No,’ he lied. ‘Austria’s our attachment for as long as man can see.’

  ‘I don’t believe that at all. One day we’ll sell the house Father’s buying in Vienna and live here … and maybe in Warsaw, too, as the capital of a free nation.’

  Wiktor laughed. ‘I don’t think you should study Polish any longer. You’re beginning to believe what you read. And in Poland that can be dangerous.’

  She had indeed made limited progress in learning the language and recalled with amusement that day in Vienna when she had been confronted by the formidable Polish names on the written itinerary which Countess Lubonska had prepared for her, listing the places they would visit on their way to Bukowo. She well remembered the terror she felt when seeing for the first time names like Przemysl and Rzeszow, and how she had turned to Wiktor for help.

  ‘Look at this,’ she said petulantly, pointing to Przemysl. ‘How in the world do you pronounce it?’

  ‘Quite simple,’ he said, repeating it several times. ‘Shemish.’

  ‘Now wait! You can’t tell me that with
all those letters, it comes out Shemish.’

  ‘It does. You can hear for yourself. Shemish.’

  ‘What happens to the P at the beginning and the L at the end?’

  ‘In strict accuracy, it ought to be P’shemish’l, and if you listen with extra attention you may hear the muffled P and the final L. But mostly we just say Shemish.’ He broke into laughter, and Marjorie thought he was ridiculing her. Not at all: ‘I was remembering how much trouble it gives the Austrian officers who speak only German. They go home to their families and announce proudly, “I’ve been appointed lieutenant commander of our big base at Przemysl,” and however he pronounces it, that first time becomes the accepted name in that man’s family. Shemish he never says.’ He laughed again. ‘How would you say it, Marjo?’

  ‘Per-zem-y-sil,’ she said firmly, ‘just as God intended it to be pronounced.’

  ‘Never try to reason things out in Poland,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Just accept it as Shemish,’ but she resolved to avoid the word whenever possible.

  She was shocked when she endeavored to unravel the mystery of the Winesooth palace, which both Countess Lubonska and Wiktor referred to repeatedly, for when she tried to find it on the maps given her, she failed.

  ‘Where is Winesooth?’ she had asked Wiktor, and he had said rather sharply: ‘On the map, where else?’

  ‘But where on the map? Clearly, it’s not on mine.’

  ‘It’s got to be,’ he snapped, grabbing the map from her, then jabbing at it with his finger. ‘Right there, where it should be.’

  ‘But that says Lancut,’ she protested, and when Wiktor looked again at the map he repeated: ‘It’s right here, where I said.’

  ‘But where you point … it’s Lancut.’

  For a long, perplexed moment Wiktor had looked at the map, then at his intended bride, and it was as if someone had lit a light in his face. ‘Darling, this is Winesooth.’