Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Father Barski, extremely eager, like most priests who sprang from humble families, to retain the support of castle and mansion, refused to perform the ceremony, and had he been an actual resident of the village instead of a casual visitor he could have prevented the marriage from taking place. He did not go so far, principally because his major patron, Count Lubonski, told him sardonically: ‘It’s a gesture. It’s a woman making a gesture, not one getting married for love. Be advised, stay clear.’

  A priest from a distant village came in some bewilderment to officiate, and when he saw the magnificence of the Bukowski establishment he prudently guessed that something must be terribly wrong in this affair, and he went to the Bukowskis and said: ‘If I am in any way offending …’

  ‘Proceed,’ Pani Bukowska said, and when on the second day the ceremony was performed, she was present, lending her sanction to the celebration, and she brought her reluctant husband with her, advising him that it was much better to make amends openly. When the fiddlers began she danced with Count Lubonski, with her husband and, finally, with the startled groom.

  Investigations had been made at Miroslawa’s insistence, and it was determined that in many Polish marriages the bride who came from a family conspicuously more distinguished than the groom’s could elect to retain her family name, with a hyphen, in which case the husband frequently assumed that more distinguished name also. The schoolteacher cited the cases of Maria Sklodowska-Curie, two-time winner of the Nobel Prize, and Ewa Bandrowska-Turska, well known as a singer throughout Europe. The peasant husband could borrow his wife’s name and become Seweryn Bukowski-Buk, but since that sounded ridiculous, he would soon drop the hyphenated part and become what he should always have been—Seweryn Bukowski. It was not neat, and perhaps not legal, but that’s the way it would be.

  So once more the routine along the Vistula stabilized. Count Lubonski occupied himself in writing persuasive reports to the Polish leaders in Warsaw, to Witold Jurgela in Wilno, and to Taras Vondrachuk in Kiev, beseeching them all to display dispassionate leadership. Father Barski was slowly learning the intricate operations of the new Polish church as it endeavored to build one solid edifice upon the varied experiences which its Catholics had suffered when living for more than a century under three different jurisdictions. Those who had been part of Austria had been considered second-class citizens by the pompous Roman Catholic hierarchy in Vienna; those in Germany had been denigrated by the Protestants who ruled that country; while the souls under Russian rule had been treated with contempt by the dominant Eastern Orthodox church. Now the yokes had been cast off and the indigenous church was free to develop along its own historic lines of total fealty to Rome.

  Since Father Barski saw that the next decades would be ones of redefinition and reestablishment, he found himself searching backward for the beginnings of his church when it came out of the western mists a thousand years ago to unify the bands of warring and wandering tribes who would call themselves to Poland. He was now thirty-four years old and vaguely aware that of all the priests in his region, regardless of age or position, he was the scholar, the knowing one, and although he had no clear vision of what rank he might obtain within his church, he did realize that to attain anything, he must retain the good opinion of the count, of the wealthy Bukowskis, and of the bishops in Sandomierz and Krakow. Therefore, he thought deeply and acted with great caution.

  Wiktor Bukowski was not concerned with the petty wars with Lithuania, Ukraine and Czechoslovakia; his main interest was his horses. On Paderewski’s last night in Poland, Wiktor had reluctantly gone with Marjorie to Warsaw, where they entertained the great man at the Palais Princesse and even tried to seduce him with the piano Marjorie had purchased for the occasion, but he did not wish to play, so the evening passed in mournful talk.

  At one point he asked Wiktor, ‘What do you intend doing?’ as if he were a boy in school, and Wiktor replied: ‘I’m told there’s a good chance to sell Arabians in America.’

  ‘What Arabians?’ Paderewski asked. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘My horses. I’ve a lot of good money tied up in those horses …’

  Paderewski broke into a generous laugh, his first of the evening. ‘Oh, I like that! One thinks of horses being tied to a wagon. But you change the idiom. “A lot of good money tied up in the horses.” I like that play on words.’

  Wiktor had no idea of what the pianist was saying, but a nudge from his wife warned him not to pursue the matter further.

  With Paderewski gone, Wiktor saw little reason to remain in Warsaw, and after a couple of concerts by an orchestra from Berlin and solo musicians who had fled the revolution in Moscow, he was hungry to get back to the Vistula: ‘I’m homesick, and that’s a fact.’ So Marjorie allowed herself to be pulled away from what promised to be a gala season in Warsaw, with opera three nights a week and concerts constantly, but when she saw her husband once more on his fields with his horses, she was assured that she had done right in bringing him home.

  She appreciated this even more when one morning Jadwiga Buk and her daughter-in-law, Miroslawa Bukowska, appeared at the palace asking to see the master, and when Wiktor came down from the room in which he had been taking his morning nap, the two women asked Marjorie to remain. ‘What we have in mind,’ Jadwiga said, ‘is that your fields are not doing well. Not really.’

  ‘And the villages,’ Miroslawa continued. ‘They’re still your villages, in a manner of speaking …’

  ‘They’re not in good repair, Pan Bukowski.’

  ‘They could profit from closer attention, I suppose,’ Wiktor conceded with all the heavy formality he would have used at a meeting of the cabinet in Vienna. ‘But I’m kept rather busy, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Jadwiga said, aware that this frivolous man she had once known so intimately had never directed his attention on anything for long. ‘That’s why Miroslawa and I—’

  ‘Pan Bukowski,’ Miroslawa broke in, as it had been arranged that she would, ‘we think you should employ Seweryn, my husband—that is, as your manager.’

  Before Wiktor could respond to this amazing proposal, Marjorie cried: ‘A splendid idea! Bring some professional attention …’

  ‘There could be merit,’ Wiktor said guardedly. ‘But why do you come to me with such a proposal? Where’s Seweryn?’

  Jadwiga said: ‘He never likes to push himself forward.’

  ‘Especially,’ said Miroslawa, ‘since the job is customarily reserved for gentry.’ And she could not keep herself from adding: ‘Which is why it is so often performed poorly. Like here.’

  Wiktor rose and stalked about the room, pondering this bold proposal and trying vainly to probe its weaknesses. He did not trust these two women, each more clever than himself, and he felt intuitively that he must protect himself from them, but before he could reject their proposal, Marjorie, who could be said to own the estates by right of marital purchase, said enthusiastically: ‘Wiktor, I think this is a most commendable idea. What would we do about salary … wages, that is? I have no concept of what’s customary.’

  Again Jadwiga spoke: ‘The pay could be small until he proved himself. But he would have to have a house—’

  ‘He just built one,’ Wiktor said.

  ‘But not a proper one for a manager,’ Jadwiga said. Going to the window, she pointed to a space beside the stables. ‘He could build a real house there. With a cellar. Then he could watch your horses … the grooms, I mean, to be sure they did right.’

  The Bukowskis came to the window and looked toward the stables, where in a space between the western end and the river Jadwiga Buk had hammered in eight stakes, each with a small ribbon flying—the outlines of the home that would be occupied by her first son.

  ‘But what would you do with the house already built?’ Wiktor asked, with the hesitancy of a man who felt himself being sucked in by a great tidal wave over which he had no control.

  ‘We’d give that to my son Jan, who’s getting marrie
d soon,’ Jadwiga said. Then she added two thoughts which sprang from the heart: ‘You and I would be at ease, Wiktor, if we saw Seweryn in a proper house. A new start for a new Poland.’

  These words cut so deep that Wiktor had to look to his wife for guidance, and when she nodded, relieved that such a simple concession would alleviate her own sense of guilt, he cried impulsively: ‘We’ll build the house! It would be a shame to waste those stakes with their little flags.’

  When the two women departed, Jadwiga knew she should keep her mouth shut, because no matter how sympathetic Miroslawa might seem and no matter how enthusiastically she had encouraged this expedition, she did remain a member of the gentry and thus a potential enemy of any peasant. But when they were a safe distance from the palace the older woman could no longer restrain herself, and catching Miroslawa in her powerful arms, she raised her in the air and did a little dance. ‘Oh, daughter! I went into that torn-down mansion twenty-five years ago a peasant girl with no shoes. Now I have my own house and fields. My second son will have his own house with a cement floor. And my first son will have a real house with a cellar.’ She embraced her daughter-in-law, then kissed her fervently on both cheeks. ‘It means something!’ she shouted to no one. ‘It really does mean something.’

  Then, with the abruptness of a forest fire, an event of indecipherable complexity erupted, and life for everyone was severely modified.

  Within eight months of having been engaged in brutal warfare against each other, General Pilsudski, semi-dictator of Poland now that Paderewski was gone, and Semen Petlura, hetman of the Ukrainians, joined forces as brother generals to launch a full-scale war against Russia.

  How had this happened? Roman Catholic Poles and Ukrainians who followed various eastern rites disliked and distrusted each other, but they shared an intense dislike of Russian Communism, which they recognized as pagan atheism at its worst. Even nonreligious citizens of both regions distrusted the promises of Communism, especially farmers, who knew that under this system they would lose their lands and control of their cattle.

  So now when Russian armies seemed about to impose Lenin’s new pattern on the east, a natural opposition developed in both Poland and Ukraine strong enough to submerge old animosities and even those of recent months. Pilsudski and Petlura marched forth to protect not only their own lands but all of Europe from the threat of Communism.

  ‘It is,’ preached Father Barski, ‘a God-given opportunity to determine the history of this part of the world,’ and he encouraged all the men in his district to volunteer for the crusade.

  Jan Buk, aged twenty-three, volunteered, and marched with the victorious army to Kiev, where the crucial battles would be waged. Seweryn Bukowski was also urged by the priest to volunteer, but his wife argued with the officials that as the manager of an estate producing food for the army, he could not be spared; secretly she told her husband: ‘It’s the wrong war against the wrong enemy. Communism is the friend of the people. Pilsudski and Petlura are dictators, deceivers, protectors of the magnates, but don’t say I said so in public.’

  Seweryn, listening carefully to all that was happening in his village, learned that several other peasants were also more attracted to the new Russian scheme of things than to the old Polish ways: ‘Father Barski and Pan Bukowski, of course they want us to fight to defend their interests. But those days are past.’

  Seweryn found great difficulty in determining what he thought about Father Barski; he liked the priest and had been taught by his parents to revere his occupation, but increasingly he respected Miroslawa’s interpretation of events, for he had learned that she was usually right when men like Bukowski and Father Barski were wrong, and he suspected that in this sudden war, started without reason, Poland was wrong and Russia was right.

  Despite such ambivalence, which surfaced in many parts of Poland, the Polish and Ukrainian armies swept to tremendous victories, driving the Russians from Ukraine and establishing in that perplexed and perplexing land a free government, the first in a thousand years of its turbulent history. On 8 May 1920, Pilsudski and Petlura actually captured Kiev, throwing the Communists completely out of eastern Europe, and ecstatic celebrations began.

  They were premature. Because down from the north came a redoubtable double thrust of real Russian power. Headed directly for Warsaw were Mikhail Tukhachevsky’s foot soldiers, with enormous weight of artillery and vehicles supporting them, but the more devastating force appeared in General Semyon Budenny’s First Cavalry, a wild-riding, terrifying pack of horsemen who disorganized the Polish-Ukrainian armies, recapturing immense amounts of territory within a few days with savage cruelty; as if they were Tatars in the year 1240, they desolated the lands of eastern Poland and approached the fortified city of Zamosc, from which they could gallop on to Castle Gorka and the Bukowski palace.

  By 2 August 1920, General Tukhachevsky’s armies were within shelling distance of Warsaw, and he had reason to believe that the Polish defense might be in total collapse. It looked to him as if the Communist armies were free to sweep on to the Oder River and from there into disorganized Germany and the heartlands of Europe. It was a time of trembling.

  A knowing French military observer, one M. Delacorte, sent a frightening report to his journal in Paris:

  The perilous situation must be clearly understood. Warsaw is doomed. The Communist army of General Tukhachevsky will soon be joined by the dreaded cavalry of General Budenny, and this victorious force will enjoy a clear gallop to the Oder River. Germany not only is too weak to resist, but within that country at least half the disgruntled population might be expected to rise in favor of the Russians.

  Within two weeks Tukhachevsky and Budenny could be on the borders of France, and England must prepare itself for this dread possibility. If the victorious Russians are able to enlist the support of the masses in one great revolutionary outburst, all Europe as we know it could be swept away.

  Leon Trotsky, gadfly of the revolution, put it more succinctly in his battle order to the Communist troops: ‘Heroes, let us take Warsaw! Just sixteen versts more and we will have all Europe ablaze.’ He was right. Nine more miles and a stupendous victory would be in hand.

  All knowledgeable observers shared this opinion. The fate of Europe really did hang in balance, and a fearful advantage worked on the side of the Russians, who were about to engulf Warsaw: they were a revolutionary force feeding on the wild excitement of people who felt themselves liberated at last, while the Germans, the French and the English were exhausted from fighting under old and sometimes outworn slogans. It was going to be an unfair battle between unequals, and the result, as Lenin predicted, ‘could be the Communization of all Europe before the new year.’

  At this juncture, word of the terror reached even Bukowo. Cried a messenger from Zamosc: ‘Our city is doomed. Budenny has it almost surrounded. Help! Help!’

  Wiktor Bukowski, hearing the plea and learning also that Warsaw might fell, kissed his wife goodbye, selected his six best horses, and went to Janko Buk’s cottage: ‘We’re all needed. My son is still in Paris. Call yours.’

  For nine centuries the Bukowskis had given such orders to the Buks, and for nine centuries the serfs had dutifully marched off to war, holding their masters’ horses, feeding them, and carrying the knights off the battlefield when they were wounded. Now the peasants were being summoned again, and Janko Buk obeyed, but with a difference: ‘Jan’s already with the army. And I can’t find Seweryn.’

  He could not be found for good reason: Miroslawa, still interpreting opposition to the Communists as an error, had hidden her husband and refused to reveal where he was. ‘He’s in Sandomierz on your business,’ she lied, ‘and I have no idea when he’ll be back.’

  So Wiktor had to leave without him, but he felt that it would be disgraceful for a gentleman of his position to go to war without a batman of some kind, so he ordered Jadwiga and Janko to produce their third son, Benedykt, and they did.

  Away the three rode, each on
a superb horse, with Benedykt leading three remounts. They went northeast until they forded the San River, and as they edged ever closer to the scene of battle, they accumulated others on horseback, peasants and gentry alike, riding together as they had always done during troubled times in these historic lands. They wore no uniforms, but each man did bring those accouterments which had proved useful in the past: guns, pistols, swords, daggers, heavy shoes, close-knit caps to serve as helmets, and the best saddlery in Europe. They were not prepared, but they were ready.

  Twelve miles west of Zamosc they were intercepted by officers of the regular Polish cavalry, who welcomed them effusively; they were now a band of some two hundred volunteers and their value to the battle that impended could prove decisive. ‘You’re to muster at Szczebrzeszyn,’ one of the officers said, and Wiktor broke into laughter. ‘What’s funny?’ the officer asked, and Bukowski, still chuckling, replied: ‘My wife. She’s from Chicago and can never say that name.’

  ‘You must be Bukowski,’ the officer said. ‘Take command of these men.’

  So Wiktor Bukowski received a battlefield commission—well, a pre-battlefield commission—as major, and he fell easily into the role. He and Janko Buk were much older than most of the patriots, but they were skillful horsemen and no one was surprised when Major Bukowski announced that Buk would be his second in command.

  At Szczebrzeszyn they found about six hundred other men like themselves, all nervous, all terrified when sounds of battle reached them from the east, but all prepared to ride straight at the oncoming Russians.

  ‘None of that,’ a Colonel Stempkowski warned. ‘Budenny’s men are impeccable horsemen and they’ve defeated us six times in this running battle.’

  ‘What are we to do?’ Bukowski asked, relishing his new position.

  ‘Are you Bukowski, owner of the big stud along the Vistula?’

  ‘The same. This is my second, Janko Buk.’

  ‘You’re practiced horsemen, not?’