Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘What about Mexico?’ someone called, and he replied after looking at his notes: ‘That would be 55.6. They refuse to work any harder. Oil makes them think they’re rich.’

  The men focused on that low figure for Poland, only one-third as much productive effort per man as in Singapore, and whereas there was some slight shifting of the figure up or down in relation to other countries, the consensus was that the index was fairly accurate.

  ‘How do you estimate Russia’s productivity?’ the German economist asked.

  ‘Insufficient evidence,’ the Hungarian replied.

  ‘You must have an idea.’

  ‘About 55 or 60. Better than Great Britain, worse than the United States.’

  ‘And your own country, Hungary?’

  ‘There’s a problem. It stands right with the United States, about 70 even. That’s why we occupy such an enviable position within the bloc.’

  The men asked Buk what he thought of the figures and he said he was amazed at the relatively low position of his country, but then conceded that he knew nothing about factories, whereupon one of the men asked: ‘But you know about farms. What index figure would you put on your agricultural production?’

  ‘I would say 30.0,’ Buk said, and when some of the men whistled, he said: ‘We really have no incentive to produce one potato more than we eat ourselves. My grandfather produced twice as much as I do, and I’m ashamed of myself. But the system has broken down.’

  The Polish professor admitted that he was confused: ‘As a loyal Pole, I don’t like to hear my country criticized so harshly, but as a scholar, I’m forced to admit that your evidence is accurate. My beloved country is in one hell of a shape.’ He then advanced two interesting theories:

  ‘Starting in 1772, when the divisions of Poland began, every Pole who found himself under the domination of Russia, Germany or Austria devised clever ways to circumvent the rule of the oppressor. Lazy on the job, break the machine, irritate the boss. After 1795, this continued, remember, for one hundred and twenty-three years.

  ‘During World War II, when the Nazis occupied us, sabotage became a skilled art. In 1944, when Communism took over, with Russian masters once more, the same brilliant capacity for quiet sabotage was exercised. Today, when the people believe that government is opposed to their interests, they know a million ways to frustrate the government. Poles are the world’s master saboteurs.

  ‘And another thing. In the postwar period, right up to 1975, for a Pole to survive on wages the government allowed he had to have two or even three jobs. Work 0800 to 1300 here, then duck out and work 1400 to 1800 somewhere else. Then at night work 1900 to 0100 at a third job. But never really work at any of them. Catch as much sleep as you can on each.

  ‘I was with the Labor Bureau when we got our first big computer. We cranked in the entire work force and found that with a population of slightly less than thirty-six million, we had fifty-three million full-time employees. That’s when we stopped the moonlighting, but the evil habits our people acquired in those years persist.’

  An American military man asked: ‘Do you see any hope for Poland in the years immediately ahead?’ and the scholar replied: ‘No. I think we shall have to plunge into the depths, reorganize in some unforeseen way, and slowly reestablish ourselves in some other posture.’ The general asked: ‘How soon could this be accomplished?’ and Buk said: ‘I see no hope during the next five years.’

  Buk went to bed that night like many a world traveler before him: he had obtained a clearer view of his homeland by leaving it and seeing it through the eyes of others. He could scarcely sleep because of the doleful things he had heard these men say, for he feared that they were right in their calculations.

  He was awakened early on the final morning by a group of men in a flurry: ‘You’ve got to change your airline tickets. You’re to leave Kennedy at noon instead of tonight at seven.’

  When he asked why, they beamed. ‘Our man in Rome has finally arranged it! Imagine! Jan Pawel Drugi has said he’d be honored to greet you. At the Vatican. Tomorrow at three.’ Buk lowered his head. He could not believe that a Pope, and one so dangerously wounded, would want to meet him, but before he left the hotel, newsmen around the world were announcing to their nations that the Pope had invited Jan Buk to the Vatican for a discussion of Polish affairs.

  At the airport, not the ordinary two or three television cameras waited but a dozen, each demanding of Buk some profound statement on Polish politics, and for the first time during his improvised trip around the world, he had to acknowledge that for this moment at least he had become a man of some importance.

  It confused him. He could be sure of only two things: the democracies were trying to use him as a cudgel against the socialist states, especially Russia; and despite his introduction to the global thinkers at the meeting last night, he was still a farmer from the banks of the Vistula with a very imperfect understanding of how Poland functioned, let alone eastern Europe or the world. He did not allow notoriety to disorient him.

  ‘Are you really going to see the Pope?’ several newsmen shouted, and when the cameras were aligned he said: ‘Jan Pawel Drugi has graciously extended an invitation. Yes, I am to see him tomorrow.’

  The name Buk used was unfamiliar, and several correspondents asked: ‘Who? Who?’ and a man from the Polish Embassy explained: ‘Jan Pawel Drugi. You say it John Paul Second. The Italian says it Giovanni Paolo Secondo. But to the whole world he is our beloved Polish Pope.’

  When Janko Buk was strapped into the Alitalia plane he began to appreciate the wonderful thing that was happening: he was flying to see the Holy Father, that simple, forthright Polish son of old peasant stock who came from a village not far from Bukowo and whose church life had been spent in Buk’s Krakow. Janko could not remember ever having seen the future Pope during his visits to Krakow, a city of great importance to anyone from Bukowo and one much more likely to be visited than Warsaw, but he could have. He wondered if Cardinal Wojtyla had been present at either of the two great convocations at Czestochowa which he had attended as a pilgrim, and he supposed that he must have been. At any rate, Jan Pawel Drugi had been a neighbor, and it was always good to visit with a neighbor.

  When the plane landed at Leonardo da Vinci south of Rome, more newsmen wanted to talk with Buk because the situation in Poland had deteriorated during the suspension of talks, and there was much speculation as to when and how Russia would invade. Three weeks earlier he would have avoided any such inquiry as being beyond his scope, but now, remembering the explanations which had so impressed him the night before, he said in carefully enunciated phrases: ‘I’m sure that both sides want to avoid any kind of confrontation. Poland’s position is exciting these days, but not very strong. On the other hand, the Soviet Union is not entirely free to act as she might wish. Afghanistan and China on her southern frontier. Two new imponderables on her world scene. President Reagan in Washington, Jan Pawel in the Vatican. An amusing fellow in New York said he’d give me a strategy free. “You farmers go ahead with your strike. Cut the food supply in half. Russia wouldn’t dare to take you. Wouldn’t even want to.” ’

  When the reporters laughed, he added: ‘I know of no one in Poland, and I suspect I’d find none in Russia, who is talking arrogantly at this moment. Desperately we are both trying to find workable ways. In Detroit, I met many Poles who talked violently, but not the Poles in Poland. When I meet with the Holy Father, I shall ask him only one thing, to pray for peace.’

  Several reporters asked if he knew the new Pope, and Buk said: ‘Farmers from little villages do not know cardinals from big cities. But what I’ve heard about him I love, and when I think of the great danger he ran when the gunman fired at him, I love him even more.’ The newsmen thought he sounded like an uneducated farmer who was getting a crash course in diplomacy.

  Next day at two-thirty in the afternoon a cavalcade of automobiles gathered at the hotel where the Polish group was staying, but most of the cars contained
newsmen. They sped through narrow streets, then along the splendid boulevard that followed the Tiber and across the bridge into the minute area of Vatican City. They headed directly for St. Peter’s, then turned sharp right and went up the very narrow street that took tourists to the Vatican art museum, and through huge gates that swung open for the two lead cars but not for those that followed.

  They now entered a series of paved roads that led through gardens and up a hill, then through another stone portal that gave upon a cobbled courtyard completely surrounded by buildings of various colors and with varied façades. Here the two cars stopped as Swiss guards inspected the credentials of the occupants, after which Janko Buk and two of his companions were led to a most inconspicuous door and into a small vestibule, where hidden television cameras gazed down at them.

  An elevator door slid quietly open, providing entrance to a really small lift which took them quietly up two stories, where it opened noiselessly, allowing them to step into a large, almost empty but tastefully decorated hall. Two priests who did not speak Polish led them through several anterooms, decorated in Renaissance style, and into a fine, narrow room with red-and-gilt chairs, paintings of churchly figures and three sculptures of holy scenes.

  Here they waited, talking in whispers, until a brash young Polish priest hurried in with loud, jovial greetings: ‘No need to talk in whispers. Prayers don’t come till later.’ He acted as if he were truly glad to see Janko Buk and gripped him warmly with both hands. ‘You are accomplishing wonderful things. Where is Bukowo?’

  Buk, relieved to be able to talk about mundane matters, explained that his unimportant stretch of the Vistula contained three rather splendid buildings much visited by tourists: ‘Castle Gorka of the famous Lubonskis, Baranow Castle of the even more famous Leszczynskis, and in between, the lovely palace of our own Bukowskis.’

  ‘Never heard of any of them,’ the young priest said. ‘I come from Gniezno.’

  ‘Where Christianity began in Poland,’ Buk said.

  ‘That’s right!’ the priest said with real enthusiasm. ‘I have no idea what the Holy Father will want to talk with you about, but you realize, of course, that it will be confidential.’

  ‘How am I to address him?’ Buk asked.

  ‘Your Holiness is always proper. Holy Father is used. And of course, his fundamental title is one we all share. Father. No other word characterizes him better.’

  ‘How is he?’ Buk asked, but before the young priest could reply, an older priest, the Pope’s constant companion during the years before his elevation to the Vatican, came in to announce that His Holiness would see the visitors now, but when Buk followed the two priests from the waiting room, he found in the reception room not the Pope but two Vatican photographers. This was going to be a historic meeting and they were responsible for catching proper mementos of it.

  Everyone stood silent, and then a door at the far end of the room swung open and a sturdy man dressed all in white except for his red slippers hurried into the room as if he were twenty, stopped in delight, looked at this visiting farmer, and said: ‘Janko Buk, I am so very pleased to see you!’

  Nudged by his companions, Buk stepped forward, knelt, and kissed the Pope’s left hand. The cameras caught this, six different pictures in a quarter of a minute, but they were even more careful to catch the next important tableau: Pope Jan Pawel embracing Janko Buk, resident of his one-time diocese. It made an excellent photograph, something out of Florence or Venice in the fifteenth century but one fraught with contemporary meaning.

  All else was subsidiary. It was the photograph of two men embracing—not Janko Buk embracing the Pope, but both embracing equally—that conveyed the message: a simple man endeavoring to start a farmers’ union was welcomed in the Vatican regardless of how he might be received in Warsaw or Moscow.

  After pleasantries about Poland and Krakow, with the Pope smiling constantly, Janko asked if the gunshot wounds had healed, and the Pope said they were healing, rather nicely he thought, and then the Pope asked how President Reagan had looked, and Janko said: ‘You’d never know he had been shot.’ At this the Pope nodded sagely and smiled.

  Janko repeated the joke about Brezhnev and the barber, and the Pope chuckled, responding with a joke about himself in Mexico. It seemed to the two companions that most of the visit was being wasted in laughter, but finally the Pope asked how the talks were going, and Janko made a highly improper reply: ‘The reason they broke off, Holy Father, is that I insisted the Bishop of Gorka participate.’

  The Pope realized that this was a subject about which he must not speak during a critical period, so he smiled and shrugged his shoulders, but he had to say something, so he was noncommittal: ‘He is a saintly man.’

  Janko said: ‘Many people in the area think he’ll be cardinal one day.’

  The Pope broke into laughter at this huge impropriety and grasped Janko by the hand. ‘I hope you’re more politic in your discussions with the government.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Your Holiness. But our side wanted the bishop to participate because he is a saintly man. Mere talking isn’t going to settle this.’ No one said anything, so Janko asked: ‘Have we your prayers?’

  ‘All Poland has our prayers,’ the Pope said, and the meeting ended, with another series of flashbulbs and handshakes and blessings, but as the Pope went far out of his way to accompany Janko to the elevator he said: ‘My prayers are with you, particularly. You’ve chosen a most difficult course.’ He neither condoned the course nor condemned it.

  Back at the hotel, Janko was told that Austrian television had invited him to Vienna: ‘No fee of any kind, but they will put us up at a good small hotel near the Schönbrunn.’ So another change in itinerary was arranged, and the men flew into Vienna, which in many ways was the most disturbing visit of the entire trip. Two experiences had a devastating impact on Buk, so that he remembered them vividly even when President Reagan and Jan Pawel were becoming distant images.

  The first was a trivial thing. Prior to his appearance on Austrian television he walked down Vienna’s resplendent pedestrian street in the heart of the city, Kärntnerstrasse, and as he strolled slowly past the opulent shops offering goods of the highest quality from all over the world—he could think of scarcely anything he might want for his wife that was not available—he began to wonder how this city, which was only a day’s drive from Warsaw, could have so much and his own so little.

  Austria had only seven million five hundred thousand population to Poland’s nearly thirty-six million. In available land Poland was four times as large, and in raw materials infinitely richer. Polish workmen were as skilled as Austrians and their political leaders as well educated. Both countries were Catholic, both had good railroads, excellent airplanes, and neither had an aggravated minority.

  But there the identities ended, for Vienna was a city of lightness and music and newspapers freely admitted from all over the world, and hope and bursting joyousness, while Warsaw, from what Janko Buk had seen of it, was not. Most important, Vienna was feeding itself and was distributing its goods equitably; Warsaw was not. Some vast difference separated these two cities, only three hundred and fifty miles apart, and Janko Buk wanted to know what it was.

  He was diverted from finding out by the intrusion of a brief trip he had not expected to make to a village he had never heard of. Traiskirchen lay a short distance south of Vienna, some twenty miles from the beautiful Neusiedler See, and it contained an immense army barracks dating back to the time of Emperor Franz Josef. To it had been brought, in the old days, those lads from occupied Poland who had been conscripted into the Austrian army for their obligatory term of duty, twenty-five years.

  Now it was occupied by those energetic young Poles who had left their country as refugees, determined to spend the rest of their lives anywhere but in Poland. Nearly a thousand of these escapees waited in these forlorn barracks for the joyous news that America or Canada or Brazil or especially Australia or New Zealand had agreed to acc
ept them as immigrants.

  Very gingerly Janko Buk stepped among these refugees, living like outcasts on charity from the United Nations, for he had to classify them as traitors, but when he talked with them and heard them describe the desolation of spirit which had driven them to flee the country they loved, he came close to tears. These had been some of the best young people in Poland; he could see that from the bright faces of the young wives who had encouraged their husbands to take this dreadful gamble; he could see it in the attitudes of the many children who were now lost to Poland; and he could hear it in the hard, implacable words of the men: ‘I will not go back. Even if I starve here, I will not go back to that prison of the spirit.’

  ‘Does the world know about this camp?’ Buk asked the men with him.

  ‘We didn’t know about it. And it’s only one of three. The flight of our talent is continuous.’

  ‘But does anybody know about it? I never did.’

  ‘The world has other things to worry about.’

  ‘But this ought to be known in Poland,’ Buk protested. Leaving his companions, he mingled with the idle refugees, wanting to know how this one had escaped, how that one had managed to bring his wife and two children with him, and he discovered an astonishing fact: none of them had escaped. They had simply asked for passports, said they were going on vacation, and then thrown themselves on the mercy of the Austrian government as political refugees. Not one Pole he met had fled the country, in the traditional sense that men fled Russia or East Germany; they had all walked out, as if from a doomed village or from a city that had lost its way.

  ‘It almost sounds,’ Buk said, ‘as if the Polish government wanted you out of the country.’

  ‘They certainly didn’t try to stop us. Fewer mouths to feed. Fewer people of the type who might cause trouble.’

  Buk was so distressed by this that against his better judgment, for he was not an exhibitionist, he confided to a group of about twenty young men who were sharing their experiences with him: ‘I’m Janko Buk. The farmer.’