Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  Buk saw the limitations which inhibited his opponents but he did not yet know his own mind, and the Communists interpreted this confusion as acquiescence. Thus emboldened, they continued to hammer at him, each man making one harsh statement which summarized his position.

  CHALUBINSKI: Keep in mind, Buk, that two nations are involved. The Soviet Union must consider the fate of many countries besides our little Poland. Bulgaria, East Germany and twenty others, who all depend upon Moscow for leadership. They cannot allow deviationism to grow on their doorstep. So what is Poland’s responsibility? To stamp out any action which looks like a capitulation to capitalism or a move to the west. Poland’s job right now is to affirm its allegiance to the Soviet Union and exterminate any who protest. I said exterminate, Buk.

  BUKOWSKI: That’s far too harsh a word, but the minister is right. The Polish government will not allow itself to be embarrassed by strikes and agitations. Those who continue to protest will do so at their own risk.

  Chalubinski had the last word: ‘Do I need to remind you, Buk, that Russian tanks are right now in that forest over there?’ and Janko replied from the long wisdom of peasants who lived beside the beech trees: ‘In the Forest of Szczek, there is always something hiding.’

  The men did not like the levity of this response and they asked if he understood the gravity of what they had been saying, and he replied: ‘I understand that you’re frightened. Well, so am I.’

  They did not bluster or try to deny that they were frightened, but they did demand that he attend to their warnings and obey them. When he carefully avoided making any promises, it was Chalubinski who made a gesture of conciliation: ‘We have a surprise for you, Buk, a most rewarding surprise.’ But he would not reveal what it was. Instead, he took Buk’s arm and led him back to the conference room, his manner showing the other participants that they had been having an amiable conversation.

  Then he startled the reassembled meeting with an announcement: ‘Under our democratic system, which ensures freedom for all, it is impossible to permit a union of food growers. That is forbidden, and the farmers’ leader, Janko Buk, accepts this decision.’

  Everyone looked at Buk, who sat staring at the table.

  ‘But what our government has agreed to do is initiate a council of farmers who will advise on rural policies and be your voice in Warsaw. This council will have plenary powers, and we will listen to it.

  ‘The chairman of this powerful council is to be Pan Buk, who has demonstrated such a firm understanding of rural affairs.’ Across the table he smiled warmly at his proposed associate Buk, who was too startled to smile back, but when he saw that Bukowski was grinning approvingly, he knew he had better respond.

  In that brief moment of hesitation Buk had time to assess his new position cynically and accurately: They’re doing this to shut me up. I’ll have a big office and no power. Nothing will change, and the factory people with Lech Walesa at their head will get all the privileges, and the farmers with nobody at their head will still get nothing. They’ve made fools of us farmers again, and I will not be partner to such fraud.

  Still smiling, he said: ‘My mother, Pani Buk, who spoke here so forcefully … she’s a heroine of the Polish resistance to Nazi terrorism. This afternoon she spoke truth about the mismanagement of our country, and as long as the weaknesses she identified remain uncorrected, I cannot leave my work here. I cannot go to Warsaw to serve as cover for your mistakes. I am a farmer, and I shall stay with my farm.’

  The three testifiers who had remained after Biruta’s angry departure cheered, and two of the rather frightened men on Buk’s side of the table clapped their hands. On the opposite side the Communist leaders sat stone-faced, waiting for the clamor to subside, and finally Chalubinski spoke. ‘Quick peace in Poland is the desire of all the socialistic democracies, who alone protect the freedom and peace of the world. As peace-seeking nations we cannot allow the superior standard of living we have achieved for our working people to be endangered by fraternal strife.

  ‘Pan Buk, it is your duty to go to Warsaw as we have recommended. There you can perform a great service for all the peace-loving nations of our bloc. Your job is in Warsaw.’ Having said this, he leaned back with that bleak smile which indicated that the situation was resolved.

  When Bukowski closed the session, Chalubinski rose, walked to where Buk waited and again took him by the arm, leading him to the front lawn where the television people waited.

  ‘What’s happened to the farmers’ union?’ a German reporter asked in Polish.

  Chalubinski smiled. ‘No nation in the world permits its farmers to unite so as to control the supply of food. Among the social democracies such a union would be especially wrong. The people would not want it, so the government cannot permit it. The issue is dead.’

  At this news one of the French correspondents whispered: ‘Janko the Yanko has allowed himself to be converted into Buk the Rus.’ And on that gloomy note the discussions in the Bukowski palace drew toward a close.

  When Szymon Bukowski, moving secretly and alone, slipped late at night into the bleak little committee room, it seemed even more desolate than it had during his earlier visit. But the cold place was made warm by the welcoming smile of Bishop Barski, who was already waiting for him. Szymon began to speak almost before he sat down: ‘I’m not here to seek counsel about our meetings. Chalubinski pretty well took care of that. And I’m not here to confess, because I’m no longer a believing Catholic. But I do very much want to ask you about something. You seem to be an understanding man.’

  ‘I try to be. But I barely understand myself, so what I provide is not understanding but sympathy.’ The bishop cleared his throat. ‘Yes, sympathy I do seem to have.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s sympathy I need.’

  ‘I judge this does not relate to government policy? I tried to make myself clear last time that our church will not come down totally on any side in what is a governmental dispute.’

  ‘I understand that. Could I speak in some detail?’

  ‘If you leave out the detail, you aren’t really speaking.’

  ‘I was present at that notorious series of trials in Lublin when Majdanek and Zamek Lublin and Under the Clock were liberated by the Russians. The prisoners in Field Four elected me to speak for them, and I did. These men had been horribly treated and they demanded justice. So I was a principal testifier.

  ‘By rotten luck the first man tried was a fellow named Willi Zimmel, a kind of dumb-witted, open-faced farm boy who had stumbled into the SS thinking it was a club of scouts. He saved my life. Hid me when a terrible brute named Otto Grundtz came searching for me on the last day to shoot me.

  ‘So when Willi Zimmel was in the docket, fighting for his life, some men from Field Four came to me and said: “We’ve got to hang that bastard,” and I suppose they had cause. But I didn’t, for Willi had saved my life, and he saved it twice, because he also rescued me from the concrete rollers which would have killed me in a couple more days.

  ‘I refused to say anything bad about him, but I wasn’t saying much good, either, because I wanted these trials to produce results. I wanted men like Grundtz to hang but I wanted Willi Zimmel to live. And then I thought of exactly the right thing to say. I told the judges that the Nazi command didn’t trust Willi because he was too lenient with the prisoners in his charge. And I related how Otto Grundtz had come along one morning and in front of us all had called him a pig’s asshole.

  ‘The judges laughed. The other witnesses laughed. In the docket Willi Zimmel laughed, a big dumb farm boy from some German village, and in the end he was acquitted. I had saved his life.

  ‘But the men from my field who had wanted him hanged came to me and raised hell. “You dumb fool,” they said accusingly, “your joke let him get away.” And they warned me that if I did anything like that with Otto Grundtz, enabling him to escape, they would hang me in his place.

  ‘The warning was unnecessary. No man in Field Four was more eager
than I to see Otto Grundtz hang. I had this friend Professor Tomczyk of Lublin. Grundtz smashed his glasses on purpose so the old man could never read again. And he used to come slouching down the line, staring at us with dark eyes hiding under his huge eyebrows, looking for someone to hang on his private gibbet. I wanted to strangle him with my own hands.

  ‘So when he moved into the docket to stand trial for his many crimes, and it was clear that I as a former prisoner under his command would be the major witness, I began to sweat and tremble, afraid that he would escape. The defense lawyer pleaded that Grundtz had only followed orders, and since the judges had already proved in the Zimmel case that they would find innocent Nazis not guilty, it seemed to me that I was personally responsible to see that this one did not escape.

  ‘I testified to everything that I had seen Grundtz do, the hangings for no cause, the dragging of sick prisoners to Barracks Nineteen, where they were left to starve to death, everything. And then, because it seemed so long ago and so ordinary, all the killings, I invented three really horrible stories, and I saw the judge shudder. But most of all …’

  Here Bukowski stopped. He reminded the bishop that he must remember that at the time of the Lublin trials he, Bukowski, had weighed barely a hundred pounds and, he said with a bitter smile, he was not in very good shape. He asked if he could have some brandy, and Bishop Barski left the room and rummaged for some. It steadied Bukowski.

  ‘The judges looked at me, but so did Otto Grundtz, and he smiled. The worse my lies became, the wider his smile grew, as if he were saying: “See! You’re no different from me.” He knew what I was doing and why I was doing it, but he also knew that in a time of passion the Polish hero was no different from the Nazi torturer.

  ‘My accusations were so appalling that the judges asked if I would swear to them, and I cried: “I’ll swear on the Bible itself,” and the Russian judge said: “We don’t need the Bible. Just tell us that all this actually happened,” and from the listeners several men shouted: “It happened! He did worse to the men in our barracks.” And I pray to God they were telling the truth, because I wasn’t.

  ‘So Otto Grundtz was hanged. From the very gibbet on which he had himself hanged so many. And I waited there in the front line staring at him, and as he stood on the white stool with the rope about his neck he smiled down at me, still accusing me of being his brother, of being his Polish counterpart.

  ‘He smiles at me at night. I cannot drive him from my conscience. He tried to murder me, and I murdered him. Is there anything I can do to get this hateful man out of my soul?’

  Bishop Barski sipped his brandy, studied the glass, and said hesitantly: ‘A man runs a grave risk, Szymon, when he presumes to administer punishment. Because God may have plans which are quite different.’

  Bukowski was shocked. ‘Do you mean those monsters should have gone free?’

  ‘No! No! It was proper that they should hang, because the foulness of their lives condemned them, not you or I.’

  ‘I would still be willing to condemn them. For the terrible things they did.’

  ‘But doesn’t it seem strange, Szymon, that the large criminals at your Majdanek and my Auschwitz were hanged with great fanfare, while the little criminals who terrorized our villages along the Vistula … they all escaped?’

  Bukowski’s knuckles grew white. ‘I spent two years trying to find Hans Yunger, the man who shot my mother … your uncle. He vanished. We tracked him to Kiev, where he supervised the slaughter of eight thousand Ukrainians. But there he vanished.’ His tensed jaw muscles showed that he was reliving painful defeats, and when he could not speak, the bishop did.

  ‘It was the same with the others. Konrad Krumpf, who ordered your grandmother hanged … he fled to Paris, sold some of the art treasures from your palace, bought his way to Paraguay, where he runs a big estate. Falk von Eschl, who supervised his terror from our castle … the judges could not believe that a man who spoke English so well, who knew many of their friends in the various governments … He was found guilty of nothing and is now living in Estoril, where rich American tourists idolize him.’

  The two men studied their brandy in a silence which was broken in a curious way: Bishop Barski clapped his hands and broke into a hearty laugh. Shoving his glass aside, he reached across the table and patted Szymon on the hand. ‘It’s really quite funny, Bukowski, that you should consult me about a Nazi monster whom you can’t get out of your soul, because I have a little Jewish rabbi that I can’t get out of mine.’ He laughed again and poured Bukowski another drink.

  ‘You may not know it, but in Auschwitz, which I prefer to call by its Nazi name because it certainly had nothing to do with Polish Oswiecim, which was a placid little town before they came … Where was I? Yes, in Auschwitz the Nazis were particularly brutal with priests and rabbis, because they felt a need to ridicule and denigrate all religions except their own.

  ‘This meant that priests and rabbis were often thrown together, and there was one horrible little cell with only one small window rather high up into which they crammed sixty or more men at dusk, expecting to find thirty-eight or thirty-nine of them suffocated by morning. Twice I spent a night in that cell, and if you told me now that I would have to do so again, I assure you, Bukowski, I would go screaming, hair-pulling mad. I think no one could survive that terrifying ordeal three times. I couldn’t.

  ‘I survived the first time—one of nineteen who did—because as I was about to be jammed inside, a little Jewish rabbi whose name I never knew whispered just four words:

  “Stand opposite the window.” That was all. When I found myself inside, one of that scrambling mass, I saw what he meant, for all the big and powerful fellows were fighting for a place near the window, which allowed me freedom to take my place against the wall on the opposite side.

  ‘Secure in position and tall enough to have my head slightly above the others, I learned two things. Such air as did come into the room drifted my way, and those struggling to intercept it at the window killed one another. There were fights for air, and stranglings, and bodies crushed when they fainted and fell to the floor. And there I stood, thanks to the little Jew, above it all, saved by the bits of air that came to me now and then.

  ‘Toward morning, when it looked as if I might be one of the survivors, I began to look for my benefactor, but he wasn’t in the cell. Of that I was sure, for he certainly wasn’t one of those still standing, nor was he among the corpses piled on the floor. When I got out I found that he along with several others had been at the end of the line and could not be pushed in. They would be held over for the next night.

  ‘I saw the little Jew on the work detail next day, lifting great rocks when we’d had no food, not even breakfast soup, and I’d had no sleep. When he saw that I’d survived, his eyes glowed and he started to come over to speak to me, but guards saw him move and they kicked him to death. Before my eyes, they kicked him to death.

  ‘As he lay there in the prison yard looking up at me, his face torn apart and covered with blood, I wanted with all the force in my body to rush over and comfort him, to take him in my arms, for he had saved my life and he deserved that consolation in the moments when he was leaving his. But I could not. I had no physical or moral power. The cell had been too terrible, and I stood motionless as they kicked my savior to death.

  ‘What was the last thing he did on this earth? He smiled at me. Through the blood that dimmed his eyes he smiled at me, as if to say: “Be not afraid.” I seemed to hear this little Jewish rabbi using the words of Jesus Christ.’

  Bishop Barski lowered his head to the table, and whether he was weeping or praying, Bukowski could not determine, but it seemed certain that he was in communion with the rabbi who had saved his life. Later, when he had composed himself, he blew his nose and said: ‘I am with this nameless little man three or four nights a week when I try to sleep. And if I am indeed sympathetic to the trials of others, as some say I am, it’s because of the counsel I take with him. He
saved my life and I was powerless to save his.’ He studied his hands for a moment, then broke into laughter again. ‘Have you noticed how I always refer to him as the little Jew? He was. I was this tall and he came only to here. But in the council of God he was so very big and I so very small.’

  Suddenly he reached forward to take Bukowski’s hands again. ‘We can never exorcise the spirits that really matter in our lives. And maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe your Otto Grundtz, maybe he is the crucial member of your life the way the Jewish rabbi is the vital member of mine.’

  ‘But the bearing of false witness. My lies about a doomed man, that continues to worry me.’

  ‘Lies? Who escapes them, Szymon? People come to me: “My mother is dying of cancer. Can you console her?” So I go to the death room and see this tired old woman who’s spent a long life working for others, and her time has come and she asks me: “Will God cure my cancer?” and I assure her that He will. But I know I am lying.’

  ‘You lie to help save a life,’ Bukowski said. ‘I lied to help destroy one.’

  ‘Men like Grundtz destroy themselves. You merely nodded approval. Don’t let him haunt you.’

  ‘I shall try,’ Bukowski assured the bishop, ‘but my other haunting is much more deadening, in a way. It comes from a much different source.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, I’m much like you. I never married, you know.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘I saw you looking at me in surprise at the conclusion of our meeting the other night.’

  ‘Yes. It was clear that some powerful crisis had come over the talks. You looked quite shaken.’