Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘I think I might be of help to you, sir.’

  ‘In what way?’ the irritated and distracted young man asked.

  ‘In the matter of Jadwiga.’ When Wiktor gasped, unable to make any sensible response, Janko pressed on: ‘If her condition becomes known, sir, it could bring ruin to your design.’

  ‘What are you speaking of?’ Bukowski thundered.

  ‘I’ve been driving you and the American girl into the woods. Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I don’t know what game you’re playing?’ Without being invited, he took a chair.

  ‘Who told you to sit in my presence?’

  Ignoring the question, Janko continued: ‘One word of this, as you know, and the American girl and her parents …’ He made a peasant sign for a bird flying away.

  Bukowski was sweating. This oaf had done two things to him by this visit: he had terrified him with a crystal-clear vision of disaster, and he had somehow suggested that it could be avoided. Licking his dry lips, Bukowski poured himself a drink and asked Buk if he would have one, too.

  ‘Please,’ the peasant said.

  ‘Now what brings you here? Blackmail? I’ll have you shot.’

  ‘Pan Bukowski, don’t talk like a damned fool. Obviously I come to help.’

  ‘Thank God!’ the frightened man cried.

  ‘I like you. You’ve been a good master, and I could never say otherwise.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Good. Now you’re talking like a sensible man. Pan Bukowski, for several years now I’ve been wanting to marry Jadwiga—’

  ‘You’d marry her?’ Wiktor cried, leaping from his chair to pour his savior another drink.

  ‘I would have married her three years ago,’ Janko said very slowly.

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Because we … had … no … land.’

  Silence. In some irritation Bukowski looked away: These demned peasants, always trying to filch a man’s land, land he’s held for a thousand years.

  It was important, Janko thought, that Bukowski make the next statement, so he calmly sipped his drink, staring all the while at the distraught young man, whose eyes came back to his from time to time. Ageless, rooted deep in the soil he had never owned, Janko Buk kept staring at his master who controlled the land he had never used wisely. Finally the master broke.

  ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘Jadwiga sent me a drawing.’

  ‘So it was her plotting?’

  ‘I’m sure you weren’t wholly at fault, Pan. As the priest always says, “No girl can become pregnant if she keeps her knees together.’ ”

  Bukowski took the carefully drawn map, with every trail and cottage clearly delineated. ‘Your girl can draw, that I’ll say.’

  ‘For the present,’ Buk said, ‘she’s your girl.’

  ‘This area that’s marked? Is that what you think you need?’

  ‘And the cottage. It’s marked too.’

  ‘And if I give you these

  ‘And that little corner of the forest. I marked that. I want the fallen branches and the rabbits from that corner.’

  ‘And if I say no?’ Bukowski asked, deeply disturbed by the arrogance of his groom.

  With great care Janko now said what he had known would have to be said: ‘Pan Bukowski, with the American ambassador, you’re playing for millions. I’m playing only for a small field, a decent cottage and a corner of the forest my family has tended for a thousand years. Think about it.’

  Silence, much more powerful than before, much more shot through with the meaning of life and the accumulated wisdom of history. Millions against a few fallen branches, a few rabbits in a winter’s stew.

  The tension became so great that neither man dared break that silence. Bukowski hated his groom for trying to drive such a bargain in such a shameful cause; Janko Buk hated himself for having allowed himself to become engaged in such a negotiation. But each man was fighting for his life, for all the values he had accumulated beside the Vistula in past centuries. One of the old Bukowskis had warned his family: The day peasants get their own land, that day Poland crumbles.’ And the Buks who had tended the land and guarded the forests from enemies innumerable had always whispered: The only man who prospers in this country is the magnate, the priest, the Jew or the peasant who grabs hold of a little land.’

  Bukowskis in time past had owned the Buks, had hanged them for infractions, had forced them to fight wars, and had taken everything they produced, and it was insufferable that now a Buk should sit here making demands. Wiktor was unable to respond. His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth and he could not speak.

  Finally Janko rose, went to the wine bottle, came back to where Wiktor sat and refilled his glass. Then he poured a fresh drink for himself. Raising his glass, he said softly: Tan Bukowski, we can each do a great thing for the other. I shall leave Vienna tomorrow and marry Jadwiga before the baby comes. And I’ll tell Bogdan that his big cottage is now mine and my small one his, for his wife is dead and his children gone. I’ll not fence off my corner of the forest, but you and I will know it’s mine, and when you marry and rebuild Bukowo as it should be with your new money, you’ll go to the lawyer and sign the paper stating that the corner of the forest and the field and the cottage are mine.’

  He extended his hand, and Bukowski, still unable to speak, took it.

  During the first leg of the journey to Lwow, Mrs. Trilling enjoyed the experience even more than her daughter, because the train traversed almost the whole of Hungary, and she was able to see for the first time large areas of territory for which her husband was technically responsible. She made notes about the agriculture east of Budapest and looked forward with wonder as they approached the Carpathian Mountains, which would mark the separation of Hungary from the Austrian province of Galicia. As the wife of an important official accredited to the Austrian court, she was careful to avoid the word Poland, for legally it no longer existed, and it would have been offensive to the emperor to imply in any way that he did not own now and forever the lands that had once been Polish.

  Her daughter Marjorie felt no such constraint. It was obvious to her, and she knew it must be to her mother, too, that she was making this visit to determine whether or not she wished to marry a delightful, somewhat flighty, definitely impecunious Polish nobleman, and before she could give a final answer, she felt that she must see his land and evaluate where he had come from and what his character might be in relation to his homeland.

  She was desperately eager to see what had once been Poland, and she did not intend to call it Galicia, so at dusk, when the long, slow train started up the winding slopes of the Carpathians and it became obvious that entrance into Poland would occur late at night or perhaps even at dawn, she told her mother: ‘I shan’t go to bed tonight. I must see Wiktor’s land as it opens up before me.’

  Mrs. Trilling thought this completely sensible: ‘I’d do the same at your age, Marjorie. But I’m not your age, so you’ll excuse me.’

  As she prepared for the bed in her private drawing room she reflected with some amusement on the situation which faced her family, and she was wise enough to see certain preposterous aspects of this journey. This was the age when scores of newly rich American families brought their daughters to Europe to find titled husbands who would add luster to the social circles of New York, Chicago and Boston. President Grant’s daughter had caught a titled gentleman in Turkey or somewhere, as had the daughters of railroad tycoons, wheat millionaires, packing-house magnates and the owners of trolley-car franchises.

  But each of them, Mrs. Trilling reminded herself as she laughed at herself in the mirror, purchased idle young men with real titles. Count this, Lord that, the Duke of something else, and even a Prince or two. Wiktor, God bless him, has a family which has been ennobled for a thousand years longer than most of them, but he bears no title. What folly!

  Prior to their departure, Count Lubonski had briefed the Trillings: ‘Poland confers no ti
tles. Our family got ours through merit, plus a little judicious bribery, two centuries ago, from the Papal States. The Radziwills got theirs on the cheap from Lithuania. I believe Leszczynski got his, also through purchase, from the Holy Roman Empire. And others, I suspect, have just given themselves whatever titles they thought appropriate. Your young fellow Bukowski could have had any title his ancestors might have been willing to purchase, but he’s in the tradition of the great Mniszech family, with which mine has often been affiliated. They scorned titles and wound up with estates larger than Belgium.’

  Mrs. Trilling was no snob. Her social position in Chicago was so secure that she felt no need for a titled daughter to display at receptions, and she was prepared for Marjorie to marry young Bukowski if love developed between them and if Marjorie responded to what the girl called ‘the Polish experience.’ It would be disgraceful, Mrs. Trilling thought, for a girl with such a problem to spend the hours asleep when her train carried her for the first time into the fabled lands which might prove to be her future home.

  ‘God bless you out there,’ she said aloud as she went to bed.

  The young couple had moved into a salon car with very wide windows, where servants offered drinks and small refreshments through the night, and there they watched the Carpathians loom out of the darkness when the train’s bright lights pierced ahead. At midnight the train halted for about an hour, during which Wiktor and Marjorie walked in the spring air, asking the workmen how far ahead the border of Poland might be, and the men responded: ‘Galicia, five miles up.’

  They were a long five miles along a tortuous roadbed flanked by dense evergreens, and then—with no fanfare, no stopping for passport control—the train edged into Poland, and a perplexed Bukowski whispered with an echo of fatality: ‘Well, we’re here,’ and Marjorie could feel that he was trembling.

  ‘What is it, Wiktor?’ she asked in English. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’ And in that language he confessed: ‘It’s become a confusion, Poland. One knows not what to think of it.’

  Later, when the train had carefully climbed down the escarpment and dawn had broken over the vast plains south of Lwow, Marjorie experienced a sensation of wonder, for the land was so enormous, so empty that she knew nothing with which to compare it. In time, the train crossed a river whose signboard evoked childhood memories: ‘We used to memorize that river in grade school. West to east. “The Dniester, the Dnieper and the Don.” Who could have dreamed that I would one day see the Dniester?”

  The short run from the river to Lwow was a revelation to the Trilling women, for the few villages seemed pitifully poor, the land tremendous in its isolation, but when they neared the city they saw repeated signs of energy and affluence. They did not remain long in Lwow, but changed immediately to a smaller train that carried them eastward toward the Russian border. At a remote station, which looked incredibly forlorn, they detrained for a line of horse-drawn carriages that awaited them, and over the empty plains, which had once been devastated by Tatars coming to burn Krakow, they rode to the eastern frontier of the Austrian Empire.

  Toward dusk on a beautiful spring day they came at last to one of Count Lubonski’s estates, where the manager had some two hundred Ukrainian peasants in colorful dress waiting to welcome the visitors from America. Many knew where Chicago was; members of their families had emigrated there.

  There could have been for Marjorie Trilling no entrance into Poland more appropriate, for she grasped at once the mystery and the magnificence of this land which she was contemplating as her home. She saw the poverty, but also the warmth, of the Galician villages. She saw the efficient manner in which the estate was run, but also the virtual serfdom under which the Ukrainian peasants lived. She saw the lack of farm machinery, but also the rich yield of the winter crops now being harvested. Always there was the contrast: the rigid control of the church, the spiritual freedom of people who knew freedom of no other kind.

  ‘This is an amazing land,’ she told Wiktor on the third day.

  ‘Do you like it? So far?’

  ‘It frightens me.’

  Mrs. Trilling said that it frightened her, too, but she told her daughter what the countess had said when planning this extraordinary trip: ‘ “I shall start you at our estates near Lwow, and there you will see the essential Poland. Then to Lancut to see regal Poland. Then to Gorka to see how an average noble family lives, the Lubonskis. Then to Bukowo to see …” ’ Mrs. Trilling did not repeat what the countess had actually said: ‘To see where Marjorie may be living one day.’ Instead she edited the sentence: ‘ “To see where our dear Wiktor lives. And then to my town of Zamosc …” ’ The countess had said: ‘To be married, if such is God’s will, in the church where I was married so very happily.’ Mrs. Trilling said nothing descriptive about Zamosc.

  After five confusing, soul-twisting days on the Russian frontier, the party boarded a creaking, protesting train which took them westward to the keystone city of Przemysl, where the emperor had a huge fortress that guarded his eastern territories. The Trillings stayed at the fort as guests of the commandant, and more than a dozen young officers from all parts of the empire paid court to the charming American heiress, giving her good opportunity to compare her possible intended with other young men his age. She told her mother: ‘Wiktor excels all of them. In dancing. In conversation. In looks,’ and her mother replied: ‘I can’t argue with that. I like your young man more every day.’

  Wiktor was appearing at great advantage, and when the Przemysl commandant, having heard of Bukowski’s triumph at Die Schmelz, suggested a riding competition, Marjorie cried: ‘Wiktor will be glad to participate, if someone will lend him a horse,’ and the commandant said: ‘He can have my best.’ Since the commandant had brought seven horses with him to this farthest outpost where there was little but riding to provide excitement, Wiktor had a rich choice and he selected well.

  Marjorie noticed that he was a much different rider from the one who had competed so graciously and with almost Hungarian charm in the capital of Austria. Now he was on his home terrain, a native Pole challenging the entire Austrian contingent, and he rode with desperation, as if this were not a race but a statement about the honor of his land. With grim effort he succeeded, and the Austrian officers, believing that this had been a mere sporting competition and not a test of empire, congratulated him on winning.

  There were balls each night, with lovely Polish girls from Przemysl supplementing the dozen or so wives of the senior officers, and Mrs. Trilling danced almost as much as her daughter. It was as gallant a visit as the two American women had ever spent, exceeding the best nights in Chicago or even the gala affairs in Vienna. It was romantic Austria at its best: young men from good families serving their allotted time extremely far from the capital in a fortress which might be attacked at any time from almost any quarter. Turks, Tatars, Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians had all besieged Przemysl at one time or another; one year it had fallen, the next it had withstood the attackers; twice there had been general massacres; more often, there had been ringing of cathedral bells as the besiegers withdrew in humiliation.

  There was a hill in Przemysl from which one could look down upon the winding river that encircled the town, and on the last day the commandant and seven of his officers invited Mrs. Trilling and her party there for a picnic in the French style, with much wine and fruit and sausage omelets, and a band of Jewish musicians to play tunes of the region. When the commandant sat alone with Mrs. Trilling he told her: ‘You could marry your daughter to any one of fifteen of my officers. All from the finest families. Starhemberg an offspring of the man who helped Sobieski defend Vienna against the Turks.’

  ‘Marjorie’s a bit of what we call a tomboy …’

  ‘I know the word well. I served in England as attaché. She’s an adorable tomboy, and if I were twenty years younger …’

  ‘She’d like it, being stationed here at your fortress for a while.’

  ‘We like it. This tests a man. You’d be
surprised at how many we ship back to Vienna. Can’t take it. The loneliness. The Cossacks raiding the frontier, with never an open fight. But I love it, Madame Ambassador, and if your daughter decides

  ‘Decides what?’

  ‘Count Lubonski telegraphed me: “If you like young Bukowski, allow him to show himself to good effect. If you dislike him, encourage him to make an ass of himself.” Andrzej Lubonski and I served in the same regiment, you know.’

  ‘Tell me, how was a Polish count accepted in an Austrian regiment? I mean, aren’t they always second class?’

  ‘Yes,’ the commandant replied without diverting his gaze. ‘They are always second class—unless they prove themselves to be first class.’

  ‘And Bukowski?’

  ‘First class, I think. A rider like that, with manners like that, I’d be pleased to have him in my regiment.’

  Early the next morning six carriages drew up to the fortress, each with four horses, and the Trilling women were introduced to the grandeur of rural Poland. The carriages were luxurious; the horses were beautifully groomed and reined with leather tooled in silver. They were from the famous stables of Count Potocki, whose ancestor had married the only daughter of the great Lubomirska of Lancut. The tremendous palace was now his and he proposed to entertain the Americans in style.

  It was about fifty miles to Lancut, and the coachmen had been instructed to drive moderately, with an overnight stop at a house which Count Potocki had ordered built especially for this occasion, so in late afternoon when a spring sun flooded the recumbent landscape the carriages pulled into a road which had been built only seven days before and up to a fine country house which had been finished only yesterday. The peasants who toiled on the old Lubomirski estate had not had new cottages for two centuries; the American visitors had an entire new mansion, which they would occupy for one night.

  And they enjoyed it! Bukowski, who had himself never seen Lancut, sat before the fire, regaling the women with legends of its ancient grandeur: ‘It has three hundred and sixty rooms, a collection of famous European art.’ But the courier leading them to the palace interrupted: ‘The Potockis added much when they took over. A new theater better than most in Paris, and those marvelous new galleries filled with Polish portraits. And have you heard about our huge stables where our horses are treated like princelings? We have fifty-five exquisite carriages, you know, and only one built in Poland. The rest? Vienna, Berlin, Paris.’ Smugly he added: ‘The Potockis have not been idle, you know.’