Poland: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘What did you mean?’

  ‘Well, frankly, under the Fuehrer’s plans for Poland, for its extinction, that is … I don’t mean gentry of quality like you or Count Lubonski. I mean only the unspeakable peasant and the impossible shopkeepers in the villages. In the new Poland there’ll be no place for a palace like this, a center of education and refinement.’

  ‘Where would the train carry the treasures?’

  ‘To Berlin.’

  She wanted to say, with bitter force, that Berlin was being bombed nightly by the Allied planes and that her treasures would be much safer in Bukowo than there, but she refrained, conscious of the absolute power this unpleasant little man had over her. She asked simply: ‘Is that wise?’ and received an answer which stunned her.

  ‘I believe arrangements could be made for the train to pass right on through to Paris.’

  She could not believe what she was hearing, but then her son said: ‘Goering has indicated that if we give him the Holbein and three of the statues, he will permit us to carry the rest of the treasures to Paris.’

  ‘What an extraordinary arrangement,’ Marjorie said. ‘Whatever would we do with them in Paris?’

  ‘What do we do with them here?’ her son asked.

  ‘They grace a building which is inextricably a part of this land, this edge of the Vistula River, and no other. Each piece, Ludwik, was brought to stand in proper relation to each other. Those two paintings …’ and she indicated the two magnificent panoramas that summarized so much of Polish history.

  ‘Oh,’ Krumpf said. ‘We’ve already discussed them. Goering or nobody else would want them. They’re purely local, with no significance at all. We wouldn’t take that other big one, either, the one that’s nothing but water lilies. But even leaving them behind, which we would have to do, Ludwik and I calculate we’d need seven goods wagons from here to Paris.’

  ‘I do believe that you and Ludwik might have consulted with me,’ she said. ‘They are my belongings, each item purchased with my money.’

  Krumpf did not have the gall to state the truth bluntly; had he been alone with her, he might well have done so, pointing out that she was a worn-out old woman who would soon be dead and commanding her not to meddle in decisions reached by her superiors with great difficulty. Instead he said: ‘Under the new rules this palace became your son’s at the moment his father died. These are his treasures now, regardless of who paid for them. And he is being very wise, I think, in completing these arrangements now.’

  She could not keep herself from asking: ‘Before the Russians come?’

  Krumpf’s voice rose to a high scream: ‘You stop that! If you say that where others can hear you, you can be shot. For treason.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said honestly. ‘These are difficult times.’

  ‘They are,’ Krumpf said, resuming his customary manner. ‘And I think your son has been rather brilliant in handling this affair. A train of seven cars, all the way to Paris. I can tell you that when Ludwik first proposed giving the Holbein to Goering, I prophesied it wouldn’t work. We’ll be crating the Holbein tomorrow for a special truck heading for the mine outside Berlin where the field marshal is collecting the paintings for his new museum.’

  So it was Ludwik who had arranged this infamous deal, and as she looked to where he sat before the Matejko painting of Jan Sobieski on his way to Vienna, she wondered what other things he had done behind her back—what hideous price had he paid the Germans to have won their permission to obtain an entire train? And she began to count up the strange happenings at Bukowo—the capture of young Szymon Bukowski, the beating of Biruta Buk, the executions of the women grinding illegal wheat—and she saw that in every instance the clever identifications by the Nazis would be understandable if they had within the Polish community someone who was feeding them information. Could it really have been her son?

  When the carpenters crated the Holbein, sending mournful echoes through the palace, she did not run to catch one last glimpse before the lid was nailed down; she carried that painting in her heart. But as she sat at dinner that night at one corner of the vast table which could have seated threescore, she felt terribly alone, even though Krumpf and her son were in their usual places, and when the German asked her why she was so sad, she said: ‘Painters do strange things. They put the image on the canvas and at the same time on the hearts of all who ever own it.’

  She left the generous table where Krumpf and some of his men ate extremely well, and wandered not to the upstairs, where her Rembrandt and Correggio and Jan Steen still waited, but down to the lower floor, where that narrow, poorly lighted gallery housed the portraits of Polish nobles long dead, and as she walked along with a flashlight, she illuminated each face and spoke to it as if the owner shared her misery:

  ‘Radziwill, you damned Lithuanian conniver. You were always smarter than the Poles you competed with. I would have enjoyed crossing swords with you. You were clever and genetically prolific, and that’s a good combination for those who would rule.

  ‘Old Mniszech, it was you who determined who should sit on the throne of Russia. What a devious, powerful rascal you were. And Jan Zamoyski, I would have loved to be your daughter. We would have understood each other, you a minor noble who became head of the University of Padua and owner of whole cities and wise governor of men. What savage husband would you have found for me?

  ‘And you, Czartoryski, how I admire you! Tyrant, manipulator of princes, but always the defender of women’s education and the father of Lubomirska. I wish I had been educated at your feet, old man.’

  And there in the darkness, when she allowed her torch to dim, she burst into tears and asked aloud: ‘How could I love Poland so much and Ludwik, my own son, love her so little?’

  Signals flashing through her tired body sent unmistakable messages that her remaining days might be few, and she felt that she must dedicate what energy she had to try to bring reason and responsibility to her son, and to this end she arranged to be with him whenever possible.

  ‘Ludwik, I can see now that someone like Goering was bound to get some of our paintings, and you’ve probably done a clever thing in buying him off cheaply.’

  ‘That was my thinking. You know, Mother, the future here is extremely obscure.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I think the Russians will sweep over here like a hurricane. They’ll probably burn the villages, but they’ll leave this. They enjoy museums.’

  ‘You think the Germans are doomed?’

  ‘Of course I think so. I know America. I know her factories. Ludwik, when they get cranked up, as they say, they’ll keep turning out tanks and planes for twenty years, if it takes that long. I know my nephew Lawrence in Detroit. If it takes till the year two thousand, he and others like him will still be working.’

  ‘You believe that, Mother?’

  ‘The amount of time? I don’t know. The end result? There can be no question. We will see American airplanes over this palace.’ She paused, startled by her own vehemence and by the alteration it made in her relations with her son and his adviser Krumpf. ‘I am sorry to have disclosed my hand so openly, but I feel very weak these days and thought it better be said.’

  Ludwik, trembling with apprehension lest the Germans learn that his mother was a defeatist who could be shot—and Konrad Krumpf was a man to do the shooting—could think of nothing to say. It would be undignified to plead with his mother to keep her mouth shut, for he knew she would not. And there was no way he could prevent her from voicing her opinions at table if she felt she was about to die. The simplest solution would be if she really did die, and sooner rather than later, and he reached this conclusion not through callousness, but because he could see that the decisions which had to be made now were of a magnitude and definition which she was simply too old to understand. Marjorie Trilling, heiress of Chicago, had quixotically fallen in love with a nation she had never seen realistically, and now those days of romance and imagination were ended. She was as o
ut-of-date as her palace, and he prayed that she would vanish without causing irreparable damage.

  She sought certain assurances: ‘Ludwik, my family was a proud one. My grandfather was a country druggist, an apothecary, and he gave honest count in his prairie town. He couldn’t do otherwise. The Bukowskis in this little village never had much, you know. Always had to jump and do what the various Counts Lubonski directed, but they were known as men of solid honor. I don’t want you to do anything, not the slightest thing, Ludwik, that would scar our honor.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘I mean Krumpf. His job is to drag you down and destroy you. His job is to destroy Lubonski, to destroy everything Polish. He tolerates you because you live in a palace, and when he has no more use for you, he will cut your throat.’

  In the long silence that followed, Ludwik, inheritor of the palace, was forced at last to study the real moral issues that confronted him. Finally he said, very slowly: ‘I know that Krumpf is using me to gain a promotion of some kind, but principally to gain escape from here. I think he’s terrified of the Russians. I think he will do anything to get away, and that’s why I was able to get him to make the deal on the train.’

  ‘But what will you do with all these treasures in Paris?’

  ‘Sell them.’

  His mother could offer no sensible comment, so she ignored the statement. If her son believed that he could find happiness by selling off his mother’s possessions in a strange city, so be it. But she could speak about the graver issues: ‘Ludwik, you’re Polish. You’re not even half-American, because I became Polish years ago, heart and conscience Polish. So in saving yourself, you must not do anything to the detriment of your nation.’

  Ludwik licked his lips, looked at his mother finally, and promised: ‘You will not find my name on Krumpf’s golden cards.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I came upon him one day when he was working, as usual, on his cards. Poles who could be trusted. Poles who would be shot if arrested. One color for each. And I noticed a small pile of much different cards and I asked what they were, and he quickly covered them up. But he did say: “Those are the ones who will have positions of importance in the new Poland we shall create here, the German Poland.” And he said meaningfully: “I hope your name will be on one of those cards soon—the people we treasure.” I could guess what a Pole had to do to get on that list.’

  The image of Konrad Krumpf hunched over his cards, ordaining who should live and who should die, was so compelling that Marjorie could think of little else during the remaining days of her life. Early one morning, after Krumpf had departed to supervise the execution of nine hostages in one of his villages down the river, she walked casually along the second-floor hall and looked into the Holbein room to see if Krumpf’s secretary was there, and finding him absent, she entered as if to check the spare space where the painting had been, but when she satisfied herself that no one was likely to interrupt, she took a deep breath, hurried to Krumpf’s desk, and began rummaging for the stack of golden cards.

  Finally she found it with the neatly lettered top card proclaiming that the persons hidden underneath were people of prudence willing to act in the long-range interests of their country. Trembling, and aware of the suicidal thing she was about to do, she took paper and began writing down the forty-three names.

  As she was at work, she heard footsteps in the hall, and assuming it to be Krumpf’s secretary, who would occupy the room from then on, barring her escape, she supposed that she was doomed, but on the chance that something might happen to save her, she scooped up the cards, grabbed her paper, and darted into a closet, where she waited in darkness, trying to control the palpitations of her heart.

  It was not the secretary. It was two minor Gestapo functionaries come to make entries in the card system, and they went to the very section from which she had taken the golden cards.

  ‘Hello, the commander left the drawer open! He’d bite us if we did that.’

  ‘He’s busy these days.’

  ‘Do you have Biruta Buk’s card? She’s a bad one.’

  ‘I can’t understand why he just doesn’t shoot her.’

  ‘I think he’s using her as bait. She’s passing food to the partisans, you know.’

  ‘Everybody knows. He’ll trick her yet. You watch.’

  The men made their entries, returned the files, and closed the drawer. When their footsteps retreated down the hall, Marjorie went to the desk, spread her cards, and resumed transcribing them. When she was finished, and had replaced the file, she thought: I’m glad my son’s name was not among them. At least he’s not an actual traitor.

  She folded the precious piece of paper and held it in her left hand as she walked down the hallway. She paused at the entrance to her theater, where she could hear Caruso singing and Paderewski at the piano, then descended to the great hall and looked as if for the last time at her two mammoth canvases, nodding to the defenders of Czestochowa and saluting Jan Sobieski. She walked casually from the palace, gazing with love at those sights which had always enchanted her. There was Wiktor’s grandiose stable with its array of handsome carriages. There was the chimney on which the storks built their messy home each year. Beyond were the immortal beech trees, those castles of the forest. And straight ahead was the little village in which so much life evolved. She loved that village and its irregular square, and she loved the people who had occupied it, bold Jadwiga most of all. From this powerful woman she had learned her first real words of Polish, and in this square she had seen Jadwiga hanging by the neck.

  She walked twice around the perimeter, pausing now and then to inspect shops that contained nothing, and then she spotted her target. Biruta Buk, limping from the punishment she had absorbed during her interrogation, unable to smile because of the wounds across her face, appeared at the far end and saw Madame Bukowska immediately. Sensing that the old woman would not be here without good reason, she walked slowly toward her, and as the distance between the two diminished, each could see in the other exactly what she had hoped to see.

  Biruta had been beaten close to death, but she still walked proudly, almost defiantly. Madame Bukowska was old and tired and nearly worn out, but she still displayed that inner radiance which comes only from a life actively spent in defense of purposeful ideals.

  When they stood face to face, Marjorie leaned forward like a village busybody to inspect with her right forefinger Biruta’s scarred cheeks, but with her left hand, so that none could see, she delivered the fatal list of names.

  ‘Kill them all,’ she whispered, and when Biruta gasped at such a message, Marjorie took her by the shoulders and turned her sideways so that light could fall upon her damaged face, as if she wished to see it more accurately. ‘They are the traitors. Kill them all.’

  Abruptly she dismissed the peasant girl as if she, Bukowska, were still gentry from the great house and Biruta the serf, and then resumed her passage about the square, but as she reached one of the corners she half-stumbled sideways, as if struck by a cart no one could see. Then she staggered twice, reached out for a handhold that was not there, and died in the sunlight.

  When the apparently distraught son was told that his mother was dead, he could not prevent himself from thinking: God’s mercy.

  Because Poland continued to play such a vital role in the eastern theater of war, the attention of its patriots had to focus on what was happening along the battle lines in Russia, and every inch of territory regained by Soviet troops was greeted joyously by those partisans who saw in Communism the path that Poland must take when peace came, and with growing apprehension by those more conservative men who had begun to hear rumors of how the Russians were behaving in towns they recaptured.

  At first Jan Buk sided with the pro-Communists, cheering the Russian victories, but when rumors of a massacre of Polish officers at a place called Katyn Forest began seeping in, he had to wonder: Hundreds, maybe thousands, murdered by the Soviets. Shot in the
back of the head. He found it difficult to believe such accusations, and when the radical partisans explained that Germans had really done the killing, he accepted their version.

  But then he heard the pro-Russians describing the way they wanted the new Poland to be, and he was not pleased with the prospect of surrendering his farm to the management of others, and he was downright displeased with their proposal to outlaw the Catholic church.

  The debate took a sharp turn when the radicals started abusing the Allies for accomplishing so little in the west when the Soviets were fighting so valiantly in the east: ‘Cowardly Allies! Hiding behind their Channel. Afraid to tackle Hitler. Leaving the Russians to fight the war alone.’ Such speakers held the efforts of the English and especially the Americans in contempt, but on several occasions Jan heard others argue differently: ‘Watch! When the great push comes, those Americans are going to hammer Hitler.’ He could not make up his mind who was right.

  However, at midnight on 17 August 1943 the British had performed an act in their western theater which bore no apparent relationship to the war in Poland but which did subsequently alter the whole complex of warfare along the Vistula, plunging Jan Buk into the very heart of the wider conflict of which he had previously been ignorant.

  An immense formation of heavy British bombers from various air bases in England and Scotland had flown across the North Sea, crossed Denmark in darkness, and dropped down low over the inconspicuous village of Peenemünde at the edge of the Baltic Sea. Here they had dropped a tremendous freight of high explosives upon laboratories, manufacturing centers and barracks in which Adolf Hitler’s most formidable secret weapon was being readied for the destruction of London. Damage caused by the mighty bombs was immense, fires started by the smaller incendiaries completed the damage, and although the German air force retaliated, the lumbering British bombers made their escape, bomb racks empty.

  The raid did not obliterate Peenemünde, for its installations had been strongly built and cleverly camouflaged, but it did cause great anxiety, for if the bombers had come once with such striking success, they could come again. So a two-part decision was made: move the manufacturing elements for the secret weapon to underground sites deep inside Germany and move the testing of the weapon to some relatively unoccupied corner of Poland, from which the weapon could be fired onto empty land, Russian or Polish.