Poland: A Novel Part 19

In the manger ...'

The girls' voices blended nicely, and they bowed together as if studiously trained, so that even Pan Grabski, who was not a happy man and who disliked Ukrainians, admitted openly to everyone: The cobbler's daughters bring the best eggs and the brightest smiles.'

By Sat.u.r.day afternoon, when all the required eggs had been delivered, seven by seven, the large room in the manor house resembled a field of flowers, or a jeweler's shop, for the decorated eggs, each a work of superlative art, shone in the shadows: red and green and blue and gold and a dazzling black that made the other colors dance. Each family had its own preferred designs, several hundred to choose from, and each colored its eggs according to secrets long protected, but in the end the total collection from the village formed a kind of hymn to nature and to G.o.d, a subtle and magnificent blending of a small fragile thing and the longing of human beings to create something of beauty.

Feliks was awed by the Easter eggs of the Ukraine and pleased by the imaginative use to which Count Lubonski put them. On Easter Monday, at nine in the morning, he allowed the children of Polz to gather at his grounds, about which his servants had hidden the eggs provided by the parents, and at the firing of a gun the little ones were free to run where they wished in search of the colored eggs, but Lubonski held in his personal reserve about four dozen, which he himself distributed to the children who were too small to find any for themselves. Mothers and fathers beamed at the benevolence of their count.

After the rigors of Lent were relaxed, the village held a dance at which the cobbler's daughter and her young man were feasted, and it lasted three riotous days, during which the fiddle, the flute and the tambor were constantly at work, one player after another a.s.suming responsibility for the music-making.

Here for the first time Feliks and Roman saw the robust, artistic dancing of the Ukrainian peasant, so much more earthy and vigorous than that of their homeland, and Feliks in particular noticed the enticing manner in which Nadzha twirled to cause her heavy dress to flare out parallel to the floor while she flashed her pretty eyes this way and that as her head turned in the echoing air. She was delectable, the essence of a young woman flirting, whispering, laughing to the young men of her village: 'Here I am, Nadzha the cobbler's daughter, Nadzha the beautiful dancer.'

Feliks Bukowski was dangerously attracted to her, for after he had danced with her several times at the extended party, and the fiddle and flute fell silent, he walked with her along the edges of the village, and although he was himself responsible for the peasants of three similar villages in Poland, it was only through her that he learned what village life meant, and the grave obligations he undertook when he presumed to direct it.

'We girls are beautiful for a few years,' Nadzha said one day in a remarkable confession. 'Then the five babies come, and we grow fat, and we lose a tooth here and there, and'-she pointed to the women moving through her village-'at twenty-seven we're old women and the felted skirts are put away. At thirty-eight we're dead, and our husbands find themselves a second bride, and the dancing begins again. And it is like this forever.'

As the days pa.s.sed, with Lubonski inspecting all things and holding long meetings with Grabski over the accounts, Feliks and Nadzha wandered farther and farther from the village, until at last they reached that grove of birch trees by the small stream where, like others before them, they were hidden from sight, and they allowed the full springtime flood of pa.s.sion to sweep over them. Nadzha, even though she appreciated the ignominy that would result if she became pregnant, could not reject this fleeting opportunity for love with a sensitive man, even though he was Polish.

Her older sister was more prudent: 'Oh, Nadzha, you're doing a terrible thing. No man in this village will have you when he leaves.'

'I do not care,' she cried defiantly, glancing at her mother as she tended her ch.o.r.es.

Benedykta-miraculously safe in her own marriage, for often, she had observed, it was the most beautiful girls who had the greatest difficulty in landing a man-brought her mother into the argument: 'Nadzha is destroying herself. Speak to her.'

'Time destroys us,' the old woman said, and she left it at that.

'He will leave you,' Benedykta predicted. 'And with a baby, no doubt. And then where in G.o.d's h.e.l.l will you be?'

But Feliks did not propose to leave this impeccable girl, so much more sincere than Katarzyna Granicka, with whom he had been so deeply in love three weeks before, and as he pondered what to do, it occurred to him for the first time that magnates like the count and gentry like himself had family names-Lubonski, Granicki, Bukowski-whereas peasants, who were just as vital and important to the land, had none. Nadzha, the most exciting and challenging woman he had ever met, was nameless, and when she died, having borne her five children, she and all memories of her would perish from human record and from her corner of the steppes.

Then he had an idea. Reporting to Lubonski early one morning, he said: 'Grabski is not happy here, and I can see you're not happy with Grabski. Why not let me be your factor for the Ukraine? Here and the three other estates. I could earn you-'

'Feliks!' the count broke in peremptorily. 'The most terrible thing a young man in your position could possibly do, I mean even worse than murder, is to accept a job as factotum, for anybody, anywhere, under any conditions.'

'But why? I can count. I can manage.'

'Once you retreat from being real gentry, however mean, and become a manager, you announce to the world that you have surrendered ambition, that you are of the fifth category-as disgraceful as if you were in trade, or lending money like a Jew.'

'You mean ... I can never work?'

'Of course you can work. For the king ... for the Austrian emperor ... for the church if you have the vocation ... or for the cavalry. But never as the manager of someone's estates. That contaminates you ... demotes you from the ranks of gentry.'

When Feliks started to explain that he could reorganize the Lubonski estates and produce real income, the count said gently: 'I know very well what's causing this insanity. You've fallen in love with some girl in the village and you imagine yourself-' He broke off that line of reasoning and added harshly: 'Whoever she is, she can't read. She knows nothing. She has one dress. She's Orthodox, with all the corruption that implies. And in ten years she'll be old and fat and lazy, and then where in h.e.l.l will you be, saddled with such a wife?'

He rose and stamped about the room. 'Where is your undying love for that little Granicki girl? You could have had a magnate's daughter ... and you set your heart on some Ukrainian peasant. I'm disgusted with you.' And he would say no more.

Feliks kept to his room the rest of that long day, angered and embittered by the count's behavior and deeply tormented by the problem of the Ukrainian peasants, who labored so diligently and received so little, but even in those troubled hours he did not yet equate the plight of the Ukrainian serf with that of his own peasants. Nadzha's mournful summary described the peasants of Polz, not of Bukowo.

After a sleepless night he rose early and walked through the quiet village to the cobbler's cottage, where he knocked on the wooden door, polished and waxed for Easter, and called out that he wished to speak with Nadzha. To his surprise, it was Benedykta who opened the door, and she said grimly: 'Nadzha's gone. She's gone for good.'

'Why?' Feliks cried, pain echoing in his voice.

'Grabski came yesterday in the afternoon. He took her to the manor house, to see you I supposed. But it wasn't that. The count told her that she must leave this village forever ... that she no longer had a place here. And Grabski brought her back and told us all: "If she sleeps here this night, you lose your cottage and your cobbler's bench and this girl's wedding will be forbidden," meaning me.'

'What happened?'

'We wrapped her a little bundle-her felted dress, her sewing-and she started to walk to some village not belonging to the count.'

'Where did she go?'

'Who knows?' As she said this, Benedykta drew back into the protection of her dark cottage. 'You did this, you know. Now go away. Leave us, or I shall lose my intended too.'

Feliks ran to the stables attached to the manor and leaped upon a horse already saddled and intended for the count's morning ride. Spurring it cruelly, he galloped out to the road that Nadzha must have taken, calling for her vainly as he went. It was a narrow pathway, hardly a road, but it led through flowered glades and out into the immensity of the Ukrainian steppe, and when he reached a spot from which the village could no longer be seen, or any other habitation, he realized that Nadzha must have followed some other route into her exile, and he leaned down upon his horse's head and wept.

The first four days of the journey back to Poland were a solemn affair, because the count was openly displeased by the behavior of his young protege and would not speak with him, but Roman was more kindly disposed and it was now that the two young men drew closer together.

'She was beautiful,' Roman said.

'Have you ever known love?' Feliks asked. 'I mean real love with a wonderful girl?'

'Oh, no!' Roman said quickly.

'Are you going to marry Katarzyna Granicka?'

'Oh, no!' They rode in silence, after which Roman said tentatively: 'I thought you were in love with Katarzyna ... the camel rides, I mean ... and she did kiss you goodbye.'

'I was in love with her,' Feliks said, sitting sideways in his saddle so he could speak more easily. 'I think anyone would find himself in love with her.'

'I think I was ... in a way,' Roman said, but then he blushed so furiously that Feliks dared not question him further.

On the sixth day, when they had pa.s.sed Przemysl, the count resumed the instruction of his young charges: 'In the morning we shall arrive at Lancut, and riders have informed me that the Princess Lubomirska is already there for her summer visit. She's an extraordinary woman and deserves your fullest respect.'

He told them that she had been born Izabella Czartoryska of the great family at Pulawy. 'She's about my age, a little older maybe, and has become a handsome woman.' Realizing that this must sound odd to the young men, as if she had not been a handsome girl, he added: 'On one point you must remain silent, even if she touches upon it. As a young girl she was supposed to marry Stanislaw Poniatowski, who became king, but he refused her ... said she was too ugly. The wound never healed, and even though she married the best of the Lubomirskis and inherited their many castles, she has borne the scar and has worked day and night to drive Poniatowski from his throne. She is his mortal enemy, and before this century is out she will have her revenge.'

'Is she an ugly woman?' Feliks asked.

'Heavens, no! In European courts she is known as a beauty, but I find that European courts use that word for any woman with four towns, sixty-three villages, a hundred and forty-five thousand serfs and nineteen castles.'

'Has she so much?' Feliks asked, and Lubonski said: 'More.'

They broke camp at seven and made an easy ride to Lancut, a vast establishment with which the count was familiar but which stunned the young men, for its size and grandeur exceeded even what they had been told. A tall iron fence, its segments imported from Prague, enclosed a park the size of a large town, in the center of which, surrounded by a broad, deep moat and perched on a man-made hillock, rose what had once been a walled castle of enormous strength but which had recently been converted into an Italian-style palazzo with the original castle buried somewhere within it.

Its main entrance, set in a three-storied pink-and-white wall, and flanked by two tall towers with onion-bulb tops in the Russian style, was an ornately carved doorway which would have graced a cathedral, composed as it was of four concentric arches, each handsomely carved with allegorical marble figures. Its roof was a bright pink, and the same color was used in the nine or ten very large buildings on the palace grounds: the orangerie, the games house, the music hall, the little Greek-and-Roman museum and the huge stables. The lawn, which was kept meticulously trimmed by forty-seven scythe-wielding peasants who worked incessantly, was enormous; truly, one could not see the end of it, so far did it reach, broken here and there by lakes and fountains and running streams.

One of the towers was completely covered with pale-green ivy, which made it appear to be very old, like some castle along the Rhine; the other, of gleaming white marble, seemed as if it had been built a month ago. And everywhere Feliks looked he saw the tall, n.o.ble, varied trees of Lancut: pines from Norway, cedars imported from Lebanon, poplars shipped in from Lombardy, oak trees from England, cl.u.s.ters of birches from Russia and specimens of all the strong trees from Poland itself.

Lancut was a feast to the eye, all parts in perfect balance, but the construction which gave it distinction, and notoriety throughout Europe, was the central palace. It contained three hundred and sixty rooms, a resplendent art gallery with works by Rubens, Correggio, Watteau, Fragonard and a dazzling sculpture by Canova, a library unequaled in Poland, and a host of affectionate little refinements: one room incorporating frescoes imported from Pompeii, another with the best art of China, and a third furnished with the rarest treasures ever allowed to leave Persia. As it stood in the summer sunlight that morning in 1793, it represented a treasure of incalculable dimension, acc.u.mulated by the Lubomirskis over many generations.

During their first day in the palace the young men did not even meet its mistress; she was in another wing of ninety-seven rooms attended by eighty servants, where she might stay secluded for a week at a time, but on the second day she came forth to meet her interesting new guests; she had thirty-one staying with her at the time, but the Lubonskis were special.

Feliks was awed when he saw her, a rather stout, handsomely gowned woman of sixty, with bluish-white hair studded with diamonds, an ample bosom decorated with a single gold medal, and the warmest, most ingratiating smile he had ever seen on a woman of such distinction.

'My dear Lubonski, give me a kiss and tell me which of these divine young G.o.ds bears your name.' Then she clutched Roman to her, crying in her imperative voice: 'You are to stay with me forever.' To Feliks she extended her hand, and when he stared at it she said heartily: 'You stupid peasant. You're supposed to kiss it, but that's a silly French custom.' And before he knew what was happening, she grasped him in a huge embrace and kissed him on both cheeks. Then, pushing him away, she said: 'Lubonski, you must tell me accurately who this young G.o.d is.'

'He is gentry going back to the time of the Tatar invasions. He fought at Legnica ... with my ancestor at Grunwald ... with Jan Sobieski at Vienna ... and against the deluge at Czestochowa.'

'He sounds as if he might be older than the Lubomirskis, and even older than my family, the Czartoryskis.'

Roman, remembering how his mother had downgraded the Czartoryskis, winked at Feliks and thought to himself: It depends on who grades our families, doesn't it?

'But family age means little these days. The important thing, is he rich?'

'Like a thousand others, Princess, he fought but he did not save. He is impoverished, and like my son, he comes seeking a bride, but unlike my son, he must find a wealthy one.'

Feliks thought he might faint from the embarra.s.sment of such talk, but Lubomirska, as she was invariably called by those who did not know her personally, smiled at him generously and warmly. Taking his hands in hers, she said: 'A young knight's major responsibility is to serve his lord. His second is to find a rich wife, and we shall find you one, young knight.'

She told them that she would be having a formal dinner at eight that night and that she would appreciate it if they would dress in the old style, to which the count replied: 'There is no other style in which I could dress,' to which she replied: 'You are the conservator of old Poland, the one that dies a little more each day.'

The dinner was a limited affair, only forty-eight in the huge room and only one silver service in the center of the table: a sculpture from Verona showing the many-towered town of San Gimignano under siege, with little soldiers moving to and fro as the silver springs unwound. Thirty men were in attendance, and the brilliance of their costumes made the room glitter. About half wore the ancient Polish dress: tight trousers barely visible under long coats richly ornamented, ruffs at the neck, great wide sashes about the waist, ends hanging to the calf, and various gold chains from which hung medals and remembrances of past heroics. But several, who like Lubonski could boast of ancestors who fought at Vienna against the Turks, affected Oriental costumes marked by gold and silver crescents, Persian-type gowns rather than coats, and delicately embroidered fabrics rather than furs. These Orientalists avoided flashy jewels, a mere diamond here or there, and they tended to wear their hair a little longer than those in ancient costume. Three men, each one a diplomat, wore the modern French dress, made by English tailors in Vienna or Berlin, with exquisite silken fabrics, tight white breeches and silvered shoes.

Roman and Feliks, of course, wore the old Polish dress, and on their slim youthful bodies it looked superlative, the costume of those intended by divine grace to command and rule and make decisions of significance.

The eighteen women dressed in a variety of styles, borrowed mainly from Vienna and Paris, and their expensive dresses complemented the men's costumes, their wealth of diamonds and pearls and rubies showing well against either the Oriental dress of men like Lubonski or the more austere perfection of the diplomats' modern wear.

Feliks was seated next to a French lady in her forties, referred to as Mam'selle, who served as Lubomirska's secretary but not her confidante, and this woman liked to talk, so that during this gala evening and on the days following he learned much about his hostess: 'Lubomirska is probably the grandest woman in the world today. Here. Read this. It appeared in a German newspaper. Wolfgang von Goethe said, and you can see it right here. I'll read it for you: "I remained an extra week in Weimar so that I could converse further with the Princess Lubomirska, who must be the most intelligent, witty and perceptive woman G.o.d has made in this century."

'In Paris, where I met her, she was the constant companion of two brilliant Americans, Benjamin Franklin, whom she loved and I thought might marry, and Thomas Jefferson, younger and more revolutionary, G.o.d forbid. They adored her and brought their problems to her almost daily.

'She has nineteen castles like this one, and she endeavors to visit each one at least once every two years. For many years she has employed three teams of architects, mostly Italian and Dutch, to refinish and improve her castles. Each team moves from one to another, working at each about two years. She is constantly building, because she says that if One as powerful as G.o.d could afford to spend a whole week at His building, she can afford to spend a year or two at hers.

'She keeps, I believe, about a hundred and sixty servants here, not counting the gardeners or the stablemen, and they work at their jobs all year. But she is able to come here for only about four weeks in the summer, and in many years, as you might guess, she doesn't get here at all. But she loves to travel ... is on the go constantly ... and has erected along all the major routes she uses, from one castle to the next, little homes-four rooms for her, two for the servants who live there the year round. She has some forty of these, I suppose, all over Poland, and years might slip by without her using this one or that one, but there it waits, always ready for her if she chances to pa.s.s by.'

By the end of the first enchanting week Feliks realized that it would require far more than six weeks for him to plumb the richness and the wonder of Lancut, but the greatest richness resided in the princess herself, and he was delighted to discover that she enjoyed talking with him, but he was also intelligent enough to know that she found pleasure in doing so because he was so nave, so uninstructed.

'My husband was a dear man, Feliks, but the Lubomirskis, G.o.d bless them, usually are. He was a gentleman, and it was through him that I inherited sixteen of my castles. I am especially proud of being a Czartoryska, and if what Goethe said of me is true, it's because of the grinding education my father made me master. "Learn languages, you little idiot," he shouted at me. "You aren't going to stay in Pulawy all your life." What languages do you speak, Feliks?'

When he revealed how impoverished he was, she lamented: 'Half your life gone ... totally wasted. How can you ever be governor of Galicia if you can't speak good German in Vienna? You know I spoke English to Franklin and Jefferson.'

'Who are they?'

To his surprise, she grasped him to her bosom and held his head against her throat for some moments. 'Blessed G.o.d, I wish I had a son like you,' and while she still embraced him she said: 'All the energy I spend in building, and no one of either Lubomirski or Czartoryski to leave my empire to when I die. It is very painful, Feliks.'

During the ensuing weeks she kept Feliks close to her, instructing him in the ways of Polish society, and sometimes as she did so she spoke of the king: 'How miserable he must be in that petty castle of his, watching his kingdom evaporate before his eyes. He was given the world to command ... and will lose it all.' Feliks could see her mouth grow tense as she told him vengefully: 'He started with so much ... to end with so little. I with so little ... to end with so much.' It was obvious that she hated the king, but Feliks, obedient to Lubonski's command, made no comment, nor did he tell Roman of his conversations with the great woman.

Each day he spent in Roman Lubonski's company he liked him more; the young man was not at all slow-witted, as some had said, nor was he indifferent to evidences about him. He was merely quiet, thoughtful. 'Lubomirska frightens me, but then all women do, even my mother.' He laughed quietly, then corrected himself: 'Especially my mother. She wants me to become some important figure and pesters me constantly with the fact that to do so, I must first find the right wife.' He looked sideways at Feliks and said hesitantly: 'You're in love with Lubomirska, aren't you?'

Feliks was. Like many ambitious young men before him, he had been swept away by his first acquaintance with a truly grand woman, for he could imagine the tremendous difference such a helpmeet would make, and this discovery encouraged him to compare his first two boyish loves with this dynamic, mature one: 'When Katarzyna Granicka and I rode across the steppe on our camels, I wished the world would go on like that forever, and when Nadzha was banished from her village, I knew my heart was breaking. But now that I see Lubomirska ... You know, Roman, I think you're in love with her, too.'

'Have you ever watched a summer storm thundering down the Vistula from the mountains? How it sweeps everything before it? Even the small boats that aren't tied securely? Lubomirska is like that. I'm terrified of her, she's so powerful.'

During the third week of their stay, Lubomirska imported from Krakow a company of some three dozen musicians, who would perform at the palace for three weeks: the best Jewish orchestra from that city, fourteen men in knee pants, black stockings and shoes, long black coats, flat hats and copious hair about their faces; six German soloists who knew Mozart and Handel; and sixteen other singers who could serve either as chorus or as soloists in a variety of forms.

Now the palace was filled with music, and Feliks would sit in the splendid rooms in which it was played, his head back, his eyes following the ornate stucco work which decorated the ceilings: cupids and angels and lions and tigers, all without bodies, white-faced and staring down at the listeners. And there were times when the German soloists departed and the robust Polish singers took over with folk songs from Krakow; then Lancut would ring with scores of voices joined together in a festival of song.

At the conclusion of one such concert, Lubomirska obviously wanted to talk with Feliks, and this gave him an opportunity to ask questions which had begun to gnaw at his conscience: 'Is it true, what Mam'selle told me, that you have nineteen castles like this one?'

'That is true.'

'And that you keep three teams of architects busy, year after year?'

'We Czartoryskis are builders, Feliks. We find a corner of empty Poland and we build something on it.'

'But sometimes you don't visit one of your castles for years on end.'

'One must also visit Paris and Vienna. And Rome and Venice. Have you ever been to those places?'

'Roman's been to Vienna. He says it was a little city of great charm, hiding within gigantic walls.'

'Sometimes walls save a city. Would to G.o.d we'd had walls of some kind around Poland, we might have saved it.'

'Is it true that you own more than a hundred and fifty thousand peasants?'

'Who knows?'

'Will they be set free ... I mean one of these days? The baron said at dinner that they were set free in France and England.'

'Did your father tell you such things, Feliks?'

'He taught me about them.'

'And such thinking got him killed, didn't it? I wish you'd fetch Roman.'

When the two young men sat with her in the gallery crowded with the marble statues of Greek and Roman heroes, including numerous Caesars, she told them: 'The most dangerous thing a young man can do when he's trying to sort out the world is to apply a situation in one country to some other where it doesn't apply. In your lifetimes you'll hear many rumbles from France, and they may prove quite exciting, but not one of them applies to Poland. France is France, and her peasants are to be set free with pikes and staves in their hands, killing their betters. Poland is Poland, divided into three and soon I think to disappear forever because of our stupid king.'

Feliks could not restrain the question which fermented: 'Why do you despise the king?'

Without hesitating, this great woman who should have been Poniatowski's queen said: 'I despise any man who could have become something powerful, and failed. If events crush him the way Hamlet and Macbeth were overwhelmed ... all right. Or if evil forces bring him down the way Oth.e.l.lo fell ... all right again. But to fail because of one's own temerity ...'

'What is temerity?' Feliks asked, but she ignored him. Turning to Roman, she grabbed his two hands and shook them vigorously. 'If you, young man, could be an officer of the Habsburg court in Vienna and fail to grasp the opportunity, or to perform well if you do grasp it ...' She thrust his hands away. 'I will be watching from heaven, and I'll be ashamed of you.'

But Feliks persisted: 'Will your peasants be set free?' and she replied evasively: 'Wolfgang von Goethe was the most brilliant man I ever met, master of the universe. But Ben Franklin was the wisest, master of the human soul. I never liked Tom Jefferson much-too revolutionary, too scientific and inhuman. And each one of these exceptional men told me that for the present, some kind of serfdom was inescapable: slavery in America, peasants in Poland. If America thinks it can end its slavery, it will perish. The day when serfs are set free in Poland, it will perish.'

'Seems to me,' Feliks said, 'it's already perishing.'