Poland: A Novel Part 23

If a nation does not exist, the name does not exist, and we must never allow either to revive again. We have been patient. We have been compa.s.sionate. And we have been just. But as of this day a new order rules in eastern Europe, a final solution has been reached.

With remarkable speed, peace and adjustment came to Bukowo. Jan of the Beech Trees was dead, but his widow would mind the fields until her son could a.s.sume charge. Their welfare deteriorated savagely, for with the defeat of General Kosciuszko and the imposition of foreign rule, rich landowners were encouraged to convert the hours their serfs owed them into cash taxes, which meant that Jan's son now owed Lubonski not forty weeks of hard labor but a hundred and ten zlotys, which he could acc.u.mulate only by many hours of additional labor at wages established by the count. Life for the peasants of Bukowo became increasingly brutal, reverting to the days of 1250, but at the same time the Lubonskis grew richer, and soon they rivaled the wealthiest families of Spain or England.

Eulalia Bukowska was left a widow with a child about to be born, but she had grown to like the old manor house of Bukowo, appreciating what could be done with it if her dowry was wisely spent; her plans were both artistic and sensible, but they came to naught, because her father spirited her back to the new Warsaw, now in German hands, where his business was flourishing. In the city he found her a new husband, a member of the gentry slightly more elevated than Feliks had been, and as Lubomirska had predicted, his grandson would be eligible for membership in that gentry. So the Bukowskis lost all the Orzelski millions and the manor house reverted to its unkempt meanness. Ownership pa.s.sed to Feliks' younger brother, who suffered for some years because it was remembered that Feliks had partic.i.p.ated in the insurrection.

For Tadeusz Kosciuszko, immured in a Russian jail, the disappearance of Poland brought dramatic consequences: Catherine the Great, near death and seeing no possibility of further danger from the Polish hero, stayed the execution which he had expected, and at her death he was reprieved completely. Seeking voluntary exile in France, he refused an exalted appointment from Napoleon, whom at an early point he had interpreted correctly as a tyrant, and as the years rolled round he lived to see himself avidly sought after by the Russian czars as their representative and intermediary in government for their Polish holdings. But he, like the two Bukowskis, loved freedom as a tangible ent.i.ty; it was good to be free, and it was good to bring freedom to others. So he chose exile in Switzerland, and one of the last acts this great man performed was to set free a group of slaves he had been awarded in America. General Suvorov, on the other hand, was rewarded for his famed Pacification of Praga by being given two thousand serfs as his personal property, some of them coming from the estate Count Lubonski held at Polz in the Ukraine, and he showed no signs at all of freeing any of them.

The Lubonskis fared well under the new regimes, receiving additional estates and privileges as a reward for the army they had contributed to the alliance. They prospered politically, too, for when the Habsburgs realized that they had all of Galicia, and a good deal more, securely in their grasp, they looked about for reliable Polish leaders to rule the area, and Count Laskarz Lubonski was remembered for his long and faithful services. Appointed governor of the area he had been so instrumental in bringing into the Austrian fold, he took immediate steps to ensure that his son Roman would one day be appointed to the Vienna cabinet itself.

But before this became practical, it was essential that Roman find a second wife, and especially one who had the potential for forwarding his career. There was an ugly little byplay with the Mniszechs, who insisted that t.i.tle to the Palais Princesse, which, after all, they had built for their daughter, revert to their family, but Count Lubonski argued in the courts, with a battery of lawyers from Berlin, that under Polish law t.i.tle had pa.s.sed to the husband at the moment of marriage, and a bench of three judges, who took bribes from both families, decided finally in favor of the Lubonskis, who had paid the most. Palais Princesse, retaining its lovely name, was now the Warsaw seat of Roman Lubonski, who would soon be Count Lubonski of Vienna.

Selection of his next bride took a curious turn, for one summer's day his mother, the present Countess Lubonska, appeared alone at Lubomirska's palace with a startling proposal: 'Princess, I've been thinking about many things-Europe, Russia, especially the Habsburgs in Vienna. And if my son is to pick his way intelligently through the traps I can see looming ahead, he's got to have a clever wife. My husband has never trusted your family-"Those d.a.m.ned Czartoryskis!" he calls you, always stirring things up. But as I grow older I see that the perfect wife for my son would be some able Czartoryski girl-someone exactly like yourself, as you were fifty years ago. Are there any?'

Lubomirska was flattered; it had always been her task to keep track of the marriageable children in her extended family, so it was easy for her to rattle off four names of girls who were showing real promise: 'You need someone who knows languages. Russian for the future. French for the past. German for power and English for common sense. Of course, she'd have to have Polish for singing.'

'How many do you speak?'

'Those five plus Italian. But she should also have had experience in the good schools of Switzerland, Italy and either France or England. Forget those of Germany, they train only policemen. Above all, as you Radziwills know, she must be clever.'

'And attractive.'

'If she's all the rest, she'll be attractive. My nephew Karolek at Pulawy has exactly the girl you seek, and may you be lucky enough to find her before someone else does.' That evening she dispatched a rider to Pulawy with a simple message: 'In the case of Moniczka, do absolutely nothing until the Count and Countess Lubonski arrive.' And next day the Lubonskis traveled south to Castle Gorka to pick up their grieving son Roman for a casual visit to the great Czartoryski families at Pulawy, where a marriage was arranged.

The final days of King Stanislaw August were mournful. During the siege of Warsaw his brother Michal Poniatowski, Poland's leading Catholic clergyman and her primate, had been so eager to escape capture by revolutionaries that he wrote a secret letter to the King of Prussia, advising him how best to capture the city. Unfortunately, his message fell into the hands of Kosciuszko's men, who were so outraged by it that they threatened to hang him. The distraught king, thinking only of his throne, presented his brother with a terrible edict: 'Hang yourself, for if you wait for them to do it, the scandal will destroy the throne.' Michal had obeyed, but his suicide accomplished nothing, for soon thereafter both the throne and the nation collapsed.

Stanislaw August, no longer a ruling king, became an embarra.s.sment to the victorious powers, who solved his case rather neatly: he was taken to Russia as a kind of state prisoner, and although he repeatedly pet.i.tioned his former bedfellow, Catherine the Great, for mercy, she refused to grant it or even to see him. Having found many lovers she liked better, she allowed him to rot in his comfortable prison, and there, in 1798, he died, an exile, a rejected lover, the unwitting architect of his nation's suicide.

VII.

Mazurka

Two days before Christmas in the year 1895 the s.p.a.cious steamboat that plied the Danube between Vienna and Budapest arrived at the former city in early afternoon, bringing with it a tall, slim man in his mid-forties. Since he was a n.o.bleman and a member of the emperor's cabinet, he was given special treatment; when the steamer docked in the ca.n.a.l, which had been dug to bring an arm of the Danube right into the heart of the city, all lesser pa.s.sengers had to wait until this austere gentleman debarked into the cold, wintry town, his ma.s.sive fur coat drawn tightly about him as protection from the snow which drifted down.

He was Count Andrzej Lubonski, Minister of Minorities, whose mission to conciliate the Hungarian agitators had succeeded so conspicuously that he could expect commendation when he reported to the emperor. Hungarians were not easy to deal with; they demanded all and conceded nothing, but he had to respect their furious patriotism and would tonight give public evidence of that respect.

Waiting for him on the quay were two liveried servants, one driving a curtained carriage drawn by two handsome gray Lippizaners, the other a footman who handled luggage and then rode perched beside the driver. Policemen monitoring the arrival area recognized the count's carriage and gave it deference; other would-be politicians from the lesser provinces of the empire, places like Croatia and Tyrol, sometimes tried to make a splash when they came to Vienna, acquiring for themselves a team of four or six dazzling white Lippizaners, but such men were quickly perceived as being nouveau, a French word much used in the capital, and were ridiculed.

Count Lubonski, with one of the richest holdings in the Austrian section of Poland, could have afforded sixteen Lippizaners had he so desired, but he felt that such display was best left to the royal family; he would be content to have his sober-gray carriage drawn by sober-gray Lippizaners, but he did have four matched teams.

Acknowledging no one, he moved quickly from the gangplank to his carriage, where he said simply: 'Ringstra.s.se.' The footman busied himself with adjusting the bearskin robe that would protect Lubonski from the cold, then scrambled to his perch, and the carriage was on its way.

It proceeded along the quayside for some distance, then left the Danube Ca.n.a.l, turning into that glorious chain of boulevards which encircled the ancient heart of the city. Thirty-eight years before, in 1857, the Emperor Franz Josef had decreed that the walls of Vienna, which had protected it so valiantly in centuries past, should be torn down, with the empty glacis which then separated the fortifications from the encroaching suburbs to be converted into a number of wide, tree-lined avenues, on each side of which were the great buildings of government. It had required nearly a quarter of a century to complete this grandiose plan, and some historians had objected to the demolition of walls which reached back almost a thousand years.

'Let us retain in Europe one n.o.ble city which ill.u.s.trates how our ancestors lived,' these antiquarians argued. 'Let the new Vienna proliferate on the other side of the glacis, and keep our walls as the symbol of our city's history.'

The emperor would not listen, and although Vienna lost an awesome medieval monument, it gained as n.o.ble a series of boulevards as the world provided. 'Paris has better,' some travelers claimed, but the French ones, named after Napoleon's marshals, were not so intimately connected with the heart of their city, nor did they have that sequence of majestic buildings.

On its Ring stood the great museums, the votive churches, the university, the theater, the Rathaus, the buildings of parliament and the stately opera. When Count Lubonski drove past these solid monuments he felt that he was at the center of the world, and he always rededicated himself to his a.s.signed task of keeping the multiple minorities which comprised the Austrian Empire placated within the intricate system.

Lubonski dealt constantly with members of some forty different national minorities: the able Hungarians, who were almost the majority; the fractious Croatians; the Italians, whom no one could discipline; the Rumanians, thirsting for their freedom; the Transylvanians, caught in a vise between more powerful groups; the Bohemians, keeping Prague in uproar; the Slovaks, insisting upon their own ent.i.ty; the Wends; the Ruthenians; the Slovenes; the Montenegrin fragment; the Bosnians; the Germans of Silesia, who felt themselves oppressed; the agitators from Bukovina, from Temesvar, from Teschen, from Carniola and the Trentino. And always, in the back of his mind, the special problems of the Poles, who occupied Galicia; they were in some respects the strongest, ablest members of this amorphous empire, and he had been chosen for this difficult a.s.signment of keeping all in balance primarily because he was a Pole.

The emperor had advised his councillors: 'Lubonski is a Pole, and they're d.a.m.ned difficult, but he's also a gentleman. Vast estates. I'm told he keeps ten thousand Ukrainians on his fields. He'll understand minority problems.' Several of his German advisers had counseled against bringing a Pole into the highest levels of what was still essentially a German government, Austrian style: 'We've made concessions to the Hungarians, and we're no stronger for it. We've granted the Czechs and Slovaks what they wanted, and if we promote this Lubonski ...'

As with the tearing down of the ancient walls, the emperor had his way, and the Pole Lubonski was brought into the government. It was a sagacious move, for every complaining faction of the empire now felt that with a Pole in charge of their affairs, they would get at least a decent hearing: 'For is he not himself a member of a client state, like us?'

With a gloved hand, the count slid back a gla.s.s part.i.tion separating him from the coachman. 'Karl Peter, if Bukowski is at his coffeehouse, I should like to speak with him.'

'Yes, Excellency.'

The carriage continued along the Ring past the university, then pulled into the garden of a fine old building housing one of the better coffeehouses of the city-Landtmann's, a brocaded, chandeliered refuge where hot chocolate, European newspapers and gossip were provided. Karl Peter, going to the entrance hat in hand, inquired of the doorman: 'Is Herr Bukowski, the young Pole, is he in attendance?'

'He is,' the doorman said, pointing to a blue-and-cream fiacre whose public driver dozed while his fare disported himself inside. 'That's the one he always hires.'

'Please to advise him that Count Lubonski would like to speak with him. In the count's carriage.'

At the mention of this respected name the doorman drew himself up to a haughty position, nodded toward the carriage, whose curtains were still drawn, and hurried inside the coffeehouse. In a moment he appeared with a young man of slight build, trim mustache and well-pressed, modish suit. In his hurry to report to the count, the young fellow had merely thrown about his shoulders an overcoat made of English wool, and with bare head he half-ran toward the carriage, whose door opened invitingly as he approached.

'Come in, Wiktor,' a voice said, and with one continuous, graceful movement the young man entered the carriage and took a seat opposite the count.

'How was Budapest?' he asked.

'As always. Music good. Food very good. Countesses the most beautiful in Europe. Politics ...' He shrugged his slim shoulders. 'As always, the worst in Europe.'

'Can I be of service, Excellency?' Wiktor Bukowski did not work in Count Lubonski's ministry; he held a minor position in the Ministry of Agriculture, where he was appreciated as an expert on horses, but as a young Pole new to the capital, he naturally fell under the supervision of the count, who utilized him now and then on farming matters and instructed him in the ways of the imperial city.

'The emperor had a message awaiting me when the Budapest boat docked. Seems there's a gentleman from the Banat with an urgent problem.'

'I've met him, Excellency. Man named Pilic. He's stopping at Sacher's.'

Lubonski frowned. It had been his experience that self-important agitators from the provinces always stopped at Sacher's Hotel near the opera and took their sweets at Demel's near the Hofburg, and more frequently than he cared to remember, these enthusiastic patriots had tried to lure him to one of those establishments for discussions of pressing problems. It had become a matter of pride with him never to have entered either the hotel or the pastry shop: 'They are for visitors, not for those who do the work of empire.'

He could visualize this Herr Pilic from the Banat. 'You don't have to describe him, Wiktor. Small, thin man. Heavy suit made from Rumanian wool. Leans forward when he speaks. Has moist hands when he greets you. Thinks he's in heaven because he's in Vienna. But desperately wants to take Banat out of the empire.' He shook his head dolefully. 'I really do not care to see him.'

'I'm afraid you must, Excellency. He's come a long distance.'

Lubonski sighed. Everyone who wished to see him in Vienna had come a long distance, because that was the nature of the Austrian Empire. It was a very long, dusty train ride to Croatia, much longer to the remote corners of Transylvania, and in some ways the longest of all from Vienna to Prague, which was not distant in miles but infinitely separated in ideas.

The Banat of Temesvar was a small territory wedged into a corner by Rumania, Hungary, Transylvania, Serbia and Croatia, abused by all, defended by none. Herr Pilic, judging by his name, was probably of Rumanian descent and had come, no doubt, to complain against his Hungarian oppressors. His mission must be serious, for the emperor himself had directed Lubonski to listen to his protests.

'Fetch him to my house,' Lubonski said. 'Half after six, sharp.'

'Yes, Excellency. You would not care to stop by his hotel right now?'

Lubonski did not change his expression. 'I do not stop by hotels.' And he kicked open the door, indicating that Bukowski was dismissed, but before the younger man could leave, the count reached for his arm and said warmly: 'The countess and I will be expecting you tonight, after the concert.'

'I shall be honored. I shall be deeply honored, Excellency.' And while Bukowski returned to the warmth of Landtmann's and his London newspaper, Lubonski directed his coachmen to take him home.

Now he pulled aside the curtain on the right-hand side of his carriage, for he was approaching that string of n.o.ble buildings which made the Ring so distinctive, and he wanted to see them. As he pa.s.sed them he experienced once more that inner warmth which suffused him when he reflected that he played a major role in the governance of this city and the empire which it represented. As a Pole he missed the Vistula, and his castle, and his vast estates in Galicia, and the winter visits to Warsaw, but in Vienna there were compensations, and now he approached one of them.

For after his Lippizaners, noticed favorably by all who appreciated good horses, had drawn him past the splendid museums, they reached the opera, that crystal-pure little heart of the city, loved by all who loved Vienna, and there they turned north into Krntnerstra.s.se, and for the first time in his journey from the boat Lubonski saw ahead of him the n.o.ble spire of St. Stephen's Cathedral, seven hundred years old and the beaconlike center of the city.

A light snow had begun to fall, throwing a blanket of silver over the ancient church, and Lubonski directed Karl Peter to halt the carriage so that he might savor this lovely sight. Then, with a knock on the part.i.tion, he indicated that the coachmen should proceed. They drove only four short blocks, then turned right into a small, distinguished, almost private thoroughfare labeled on the corner Annaga.s.se. Had it been a wide street, it would have been called Annastra.s.se; its present name signified an alley or a very narrow street, and this it was.

It contained, close to the cathedral, some of the finest small houses in Vienna, three- and four-story affairs, severe in faade, soberly austere in the courtyard, interiors often magnificent in their muted splendor. With quiet satisfaction Lubonski checked off the houses in his alley, visualizing the notable families that lived therein, and finally, at the end of the row, on the right-hand side, he came to a modest house, its front occupying every available inch of sidewalk, its stone plaque proclaiming in the style used two centuries before, when street names were not jumbled together: ANNA Ga.s.sE.

22.

1648.

It had been an old house when King Jan Sobieski marched down from Krakow to save the city from the Turks, and under its cellar there was still a deep cavern dug by the Turkish sappers who had planned to blow up the city with their huge deposits of gunpowder.

Now came the moment that Lubonski relished whenever he returned from a trip to Hungary or Bohemia or Croatia. Karl Peter rang a bell attached to the carriage. Servants inside the house ran to the two huge gates, swinging them aside. The horses left Annaga.s.se and drew the carriage inside, where a very large square, not visible from the street, was paved with blocks of oak rather than stone, the purpose being to m.u.f.fle the sounds of hoofbeats.

Many Viennese houses and minor palaces had such courtyards, with twenty or thirty rooms wrapping around the area, but what distinguished Lubonski's 22 Annaga.s.se was the wall that faced the visitor when he entered, for during the past hundred years servants had carefully pruned a huge pyracantha bush into a magnificent espalier which bifurcated beautifully left and right as if drawn by some master designer. One set of branches outlined the windows of the first floor, another emphasized the second floor, and a third, high against the wall, crept under the windows of the fourth floor.

Even in late spring, when the plant seemed rather drab, it provided a grand design, but in autumn and winter, when it produced a mult.i.tude of bright orange berries, it was a thing of splendor. Now, at Christmas, with light snow festooning the leaves and the berries, it was stunning, and the count stood in the courtyard for some minutes, appraising it and thinking of how fortunate he was that his great-grandfather had bought this perfect place years ago when the Lubonski part of Poland first fell under Austrian control. His family had owned this house for more than a century; his servants had brought this pyracantha to its present state of perfection; and he sometimes thought that it was this st.u.r.dy plant whose roots tied him so strongly to Vienna.

Leaving the courtyard, he hurried inside, ran upstairs, greeted his wife, Katarzyna, and called for a bath. 'I'm to meet some dismal fellow from Temesvar. Yes, here. Then we go to the concert. And I hope you've invited the musicians for dinner afterward.'

His wife, a daughter of the great Zamoyski family whose estates since 1815 had been in Russia, enjoyed sitting on a stool in the bathroom while her husband bathed, for then she knew that she could command his unbroken attention, and now she smiled at him and asked if his meetings had prospered in Budapest.

'Famously. If I weren't a Pole, I'd enjoy being a Hungarian. Robbers both.'

'Who's the man from Temesvar?'

'A Herr Pilic. Rumanian, I judge.'

'But why here?'

'He's stopping at Sacher's, and I refuse to conduct business in hotels.' He paused. 'You remember, I'm to wear my Hungarian uniform tonight. To show that in Vienna, I pay them the same respect I do in Budapest.'

Lubonski, like all members of the imperial cabinet, owned twenty-odd different resplendent uniforms. Some pertained to historic Austrian regiments, but more than half were gold-and-silver-and-bronze-decorated uniforms of foreign governments: Russian, German, French, English and one dazzling affair from Italy. It was international courtesy for an Austrian official to appear in the uniform of any visiting king or prince, and Lubonski always honored this convention, except that he was ill at ease in the Italian uniform, since the northern section of Italy had so recently broken away from Austria.

More important, in view of his particular responsibilities, were the eight or nine gaudy uniforms of the various components of the empire; if he entertained Polish officials, he customarily donned Polish dress; Bohemians were honored by seeing him in their national costume; and Slovaks were similarly respected. Patrician in all aspects, he graced any uniform he wore, but the one which gave him solid pleasure was the Hungarian.

As he left his tub his wife withdrew, leaving the dressing of her husband to his servant, and this man toweled his master, powdered his feet, attended his hair, and led him to where a gorgeous a.s.sembly of clothing, medals, daggers and swords awaited.

When his underpants were adjusted, the valet doing the work, he slipped into the skintight suede trousers, then the knee-length woolen socks that would fold down over the calf-length elk-leather boots from Bohemia. He chose a lightweight silk blouse, subtly embroidered in pale-red and blue designs, with a silver clasp at the high ribbed collar. His jacket was of Hungarian peasant pattern, heavily brocaded and rather florid when compared to the tasteful blouse. He wore a cap made in Budapest, a tricorn affair topped by egret feathers, and about his shoulders he draped a leopard skin, beautifully finished and fastened with three silver frogs.

Resplendent as he was, he was not yet fully costumed, for a wide sash pulled everything together, whereupon his valet slipped into the stocking of his left leg a sheathed dagger ten inches long, while into the folds of the sash Lubonski himself fastened a long sword with a gold-and-silver handle.

He presented a dashing figure when all parts were given last-minute adjustments by the valet, who said admiringly: 'The emperor himself will applaud you this night.'

He received a less enthusiastic welcome from Herr Pilic when he entered the drawing room at six-thirty: 'My G.o.d, Your Excellency! I came all the way to Vienna to protest against the Hungarians, and here you are, a Hungarian n.o.bleman.'

Lubonski enjoyed such sallies and explained: 'Yesterday in Budapest, I gave the Hungarians nothing they wanted. Tonight in Vienna, I give them this.' He pointed to his shimmering uniform, then asked politely: 'And what can I give you, Herr Pilic?'

'The Hungarians, they treat us like peasants.'

'Sit down, please.' Lubonski ordered wine, but told the butler: 'No tokay, please. Herr Pilic does not enjoy things Hungarian.'

'What I don't like,' Pilic said, 'is the way in which the Hungarians abuse your imperial government. Your Excellency, they take everything from you and give nothing to us.'

Lubonski chuckled. 'No one has ever said it better, Herr Pilic. The Hungarians badger us day and night for what they call their freedoms. Heavens, they run the empire. But always they want more. Yet they treat their own minorities like swine. Slovaks come to me crying complaints about them. Rumanians, Transylvanians, Croats, Slavonians ... it's always the same: "The d.a.m.ned Hungarians are persecuting us." What can the emperor do? Tell me, please.'

'The Banat of Temesvar must be an independent unit within the empire.'

Lubonski called for an atlas, and when its large pages were unfolded he pointed to the Banat, a mere speck within the vast complexity of Austria's responsibility: 'Herr Pilic, look for yourself. What you ask is an impossibility. We can't fragment this great empire.'

When Pilic started to remonstrate, Lubonski stopped him. Pointing now to huge Galicia, many times the size of the Banat, he said: 'Look at my Poland. A huge territory. But we exist within the empire.'

'You don't have Hungarians on your necks.'

'True.' The count leaned back, keeping the atlas on his knees, and said in the most conciliatory way: 'Pilic, share with me your honest thoughts. I need your counsel. What do you think should be done?'

'May I speak frankly?'

'You've come very far to waste your time, otherwise.'

Without waiting for the servant, Pilic poured himself a large drink, gulped a good portion of it, and said: 'A confederation. Each natural nation on its own. The Banat. Croatia. Bohemia. Carniola. Hungary off to itself.' When he saw Lubonski frowning he added quickly: 'Poland too. Poland a nation of its own.'

Lubonski showed no change of expression, for he suspected that Herr Pilic might have been sent by his German enemies within the government to test his loyalty. Ringing for the servant to pour additional drinks, he said quietly: 'So far as I know, there is no outcry for a Polish state. Or for one in Carniola. Or Bohemia.'

'There is great unrest in Bohemia, Excellency. You must know that.'