Poland: A Novel Part 30

It was a pleasurable ride up the left bank of the Vistula as compared to that somber journey through the stricken Russian areas leading to Zamosc, for in the Austrian section the fields were rich and the prosperity obvious, but toward dusk the Americans saw looming ahead the gaping ruins of what once had been a tremendous castle. It was staggering in size, many times bigger than Gorka or even the better castles around Vienna, and although most of the walls were now heaps of rubble, enough remained standing to create the impression that armed knights could come riding out at any moment.

'We'll camp here tonight,' the countess said, and her servants began pitching tents and preparing a country supper.

They spent that night discussing castles and the incursions which had destroyed them, and Marjorie found it impossible to go to her bed, for she felt correctly that she was at last catching an insight into the heart of Poland, that vanished land which somehow refused to vanish, and under the stars her father took her aside to rea.s.sure her: 'Marjo, darling, you can have as much money as you need to rebuild Bukowo. Your mother and I can see that you're going to be very happy here. We're buying for ourselves, after the amba.s.sadorship ends, a small but very comfortable place on Annaga.s.se, not far from the Lubonskis. They found it for us, across the little street from where they are. You and Wiktor can have it whenever you like, so between the two places ... But, Marjorie, rebuild Bukowo. Make it something we'll all be proud of.'

Marjorie kissed her father ardently. 'You dear! I've already told Wiktor to start. The workmen arrived yesterday and I saw them spreading their tools.'

But when the excursion to Krzyztopor ended three days later, Marjorie found that the twenty workmen Wiktor had hired were executing plans not for the house but for new stables, which would cost $180,000, and she realized for the first time that her husband was going to remain exactly what he was when she first met him: a young Polish n.o.bleman with no money of his own, no common sense, and a great love for horses. When the stables were completed and the horses properly housed, there would be time to work on the Bukowo mansion.

Her second discovery involved a situation inherently more significant but also more easily dismissed; Wiktor's shallowness would be a lifelong problem, but what she now learned about him was, she trusted, a one-time thing.

It evolved from her determination to learn Polish, and this meant that she would be spending more time with Jadwiga Buk, and when Auntie Bukowska saw that the two women were forming more than the mere acquaintance customary between a mistress and a servant, she felt that a stop must be put to it, out of deference to the Bukowski reputation.

She spoke no English and Marjorie was still totally deficient in Polish, but each woman had acquired a few kitchen words, and with these and agitated gestures Auntie tackled the problem of informing the mistress: 'Jadwiga ... no.'

'I like her.'

'Not good.' Auntie conveyed this meaning in six or seven different ways, but each of the maid's disqualifications was some characteristic that Marjorie especially appreciated, like her outspokenness, her lack of humility, so that Auntie was driven back and back until the truth had to be told.

Puffing out her own belly and patting it to indicate Jadwiga's pregnancy, she started to tell Marjorie how that pregnancy came to be, when the American woman interrupted: 'It's good. Baby born, study with your daughter Miroslawa.'

When Auntie deciphered this startling news and realized what profane thing the mistress was saying-that Jadwiga's child would learn to read, and with Miroslawa-she became downright terrified at the revolution which threatened, and she cried loudly and with gestures that could not be misinterpreted: 'Baby in belly. Whose? Not Buk. Bukowski.'

Marjorie looked at the housekeeper and tried not to understand what the woman was saying, but Auntie's graphic repet.i.tions made ignorance impossible, and finally she had to ask: The baby? Wiktor's?' and Auntie replied with stubborn satisfaction: 'Yes.'

Marjorie went to her room and sat by the window, looking out at the castle ruins and the Vistula beyond, and she saw for the first time that in a human life there were many ruins which remained, giving the landscape meaning, and that like the great river, life flowed on, coming out of the mountains, seeking the ocean of which it was a part. And everything one did entailed the creation of ruins and involved one in the implacable movement of the ongoing river.

She heard a sound at the courtyard door and Auntie's voice raised to a high pitch, and she remembered that Jadwiga was supposed to come at eleven for a language lesson, and Marjorie very much wanted to inspect her in this new light, so she ran downstairs and interrupted the scene: 'Come in, Jadwiga.'

'She knows!' Auntie shouted in Polish, but who knew and what, Marjorie could not decipher.

She led Jadwiga upstairs to the study room, and they talked in their horribly broken manner, Marjorie awakened to the fact that whereas she was learning very little Polish, Jadwiga was becoming rather skilled in acquiring a workable English vocabulary. And then Marjorie realized what an average lesson was like: she would ask Jadwiga the Polish name for something and the girl would give a quick answer, followed by patient questioning: 'How you say in English?' Jadwiga was teaching Marjorie ten minutes in the hour, but Marjorie was teaching Jadwiga forty or fifty minutes, and in a perverse way the American girl was pleased that if her husband had to have an affair before their marriage, and with a servant at that, it was rea.s.suring that he had at least picked an intelligent girl.

When the lesson ended and Jadwiga left, Marjorie found herself quite perplexed, especially when Auntie stormed back with garbled information as to how Jadwiga and her husband had maneuvered to get their new cottage, their field and their corner of the forest. This information was so complex that Marjorie could not digest it all, but there was evidence that it must be accurate, so she asked for a carriage and Buk to drive it, and off she went to talk with the countess, who seemed by far the most knowledgeable person in these parts, and to that sagacious woman she spread forth the entire situation.

Katarzyna Zamoyska had not reached the age of forty without having observed many such escapades in her own robust family and in that of her husband's. 'I find nothing unusual. No murders. No infants slain at night. No treason, with man and woman fleeing across the border. Marjorie, I see no problem that ought to concern you.'

'In my own house ...'

'She doesn't have to be in your house. You keep her there, as your maid, from what you tell me.'

'I like her. She's a bold, intelligent woman, and I like her.'

'But wouldn't you agree that if you continue keeping her, your husband might ...'

'I've wondered about that.'

'Wiktor Bukowski is one of the luckiest men alive, Marjorie. You came along to save his life ... in numerous ways. He was doomed to be just another habitue of the coffeehouses. You made a man of him, and he knows it. I'd gamble that he appreciates this and will never touch her again. But if you insist upon having her in the house ...'

'You think it's folly?'

'Of the worst sort.'

'But the child?'

'In Poland, children come and go.'

'But this child ... of a good mother ...'

'They come and go, Marjorie.'

On the drive back she sat hunched up in a corner of the carriage, staring at Buk as he drove the horses, and she wondered by what tricks he had connived at getting possession of the best cottage and a field of his own, and her mind began to construct so many possibilities, none more exciting than actuality, that she grew almost to approve of this clever peasant. Her grandfather, in dealing with the New York bankers who tried to destroy him, had been much like Janko Buk, and although she admitted the wisdom of what the countess had advised, she felt that in losing Janko and his clever wife, she was suffering a real deprivation. But they would not accompany the Bukowskis back to Vienna; Wiktor could jolly well find himself another groom and she would look elsewhere for her language instruction.

Without Jadwiga, her learning of Polish lagged; she found the language much more difficult than French or German, and Wiktor was of little help. Eager to improve his English, he rarely spoke to her in his native tongue, and when she implored him to do so, he told her: 'Most of our life will be spent in Vienna, so you will have little need for Polish.'

She startled him by voicing openly for the first time a conclusion she had reached after much thoughtful a.s.sessment: 'Poland will be united again before we die.'

'You mustn't talk like that. You saw what happened to the Polish pianist from Paris who talked like that. Whisk! Out of the country!'

'Countess Lubonska told me that you came very close to eloping with her. Running away to join the revolution.'

'I was in love with her. I was in love with twenty-six different girls, I think, till you came along.'

'Weren't you in love with her ideas?'

'No,' he lied. 'Austria's our attachment for as long as man can see.'

'I don't believe that at all. One day we'll sell the house Father's buying in Vienna and live here ... and maybe in Warsaw, too, as the capital of a free nation.'

Wiktor laughed. 'I don't think you should study Polish any longer. You're beginning to believe what you read. And in Poland that can be dangerous.'

She had indeed made limited progress in learning the language and recalled with amus.e.m.e.nt that day in Vienna when she had been confronted by the formidable Polish names on the written itinerary which Countess Lubonska had prepared for her, listing the places they would visit on their way to Bukowo. She well remembered the terror she felt when seeing for the first time names like Przemysl and Rzeszow, and how she had turned to Wiktor for help.

'Look at this,' she said petulantly, pointing to Przemysl. 'How in the world do you p.r.o.nounce it?'

'Quite simple,' he said, repeating it several times. 'Shemish.'

'Now wait! You can't tell me that with all those letters, it comes out Shemish.'

'It does. You can hear for yourself. Shemish.'

'What happens to the P at the beginning and the L at the end?'

'In strict accuracy, it ought to be P'shemish'l, and if you listen with extra attention you may hear the m.u.f.fled P and the final L. But mostly we just say Shemish.' He broke into laughter, and Marjorie thought he was ridiculing her. Not at all: 'I was remembering how much trouble it gives the Austrian officers who speak only German. They go home to their families and announce proudly, "I've been appointed lieutenant commander of our big base at Przemysl," and however he p.r.o.nounces it, that first time becomes the accepted name in that man's family. Shemish he never says.' He laughed again. 'How would you say it, Marjo?'

'Per-zem-y-sil,' she said firmly, 'just as G.o.d intended it to be p.r.o.nounced.'

'Never try to reason things out in Poland,' he said rea.s.suringly. 'Just accept it as Shemish,' but she resolved to avoid the word whenever possible.

She was shocked when she endeavored to unravel the mystery of the Winesooth palace, which both Countess Lubonska and Wiktor referred to repeatedly, for when she tried to find it on the maps given her, she failed.

'Where is Winesooth?' she had asked Wiktor, and he had said rather sharply: 'On the map, where else?'

'But where on the map? Clearly, it's not on mine.'

'It's got to be,' he snapped, grabbing the map from her, then jabbing at it with his finger. 'Right there, where it should be.'

'But that says Lancut,' she protested, and when Wiktor looked again at the map he repeated: 'It's right here, where I said.'

'But where you point ... it's Lancut.'

For a long, perplexed moment Wiktor had looked at the map, then at his intended bride, and it was as if someone had lit a light in his face. 'Darling, this is Winesooth.'

'Are you teasing me?'

'No!' he said emphatically, pointing to the letters Lancut. 'That's Winesooth. That's how we p.r.o.nounce it.'

'Oh, Wiktor!'

'Look for yourself. The L is p.r.o.nounced W, the A isn't like your A, sort of an I, which makes a Wine. Our C is really a TZ. And we give the final T a kind of Th sound. So it comes out Wine-tzooth.'

She stared at her two maps, each of which clearly showed Lancut as the site of the palace; the word even carried a minute drawing of battlements to prove the point, but now she knew the name was really Winetzooth. Looking up, she had said: 'I'm so glad you've proved you love me, Wiktor.' She had slammed the books shut. 'Because otherwise I'd think you were trying to drive me crazy.'

When it seemed that she would never master this difficult language, she had faced two alternatives: she could surrender in despair or she could laugh at herself and try anew. Having been an honors graduate at Oberlin, she chose the latter, and drew up a small poster which she attached to the mirror in her dressing room: And with this guide constantly before her, she continued her struggle with the language, reminding herself when progress was slow: I shall make myself Polish. For I am marrying the land as well as the man. And in this resolve she never wavered.

Wiktor had proved an understanding husband, and one morning he appeared at breakfast like a little boy with a big secret: 'No, I shall tell you nothing. Except that you're to climb into that carriage out there and ride with me to Krakow.' And in that romantic old city he mysteriously placed her aboard the train to Warsaw, and when they reached that Russian capital he hired a fiacre, which took them to the offices of a German estate agent, who was most pleased to see them: 'Madame Bukowska, what a surprise we have for you. And since it is a very fine day, we're not going to hire a carriage, but we three are going to walk down Miodowa and feast your eyes.'

He led Marjorie and Wiktor out into the street leading to the lovely residential Miodowa, and conducted them to a spot from which they could see the exquisite Palais Princesse built by the Mniszechs a century before as a wedding present to their daughter Elzbieta at the time of her marriage to Roman Lubonski. On the very spot at which they stopped, dreamy young Feliks Bukowski had wept his heart out prior to enlisting in the crusade of Tadeusz Kosciuszko. All Bukowskis since 1794 had entangled in their memories visualizations of this delicate palace with the beautiful marble faade.

That little building set back from the street,' Marjorie said, indicating the palais. That's quite lovely.'

'It's yours,' the agent said in German. 'Your husband bought it for you two weeks ago.'

'You didn't come to Warsaw,' Marjorie said, turning to Wiktor. 'You never saw this building.'

'I've seen it all my life,' he said, and then he said no more. He did not want her to know that he had bought it not for her, but for himself, to a.s.suage an old grief which had been handed down in his family from generation to generation. And when they entered the little palace, the brightest gem in all Miodowa, he felt as if old scores had been settled, for several pieces of furniture were ones that Elzbieta Mniszech herself had purchased before her death.

Their stay in Warsaw had another fortunate outcome. The German estate agent introduced Marjorie to a German art dealer whose family had maintained a salon in the city for three generations, and this erudite man told her that he knew of various canvases which she ought to buy for the little Mniszech palace on Miodowa, but she surprised him by saying: 'The Palais Princesse is decorated precisely as we would like it, but we're building a more important place in Austrian Galicia and we'd be interested in certain things for it.'

He told her that Krakow had produced a very fine painter, a man named Jan Matejko, who painted enormous canvases much in the style of a Venetian painter named Paolo Veronese. 'I know Veronese's work,' she said crisply.

'You do? How fortunate! How very fortunate. I have an uncle in Berlin, a great scholar, really, and he controls a number of Italian works you really must see.'

'I'd prefer to see the Matejko, if he's Polish.'

'Indeed. There is in Warsaw at this minute a grand canvas he did. Jan Sobieski on the Route to Vienna. It's not the famous battle scene, but much better, in my opinion.'

'How large is it?'

The dealer was reluctant to tell how huge the thing was, but when he consulted his notes and stepped off the enormous distances, Marjorie cried: 'Exactly what I've been looking for.' Then, having betrayed her interest, she added: 'If the price is reasonable. So let's talk price first.'

'You haven't seen the painting.'

'In Vienna, I saw several fine photographs of Matejko's Battle of Grunwald. I thought him a gentleman's Peter Breughel.'

'Oh, madame. You know art.'

'I should like to see Jan Sobieski on the Route to Vienna. You know, my husband's ancestor rode with the king.'

The canvas was as big as the man had said, as fine as Marjorie had antic.i.p.ated, for in it she could imagine Bukowski's great-great-something setting forth on the adventure which had brought him his horses and the Turkish jewels with which he had built the house they were now rebuilding.

And then the dealer had another good idea: 'Have you ever heard of the Russian-Polish painter Jozef Brandt? He's very good, and he has a canvas almost the same size as the Matejko, The Defense of Czestochowa, and if-'

'The same ancestor fought there.'

'Madame, you must have the Jozef Brandt,' and when she saw it, and visualized it hanging opposite the Matejko, she knew that the Bukowski mansion would be well regarded by all who loved Poland, as she now did.

It was, however, a purchase she made from the uncle in Berlin which played a crucial role in the history of Bukowo; it was the portrait of an Englishwoman by Hans Holbein, and it was hung in her bedroom along with a small Correggio study of Leda and the Swan. For her husband's room she bought a Rembrandt Polish Rabbi and a Jan Steen Topers at an Inn. For the small reception room she acquired a Philip Wouwerman Hors.e.m.e.n on a Hill, but for the garden room facing the forest, she bought an extraordinary canvas, a green-and-blue-and-white study of water lilies by a Frenchman whose work she had seen in Paris, Claude Monet. When Wiktor saw a photograph of the painting he told his wife he disliked it intensely, and he barely relented when she a.s.sured him that it would stay in the garden room, where only their intimate friends would see it: 'It's my intimate friends whose good opinion I want to keep.'

By the time they left Bukowo for Vienna, the mansion was well under way, with the canvases waiting in a Krakow warehouse and furniture being shipped from various centers. On the train to the capital Marjorie calculated that she had spent of her father's dowry more than a million dollars, including the stables, which were now costing some $197,000-far more than all the canvases.

The two Bukowskis were equally happy: Wiktor with the decent home for his horses, Marjorie with the paintings which she believed were rather good.

It was a much different Marjorie who returned to Vienna that autumn, for her stay in the country and her visit to Warsaw had converted her into a pa.s.sionate defender of things Polish, and she now looked at the Austrian Empire from within, as it were. She startled Count Lubonski with some of her observations and embarra.s.sed her father with her intensifying republican ideas, for he was by nature a defender of royal prerogatives and a champion of empire. In fact, he intuitively felt that England, Austria, Germany and, perhaps, even Russia had systems of government superior to that of the United States, and any talk of Polish or Hungarian separatism irritated him.

But he sympathized with Marjorie when she came home one day when Count Lubonski was visiting and demanded: 'Why in this great city of Vienna, crawling with statues, is there no monument to Jan Sobieski, the Polish king who saved the place from becoming Muslim?' When Lubonski said that he thought there was a small statue somewhere, she stormed: 'I've just come from the new military museum. It's a grand place, really, with displays of Napoleon and white statues of all the military leaders. It's disgraceful, too. They have monuments to frightened lieutenants who led an army of seventeen hors.e.m.e.n, but not a word about Sobieski, who led a combined army of seventy-eight thousand. It's shameful.'

Lubonski explained: 'Germans-and you must always remember that Austrians are essentially German-have always had a low opinion of Poles. They see us as the savage hinterland between significant Germany and great Russia. Germans don't dare to condescend to Russia, which is an empire of magnificent strength. So they vent their contempt on us.'

'But why should Austria do the same?' Trilling asked, and the count replied: 'Because she has territories much more interesting, she thinks, than ours. Hungary is a very exciting land. Transylvania is challenging. Moravia and Bohemia are first-rate centers. Very few Austrians ever get to their part of Poland, so they ignore it.'

It seemed to Marjorie that Count Lubonski made every excuse possible for his government. 'He's more Austrian than Pole,' she told her husband, and Wiktor said: 'I've noticed that. And I was on the path to becoming just like him-servant of the emperor, defending everything he did.' He walked up and down the big room at Concordiaplatz, stroking his mustache and pondering whether to discuss his plans openly with his wife. Finally he confided: 'Marjo, would you think ill of me if I resigned my position in the ministry?'

'I think it would be wonderful, Wiktor. Let's go home to Poland and really work.'

'I don't mean to leave Vienna. This is where things happen.'

'But they will be happening in Poland, believe me.'

'I wouldn't want to miss the music ... and the theater.'

'And the coffeehouse.'

'As a matter of fact, yes. I like to keep up with the world.'

'But we're to have our own theater at Bukowo ...'

'For family theatricals ... recitations ... and one piano.'