Poland: A Novel Part 32

She was forty-nine now, a short, dynamic woman with graying hair and a little more weight about her middle than when Wiktor Bukowski had first met her that winter in Vienna. She had never played in concert with Paderewski and was considered several levels below him in reputation, but the old hero was delighted to hoist her in the air and give her three mustachioed kisses, for he recognized her as a great patriot who had reinforced the work he had done in the days when Poland fought for her liberation.

At seven those staying at Castle Gorka arrived, along with Count Lubonski and his two distinguished political visitors, and there came a gracious moment when Prime Minister Paderewski stepped forward to greet them. At the introduction Lubonski remembered that whereas his guest was certainly Witold Jurgela, his first name took quite a different form in Lithuanian, for it was that of his country's outstanding hero. So Lubonski said: 'This is Vytautas Jurgela, of Wilno,' and Paderewski replied instantly: 'A descendant, I see, of the great Vytautas who led the fight against the Teutonic Knights at Grunwald.' Then he turned to the Ukrainian Vondrachuk and said: 'And this huge fellow, I'm sure he's one of Mazepa's hetmen.'

When the laughter subsided he said: 'It would be quite improper for me as prime minister to intrude upon your political discussions. I'm here only as a pianist, and as a friend of the dear lady who is going to insist that I play for you. I hope you like banging on the piano.'

As the four men stood together in that felicitous moment, Marjorie thought: How handsome these Slavs can be! What a n.o.ble race! The Ukrainian standing there like a great mountain of gold. Paderewski slight but with the power of volcanoes about to erupt, what a strong face he has. And dear old Lubonski, tall and straight as a Roman senator, a man of rect.i.tude. And I like that Lithuanian professor. He could be teaching at Yale or Chicago.

Then, perforce, she looked past the four prominent men to where her husband stood, chatting with Krystyna Szprot, and she had to contrast the great men's dignity of mind and bearing with Wiktor's boulevard charm: the London suit just a little too tight so as to display his build, the mustache a little too waxed, the smile much too forced, the gallantry quite proper for 1880 but not for 1919. How I wish that man of mine would do something significant, that dear, lovable, wasted man. Now, as she stared at him, he was charming the ladies, and doing it in his best Viennese manner.

The fifty-seven chairs of the little theater were quickly occupied when the two pianists indicated that they would be pleased to play several short numbers before dinner, and Miroslawa Bukowska supervised the placing of extra chairs along the walls, then showed the remaining guests where they might stand. The theater had a small balcony seating sixteen, and here she took her place inconspicuously, indicating with an almost imperceptible shrug of her right shoulder where the peasant Seweryn Buk might hide himself behind some statuary; she had deemed it important to his education that the young man hear the great music about to be played.

From the ap.r.o.n of the stage containing the two Steinways which the Bukowskis had imported from America, Marjorie announced: 'Maestro Paderewski has agreed to honor us with a rendition of what we all consider his major composition, Variations and Fugue in E flat minor, Opus 23. The Maestro wrote this in ...' She hesitated, looked at Paderewski, who was adjusting himself to the Steinway, and asked, 'When did you write it, Maestro?' and Paderewski shrugged his shoulders.

'Nineteen hundred three,' volunteered a voice from the audience, and Paderewski said in French: 'That's as good a year as any other,' and the audience laughed.

The piece, which was indeed Paderewski's masterwork, started with a bold, bare sequence of seven notes that established the theme upon which twenty wildly differing variations would be constructed. It was not a congenial theme or one that could be whistled, and certainly it sounded nothing like Chopin, but it was strong and magisterial, like Poland itself, and as the enchanting variations progressed, now happy, now sad, now in a minor key, now in a major, but always surging with power, Marjorie thought: The great man placed the history of Poland into this composition. He knew what he was doing. And she wondered why these excellent variations had not won the approval of the public; the only time she had ever heard them played was when Paderewski himself had placed them hesitantly in one of his programs in Boston; then the audience sat quietly, listening respectfully while it waited for the real music of Chopin or Schumann or Liszt.

Now Paderewski hunched his shoulders and launched into the grand fugue which ended the composition, and again Marjorie was astounded by the virtuosity of the piece; she wondered if there was any major piano music she loved as much as this, perhaps Liszt's Sonata in B minor and maybe the Chopin sonata which contained the funeral march, but these variations of Paderewski would rank high, and she hoped that he would one day record them for the new talking machines.

It was difficult to a.s.sess how the audience felt about the composition. Count Lubonski and his distinguished guests sat stony-faced; some of the music professors from Krakow and Lwow seemed to be following each note, but betrayed no reaction; and the general audience was, to use a word that had just crossed her mind, respectful. But as she turned to inspect the little balcony, she saw tucked in behind one of the white marble statues the surprising figure of the peasant Seweryn Buk, his eyes riveted upon the piano as though his ears were straining to hear every note. At first she supposed that Wiktor had invited the young man for what might well be one of Paderewski's last concerts ever in these parts, but then she saw Miroslawa Bukowska sitting prim and impa.s.sive, hair pulled back, as she, too, followed each note. She must have invited him, she said to herself. Part of the education she insists upon giving him.

Her attention left the balcony as Paderewski almost sprang into the furious yet controlled finale to his fugue, and as all the notes tumbled into position, creating a grand effect, she began to applaud, and even before the composition ended triumphantly, the audience was on its feet cheering. They loved this man. They were proud of his international honors. And they liked his bold way with music. But most of all they revered him for the persistence he had displayed in America in the years 1916, 1917 and 1918, when, on the strength of his own integrity, he was able to prevail upon President Woodrow Wilson to include in his famous Fourteen Points the memorable Paragraph Thirteen, which read: 'An independent Poland with access to the sea and under international guarantee.' As he stood beside the piano, bowing repeatedly, he was not only the prime minister of Poland but also its regenerator, and Marjorie had tears in her eyes as she reflected on the rumors now afloat that he would soon be deposed because of his inability to compromise with the various stubborn leaders of stubborn factions. It's like old Poland, she told herself. The magnates tearing down the king, always unwilling to accept any sensible leadership.

Count Lubonski, clapping with restraint, looked at Paderewski with gentle compa.s.sion. Whispering to his Lithuanian and Ukrainian guests, he confided: 'The man's pretty well run his course. We're told he'll be quitting Poland shortly.'

'That will be bad for all of us,' Vondrachuk whispered back. 'It could mean war, you know, if your hotheads like Pilsudski gain a free hand.'

'There will not be war,' Lubonski insisted. 'None of us, not you, not you, not me, could support a new war so soon after the old one.'

'Then keep your pianist in Warsaw,' Vondrachuk advised.

Paderewski, having offered the group the best music of which he was capable, walked to the wings of the little stage and brought forth Krystyna Szprot, dressed as always in a white dress with the embroidered waistline coming just below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She was still an enchanting figure, with a beguiling way of enlisting the sympathies of her audience: 'For the master of this house, whom I once knew in Vienna, I shall play two etudes of Frederic Chopin, and I must tell you that he wrote some wonderful words to this music, words which have stayed with me for a quarter of a century, for they said verbally what I have tried to say musically, that Poland will always survive.'

The audience cheered, whereupon Wiktor rose to bow, but Marjorie noticed that Krystyna went carefully to the second piano and not the one that Paderewski had used; that was his and she would allow no other hands to touch it. Then, with her powerful fingers, Krystyna started to hammer out the eight notes of 'Winter Wind,' that haunting composition which alternated the wild fury of a Polish storm with mournful echoes of the soil, and it seemed that she was too small to play this music, except that under her command, it soared from the piano.

Then, subtly, she proceeded to the final etude, and a chill went down Wiktor's back as those wonderful chords began to echo through the theater, wandering ones at first and then the thirteen which had once moved him so deeply and which he had carried with him for so many years. It was as if he were himself a tautly drawn string that reverberated harmonically with this music, and he almost choked with emotion as he recalled the revolutionary words which had miraculously come true: 'Home!

The fields are green,

The woods are clean,

My soul serene ...'

One could scarcely believe that Poland had attained the freedom of which this song had prophetically dreamed, but it had happened through the efforts of men like Paderewski and Lubonski and of women like Krystyna Szprot and Marjorie Trilling of Chicago. It was a miracle, and he was overcome.

Krystyna now told the audience: 'Maestro Paderewski and I will give two formal concerts on the next two nights, so I don't want to play anything heavy in this brief introduction. But I think you might enjoy a selection from Chopin's mazurkas.' The people applauded, and she delighted them with a dozen of these intriguing little dances.

Dinner was served for sixty-six in the grand banquet hall lined with mirrors at each end and the two gigantic paintings along the main walls. It was a lavish affair, with fifty-three waiters who served silently from gold and silver platters, and all was overseen by Miroslawa Bukowska, who did not eat with the guests but watched from various vantage points. Four different wines were served by six butlers, one of whom was Seweryn Buk, dressed like the others in a sergeant's dark-gray, light-blue uniform.

After dinner, when the red-and-gold-brocaded chairs were pushed back along the walls, Lubonski suggested that Paderewski and Bukowski join him in an informal session with the delegates, but the prime minister deemed it best to avoid direct partic.i.p.ation in the negotiations, so he accompanied Madame Bukowska to a salon, where they enjoyed tea and whiskey with the guests.

This left Lubonski and his neighbor Bukowski to talk with the Lithuanian and the Ukrainian, and the four continued their discussion till three in the morning. Taras Vondrachuk, whose grandfather had been a Dnieper Cossack in rebellion against the czar, established the tone of the argument: 'We Ukrainians have got to think, Count Lubonski, that you Poles wish to talk about a possible union of our lands only so that you magnates can win back your estates in courts of law, and lord it over us in the future as you did in the past. The union you propose would be everything for Poland, nothing for Ukraine. And even so, it would be nothing for the people of Poland, everything for you magnates.'

To this, Lubonski replied: 'Do you think that in three hundred years we've learned nothing?' and both the Lithuanian and the Ukrainian said eagerly: 'That's exactly what we think.'

Lubonski then reminded them that for thirty-two years, from 1885 to 1917, he had served in Austria's Ministry for Minorities, and did they not suppose that during that time he had learned about the inalienable rights of minorities, to which they replied: 'You, yes. But Poland, no.'

Toward midnight Witold Jurgela, an extremely bright fellow with two years of study in Germany, took from his pocket a small piece of paper. 'Lubonski, undoubtedly you know your fellow Pole landowner Gustaw Prazmowski.'

The count threw up his hands and cried: 'Don't speak to me about that scoundrel,' but the Lithuanian negotiator proceeded: 'In Vilnius [which was how he p.r.o.nounced the name of the city the Poles called Wilno] we had an opportunity to observe how Prazmowski dealt with people for whom he had little respect, namely, us Lithuanians, and I have here the notes I made one day when he was being especially offensive: "As a friend treacherous, as an enemy venomous. Able in all things, reliable in nothing. Uses words to obscure truth and truth to obstruct justice. Bathed in self-pity, he envies everyone who does better than he. A cruel master, a contentious equal and a craven subordinate. Has a l.u.s.t for property and an aversion to working for it. Worst of all, his petty, screwed-up face and narrow suspicious eyes constantly betray his confused inner pa.s.sions. He is a man to be avoided, for he can never be trusted." '

Carefully Jurgela folded his condemnatory doc.u.ment, returned it to his pocket, and asked: 'Do you seriously recommend that we Lithuanians trust our security to people like him?'

Without blanching at this savage description of a type of frontier Pole with whom other nations were familiar, Lubonski asked quietly: 'Do you describe me in those phrases ... when you discuss our meetings with your superiors in Wilno?'

'You're an Austrian, Lubonski, no longer a Pole.'

Vondrachuk joined in support of his colleague: 'Count, do you remember an agent you employed to run your estates east of Lwow? Man named Szypowski? A raging tyrant, worse than the man Witold described. And he was your man, Lubonski, working under your orders.'

'In my employ, Vondrachuk, not under my orders.'

'The supreme drawback to your proposal of a three nation union, Lubonski, is that both Lithuania and Ukraine have seen your magnates in action. All those graspers want is to reclaim their lost estates, their lost serfs. Justice is not in them, and you know it.'

As always, Lubonski retreated to his maps, spreading before the men a large one which encompa.s.sed the region that lay between Berlin and Moscow, and with ice-hard logic he began to speak, indicating every area as he did: 'Let's start with facts we can all accept. Poland, lost in this sea of steppe and forest, a land with no natural boundaries east, north or west, is an orphan. Caught between Russia and Germany, it can exist only briefly unless it makes friends and establishes some kind of self-defense union with other powers.

'Our most propitious union would be with what we now call Czechoslovakia, but three things make this impossible. First, the Carpathian Mountains restrict normal discourse. Second, Czech leadership is stubbornly Protestant, we just as stubbornly Catholic. Third, we're engaging in near-war with them over Cieszyn, so that peaceful discussions are not possible. Any dream of a Czech-Pole or Hungarian-Pole or Czech-Hungarian-Pole union is unattainable, and will never come to pa.s.s, to the detriment of us all.

'So that leaves only some kind of reinst.i.tution of the ancient patterns, the ones that served us so well in the past. Lithuania-Poland-Ukraine, united in one grand confederation which can sustain itself. I beg you to forget past differences between us and devote your energies to the only solution which will allow us to survive.'

When Jurgela protested: "There's no quarrel between the Ukrainians and the Lithuanians, it's only with both of us against you domineering Poles,' Lubonski replied: 'You have no Lithuanian-Ukrainian quarrel because you have no common borders. You fight with us because we touch you and are available for the fight. Believe me, gentlemen, if you were neighbors, you would fight each other just as much as you fight us. But now we seek a new order, when fighting between neighbors falls out of fashion.'

At this point Bukowski indicated that he wished to leave the discussion, but did not reveal why: he desperately wanted to talk with Krystyna Szprot and learn how she had spent the years since that night when he proposed to her in Vienna, but as he moved toward the door Count Lubonski almost commanded him to stay: 'In the next round of talks on the merger of our three nations, I shall request you as my aide, Wiktor. You must familiarize yourself with the problems.' And with that the four men settled down to deal with the real problems which would face their peoples in the decades ahead. Lubonski was free to use advanced concepts because both Jurgela and Vondrachuk had always spoken Polish as their language of learning and external commerce, regardless of what they spoke at home; so he spelled out the difficulties: 'I'm an old man now, and I've spent my life grappling with problems of nationalism, and it has become increasingly clear to me that a body of people needs two conditions before it can graduate into nationhood.

'The first requirement is the easiest defined. A coherent land ma.s.s big enough to survive as a unit, occupied by people similar enough to have common interests and numerous enough to const.i.tute a viable economy. On these criteria we three fare rather well. The total land ma.s.s would be enormous and of enormous importance, much bigger than any existing European nation. And the people are reasonably h.o.m.ogeneous, three different home languages, one common language for intercourse.

'The population is big enough, too. Lithuania, perhaps three million; Poland, twenty-seven; the Ukraine, twenty, and depending upon boundaries, maybe as much as thirty million. Again, we're bigger than any existing European nation.'

'But not Russia,' Vondrachuk broke in, to which Lubonski countered: 'I never think of Russia as European.' Now, as he reached the difficult part of his argument, he rose and moved about the room which Marjorie Bukowska had decorated with such elegance: the Holbein portrait on one wall, a suit of armor against another, a large Polish tapestry covering a third: 'The second requirement is not so easy. To justify becoming a nation, the land and the people must have produced a unifying culture. [Both Jurgela and Vondrachuk began to protest that their people did possess a culture, as of course they did, but Lubonski was thinking on a higher plane.] By culture I do not mean folklore, cooking patterns or nationalistic myths. I mean music which all respond to. I mean architecture which constructs buildings of spatial and utilitarian importance. I mean conscious poetry, not doggerel. I mean great novels which generate and define a people's aspirations. And above all, I mean the creation of a philosophy which will underlie all acts pa.s.sed by your parliaments, all utterances made by your teachers and professors.

'Gentlemen, the acc.u.mulation of such a culture requires time and the dedication of men and women who know what they're doing. [Here he paused, almost afraid to make his next statement. Then, walking briskly back to face his visitors, he spoke.] You Ukrainians have not had time to build such a culture, and if you try to establish a state of your own with inadequate foundations, it will collapse. Vondrachuk, I a.s.sure you, it will collapse, probably within ten years, because you lack the cohesive background upon which to build. You lack the music, the architecture, the beautiful town squares, the great novels. I concede, the poetry you have, thanks to one man who would understand what I'm saying, your fellow Shevchenko, who almost single-handedly gave the Ukraine a soul.'

Vondrachuk could not suppress his indignation: 'Why do you always say the Ukraine? You don't refer to Poland as the Poland.' But Count Lubonski interrupted: 'One does, however, refer to The Hague.' Now Vondrachuk instinctively reverted to his native language to express his deep convictions: 'But Ukraina is a nation! It's true, Pan Lubonski, we may be lacking in cultural refinements. By preference, we do not even use t.i.tles in our forms of address. And Shevchenko is only a beginning ... a taste of freedom. Your point may be well taken geographically, but Poland will never permit us to grow as a nation and we refuse to continue to be subservient to the whims of Polish magnates.'

'Vondrachuk, you cannot make it alone. You can only exist as one of three. But let me continue.

'As for Lithuania, I'm afraid it's too small in its present state. Not enough people. Not enough land. Not enough commerce. You have the history and the common interests, Jurgela, but you will never be able to exist for very long as a free nation. Either Germany will engulf you from the south or Russia will gobble you up from the east. There is no hope.'

To this gloomy prediction Witold Jurgela had to protest, and he made a vivid defense of Lithuanian patriotism and culture, pointing to the antiquity of both and to the n.o.ble traditions of the past, when Lithuania was the master nation in this part of the world, more powerful than Russia, more extensive than Poland. The room sang with echoes of Lithuanian deeds and a present yearning for a reestablished sovereignty.

Lubonski allowed the flood of rhetoric to pa.s.s on, then said quietly: 'In the Austrian Empire forty units like yours, Jurgela, constructed justifications for their freedom-'

'And many got it,' Vondrachuk interrupted. 'Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Yugoslavs and you Poles.'

'The more important question will be: How many will retain it? Even the big ones. As for the infants ...' With sadness and concealed contempt he rattled off the names of tiny units whose patriots had pestered him with their claims: 'Bosnia, Slovakia, the Banat of Temesvar, Transylvania.' He put his hands to his head and almost moaned; then he returned to his map and pointed to the tiny area of Cieszyn, a short distance southwest of Krakow: 'We cannot even settle among ourselves the disposition of this tiny corner. We are seriously considering a major war to determine its destiny.'

Now Jurgela took possession of the map, and with delicate strokes of his right forefinger he outlined what he proposed as four new nations which would cl.u.s.ter on the western flank of Russia: 'Up here, Finland, a very cohesive group of people. Here, Estonia with its own language. Here Latvia, very solid patriots. And down here, free once more, the Republic of Lithuania with its own historic culture ...'

He was about to say more, when Lubonski with an extended left hand covered that entire section of the map, erasing it from sight: 'In one week Russia would envelop you all, and we would never hear of you again.' Then he slapped his right hand over the proposed Ukrainian state: 'And you, too, Vondrachuk, would vanish.'

It was Jurgela, trained in debate, who countered this devastating prediction: 'And what about you, Lubonski? Do you consider yourself invulnerable?'

Lubonski lifted his hands, freeing the satellites for their brief days of glory, then pointed with left and right forefingers to his own endangered country: 'Poland is the most vulnerable of all, because whenever either Germany or Russia seeks to move, each nation will have to settle with Poland first ...' With devastating thrusts of his fingers he slashed at his exposed country, indicating ancient enemies in new dress as their armies whipped across the flatlands of Poland.

'I sometimes think, gentlemen, that Poland needs you far more than you need us, because if we unite in a strong three-part republic, we can protect ourselves. If we go separately, we perish.'

It was Vondrachuk-grandson of an ataman, a man whose Cossack father had commanded seven villages, deeming himself greater than the King of Spain and willing to fight to the death against the Cossack who commanded eight neighboring villages-who spoke the words that ended this long discussion: 'The time comes in the history of a people when they believe they're ready for freedom ... for nationhood. When that moment arrives, anyone who opposes the public will is swept aside. We Ukrainians are convinced that our time for nationhood has arrived, and we don't need your music and architecture and philosophy to justify us. We've done that with our swords, our horses, our conquest of the steppe. We are a nation, and we require no instruction from Poland, who has been our timeless enemy. You go your way, we'll go ours, and I pray we can have peace between us.'

'I understand we're to meet at Brest-Litovsk,' Lubonski said, using out of respect to his visitors their name for Brzesc Litewski. 'Let us each review his positions before that final meeting.'

But as Bukowski watched the three negotiators separate he felt no a.s.surance that when they did meet again, their individual animosities would be altered: Lubonski, the proud Pole who had stood in the halls of the mighty and who now fought to reverse centuries of history; Professor Jurgela, who felt the blood of the entire Lithuanian nation, past and future, coursing through his veins, and who was determined to revive eras of greatness; and tough, uneducated but very wise Taras Vondrachuk-named after one of Ukraine's legendary revolutionaries-battling to establish a nation which lacked books or buildings or any memory of self-government, and never doubting that will power, plus swift horses and the Greek Catholic religion, would be sufficient base for a modern state.

'It should be very interesting at Brzesc Litewski,' Bukowski told his wife when he awakened her at half after three in the morning.

'Did you accomplish anything?' she asked.

'What could one accomplish with a dumb Lithuanian and a stupid Ukrainian?' he asked.

At the first of their two concerts Paderewski insisted that Krystyna Szprot open the evening, and this she did with a sparkling selection of mazurkas, after which he said enthusiastically: 'We could have had no better opening. Real Polish music. Now I shall follow with an equal number of polonaises.' When the applause died down he stood beside his piano and said in a voice resonant with patriotism and love of land: 'You are to imagine the king's court in Krakow. All the n.o.bles have gathered in their traditional dress-furs for the men, jewels for the ladies. A march forms. See, they come in stately fashion, arms akimbo, they bow, they turn, they disappear down that aisle and out that door. The eye fills with tears at the majestic march of the Polish patriots.'

Like many in the audience, he wiped his eyes, then sat at the piano and launched into the first of the eleven polonaises he would play that night. How melodic they were, how surprising in their changes of rhythm, how infused with the essence of a vanished Poland suddenly revived.

'And now,' he said at the conclusion of one of the deft promenades, 'we come to music I love.' When he began the hushed notes of the longest and perhaps most impressive of the polonaises, Number Five in F sharp minor, Opus 44, a few people clapped, and instead of rebuking them, he turned and smiled, nodding his head in agreement. Those who had applauded knew that midway through this piece the music would drop to a heavenly whisper, one of the subtlest of Chopin's inventions, and when this happened one could hear a sigh echoing across the theater, as if the people of the new Poland were joining with those forgotten promenaders of the old.

But Paderewski did not propose to end his concert on any such note of nostalgia, for when this difficult and lovely music ended he stepped to the ap.r.o.n of the stage and said: 'In those heartbreak years when I wandered the world an exile, visiting capitals and pleading for Poland's freedom, it was customary for Polish pianists playing abroad always to include in our program the two wonderful polonaises of Opus 40, for we believed they summarized our history, first the glorious past, then the prolonged agony of defeat. That's the order in which Chopin wrote them, for he had known both the glory and the despair.

'But tonight, when we have won our freedom, and hereafter whenever I play, I shall reverse the order. First the tragic years in C minor.' Bowing his head over the keyboard, as if this music were too painful to begin, he finally started that exquisite threnody, that long lament for lost dreams, and rarely had a piano seemed so intimate a part of a nation. With deft skill he brought the sorrowful notes to a conclusion, keeping his head bowed long after the final chord.

Then, with almost savage joy, he struck the triumphant notes of the A major, which many called the 'Military,' and with this burst of patriotism, written when Chopin was at his loneliest, the little theater rang with cheers, and Marjorie Bukowska's pleas for quiet went unheeded, nor did Paderewski object, for this was a night of celebration. When he ended, there were more cheers and applause, not only for his performance but also for his years of n.o.ble service, which he acknowledged with two sentences: 'We have won so much. Let us strive to keep it.'

On the second night the two pianists offered as a joint encore a more or less impromptu offering of some Brahms waltzes, during which Paderewski stopped the music twice to instruct Krystyna in how a pa.s.sage should be handled. The first time she nodded demurely, changed her approach, and followed him through that particular waltz, but at his second bit of instruction she demurred: 'It will sound much better if we play it as written,' and she ran through a pa.s.sage of difficult transition. Then she rose, turned to the audience and asked them: 'Now, doesn't that seem more like a waltz?' When the audience applauded, Paderewski also rose, walked over to Krystyna and kissed her. Then, with his powerful right hand, he swatted her on the bottom: 'Now we shall play it my way,' and they did.

Since Jurgela and Vondrachuk suspected that their host at the castle, Count Lubonski, had brought them to the Bukowski palace to impress them with the accomplishments of Polish culture as opposed to the bleakness of their own, they had resisted appreciating the great artistry of these two pianists, but on their final night their hostess presented a program which anyone anywhere in the world would enjoy, for it was felicity itself in bright costume, youthful vivacity and joyous singing; to men born and bred in Slavic lands, it would be especially endearing.

A troupe of nine singers in full costume had come by train from Krakow with their own pianist, first violinist and conductor. a.s.sembling two different groups of highly skilled local Jewish players who had mastered everything from polkas to Beethoven, the visitors had formed an orchestra, and now, after two rehearsals, were prepared to offer a simplified version of Stanislaw Moniuszko's delightful opera The Haunted Manor. As the leading tenor explained: 'It may seem just a bit confused at first, but bear with us. Because when I and the other soloists are not singing our lead roles, we shall become the chorus, and at that time we will put on these caps, so when you see me in this cap you are to forget that I am the hero and tell yourself: "Look, there's another villager." '

When Marjorie heard the music with which she was now familiar, she thought again of its high quality; the solos were as good as any being offered by Smetana in Vienna or Glinka in Moscow, and when the ba.s.so profundo sang his aria she judged it, accurately, 'to be as good as Colline's apostrophe to his overcoat in La Boheme.' It was glorious music, ideally suited to the ornate little theater, and the nine singers presented it with just the proper make-believe.

There came a moment in the action when the father of the two girls who were seeking husbands stepped forward to describe what it was he sought in a man who might enter his family, and the aria, written in the 1860s while Poland was still in bondage, had been used as a device to describe the ideal revolutionary Pole-such a man as Count Lubonski, biding his time in Vienna, or a woman like Krystyna Szprot, living in exile but breathing wherever she went the message of ultimate freedom. It was a splendid aria, deeply loved by Poles everywhere, and as the baritone enunciated the meaningful words, all in the audience who had fought for Poland's resurgence compared themselves with the father's description of the ideal citizen and calculated how far they had fallen below the target. Andrzej Lubonski wiped his eyes and remembered how his valiant Zamoyski wife had worked so resolutely during the long years in Vienna, dying before freedom was attained but a.s.sured even on her deathbed that it must come.

In the balcony two listeners were not so deeply impressed; Miroslawa Bukowska whispered to the peasant Seweryn Buk: 'Always they sing of gentry in the manors. The real Poland is the peasant in the village. On that stage it's all fluff.'

The next day the negotiators from Lithuania and Ukraine departed to write reports for their governing committees, and the other guests trailed off, leaving Paderewski and Szprot at the palace with the Bukowskis and Count Lubonski, and when it became apparent that the prime minister was determined to resign his high office before he was forced out, all tried to persuade him that it was his duty to fight on, but he would have none of that: 'They don't want me, and to tell you the truth, I don't think they need me.'

In the discussion which followed, it gradually became clear that he was planning not only to quit his post as head of the government, but also Poland, forever, and this caused real dismay, for as Lubonski said: 'Maestro, you are Poland.'

'I was,' he said quietly, and Bukowski reminded him of how in the dark years of 1909 and 1910 he had contributed all the money he made from his concerts in Berlin and Buenos Aires and Paris for the erection of a public monument in Krakow honoring the five-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald when the Teutonic Knights were driven back, and the old man said: 'Matejko with his paintings, Sienkiewicz with his novels, I with my music, we tried to keep Poland alive,' and Wiktor cried impulsively: 'Yes, and Krystyna Szprot with her Chopin.'

'She did indeed!' Paderewski agreed, blowing his fellow artist a kiss. 'Great on Chopin, dreadful on Brahms.' And Marjorie Bukowska, noting well the ardent enthusiasm of her husband, resolved that whereas there would in the future be much playing of Chopin in her theater, it would be played only by aspiring young male pianists and never again by visitors from Paris like Mademoiselle.

It was at the Bukowski palace that Paderewski finally determined to go into voluntary exile, and on the final night he said: 'Poland drives out all its talented people. Frederic Chopin never saw this country again after the age of twenty. He wrote all his great works abroad. Adam Mickiewicz wrote his Pan Tadeusz in exile. Maria Sklodowska, whom I saw so often in Paris, won her two n.o.bel prizes there and not in Poland. I'm leaving because the nation is determined to fight one war after another. Against Lithuania over the matter of Wilno. Against the Ukrainians over the division of farmland. Against Czechoslovakia over a wedge called Cieszyn. And before long, against Russia over a matter of politics. Lubonski, slow your horses down or they will gallop away with you.'

Marjorie, unwilling to see her gala week end in such disarray, pleaded with Paderewski to play for them one last time his Variations and Fugue, and when Krystyna Szprot added her entreaties with one calculated to warm the composer's heart-'I want to add it to my repertoire for America and Brazil, and I want to hear how you think it should be played'-he walked slowly to the theater, mounted the stage, and ran his fingers over the piano he had chosen as his own. Then, with the bare, heavy mastery which he sometimes displayed, he struck the keys, lining out the theme upon which he would build his twenty variations, but as he played he instructed Krystyna: 'I like it slow, and heavy at the opening so that it sounds almost ba.n.a.l. Because you and I know what we shall do with it later.'

On and on he went, speaking now and again when some critical point was reached and bringing all his listeners into the secret places where music was written. Lubonski, who had known most of the great musicians of his day, entertaining them in his home, simply allowed the sound to flow over him. Krystyna was enchanted by the complexities the great master had introduced into his music, providing something for any virtuoso who wanted to tackle his difficult composition, but at the same time she could hear herself playing certain variations rather better than he was doing, for she was in certain restricted ways a superior pianist. Marjorie hoped again that she might some day find a recording of the piece.

Wiktor sat enraptured, a veritable slave to every nuance. Chopin, he said to himself, was a dreamer, writing music that envisaged a day fifty years removed, either backward or forward. It evoked romance, the ringing of fairy bells. What I'm hearing now is the music of an extraordinary man who struggled to make today's dreaming come true. There's not a shred of romanticism. This is the statement of a practical man, a cynic who battled them all. Chopin may be the soul of Poland. This is the sinew and the strong trees in the forest and the workman plowing his field.

For the duration of the piece he continued thinking along these lines, accurately defining the two approaches to music, the two approaches to Poland, but when Paderewski finished his thundering fugue, Bukowski muttered to himself: 'I prefer Chopin.'

Paderewski had been right in his predictions about the future. In a series of twists and turns so bizarre that one could scarcely follow them, the new Polish nation launched an invasion of Lithuanian territory, with the announced intention of protecting Poles in that confused nation while at the same time aiding true Lithuanian patriots in establishing a secure state. This was a gambit difficult to explain, so negotiations between Lubonski and Jurgela, seeking a union of the two states, were shattered.

At almost the same time Polish patriots, for the best reasons in the world, felt they had to fight the Ukrainians in the Polish part of Galicia and some rather brutal events occurred, about evenly divided between the two armies but all calculated to make any future union of the two nations impossible. For a while Lubonski would see no more of Vondrachuk.

But war was a common commodity in these parts, and the battles far removed, so it was easy for attention to be diverted when a startling event focused attention on the Bukowski palace. Miroslawa Bukowska announced that she was marrying Seweryn Buk, the master's b.a.s.t.a.r.d son.

'You can't do that!' Wiktor protested, but his distant cousin, this tall, ungainly woman of twenty-nine whom no one could imagine as engaged in pa.s.sion of any kind, was obdurate: 'We're getting married.'

'No priest will countenance such a thing,' Wiktor growled, and it was apparent that he would take steps immediately to ensure that Father Barski did not perform any ceremony.

'I have supposed you would behave like this,' Miroslawa said with lips pursed.