Poland: A Novel Part 9

So Lukasz of Bukowo, a petty knight with four horses of his own and a ruined castle, fried pierogi for the chancellor of the nation, who could not decide whether he liked the boiled ones better than the fried, or the pork ones better than the cabbage. But finally all agreed that fried or boiled, the pierogi that contained the bitter sauerkraut and the delicate mushrooms were the best.

At the height of the little feast Ossolinski announced: 'Panna Barbara has consented to marry my son Roman, and together we shall build the greatest castle in Poland, and everyone will be invited to its christening.'

When Jan of the Beech Trees brought the package of haslet home to his wife, Anulka, and she turned back the wrapping and saw that she was to have real meat, and in such unbelievable quant.i.ty, she started to cry, for it had been more than a year since she and her husband had eaten anything but cabbage and kasha and beets, with now and then a slab of fat containing no meat whatever, and she could scarcely credit the good luck that had befallen her family.

There it was, in some ways the best part of the hog: the liver, the kidneys, the feet, the heart, the tongue, the brains, the meat still on the head and neck, the sweetbreads-the whole inside and history of the hog, meat so precious that it must be treated with reverence. For a moment she had a fright: 'They didn't give us the intestines!' But at the bottom of the package Jan found the long strings of guts, and now she was ready.

First she carefully examined the treasure for whatever choice pieces of meat could be cut, and set them aside, catching every precious drop of blood. She then singed the skin, and carefully cut away the fat that remained close to it. Next she went to the river, where she washed the intestines and singed portions until they gleamed.

She now had three pots boiling, each at its appropriate speed, and had she owned a fourth, she would have kept it busy boiling the kasha. From the fields she gathered the herbs she would need, and after a long day's work she was ready to begin the serious business of making her kielbasa. She carefully seasoned whatever choice meat she had with generous amounts of garlic, pepper, herbs and spices. Then, having tied one end of an intestine with a thread, she took a wooden spoon and carefully fed her mixture into the free opening, pressing it along with her fingers but taking great care never to compress the mixture too tightly lest it burst the skin at later cooking. The whole was then carefully tied into links, which Jan hung in the chimney for smoking. After the kielbasa was properly cured, Anulka would apportion it sparingly, a little piece here, another when the children were good. The fatback was salted and stored in a wooden container. It would be used in the preparation of almost any meal, or eaten with bread to provide nourishment during the long winter months. The blood was mixed with the kasha, spices and onions, spooned carefully into the larger intestines, baked at mealtime, and was called kiszka. The knuckles were cooked with spices and other remaining bones, until even the most minute shred of meat had been loosened, and this became a tangy gelatinous delicacy. Nothing was wasted.

In this prudent way every portion of the Castle Gorka hogs was utilized: the good cuts for the banquet, the tougher ones in Pani Da.n.u.sia's pierogi, the haslet in Anulka's kielbasa. This good husbandry was symbolic of the rational way in which Poland had organized itself in the year 1646, when magnates, gentry and peasants were about as happy as they had ever been.

The wedding was a joyous affair. It started one Wednesday when peasants from four of Cyprjan's villages arrived, bringing what carts they had, the horses decked in flowers, and each person dressed in the one good garment she or he owned. The peasants wore shoes, which they had carried to the festivities, heavy dark trousers and jackets for the men, brightly colored dresses and headgear for the women. Girls of marriageable age, to which the wedding was a special treat because here they could review the young men of the district, wore particularly attractive skirts, heavily embroidered bodices and scarfs of the brightest color; they moved in groups, laughing and teasing, and seemed at times like little flocks of spring birds chirping with delight.

One village provided a rustic band: an old man with bagpipes, a young man with a fiddle, and a man of middle age with a wooden flute that he himself had carved. They played country tunes with which everyone was familiar: krakowiaks (the dance of Krakow) and chodzonys (a strolling dance) and gonionys (a chasing dance). The musicians, who were occasionally joined by two or three men who performed wonders with the jew's-harp, played incessantly, stopping only when someone slipped them a mug of beer, and this encouraged dancing day and night.

The visiting villagers were housed in various barns on the estate; the largest one was reserved for the dancing, the eating and the general a.s.sembling. Here shy young men studied the groups of girls, joshing and pushing each other until one gained the courage to approach them, to be invariably rebuffed with loud squeals and left standing foolishly in the middle of the barn. But as the afternoon waned, each boy somehow subtracted from the groups of girls someone with whom he wished to dance or talk, and then the remaining young women would fall silent for a moment, watching to see how the young man behaved himself.

The peasants were fed from a central kitchen area at which older women prepared feasts from such foods as they had brought with them-cabbages, beets, kasha, onions, a few eggs-but during the first two days there was no meat. For about six hours each day they were supposed to work at tasks set them by the castle, and this they did with generosity and even pleasure, for it was known that beginning with the third day, Friday, the magnate would provide them with meat, or at least fish and chicken, and this was a boon worth working for.

The villagers from Bukowo, who now pertained to Lukasz of the small castle, were brought en ma.s.se to Cyprjan's to help with decorating the large castle, and Lukasz came with them to supervise their efforts. As one subservient to Cyprjan, it was prudent for him to perform well, and considering the exalted position of some of the guests, he realized that someone dependable like himself was a necessity.

On Thursday the other gentry who served Cyprjan's extensive holdings began to arrive, mothers, fathers, children, principle servants, and since many of them came from great distances, even from the Ukrainian estates, they had to be housed in the castle itself, except that two of the gentry who were actually Ukrainian and not Polish were sent to the little castle at Bukowo.

Now the pace of festivity increased, and its quality too, because Cyprjan had imported from Krakow two orchestras of skilled musicians who played violins, ba.s.ses, real flutes, horns and a small drum. One group was Jewish, dressed in their traditional Galician garb: black shoes and white stockings, black pants which came just below the knee, long black coat which came just above the knee, flat hat with wide brim which they wore indoors and out, and beards fancifully cut so that long curls descended about the ears.

'No wedding would be official,' Cyprjan said, 'without the Catholic priest and the Jewish orchestra,' and since the latter would play about eighteen hours a day for the next six days, except on their Sabbath, he had provided a small special cooking area for them in which they could prepare their own dishes in their own traditional ways. Although the Poles did not look kindly on then-Jews, who had known Jesus and rejected Him, they did tolerate them and, indeed, expressed pleasure whenever it was announced that a Jewish orchestra would be appearing.

The Jews played good music, sophisticated dances from Hungary and Germany, Ukrainian folk songs of high quality, and at special moments, which they announced to the audience in accented Polish, 'music which has come to us from Italy, where it is highly regarded.' But mostly they played the excellent Polish music that was being composed throughout Poland and performed in the inns and homes of Warsaw or Krakow. Exciting moments came when they played some fine Jewish dance from Moldavia or Hungary, or from Poland itself, because then the listeners had a sense of the forbidden, or the mysterious, which intensified their pleasure. The musicians did not mingle with the guests, or eat of their food, or drink their beer. They were apart and were content to be so, but they were also a treasured component of the festivities, and they knew it.

With their arrival, serious dancing started within the castle itself and not only in the peasants' barn. Young Barbara, as the bride-to-be, did not dance, nor did she watch the others enjoying themselves; these were critical days for her and she stayed above with the older women, who fitted her with dresses and showed her the linens they were storing in the chests she would take with her to Krzyztopor. But the other visiting maidens between the ages of ten and twenty had a gala time, swaying across the stone floor in pretty dresses and gazing with admiration as young men from other well-born families tested their new shoes in the slower dances.

On Friday there was real commotion, for in the morning the archbishop arrived from Krakow, and he was met by all the local clergy, sixteen of them, who commented on how fine he looked and how well the affairs of the church were progressing under his leadership. He had been to both Rome and Compostela and was a man of substance in the hierarchy. He had known Cyprjan in Krakow and had partic.i.p.ated with him in a mission to Lithuania, where a group of clergymen who had been members of the Russian Orthodox church desired to convert to Rome's Uniate church under the dispensation of the Union of Brzesc, 1595. The archbishop had greeted the converting priests with a warmth that pleased Cyprjan, who told the newcomers: 'You have left a church wallowing in darkness and joined one gleaming in G.o.d's light. You will never regret your decision.' Three of them would, of course, because their conservative parishioners out in the distant villages would not understand their apostasy and would shortly slay them.

In the afternoon all the peasants gathered at the riverbank, where a small platform had been erected for the Jewish orchestra and another larger one for Cyprjan, Zofia Mniszech and the bishop; again, Barbara was not to be seen.

Trumpets sounded and there were shouts of There they come!' and from the west bank of the Vistula three canopied barges decorated with thousands of flowers set out, each with six men rowing and six poling with long shafts that reached the bottom of the river. They came slowly, like faery boats in a dream; the current of the river carried them northward, but the polers fought against this, so that the barges seemed to be moving in a sideways posture. Persons aboard began singing wedding songs, and sound floated over the river, and several fish, disturbed by the unusual procession, leaped into the air as if they, too, were celebrating.

Thus Roman Ossolinski, attended by two hundred, journeyed from Krzyztopor and crossed the Vistula to claim his bride. As his barge, the one in the lead, approached the eastern sh.o.r.e the orchestra broke into joyous music, and the girls who had been coached how to throw their flowers when the chancellor and his family stepped ash.o.r.e ran to the water's edge, but before the flowers could be thrown, the archbishop stepped forward and blessed the river, the barges upon it and all who had made this journey: 'G.o.d blesses this day. G.o.d blesses Roman Ossolinski, who comes on such a splendid mission. G.o.d blesses the union which will ensue.' Then five trumpets blasted and the festivities began in earnest.

That Friday night there was a gala banquet served on plates from Paris, each containing enameled scenes of rural life featuring lovers working in the fields while G.o.ddesses watched approvingly and birds flew overhead. An orchestra played slow dancing music as forty servants trained for the occasion and dressed in livery supplied them by the master served nine courses, beginning with a delicate white borsch made from soured rye flour and ending three hours later with small pieces of a cake which Zofia herself had made for this opening occasion: a bottom layer of dark-brown walnut cake, an upper layer of golden-yellow almond cake, and over all, a thick layer of orange preserve with chunks of the rind glistening through.

The archbishop, who loved to drink seriously at any banquet, gave a rambling speech in which he avowed that he had never had a better cake to end a meal, to which Chancellor Ossolinski agreed. It was a splendid beginning to a wedding and the guests enjoyed themselves immensely, but Barbara had still not made an appearance.

On Sat.u.r.day most of the women, including Zofia and Chancellor Ossolinski's wife, went to the kitchen to prepare the ritual bread which would grace the wedding and unite it with the earth. Using only the best grains, the women ground small supplies of symbolic flour: wheat, rye, oats. This they mixed with large amounts of similar flours obtained in the usual way, and ingredients were laid out for the bread-making.

This bread had to be made in specified ways: the salt was blessed; the yeast was taken from special crocks in which it had been carefully nurtured; and the caraway seeds were inspected almost one by one to ensure their purity. When the older women were satisfied that ritual procedures had been observed, they gathered the others and said: 'It is time to fetch the bride.'

With the two mothers, Zofia Mniszech and Wanda Ossolinska, leading the way and chanting 'All men to leave the castle!' the procession of women in their beautiful dresses made its way to Barbara's chamber, while two guards were left along the way to continue chanting 'All men to leave the castle!'

They found Barbara sitting with the old nurse, who was in the midst of reminding her once again that the family of Cyprjan and Zofia was no less distinguished than that of the Ossolinskis, whom fate had placed at the top of the ladder at this particular moment, and when the older women stood around the room, one said: 'Lady Barbara, it is time now to bake the bread for your beloved,' and with the mothers once more in the lead, the splendid procession wound its way back to the kitchen as the women again chanted 'All men to leave the castle.'

In the kitchen Barbara went to a special table where ritual ingredients were spread out for the making of dough sufficient for one loaf, and as she mixed them and kneaded the dough the other women did the same, using more ordinary ingredients, for on this gala day they would bake thirty-seven loaves, and as they worked they sang: 'May this marriage be fruitful ...

May the mouth that eats this bread sing praises ...

May the womb that this bread nourishes be fruitful ...

May G.o.d be praised in all things ...

May Jesus Christ be praised ...'

But before Barbara's loaf could be placed in the oven the archbishop was summoned from among the men waiting in the courtyard, and when he entered the kitchen he knelt before Barbara, saying: 'You are to be queen of this household,' and then he blessed each of the loaves, uttering a solemn prayer for the happiness of the wedding which this bread was to honor. Into the ovens they were popped, and after Barbara retired to her room, Zofia and Wanda peered into the ovens from time to time, reporting to the others: 'The bread is doing well.'

That night, when all were seated at the long table with the French plates before them containing nothing, trumpets sounded and the orchestra began playing solemn music, and into the hall came Barbara-dressed in flowing white robes, with a single flower in her hair and the amber necklace about her lovely throat. When she approached the table her attendants withdrew and she stood alone. Walking slowly and with marvelous grace, she went to where the bridegroom sat and kneeled before him, offering on her upturned hands a loaf of the new bread: 'I give you the soil of Poland. I give you the grain of Poland. Eat this good bread and be strong. Eat this good bread and be my husband.'

At this moment Zofia Mniszech handed a loaf to her husband, Cyprjan, and Wanda Ossolinska honored her husband in the same way, whereupon servants scurried about giving each guest a small piece of the fresh bread. It was eaten not ritually, as in a celebration of Ma.s.s, but hungrily, as if this were substance of Poland upon which all life depended.

Sunday, both for the gentry in the castle and the peasants in the barns, was given over to religious services, so the orchestras were excused until sunset, when a giant feast was served in the castle and the meat from two large roasted pigs was distributed among the peasants. There were songs and dances, and processions and trumpet blasts, while Cyprjan and Ossolinski sat on improvised thrones beaming their general approval.

On Monday, at eleven in the morning, the wedding ceremony was solemnized by the archbishop and three of his priests. He realized that he was joining two of the n.o.blest families of Poland, and two of the richest, and in his brief address to the newly married couple he stressed just this: 'Roman and Barbara, because you come from special families you must accept special obligations. Poland needs your leadership. Poland needs your help in preserving its freedom. Jealous enemies beset us on every side, and we must defend ourselves against them.

'You are building a great castle on the other side of the river, one that will withstand any siege, but you must also build in your hearts a love of Jesus Christ so that you will be ready to defend His freedom, too. The church is the salvation of Poland. Holy Mother Mary is the protectress of our liberties. May you be strong in your defense of both.'

That night there were endless celebrations in both castles and in the barns, and there was dancing till morning. The bagpipe-flute-fiddle sc.r.a.ped away with country dances while the Jewish orchestra alternated lively Polish mazurkas with more serious music from Rome and Paris. Barbara, in a lighter dress than the one in which she had been married, danced with every father and son from her father's outlying castles, but when the c.o.c.k crowed she drew aside, as she had been instructed, and with her mother in front holding a candle, she and all the women in the castle, even the cooks, paraded majestically three times around the dining hall while the men applauded, and then they marched up the great stone stairway to the upper floors, where the bridal chamber, strewn with flowers, awaited.

Now Chancellor Ossolinski lifted a candle, whereupon his son stepped behind him, followed by all the men, and they circled the room, singing 'Christ is the bridegroom in heaven, Roman the bridegroom on earth,' after which they headed for the stairway, delivering the bridegroom to the chamber. Dawn broke and roosters crowed and men fell into drunken sleep.

Early Tuesday morning all who could be spared were placed in carts and driven the short distance to the Bukowo castle to see for themselves that Lukasz really did have a tame bear, an otter that played with a fox, and two storks, and although the crowd was rather large, Lukasz's animals behaved as if they knew this was a special occasion. The bear moved among the guests, nudging them and pushing them in the chest with one big paw, while the fox darted here and there as if it were his business to greet each guest individually.

To many, it was the two storks that occasioned most comment, for though all had seen these ungainly birds atop their chimneys, few had ever been close enough to inspect their structure or their curious faces; the storks behaved as if they, too, had rarely seen anything as strange as a human being. So the entire morning was spent with the animals, and this became so tiring to the beasts that before the wedding guests departed, the bear was asleep, with the fox and the otter dozing inside her paws.

The next years were among the happiest Cyprjan and Zofia would ever know, for the Ossolinskis proceeded with amazing vigor to the building of Krzyztopor, and when the foundations were dug the enormous place looked even larger than it had on paper. It was tremendous, an entire city within great battlements and protected by those four gaunt towers reaching into the sky. The winding stairway to the hidden well was constructed; the immense chapel was built, finer than many cathedrals; the three hundred and sixty-five windows were installed, and the fifty-two rooms, each an apartment in itself with three or four attendant rooms, were completed.

It was a castle of such strength and magnificence that Cyprjan was proud to think that his daughter was one day to be its chatelaine, and Barbara rose to her responsibilities, applying the lessons she had learned from her tutor while traveling in France with her father, and poring over the books on palaces she had acquired during the year he had served as an amba.s.sador in Italy. She studied the husbandry of the place and how its two hundred servants and groundkeepers and woodsmen were orgainized and supervised. She grew lovelier each year; motherhood enhanced her charm; and she was becoming known not only in Poland but in surrounding countries as a notable beauty.

At the dedication of the castle and its formal christening as the Battle Axe of the Cross, a Polish poet from the Jagiellonian University at Krakow asked permission to read a poem which he had written in honor of Barbara Ossolinska's famed amber necklace, and he recited a rather heavily constructed but deeply moving evocation of amber's mystery and glory: 'Not harsh or brilliant like a challenging diamond,

Nor stained with miners' blood like a throbbing ruby,

Nor brazenly proclaiming its worth like a cube of gold ...

You are an autumn moon rising over a field of ripened grain.'

The poem, containing three other similar stanzas, occasioned much applause, and various persons asked for copies, so that it became well known and even treasured, but a young French diplomat serving in Krakow considered the poem rather bucolic, and he asked permission to produce a version more in the style of the English poets of the time, whom he admired exceedingly, and on the next night he offered the guests his more graceful version, which he called 'A Pretty Conceit in Which My Lady's Amber Is Compared with the Constellation Pleiades': 'The Pleiades are seven stars,

But only six are seen.

The seventh is immured by bars,

A sad imprisoned queen.

'The Sisters Six glow on your breast,

The fairest ever seen.

The seventh shines beyond the rest,

'Tis you, their heavenly queen.'

He recited his poem with such appropriate delicacy that those about Barbara applauded vigorously, but friends of the Polish poet grumbled: 'The Pleiades isn't a constellation by itself,' and one man explained: 'It's part of Orion, as everyone knows.' The Polish poet stared at his defender.

Then, in the year 1648, frightening rumors began reaching both Krzyztopor and Castle Gorka concerning an uprising of Cossacks throughout the Ukrainian territories of Poland, and since Cyprjan had large holdings there, estates vaster than some European princ.i.p.alities, he had to hasten eastward, taking Lukasz and his henchman Jan of the Beech Trees, to stem the trouble before it reached his estates.

They rode at the fastest practical speed for more than two hundred miles, but as they approached the vast empty area east of Lwow they saw the ruins of Polish estates, one after the other, and a sick feeling a.s.saulted Cyprjan, for he could guess what he was going to find when he reached his holdings. Four miles west of the first estate the travelers encountered a Catholic priest who, recognizing Cyprjan, gasped incoherently: 'Peaceful ... your four hundred peasants ... the little church ... the mill ... and then the Cossacks.' They had destroyed everything in one wild protest against the heavy impositions of the Polish landowners and the spiritual tyranny of the Roman Catholic church, since they were loyal only to the Orthodoxy of Constantinople and Moscow.

'All the priests but me ... slain. All the Jews ... most of the Poles.' When Cyprjan, trembling with rage, asked how he had escaped, the priest said: 'A Jew saved me, and then I saved him. We were the only ones who lived.' Cyprjan asked where the Jew was, and the priest said: 'He went back. The Jews always go back.'

It was a time of heartbreak for Cyprjan and sullen rage for Lukasz and Jan, for they saw at each of Cyprjan's five Ukrainian estates only complete desolation and the loss of at least sixty percent of the former population. But the two attendants applauded the determination with which Cyprjan decided to rebuild: 'If it takes every zloty we earn along the Vistula and in the north, these estates will be reconstructed. Lukasz, you stay here with Jan and supervise things. I'll send all the gold I can collect.'

So the two men from Bukowo were absent from their homes for two years. On the steppes they collected a new group of peasants, who had no other choice but to submit themselves to the custodianship of the magnate Cyprjan. New Jews were imported to operate the stores and the money system, new priests of the Roman faith to rebuild the little churches.

In 1649, in the midst of the rebuilding and before too many goods or houses had acc.u.mulated, the Cossacks struck again, killing and burning as before, but Lukasz had antic.i.p.ated their coming, and he hid himself, Jan, two priests and a Jew who was doing his trading from a cave which he had prudently constructed, and there they waited in darkness until the hurricane pa.s.sed. After that second sweep, the Cossacks let this part of the Ukraine alone, and a kind of peace was restored, and magnates like Cyprjan dismissed the Cossack incursion as merely one more of the troublesome invasions from the east.

In 1654 an event occurred which at the time seemed much less important than the great Cossack raids but which in the long run proved much more disastrous to the welfare of Poland, for as Lukasz and Jan of the Beech Trees had proved, damage done by the raids could be repaired, but the damage about to be done by this new development would in the long run prove fatal.

The government of Poland had several unique weaknesses that differentiated it from other European nations, making it much less stable than they. First, the magnates dominated the election of the king, but they insisted upon doing so reign-by-reign, lest an inherited dynasty slip into dictatorship. Second, they refused to conduct the election vivente rege-that is, while the old king still lived, for fear he might exercise too much influence and throw the election to his son or some other member of his family. Third, the magnates were afraid to elect one of their own number, who might wax too strong and restrict succession to members of his own clan; they strongly preferred to elect foreigners, which inevitably involved them in the dynastic troubles of other nations with which they had no functional affiliation.

At first the elected kings performed like responsible hired managers, and some actually provided excellent custodianship, but the inevitable arrival of weak foreign kings precipitated the decline of the kingdom, for as the papal legate explained in one report to Rome: 'It would be much easier for some trivial French n.o.bleman to become King of Poland than for an honest Polish patriot. You see, the magnates are satisfied that if they don't like the Frenchman, they'll be able to kick him out of the country, something they might not be able to do with a native Pole.' He might have added that on occasion the voting had ended in such chaos that two different kings were elected, a situation that could be resolved only by civil war.