Poland

  The slow, wonder-filled journey from Przemysl to Lwow, over the flat and glistening snow, was one that Feliks would never forget; Katarzyna rode with him sometimes, she on her camel, he on his, and occasionally they would urge their stately beasts well ahead of the others. He would imagine himself and this delectable girl riding forever into the vast distances, and when Katarzyna asked: ‘Would you be willing to wear modern clothes?’ he interpreted it almost as a proposal of marriage.

  The land was almost as enchanting as the girl, an incredible sweep of emptiness dotted here and there with small villages populated by Ukrainian peasants who existed at the starvation level, then some town of modest size filled with intruding Polish merchants and Jews and Roman Catholic priests who scarcely dared move out among the Orthodox Ukrainians. When the snow was fresh, it was like crystal, stretching forever; and when it started to melt, it revealed a million little flowers, gold and blue and red and bright yellow, all smiling at the sun and the passers-by.

  Six of the camel riders formed a small band featuring Ukrainian balalaikas, and at unexpected times the men broke into songs that all the riders knew, and then the steppes echoed with joyousness, and once on such an occasion a village loomed on the horizon, and the camel corps broke into a run, with Katarzyna and Feliks amongst them, and they dashed at the village, singing and firing their rifles and wheeling the camels about as if it were some great attack, and the peasant mothers told their children: ‘Here comes that wild Pole again,’ and the entire village joined the singing.

  In Lwow, Granicki owned a small palace which he used only for such visits—once every two or three years—and for six starry days the young people said their goodbyes; Roman told his father that Katarzyna was about the most attractive girl he had ever met, and when Lubonski relayed this important information to Granicki, the old man growled: ‘I’m afraid Lubomirski with the French clothes has settled the matter.’ The count did not inform his son of the probable engagement, and he certainly did not tell Feliks, who was not to be considered a competitor, but he did say to Kleofas: Things often change, old friend, as you and I know.’

  ‘Damned well we know,’ Kleofas roared. ‘Remember when I wooed your cousin? She snapped: “An old man who’s already had three wives! Begone!” So I smashed her across the ear and said: “No one tells me begone,” and we had quite a tussle. She was going to shoot me with my own gun, but in the end she considered the matter and accepted me, and we’ve had three beautiful daughters.’

  ‘The loveliest is Katarzyna.’

  ‘No,’ Granicki corrected. ‘The loveliest is always the one who hasn’t found her husband yet. For the moment that’s Katarzyna.’

  ‘Will she marry the Lubomirski boy?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I think maybe not,’ Lubonski said.

  They parted in the morning, Granicki heading northward toward his estates now in Russian hands, Lubonski eastward toward his vast Ukrainian holdings. And when the camel corps started to move through the flower-strewn steppes, with the horsemen and the wagons trailing behind, and old Kleofas and his lovely daughter bringing up the rear, Feliks felt his heart bursting. For the first time in his life he was truly in love.

  Without the Tatar charges on little villages, and without the camels to divert attention, the Lubonski group assumed a more honest character, and now Feliks and Roman could study the real Ukraine, that mysterious land which lay between Russia and Poland, between Europe and Asia, and the more deeply the caravan penetrated this always-conquered but forever-unconquered land, the more the young men respected it. They were therefore in a receptive mind when they approached at last the village of Polz, the largest of the Lubonski holdings in this area.

  It was a low, flat village of small cottages built of many inexpensive substances—wood, wattles, mud—and it contained only one building of significance, a small wooden church with two onion-bulb steeples painted in red and blue. The nearby manor house was also of one story, but its walls were stone and it rambled over a substantial area in order to provide rooms for the many attendants who accompanied the count on his periodic visits. The factotum, a man named Grabski, occupied a cottage indistinguishable from the others except for the multitude of flowers which surrounded it whenever the snow melted.

  The young men were fortunate to see Polz at this time of year, for Easter was at hand, not the real one, which had come while they were en route, but the more lively Orthodox one when the Ukrainian year reached a climax and young women wore their best while their mothers counted eggs to ensure that there would be enough for the decorating geniuses produced by every village, none better than in Polz. After the long snows of winter, and the shivering nights, the earth seemed to burst with new life at Easter, as if the year were just beginning, as it had in the old calendar.

  Roman and Feliks had an interesting introduction to the daily life of Polz, for on the morning of their second day in the village a young Ukrainian of about their own age appeared at the manor house to seek a beneficence from the count, who sat himself in a chair with high back and heavy arms, waiting to hear the applicant’s plea: ‘Your Excellence, I want to get married.’

  ‘Have you found yourself a good girl?’

  ‘Yes, Benedykta, the cobbler’s daughter.’

  ‘Does she wish to marry you?’

  ‘She does, Excellence, and she hopes we may have the cottage that old Natasha occupied.’

  ‘Is Natasha dead?’

  ‘No, her mind left her … during the coldest part of the winter.’

  ‘It may come back.’

  ‘It might, Excellence, but now she lives with my aunt and her cottage is empty. I beseech Your Excellence

  ‘Let me think about this. Return in four days.’

  It was clear to Feliks that Count Lubonski had decided within the first moments to allow the young man to marry Benedykta, and to have the cottage too, and the postponement was to remind the young fellow and his intended bride that the power in such matters rested with the count, who owned them, and their cottages, and their land.

  On the third morning Feliks was walking in the village when he saw the young suitor and they spoke, the Ukrainian using a few words of Polish, Feliks a few of Ukrainian, and the former asked: ‘Would you honor me by greeting my intended?’ and Feliks nodded, whereupon he was led to a cottage near the edge of the village, its walls decorated gaily and its flowerbeds in bloom.

  ‘Benedykta!’ the young man called, and a most beautiful girl came to the low door, slim of waist, her flaxen hair in braids, a wide smile on her wide face, and a kind of poetic lilt in how she held her head and moved her hands. Feliks thought he had never before seen a girl who so completely expressed the joy of being young and beautiful and in love, and he noticed especially that her quilted dress, tight at the waist and flaring out below her knees, was made not of ordinary cloth but of a felted material ornamented with tufts sewn to it, and bright bits of metal, and many areas of singing color.

  How fortunate this fellow is, Feliks said to himself as he stepped forward to meet Benedykta, but to his surprise the Ukrainian showed disappointment and asked the girl: ‘Where’s Benedykta?’ and before she could reply he told Feliks: ‘This is her sister, Nadzha,’ and Feliks felt an actual burden lift from his heart.

  He spent much of his time during the next days at this cottage, so beautiful on the outside, so meager and forbidding inside. It had no floor other than the earth, no furniture other than the table, the beds and the three-legged stools, and nothing much else except the bench on which the father mended shoes, yet it was one of the wealthier homes in the village and a center of much delight, for the two daughters were beautiful, and there was bread, and the parents had their teeth.

  Nadzha accompanied her sister to the manor house on the morning when the latter and her young man stood before Count Lubonski to receive his formal permission to marry and occupy the old woman’s cottage, and the sisters formed a lovely pair, Benedykta slightly taller, Nadzha
slightly more animated. ‘I am sure this is to be a good marriage,’ the count said as he left his big chair to kiss the intended bride.

  The girls also appeared together when on the Saturday before Easter they brought to the manor house the seven decorated eggs which their family had presented there each Easter since history began; when the count was in attendance they delivered them to him, singing an old song as they bowed before him with these gifts of elegant and intricate beauty: the eggs of Easter were the sonnets and the symphonies of the Ukraine, and those prepared in the cobbler’s house were among the most honored:

  ‘I bring these eggs

  As Melchior brought myrrh.

  They are the gifts

  That Jesus played with

  In the manger …’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘I do not care,’ she cried defiantly, glancing at her mother as she tended her chores.

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

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

  ‘He will leave you,’ Benedykta predicted. ‘And with a baby, no doubt. And then where in God’s hell will you be?’

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

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

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

  ‘But why? I can count. I can manage.’

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

  ‘You mean … I can never work?’

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Why?’ Feliks cried, pain echoing in his voice.

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

  ‘What happened?’

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

  ‘Where did she go?’

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

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

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