The narrow road led over a rise and passed close to a small lake; grey crusts of ice along its rim. A rowing boat had been pulled out of the water on to a pier, and left inverted to drain. Our appearance, and the noise of the motor cycle, sent dozens of birds into the air with a thunderous clattering of wings and shrill cries. They circled low over the water and then came back to earth in a circuit that seemed more like a practised gesture of protest than a sign of fear.
Immediately beyond the tiny lake there was the Kosinski property. I had seen it in George’s family photos. Behind the house, framing it against the dark sky, there was a line of beech-trees, giant growths reaching about a hundred feet into the sky. Nicely spaced, their massive boughs stretched out like giants linking hands. The rambling property had once been a grand mansion; a typical dwelling of the minor nobility, the class that the Poles called szlachta. When George’s parents had fled penniless to England, other relatives had tenaciously held on to this mansion and preserved it as a family dwelling while other such houses were seized by socialist reformers. The main building was big and, despite its run-down condition, it retained a certain grandeur. Only a few of the windows were lit. Through the fuzzy glass I saw a shadowy interior and the mellow glow of oil-lamps.
Light from the windows made patterns and revealed a path describing a circle round an ornamental stone fountain. The fountain was drained, and the stone maidens standing between two slumbering lions were wrapped in newspapers, and neatly tied with heavy string, to protect them against frost. Two more stone lions stood guard each side of the steps that led up to the front door, while above the entrance a pediment was supported by four columns. The overall mood of dereliction was endorsed by the tattered remains of several storks’ nests, abandoned by those free to seek warmer sojourn.
‘I was right,’ said Dicky triumphantly. ‘It’s the Kosinski place isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Dicky. You were right.’
‘People are always telling me I have a sixth sense: Fingerspitzgefühl – intuition, eh?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Fingertip sensitivity. It’s what safe-crackers and pickpockets have too.’
‘Very bloody funny,’ said Dicky, his usual sense of humour failing him.
We parked our rented Fiat at the side of the house where a long wooden veranda would in summer provide a shelter against the sun. Behind the house there were various coach-houses and stables and other outbuildings arranged around a wide cobbled courtyard. By the dim light of the moon a couple of youthful servants could be seen there pumping water from a well and clearing up, having finished washing a horse-drawn carriage that was obviously still in regular use. Horses poked their heads out of stable doors to watch them. Which aspect of this rural scene could have stirred Boris’s literary memories – of Chekhovian stage-sets lit by golden spotlights – was not easily recognized in this harsh moonlit winter setting. As a literary reference, Solzhenit-syn’s gulag came more readily to mind.
Alerted by the approach of our noisy cavalcade, two women in aprons emerged from a side-door and stood on the covered wooden deck that formed one side of the house. The front door also opened. We parked the car, went up the steps and were greeted politely and ushered inside by a seemingly unsurprised man in a dark suit, stiff collar and plain tie, who used accentless German to announce his name as Karol, and his position as Stefan Kosinski’s secretary.
A maid closed the door behind us and the hallway was darkened. I looked around. Glinting in the moonlight that came from an upstairs window, there were on every wall trophies of the hunt; so many furry, feathered, horned and melancholy heads that there was little space between them. A wide staircase gave access to a balcony over the front door and then continued to the upper floor where more inanimate beasts were displayed. From somewhere far away came the sound of a piano playing a simple melody, and the high reedy voice of a young girl singing.
‘Herr Samson and Herr Cruyer?’ said the secretary, as a maidservant hurried forward with an oil-lamp. Now that we were more closely illuminated, the man looked quizzically from one to the other of us. I must have looked just as quizzically at him, for Dicky and I were both travelling on false passports, and had not used our real names anywhere since arriving in Poland.
‘I’m Cruyer,’ announced Dicky. ‘How did you know?’ The piano and the singing ended suddenly. Footsteps ran lightly across the upstairs floorboards and a child’s head appeared and gazed solemnly down at us for a minute before disappearing again.
‘You were expected, sir,’ said the secretary, switching to English. ‘You both were. Mr Stefan has been called away – a domestic problem. Madame is with him. They will join you tomorrow evening.’
‘We are looking for Mr George Kosinski,’ said Dicky.
‘Perhaps Mr George too. Shall I show you your rooms? May I have your car keys? I will have your bags brought in.’ Karol was a thin stiff-backed fellow, with an unnaturally pale face and bloodless lips. His hair was cut short and he wore very functional glasses with gun-metal rims. Adding this Teutonic appearance to his somewhat unconvincing deferential manner left the effect of a German general pretending to be a waiter.
Karol went to the front door, opened it and made a signal with his hand. After spasmodic bursts of engine noise, the motor-cyclist lurched forward and made a tight circle around a patch of land that in summer might become a front lawn. Then he roared away in a cloud of foul-smelling exhaust fumes. The two youths on bicycles followed him and were soon swallowed by the gloomy forest.
He closed the door and picked up an oil-lamp. We followed him slowly, Karol, and the wooden stairs, both creaky and arthritic. We stepped carefully around a large collection of potted plants which had been brought in from the front balcony for winter, and now occupied most of the staircase. Upstairs he took us to the far end of the corridor and held the light while we looked inside a bathroom. It echoed with the sound of a dripping tap and there were long rust stains patterning its tub. The faint smell of mildew that pervaded the house was at its strongest here, where the warm air from the boiler no doubt promoted its growth. Each side of the bathroom – and with access to it – there were our bedrooms. My window overlooked the forest that came close to the rear of the house. Immediately under this window there was the wooden roof that sheltered the long veranda along the side of the house. Cloud was draped across the vague shape of the moon but there was still enough light to see the veranda steps, and a well-used path led to a woodshed and a fenced space where half a dozen garbage bins were imprisoned. They were tall containers with stout metal clips to hold the lids on tight, the sort of bins needed in regions where wild animals come foraging for food after dark.
Under the supervision of Karol a young manservant came struggling under the weight of our cases. We watched him as he lit all the oil-lamps and then arranged our baggage. A long-case clock in the hallway downstairs struck nine. The secretary announced gravely that we should gather in the drawing-room in time to go in to dinner at ten o’clock. He looked at me. I looked at Dicky. Dicky said we’d be there.
Once we were alone Dicky said softly: ‘So he is here! George Kosinski. You were right, Bernard, you bastard! You were right.’ He groaned and sat down on his cotton crochet bedcover, pulled off his cowboy boots and tossed them into the corner.
‘We’ll see,’ I told him. ‘We’ll see what happens.’
‘What a place! Where’s Baron Frankenstein, what? There must be fifty rooms in this heap.’ The house was big, but fifty rooms was the sort of exaggeration that expressed Dicky’s pleasure or excitement; or merely relief at not having to spend the night on the road.
‘At least fifty,’ I said. It was better not to correct him; Dicky called it nit-picking.
‘I wonder if the whole house is as cold as this. I need a hot shower,’ said Dicky, rubbing his hair and looking at the dirt on his hand. He went and inspected the bathroom and grabbed the only large towel. Then, with the towel over his arm, he bolted the door that led to my bedroom. ‘Dri
ving on those cart-track roads leaves you coated in filth.’ He said it as if adding to the world’s scientific knowledge; as if I might have arrived at the house aboard a cruise ship.
I went to my room and unpacked. Having taken possession of the bathroom Dicky could be heard whistling and singing above the sounds of fast-running water. I opened the doors of the wardrobe and looked in all the more obvious places in which a microphone might be concealed. As part of this exploratory round I tried the door to the bathroom, and it opened to reveal a second door. In this space, the thickness of the wall, someone had left cleaning things: a mop and a broom, a packet of detergent and tins of floor polish. It was I suppose an obvious place to store such things. Scented steam came from the bathroom and Dicky’s voice was louder. I closed the door quietly. The provision of hot water was encouraging, for this seemed to be a mansion without many of those utilities taken for granted in the West. No electricity supply was in evidence. The elaborate brass electric-light fittings and parchment shades were dusty and tarnished, and had clearly not worked for many years. The equally ancient paraffin lamps, one each side of my bed, were clean and bright, their carefully trimmed wicks giving a mellow light without smoke.
I looked around my room. There was only one window, the upper part of which consisted of leaded panels of stained-glass, artistically depicting some of the more savage episodes of the Old Testament. The room was made more gloomy by the panelling, the heavy carved furniture and an embroidered rug with folk-art designs, that hung against the wall alongside the bed. Arranged facing towards the bed – as if for visitors in a sick-room – were two large armchairs with upholstery from which horsehair stuffing emerged in tufts, like unwanted hair in depilatory advertisements. Upon a glass-fronted bookcase there was an antique clock – silent and still – and an ashtray from the Waldorf in Paris. There was a case of dusty unread travel books dating from the long-ago days when Poles were free to travel, and a threadbare oriental carpet; the sort of once-cherished objects that were relegated to the guest-rooms of grand houses. The only picture on the wall was a lithograph, an idealized profile portrait of Lenin, his bearded chin jutting out in what might be construed as a gesture of foolhardy provocation. Directly under the picture, on the chest of drawers, there was a tray covered with a linen cloth. Under the cloth I discovered a china teapot, a tin of Earl Grey tea from Twinings in London and a cup and saucer. Stefan Kosinski was seemingly a man who didn’t encourage his guests to join him for breakfast. The large wood-fired white porcelain stove in the corner was warm to the touch. Everything was ready. Who, I wondered, had foreseen our imminent arrival? And what other preparations awaited us?
There was something contrived about the formality with which dinner was served in this remote country house. Poland’s szlachta had always been the bulwark against social changes, both good and bad. No doubt such meals served by maidservants were a way for the Kosinski family to distinguish themselves from villagers, some of whom might in these days of black-market boom be making more money than their betters. It was an appropriately formal gathering. Karol presided as if a delegate of his master. Stefan’s elderly Uncle Nico and Aunt Mary took their seats either side of him. Aunt Mary was a cheery granny of the sort that the Poles called Babcas. When we first entered the drawing-room it was she who got up from the sofa to greet me. Having tucked her needlework into a basket that she carried with her almost everywhere, she smoothed her skirt with both hands and smiled. Karol the secretary introduced me. Aunt Mary said: ‘How do you do?’ in perfectly accented English. Those were the only perfectly accented English words I ever heard her use.
Her husband Uncle Nico was frail; a thin white-faced man with yellow teeth and a cane to support himself as he walked. He was wearing a hand-knitted shawl over a dark, well-tailored suit that was shiny with wear. ‘You’ve come to visit Stefan?’ Uncle Nico asked in good English. He inhaled on a cigarette, having first flicked ash into an ashtray which he carried with him. It was already loaded with ash and butts. His face was chalky white and his eyes large with the stare that comes with old age. I remembered the stories George had told me, and I knew that this was the man who had adopted Stefan when George’s parents escaped; his father just a few steps away from arrest and charges of being an agitator and class enemy.
‘And to visit Mr George,’ I reminded him. The room was cold, the ceiling too high for the elaborate tiled stove to make much difference, and I looked at Uncle Nico’s shawl with ever-increasing envy.
‘Oh, dear!’ said Uncle Nico. ‘Ach Weh!’ and from then onwards spoke in German.
Dicky’s entrance was more considered than mine. He kissed Aunt Mary’s hand in the approved Polish style. He smiled and, using a low resonant voice, did the warm-and-delightful-shy-young-man act that he used on anyone influential, infirm and over fifty. Dicky went to the stove and laid both hands on its top hopefully. Disappointed, he patted the sides of the stove and then felt its chimney. Finally he turned to us, smiled again and slapped his hands together, rubbing his arms to encourage circulation.
Through the partly open folding doors I caught sight of the dining-room and the polished mahogany table where cut glass, silver and starched linen had been arranged as if for a banquet. It looked promising; I was cold and hungry and the water hadn’t warmed enough to provide a hot bath. Karol offered us a drink. It was potato vodka from Danzig or tap water. I decided upon vodka.
‘Dinner,’ announced Karol suddenly as if to a roomful of strangers.
As we went into the dining-room half a dozen more people – mostly young – quietly appeared and sat down at the table with us. Dicky’s hot bath and a change of clothes had worked wonders upon him. Even before I had my napkin tucked into my collar, Dicky had found out that Uncle Nico was writing a book. He’d been working on it for more than twenty years, thirty years perhaps. It was a biography of Bishop Stanislaus, the Bishop of Cracow, who had been canonized in 1253 and became the patron saint of Poland.
With vivid movements of the hand and head, Uncle Nico related the story of the saint’s death. According to Uncle Nico, King Boleslaw the Bold personally beheaded the bishop upon a tree-trunk, before having him chopped into pieces and dumped into a nearby pond. That was in 1079, since when pond, tree-trunk and saint have become unrivalled objects of pilgrimages.
Dicky nodded and told us that the mortal remains of Saint Stanislaus are to be found in the Wawel Royal Cathedral in Cracow. Dicky had discovered this in a guidebook he’d been reading in the car. Showered with praise for displaying this knowledge he smiled modestly, as if keeping some succulent morsels about the doings of Saint Stanislaus to himself. My vodka finished, I picked up the cut-glass tumbler and its contents: water. There was no wine in evidence; just tumblers of water, one at each place setting.
‘When will the book be published?’ Dicky asked.
Perhaps the book would never be finished said Aunt Mary. But it did not matter. The writing of the book was essential to the household, and indeed to the nearby village. She spoke of the book, as everyone was to do, in a hushed and respectful voice. Each night Uncle Nico told his family assembled round the dinnertable some aspect of the book that he felt they should know. Often this was something they had all heard many times, but that did not matter. All that mattered was that a long and seemingly important book about Poland’s medieval history was being written in this house, and they were all sharing the glory of it.
A young servant girl in a black dress and starched frilly apron served vegetable soup from a large chinaware tureen, measuring each ladleful with care. It took a long time.
The dining-room was memorable for the large stuffed, and somewhat moulted, bird of prey that, cantilevered from the wall, seemed about to swoop upon the table. It was a huge creature, about six feet from tattered wing-tip to wing-tip, with realistic glass eyes and open beak. The flickering candles encouraged the illusion that it was alive. Residents no doubt soon grew accustomed to dining under the sharp talons of this menacing creature, b
ut I noticed Dicky glancing up at it apprehensively while the soup was being served, as I admit I did too.
‘Did you read the Premier’s speech?’ Uncle Nico asked the assembled diners, tapping the weekly newspaper that was jutting from his coat pocket. When no one replied he repeated his question, holding his head to one side and fixing us, one after the other, with his glassy stare.
Still no one replied until I told him, no, I hadn’t.
‘More reforms,’ he said. ‘Capitalism mixed with socialism.’
‘Is that good?’ Dicky asked, smiling.
‘Is champagne good when mixed with prussic acid?’ the old man asked sarcastically. Dicky didn’t answer. Uncle Nico drank some water. Someone at the other end of the table picked up a basket of roughly sliced bread and passed it around.
Karol tore up his thick slice of dark bread and dropped pieces of it into the fruity vinegar-flavoured vegetable soup. While doing this he said: ‘There will be no reforms; the Soviet Union will prevent Poland making reforms.’
‘By invading us?’ said Aunt Mary.
‘Why invade us? The Kremlin have already made sure that apparatchiks have the key positions in Poland. Their job is to block or sabotage all meaningful reforms here. They will say yes and do nothing. In that way the men in the Kremlin can sleep soundly.’
It seemed to be the accepted view, for no one argued; they just drank their soup. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev had come to power. The optimists in Warsaw were saying that the men in the Kremlin were too concerned with their own troubles to wield Soviet military power against their neighbours as belligerently as once they had done. But Mikhail Gorbachev, for all his posturing, was a dedicated Marxist, and, as we had seen on the road from Warsaw, he had his soldiers discreetly positioned should he decide the Poles were changing things too quickly. So the going was slow. Uncle Nico sighed deeply, and in that way that families communicate without speech, a sudden mood of resignation followed the exchange. Or was it a reluctance to speak frankly in front of the servants?