Poland: A Novel Part 24

'One out of ten thousand does not const.i.tute great unrest, Herr Pilic'

'If he is the right one, he does.'

'I am not aware of any great demand for a separate state in the Banat.'

'But you must be aware of our anger over the oppression we suffer from the Hungarians. They are not easy people to live with, Excellency. You know that. They are h.e.l.l to live under.'

'Would the Rumanians be any better masters? Or the Slovaks?'

'Why must we have any masters?'

Lubonski pondered this difficult question, so common in the empire these days, and replied gently: 'Because that is the way G.o.d has ordained this part of Europe.' And he placed his left hand on the map so that it covered most of the Austrian Empire.

'When you dress like a Hungarian, Excellency, you talk like one.'

'Tonight I am Hungarian.'

'So my visit is a waste of time?'

'No!' Lubonski cried, throwing the atlas aside and rising to his feet. 'Herr Pilic, you shall meet all my subordinates. Right after Christmas. And they shall listen to your complaints, and if justice is required, you will get it.'

With his leopard skin falling gracefully over his tunic, the count placed his arm about his visitor's shoulders and walked him to the door, a.s.suring him as he went that he had arranged this extraordinary meeting in his home because the emperor himself had requested it. 'The Banat of Temesvar may be small, Herr Pilic, but it is never lost in our conscience.'

'It's an honor to talk with someone who knows where it is.'

'And now I must help my wife prepare for the concert.'

'May the music echo with the sounds of Christmas,' Pilic said as he went down to the courtyard, where a surprise awaited him.

'I've asked my coachman to return you to your hotel,' Lubonski said, and he watched with real pleasure as the little man climbed into the exquisite carriage and settled back against the cus.h.i.+ons as the two gray Lippizaners clip-clopped their way upon the oaken blocks that softened the sound of their going.

The gala Christmas concert was held in a theater that seated more than a thousand, but for the first part of the evening the guests looked less at the stage than at the imperial box, where the Emperor Franz Josef sat. The emperor-sixty-five years old, with heavy white sideburns and mustache-was married to one of the most glamorous women in Europe, and one of the most neurotic. Empress Elizabeth, a German of the House of Wittelsbach, had lived with young Franz Josef long enough to bear him three daughters and a son, but had then sought refuge from the intense boredom of the court by traveling incessantly-Greece, Italy, France, England-by building a vast palace for herself on the island of Corfu, by attaching to herself a series of what she called 'my attendants'-a Greek professor, an English hunting gentleman, an impecunious teacher-and by writing impa.s.sioned letters to other men under one of her pseudonyms: Gabrielle, the Countess von Hohenembs, Mrs. Nicholson.

No other supreme emperor in history had ever been so poorly served by his wife as Franz Josef. Empress Elizabeth's behavior was a scandal and her lavish expenditure of public funds a threat to the monarchy, but Franz Josef could do nothing to discipline her. Instead, he sought refuge in a bizarre way: a forty-year alliance with one of the most ordinary mistresses an emperor had ever selected, and on this night she was visible to the Viennese public.

Kamarina Schratt, deserted wife of a minor Hungarian landowner, had made herself into a popular actress in comic roles. Not pretty, not gifted, not blessed with any unusual talent, she had developed a rowdy style of comedy which exactly suited her bubbly personality and her rather plump form. She was, in fact, an Austrian hausfrau converted into a most ordinary actress, and it was because of her commonplace appearance and behavior that the emperor had chosen her as his companion and confidante.

This was reasonable, since Franz Josef, this all-powerful emperor of a sprawling empire which embraced all of central Europe, was himself a most ordinary man. He read no books, appreciated none of the great plays then available in Vienna, understood no music except German military marches, and failed even to comprehend the vast political movements which agitated his empire. Unable to control his beautiful empress, who saw him only a few days each year when she returned to Vienna from her interminable travels with other men, he found consolation with Frau Schratt, but in what precise way, not even the intimates of the court could say.

'Is the little Schratt his mistress?' a Bohemian politician asked Count Lubonski during a painful set of negotiations. It was customary in Vienna to use the phrase 'the little Uspanski' or 'the little Kraus' to refer to any reasonably presentable young woman who was unattached: it depersonalized her, making her fair game for the men of the city.

'The little Schratt? Who knows? I certainly don't,' Lubonski said, and when on another occasion Wiktor Bukowski asked the same question, Lubonski reprimanded him: 'It is not proper for a man your age to inquire into such matters.'

On this evening Frau Schratt had come into the concert hall with the emperor, but she was not seated in his box, for that honor was reserved for the absent empress, but in a nearby box occupied by two n.o.ble families from the countryside west of Vienna. The buxom little actress refrained from looking at the emperor and he kept his eyes on the stage, but the pair caused great excitement among the Christmas gathering.

The program was in that heroic mold made popular in Beethoven's day, when an evening's entertainment might consist of two or three symphonies, a concerto or maybe two, improvisations by the pianist and perhaps a half-dozen songs. The Viennese loved music, and on this night they would enjoy a substantial treat.

A conductor well known in Berlin would lead the local orchestra in Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, a jolly, holiday affair, after which a Berlin pianist would join the orchestra to present Mozart's delectable Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467. After an intermission, a group of singers from Munich would offer Brahms' glorious Liebeslieder Waltzes, with the Berlin pianist and one from Vienna as dual accompanists. Then the same singers with their pianists would venture a radical presentation: Gustav Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer, scored not for contralto as originally composed, but for a quartet. Then would come a second intermission, after which a young Polish pianist from Paris, Krystyna Szprot, would offer a selection of pieces by the Polish composer Frederic Chopin. As the program, embellished with angels and Christmas ornaments, explained: 'Mlle. Szprot will announce her selections from the stage.'

When the Count and Countess Lubonski came down the aisle to their seats-as a conservative Pole working among Germans who distrusted him, he deemed it imprudent to take a box in which he would be conspicuous-his quick eye saw several things: the emperor had none of his family with him; the little Schratt was properly off to one side; young Wiktor Bukowski was in place, properly dressed, in the seat next to his; and Herr Pilic from the Banat of Temesvar had purchased himself a seat with other visitors from protesting provinces.

He also saw that the hall was resplendent in the Viennese style: glittering uniforms like his own, which often made the Austrian officers more beautiful than their women; at the last three European compet.i.tions Austrian uniforms had won first prizes for color, for design and for overall grandeur, but the military men wearing them had won medals for nothing. In its last four wars the Austrian army had been humiliated.

When the orchestra was seated, the Berlin conductor walked stiffly onstage, bowed to the emperor, then to the other boxes, and finally to the orchestra itself, and with a quick flash of his baton, sent the players into Beethoven's rollicking little master-work, composed not far from where the musicians sat. The orchestra did not play the music, they danced through it, appreciating the fact that no other symphony in the repertoire would have fitted so perfectly the mood of this Christmas season.

But just when Lubonski was most attentive to the masterful way in which Beethoven was bringing his little gallop to a pleasing conclusion, he felt Bukowski nudging him; the young man was pointing to the imperial box, where the emperor had fallen asleep.

'Keep your eyes on the stage!' the count said in sharp rebuke, and by the time the German conductor reached the final coda Franz Josef was awake.

Bukowski, a difficult young man to repress, said as six husky stage personnel pushed a large piano into position: 'If that thing ever started slipping ...'

'It's their job to see it doesn't,' Lubonski said. 'Do you know the Mozart they're playing?'

'No. But I've heard both the Brahms songs and the Mahler. I'm waiting for them.'

'You'll soon hear some splendid music, Wiktor. Listen carefully.'

Bukowski was not much impressed with the first movement of the concerto and judged that the German pianist did not strike the piano keys hard enough; in fact, his mind wandered and he began to scout the various boxes to see which of Vienna's beautiful young ladies were in attendance, and at one point, when the piano and orchestra were marching through some undistinguished routines, he again nudged Lubonski and whispered: 'That box next to the little Schratt? Who has it tonight?'

Lubonski was irritated by the interruption, but he was also interested in who might be attending in official capacity, and he followed Bukowski's discreet pointing. 'That's the American amba.s.sador. A boor, but extremely rich. From Chicago, I believe.'

'And is that his daughter?'

'I suppose so,' Lubonski said without looking. He loved this Mozart concerto and had picked it out on his piano to the extent that he could follow the music, but Bukowski, interested as he should have been in attractive young women, stared at the American box and tried to deduce what kind of person the amba.s.sador's daughter might be: She could be his niece. Or just a visitor. Not what you'd call pretty. But striking. Yes, striking, and I'll wager that gown came from Paris, not Chicago.

He was engaged in such a.s.sessments when the first movement of the concerto ended with an agitated succession of sounds and a coda of some brilliance. 'Wasn't that inspiring?' Lubonski asked, and the young man said: 'One of the best, Your Excellency.'

And then, as he still gazed at the American box, the orchestra began the second movement with a soft but very marked waltz beat 1-2-3, 1-2-3 in the winds, horns and cellos, atop which came the violins in a theme so delicate and lambent that he turned his full attention to the stage, where that obsessive 1-2-3 continued, with the violins producing an even more enchanting melody. Then, when he was not noticing the piano, that instrument broke in gently with its own statement of ravis.h.i.+ng melody.

'Oh!' he whispered, but Lubonski did not hear. He was captivated by the elegance exhibited onstage: waltz beat, violin melody, piano statement, all fused into one of the miracles of music, a perfect harmony of composition and performance. This second movement of Concerto No. 21 was one of the most ingratiating ever composed, and Vienna accepted it warmly on this festive night. But Bukowski noticed that the emperor was again asleep. However, when he sought to point this out to Lubonski, the box was empty. Franz Josef had slipped away from this boring fiddling, as he called it, and after a decent interval Frau Schratt followed.

They would return to the palace, where in the emperor's private quarters she would make him a cup of hot chocolate and talk to him as he munched biscuits and warmed himself, after which he would be in bed by nine, for in the morning he must be up at four, reading carefully every report placed before him, making brief notes on the margins, altering nothing, commanding nothing, just working his way through another day at the head of his vast empire.

During the intermission Count Lubonski wanted to talk about the scintillating Mozart and the magical manner in which the three parts of the second movement were held in balance, but Bukowski was eager to see if he could manage in some way or other an introduction to the American amba.s.sador and his entourage. He failed, but when the conceit resumed he found a gratification he could not explain from the fact that the amba.s.sador's daughter or niece was still in attendance.

The Liebeslieder Waltzes of Johannes Brahms had been written in Vienna for Vienna: to the lively accompaniment of two pianos a mixed quartet sang of the joys and despairs of love. Both Bukowski and his count knew these songs, so very popular in the city, and each had certain selections he preferred; Lubonski regarded the lovely apostrophe to the Danube, 'Am Donaustrande,' a perfect evocation of the city in which he spent most of his time these days, and he was especially fond of the song to the little bird, 'Ein kleiner hbscher Vogel,' for it reminded him of the pleasures he had known in the Vienna Woods in which the bird lived.

Bukowski, for his part, liked the cry of the tenor and baritone as they sang of their love for women in general, 'O die Frauen, O die Frauen.' This was a song which he himself might have sung, for he was fearfully confused about women; he cherished them, dreamed of them, wondered which one he would marry and whether she would agree to live half the year in Vienna, the rest in his rather gloomy half-mansion on the Vistula. During the twelve months of 1894 he thought he had been desperately in love six times, with six totally different young women, two Austrians, two Poles, one Hungarian and the niece of an English lord to whom he had never spoken, and this year had been no better.

Now he closed his eyes, allowing the rich sounds to flow over him with their heavy burden of longing, their promise of ultimate fulfillment, and the blending of the four voices, the extreme manliness of the baritone, the feminine apotheosis of the soprano, seemed to him the most powerful statement of s.e.xuality he had ever heard. The vanished emperor was forgotten, the bright uniforms, the glitter of the boxes, the s.h.i.+mmering quality of the concert hall, all were gone and he was in some timeless setting. 'O die Frauen!' he whispered.

'Hus.h.!.+' Lubonski snapped, poking him sharply with an elbow. The count liked Bukowski, for the young Pole showed promise of becoming an excellent official, qualified to hold some important position in the Austrian government. A man of significance, especially a minority official like Lubonski, had to be careful whom he sponsored, because many young Poles had made a.s.ses of themselves in the capital. They'd proved themselves provincial yokels, bringing scorn upon all Poles, and until a young fellow had been tested, there was no way of predicting how he would meet the challenge of a great city like Vienna. A man could be of some significance in Krakow, yet prove himself a fool when posed against sophisticated Germans and Frenchmen.

Bukowski looked promising. He spoke German, French and some English, knew how to dress, flattered women easily and made small conversation with their husbands. But the real Bukowski had yet to show himself, and Lubonski would prudently mark time before pressing the imperial government to promote him.

The young fellow was unaware of the count's speculations, for the two women singers were uniting in a song which tore at his heart: 'A bird will fly afar

Seeking the proper glade.

So a woman must find a man

Before her life can flourish.'

He was convinced that this was true, and he wondered when the seeking woman would find him, so that her life could blossom. Where was she? How did one locate the woman?

When applause for the singers ended, Lubonski told Bukowski and the countess: 'This next is rather daring, you know. Mahler, whom you met at the opera, wrote these wayfaring songs for solo voice. Now four are singing them, but you know ...' He paused to nod to Herr Pilic, who had moved so as to attract Lubonski's attention. 'You know that Mahler later borrowed the songs to use as the base for his first symphony.'

'And very good it was,' Bukowski offered.

'If you like Jewish music. The songs won't be light and dancing like Brahms, I can tell you that.'

After only a brief pause the singers rearranged themselves and the two pianists began a slow and mournful theme, to which the voices soon added a lament, but now the spirit changed, and a broad swelling movement developed, in which Bukowski could visualize himself striding over bleak, empty s.p.a.ces ... alone. In the rich sadness of late youth he indulged his pa.s.sion for romanticism, spurred on by the changing, driving imagery of the Mahler songs. Count Lubonski had been right; this music had little to do with Brahms, or Beethoven either, yet it was pa.s.sionately Viennese, the almost majestic inheritor of the great tradition.

'It's very Jewish,' Lubonski whispered to his wife, 'but I must say I like it.'

Throughout the cycle the two pianos and the four voices created an increasing sensation of persons lost in vast expanses, wandering forever toward some goal undefined and never to be realized. It was music for the year 1895, on a snowy night, in central Europe.

There is the key! Bukowski thought. I'm on the plains of Poland, Russian Poland that I saw once from the train. It's my land, my Poland, and I've never really seen it or been part of it.

Now his music-driven footsteps became longer, for he was striding toward something, toward a homeland which he had never appreciated when living in Bukowo as a child. As the music swirled about him, its marvelous minor harmonies inflamed his imagination, and he became for a moment the romantic Pole lost in a vast horizon.

'Do you like what they've done?' Lubonski asked. 'The four voices, I mean?' When he looked at his young friend he realized that Bukowski was not in the concert hall but adrift in some wandering fantasy land, where a young man should sometimes be.

It was in this dreamlike state that Bukowski wandered through the salon of the theater during the second intermission, and at some distance from the bar, where servants in red uniform were pouring champagne, he encountered the American amba.s.sador and the two women who could be presumed to be his wife and daughter. Lacking an introduction, Wiktor could not speak to them, but to his delight the young woman said to him in French: 'It's very daring, the four voices I mean,' and he replied in English: 'Very powerful statement, is it not, yes?'

'You speak Englis.h.!.+' the young woman said, reaching for the older woman's arm. 'Mother, this young man speaks English.'

'The newspapers, I mean from London, one reads them, you know.'

'And what do you do?' the American woman asked forthrightly.

'Wiktor Bukowski, to your service, Ministry of Agriculture,' he said. 'And my sponsor, Count Lubonski of Minorities, told me that you were the American amba.s.sador's family, yes?'

'Yes,' the older woman said. 'Where did Oscar go?' Looking around for her husband, she said, 'Well, he's missing. This is my daughter, Marjorie.'

'Miss ...'

'I'm sorry. I'm Mrs. Trilling. This is Marjorie Trilling.'

'I saw you enjoying the Mahler,' the girl said, and Bukowski blushed like a schoolboy who had been complimented, deeming it incredible that this young woman from a foreign land should have noticed him particularly.

'You are beware that Mahler used these songs in his symphony?'

'Aware,' the girl corrected with no embarra.s.sment, and she did it so forthrightly that Wiktor was not affronted.

'I speak French a little better,' he said, and she replied in French: 'I knew about the Mahler. We played his symphony in our orchestra.'

'You played?' he asked.

'Flute,' she said, but before he could ask what orchestra, she was summoned by her father, who led his women back to the third part of the concert.

The six husky men had taken away the two heavy pianos used to accompany the singers, replacing them with a much frailer instrument with glowing ebony sides, and to it came a small, delicate young woman who wore a white dress with a beltline just below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and whose black hair was adorned by a single silver clasp. She seemed much too small to manage the piano, but when she bent over to adjust the seat, she did so with such authority that it was obvious she was in command. Then, still bent forward, she smiled at the audience and said in French: 'I must reach the pedals, you know.'

When the laughter stopped she said, again in French: Tonight I am proud to play for you selections from our great Polish pianist Frederic Chopin.' From various quarters in the audience, marking areas where Poles sat, came murmurs of approval, at which she repeated her announcement, this time in halting German. Some applauded.

She proceeded to outline her program: 'First I shall play the Ballade in G minor, Opus 23, then a few waltzes, and a lovely scherzo ...' When she said this last word, Bukowski felt the count snap to attention and heard him whisper something to his wife, but the young man was diverted when the pianist said with great charm: 'And I shall conclude with music that we pianists like very much, the etudes.'

Seating herself carefully at the piano, adjusting her filmy white dress and testing her reach to the keys, she paused a long moment as if for the audience to appreciate how small she was and how large the task she was undertaking. Then suddenly she darted forth her hands and struck those five lovely notes which comprised the opening theme. She played with such alternating force and delicacy that the audience made no sound, listening intently to the flow of Chopin's beautifully contrived composition.

Bukowski, who intuitively preferred the opening orchestral selections to the singing, and the singing to piano solos, listened respectfully, proud that a Polish artist was playing music by a Polish composer, but not really involving himself in it. And even when Mlle. Szprot came to those faerylike arabesques that decorated the middle portion of the ballade, he remained detached, continuing so when she reached the thunderous closing pa.s.sages.

'The little one can play,' Lubonski whispered as the ballade came to a conclusion in which the five opening notes reappeared in force, then drifted gently away in the same melancholy which had characterized the Mahler songs.

The audience applauded loudly, more for the charm of the artist than for the skill of the composer, and like a practiced little flirt, Mlle. Szprot bowed gracefully and placed her hands over her lips as if she wanted to express her thanks but did not dare speak.

She played seven short waltzes with the delicate touch that one would have expected: extremely feminine, obviously light, almost inconsequential, but with such inventiveness as to make them proper ornaments for any Christmas celebration. Bukowski liked them, but realized that they were music on a much less intense plane than either the Beethoven or the Mozart.

Indeed, he was about to dismiss Chopin as a transparent lesser artist when Mlle. Szprot brought her waltzes to a graceful conclusion, full of arabesques and adornments, after which she left the piano, came forward toward the edge of the stage and said, first in French, then in Polish: 'This is Christmas and I bring to my Polish friends a special present. First a group of seven mazurkas, the wonderful music that only Chopin could have written, and then ...'

Again Bukowski felt Lubonski stiffen, and turned toward him as the count grasped his arm almost in apprehension. 'And then I shall play for you the music we Poles have always loved at Christmas, the Scherzo in B minor.' As she said this, Lubonski gave a m.u.f.fled cry of delight, gripped Wiktor's arm even more tightly, and whispered: 'I knew she would play it!'

It was a much different Krystyna Szprot who returned to the piano. Grimly, forcefully, as if she must make an important statement for all Poles living in exile, whether in Paris or the capitals of captivity like St. Petersburg, Berlin or Vienna, she attacked the mazurkas, those curious and terrifyingly inventive compositions which only a Pole could have written. The mazurka had begun as a kind of peasant square dance, much loved by Chopin when he was a boy living in the country, but in his creative hands it became a work of masterful overtone and implication. One English critic, marveling at the effects Chopin achieved with the form, said: 'He took cobwebs of Italian moonlight, French elegance and German romanticism, mixing them all with Polish heroics, making of them something to which the Polish heart responds.'

On this night that judgment was accurate, for when the Poles in the audience heard the famous rhythm of the mazurka, the same three-quarter construction as a waltz but with a much different beat, their hearts seemed to expand, as if some special and great musician were playing solely for them. No other nation had such music, and no other composer had used the country idiom so effectively. Bukowski was especially moved by a brief mazurka consisting of 1-2-3 repeated four times in a minor key; when he heard it he felt himself back on the banks of the Vistula.

But when Mlle. Szprot announced that she would conclude with the two mazurkas she particularly liked, he suspected that these might be something special and he listened with added attention, hearing in the first as gently modeled and poetic a piece of music as Chopin was to write; and in the second, a poem of broken rhythms, minor chords and subtle harmonics. The man who wrote this music, Bukowski concluded, was no ordinary genius.

Count Lubonski listened to the mazurkas with his head bowed, as if he wished no one to see how profoundly the music was affecting him, but this apparently was not the case, for when the great Polish dances came to an end he gripped Bukowski's arm again and whispered almost with joy: 'Now we shall hear something! Do you know this scherzo?'

'No.'

'You will.'