Poland: A Novel Part 45

Back at the hotel, Janko was told that Austrian television had invited him to Vienna: 'No fee of any kind, but they will put us up at a good small hotel near the Schnbrunn.' So another change in itinerary was arranged, and the men flew into Vienna, which in many ways was the most disturbing visit of the entire trip. Two experiences had a devastating impact on Buk, so that he remembered them vividly even when President Reagan and Jan Pawel were becoming distant images.

The first was a trivial thing. Prior to his appearance on Austrian television he walked down Vienna's resplendent pedestrian street in the heart of the city, Krntnerstra.s.se, and as he strolled slowly past the opulent shops offering goods of the highest quality from all over the world-he could think of scarcely anything he might want for his wife that was not available-he began to wonder how this city, which was only a day's drive from Warsaw, could have so much and his own so little.

Austria had only seven million five hundred thousand population to Poland's nearly thirty-six million. In available land Poland was four times as large, and in raw materials infinitely richer. Polish workmen were as skilled as Austrians and their political leaders as well educated. Both countries were Catholic, both had good railroads, excellent airplanes, and neither had an aggravated minority.

But there the ident.i.ties ended, for Vienna was a city of lightness and music and newspapers freely admitted from all over the world, and hope and bursting joyousness, while Warsaw, from what Janko Buk had seen of it, was not. Most important, Vienna was feeding itself and was distributing its goods equitably; Warsaw was not. Some vast difference separated these two cities, only three hundred and fifty miles apart, and Janko Buk wanted to know what it was.

He was diverted from finding out by the intrusion of a brief trip he had not expected to make to a village he had never heard of. Traiskirchen lay a short distance south of Vienna, some twenty miles from the beautiful Neusiedler See, and it contained an immense army barracks dating back to the time of Emperor Franz Josef. To it had been brought, in the old days, those lads from occupied Poland who had been conscripted into the Austrian army for their obligatory term of duty, twenty-five years.

Now it was occupied by those energetic young Poles who had left their country as refugees, determined to spend the rest of their lives anywhere but in Poland. Nearly a thousand of these escapees waited in these forlorn barracks for the joyous news that America or Canada or Brazil or especially Australia or New Zealand had agreed to accept them as immigrants.

Very gingerly Janko Buk stepped among these refugees, living like outcasts on charity from the United Nations, for he had to cla.s.sify them as traitors, but when he talked with them and heard them describe the desolation of spirit which had driven them to flee the country they loved, he came close to tears. These had been some of the best young people in Poland; he could see that from the bright faces of the young wives who had encouraged their husbands to take this dreadful gamble; he could see it in the att.i.tudes of the many children who were now lost to Poland; and he could hear it in the hard, implacable words of the men: 'I will not go back. Even if I starve here, I will not go back to that prison of the spirit.'

'Does the world know about this camp?' Buk asked the men with him.

'We didn't know about it. And it's only one of three. The flight of our talent is continuous.'

'But does anybody know about it? I never did.'

'The world has other things to worry about.'

'But this ought to be known in Poland,' Buk protested. Leaving his companions, he mingled with the idle refugees, wanting to know how this one had escaped, how that one had managed to bring his wife and two children with him, and he discovered an astonis.h.i.+ng fact: none of them had escaped. They had simply asked for pa.s.sports, said they were going on vacation, and then thrown themselves on the mercy of the Austrian government as political refugees. Not one Pole he met had fled the country, in the traditional sense that men fled Russia or East Germany; they had all walked out, as if from a doomed village or from a city that had lost its way.

'It almost sounds,' Buk said, 'as if the Polish government wanted you out of the country.'

'They certainly didn't try to stop us. Fewer mouths to feed. Fewer people of the type who might cause trouble.'

Buk was so distressed by this that against his better judgment, for he was not an exhibitionist, he confided to a group of about twenty young men who were sharing their experiences with him: 'I'm Janko Buk. The farmer.'

Word flashed through the yard, enclosed by a high chain-link fence, that the farmer who'd been to see the Pope was here, and several refugees produced Austrian newspapers showing Buk on the front page. Now he had an audience of hundreds, most of whom wanted to know how Jan Pawel looked and how he was recovering from his bullet wounds. Several ardent patriots wished to explore the rumors which had been floating through Poland when they left: that the Pope had been shot by Italians who resented his occupancy of the Vatican, or by Russian Communists, or by a Bulgarian infiltrator under the pay of the Orthodox bishops, or by a demented nun, or particularly by agents of the Polish government who had gone to Turkey to hire the gunman for their plot.

Buk, who had heard none of these theories, gave it as his opinion that the gunman had pretty clearly been acting on his own, and several men jeered: 'That's what they said about President Kennedy,' but when they volunteered who the conspirators in that case had been, their guesses were as wild and as fascinating as before. One man insisted that Kennedy, too, had been shot by a demented nun.

But when the chatter and the nonsense ended, there remained the dreadful fact that these barracks which had once housed Polish recruits taken under duress were now filled with some of Poland's finest, who had placed themselves within the confines voluntarily, and Buk felt he had to address this tragedy: 'Men like me, all over Poland, we're trying to correct things.'

'We wish you luck.'

'But don't you have any desire to help?'

One man answered for all: 'I've been to Rumania. I've been to Czechoslovakia. And, G.o.d forbid, I've been to East Germany. And in that entire system there is no hope.'

'Poland is not like those countries,' Buk insisted.

'In some respects, it's worse.'

But the men were hungry for news about their homeland, and after the negatives had been voiced, rather bitterly Buk thought, they wanted to hear about the strikes and the reaction of the two governments, Poland and Russia. They listened to every word Buk said, and several men complimented him: 'You have courage. But what do you expect to accomplish?'

And Buk retreated to a saying popular in his village: ' "A Pole is a man born with a sword in his right hand, a brick in his left. When the battle is over, he starts to rebuild." After every war we rebuild. After every disaster we regroup. I do wish you would return home and help us regroup.'

'There is no hope,' the refugees said, and Janko Buk left the barracks sick in spirit.

That night the Austrian television people arranged an informal dinner at a popular Viennese restaurant called the Balkan Grill, where a st.u.r.dy country meal was provided, featuring great platters of mixed meats and hefty vegetables. Steins of beer were served, and when Buk leaned back to survey the littered table, he felt the same sickness, for this was another discrepancy he could not explain: Vienna gorged with food, nearby Warsaw facing terrible shortages.

When talks resumed, television crews from all over the world, including Moscow, descended on Bukowo, so many that some had to be housed in Castle Gorka up the river, some down at Baranow Castle, and all wanted to interview Jan Buk, but they found a much more sober farmer, and one Paris reporter wrote: 'In the four-week break he gave himself a university education.' He did not posture, nor did he fulminate; he showed that he was deadly serious in his endeavors to find a solution to the problem of food.

The second session began with a tour of the Bukowski palace for the reporters, and selected television cameramen were a.s.signed as a pool to take pictures for all the networks. A spokeswoman from the cultural branch of the Warsaw government explained what was being shown, and she started with the great hall, where the visitors were delighted by the two huge facing canvases Jan Sobieski on the Route to Vienna and The Defense of Czestochowa. They formed a stunning pair.

'But I read somewhere they had been destroyed,' a j.a.panese newsman said.

'They were,' the spokeswoman said, 'and your question gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to the man who resuscitated them.' To everyone's surprise she pointed at Szymon Bukowski, who stood with his hands clasped at his waist.

'After the German occupation, in the years from 1950 through 1970, Pan Bukowski, now a minister of government, was responsible for the rebuilding of Poland's destroyed treasures. It was he who rebuilt Castle Gorka, where some of you are staying. You've seen photographs of how the n.a.z.is left it. He then rebuilt beautiful Baranow to the north, which many of you know. He rebuilt parts of Lublin and of Stalowa Wola. But his heart, I do believe, was in the rebuilding of the palace we are now in.'

She pointed to the Matejko painting of Jan Sobieski and said: 'This painting has always been a national treasure. We revered it. But in the last hours of the war German soldiers stationed here took their machine guns and riddled every one of those men. We've put a photograph over there of how the painting looked when Pan Bukowski got to it. Not very pretty.'

She allowed time for those who wished to study the ghastly sight of the great painting as it had appeared in 1944. Then she brought the reporters back to the painting itself: 'Every figure you see there was first patiently rewoven by women from this village. By that I mean, we stretched the canvas out on an immense table and we rewove every missing fiber. I did the head of Brat Piotr, a wild and famous priest who accompanied Sobieski. It took me five weeks, but when I was finished we had a canvas on which some very skilled artists could re-create the face of Brat Piotr as Matejko had painted it a hundred years ago.'

'Who did the head of Sobieski?'

'Some woman like me.'

'I mean, who repainted it?'

'Some artist like the man who did Brat Piotr.'

She invited those who considered themselves expert in art to study the two paintings, then she led everyone to the rooms where copies of the Correggio, the Rembrandt and especially the Holbein were displayed as they had been in the time of Marjorie Bukowska, and she made this point: 'The palace is very old, perhaps back to 1450, but it had to be rebuilt so many times that we scarcely know what we have at any given intersection of the walls. We do know that it took its present form in 1896 when young Wiktor Bukowski, serving in Vienna, married the extremely wealthy daughter of the American amba.s.sador. Oscar Mandeville Trilling, his name was for you American reporters. From Chicago. Grain and real estate and railroads, I believe.'

She answered further questions about the Trillings, then said: 'We are grateful to Madame Trilling Bukowska for what she did in reconstructing such a fine palace, but many of us treasure most what she did in the long gallery downstairs.' She led the group down to the portrait gallery, where the thirty-one worthies of Polish history lived again. She told briefly of that last day when the n.a.z.i troops ran wild, and she showed where the bloodstains of the murders had been allowed to remain on the old carpet. Then she led the reporters past the n.o.ble heads, the great paunches held in by golden sashes, the fierce mustaches, and gave brief introductions to these glorious wild men of Polish history: 'Radziwill, one of the founders of the Lithuanian family-one married the sister of your Jackie Kennedy. Mniszech, who helped decide who should be Czar of Russia. This is Leszczynski, twice elected our king, twice rejected. He became father-in-law to one of the kings of France.'

'Louis XV,' a French reporter volunteered.

'And so it goes,' she said. 'Remember that every portrait here was bullet-ridden that day. But Pan Bukowski would not allow that desecration to remain. He ordered them all restored, and I wove the fabric for this fine fellow. I can never remember his name.'

Some reporters felt afterward that this tour, instructive though it might be, had been a ploy on the part of the government to inflate Bukowski as their negotiator, but even these doubters had to concede that his work of restoration along the Vistula was triumphant. 'These are three of the most congenial monuments in Europe,' the French critic wrote. 'Not grandiose. Not stupefying. But extremely real. That they should have been rescued from the debris of war will be a permanent tribute to Polish doggedness. Architect Bukowski made not a single mistake in his buildings. Now we shall see what he can do with his recalcitrant farmers.'

This series of meetings, much enlarged in attendance, was held in the great hall, with Jan Sobieski looking down in stern supervision, and they were entirely different from those four weeks earlier. Jan Buk was no longer an embattled farmer; he was now a statesman, so acknowledged by other statesmen around the world. He carried weight where before he had carried only conviction.

But Szymon Bukowski was not the same man, either. Stiffened by his series of hammer-blow consultations with leaders of the Polish government, who themselves had sought secret instructions from Russian envoys who had slipped into the country, he was in no mood to make irrelevant concessions, and in the opening minutes he announced his first decision: 'We recessed our discussions four weeks ago because Pan Buk asked that a high official of the Catholic church be brought into our meetings. This request is denied. Our two teams are competent to make all decisions.'

To the surprise of the delegates, Janko Buk made no objection, and for a good reason: Bukowski had not accompanied the reporters down to the gallery; he spent that time seeking out Buk and a.s.suring him that together they two would meet with the Bishop of Gorka that night, after the plenary session ended. When Buk asked where, Bukowski confided: 'Secretly. At the castle.'

With that p.r.i.c.kly question settled, the morning session continued, with Bukowski standing forth as the man in command. He made two striking statements: 'The people of Poland and the world must know that this country stands solidly and irrevocably with our great Soviet partner in our determination to bring social justice into the family of nations. We are united now and forever in that resolve, and anyone or anything that imperils that union is an enemy of the Polish people. I'm not saying that our farmers who are making certain demands are false to the cause. Not at all. They're discussing honest problems in an honest way. But those enemies of the state who try to inflate these discussions into a form of revolution, or who endeavor to use them as a wedge between Poland and Russia, are enemies of the state and will be so treated.'

His second major statement caught the attention of all the delegates, and of the world press, when they heard a summary of what he had said: 'We've just heard Pan Buk speak of his visit to Detroit, where he met many Poles who emigrated there in the bad days before we had social justice in Poland. And he spoke of his fellow countrymen who had automobiles, sometimes even two automobiles to a family. Well, let me tell you two things about such evidence. First, any family that has two automobiles anywhere in the world does so at the expense of the workingman. They are prospering on the blood of the workingman.'

'But these were workingmen,' Buk interrupted.

Bukowski took no notice. 'Second, every impartial observer knows that America is heading for a major depression. The devices they're trying won't work. If Pan Buk returns to Detroit this time next year, he'll find his Poles selling both their cars in order to eat. America has solutions to nothing. Only the socialist republics of the world who believe in equality and freedom and peace have the solutions, and we must not be blinded in these days of relative discomfort to that basic fact.'

A tough lion of a man with gray mane, this graduate of the cruelest academies the world had produced in recent years-exile in the Forest of Szczek, torture in Under the Clock, starvation and genocide in Majdanek, plus the agony of surveying a destroyed land before starting to rebuild it-was not disposed to surrender the social gains he believed his country had made since it pa.s.sed under Russian control. He was especially forceful when he called upon his countrymen to remember how their ancestors had lived under the dictators.h.i.+p of the magnates and the despotism of Prussia, Austria and czarist Russia: 'Look back to how we lived in villages like this a hundred years ago. The dirt floors. Meat twice a year at Christmas and Easter. Bowing when the gentry forced us into the gutters as they pa.s.sed. Polish forbidden to be spoken. No newspapers. Our colleges closed down. And everywhere the secret police sending our fathers and grandfathers off to permanent exile. That's the Poland my mother fought against. And I shall fight till I die to prevent its return.'

At the noon break the television people wanted to cl.u.s.ter around Buk, hoping to stage a photograph of him standing beside a clever poster which some local cartoonist had created; it showed a clearly recognizable Janko Buk shaking hands with President Reagan, and the words in English: JANKO THE YANKO. It was a tricky little play on words, because Buk's first name was p.r.o.nounced Yanko, of course, and since Polish has no word beginning with a y, the Yanko had to be p.r.o.nounced in the American fas.h.i.+on, which made it the same as the other. Children in the waiting group outside the palace were crying 'Yanko the Yanko' and sometimes 'Djanko the Djanko.' In either case, they were having fun and the television crews wanted to catch the frolicking.

But Bukowski had decided that from here on he would dominate the picture sessions, and he brought two sober companions before the cameras to help him summarize the morning's talk: 'We confirmed our loyalty to the concept of social democracy and our alliance with the Soviet Union. About that there must be no confusion.'

The afternoon session took up in sober detail the implied problems and difficulties of trying to organize and run an agricultural union, and again Bukowski steamrollered the opposition, which insisted that it could be done. When reporters heard of his hard line they began to write that whereas the earlier session had been Buk versus Bukowski, this one was surely Bukowski versus Buk, with the behind-the-scenes power of the Russian bear dominating the discussion. Bukowski, when asked about this, said merely that tomorrow the reporters would witness the real cohesion of the Polish people. When they asked what he meant by this, he said merely: 'You'll see.'

Since Buk still refused to lodge in the palace with the other delegates, preferring the familiarity of his own cottage, it was not difficult for him to slip away after dusk, but he had to wait in the car that would carry him and Bukowski to their meeting with the bishop. After a while the latter made his escape and they sped with dimmed lights to the town of Gorka, where the bishop was waiting.

They met not in the castle, as Bukowski had first indicated, for that was filled with reporters, and not in the bishop's palace, for that would have compromised the Communist Bukowski, but in a bare committee room provided in secrecy by the mayor.

The Bishop of Gorka was, as Jan Pawel Drugi had said in the Vatican, a saintly man. Sixty-three years old and with a face that looked as if it had been carved of wood and allowed to weather as the central figure in some treasured roadside shrine, he wore his white hair combed forward in the Julius Caesar style, which was appropriate, for his tall, lean figure resembled that of the aging Caesar when the daggers came at him.

He was a wise man, one who had fought enemies all his life, inventing ways to circ.u.mvent their ugly intentions and still preserve his own more humane and generous ones. As he had told a group of touring Scandinavian reporters the previous year: 'When you had to survive under the n.a.z.is as a young man, and under the Communists as an old one, and when you've spent your ecclesiastical life being tutored by the revered Cardinal Wyszynski, who was in jail a good deal of the time, and Cardinal Wojtyla, who knew how to resist and smile, you learn something ... or you perish.'

His reputation for saintliness stemmed from his unwavering support of his people, no matter what difficulties they fell into. He was indeed the ideal village priest, and his elevation to bishop had been a mistake which many in and out of the church now acknowledged; that he should be selected for promotion to cardinal, as Jan Buk had suggested to the Pope, was not even under consideration, for the lower his status in the hierarchy, the greater his contribution to the spiritual life of his country.

He was regarded by the mult.i.tude of Poles with reverence because of his simplicity, by the Polish Communists with apprehension because of his opposition to many of their policies, and by the Russians, who had to deal with these terribly difficult men Wyszynski and Wojtyla, as a source of comparable danger. To abuse this tall, almost ghostly figure would have created exactly the kind of opposition they sought to avoid.

The bishop, eager to meet the two men from his district who were playing such important roles in the present crisis, hurried forward to greet them as if he were being honored and not they: 'Two men from the Vistula, causing all this commotion!' Buk genuflected and brought the bishop's left hand to his lips; Bukowski, to whom the gesture was distasteful, bowed and then extended his own hand to shake the bishop's.

'You were kind to arrange this meeting,' Buk said. 'As he will tell you,' he said, smiling at Bukowski, 'it almost broke up the sessions when I suggested it.'

'I would not have wanted that,' the bishop said as he led the men to their chairs. 'In these dolorous times it's important that we all keep talking.' He smiled, then paused as the mayor's a.s.sistant brought in tea, but no doilies, currant juice or small cakes. 'How are the meetings going?' he asked when they were alone.

Bukowski replied: 'Not at all well. Our differences are quite fundamental.'

'They always are, if the meeting is worth anything. What are they this time?'

'They cut to the heart of Poland's future.'

'Thank G.o.d that somebody's worrying about the future of this land.'

'But in the wrong way,' Bukowski said.

'Explain, please.'

'My friend Buk here, and his Solidarity men at Gdansk, want to take steps that would alter the basic structure of our country.'

'Well, if one looks at the bread lines-the lines for everything-isn't some alteration advisable? Isn't it even ...' The bishop paused a perceptible moment as if loath to use the harsh word he could not evade. 'Hasn't it become inevitable?'

Bukowski stiffened. 'This is to be a socialist republic, that's basic. It's to remain in close alliance with the Soviet Union. That's forever. And if what Buk proposes endangers those two fundamentals, he becomes an enemy of the state.'

The bishop extended his hand to touch Bukowski's. 'But isn't what your side is doing, doesn't that endanger the state even more? Can we tolerate food riots this coming winter?'

'There will be no food riots,' Bukowski said. 'We won't allow them.'

'One never allows or disallows the rioting of hungry women. There the riot is, right in your lap, and you either shoot the women down or you accommodate them. Mr. Minister, I'm not only honored that you've come to talk with me, I'm really quite excited, for it gives me a chance to share my views with a high official of the government. Mr. Minister, we are in deep, deep trouble.'

'And that's why we wanted to talk with you,' Buk interrupted.

The bishop sighed. 'I am so glad you're talking. I'm so very pleased you asked me to join you, even if you were afraid to do so publicly. Because nations sometimes really do stand at crossroads, and I think this autumn of 1981 has been such a time for Poland. I've been reading, these days, about other periods when fate hung in the balance. In 1658, Poland-Lithuania joined Ukraine in a union-sagacious laws, social justice, protection of minorities, Roman Catholics, Uniates and Orthodox, each church with its guaranteed rights. However, it lasted six months, torn apart by jealous, narrow-minded men, the Polish magnates the worst of the lot, with Count Lubonski of this very town leading the wreckers. Well, we tried again in 1920, and this time our Lubonski was the princ.i.p.al builder, but again it all came to ashes ... shadows ... despair. I often wonder, as I read, what proportion of their goods the Lithuanians and Ukrainians would give today to be living safe with such a union? I wonder how much we Poles would give had we been wise enough to bury our prejudices in 1658 or 1920?'

'Those chances are lost,' Bukowski said. 'We live in a new world now.'

'Indeed we do,' Bishop Barski granted, 'and it is the protection of that world, such as it is, that concerns me. You men, together and individually, you must do nothing that will destroy your world. You must move with great caution.'

'We understand the gravity,' Bukowski said quickly. 'And I'm terrified that this man's drive to disrupt the countryside-'

'No!' Buk cried. 'It's your rules that are doing the disrupting.'

'Are you two so far apart?' the bishop asked, and before they could give their answers he gave his: 'Surely the three of us can find common ground ... I mean we three in particular.' And as he spoke he allowed his left arm to stretch forward rather awkwardly, but far enough so that the men could see that ugly purplish line of identifying numerals which had been tattooed upon it in the concentration camp, and when he was satisfied that each of his visitors had seen it, he spoke at some length.

'Szymon Bukowski, in the interrogations at Lublin and at Majdanek you went through two of the worst h.e.l.ls that this earth can provide. That you survived when so many others didn't is a tribute to your courage and the strong body your parents gave you. But I am equally impressed that on your release you dedicated yourself to the rebuilding of our nation. Here in Gorka, I see your reconstructed castle every day, and it's a monument to you. On my visits I see what you accomplished at Baranow, that dear little gem, and at the palace. Few men are ever given the chance to build their own memorials. You were offered that chance, and you built exceedingly well.

'Because of what you saw during the war and the occupation, you became a Communist, a very wise one I'm told. I suppose you understand the theory rather better than you do its application, but because you were so savagely treated at Majdanek, you exercise your own authority with gentleness and even love. Poland can be grateful that so many of its Communist leaders are like you and not like the n.a.z.i officials who terrorized this land in their day.

'Mr. Minister, there is no warfare between you and me. I know you and I love you for the brave man you are. Your governmental decisions? Well, that's another matter.

'And you, Farmer Buk. What a distinguished son of Poland you are. Did you know that on the dreadful morning when the n.a.z.is arrived in your village and lined up the people to be executed, your great-aunt Miroslawa-that's Pan Bukowski's mother-did you know that the man who stood next to her when the machine guns fired was my uncle, Father Barski of this parish? Yes, I dedicated myself to the priesthood that awful day. I told my mother. "They've killed Uncle Pawel. I must take his place."

'So we three are bound together in ways we might not recognize at first. We are three men of this soil, products of the fertility of this fortunate land. We've followed three very different paths, but we have all come to the same critical moment, in a bare little room on the banks of the Vistula: a member of the government, a bishop of the church, a local farmer who gallivants about the world appearing on television and meeting presidents and popes. Tell me, Pan Buk, how was the Holy Father?'

'President Reagan has recovered from his bullet wound. Jan Pawel Drugi has not. He was thin and I think he was in pain.'

'What did you talk about?'

'We laughed most of the time. I told him two jokes and he told me two jokes, and we spoke of you.'

'You did?' The bishop's two hands reached out to clasp Buk's. 'And what was said?'

'I said we thought, in these parts, that you should be a cardinal.'

'My heavens! And what did the Holy Father say to that?'

'He laughed.'

'I should think he might. I'm barely qualified to be a bishop, and here you go promoting me to cardinal.' He chuckled and said: 'I read about it in a report from America. The Peter Principle.'

'Saint Peter?' Buk asked.

'Heavens, no! This Peter was an advertising man, I believe. He said that organizations like the church or General Motors promote a man up and up till he reaches a spot which he is obviously incapable of filling, and there they let him rest. So that big organizations are constantly being run by men like me who have attained the demonstrated level of their incompetency.'

He grew very serious: 'But we three are competent to discuss the future of a nation we love. And I suppose that's why we're here tonight.'

'The basic,' Bukowski said firmly, 'is that we must remain socialist and we must remain in tandem with the Soviet Union.'

'But not dictated to by them,' Bishop Barski said. 'We've fought that battle in the church, and we've won.'