Poland: A Novel Part 44

Suspecting that this was some sort of trick, he asked if he could enter one of the j.a.panese shops, and his impromptu visit became something of a sensation when a local reporter heard about it, drummed up someone who could speak Polish, and conducted an interview right in the store: 'I am amazed that the j.a.panese are free to come here and sell their goods so openly.' Outside, the man pointed to twenty pa.s.sing automobiles, and eleven were j.a.panese. 'This is a miracle.'

When the reporter asked if they didn't have j.a.panese goods in Poland, he replied: 'We have scarcely any goods from foreign countries. Not even from our good neighbor Russia.'

The network arranged for him to stop over with the Polish community in Detroit, where he received several shocks. First, he found himself in an area as large as some Polish cities, populated mostly by Poles, with excellent Polish restaurants and many sights that reminded him of Krakow. Second, he was invited to listen to a Polish-language program on radio and then to see one on television, but they distressed him so sharply that he had to complain: 'I spend three years in Poland and never hear a polka. I spend two days in Polish America and hear nothing else. What happened to Chopin and Penderecki?' Third, he found the Poles in Detroit almost bursting with enthusiasm for a Polish-Russian war, and he had to tell them: 'n.o.body in Poland or Russia wants such a thing. You hear none of that talk over there.' When he was asked if Poland was afraid, he replied: 'We are. We can field an army of how many? Twenty thousand? And the heaviest gun our soldiers have is a deer rifle. Russia has eight hundred thousand men on our borders, with tanks, flame throwers, heavy artillery and dive bombers. We are very afraid.' Fourth, and perhaps most important, he discovered that about half the Polish families he met had two cars, and in some cases, three. Even boys sixteen had their own cars. 'How do you pay for them?' he asked, and they spread before him the figures on wages, income and the cost of second-hand cars, and he realized that if a Warsaw worker set aside only the same proportion of his salary as the American worker did, he could buy not even a bicycle.

He asked if there were any Polish farmers, and his hosts took him out to a farm near the Canadian border, where he methodically listed the description, cost, and cost of operating every piece of machinery, with the price of gasoline factored in. He could not believe his results. Then he went to four different machines and indicated peculiar parts which might break, and he wanted to know how long it would take to get a replacement and at what cost, so the farmer, a man named Dabrowski, drove him right in to the nearest town, where there was a John Deere representative and an International Harvester dealer, and in these shops Janko saw bin after bin of spare parts. Some of the prices seemed high, but as Dabrowski said: 'That's how they make their money. Sell you the big machine cheap and then keep selling you parts for the next twenty years at a stiff price.' But there the parts were. Every item Buk had specified could be obtained within an hour, except one, and as the John Deere man said to Dabrowski: 'We've never had a single call for a thing like that. It never breaks.'

'But let's suppose it does break,' Buk said to Dabrowski, who interpreted.

'But it never does,' the man insisted.

'Mine did,' Buk said, staring right at the man, who brought down a large catalogue in which every component of the machine was listed, and there the part was, drawn in beautiful detail and numbered: 31-XZ-493-8271. Janko wanted to know specifically whether he could get that part, how much and how soon, and the manager said: 'I'll have to call Chicago.'

During the phone conversation Dabrowski told Buk that the manager was making apologies, saying that he had never before heard of such a part breaking, and then apparently the man in Chicago said the same thing, for the manager placed his hand over the phone and said: 'He tells me he's never heard of that part breaking.'

'So you have no spare?' Buk said triumphantly, but the manager returned to the phone and after a while said: 'The company keeps six in stock, just in case. They'll fly one here by the afternoon plane.'

'How much?'

'Thirty-two dollars, forty-seven cents.'

'Who pays the air freight?'

'On a remarkable case like this, we do.'

Then Janko Buk smiled, the gap between his teeth making him look like a naughty boy. 'Tell him, Dabrowski, why I asked so many questions,' and when Buk's visit was explained, the manager called several of his clerks and they stood admiring the plucky Pole: 'Give the Russkies h.e.l.l. We're with you all the way.' And one woman asked: 'Are you really going to be on television? What station? When?'

When they were back in Dabrowski's car the American warned: 'Don't take what he said too seriously. These equipment dealers always promise you they'll get the spare part by this afternoon. Usually arrives three days later.'

'Do you think they really did have six spares?' Buk asked.

'Probably. That's how they stay in business. But if they don't ... to keep you happy, they'd take a part from one of their other tractors,' and Buk said: 'That's exactly what we do in Poland.'

His visit to New York was a delight, with a charming young woman as interpreter always at his side. The network men asked if he'd like to visit a Polish restaurant, and he said: 'Anything but.' To their amazement he selected an Argentine one on the grounds, as he explained: 'I'll never have another chance.' The beef was so delicious that the network men thanked him for his daring. When they took him to a store where he could purchase gifts for his children, he stood dumfounded at the variety and at the fact that at least half of them came from foreign countries. He never rested easy with this concept of almost free movement of goods between nations.

His two appearances on national television were so self-controlled, and so clearly the performance of a man suddenly projected into a position far beyond his normal capacities but who was struggling to catch up, that three unexpected opportunities resulted.

The leaders of American labor wanted to talk with him and give him good advice, but as he listened to these tired and frightened old men he kept thinking that they had little right to advise Lech Walesa or him: We Poles are fighting on the frontier of entirely new situations and we're doing it with some courage. These Americans, with nothing to risk, weren't even clever enough to handle that air controllers' strike properly. That's not what I call solidarity. But out of politeness, he did listen.

He was startled one morning when the Polish amba.s.sador himself appeared at his room in the big hotel on Sixth Avenue. 'President Reagan invites you for lunch at the White House.'

'What could I say to the President of the United States?'

'I'll be there to interpret.'

'I mean, why me?'

'Because you've become an important man in the world, Janko. You represent something exciting and new. And I must say, Janko, you handle yourself well. All Poland's proud of their farm boy.'

He flew with the amba.s.sador to Was.h.i.+ngton and had an enjoyable, amusing and relaxing meal with the President, who was better versed on farm matters than anyone he had so far met in Honolulu, Detroit or New York. Also, everyone at table told funny stories, the prize being taken by Janko Buk himself, who relayed a story which Szymon Bukowski had told during their meeting at Bukowo: 'Leonid Brezhnev needed a haircut, so he went down to the ground floor of the Kremlin and plopped into the chair. It was understood that at such times the barber was to say not a word, just cut hair. But this morning, after a few snips, he said: "Comrade Brezhnev, what are you going to do about Poland?" No reply. Some minutes later: "Comrade Brezhnev, what about Poland?" Again no reply. Then, pretty soon: "Comrade Brezhnev, you've got to do something about Poland."

'At this Brezhnev jumps out of the chair and tears away the cloth: "What's all this about Poland?" and the barber says: "It makes my job so much easier," and Brezhnev screams: "What do you mean?" and the barber says: "Every time I mention Poland your hair stands straight up on end." '

He liked Reagan and was photographed several hundred times with him, but he doubted that Reagan would last very long in either Warsaw or Moscow, where the compet.i.tion was brutal.

It was the third unexpected opportunity which left the deepest impression. Back in New York, on the night prior to his return to Europe, he was invited to meet with a group of serious scholars, diplomats and businessmen, all of whom had visited Poland and studied its problems. They dined in an exclusive club atop a soaring skysc.r.a.per, with the beauty of a New York night spread out below them.

'What's going to happen in Poland?' the men wanted to know, but the first two hours were spent in their offering their guesses. A young man from Krakow teaching at New York University whispered interpretations as the various men spoke, and he relayed a portrait of disaster.

'The world banks are simply not going to extend any further credits,' an international banker predicted. 'Poland owes ... how much? Twenty-five billion? Not a chance of any more.'

'And that means no replacement parts ... for anything,' an industrialist said.

'They can still get some from East Germany. With blocked currency.'

'East Germany,' said a man well versed in the area, 'will drag its feet. On orders from Moscow.'

Now the ugliest question of the evening was broached: 'Do you think that Moscow is orchestrating the disaster in Poland?' The questioner was a sophisticated reporter from Time.

'Well, they're certainly not making it any easier.'

A labor-union expert on international affairs said: 'The critical point came a few weeks ago when Solidarity sent that message to workers in the other Iron Curtain countries.' Some of the men did not know about this, so he elaborated: 'Solidarity leap-frogged over the heads of the government in Poland and over the heads of government in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania and East Germany. They spoke directly to the workers of those countries, intimating that what Solidarity had accomplished in Poland, they could accomplish in their countries.'

One man, who heard this news for the first time, whistled. 'That's incitement to counterrevolution if I ever heard any.'

'It is,' the labor-union man said. 'So we shouldn't be surprised if Russia does everything possible to frustrate Poland. To prove to the other countries that if they go the Solidarity route, they can expect bread lines and confusion and perhaps even troops in the street.'

'No!' several experts cried in unison, and one by one they explained that Russia had by no means a free hand in Poland: 'They have to worry about Afghanistan, and believe me they're bleeding there. Just as we did in Vietnam. And they have to worry about China, which remains their major danger. And two new factors must be taken into account. The election of Karol Wojtyla to the papacy has changed a lot of things. You know, he said that if Russian troops invaded, he'd fly to Warsaw. He represents considerable force, shot in the belly or not. And another funny thing. Our election of Ronald Reagan poses the same kind of problem for them. They don't exactly know how to estimate Reagan. They're not sure what he might do if they go too far.'

They then turned to Poland itself, and these men whose job it was to calculate the real position of nations agreed that Poland was in just about the sickest condition of any that they had seen in a long, long time. 'If it was only food,' said one man who knew the country well, 'they could correct that in one growing season. Rationing. Giving the farmers priority in things they need. Cleaning out the channels of supply. But it's so infinitely more than food. It's the whole d.a.m.ned stew. It's turned sour, and maybe the only corrective is to throw it all out and start with fresh ingredients in a fresh pot.'

One man asked how long it would require, if everything went well, to make the corrections.

'Most hopeful scenario, if all goes well, three years.'

'Can Poland endure the mess for three years?'

'It has to,' the Pole teaching at NYU said. 'It has in the past. It will now.'

The men turned to Buk, seeking his estimate of the situation, and he said softly: 'I am amazed that in New York City, I should find so many men who know my country so intimately. You speak of things we don't even speak of among ourselves. And I suppose there are in Moscow tonight men just like yourselves who know as much as you do.'

'Well ...' a German diplomat said cautiously.

'So what does a farmer on the scene think? He thinks that things are terrible. And he sees no signals from Warsaw that they're going to get any better.'

The men plied him with questions, and every one of his answers hung together cohesively with every other, leading to the unmistakable conclusion that the system itself had begun to show signs of fatal strain. Nothing was working properly, but even Buk did not place his finger on the terrible weakness that underlay everything else. A Hungarian scientist now working at the Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology was the first to voice the problem.

'The fatal weakness that I observed when I was there last year and again this spring is that practically no one in Poland does a full day's work, except maybe a few farmers who are selling their surplus on the black market. For one conspicuous thing, most factories are shut down two or three days a week because of strikes or shortages. But more important, those who do work put in only four or five honest hours a day, and even in those four hours their performance is apt to be inadequate.

'One of my colleagues filmed a television show in Poland. Where he would have used four men in America, five in England, he was forced by the government to use eighteen in Poland, and not a d.a.m.ned one of them did anything. It was disgraceful. He even had to carry his own umbrella and chair. It's that way with everything.

'Some of us have been working on an index of what percentage of an eight-hour day people really work in various countries, modified by how much they do accomplish in any given hour in which they do work. Combined figures like this can't be too accurate, but you may be interested in our provisional estimates using 100 as top norm.

'Singapore 92.6; Taiwan 89.7; Korea 83.3; j.a.pan 82.1; West Germany 78.8; France 72.7; United States 70.3; Great Britain 40.4; Poland 33.3; Zaire 29.6; Chad 19.9. I have the others, but that's a sampling.'

'What about Mexico?' someone called, and he replied after looking at his notes: 'That would be 55.6. They refuse to work any harder. Oil makes them think they're rich.'

The men focused on that low figure for Poland, only one-third as much productive effort per man as in Singapore, and whereas there was some slight s.h.i.+fting of the figure up or down in relation to other countries, the consensus was that the index was fairly accurate.

'How do you estimate Russia's productivity?' the German economist asked.

'Insufficient evidence,' the Hungarian replied.

'You must have an idea.'

'About 55 or 60. Better than Great Britain, worse than the United States.'

'And your own country, Hungary?'

'There's a problem. It stands right with the United States, about 70 even. That's why we occupy such an enviable position within the bloc.'

The men asked Buk what he thought of the figures and he said he was amazed at the relatively low position of his country, but then conceded that he knew nothing about factories, whereupon one of the men asked: 'But you know about farms. What index figure would you put on your agricultural production?'

'I would say 30.0,' Buk said, and when some of the men whistled, he said: 'We really have no incentive to produce one potato more than we eat ourselves. My grandfather produced twice as much as I do, and I'm ashamed of myself. But the system has broken down.'

The Polish professor admitted that he was confused: 'As a loyal Pole, I don't like to hear my country criticized so harshly, but as a scholar, I'm forced to admit that your evidence is accurate. My beloved country is in one h.e.l.l of a shape.' He then advanced two interesting theories: 'Starting in 1772, when the divisions of Poland began, every Pole who found himself under the domination of Russia, Germany or Austria devised clever ways to circ.u.mvent the rule of the oppressor. Lazy on the job, break the machine, irritate the boss. After 1795, this continued, remember, for one hundred and twenty-three years.

'During World War II, when the n.a.z.is occupied us, sabotage became a skilled art. In 1944, when Communism took over, with Russian masters once more, the same brilliant capacity for quiet sabotage was exercised. Today, when the people believe that government is opposed to their interests, they know a million ways to frustrate the government. Poles are the world's master saboteurs.

'And another thing. In the postwar period, right up to 1975, for a Pole to survive on wages the government allowed he had to have two or even three jobs. Work 0800 to 1300 here, then duck out and work 1400 to 1800 somewhere else. Then at night work 1900 to 0100 at a third job. But never really work at any of them. Catch as much sleep as you can on each.

'I was with the Labor Bureau when we got our first big computer. We cranked in the entire work force and found that with a population of slightly less than thirty-six million, we had fifty-three million full-time employees. That's when we stopped the moonlighting, but the evil habits our people acquired in those years persist.'

An American military man asked: 'Do you see any hope for Poland in the years immediately ahead?' and the scholar replied: 'No. I think we shall have to plunge into the depths, reorganize in some unforeseen way, and slowly reestablish ourselves in some other posture.' The general asked: 'How soon could this be accomplished?' and Buk said: 'I see no hope during the next five years.'

Buk went to bed that night like many a world traveler before him: he had obtained a clearer view of his homeland by leaving it and seeing it through the eyes of others. He could scarcely sleep because of the doleful things he had heard these men say, for he feared that they were right in their calculations.

He was awakened early on the final morning by a group of men in a flurry: 'You've got to change your airline tickets. You're to leave Kennedy at noon instead of tonight at seven.'

When he asked why, they beamed. 'Our man in Rome has finally arranged it! Imagine! Jan Pawel Drugi has said he'd be honored to greet you. At the Vatican. Tomorrow at three.' Buk lowered his head. He could not believe that a Pope, and one so dangerously wounded, would want to meet him, but before he left the hotel, newsmen around the world were announcing to their nations that the Pope had invited Jan Buk to the Vatican for a discussion of Polish affairs.

At the airport, not the ordinary two or three television cameras waited but a dozen, each demanding of Buk some profound statement on Polish politics, and for the first time during his improvised trip around the world, he had to acknowledge that for this moment at least he had become a man of some importance.

It confused him. He could be sure of only two things: the democracies were trying to use him as a cudgel against the socialist states, especially Russia; and despite his introduction to the global thinkers at the meeting last night, he was still a farmer from the banks of the Vistula with a very imperfect understanding of how Poland functioned, let alone eastern Europe or the world. He did not allow notoriety to disorient him.

'Are you really going to see the Pope?' several newsmen shouted, and when the cameras were aligned he said: 'Jan Pawel Drugi has graciously extended an invitation. Yes, I am to see him tomorrow.'

The name Buk used was unfamiliar, and several correspondents asked: 'Who? Who?' and a man from the Polish Emba.s.sy explained: 'Jan Pawel Drugi. You say it John Paul Second. The Italian says it Giovanni Paolo Secondo. But to the whole world he is our beloved Polish Pope.'

When Janko Buk was strapped into the Alitalia plane he began to appreciate the wonderful thing that was happening: he was flying to see the Holy Father, that simple, forthright Polish son of old peasant stock who came from a village not far from Bukowo and whose church life had been spent in Buk's Krakow. Janko could not remember ever having seen the future Pope during his visits to Krakow, a city of great importance to anyone from Bukowo and one much more likely to be visited than Warsaw, but he could have. He wondered if Cardinal Wojtyla had been present at either of the two great convocations at Czestochowa which he had attended as a pilgrim, and he supposed that he must have been. At any rate, Jan Pawel Drugi had been a neighbor, and it was always good to visit with a neighbor.

When the plane landed at Leonardo da Vinci south of Rome, more newsmen wanted to talk with Buk because the situation in Poland had deteriorated during the suspension of talks, and there was much speculation as to when and how Russia would invade. Three weeks earlier he would have avoided any such inquiry as being beyond his scope, but now, remembering the explanations which had so impressed him the night before, he said in carefully enunciated phrases: 'I'm sure that both sides want to avoid any kind of confrontation. Poland's position is exciting these days, but not very strong. On the other hand, the Soviet Union is not entirely free to act as she might wish. Afghanistan and China on her southern frontier. Two new imponderables on her world scene. President Reagan in Was.h.i.+ngton, Jan Pawel in the Vatican. An amusing fellow in New York said he'd give me a strategy free. "You farmers go ahead with your strike. Cut the food supply in half. Russia wouldn't dare to take you. Wouldn't even want to." '

When the reporters laughed, he added: 'I know of no one in Poland, and I suspect I'd find none in Russia, who is talking arrogantly at this moment. Desperately we are both trying to find workable ways. In Detroit, I met many Poles who talked violently, but not the Poles in Poland. When I meet with the Holy Father, I shall ask him only one thing, to pray for peace.'

Several reporters asked if he knew the new Pope, and Buk said: 'Farmers from little villages do not know cardinals from big cities. But what I've heard about him I love, and when I think of the great danger he ran when the gunman fired at him, I love him even more.' The newsmen thought he sounded like an uneducated farmer who was getting a crash course in diplomacy.

Next day at two-thirty in the afternoon a cavalcade of automobiles gathered at the hotel where the Polish group was staying, but most of the cars contained newsmen. They sped through narrow streets, then along the splendid boulevard that followed the Tiber and across the bridge into the minute area of Vatican City. They headed directly for St. Peter's, then turned sharp right and went up the very narrow street that took tourists to the Vatican art museum, and through huge gates that swung open for the two lead cars but not for those that followed.

They now entered a series of paved roads that led through gardens and up a hill, then through another stone portal that gave upon a cobbled courtyard completely surrounded by buildings of various colors and with varied faades. Here the two cars stopped as Swiss guards inspected the credentials of the occupants, after which Janko Buk and two of his companions were led to a most inconspicuous door and into a small vestibule, where hidden television cameras gazed down at them.

An elevator door slid quietly open, providing entrance to a really small lift which took them quietly up two stories, where it opened noiselessly, allowing them to step into a large, almost empty but tastefully decorated hall. Two priests who did not speak Polish led them through several anterooms, decorated in Renaissance style, and into a fine, narrow room with red-and-gilt chairs, paintings of churchly figures and three sculptures of holy scenes.

Here they waited, talking in whispers, until a brash young Polish priest hurried in with loud, jovial greetings: 'No need to talk in whispers. Prayers don't come till later.' He acted as if he were truly glad to see Janko Buk and gripped him warmly with both hands. 'You are accomplis.h.i.+ng wonderful things. Where is Bukowo?'

Buk, relieved to be able to talk about mundane matters, explained that his unimportant stretch of the Vistula contained three rather splendid buildings much visited by tourists: 'Castle Gorka of the famous Lubonskis, Baranow Castle of the even more famous Leszczynskis, and in between, the lovely palace of our own Bukowskis.'

'Never heard of any of them,' the young priest said. 'I come from Gniezno.'

'Where Christianity began in Poland,' Buk said.

'That's right!' the priest said with real enthusiasm. 'I have no idea what the Holy Father will want to talk with you about, but you realize, of course, that it will be confidential.'

'How am I to address him?' Buk asked.

'Your Holiness is always proper. Holy Father is used. And of course, his fundamental t.i.tle is one we all share. Father. No other word characterizes him better.'

'How is he?' Buk asked, but before the young priest could reply, an older priest, the Pope's constant companion during the years before his elevation to the Vatican, came in to announce that His Holiness would see the visitors now, but when Buk followed the two priests from the waiting room, he found in the reception room not the Pope but two Vatican photographers. This was going to be a historic meeting and they were responsible for catching proper mementos of it.

Everyone stood silent, and then a door at the far end of the room swung open and a st.u.r.dy man dressed all in white except for his red slippers hurried into the room as if he were twenty, stopped in delight, looked at this visiting farmer, and said: 'Janko Buk, I am so very pleased to see you!'

Nudged by his companions, Buk stepped forward, knelt, and kissed the Pope's left hand. The cameras caught this, six different pictures in a quarter of a minute, but they were even more careful to catch the next important tableau: Pope Jan Pawel embracing Janko Buk, resident of his one-time diocese. It made an excellent photograph, something out of Florence or Venice in the fifteenth century but one fraught with contemporary meaning.

All else was subsidiary. It was the photograph of two men embracing-not Janko Buk embracing the Pope, but both embracing equally-that conveyed the message: a simple man endeavoring to start a farmers' union was welcomed in the Vatican regardless of how he might be received in Warsaw or Moscow.

After pleasantries about Poland and Krakow, with the Pope smiling constantly, Janko asked if the gunshot wounds had healed, and the Pope said they were healing, rather nicely he thought, and then the Pope asked how President Reagan had looked, and Janko said: 'You'd never know he had been shot.' At this the Pope nodded sagely and smiled.

Janko repeated the joke about Brezhnev and the barber, and the Pope chuckled, responding with a joke about himself in Mexico. It seemed to the two companions that most of the visit was being wasted in laughter, but finally the Pope asked how the talks were going, and Janko made a highly improper reply: 'The reason they broke off, Holy Father, is that I insisted the Bishop of Gorka partic.i.p.ate.'

The Pope realized that this was a subject about which he must not speak during a critical period, so he smiled and shrugged his shoulders, but he had to say something, so he was noncommittal: 'He is a saintly man.'

Janko said: 'Many people in the area think he'll be cardinal one day.'

The Pope broke into laughter at this huge impropriety and grasped Janko by the hand. 'I hope you're more politic in your discussions with the government.'

'I'm sorry, Your Holiness. But our side wanted the bishop to partic.i.p.ate because he is a saintly man. Mere talking isn't going to settle this.' No one said anything, so Janko asked: 'Have we your prayers?'

'All Poland has our prayers,' the Pope said, and the meeting ended, with another series of flashbulbs and handshakes and blessings, but as the Pope went far out of his way to accompany Janko to the elevator he said: 'My prayers are with you, particularly. You've chosen a most difficult course.' He neither condoned the course nor condemned it.