第 4 页

Helena was proud of Wladek, and at first avoided admitting to herself that a wedge had been driven between him and the rest of the children.

But in the end it could not be avoided. Playing at soldiers one evening, both Stefan and Franck, generals on opposing sides, refused to have Wladek in their armies.

'Why must I always be left out?' cried Wladek. 'I want to learn to fight too.'

'Because you are not one of us,' declared Stefan. 'You are not really our brother!

There was a long silence before Franck continued. 'Ojciec never wanted you in the first place; only Matka was on your side.'

Wladek stood motionless and cast his eye around the circle of children, searching for Florentyna.

'What does Franck mean, I am not your brother?' he demanded.

Thus Wladek came to hear of the manner of his birth and to understand why he bad been always set apart from his brothers and sisters. Though his mother's distress at his now total self-containment became oppressive, Wladek was secretly pleased to discover that he came from unknown stock, untouched by the meanness of the trapper's blood, containing with it the germ of spirit that would now make all things seem possible.

When the unhappy holiday eventually came to an end, Wladek returned to the castle with joy. Leon welcomed him back with open arms; for him, as isolated by the wealth of his father as Wladek was by the poverty of the trapper, it had also been a Christmas with little to celebrate. From then on the two boys grew even closer and soon became inseparable. When the summer holidays came around, Leon begged his father to allow Wladek to remain at the castle.

The Baron agreed for he too had grown to love Wladek. Wladek was overjoyed and only entered the trapper's cottage once again in his life.

When Wladek and Leon had finished their classroom work, they would spend the remaining hours playing games. Their favourite was chowanego, a sort of hide and,seek; as the castle had seventy-two rooms, the chance of repetition was small. Wladek's favourite hiding place was in the dungeons under the castle, in which the only light by which one could be discovered came through a small stone grille set high in the wall and even then one needed a candle to find one's way around. Wladek was not sure what purpose the dungeons served, and none of the servants ever made mention of them, as they had never been used in anyone's memory.

Wladek was conscious that he was Leon's equal only in the classroom, and was no competition for his friend when they played any game, other than chess. The river Strchara that bordered the estate became an extension to their playground. In spring they fished, in summer they swam, and in winter, when the river was frozen over, they would put on their wooden skates and chase each other across the ice, while Florentyna sat on the river bank anxiously warning them where the surface was th:in. But Wladek never heeded her and was always the one who fell in. Leon grew quickly and strong; he ran well, swam well and never seemed to tire or be ill. Wladek became aware for the first time what good-looking and well-built meant, and he knew when he swam, ran, and skated he could never hope to keep up with Leon. Much worse, what Leon called the belly button was, on him, almost unnoticeable, while Wladek's was stumpy and ugly and protruded rudely from the middle of his plump body. Wladek would spend long hours in the quiet of his own room, studying his physique in a mirror, always asking why, and in particular why only one nipple for him when all the boys he had ever seen barechested had the two that the symmetry df the human body appeared to require. Sometimes as he lay in bed unable to sleep, he would finger his naked chest and tears of self-pity would flood on to the pillow. He would finally fall asleep praying that when he awoke in the morning, things would be different. His prayer were not answered.

Wladek put aside each night a time to do physical exercises that could not be witnessed by anyone, not even Florentyna. Through sheer determination he learned to hold himself so that he looked taller. He built up his arms and his legs and hung by the tips of his fingers from a beam in the bedroom in the hope that it would make him grow, but Leon grew taller even while he slept. Wladek was forced to accept the fact that he would always be a head shorter than the Baron's son, and that nothing, nothing was ever going to produce the missing nipple. Wladek's dislike of his own body was unprompted, for Leon never commented on his friend's appearance; his knowledge of other children stopped short at Wladek, whom he adored uncritically.

Baron Rosnovski became increasingly fond of the fierre dark-haired boy who had replaced the younger brother for Leon, so tragically lost when his wife had died in childbirth.

The two boys would dine with him in the great stonewalled hall each evening, while the flickering candles cast ominous shadows from the stuffed animal heads on the wall and the-servants came and went noiselessly with jthe great silver trays and golden plates, bearing geese, hams, crayfish, fine wine and fruits, and sometimes the mazureks that had become Wladek's particular favourites. Afterwards as the darkness fell ever more thickly around the table, the Baron dismissed the waiting servants and would tell the boys stories of Polish history and allowed them a sip of Danzig vodka, in which the tiny gold leaves sparkled bravely in the candlelight. Wladek begged as often as he dared for the story of Tadeusz Kosciuszko.

'A great patriot and hero,' the Baron would reply. 'The very symbol of our struggle for independence, trained in France'

'Whose people we admire and love as we have learned to hate all Russians and Austrians,' supplied Wladek, whose pleasure in the tale was enhanced by his word-perfect knowledge of it.

'Who is telling whom the story, Wladek?' The Baron laughed. '... And then fought with George Washington in America for liberty and democracy. In 1792 he led the Poles in battle at Dubienka. When our wretched king, Stanislas Augustus, deserted us to join the Russians, Kosciuszko returned to the homeland he loved to throw off the yoke of Tsardom. He won the battle of where, Leon?'

'T.aclawice, sir, and then he freed Warsaw!'

'Good, my child. Then, alas, the Russians mustered a great force at Maciejowice and he was finally defeated and taken prisoner. My great-great-great-grandfather fought with Kosciuszko on that day, and later with Dabrowski's legions for the mighty Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte!'

'And for his service to Poland was created the Baron Rosnovski, a title your family will ever bear in remembrance of those great days,' said Wladek, as stoutly as if the title would one day pass to him.

'Those great days will come again,' said the Baron quietly. 'I only pray that I may live to see them!'

At Christmas time, the peasants on the estate would bring their families to the castle for the celebration of the blessed vigil. Throughout Christmas Eve they fasted and the children would look out of the windows forthe first star, which was the sign the feast might begin. The Baron would say grace in his fine deep voice: Tenedicte nobis, Domine Deus, et his donis quae ex liberalitate tua sumpturi sumus,' and once they had sat down Wladek would be embarrassed by the huge capacity of Jasio Koskiewicz, who addressed himself squarely to every one of the thirteen courses from the barsasz soup through to the cakes and plums, and would as in previous years be sick in the forest on the way home.

After the feast Wladek enjoyed distributing the gifts from the Christmas tree, laden with candles and fruit, to the awestruck peasant children - a doll for Sophia, a forest knife for Josef, a new dress for Florentyna, the first gift Wladek had ever requested of the Baron.

'It's true,' said Josef to his mother when he received his gift from Wladek, 'he is not our brother, Matka.'

'No,' she replied, 'but he will always be my son.'

Through the winter and spring of 1914 Wladek grew in strength and learning. Then suddenly, in July, the German tutor left the castle without even saying farewell; neither boy was sure why. They never thought to connect his departure with the assassination in Sarajevo of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand by a student anarchist, described to them by their other tutor in unaccountably solemn tones. The Baron became withdrawn; neither boy was sure why. The younger servants, the children's favourites, began to disappear one by one; neither boy was sure why. As the year passed Leon grew taller, Wladek grew stronger, and both boys became wiser.

One morning in the summer of 1915, a time of fine, lazy days, the Baron set off on the long journey to Warsaw to put, as he described it, his affairs in order. He was away for three and a half weeks, twenty-five days which Wladek marked off each morning on a calendar in his bedroom; it seemed to him' a lifetime. On the day he was due to return, the two boys went down to the railway station at Slonim to await the weekly train with its one carriage and greet the Baron on his arrival. The three of them travelled home in silence.

Wladek thought the great man looked tired and older, another unaccountable circumstance, and during the following week the Baron often conducted with the chief servants a rapid and anxious dialogue, broken off whenever Leon or Wladek entered the room, an uncharacteristic surreptitiousness that made the two boys uneasy and fearful that they were the unwitting cause of it. Wladek despaired that the Baron might send him back to the trapper's cottage - always aware he was a stranger in a stranger's home.

One evening a few days after the Baron had returned he called for the two boys to join him in the great hall. They crept in, fearful of him. Without explanation he told them that they were about to make a long journey. The little conversation, insubstantial as it seemed to Wladek at the time, remained with him for the rest of his life.

'My dear children,' began the Baron in a low, faltering tone, 'the warmongers of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire are at the throat of Warsaw and will soon be upon us.'

Wladek recalled an inexplicable phrase flung out by the Polish tutor at the German tutor during their last tense days together. 'Does that mean that the hour of the submerged peoples of Europe is at last upon us?' he asked.

The Baron regarded Wladek's innocent face tenderly. 'Our national spirit has not perished in one hundred and fifty years of attrition and repression,' he replied. 'It may be that the fate of Poland is as much at stake as that of Serbia, but we are powerless to influence history. We are at the mercy of the three mighty empires that surround us.'

'We are strong, we can fight,' said Leon. 'We have wooden swords and shields. We are not afraid of Germans or Russians.'

'My son, you have only played at war. This battle will not be between children. We will now find a quiet place to live until history has decided our fate and we must leave as soon as possible. I can only pray that this is not the end of your childhood.'

Leon and Wladek were both mystified and irritated by the Baron's words. War sounded like an exciting adventure which they would be sure to miss if they had to leave the castle. The servants took several days to pack the Baron's possessions and Wladek and Leon were informed that they would be departing for their small surnmer home in the north of Grodno on the following Monday. The two boys continued, largely unsupervised, with their work and play but they could now find no one in the castle with the inclination or time to answer their myriad questions.

On Saturdays, lessons were held only in the morning. They were translating Adam Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz into Latin when they heard the guns. At first, Wladek thought the familiar sounds meant only that another trapper was out shooting on the estate; the boys returned to the poetry. A second volley of shots, much closer, made them look up and then they heard the screaming coming from downstairs. They stared at each other in bewilderment; they feared nothing as they had never experienced anything in their short lives that should have made them fearful. The tutor fled leaving them alone, and then came another shot, this time in the corridor outside their room. The two boys sat motionless, terrified and unbreathing.

Suddenly the door crashed open and a man no older than their tutor, In a grey soldier's uniform and steel helmet, stood towering over them. Leon clung on to Wladek, while Wladek stared at the intruder. The soldier shouted at them in German, demanding to know who they were, but neither boy replied, despite the fact that they had mastered the language, and could speak it as well as their mother tongue. Another soldier appeared behind his companion as the first advanced on the two boys, grabbed them by the necks, not unlike chickens, and pulled them out into the corridor, down the hall to the front of the castle and then into the gardens, where they found Florentyna screaming hysterically as she stared at the gnass in front of her. Leon could not bear to look, and buried his head in Wadek's shoulder. Wladek gazed as much in surprise as in horror at a row of dead bodies, mostly servants, being placed face downwards. He was mesmexised by the sight of a moustache in profile against a pool of blood. It was the trapper. Wladek felt nothing as Florentyna continued screaming.

'Is Papa there?' asked Leon. 'Is Papa there?' Wladek scanned the line of bodies once again. He thanked God that there was no sign of the Baron Rosnovski. He was about to tell Leon the good news when a soldier came up to them.

'Wer hat gesprochen?' he demanded fiercely.

'Ich,' said Wladek defiantly.

The soldier raised his rifle and brought the butt crashing down on Wladek's head. He sank to the ground, blood spurting over his face. Where was the Baron, what was happening, why were they being treated like this in their own home? Leon quickly jumped on top of Wladek, trying to protect him from the second blow which the soldier had intended for Wladek's stomach, but as the rifle came crashing down the full force caught the back of Leon's head.

Both boys lay motionless, Wladek because he was still dazed by the blow and the sudden weight of Leon's body on top of him, and Leon because he was dead.

Wladek could hear another soldier berating their tormentor for the action he had taken. They picked up Leon, but Wladek clung on to him.

It took two soldiers to prise his friend's body away and dump it unceremoniously with the others, face down on the grass. Wladek's eyes never left the motionless body of his dearest friend until he was finally marched back inside the castle, and, with a handful of dazed survivors, led to the dungeons. Nobody spoke for fear of joining the line of bodies on the grass, until the dungeon doors were bolted and the last murmur of the soldiers had vanished in the distance. Then Wladek said, 'Holy God.'