A Day of Small Beginnings (13 page)

Flattered and slightly curious, Nathan waited for Załuski to continue.

“You are a Jew, Professor Linden.”

An electric sensation stung Nathan at the back of his neck. He clenched his jaw. “What of it?”

Załuski’s smile creased the corners of his heavy eyelids. “They say we Poles have a sixth sense about Jews. We always know.
So let us understand each other. It is not wartime, after all.” He took another drag of his cigarette and gave Nathan a meaningful
look. “A Jew should understand what I say. A Jew knows he has reason to fear man’s dark impulses.”

Nathan went taut with fury. How dare Załuski presume he was a Jew before he was a scholar, as if he, Nathan Linden, had some
primitive tribal obligation to represent the Jews.

“In March 1968 this country went into something of an anti-Jewish madness,” Załuski continued evenly. “Extremists openly said
Jews were German sympathizers during the war. Three million people were responsible for their own deaths, they said. They
pushed Jews from their livelihoods. Some they beat, some they robbed. The Jew was used as an excuse to brutalize students
who demonstrated for more democracy on this campus.” He pointed his finger at the spot where they stood.

Nathan was upset to hear this. But he did not trust where Załuski might be trying to lead him. He cleared his throat. “I certainly
remember there was trouble in Poland during that period, but I wasn’t under the impression that things were quite as serious
as you say.”

The lines on Załuski’s face deepened with irritation. “Then let me inform you, that when it was over, twenty-five thousand,
including almost all the young Jews we had left here, had packed their bags and run. Some of our best minds went out the door
that year.”

His voice, thick with emotion, attracted the attention of passersby, but he ignored the scene he was creating. “None of this,”
he said vehemently, “could have been accomplished if it were not for the willingness of an enslaved nation to embrace its
dark and ancient hatreds rather than reflect on what they had seen with their own eyes during the war, the genocide against
the Jews.”

Flushed, he took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled sharply. “It has been my life’s work since that time to say to anyone
who will listen that if the Poles don’t begin to question themselves they will always be slaves, downtrodden and spiteful.
I say this, you understand, out of love for my people. They don’t know it, but to be rid of this mania about Jews would be
a relief.”

Nathan was at a complete loss. “What does this have to do with me?”

Załuski’s face hardened. “We are at the beginning of a new era in Polish history. We have achieved sovereignty. This we paid
for with our blood and centuries of unimaginable suffering. You, Professor Linden, were invited here to speak to us about
creating a constitution. But what I say to you is that we don’t need Utopian schemes that will send us back into the grip
of the tyrants. We need someone who understands that the Poles’ dark impulse to lay the blame outside enslaves
them.
Build individual responsibility, a presumed duty to reflect, into every corner of your constitutional paradigm and we will
have something useful from you, a real contribution to history.” He took a long, uneven drag on his cigarette.

Nathan knew what Pop would say to this. He’d say, “Listen, Mister College Professor, a Pole is a Pole. You can’t do nothing
with him unless he’s a socialist. Then he’s a brother.” Pop had a whole arsenal of truisms like this, one more obscure than
the next.

“So, until tomorrow then?” Załuski said.

“Tomorrow?”

“I am to give you a tour of the city.”

“Actually,” Nathan said, hoping to conceal his distaste for the plan, “I think I’d rather get out of the city and take a look
at this country of yours. Can you arrange for me to have a car and driver for the day?”

Załuski smiled. If he’d been surprised or disappointed by Nathan’s request, it didn’t show. “If you would prefer, I’m sure
this can be arranged,” he said with a slight bow. “I’ll call you with the details later this evening.” Then he headed off
in the direction of Kazimierz Palace, smoke fanning out behind him like a cloud.

12

W
ARSAW
! B
EAUTIFUL
W
ARSAW
!
THAT CITY WAS NO MORE
.
I could not find the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street, or mark my way to Plac Grzybowski by the smell of hot chickpeas.
But still sweet was the smell of grass growing in Saxon Garden.

W
arsaw’s air smelled of a burnt stew of elements Nathan could not identify. It was also permeated by dust and gasoline exhaust,
which irritated his eyes. But after the morning’s events, he felt so agitated he decided to take a walk, despite the added
threat of rain. He passed under the university’s decorative wrought-iron gate, with its Polish eagle on top, and walked north,
intending to visit the Gothic postwar reconstruction called Old Town. He had read somewhere that although small in size, it
was quite charming.

But somehow he managed to take a wrong turn, and he found himself instead at a pleasant but unremarkable park identified in
his tour book as the Saxon Garden. According to the book, a building called the Blue Palace could be found on the far end
of the Garden. The name intrigued him, but the guide said the original building, with its extensive art and book collections,
had burned during the war, that it had been rebuilt as the headquarters of the municipal transport enterprise and now wasn’t
worth a visit.

Nathan retraced his steps, and with a sudden desire for the taste of something sweet, he drifted south toward the cafés on
the elegantly reconstructed Nowy
wiat. He sat down in a café that had a large display of doughnuts in the window. Of all
things to find in Poland, he thought. He ordered a sugar-sprinkled one with a tea, in the best Polish he could manage from
his tour book.

The waiter looked sympathetic as Nathan struggled to pronounce
p
czek
the word for
doughnut.
“That is very good Polish,” said the waiter, although it was clear to them both that Nathan had just about reached the limit
of his abilities in the language.

“You speak English,” Nathan said gratefully.

“A little,” the young man offered.

Nathan noted how even in jeans and a T-shirt, the Pole retained that intangible difference that marked him as non American,
as if some trace of ancestral formality prevented his wearing casualness well. “Can you tell me what that church is over there
with the two towers?” he asked.

The waiter bent slightly at the waist as he set up the table. “That’s
Ko
ciól
wi
tego Krzy
a,
the Holy Cross Church,” he said. “Inside it was almost destroyed, from bombs, in the Second War. During the great Warsaw
Uprising there was much fighting there between our people and the Nazis.”