A Day of Small Beginnings (37 page)

She looked up at the guitarist and was surprised to see that from under his hat, he was watching her.

The melody repeated and built speed. The guitarist turned his attention to his fingering and added decoration, folding in
new melodies, new rhythms, until the tune wildly crescendoed to an end. By the time he’d finished, even the Americans had
stopped talking. But the guitarist quickly left the stage, barely acknowledging their applause.

Ellen stood up and walked to the vestibule, hoping to see him.

He soon emerged from a side door. Lithe and graceful, he slid past the cluster of tables toward her.

“Do you speak English?” she asked him.

He lit a cigarette and tipped back his head, revealing a long, elegant neck and a strong jawline. “Yes, some English.”

She thought he sounded wary, but interested.

He took off his hat, and she was struck by his unusual looks—a face long and oval as a Modigliani, with dark-brown eyes and
taut, pale skin. His wavy shoulder-length brown hair was combed straight back. In one ear, he wore a thin gold earring, and
the middle of his chin, just below the lip, was punctuated by a reddish tuft, about the size of a dime. He eyed the row of
gold hoops in Ellen’s left ear with obvious approval.

“Your music is fantastic,” she said, hoping her attraction to him wasn’t overly obvious. “I heard you practicing that last
song before I came into the restaurant. You gave me a real shock. My grandfather used to sing that. Do you know anything about
the tune?”

He looked at her carefully, eyed the rings in her ear again, then smiled shyly. “I don’t know what it’s called, but I like
that one very much. It has something in it, I think.”

She thought he had a beautifully shaped mouth. “Where did you hear it?”

“In the street, on my way home one night. I never found the person who was playing it. But I have a good memory for tunes,
and I like to research them. It is difficult work. There is not very much written down.”

Ellen tilted her head to the side and smiled up at him. “One of the people at the other table said that none of you are Jewish.
Can I ask you, what makes you interested in this music?”

His expression hardened. “Must you be Austrian to be interested in Mozart?”

“Of course not.” She laughed, hoping he wouldn’t think she’d meant to insult him, although the analogy seemed odd. Everyone
knew Mozart, but playing obscure Jewish music in a country without Jews just seemed strange.

“Actually,” he said, “the accordion player in our group had a Jewish grandfather.”

“Does he consider himself Jewish?”

“No.” He frowned. “He’s a Catholic, like me. We just like Jewish music.” He pursed his lips. “Of course, my parents would
prefer that I play Mozart.”

“Why?”

“Because to them, this is low folk music, simple. It’s not serious. They think I am wasting my time.”

Ellen smiled. Despite the slight to Jewish culture, she sensed she was in the presence of a kindred spirit. “I know what you
mean,” she said.

“The older generation, they always think this way,” he continued, clearly having given the matter considerable thought. “They
want you to be a serious person so they can be proud. This isn’t music my parents know. It does not make them proud. But”—he
shrugged and smiled shyly again—“I like it. I do not even know why. It feels good to play it.” He laughed, and Ellen laughed
with him, enchanted by the warmth in his eyes.

“I’d love to have a tape of that tune,” she said. “Do you have a recording of it?”

“Not yet. But, if you like, I could make you a cassette. Can you come back here sometime?” He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I could,” Ellen said, enjoying his flirtatiousness. “That would be great!”

They smiled at each other, each knowing some kind of a beginning had been made.

“By the way, my name is Ellen Linden,” Ellen said, extending her hand.

“Mine is Marek Gruberski,” he said, returning her handshake and cupping it with his other hand. She liked the feel of his
skin, smooth and intimately warm.

27

T
HE NEXT DAY,
E
LLEN WENT TO THE STUDIO TO OBSERVE THE COMPANY
and to make notes on their dance styles. During a break, Pronaszko took her aside. “I think we should begin to discuss your
piece. Can you meet with me this evening?”

“Of course,” Ellen said.

“Seven thirty at café Malma in Rynek Główny then. We can walk from there to a restaurant.”

At the appointed hour Ellen, armed with her spiral notebook, arrived at café Malma to find Pronaszko rolling an almost-finished
glass of beer between his hands at an outdoor table. “Would my young colleague like to join me for a drink or shall we go
on to dinner?” he asked.

Ellen remained standing, having noticed that he had already had a few beers. “Dinner would be great,” she said.

He swerved ever so slightly as he made his way through the maze of small tables. There weren’t many people in the square.
Pronaszko led her along its eastern flank past the squat, domed church planted peculiarly in the pavement.

“I might as well ask you now,” Ellen said. “The company doesn’t seem exactly thrilled that I’m here. Is there something I
should know?”

Pronaszko threw back his head dramatically and looked up at the uneven double towers of Saint Mary’s Church across the square.
“They are not thrilled that you have joined us. Not thrilled at all.”

Drunk or not, his bluntness hurt her. “Why?” she said.

“They had the idea I should pick one of them to choreograph a dance, not someone from outside, especially not someone from
America. I disagreed, so they are upset.” He shrugged, as if the company’s desires were merely a nuisance.

They passed a small bakery. Ellen caught a glimpse of their reflection in the glass and thought of her grandfather. He would
have called her a scab, working for Pronaszko when the company wanted to do its own choreography. “You’re a parasite of the
boss,” he’d have told her.

“You must understand,” Pronaszko said, “under communism we had no worthwhile cultural exchanges, nothing was permitted in
the open. The country was a suffocating hole. How difficult it is to grow as an artist in such an atmosphere. My dancers don’t
understand that. They are too young to understand that my job is to give them fresh air.”

Ellen studied her mentor’s profile—the short nose, the strong chin jutting out resentfully—and wasn’t sure if it would serve
any useful purpose to argue with him about communism. But she was troubled by his attitude toward his dancers. “Maybe they
feel they also have a right to make choices,” she said.

“And what would they choose? These are, almost all of them, children from the country. They are not city people. When I take
them on tour, they stay together like sheep and don’t go out to explore the places where they have been so fortunate to have
been taken. Do not be fooled by their modern clothes. If I let them, they would choose this dead, stupid Soviet ballet. That
is what they know. But I know what we need. We need fresh influences, new passions. So I do not care what they want.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Ellen said carefully. “But do you think the company will give their best creatively if
they’re so angry?”

“That is for you to work out. Certainly, they will resist you. You don’t know the Polish character as I do.” He stopped and
turned to her. “For all our European pretensions, we are a peasant people. Subservient. A people deformed by invasion. You
want to know why they smile at you in class one minute and whisper about you the next? It is because they are all two-faced
servants.” His eyes flitted up to the statue of Adam Mickiewicz as Ellen tried to recall when the dancers were whispering
about her.

“Ellen.” He ran his forefinger back and forth over the length of his nose. He seemed hesitant. “You remember your improvisation
of the statue, of Adam Mickiewicz?”

She rolled her eyes. “That was a big mistake.”

“No. I have given this some thought. You have a sense. You could not have chosen better, even without knowing him. Mickiewicz
is the national poet, yes. Ask any schoolchild. And this is because when the nations around us cut us into parts and made
Poland disappear from the map of Europe, we needed to believe in the poems of this man, our Polish patriot.” He squinted,
as if appraising the statue in Rynek Główny. “But the truth is our national poet lived abroad most of his life. He died in
Istanbul. The statue of him in the main square, that is our little Polish joke. Because Mickiewicz was never in his life in
Kraków.” He lowered his voice, as if others might be listening. “And the rest of the joke? That is for you to enjoy. Now that
our communist friends are not rewriting history anymore, I can tell you that it has long been believed that our Polish Shakespeare,
our hero to the faithful, had a Jewish mother. Ha! There is something they did not tell us when we were memorizing
Pan Tadeusz!”

Ellen was conscious of holding her breath, of not wanting to misspeak in the face of a man’s rebuke of his own people.

But Pronaszko apparently did not share her sense of delicacy. “We are becoming free to say the truth,” he said, with some
belligerence. “And truth can be very difficult for Polish people. We operate in the fantasy of ourselves.”

Ellen didn’t think there was a politic way to respond to this, so she merely offered a smile.

He gave her a wink. “Nothing is what it seems, yes?”

She nodded weakly at this man with whom she still felt so awkward.

He took her by the elbow and began walking again. “They do not like strangers. What they don’t know is that they need them.
The stranger will teach them who they are. Hundreds of years ago, strangers built our economy. Our princes, our King Kazimierz
Wielki invited them to come here, from Germany mostly. Just as I invited you.”

Ellen was unsure how much of this speech was being randomly driven by drink and how much was his trying to tell her something
he thought was important.

“And ever since the Jews left this country, we have suffered, even though some of them who survived were very powerful in
the government. Jewish communists are the worst, you know. They really believe.”

She felt the pressure of his fingers along her arm, and prickles ran up and down her spine. She remembered her father’s warning
not to tell Pronaszko that she was Jewish. But was he an anti Semite? What did he mean, she wondered, by the phrase “since
the Jews left”? Had he meant the Jews who had emigrated, like her grandfather, at the turn of the century, or was he referring
to the Holocaust? And if he meant the Holocaust, how could he call that
leaving?

At that peculiar moment, she noticed that the taller of Saint Mary’s two towers was ringed by a gilded royal crown. It made
her think of the odd phrase on the plaque in Szeroka Square—“
sixty five thousand Polish citizens of Jewish nationality.
” She hadn’t been able to articulate what had bothered her about it. But now, looking at the tower, she realized that in a
country where church and state were one, a Polish Jew was regarded as having a different
nationality.
She felt cold.

They turned off the square, onto the narrow stone sidewalks of a side street, and headed toward Malٹ Rynek, the small market
square behind Saint Mary’s. Ellen listened to the rhythm of their feet on the pavement and worked hard at pulling herself
together so that she could face what she knew was going to be a difficult dinner.

“Ah, well.” Pronaszko sighed, waving their subject away. “All this is for another day. Tonight, perhaps I am more pessimistic
than usual.” He guided her toward a wood-gated doorway, which led to a rough cubbyhole of a restaurant. “The food here is
excellent,” he said, dismissing the plain surroundings with the easy manner of a connoisseur.

The restaurant’s owner, a short man with a mustached face as round and red as an apple, greeted Pronaszko with excited deference
and seated them at a center table where, unfortunately for Ellen, the cigarette smoke seemed thickest. The place was crowded
with locals, a few of whom stared at Pronaszko, then at Ellen. Pronaszko leaned toward her and said softly, “You see, some
of us recognize an interesting beauty when we see one!”