Lala Read online

  Grandpapa Leonard on the beach at Kolberg, c. 1905.

  Granny always has a story to tell whenever she has to deal with complicated machinery. For instance, it’s enough for the toast to jump out of the toaster with a loud ping at breakfast – as for those incredible Oliwa breakfasts, they deserve a paragraph of their own – it’s enough for my parents to have brought her an electric kettle (‘Well I never! I thought I’d burn it dry in an instant because it doesn’t whistle, and without the whistle I’ll forget it’s on, but what do you know, it switches itself off! Though actually it’s too quick, because I used to have time to put on the water, slice the bread, spread the butter, make sandwiches, slice the cucumbers and tomatoes, and only then did the kettle squeak. Then I’d pour the boiling water on the tea in the pot and put it next to the kettle to stop it from going cold… but now it boils in an instant. Though the new kettle is nice and flat on top, so I put the pot on top of it…’), it’s enough for someone to have mended the cooker or the washing machine for Granny to say: ‘Well, well, what a fancy washing machine (toaster / radio / torch) – what a lot of screws there are in it, what a lot of metal parts and bulbs and dials. Do you know how Grandpapa Brokl drove across the Ukraine?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ I say, but Granny either can’t hear, or refuses to hear the irony in my tone of voice.

  ‘Grandpapa had an automobile, the first one in the Ukraine. Of course he had a chauffeur to go with it, but he often drove it himself, for the mere pleasure. There were photographs of him standing by the car with his driving goggles up on his forehead, wearing special gloves and a dustcoat thrown over his pinstriped suit… so smart and spruce from head to foot, as if they’d manufactured him and his entire outfit along with the car, just for that photograph. But if he was travelling with Grandmama, they took the chauffeur and sailed across the Ukrainian wilderness, across boundless fields and forests, along inhospitable roads, under an infinite sky. Miles of bent grass and all that, you see. And one day, under this infinite Ukrainian sky, they had to make a sudden stop in the middle of the highway, because a pack of hairy Ukrainian peasants had surrounded them, half furious and half terrified, shaking their scythes, axes and stakes, and yelling that here was the devil himself. Grandpapa had already told the chauffeur to force his way through the crowd, but Grandmama took matters into her own tiny but heroic hands – she had him open the door for her, she stepped out into the road, raised her veil and asked – in Polish, of course, because she couldn’t speak Ukrainian – what did they mean, the devil? Then they roared, but more quietly now, that here came the devil, it was the devil’s own carriage because it had no horses, and yet it was moving. So Grandmama said: “Have you ever seen a steamship?” They hadn’t. “Are you familiar with a chaff-cutter?” They weren’t. Finally she came round to a threshing machine or something of the kind, and they knew it. “But a threshing machine has an engine!” the crafty fellows argued. “This has one too,” replied Grandmama, and called out the chauffeur, who already had a tight grip on the crank handle, useful in case of a fight, and told him to open the bonnet flap and show the peasants the engine, the radiator and whatever else. And they stepped aside. They even sent news to the next few villages ahead to say it wasn’t the devil, but it had an engine – and from then on they weren’t accosted any more.’

  Grandpapa Leonard (in the back, with hand raised) and some unidentified people in his car, c. 1910.

  II

  At this point I should do a bit of housekeeping. As I’ve already said, Granny’s story has no frame or confines – it’s blurry, branching off every which way, without bounds. What’s more, I’ve already told everything that I’m writing down here many times before, and of course a large part of what Granny has told us was told to her by others in the past. The repetition of wise and beautiful things is wise and beautiful in itself, and is the same sort of virtuous act as feeding the hungry, caring for animals, watering plants or donating to charity. But a story takes place within a time, and doubly so – firstly because it describes a time that’s past, bygone, elapsed, organised into a provable chronology and order of events, and secondly because it also describes that time within another time – during a conversation. And so a multitude of characters are going to appear here who will seem at first sight non-essential: acquaintances, chance passers-by, closer and more distant relatives, and above all some of my friends, male and female – not as protagonists but as listeners. But how different these stories are for each of them! How much plainer they are when stripped of charm, nothing but illustrations of events, like a digest from the Herald to meet the needs of Madzia-who-brings-the-milk or the lady at the market – but how they sparkle with wit when Granny pulls out the stops… Only a few years ago, when most of the former regulars at her name-day and birthday parties had already passed on, Granny would make herself into the sacred queen of the drawing room, and always did for my friends, hence their presence in this story. In any case, if they’re in my life, they’re also in Granny’s, just like Jadzia Kontrymówna or the Japanese spy, all those people who are strangers, and yet are part of my life too.

  So they’re going to appear, and in a completely unruly manner. Don’t be surprised if a story starts in one person’s presence, and ends in someone else’s. This is in the mysterious nature of storytelling: the same start can also mean different endings, and different starts can lead to the same finale. It’s all subordinate to the greater narrative, which starts somewhere in Kiev, at a good address, in a large residential house with caryatids… and that’s the only thing organising the episodic, though in fact necessary characters to whom it is told. And so past time will come to form time that is passing.

  There are also the sort of stories that we only pass on to very few people. Not because no one else would understand their moral or laugh at their punchline, and not because we’d rather keep them for special occasions, but just because some stories race headlong towards some people, they soar, fly and plummet at breakneck speed, jumping about like dogs who’ve been pining for their masters. I usually tell Margot stories about ghosts, about the loving affection of the dead, and about beautiful places and images, such as the white cornettes of Beguines reading their breviaries, floating above the narcissi in the convent courtyard in Bruges. The stories I tell Basia are about malevolent aunts, sudden escapes, unexpected plot twists and bizarre connections. Scandalous incidents also give her a thrill. Radek likes to hear about himself, so he doesn’t belong in this book, but he does belong in others. And so on, and so forth – each story has its favourite listener, and each listener has his or her favourite story. Sometimes we also find a place that’s ideal for listening, or a time that’s just waiting for one particular story to be told.

  I told Basia the story of Grandpapa Leonard, Grandmama Wanda and their children in Pelplin.*

  If you’ve never been to Pelplin, do go there. You’ll find yourself at a small station, where the trains arrive empty and depart full in the morning, and vice versa in the evening; a little further on you walk past a crumbling factory where something or other is made, sugar perhaps, then a small square, a handful of houses, and once you’ve lost hope of finding anything, you come upon a vast medieval cathedral, which, like a red-brick jewellery box with very fine vaulted ceilings, houses some unimaginable Gothic and baroque, Cupids and cardinals, skulls piled in reliquaries, a dancing Christ and many other spectacular things.

  It was there that I said to Basia: ‘Look at that – the light from the stained-glass windows shining on the choir stalls would make a superb photograph.’

  But Basia frowned.

  ‘It can’t be done. It won’t work,’ she said.

  ‘For a professional photographer it would,’ I said in a patronising way. And of course she took the picture, and it worked, and now she’s going about proud as Punch.

  A lot happened that day. There was the girl we saw in the cathedral doorway… writing about it here makes no sense at all, because I should be writing about W
anda and Leonard, and about Ewa, and Róża, and so on, but where else am I going to write about that girl? So she’s here too.

  We were waiting in the vestibule. One leaf of the wide gates was set ajar, and through a grille we could see the honey-coloured interior of the cathedral – the gilded beaten egg-whites of baroque altars, the angelic tribe and the dark choir stalls.

  Basia tugged at my sleeve. I turned, and there was the girl. I had seen her earlier, but I’d come in here telling a story, very happy that Basia was dazzled, and that she was going to be even more dazzled – and here was this girl, who had popped up from nowhere, stick-thin, pallid, with a bluish complexion. She looked about fourteen years old. She was standing on the stone threshold, between the door and the grille, almost entirely hidden behind the mighty doors and their ironwork, overshadowed, so that all I could see was a protruding knee, some long fingers, one cheek and a grey-ringed, lustreless eye under a narrow lid. Perfect for a picture.

  Basia drew me to one side, as if to show me a notice.

  ‘Do you think she’d agree to pose for me?’

  ‘I think you could ask.’

  For a while I felt like a summer vacationer from the year 1923 – the eastern borderlands, impoverished children, seekers after local colour in plus fours and tweed jackets. I moved a little further off and jotted something down in my notebook, while Basia conducted the negotiations, and then took the pictures – but by now the magic had gone. And again I saw this vision – the Hutsul region* in 1923, and me saying: ‘But no, my dear Klementyna, there may indeed be a certain noble roughness to it, a certain tough quality as in the Italian primitives, but the young lady’s grace was so much greater when she was quite unaware that you wished to immortalise her… by the by, how about indulging in some of the wholesome local fare?’

  Finally we were let inside. As usual, we were shown around by a seminarian; a gauche young thing, he was (as Granny would have said). He talked about a Rubens that hangs in the Old Pinacolada in Munich. I told him that piña colada is very nice too, though not necessarily old, but what they have in Munich is the Pinacotheca. Or there may even be two.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I got it wrong. But I’ve been here since ten this morning,’ he replied with a disarming smile, ‘and that’s not the first nonsense I’ve spouted today.’

  Basia vanished, but a little later we ran into each other again – I was with a small group of tourists, obediently hearing for the nth time that ‘the man who made the Gothic choir stalls portrayed himself close to the ground as if out of humility, but in fact out of conceit, because everyone has to bow down to see him, ladies and gentlemen’; and Basia was scurrying along from the entrance, out of breath, loaded with all her bags, cameras, lenses and apertures. ‘She’s called Liliana Liliańska.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘The girl. I promised to send her the picture. And I took a second one, from inside. It probably won’t work.’

  We did a tour of all the nooks and alcoves; once again I saw King Jan Sobieski* portrayed as a rich man feasting, the Christians being torn to pieces by wild animals, and the bricks polished by monks sharpening their knives against them on their way to the refectory. Now and then Basia tugged at my sleeve. Or I at hers. By the dancing Christ on top of the organ (‘Noo, it won’t work. But I’ll try if you like.’), by the coloured spots of light sifted through the stained glass onto the tracery topping the choir stalls (‘Noo, it won’t work,’ ‘It would for a professional,’ ‘Maybe so, but not for me. Though it won’t hurt to give it a try.’).

  ‘What about the reliquaries? Would you please show them to us, Father?’ I asked.

  ‘Er… I’m not a Father yet,’ said the seminarian.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No matter. It’s not usually done…’ – oh yeah? I thought, it’s almost always done – ‘but as an exception…’

  And once again I stood before the small wooden doors hidden in the altar, behind which several rows of skulls were neatly stacked, wrapped in red or blue velvet. And wearing crowns embroidered with pearls that shone festively, like a sort of tarnished chronology of monarchs, scanned in hexameters.

  ‘Look at that,’ I whispered to Basia, ‘the epitome of eternity – some nice little skulls in velvet, some incense and some gilded bits of rotten wood.’

  But enough about the girl called Liliana Liliańska, a name we liked very much, enough about the seminarian, enough about the museum where they have the Gutenberg Bible and umpteen Gothic sculptures and altars, and where we came upon dreadful mayhem caused by a local restorer who coats the Gothic altars with metallic paint in primary colours, which hurts the eyes, but wounds the spiritual organs worst of all.

  I don’t know how we fitted it all in that day, but Basia also told me about Loleczek, and I told her about the aunts, which were highly appropriate stories in highly appropriate places, including a little village graveyard, a pizzeria and the station. But it started innocently enough.

  ‘Tell me,’ said Basia, walking at a brisk pace, as she sometimes does, ‘that auntie your granny was talking about at breakfast, what sort of an auntie was she? And why did she hate your great-grandmother so much?’

  ‘Aunt Ewa, the loony.’

  ‘The one who married a general?’

  ‘No, not that one.’

  The Brokl family on holiday. From the left, General Szymiczek, Aunt Róża, Grandmama Wanda, in front Grandpapa Leonard and Uncle Maciej, c. 1905.

  ‘The one who married a violinist?’

  ‘No, that was Aunt Sasha.’

  ‘So please clarify. One by one.’

  ‘All right. There was Leonard Brokl, my granny’s grandfather, and her grandmother, Wanda, née Dziewia˛tkiewicz.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know about them. Go on.’

  ‘So you mean later on, because there isn’t much of what came earlier. All I know is that there was a paternal uncle’s wife who was a Scipio del Campo, and that’s a remarkable, grand family, and various others hanging around in the genealogy, such as Prince-General Zaja˛czek. Grandpapa Leonard Brokl…’

  ‘What about Zaja˛czek?’

  ‘He’s nothing, just your typical prince-cum-general – boring. But we’re related to him through his wife, a Frenchwoman. And she’s an interesting character,’ – note the artistry of the storyteller, as with a clean conscience I sacrifice an Uprising general for a scandalous general’s wife, who will certainly please Basia – ‘just imagine, Zaja˛czek’s wife was a woman of great beauty, and she continued to be one to a very great age. Even when she was eighty she had lovers among the cadets.’

  ‘Was it a career move for them?’

  ‘I wouldn’t rule it out, but that’s another matter. She was very well preserved, you see. She used to cover herself in fresh meat…’

  ‘The cadets?’

  ‘No, fresher than that, just slaughtered. Slices of good meat. And she slept in a bed with large blocks of ice underneath it all year long. And she rouged her heels, knees and ear lobes. And so on. Thanks to which she retained her freshness and vigour. But we’re not descended from her, because the general died without issue. Though we are descended from a sister of hers, or a sister-in-law, perhaps a cousin, also none too virtuous, who in her turn regularly slept with Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich,* after which her husband acknowledged all their children, nothing but daughters, as far as I know, as his own. That gave him permanent access to honours and riches.’

  ‘How did anyone know they were the Grand Duke’s children?’

  ‘By their noses. He had such an insanely ugly nose, sunken as well as snub, you know the kind. And all the daughters were the same. Hence my turned-up nose. In any case, be that as it may, that makes me a descendant of the Empress Catherine the Great.’

  ‘But you were going to tell me about the aunts.’

  ‘And I shall. And the uncle, because there was an uncle too. Altogether there were five of them, but one died in childhood… a little girl, I think, yes, it was a girl. Oh yes
– Zosia, pretty and clever, the bane of the naughty children, straight out of a governess’s sermon. She wrote poems in French, played the piano beautifully and had a heart as big as the Palace of Culture. Or rather the Winter Palace. But at the age of ten she had an attack of appendicitis; the doctor thought it was plain indigestion, so he gave her castor oil as a purgative. A terrible death, fitting for the heroine of a moral tale for children. The others were Ewa, Róża, Maciej and Irena, my great-grandmother. They all grew up in a large, affluent home, because their father, as you know, happened to have made a great fortune on the stock market…’

  ‘But which was the one who married a violinist?’

  ‘Aunt Sasha, but she was my great-grandfather’s sister, not my great-grandmother’s. Don’t interfere, I’ll tell you about Sasha too. In any case they were all very wealthy and happy, Grandmama Wanda had lovely dresses and lots of servants, the children played with toys from the most splendid shops in Vienna and St Petersburg, they had china dolls, whole armies of little tin soldiers, and so on. And they were sent to school, to very good schools, the best in Kiev. And then Grandpapa Leonard went bankrupt.’

  At this point there’s a digression. It was typical of Grandpapa Leonard to go bankrupt from time to time. Then he’d buy something, sell something, lose the rest of his gold roubles on something, until suddenly, quite out of the blue, the goddess Fortuna, who was particularly kind to Grandpapa Leonard, for no obvious reason would shower him in golden rain, and Grandpapa could buy himself an automobile, for instance. Or a sugar factory. In his delicate hands, made for stroking lacquered screens and holding Vieux Saxe cups, the landed estates would mysteriously evaporate – it was as if they still existed, comprising such-and-such a number of acres and buildings, while the state continued to demand taxes from them, and yet someone else had been managing them for years, someone else had been picking the apples in the orchard, someone else received the peasants in gloomy drawing rooms, and other women entirely waded through the clumps of phlox and rose bushes. Under the influence of Grandpapa Leonard’s imprudent activities bookkeeping, bills of exchange, credits and debits changed into real beasts, living their own, unbridled life, and leaving their patron far behind.