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The Teacher

2023; Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America; Volume: 68; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/23300841.68.4.04

2330-0841

Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Jack J. B. Hutchens,

Polish Historical and Cultural Studies

It was raining the day the teacher was supposed to arrive. This did not upset any of us, neither me, nor Felek, nor Jaś. Felek had grown a lot over the summer. He had just turned sixteen and could no longer fit into his gray uniform. The tailor should have already made him some new clothes, but mother had once again fallen ill. She had locked herself up in her apartments with old Kama, and again there was no one to come with us to Klasztorzyszcz. Jaś, always frail and thin, would go running around the park by himself; he was eight years old, four years younger than me. The rain didn't bother us, so we spent the whole day in the yard, and in the evening, smelling of wet cloth, sat down to dinner. There were dumplings with bacon and roasted cabbage with porridge. Miss Dora solemnly put down her fork as soon as she tasted the dish. But father had gone, as usual, to the neighboring estate of Dowżycha, my mother was in her apartments, and so the old Englishwoman's demonstrations against our Polish-Ukrainian cuisine did not at all succeed.After dinner we played in the rain with the wash-boy, Vasyli, who always stank of dirty dishes. The path through the park to the pond wasn't long; we ran beneath the overhanging branches of a giant willow tree, shaking off the water with squeals and shouts. The willow rustled gently in the warm, fragrant rain, as though it weren't September. This was in 1914. For school our parents had sent us to the Kingdom, which now was being threatened by the German march on Warsaw. They were afraid to send us back there, even though our oldest brother, Fryderyk had gone to Kielce with the legionnaires.1 But we didn't talk about that at home. Our parents frowned on his having joined the legions, fearful that any day the Muscovites would hang him as soon as they caught him, even though he'd obviously taken on a pseudonym, and now called himself Oksza, after our coat of arms. So, we were supposed to stay at home all winter and work under the tutelage of this teacher, who was arriving today. These were, then, the last days of our long holiday. We had been wondering how they would end.Miss Dora lived in a small separate house connected to the manor by a long hallway. Next to her room was the pantry. To get there, one had to walk from the hallway into the pantry, and between there and Miss Dora's room was a set of doors. They were never open, and Miss, having already lived there for three years, had forgotten they even existed. Today, after dinner, when she had sat down to read some romance from the “Tauchnitz Edition,” the doors to the pantry suddenly swung open with a bang, and the frightened Englishwoman beheld four white figures jumping in circles and belching out in a horrible manner. It was Felek, dirty-dishes Vasyli, Jaś, and I with sheets thrown over ourselves. We had mastered the belching trick long before from watching horses cribbing; we would swallow air in a special way, and then let it go with a loud, awful noise. Miss started shaking angrily; she tried to close the doors but both halves turned out to be connected quite soundly with twine. She began cursing us and ran to kindly Kama, my father's nanny, an old woman, who, now in her dotage, was filling the roles of housekeeper, lady-in-waiting to my mother, house manager, and mediator for all grievances. But before Kama could get to us, a carriage grated to a halt in front of the house, and with a scream we flew through the hallway. But when the teacher exited the carriage at the porch of the well-lit house, everything was in perfect order. We stood like three polite angels in a row behind the marble table in the front hall, and Vasyli, with the most footman-ish bearing, collected the teacher's heavy luggage from the carriage.The first impression was nothing special. More than once I've reminisced about this man. He seemed thin to us, tall, and very young. After looking him over during dinner we figured that he had to be around thirty, which in those times was considered advanced in age. He was from Galicia, and father had gone through considerable trouble getting the governor's permission to allow him to live with us in the countryside, being truly quite far from both the front and the border, tucked away in the depths of the Kherson steppes out towards Odessa and the Black Sea, from which now warm, damp, September winds were blowing. Only later did we understand that Mr. Kazimierz Leszczycki was beautiful; at the time we simply saw his moustache, black clothing, and tie—which we laughed at—his thin white fingers, and dexterous movements at the table, where a “guest” supper had been set, which was completely different from what we usually ate. He ate a lot, and quickly, barely speaking at all, swiftly looking us in the eye. He had a charming gaze, blue eyes beneath black eyebrows that almost grew over his short straight nose, wide red lips, and a strong-set fleshy jaw. We immediately noticed his voice, rough and halting, like a boy's during puberty that would unpleasantly surprise its owner. The teacher would not be able to count on that voice in the future while trying to tame or correct us. It felt like it might break on him at any moment in a high-pitched squeak, and it was obvious that the teacher himself, not believing in his own strength, was afraid of raising his voice or risk taking it into a higher register. So, he spoke quietly, almost in a whisper, exchanging words with Kama about the roads, dust, the rain, trains to and from Kiev and Odessa, and various equally unimportant things. Miss Dora did not come to table. When the teacher had finished eating, the boys showed him to his quarters. He was going to stay in a small cottage at the edge of the park and a country lane. It also housed the chancellery's office and two guest rooms with windows facing the garden.The boys took the teacher's trunks to his room, politely said goodnight, and walked out into the chancellery corridor and then onto the small porch facing the park. They stood on the porch, while I stood lower down in the park, watching the figure of the new teacher through the brightly lit window. He went to open it, so we hid in the lilac bushes, giggling quietly. The teacher opened the window wide and began to inhale the smell of fresh rain, wilting leaves, and the last flowers of our garden. The heliotropes were still giving off a strong fragrance.The next morning it rained, and we began our lessons. It started off with a fight with Jaś. The two of us, Felek and I, sat in father's large office which had been changed into a “classroom.” Jaś was in mother's office reading, or rather mumbling with Miss Dora in English. After an hour, the teacher ordered a recess and had us run around the garden, after which we were supposed to return to class.“You should all come back in ten minutes,” he said, glancing at his watch.It began raining. The ground and leaves, still green, were soaked with warm, soft water, a damp mist was moving over the pond between the raindrops. On the way to the chancellery there stood a large maple tree whose top had died and was drying out. The gardener had decided to cut it down. When we ran out into the garden, a few boys were cutting the roots. A gleaming bright saw lay on the wet grass. The scent of the fresh, deeply wounded tree pierced the dampness. Ropes had been thrown high over the maple's branches and fastened to the boughs. A red-haired gardener in a shiny black coat was walking around the tree like a squirrel. Larger branches had been sawn off, falling to the ground like wounded animals. We didn't at all notice when ten minutes had passed. The teacher sent Vasyli to call us back into the manor.We reluctantly returned to the house, but Jaś stayed behind with the tree.When we got back to the classroom the teacher furrowed his eyebrows.“I would prefer you come when you are called,” he said. “And where is your brother?” he asked, obviously not yet remembering our names.“Jaś stayed with the tree,” I said with a certain glee in my voice, delighted that little Jaś hadn't obeyed the teacher.The teacher left without a word. Through the open window we watched as he went up to the tree, which was already almost completely shorn of branches, and ordered Jaś to return, even getting a bit angry. It didn't work. So, he grabbed Jaś by the neck and trousers and lifted him off the ground. Jaś began squirming, but the teacher, paying not the slightest bit of attention to him, carried him the entire way from the tree to the house, only putting him on his feet once they'd made it to the classroom. Both Felek and I began shaking with indignation. The teacher sat Jaś, now crying bitterly, in his seat, dusted his hands, and with a calm face turned his attention to us.But Felek couldn't stand it. He looked at the teacher angrily, his face reddening, as he would do, and, stuttering a little, said:“Sir, no one ever beats us and we ask. . . . ”The teacher looked at Felek in the calmest manner. There was a faint surprise in his clear gaze. He said softly, in a cold voice:“But I've not struck anybody.”His voice chilled us to the core. Felek, however, was not easily tamed. He stood, already red as a beet, and stared at the teacher straight in the eye. The teacher's gaze grew even colder. After a moment, he added, drawing out his words that fell like drops of frozen water:“But if it were ever to be necessary to strike somebody, I would certainly be able to. Because that is a very effective way to deal with disobedience and laziness.”For a long moment, the teacher's and Felek's eyes were locked on one another. Finally, the blood in my brother's neck cooled, and with great effort he turned his eyes to the ground.“Sit down,” the teacher said dryly, and we started the lesson as if nothing had happened.At noon, Mother invited the new teacher to her apartments, which were situated behind the dining room and consisted of three rooms: a living room, a bedroom, and a dressing room. These rooms were fundamentally different from the atmosphere of the rest of the house, from the style of the masculine hunting-cabin furnishings. They were somber, soft, pink, and full of lace, with very little light. A lustrous pink curtain separated the dressing room from the bedroom which was connected to the corridor. I don't know if mother ever realized that we overheard all of her more interesting conversations from behind that pink curtain. And obviously we wouldn't miss a conversation with such an important figure as the teacher. With bated breath, we snuck into the hallway from the dressing room, the three of us getting as close to the center of the curtain as possible. Vasyli stood outside the door and watched us eavesdrop while standing guard.At that time, mother spent most of the day in bed complaining of severe pain in her kidneys. She was only accompanied by good old Kama and Miss Julia Wallishauser as well, whenever she came to visit us for a few weeks. Mother rarely saw father, and even less of us. Only Jaś, as the youngest, would sometimes run into mother's rooms, either to cry and pout, or to show off some discovery of his from the fields or garden. Felek and I were afraid of the rooms’ air, full of the smell of medicines and heated serving trays, stifling in the strong odor of greasy talcum powder and French perfumes. What's more, mother was afraid of our Cossack manners, our tall boots, the leather straps we carried in our hands, and the smell of the stables that hung all about us.Despite the deep gap that existed between this morbid creature and us (Fryderyk also shared our feelings), mother, as someone who did not really know life, had inexplicable illusions about her pedagogical abilities and the influence she had on her sons through these abilities. In Odessa, she even wrote and published—at her own expense—a book entitled What We Don't Know about Our Sons; she enumerated sins that we had no idea about, while all our actual faults and crimes were ignored.From what we overheard of their conversation, it was quite clear that the new teacher had little respect and plenty of contempt for mother's educational abilities. When we escaped through the corridor into the garden, Felek sighed deeply and said:“How did he immediately know that mother just ignores us?” I felt that the teacher had risen in Felek's estimation.Mother spoke a lot, while Mr. Kazimierz replied in monosyllables. She asked him about Pestalozzi, but Mr. Kazimierz gave no answer at all.2 Mother discussed our characters extensively, and we had to cover our mouths to keep from laughing. The teacher's voice made it clear that he was also laughing. Even though he had met us for the first time only a few hours before, he already knew us better than our own mother. What struck me most, however, was that the most important thing the teacher told our mother was that he considered Felek to be the most outstanding of us all, and that he thought he was a very capable boy. I thought the teacher was being absurd, and this made me think less of him. However, this became one of the reasons Felek immediately respected Mr. Kazimierz.Felek's natural-born traits did not correspond to the teacher's at all. He was the strongest of all of us, but his delicate face resembled Mother's. He blushed easily and had nice black eyebrows. He was a terrible student and was considered very weak at our school; he made no progress in mathematics, and I had the impression that, apart from the four operations, everything else was an awful incomprehensible forest full of wild algebraic symbols to him. In language, he was able to place two spelling mistakes into one word, and it was quite difficult for him to put together even four or five sentences that barely passed as a paragraph. He was passionate about gymnastics and drawing, but that wasn't much. He read nothing, and at home, if he wasn't causing a ruckus on the farm, or sleeping, or riding horses, he would be looking over old drawings for hours: albums of Parisian salons, starting from 1882 that were kept in our library closet, reproductions from the Galerie de Dresde or the Galerie d'Anvers, collected in red Moroccan leather bindings, or even simply the collected annuals of Illustrated Weekly, from which he would sometimes redraw pictures of horses. On top of that he was always up for some adventure or another: he could ride a horse like a Voltigeur; in summer he would catch fish and crayfish; in winter he often organized toboggan runs and delightful merry-go-rounds on the frozen pond. He teased us, the younger ones, a lot, and he was especially hard on Fryderyk. We didn't really like him very much at that time. Sometimes on autumn evenings or during rainy summer days, he would tell scary fairy tales or ghost stories in a most enthralling way. In those moments I would have done anything for him, but my adoration would pass very quickly. And, as I realized later, my parents didn't like him very much either: Fryderyk, the eldest, the pride of the family, was my father's favorite, while my mother seemed to love me the most; Jaś found solace for his many sorrows in Kama's warm, plentiful bosom; Felek was left out of any special familial affection. He made father so impatient, and he irritated mother to such an extent that eventually he was afraid to speak in front of them, and if he did say anything, it was always something pointless and inappropriate that even surprised us younger children. He would blush at all of father's questions and he would either not answer at all, or else he would stutter uncontrollably. The summer of 1914, which was so beautiful in Ukraine at that time, unleashed his wildness and turned him into a real brute. This tanned, dark savage, with his “white eyes,” as Fryderyk would call them, behaved horribly at the table having forgotten all the “social norms” Miss Dora had trained him in for three years. He made up stories, tracked mud through the house, and he smelled like the stables even in church on Sundays. He would rarely stand still, and he was always crude and arrogant, as he had been with Mr. Kazimierz that day.The rain didn't stop falling for the next few days, tormenting us as much as Mr. Kazimierz. I immediately hated the new teacher and watched his every step suspiciously. He was quite diligent with the lessons he led us in, and while they didn't really bore us, there were just so many of them. At dusk, I would tear myself out of the house like a horse from a stable and, accompanied by my greatest friend Vasyli, would run around the pond twice, kicking the wet gravel on the paths in all directions. Immediately after lessons, the teacher would retire to his room in the chancellery, light the lamp, close the blinds, and devote himself to some quiet activity, like reading, writing, or studying. We were never able to spy on him much, even though Vasyli and I watched him more than once. Sak, the boy who waited on him and cleaned the house, also lived in the chancellery, and slept in a small closet behind the stairs. He told us the teacher had a large number of books, and that was why his luggage had been so heavy. After dinner, I would play chess with Felek, and Mr. Kazimierz would talk with Kama and Miss Wallishauser. Sometimes he would play the piano quite beautifully, which everyone enjoyed. Father returned from Dowżycha, but after just one day he left again for Kyiv, again leaving us with no parents. At the time, mother would not leave her rooms for many weeks, only calling for Kama and Jaś to visit her.When the storms stopped, it was full autumn. During the weeks of rain, the trees had turned yellow and the flowers had withered. The tall dahlia bushes, beaten into sharp strips, lay like the remnants of masts on a beach. The nasturtiums had grown bald, and the paths in the park glistened white and gold with fallen maple leaves. And the days, whose mornings were now filled with lessons and whose evenings were being trimmed by the encroaching winter, became immeasurably, painfully short. Autumn seemed very sad to me.One day, on my way back from the farm, where the cows were already having to be milked by lantern, I found Felek in the living room, pouring over a thick yearbook of The Weekly. He was flipping through the pages carelessly, thinking about something else. I knew what it was. That was the day the teacher first told him, in his unpleasant but extremely calm voice:“You know, Felek, you've written this essay in a quite decent way.”Indeed, the essay had been enormous for Felek—three whole pages in a notebook. It was simply about the history of our house, who built it and how, and what it was like inside and out. It should not have been a difficult task for a sixteen-year-old boy, but the praise surprised me greatly.As Felek was sitting on the floor, indifferently flipping through the pages of the magazine—the bound volume of The Weekly was huge and very heavy—Mr. Kazimierz entered, heading for the piano. But, noticing one of the pictures, he instead sat down next to Felek and began explaining it to him. It was a view of the Acropolis, so he began telling him about Pericles, then about Greek art, and finally about architecture and its structure. Slowly, I started moving closer, and I must admit, that it was this conversation that first sparked my interest in architecture and, perhaps, was even what brought me to devote myself to it.Felek asked questions calmly and without stuttering, inviting Mr. Kazimierz to explain things further. From then on, the three of us would gather daily half an hour before dinner to look at magazines and albums, with the teacher constantly finding new topics for anecdotes and conversations, which would often continue throughout the entire dinner. Even Kama and Julia Wallishauser would listen to these narratives.Miss Julia Wallishauser, as I mentioned, would spend long weeks with us in a kind of indefinite residency. Today I understand that, having lent father a large sum of money as a mortgage, she had every right to supplement the slim and irregularly paid interest by staying in our house from time to time, even though the servants were rude to her, and our parents were cold and unfriendly. The three of us boys, however, were quite fond of “Julcia.”She was unmarried, near sixty, but her hair was still a raven black, either naturally or through deliberate treatments. She was as skinny as a rail, with a mole on her wrinkled face above her mouth that twisted it into a friendly smile. Having inherited a small fortune from her grandfather, a Swiss watchmaker, she lent the money, God knows how, to all the neighboring families, and now she traveled with a small wooden box, closed with a black padlock, from one hearth to another, living everywhere for a few weeks or months, finding everywhere the sour faces of her hosts, the unfavorable comments of the servants, and her permanent place at the dinner table. We would play a thousand pranks on Julcia, which never upset our parents; on the contrary, they enjoyed it quite openly. You could tease Julcia, you could dance with Julcia, you could laugh at Julcia, and yet at the same time with Julcia there was always fun and adventure, and something was always happening. And when we would scream with joy, jumping around the old lady in the hall, she rejoiced with us, kissed us, even calling Vasyli her “little lover.” She would then lock herself in Kama's room to tell her about everything happening in the towns and nearby manors. Julcia's reports were distinguished by the fact that they concerned not only the so-called “crowned heads,” meaning the citizens and their wives, magnates, and administrators, but also commoners of the villages: priests, tax agents, teachers, Jews, owners of spice shops, flour merchants, and shoemakers. Kama learned about this whole world only from hearing about it, because she didn't even go to church on Sundays. Instead, she got to know it from the outside in. Julcia would suddenly pop in with another “chapter” of an extremely interesting novel and Kama would not want to let her go until she had told her everything. But it couldn't be all at once; Julcia brought back a supply of stories that would last for a good three weeks.One can imagine what the arrival of the new teacher meant to Julcia. She flushed at dinner and told the most fascinating anecdotes. Miss Dora would wrinkle her nose at Julcia; they hated each other like two old cats. Although Julcia could not speak a word of English, and Miss Dora neither a word in Polish nor French, there was a constant war between them, usually hidden from human sight. We immediately started teasing Julcia about Mr. Kazimierz, and it got so that she, red as a crab, would lower her eyes and repeat, quite joyfully:“Such bad boys, they always torment me!”Mr. Kazimierz was also amused, and even joined in our game, making sweet eyes at Julcia in an excessively courtly manner. I must admit that he was beautiful then, and Kama and Julcia, sitting next to each other, would nudge each other with their elbows and closely follow the graceful movements of the lovely teacher. Immediately after the first supper, Mr. Kazimierz sat down at the piano and played an improvised song. Then, accompanying himself, he sang in a countertenor some old-fashioned songs like “It's already a Month Gone By” and many others. Felek took out a volume of The Weekly and flipped through its pages demonstratively in the middle of the living room. Bored with the several weeks of rain and lack of company, our tutor found a visible pleasure in conversation and jokes.But the next day, we resumed our pre-dinner and post-dinner conversations. Vasyli told me, however, that in the evening the old ladies would remain in the living room and talk for a good long time with the teacher, while we were already fast asleep. After a few days, unable to control our laughter, all three of us realized that Julcia obviously had a deep and passionate affection for the young Galician. Finally, Mr. Kazimierz took measure of himself, started to stay away from the “biddies,” and ostentatiously returned to his educational conversations with us.Julcia extended her stay with us indefinitely, even though father, dropping in between trips to Dowżycha, Uman, Kyiv, and the Klasztorzyszcz, asked her meaningfully whether she would need horses, because he'd have to arrange it before leaving again. But Julcia never needed any horses; she had fallen in love with Mr. Kazimierz, at first as a joke, but then finally for real. She spoke with Kama for hours about her feelings. Jaś would report to us about these conversations. Since he was still so young, he slept, to his eternal shame, in the same room with Kama. Half asleep, he would listen to Julcia's whispering and the advice of the older, more experienced Kama. He had no idea what the “biddies” were talking about, and after a few sentences, Jaś, turning to the wall, would fall back to sleep.“You dummy!” Felek would call Jaś, laughing.Soon, the entire house was silently watching Julcia's maneuvers and the teacher's counter-maneuvers.Personally, I was enormously amused by all this intrigue, and especially by the atmosphere it created—when there were two people alone in a room, they only talked about Miss Wallishauser's emotional state, and at table, everyone watched her every slightest movement and Mr. Kazimierz's every slightest reflex, all while talking about the weather, about the parish priest from the Klasztorzyszcz, about his singing, about the last meeting at the Red Cross. Immediately after dinner, I would share my impressions of the “flirting,” either with Vasyli, or with Felek, or even with Kama, who in her youth had (supposedly) lived a quite worldly life, and was now mocking her poor friend to her face.Several weeks passed like this and time moved on towards Christmas. Finally, Julcia could not stay with us any longer and left, promising to return after a short time. Then, apparently feeling better, mother got up from the bed, and started coming out for dinner. This gave her a reason to comment on how much Felek had changed. Mother, as I'm able to judge now, was highly educated and naturally endowed with great intelligence, but her mind was focused in a direction so different from ours that we could never find a way to talk with her. Now these barriers somewhat fell away, and we would converse for hours. Converse? This word seems to be too much—I would listen to the conversation, and Mother, the teacher, and Felek would converse. I will remember these conversations forever. Everything I learned later in life, everything I would become interested in, it was all awakened within me while listening to those discussions. Mother knew how to lead a conversation, how to ask questions, how to raise interesting issues; Mr. Kazimierz knew much in the fields of art, music, and literature. He traveled a lot, and was able to present his experiences in an interesting form; Felek enlivened it all with sharp remarks, jokes that became more amusing thanks to his slight stutter; his burning interest in every line of discussion was illustrated by him not being able to sit in a chair while mother and the teacher talked. After the empty weeks of sterile jokes with Julcia, these were weeks when all that was said fed me like manna. Today, even though twenty-two years have passed, and though I was only a silent guest, I can see before me mother's beautiful, refined profile, the movement of her mouth in speech. I can hear Mr. Kazimierz's uneven, careful voice; I see his black eyebrows, straight nose, and bright eyes. But most of all I hear Felek's cheerful voice, intoxicated simply by the “maturity” and “seriousness” of these conversations. More than once they dragged on for so long that the entire scene would blur before me, and my head, heavy with sleep and new knowledge, would fall onto the table. Mother would then say:“My God, it's eleven o'clock! To bed, children! To bed!”Sometimes Mr. Kazimierz would play piano or read poetry, usually by Słowacki or the then unknown German poet Stefan George, whose popularity had been brought from the universities in Heidelberg and Marburg.3 Until then, I had never seen—nor have I since—such a change in a person as occurred in my brother. He was cheerful, lively even, and when he was at times moody, one word from Mr. Kazimierz would brighten him up. He would blush, and then sit with a book somewhere in the corner of the room. Unlike before, when he would never pick up a book, now he read almost all day. This created a certain discrepancy between us: the four years age difference that had not seemed to exist until now, was suddenly distinctly obvious. Our runs through the garden, “Twice ‘round the pond!” our ice skating and sledding together all came to an end. Jaś was too small for me to play with, so I was forced to enjoy the company of Vasyli, and our friendship grew day by day.Father's library had considerable gaps, which was discovered as soon both Mr. Kazimierz and Felek began to look after the books; this or that one was missing on the shelves. Mrs. Pleszczowa, who lived about fifteen miles from us, had a reputation as a learned woman, so we went to visit her before Christmas in order to finally find those books that our voracious readers were missing. Mother—joy of joys—thanks to her good health and the perfect conditions for sleigh riding on the roads, was able to go with us; Felek insisted on taking the trip on horseback, while the rest of us, even including Miss Dora, went by sleigh. The journey was particularly pleasant. In her house, Mrs. Pleszczowa had five daughters, and four teachers to teach them; it was a real henhouse, in which a little dark Frenchman—the eighteen-year-old son of Madame Colette, a teacher for the Pleszczóws—stuck out like a sore thumb. He had come on vacation to visit his mother in far-away Ukraine and, after the ou