Report of the County Chairman (38 page)

He liked what he saw of young Pani Buk: Kazimiera was of that stalwart breed which had always kept the farms of Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Russia functioning. She was prepared to serve as wife, mother, cook, seamstress, ox when the plow had to be pulled, and always as the sharp verbal critic. It was to her that he now spoke, as if acknowledging that inside the cottage she was mistress.

‘Pani, when I left Warsaw at dawn this morning the women in my building asked me—’

‘I know,’ she said abruptly. ‘They hoped you could bring home some meat.’

‘And vegetables.’ Quickly he added: ‘I have the zlotys, you know.’

Buk’s mother broke in: ‘Zlotys are of no use any more. We can’t buy anything with them.’

‘But I’d leave them anyway. To demonstrate my good will.’

‘Good will we know you have. I knew your mother, I knew your grandmother. And women like that do not produce poor sons.’

They talked for a while of the old days, and tough Biruta began to weep when she recalled that special night when Bukowski had come to this cottage to talk her and her husband into joining his underground unit, then operating out of the Forest of Szczek. ‘They were heroic days,’ she said.

‘These are heroic days, Biruta.’

‘How have you managed to mess up this country so abominably?’

‘We’re not free in Warsaw, you know.’ And that was all he would concede. ‘You will let me have some food?’

‘Of course. You came here before, begging for food, and we gave it then, didn’t we?’

‘What can I give you in return?’

‘Not zlotys. Szymon, zlotys are no longer worth a damn. But we would like some books about farming … for Janko and our young ones.’

‘Books you shall have,’ he said. Then he left the cottage and whistled for the driver to bring the government car closer so that its trunk could be packed with items of food no longer obtainable in Warsaw.