In ‘Rakowski’s Gang’, Continued
We will never know which comrade from the Polish Ministry for Foreign Affairs (MSZ) tells Kapuściński that he should not make any more trips abroad as a correspondent because he doesn’t understand ‘the Marxist–Leninist processes happening in that world’. On his return from Congo, Kapuściński writes a note for the MSZ in which he outlines the Congolese conflict, the prevalent anarchy, and the coming collapse of the newly arising state. He prophesies the defeat of Gizenga, whose sympathies lie with the socialist camp, and the victory of the pro-Western Mobutu. His dissenting prophecies do not please the comrade from the MSZ.
The assassination of Lumumba, a romantic leader who broke free of Congo’s colonial authorities, reinforces Kapuściński’s convictions about the sinister role of the West in the Third World – not just the former colonial powers but also the United States, which during the ongoing Cold War is playing the leading role among the Western superpowers. (Years later, it will come to light that the CIA did prepare the plan to assassinate Lumumba.)
Any aggression is a crime, but in the case of Congo the colonialist invasion has an extra feature of cynical mockery . . . The fight is uneven, like five tough thugs picking on a small boy . . .
The Belgians have isolated Congo from the world . . . The drama of Congo, as one European there told me, lies in the fact that the most backward country in Africa came under the control of the most worthless, insignificant people in Europe.1
The expedition to Congo is a crucial element in the formation of Kapuściński’s world outlook, his view of the Cold War conflict and of the dilemmas and dramas of the times from the perspective of the Third World countries attempting to gain their liberty.
In an entry in his Political Diaries dated 23 June 1961, Polityka’s editor-in-chief, Mieczysław Rakowski notes: ‘Rysiek has finished a series entitled ‘‘Congo Close Up’’. We published twelve reports. Rysiek is a fantastic reporter. This is no ordinary journalism. This is political literature produced by a devilishly talented writer. We collected 2,687,138 zloty for the Lumumba Fund.’2
A year later, in a popularity contest for Polityka’s writers, Kapuściński comes first. His reports from Ghana and Congo play their role in gaining him fame and public recognition, but this is not the only way he displays his talents. In less than two years of working at Polityka, Kapuściński has created his own language, a new literary style, with a poetic rhythm to his sentences and an original way of depicting things – free of the wooden, propagandistic phraseology of his early years as a journalist at Sztandar Młodych. It is this new language and new tone that make the then cub reporter Małgorzata Szejnert (later co-founder of Gazeta Wyborcza and head of its reportage department for fifteen years) think on reading one of his reports: ‘He writes as he wants to.’
‘He flourished at Polityka,’ says Daniel Passent. ‘He wrote articles that showed what was really happening in Poland, warts and all.’
Between the African trips, Kapuściński travels to the Polish provinces, but he is not yet aware that his current visits will be his farewell – as a reporter – to Poland. A curious farewell, because he had just begun to shine as an incisive observer of the Poles during the ‘minor stabilization’ when he went off on a completely different path.
‘He deserted,’ some people would say.
Kapuściński refutes the charges: ‘Africa and the Third World were a continuation of the heroic period of reportage in Poland.’
As the 1950s turn into the 1960s – the years of the ‘minor stabilization’ – people are no longer marching romantically, storming the great edifices of socialism, holding ideological debates and awakening dreams. It is a time of positivism for the PRL, of work at the foundations, doing whatever possible within the conditions of the plebeian, puritanical socialism of Władysław Gomułka. People earn money for new flats, dream of owning a car, or try to settle down; few minds are occupied by the struggle for or against socialism. The majority shut themselves up in the privacy of their domestic, family and social life.
Polityka looks for its own way of thinking about society, the economy and culture. It is sometimes sceptical or ironical, and poses awkward questions – within bounds that concur with the fundamental Party line. It sets fashions and initiates beneficial vogues. ‘For example,’ writes Władyka, ‘the paper’s campaign entitled ‘‘Citizen, Don’t Stutter’’ is to do with the first global experiences of the generation of then thirty-year-olds who, unfortunately, don’t know any foreign languages; the ‘‘Let’s Look at Our Watches’’ campaign is essentially a fight for work and life to be sensibly organized, a fight against bureaucracy and lack of respect towards people.’3
Kapuściński travels about the country, portraying the provincial Poland of the late 1950s and early 1960s. He compiles most of these reports into his first book, The Polish Bush. He still writes the occasional positive, semi–socialist–realist story. A ‘Positive Report’ (the phrase already sounded ironic) is the kind of article that describes the rosy aspects of life under socialism, has an optimistic tone, and shows that with hard work and persistence you can conquer mountains – just like the ‘hero of labour’ from Nowa Huta, who used to be a cowherd but has become a university professor (‘More Than You Can Chew’). In another ‘positive report’ Kapuściński describes a visit to the tenants in a newly completed apartment block and is delighted by the efficiency of socialist construction (‘The House’).
However, in most of his Polish stories, the topics and his take on them are original and surprising. He describes, for instance:
• how two German women ran away from an old people’s home in Szczytno (‘The Fifth Column Marches Out’, a report that years later was accused of having anti-German overtones);
• how a number of down-and-outs rescued a ruined state agricultural farm (‘Wydma’); and
• the society in a small town where several women tortured a beautiful girl because an artist had used her face for a sculpture of the Madonna outside a local church (‘Danka’).
In ‘No Address’, he writes about footloose, drunken students expelled from college. In ‘Ground Floors’, he describes workers who roam from factory to factory, lack ambition, and have no desire to build a career – the complete opposite of the socialist–realist heroes who erected the great constructions of socialism in the 1950s. Taken together, the reports make up a broad picture of B-grade, and even C-grade, Poland – places little known in Warsaw.
Polityka’s scathing spirit informs the reporter’s comments in ‘Toothpaste Advertisement’, his story about girls from a village called Pratki: ‘I went on dreaming that the district instructor, who runs successive Party gatherings, once the decisive issues for the further flourishing of our fatherland had been discussed, would involuntarily and entirely incidentally want to ask: “And how are the teeth, Comrades? Are you brushing your teeth, or not?” ’4
Some of the reports have a moral, such as the one about a discus thrower named Piątkowski (‘The Big Throw’). Kapuściński, who loves sport, especially soccer, perceives a quality in the champion discus thrower that drives his own aspirations, too – passion.
Kapuściński contrasts the discus thrower’s passion with widespread ‘scheming?’, and as a result, the feature about the sportsman carries a broader social message. He somewhat sarcastically proposes, ‘Maybe all it takes is a little scheming, worming your way in somewhere and it’ll be OK. Why slog your guts out? A song, maybe the right face, or some bows aimed in the right direction – isn’t that enough?’5
The sentences have a wonderful rhythm and the language is relaxed, with none of the stiffness in which Kapuściński voluntarily imprisoned himself in the days of socialist realism. Many of these texts eventually enter the canon of Polish literary reportage; they will be the starting point for successive generations of reporters.
It was Trofim who discovered Wydma. In 1959 a bigwig from the district administration asked him: ‘Are you any good at guarding things?’ Trofim thought about it. ‘Why not?’ he replied. At which the bigwig said: ‘Take him along.’ They took him to the place by car. He stood in the yard and looked around him.
He was standing in the middle of a world gone to waste.6
‘When I read Wydma, I stopped in my tracks – it felt as if something vital had happened to me. I was stunned by the language and the rhythm of the sentences. I read that article over and over again, until I knew it by heart.’ Many years on, Małgorzata Szejnert still finds it hard to contain the thrill that this report gave her. After 1989, she decides to run a reporter’s workshop for young trainees in the art of reportage for Gazeta Wyborcza, based on Kapuściński’s old articles, among others. ‘No one wrote like that in Poland before him,’ she tells me. ‘Certainly no one in our generation. There was a freedom of depiction in his articles, there was artistic language, and what verve! As if there were nothing restraining him: no censorship, no political loyalties, it was pure, unrestricted creativity. I was sorry he’d become a foreign correspondent, because I’d love to have read his reports on Poland.’
Two of Kapuściński’s reports from that era are under a shadow for having been written to political order. One of them, ‘The Abduction of Elżbieta’, is about a teacher from the Kalisz area who decides to become a nun and shuts herself away in a convent, leaving her ailing parents without any help. On their behalf, as it were, Kapuściński goes to the convent and tries to talk to their daughter.
Through the bars I could see the nun’s eyes, large brown eyes with fever in them. She remained silent, staring to one side. People who stare to one side have something to say, but they are choked by fear. Then I heard her voice:
‘What have you brought me?’
But I had nothing. I had no words or things at all . . .
‘I don’t really know. Maybe just your mother’s cry.’7
It is not known whether Kapuściński came up with this topic himself or Rakowski commissioned him to cover it (in our conversation, Rakowski denied doing so). The article prompted doubt and disgust. About fifteen years later, Szejnert would write of it: ‘The author intervenes in an issue that is difficult to judge, and takes an over-impassioned approach. He must know that the article is grist for the mill of official prejudice against the Church, and yet he acts in the best faith, he is convinced that he is helping the sick, abandoned parents of the central character, who chose a convent that was indifferent to the fate of her relatives.’8
A report is always rooted in the realities of the time and place when it was written – read after the fall of real socialism, in an era when the state authorities and the Church get on well together, sometimes even too well, ‘The Abduction of Elżbieta’ holds its own as a story about one woman’s choice and the soullessness of an institution.
In the second article that adheres to a political demand – that of Party leader Gomułka himself – Kapuściński artfully hid behind literary form and a witty idea. ‘Gomułka’, says Janusz Rolicki, then a cub reporter for Polityka, ‘demanded a report on the front page to celebrate the 550th anniversary of the Battle of Grunwald, the Polish troops’ great victory over the Order of Teutonic Knights. He was probably expecting anti-German overtones – he was a politician for whom the issue of the Recovered Territories restored to Poland after the Second World War, and also standing up to the Germans in international politics, was almost an obsession.’
So Rakowski commissions Kapuściński for the ‘prestigious’ order. The reporter finds himself in a trap: preserving his independence of outlook, or succumbing to the beck and call of politicians? How is he to deal with it?
His solution is to describe a farmer named Piątek, who farms near the village of Grunwald. Piątek has a smallholding and a few hectares of land. He sends his children to school and can afford a washing machine for his wife. He has never heard of the battle against the Teutonic knights in 1410. When they talk about the war, Piątek is thinking of the world war against Hitler, while the reporter means the feudal war, the jingoistic image of which was created in the collective imagination by the writer Henryk Sienkiewicz and the artist Jan Matejko. Piątek is pleased to hear that the young people are coming down to Grunwald and that the village has become famous, though he can’t understand why. However, he ‘is worried in case all those hundreds of feet will trample the field of corn that has grown so promisingly’. Kapuściński concludes that ‘Piątek isn’t interested in history. What matters to him is the land . . . The land will yield a crop anyway. Piątek will harvest it anyway.’9
Devoid of patriotic bombast or political overtones, the mildly humorous report is not suitable as an anniversary article for the front page. Rakowski, who gets the occasional carpeting from Gomułka, does not want to antagonize the First Secretary yet again, and so ‘Piątek of Grunwald’ ends up in the middle pages.
Kapuściński proves to be a master dodger. Many friends and acquaintances tell me about his ability to avoid head-on collisions and confrontations. He doesn’t refuse to write a report that fulfils a political order, but he writes it in such a way that it doesn’t meet the demands of the commissioner. Saying no was not in his nature – neither earlier nor later was he the dissident type, the protestor type, nor did he regard it as his mission to bear moral witness. Yet he also wanted to avoid being labelled a propagandist, a reporter at the disposal of others, and so he would write an article to order but it would be one he didn’t have to be ashamed of.
The situation in which he found himself is a good illustration of one of the dilemmas faced by reputable journalists in People’s Poland, the PRL. They wanted to write and operate within the official distribution of news, and many, including Kapuściński himself, despite their disappointments, still regarded socialism as their system. At the same time, they wanted to preserve relative independence of views and judgements, and felt bad in the role of Party drudges, scribes to order, plenty of whom surrounded them at the same or other papers. Moreover, Kapuściński had already done his share of propaganda work.
Rakowski says to me: ‘Gomułka told me off for one of Kapuściński’s reports. The problem was a conversation between two young ladies, in which one advises the other how to have it off with someone, using the phrase “Do it standing up”. “In a Party organ, on the front page, you’re describing a guy screwing a girl!” screamed Gomułka. Then, after a pause, he asked pensively: “Standing up? Is that actually possible?” ’ (The reference is to a 1959 report titled ‘The Peaceful Mind of the Gawker’; the relevant passage is: ‘He happens to overhear a conversation between two of his pupils: “You idiot, do it standing up. You won’t fall pregnant.” ’10)
Artur Starewicz, head of the Central Committee Press Office: ‘Kapuściński was highly rated at the Central Committee, Gomułka himself valued him. Of course he never voiced any in-depth views about him, but I remember some favourable comments and expressions of recognition for his writing talent and the quality of his analyses.’
Janusz Rolicki: ‘Kapuściński had respect for Gomułka. He said that Gomułka was a politician for whom only two Polish embassies could possibly exist: in Moscow and in Bonn. In Moscow, for obvious reasons; and in Bonn, because Gomułka’s hobby-horse was the Recovered Territories. He aspired at any price to having West Germany recognize that those lands belonged to Poland. Kapuściński respected that. He saw Gomułka as a good farmer who takes care of every sack of grain.’
Shortly before parting with Polityka, Kapuściński finds himself at the centre of a scandal. What happens is that a writer called Bohdan Drozdowski publishes a play called The Cortège, which Kapuściński regards as plagiarism of his own piece entitled ‘The Stiff ’.
Here is a summary, written by Kapuściński himself:
A group of people is transporting a coffin by lorry. Inside the coffin is the corpse of a miner who has been killed in an accident, crushed under a pile of coal. The group are on their way to the miner’s hometown, where he is to be buried. However, on the way the vehicle breaks down. It’s impossible to repair the damage, so the question arises, What are they to do? Night is approaching, and it is not far to their destination. Some think they should find some means of transport. Others think they can pick up the coffin and carry it to the place themselves. The latter view prevails. So the group of people carry the coffin in the darkness, through a forest. After a while they are tired, so they stop, put the coffin down, and light a bonfire. In the nervous atmosphere of the night they come to blows and fits of hysteria. Meanwhile, some girls pass by and some flirtation follows, though not everyone takes part in it. Finally the envoys from the mine continue their procession, carrying the coffin on their shoulders.11
The plotline of Drozdowski’s play is almost identical.
In a letter to Polityka, Kapuściński reveals that before he left for Congo Drozdowski had approached him, asking him not to publicize the matter. (Drozdowski later claimed that he found out about Kapuściński’s grievances only through friends, and that he himself had never read ‘The Stiff ’ before.) Kapuściński claims they made a gentleman’s agreement: Drozdowski would write a letter to the theatrical monthly Dialog (where The Cortège had been published), in which he would admit to being inspired by Kapuściński’s article, and would not let the play be staged; in turn, Kapuściński would not take him to court and would not publicize the matter. In the course of a further meeting at a book fair, Drozdowski writes a dedication to Kapuściński in his collection of poems: ‘To dear Rysiek Kapuściński, the secret co-author of my best (so far, as it’s my only) play The Cortège, with warm wishes, the totally “Stiff” with cold Drozdowski. 14 V 61.’
On his return from Congo, Kapuściński explodes with rage when he finds out that not only has Drozdowski failed to publish any explanation, but The Cortège is now going to be staged at several provincial theatres. In a furious letter published in Polityka he lays into all Drozdowski’s defenders: the critics who have praised The Cortège and defended the author’s integrity, the editors-in-chief of the journals who have published their articles, the theatres that are prepared to put on a play by a plagiarist, and even the silent people who prefer to say nothing so as to avoid losing good connections.
I do not really want more of the sort of pleasure afforded by reading my own ideas signed with someone else’s name, I do not want yet another fan of ‘reportage as inspiration’ to raise what I or my colleagues on the paper write to the heights of real literature. Our profession as reporters is difficult, and – strange as it might seem to some – we put blood, sweat and tears into our writing. I never imagined that the fact that we lack the wings and the greatness that are only bestowed on those who produce so-called real literature justified depriving us of what is ours. That was what I imagined, but how wrong I have proved to be!12
The quarrel about plagiarism revolves around the literary form of ‘The Stiff ’. In his letter attacking Drozdowski, Kapuściński calls his article a fictional story. Drozdowski defends himself thus:
[T]his piece could have been read as a report, a genuine report to boot . . . The facts presented in news reports are nobody’s property and may be regarded as public property, just like anonymous agency news items, which quite often contain ready-made dramatic plots . . .13
Drozdowski is defended by the Polish Writers’ Union. Meanwhile, the editors of Polityka stand solidly behind Kapuściński:
Drozdowski is trying to suggest that plagiarism would be involved only if the words and sentences in ‘The Stiff ’ and The Cortège were exactly the same. Let’s not be so naive! No one is trying to hide the fact that The Cortège does have some different features too, slightly different characters and some slightly different details, especially in the background. But the fact remains: not only is the idea the same, but also the plotline and, crucially, the psychological and philosophical atmosphere . . .14
Famous writers join the debate. In the satirical weekly Szpilki (Pins), Antoni Słonimski writes that Drozdowski has committed plagiarism. In turn, Julian Przyboś attacks Polityka, mocking the artistic quality of Kapuściński’s reportage-story: ‘the cry of alleged plagiarism has rashly drawn attention to “The Stiff”, which can only bring harm to Kapuściński’s reputation as an author of fiction..15
Rakowski told me that he did not rule out the possibility that such a big fuss in the press on this matter was inspired by the Central Committee itself. It could have been done by people who didn’t like Polityka – there was no lack of them – taking advantage of an excuse to attack the weekly’s ‘belligerence’ and managing to drag some writers into their intrigue. But when asked for names, Rakowski fell silent.
The quarrel about plagiarism has another, totally non-political significance in Kapuściński’s biography. It focuses attention on both the principles for, and the limits of, introducing elements of fiction into journalism. To what extent may one distort reality in order to reach the deeper truth that reflects the ‘heart of the matter’? Where are the lines that mark the borders between fiction and non-fiction? By introducing elements of invention, by processing reality, do we shift our text from the ‘journalism’ shelf to the one marked ‘literature’? Is literary reportage – as Kapuściński himself thought – independent artistic work, a legitimate literary genre (hence, above all, his rage at Drozdowski)?
Years later, by now a world-famous reporter and writer, Kapuściński quite often comes in for stern criticism because of his nonchalant treatment of the facts as the raw material for his texts – his inaccuracies, ignorance or even plain old fabrications.
His declaration that ‘The Stiff ’ is a story will prove rich in revolutionary consequences for his future work and for his journalism’s tendency towards a non-fiction which does not hold fiction in contempt. Fiction will make its way into the world described in his work as much as it does into his autobiographical themes, which are sometimes one and the same: after all, Kapuściński is the hero of most of his own books.
Early in 1962, Ryszard Frelek, his new friend from India, reappears in Kapuściński’s life. On returning from his posting as a correspondent in New Delhi, he becomes a decision-maker at the PAP and offers Kapuściński the job of opening the agency’s first bureau in Africa. The location is Dar es Salaam in Tanganyika – the very same city where the young diplomat Jerzy Nowak, whom Kapuściński met at a café in central Warsaw, has been posted.
For Kapuściński this is an opportunity to develop his new passion for the Third World. No daily or weekly has the same financial possibilities as the PAP; they are able periodically to send the reporter abroad. Moreover, in Africa Kapuściński has his beloved revolution, Major Change. In Gomułka’s Poland ‘there’s none of that spark, that ardour’, and he is missing the years that ‘fired him up’ so much in the days when he ‘wore himself out, got washed away’. He rediscovers these feelings in Africa. Now it is all happening there. He doesn’t want to continue being one of the characters in his own reports – the ones who went through a great deal at the time of the ZMP revolution, then during the thaw and October ’56, and now haven’t the energy for anything new. He does not identify with the people from the ‘minor stabilization’ period whom he so incisively describes, nor with the gawkers – Hamletizing humanists, dreamers overcome by inertia, ill-fitted for life, incapable of pressing ahead despite obstacles – nor with the rationalizing engineers who are set on success, money and consumerism, and are obsessed with ‘the world of four wheels’, as he puts it in ‘The Peaceful Mind of the Gawker’.16
During the first few years of his work as a correspondent in Africa, he will occasionally submit longer articles to Polityka, but he and the weekly will gradually part ways. On returning from his postings in Africa and then Latin America, he will choose other workplaces. Never again will he write for Polityka, either in the PRL era or after the fall of real socialism.
Rakowski bore a grudge against Kapuściński for having sailed out from Polityka onto broader waters and then turning his back on the journal: ‘After the fall of socialism, in one of his biographical notes he left out the fact that he had spent more than four years at Polityka. I never mentioned it to him, but it was upsetting.’
‘Maybe he thought his connections with Polityka were compromising?’ suggests Passent. ‘It must have been because his own image was at stake, his position within the establishment.’
Perhaps Passent’s idea has some merit. In the 1970s Polityka, a Party paper of course, was more critical of the realities of the PRL and stood slightly further away from the regime than did the weekly Kultura, with which Kapuściński was later connected. He was also distanced from Polityka by his political and social connections at the top levels of power. Kapuściński’s Party patrons, above all Frelek, spent the whole of the 1960s waging inter-clique battles against Rakowski and his weekly.
Agnieszka Wróblewska, a journalist from the Polityka circle, points out that regardless of political motives Kapuściński did not fit comfortably with ‘Rakowski’s gang’. Among its members, scepticism and a sense of irony had always prevailed, whereas Kapuściński was the enthusiastic type, an idealist, a zealot. He might not have felt at his best among sceptics and scoffers.
Another element that may have played a role was that he was an individualist, while Polityka was a team enterprise.
After the fall of real socialism, Polityka bore the stigma of the ancien régime. At that point, Kapuściński preferred to be associated with the new era, the democratic movement in favour of change, and he decided that Gazeta Wyborcza was the right place for him. He often dropped in at the Polityka office for gossip and for visits with old friends, but despite several colleagues’ strenuous efforts to try and persuade him otherwise, he never wrote another article for Polityka.