Marital Secrets. Prince R., or the Things One Isn’t Allowed to Do in Poland
I WAS FOURTEEN WHEN MY OLDEST SON David was born. It was only natural that it took me a long time to fulfill this most basic marital duty, for I had married at eleven and had previously led the normal life of our people in this region. That is, I had had little social interaction with the opposite sex. I had had, in fact, no knowledge at all of marital duties, and I regarded pretty girls like any other work of nature or art, or more or less the same way I had regarded that handsome medicine box I once stole.
I tended to make physical contact with my wife tremulously, as though she were a strange object. [107] In an attempt to cure me of this evil, and in the belief that a spell had been cast on me at our wedding, I was brought to an old witch. She performed all kinds of procedures on me. They helped, I must admit, though only indirectly, i.e., because of their effect on my imagination.
From the time I got married until I left Poland—a period that included my coming of age—I experienced many forms of misery, had no means through which to further my intellectual growth, and thus necessarily misused my intellectual powers. As I try to describe those circumstances, I keep dropping my quill; I find myself trying to push back such painful memories.
A whole series of factors combined to obstruct the course of my development and hinder the workings of my natural aptitudes, first and foremost, the shape Poland was in back then and the condition of our people within Poland. We were like a donkey buckling under a double burden: the weight of our own ignorance and the religious prejudices bound up with it, and, secondly, the weight of the Polish majority’s ignorance and the religious prejudices bound up with that ignorance. Finally, my family’s misfortunes were involved as well. [108]
The Polish nation, by which I mean the Polish aristocracy, is very heterogeneous. Only some aristocrats have the chance—through general education, formal study, and edifying travel—to develop in the way that would best foster their own wellbeing and that of their subjects. Most aristocrats go through life ignorant and without any kind of moral compass. What characterizes these people is, in fact, the free rein they give to their dissolute impulses, which ruin the lives of their subjects by the thousands. They strut around with their titles and medals, but their actual deeds dishonor these distinctions. They own numerous estates but don’t know how to manage them. And they make enemies of each other, with the result that Poland necessarily winds up being the booty of neighbors envious of its size.
Prince R., as a hetman in Poland and a voivode in Lithuania, was one of the greatest magnates.1 Having received three inheritances from his family, he owned innumerable estates. It would be unfair to say that there was no goodness in his heart and no common sense [109] in his head, but because his education had been neglected and he had no schooling of any kind, he was one of the most depraved princes who ever lived. He had no constructive occupations and this, in turn, led him to become a devotee of alcohol, under the influence of which he committed the most senseless and insane acts. He gave himself over to the basest sensuous desires, without even having any great desire to indulge in such things. And even though he wasn’t actually a brutal person, he terrorized his subjects in the most brutal manner possible.
He maintained an army of ten thousand men as a hugely expensive accessory, using it for display and nothing else. During the unrest in Poland, he took the side of the federalists, though he couldn’t have said why. His doing so angered the Russians, who plundered the prince’s estates, which in turn plunged his subjects into destitution. More than once, he fled into exile, [110] with the result that treasures his family had collected over many generations were abandoned to his enemies.
How could anyone possibly describe all his dissipations? Several examples will suffice, I believe, to give the reader at least some sense of what they were like. A certain respect for my former lord keeps me from treating his problems as anything other than deficiencies of temperament and education, deficiencies that deserve our pity, rather than hatred and contempt.
Whenever he drove down a street—something he generally did accompanied by both his courtly entourage and bands and soldiers—everyone had to disappear from sight. Staying out on the street then could be dangerous, even deadly. Nor was one safe in one’s house. If the prince saw the plainest, filthiest peasant woman, he would have her summoned to his carriage.
He once sent for a respected Jewish barber. The latter, having surmised that he was going to be asked to perform a surgical operation, appeared before his lord with his medical instruments. The prince [111] asked: “You have brought your tools?” “Yes, your most eminent majesty,” replied the barber. “Good,” said the prince, “give me your lancet; I will open up a vein for you.” All the poor barber could do was cooperate. The prince picked up the lancet, which he didn’t know how to use. Because of his complete lack of training, and also because his drunken state was making his hands shake, he wounded the barber atrociously. Yet the prince’s courtiers smilingly applauded him, praising his great surgical talent.
On a different occasion, the prince went into a church, and, too drunk to know where he was, stood at the altar and proceeded to empty his bladder. Everyone there was horrified. The next day—in the morning, when he was still sober—the clergy told him what he had done. “Oh!” said the prince. “Let us atone.” He then ordered the local Jews to place fifty bricks of candle wax in the church in question, at their own expense. Thus the poor Jews had to do penance [112] because a believing Christian had desecrated a church.
The prince once wanted to ride around the walls of the city. But because the walls were too narrow for a carriage with six horses—which was how he always rode—his hussars had to carry him the whole way around. This cost them a great deal of effort, and it could easily have cost them their lives as well.
The prince once went with his whole entourage into the Jewish synagogue and wreaked havoc, though even today no one knows what the motivation for the attack was. He smashed windows and doors, shattered ceremonial glasses, threw copies of the Holy Scripture that had been carefully stored onto the ground, etc. A learned, scholarly Jew dared to pick up one of the copies. He had the honor of being shot by the prince himself. From there the whole group went to a second synagogue, where they undertook the same sort of housecleaning. And from the second synagogue they went to the Jewish cemetery, [113] where they destroyed structures and burned monuments.
Who would imagine that a lord would behave in this way toward his own poor subjects, whom he can legally punish for his own acts of vandalism? Yet it happened here.
On still another occasion, the prince spontaneously decided to take a trip to M., a borough of his that was four short miles from his residence.2 The trip had to be undertaken with his entire court along with his usual entourage. The caravan left early in the morning. First, the whole army began to march, divided, as was customary, into infantry, cavalry, artillery, etc. Then came his security forces, which consisted of volunteers from the poorer nobility. These were followed by the food wagons, stocked with Hungarian wine, and then by the prince’s Janitscher musicians and other orchestras. His own carriage came next, and finally his satraps. I call them that, because [114] the only comparable caravan I know of is that of Darius in the war against Alexander. Around evening, his princely majesty himself arrived at an inn on the edge of K., a town just outside his residence. But I can’t say that he arrived in person. For the prince’s consciousness, which is where the personality resides, had been washed away by the Hungarian wine. He was carried into the house and, fully dressed, boots, spurs, and all, thrown onto my mother-in-law’s dirty, unmade bed.
I, as usual, took to my heels. But my amazons—that is, my mother-in-law and my wife—had the courage of warriors, and they stayed in the house on their own. There was bustling activity all night long. People even chopped and cooked and baked and fried food in the prince’s room. They knew that when the prince was sleeping nothing could wake him, except perhaps the trumpets of Judgment Day. [115]
The next morning, they nevertheless woke the prince. He didn’t know whether to believe his eyes. There he was in a miserable inn, lying in all his clothes on a bed teeming with bedbugs. His servant, page, and moor were awaiting his orders. He asked how he had wound up there, and he was told that he had begun a trip to M. the day before but had stopped to rest. The whole royal train, meanwhile, had gone ahead. No doubt it had already reached M.
The trip was canceled for the time being, and the entire caravan had to return to the royal residence—in the customary formation and with all due ceremony. The prince, however, decided to linger at our inn and to preside over a large lunch. All the nobles who happened to be staying in town were invited. The diners ate off of gold dishes; it would be hard to exaggerate the contrast between this Asiatic opulence and the Lapplandic poverty that obtained in our house. [116]
In a wretched inn, whose walls had been partially blackened by smoke and soot, whose beams were supported by ugly rounded reinforcements, and whose windows, made from pieces of cracked low-quality glass and narrow strips of pine wood, were covered over with paper, princes were sitting on filthy benches and at an even filthier table, resplendent with the glow of their royalty and enjoying themselves as they were served golden plates and golden goblets full of the finest foods and the best wine.
Before he ate, the prince and the other lords went for a stroll in front of the inn. It was then that he happened to see my wife, who was in the bloom of youth. Although we are divorced, I feel obliged to do her justice, which means acknowledging that even without taste and cosmetic skill—both things she lacked—my wife was a great beauty. It was therefore only natural that Prince R., too, found her attractive. He turned to his companions and said: “What [117] a pretty girl! All she needs is a white shirt.” This was his catchphrase; it was equivalent to the great sultan’s throwing of a handkerchief. When the lords heard the prince utter these words, they grew concerned for my wife’s honor, and indicated to her that she should get out of there as soon as possible. She took the hint. While it was still quiet, she slipped away and ran to the other side of the mountains.
After lunch, the prince rode back into town with the other lords, to the accompaniment of trumpets, drums, and Janitschar music. He and his entourage immediately resumed their normal schedule of activities. That is, they began to drink and continued to do so all afternoon and into the evening. Then they rode to H., a pleasure park at the entrance to the royal zoo. A very expensive fireworks display was to take place there. Things frequently went wrong during such displays. Whenever the prince and his companions emptied a beaker of beer, a cannon had to be fired. The poor men doing the firing knew more about plows than cannons, and it often happened that they got hurt during the spectacle. [118] “Long Live the Prince!” cried the guests, and the prince, naturally, received the prize in this Bacchic festival. He showered those who handed him the prize with gifts, and not just small precious items, like coins and gold boxes, but actual estates that came with many hundreds of peasants. Finally, a concert would be held. His majesty would drift off to sleep during it, and in that condition, he would be brought back to the castle.
It was the poor subjects who had to bear the expense of his extravagances. If the prince couldn’t squeeze enough out of them, he would sell off estates. Indeed, he didn’t even spare the twelve life-size gold men that he had inherited from his ancestors. (I never knew whether they were supposed to represent the twelve apostles or twelve giants.) Nor did he spare the gold table that he had had made. Thus [119] the prince’s vast land holdings gradually became smaller; thus his treasures, collected over many generations, were gradually exhausted; and thus his subjects—but I should break off here.
This prince died recently without immediate heirs. His brother’s son is apparently the only heir to his estates. [120]