A Day of Small Beginnings (12 page)

Nathan adopted a look of concern and nodded understandingly.

“He was looking forward to greeting you personally after these many months.” As Załuski spoke he escorted Nathan to the center
of the small apartment, where about thirty people mingled, packed together in small groups. The place was uncomfortably warm,
and no one wore a jacket. Nathan wished he could remove his own. The cramped quarters, lined from floor to ceiling with books,
every available surface cluttered with photographs and knickknacks, had the feel of a temporary storage unit.

“Professor, please let me introduce you to my wife, Anna, and to some members of our faculty,” Załuski said.

One by one, with great formality, Załuski introduced his wife, a woman whose delicate face was framed by an elegant pair of
amber earrings, and each of the assembled Poles. They all shook his hand and, to Nathan’s great relief, greeted him in English.
Several people expressed admiration for his theories on constitutional paradigms. Others apologized for Dombrowski’s failure
to escort him to the reception. Nathan accepted a glass of sherry from a young man in jeans. With a conspiratorial wink, Załuski
handed his guest a hot cheese blintze on a delicately decorated china plate. “My wife makes the best
nale
niki z serem
in Poland,” he said.

Nathan stared at the cheese blintze, which until that moment he believed was of Jewish origin. He bit into the soft dough
and discreetly admired Załuski’s shock of thick blond hair, which swept majestically away from his broad, high forehead. The
Pole’s drooping blue eyes gave him an air of aristocratic ease. You could watch a man like this and be convinced that blintzes
are every bit as refined as French crepes, he thought. “They are delicious.” He smiled at Anna and followed his host to one
of the few chairs that had been scattered about. Załuski motioned for him to sit. Nathan could not politely refuse, although
he felt more comfortable observing the gathering from the perimeter walls than from the center of the room.

“I hope you will enjoy your first trip to Poland, Professor Linden. I think you will find we are a more complex people than
most Westerners think, Polish jokes notwithstanding.” Załuski winked again.

Nathan smiled agreeably as he watched his host light a cigarette and slowly inhale. A moment later he realized that he too
was being closely observed. “I think that can be fairly said of all peoples, that they are complex, don’t you agree?” he said.
“At least, that’s been my experience, and it’s part of the challenge of devising constitutional paradigms.”

“With all due respect, Professor Linden,” Załuski said in a voice that resonated throughout the room and caught the attention
of all its occupants, “I think you Americans put too much stock in creating systems of one sort or another. I don’t think
the world can be that easily reduced.” Załuski slowly exhaled through his nose. He paused, gazed around the room, and narrowed
his eyes. His audience quieted as he continued. “I believe there are irrational forces in all societies that cannot be tamed
or reasoned away. They are the enemies of democracy, the dark, magical side of human nature if you will, and a hundred of
your perfectly drafted, duly adopted constitutions will not diminish their power.”

“Perhaps, but a constitution can control them,” Nathan responded without a second thought.

“Only to a point. In your own country, did the post-Civil War amendments abolishing slavery and promising equal protection
under the law end the apartheid mentality, if not the practices, of your southern brethren? I think not.”

Nathan was not used to this level of skepticism about the foundations of his life’s work. He raised his eyebrows in what he
hoped would convey a neutral, slightly bemused attitude, and smiled back. But his jaw was locked, and his teeth were clenched.

The two men regarded each other. Then Załuski leaned back in his chair and gave Nathan a half smile. He pulled an ashtray
from a bookshelf and twirled the burning tip of his cigarette into the glass until it was crushed. He paused, inspected the
stub, then looked directly at Nathan.

“Excuse me for my curiosity, but what kind of name is Linden?” he asked.

A tight, pulsing sensation shot across Nathan’s stomach. “An American name,” he said.

“But of what derivation?”

“European. American families don’t generally come from just one place. My family came from all over Europe.” He quickly turned
his face away.

“Forgive me,” Załuski said, “but I ask you about your name only because I don’t recognize its origin, and I have a fascination
with such things. In this country, you see, one’s origin is of singular importance. My own family, the Załuskis, for example,
traces its Polish lineage to the fifteenth century. The name is my Polish birthright, more significant to me than the memory
of Germans arresting my father or the Communists seizing our ancestral home to make us outcasts in our own country. We are
still Załuskis, of the Kingdom of Poland.”

Nathan gave his host a short nod. “I’m aware of Poland’s history of invasion,” he said. “I suppose it’s the lot of a nation
that stands between Western and Eastern Europe without the protection of natural borders.”

“Yes, an old story,” Załuski concurred. “We are the Christ of Nations. But now, about your family?”

“I’m afraid that, like most Americans, my origins are obscure,” Nathan offered, hoping to put a quick end to the discussion.
“In any case, my origins are not of much interest to me or to anyone else in my family.”

Załuski looked genuinely shocked. “How do you know who you are if you don’t know where your family came from?”

All around the room people appeared to regard Nathan with new interest. He rose from his chair and fixed Załuski with one
of those ironic professorial smiles that worked so well at confusing his students back home. “Perhaps that’s the great American
dilemma,” he said. But as he looked about hopefully for support, not one person returned a sympathetic gaze.

Załuski’s wife, Anna, pressed a steaming dish toward him. “Another
nale
niki,
Professor?”

“I would love one,” he replied, smiling at her gratefully. But as she placed the delicacy on his plate, Nathan was reminded
of the far less elegant blintzes frying in the Brooklyn kitchen of his childhood. He remembered the steam on the window, the
fire escape, and the brick wall. He had set the course of his entire life to break free from that kitchen and the boundaries
of Brooklyn. To succeed, he had even left his name and his parents, Sadie and Isaac (née Itzik) Leiber, behind. How, in God’s
name, had Załuski guessed?

11

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING, THE
H
ISTORY
D
EPARTMENT’S LECTURE
hall was packed with scholars and government officials. Professor Dombrowski, temporarily freed from his domestic difficulties,
introduced Nathan, in Polish and English, in a warm and highly laudatory manner. To much applause, Nathan ascended the steps,
grasped each side of the wooden podium, and addressed his respectful listeners.

“The great American philosopher Morris Rafael Cohen once said, ‘No man can stand in front of an audience without pretending
that he knows more than he does.’” He waited a beat, with an expectant smile. “And I am no exception.”

The audience tittered politely. Nathan leaned over his prepared text like an athlete warming up and launched into his theory
of constitutional genesis and the paradigms for progress, aware of the appreciative sounds that punctuated his remarks. He
focused briefly on the first row, where an impressionable-looking young woman, seated on the aisle, was making a point of
showing off her superb calves. She needn’t have bothered for Nathan’s sake. He was merely using eye contact to assert his
dominion at the lectern. His wife, Marion, was the only woman who’d ever really succeeded in gaining his sexual attention.
And even she suspected that his devotion was almost as much out of gratitude for the way she protected the sanctity of his
study and helped him battle his dyslexia, as for love.

Nathan transitioned smoothly into his discourse on the principle of separation of powers, implied limitations on government,
and the fundamental rights outlined in the American Bill of Rights. The microphone hissed. He tapped it. “Let me say, in conclusion,
that for a Polish constitution to survive in a new Polish democracy, the common man must believe it is a living document,
not a relic to be paraded around for state occasions.” He watched with satisfaction as scores of hands furiously scribbled
his advice, marvelously unaware that the man who they subsequently applauded had spent his youth pushing garment racks down
Seventh Avenue by day so he could take classes at City College, the poor man’s Harvard, at night.

A breeze floated through the hall, rustling papers, causing feet to shuffle. Nathan collected his notes and sensed an unusual
charge in the atmosphere. He felt a bit off center, as if one of his ears was filled with water. When he pulled on his earlobe
to clear it, he heard what sounded like a far off voice humming an indistinct tune. Dombrowski stepped up to the podium and
shook his hand. People crowded the front of the hall to meet him. But the eerie sensation and the voice lingered and robbed
him of his customary post-lecture high.

A faculty member proposed a project between Harvard and a multidisciplinary group of Polish scholars. He tried to look interested,
but he couldn’t shake the fluttering sound in his ears. Disturbed, he made his excuses and left the hall, hoping to escape
further contact with the Poles until he could reclaim his sense of equilibrium.

“It seems my colleagues were highly impressed with your constitutional paradigms, Professor Linden.”

The deep, rolling voice, directed at his back, gave Nathan a start. He turned. The sounds in his ears stopped when he saw
Stanisław Załuski standing at the exit door of the lecture hall. Feeling immediately improved, he regarded Załuski with the
confidence of a man who’d just bested his enemy. “I guess not everyone shares your belief in the dark side of human nature,”
he said.

Załuski squinted into the sunlight and lit a cigarette. “Laugh if you like at my way of expressing my opinions,” he said,
approaching Nathan, “but it is my duty to speak frankly because you are a man of some influence, and I am a man who loves
his country.”