– was a matter of complete indifference to her. She was, of course, assiduous in her efforts to get good marks, but she pursued this goal with none of the slavish idolatry some of the others displayed.
Madame’s picking on her now seemed to me – especially since for once, and despite the appeal for volunteers, Agnes had not raised her hand – to be an act of warning from an angry goddess whom someone had neglected to propitiate. She was demanding a sacrifice. I can see, she seemed to be saying, that you don’t worship me, and I am not pleased. But don’t imagine you can get away without offering me homage. The fact that I usually ignore your raised hand does not mean that you may cease to raise it. It is your duty to raise it, since you deny me love.
The diligent Agnes Wanko rose, picked up her notebook and read out, with excessive care over her accent, the title of her essay: ‘De Copernic à Gagarin.’
Titters and stifled guffaws came from somewhere in the back of the classroom. Madame glared repressively at those dark, forgotten regions and said politely, ‘Bon, alors, on t’écoute.’
Agnes Wanko’s essay had as its epigraph Per aspera ad astra, and consisted of selected examples of man’s progress in his struggle to free himself from the earth’s restraints and soar ever higher into the celestial regions. It began with Copernicus, went on to the Montgolfier brothers and their balloon flight, and proceeded, by way of Lomonosov and his many discoveries (most prominently the helicopter in which he was alleged to have flown over the mountains of the Caucasus with a certain Georgian, who went on to live for another hundred years and tell the tale), to the final and longest part, namely the countless extraordinary achievements of Soviet aviation, the greatest of them being, of course, Yuri Gagarin’s triumphant space flight.
Listening to this, one could be in no doubt as to who had suggested the essay and provided the material for it: Wing-Commander Wanko’s little talks left an indelible mark on the memory. The work now being read out was characterised by the same way of thinking, the same arrangement and the same emphasis. First came the ritual bow in the direction of Polish scientific achievement (the patriotic touch); next, given the language in which the essay was written, a polite gesture of acknowledgment towards the French (the international touch); these tributes made, the balance was immediately restored with an impressive example from the inexhaustible treasury of Great Russian Science (the political touch); finally, there was a paean of praise for the technical and scientific achievements of our Brother the Soviet Union, Motherland of the Proletariat and Land of Progress (the faithful ally touch). The choice of material, its use and its arrangement were all exemplary.
However, before Agnes had waded through to the end, an incident occurred that disturbed her grave and reverential recital. Its instigator and protagonist was none other than the infernal Roz Goltz, that irrepressible enfant terrible who let nothing and no one stand in his way. At the very beginning of her essay, in the part about Copernicus, Agnes was quoting the following popular couplet about our greatest scientist:
He moved the Earth, he stopped the Sun,
Of Polish soil he was the son.
(which in her translation, although it lacked both rhyme and rhythm, sounded even more pompous:
Il a arrêté le Soleil, il a remué la Terre.
Il tirait son origine de la nation polonaise.)
when Roz Goltz suddenly burst out, in Polish, ‘Polonaise? What does she mean, polonaise?! He was a German, not a Pole! And he wrote in Latin.’
‘Calme-toi!’ Madame intervened, but Roz paid no attention.
‘His mother’s maiden name was Watzenrode – that’s not a Polish name. And he studied in Italy – in Bologna, Ferrara and Padua.’
‘So what?’ retorted one of the romantics, traditional enemies of the insufferably objective Roz. ‘He was born in Torun, and he worked and died in Frombork.’
‘Those were crusader settlements,’ Roz interrupted immediately, ‘built by the Germans. You can still tell, even today.’
‘You don’t know anything about Polish history!’ shouted the ‘romantics’.
‘Silence, et tout de suite!’ commanded Madame, stepping in firmly between the opposing sides. ‘What’s the matter with you? You can discuss it later, at the end of the essay. And in French, not in Polish!’
‘Je préfère en polonais,’ Roz replied, undaunted. Whenever he let himself be drawn into a skirmish of this kind, he would get excited, lose his temper, and dig his heels in. ‘Of Polish soil he was the son!’ he jeered, mimicking Agnes Wanko’s pompous tone. ‘What’s that supposed to mean, anyway? That if he hadn’t been Polish he wouldn’t have been what he was, or what? Or that his scientific genius is a source of rightful pride for the whole nation? Either way it’s an incredibly stupid statement. You have to be out of your mind to think that belonging to a particular nation can be the cause of an astronomical discovery. And all this pride just because a countryman of yours did something interesting and became famous for it is an admission that you yourself are a worthless moron, and with an inferiority complex to boot. One’s just as bad as the other. If Poland had produced thousands of scientists like Copernicus instead of just poor old him, and other countries just one or none at all, then it would be different. But even then all I’d say is that statistically there were more great discoverers born in Poland than elsewhere.’
At this the romantics sniggered loudly, Agnes Wanko continued to stand placidly where she had stood, and Madame, for the first time, seemed to be at a loss.
‘There’s nothing funny about it!’ said Roz, offended. ‘And since you’re so cheerful, I’ll tell you something else. The reason the Poles are so sensitive about their achievements as a nation is that they’re insecure. If they were as good as they want to appear, their history would be quite different, for one thing; and for another, they wouldn’t go on and on about all their great achievements. Do the Italians go on about Leonardo, or the English about how terribly English Newton is? But in this country you hear that kind of thing all the time. And that’s also because the nationality of most of its greatest figures tends to be a bit hazy – a bit of a sore point. Chopin, for instance: he was half French. So was Gallus Anonimus, the first Polish historian. Even the author of the first dictionary of the Polish language, Samuel Linde, was German. And the only writer of Polish origin who ever made it, and is read all over the world, unfortunately didn’t write in Polish. I mean Conrad, of course. And thank God for that! Because if he’d written in Polish, he would probably have written like that precious little wonder of yours, Zeromski. Well, isn’t that right?’
‘You talk as if you weren’t Polish yourself,’ one of the romantics said.
‘He’s not,’ muttered another: ‘Goltz isn’t a Polish n—’
‘That’s enough!’ Madame cried. ‘I will not listen to this any longer! You’re to stop it right now!’
But Roz could never let anyone else have the last word. ‘Whether or not I’m Polish remains to be seen. If I ever amount to anything, and especially if I become famous, then I’ll turn out to be more Polish than any of you. I’ll be treated like a king! And you’ll all go around boasting that you went to school with me. Unfortunately that’s how it works. And that’s how it’ll always work here. The best people either aren’t really Polish or get the hell out.’
Then something extraordinary happened: Madame strode energetically up to Roz and said, in Polish, ‘One more
