Homo Sapiens: Under Way by Stanislaw Przybyszewski and translated by Joe E Bandel
VII.
Marit’s whole face lit up with joy when she spotted Falk among the district commissioner’s guests.
But Falk had no hurry to greet her. He stood with the young doctor, deep in conversation.
And yet he had seen her; she had noticed his probing gaze.
Only later did he greet her coldly and stiffly in passing.
“Good God, where have you been hiding so long?” Herr Kauer shook Falk’s hand heartily. “I would so have liked to speak with you before my departure.”
“Departure?”
“Yes, I must go to my wife tonight by night train and entrust Marit to your protection.”
The young doctor joined the conversation; he absolutely wanted to know how far research in nerve anatomy had actually progressed. Herr Falk was surely a specialist in it.
“Yes, he hadn’t occupied himself with that for a long time; now he was a literary man and wrote novels. But he could give him some clarifications.”
“No direct contacts? Good God, how does the nerve current propagate then? No, that’s a revolution!”
Marit sat nearby; she listened tensely, while giving the councilor’s wife, who asked about Mama’s well-being, indifferent, distracted answers.
Words, foreign, learned words—Golgi… Ramón y Cajal… Kölliker… granular substance… arborisation terminale—flew over to her.
No, she understood not a word of it. Erik knew everything.
How small the clever doctor seemed to her, who also wanted to know everything and constantly boasted with his knowledge. Like a schoolboy he stood there.
A joyful pride filled her with hot jubilation.
They sat down to table.
The conversation gradually became more general; they came to important questions of the day.
Marit sat across from Falk; she sought to catch his gaze, but he always evaded it.
Didn’t he want to see her? And yet she had never longed so much for his gaze.
They spoke about the latest publication of the Settlement Commission in the Province of Posen.
“Well, he simply couldn’t understand it,” Falk spoke quickly and incisively. “They mustn’t accuse him of flirting with the Poles; absolutely not; but he simply didn’t understand it. They should make the contradiction clear to him. On the one hand, Prussia felt itself the mightiest nation in Europe, right? Yes, that was emphasized in every official speech, and in official circles they talked a lot! How did that rhyme with the Prussians so enormously fearing the ridiculous three to four million Poles? Yes, fearing! They banned the Polish language in schools; suppressed the Polish element wherever possible; deliberately made a large part of their own subjects into idiots and cretins, for he knew from personal observation that the children forgot Polish and adopted a ghastly idiom that wasn’t a language at all. They bought up estates, parceled and fragmented them, settled poor and mostly lazy German colonists everywhere, who could never replace the proverbial strength of the Polish peasant. The colonists finally fell completely into poverty, although they were given the greatest possible facilitations. Racial hatred was awakened. Why do all that? Is it really fear?”
“No, that demands the interest of the empire, the security of the country; the Poles were like worms that crawled everywhere and corroded the strong Germanic element,” interjected the district commissioner, who was a member of the commission.
“Good, fine; then they should abandon the stupid phrase about the power and strength of Prussian state consciousness and the like
and simply say: We are a weak state, we are no state, a bunch of Poles would suffice to polonize us and finally make a glorious Polish empire out of the polonized Prussia, and therefore we are compelled to exterminate the Poles.”
Falk grew excited.
“Good, I understand that: we are no nation, we want to become one, and this end sanctifies history. Then they should say: Whether moral or not, that’s indifferent to us, history knows no morality. Yes, that’s what we should say, gentlemen, quite brazenly, and then we should draw the résumé coldly smiling: We are a nation drummed together in three wars, we are a nation pieced together from war booty, that means no nation.”
“The résumé is completely wrong,” interrupted the district physician—he seemed very agitated—”completely, completely wrong. The Prussians only had to deal with a very restless and dissatisfied element. In Poland, new unrest could break out any day; the whole of Germany, the whole imperial unity could then come into question, for the Social Democrats were just waiting for a favorable opportunity.”
“No, what you’re saying, Herr District Physician! Do you want to set up an arms depot for the Poles? Or do you think that the imperial supplier Herr Isidor Löwe will accept orders from the Poles? Well, he has offered himself to the French too; but the Poles are not creditworthy, that’s where the dog is buried. And I ask you: three Prussian cannons would suffice to blow the Polish army armed with pitchforks, scythes, and hunting rifles off the face of the earth in five minutes.”
“This whole policy, precisely this petty, hypocritical fear policy, is psychologically completely crude, by the way. Just look at Galicia. There the Poles have their schools, yes even universities with Polish as the language of instruction, quite wonderful, pope-loyal universities, guided by the maxim that science is the Church’s most devoted handmaid. That’s certainly beautiful, and a beautiful sight it is when the professors go to church in quite wonderful official garb. They have also allowed the Poles to attend the Polish Diet in beautiful, oh, very beautiful national costume. Never have I seen more beautiful and better-dressed people than at the Diet in Lemberg.
The consequence, gentlemen: The Poles are excellent Austrian subjects. Patient, flexible, gentle, the true lambs of God. Have you ever heard of unrest instigated by Poles in Galicia? No, on the contrary: wherever heads need to be chopped off a Reich hydra, they preferably use Poles, and they are always ‘fresh,’ as Schiller says, ‘at hand.'”
“Has Falk learned nothing at all from Czech policy?” asked the district court counselor excitedly, who was also a member of the Settlement Commission.
“Yes, he had learned a great deal and therefore knew that this policy was completely different and had nothing to do with the one just discussed. The whole Czech policy was namely a policy of economic interests. That the Germans in Austria had so much trouble with the Czechs came from the fact that Czech industry was in a wonderful boom. It sought the widest possible sales area, accordingly had to displace the Germans everywhere, for it was clear: Czech producers, Czech consumers! The Germans also went to German producers.”
“Then,” Herr Kauer interjected, “the story would present itself that the Prussians are pursuing Czech policy. The Prussians can have, alongside the patriotic, primarily an economic interest in suppressing the Poles.”
“Bien, good, very good! Then the whole—I’ll now assume—interest policy is even much stupider than the fear policy.
I ask you: The German industry wants to create a sales area for itself in the Province of Posen. Now comes the Settlement Commission, buys up the estates, the estate owners naturally scatter to all winds, and the actual purchasing power is paralyzed. The estates are fragmented and occupied with poor colonists who can’t consume anything at all, for what they need, they produce themselves. Who is supposed to consume now?
The Polish industry, which is none, because it is completely destroyed by depriving it of the actual consumers, lies fallow; the German industry has not the slightest benefit; what remains, gentlemen? Stupidity remains, an unheard-of stupidity. Don’t be outraged, ladies and gentlemen; but isn’t it utterly stupid to use all one’s strength to ensure that a large piece of land, one’s own land, becomes impoverished?!”
Falk grew even more excited. His gaze grazed Marit’s glowing face, which seemed to devour every one of his words.
“Yes, the whole policy,” Falk nervously broke a piece of bread into crumbs and mechanically arranged them in rows—”this whole Prussian policy, ladies and gentlemen, is for me, for psychological and social-political reasons, completely incomprehensible. Or, well, it might be comprehensible perhaps like I can comprehend a stupid and therefore failed stock market speculation. But one Polish policy I really find completely incomprehensible—completely, ladies and gentlemen: the Vatican one!”
Again, his eye briefly grazed Marit’s face.
“Please, Reverend Father, no concern! You will completely agree with me. No really, please: it doesn’t occur to me in my wildest dreams to touch any religious topic, not a single question in which a pope is infallible. I will speak solely of politics, and in politics, Pope Leo is surely not infallible either. Right, no? So no.
I have seen Pope Leo, Leo XIII, in Rome. He is the most beautiful old gentleman I can imagine. He has an incredibly fine, aristocratic face and very fine white hands, he also writes good poems. Oh yes: they are composed in genuine Ciceronian Latin. Certain turns tasting of Ambrosian kitchen Latin should by no means detract from their value; at least that’s what the philologists told me. Now Pope Leo has the certainly very beautiful quality of feeling himself the born protector of all the oppressed. The Poles stand closest to his heart; for they are the most oppressed.
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