Jan had studied shipbuilding, but his passion was early Pomorshian history. At night he wrote poetry. He had published in the Baltic Almanac an article on the love poetry of Wiclaw of Riigen. Along with some favorable criticism, his epic cycle on Prince Mestwin's daughter Damroka, first abbess of Zuckau Convent, had, because of its' numerous erotic metaphors, provoked a protest on the part of the Ka-shubian Cultural Association. Holding to the controversial thesis that the general who defeated and destroyed the Kashubian prince Swantopolk was Fortinbras, prince of Norway, who in the last scene of Hamlet claims to have just come from victories in Poland, Jan was projecting a sequel to Shakespeare's tragedy. But he never had time. By day he wrote publicity for the Polish shipbuilding industry, which was translated into English, Swedish, and German and thought to be effective; in the evening Maria would be waiting for him to take her dancing or to the movies.
He had met her at the cooperative. They quarreled from
the start. He had brought back a can of putrid peas and held it under the nose of cashier Kuczorra. When they met in the evening in the now public gardens of Oliva Monastery, Jan told Maria that with her corkscrew curls she reminded him of the Kashubian princess Damroka, a sister of his hero Swantopolk and cousin to Wiclaw of Riigen. This Damroka (Jan explained) had founded the Zuckau Convent on the banks of the Radaune because of the wild raspberries that grew there. And he quoted from his long poem. Jan's historical comparisons appealed to Maria. She let him call her Damroka. They were soon in love.
But what about me? I'm not Jan. I'm Maria's second cousin. But she calls me Uncle. She gave me a piece of amber, that's all. With an insect enclosure. I'm the enclosure. In case of doubt, I, late-enamored and kept in reserve. Beside me: I. Outside me: I. Foisted on me like a hoax, the obedient but grumbling I. Always escaping, fleeing the times, devious. Where a slat in history's fence is missing. Listen to me, Maria. It was when Mestwina wore a necklace of amber pierced by me. Sambor, Mestwin, Swantopolk, and Princess Damroka are descended from her daughters and daughters' daughters. No, it was I who caught the talking Flounder. I in the guildhall when the guilds rebelled. I in the Stockturm, spooning up my last tripe. And when the plague greeted me in passing. And when the potato triumphed over millet. The great cook who stirs all things stirred me at cross-purposes with time. How she (to this day) clarifies me with the skimmer, how fairly she dishes me out. How tender I am to her taste, once marinated. Lovage and caraway seed, marjoram and dill. Seasoned am I. I, Maria, am Jan, as per your recipe.
And when Maria Kuczorra had been purchasing fresh vegetables, canned goods, and (illegally, to be sure) bananas and oranges for the Lenin Shipyard canteen for a year, when asked by her boy friend, whom she still loved and who (evenings in the dark movie house, whispering in her ear while dancing) called her Damroka, when, finally, because Jan so desired, she stopped taking her curly hair to the hairdresser's, when autumn came and the newspapers were full
of treaties ready to be signed, when in Warsaw Gomulka and Brandt affixed their names for Poland and Germany, so — as people said — making history, when winter came and preparations for Christmas got under way, Maria, seeing there was too much talk about the priority of national tasks, said it was time to buy provisions in a hurry. The newspapers were stuffed with sublimities about the great historical hour. Not a word about consumer goods. That was a bad sign. "They're going to raise the prices," said Maria to Jan. Which is just what happened. By decree. Sugar, flour, meat, butter, and fish. On December 11. And they'd been planning to marry on the fourth Sunday of Advent.
There were good economic arguments for it. Everything can't be subsidized. Even a Communist government can't afford it. If the market doesn't regulate prices, government regulation comes too late. But when prices get out of hand, so do other things, and sometimes the whole shebang.
When the prices of staple goods were raised between thirty and fifty percent on Friday — they had thought it was clever to take account of the weekend — Jan said it was a historical fact that on several occasions the rise in the price of Scania herring and the importation of cheap beer from Wismar had united the quarreling guilds and incited them to rebel against the patricians. Then he speculated at length on the drop in the price of pepper during the Reformation and the simultaneous meat shortage in Central Europe, due to a falling off in the marketing of cattle.
Maria said, "Maybe you have to expect such things under capitalism, but they shouldn't happen in a Communist state. Why, we learned that in school. And if the union doesn't do anything, we'll take action without the union. And if the men have no spunk, the women will just have to wake them up." No, she was in no mood for the movies. He, Jan, should go and organize. She, Maria, would go and see the women at the cooperative and talk things over. She knew them. They knew all about prices, too. They'd smelled a rat long ago. And you could count on them.
And because all the women had steamed up their men (as Maria had steamed up Jan)—"And don't show your face in my kitchen until the prices are back down again!" — the
harbor and shipyard workers of the Baltic coast, of Gdansk and Gdynia, of Szczecin and Elblag went on strike the following day. The railroad workers and others, even the girls in the Baltic Chocolate Factory, joined in. Since the local trade-union leadership held aloof, strike committees formed spontaneously, and workers' councils were elected. They demanded not only the rescinding of the price increases but also worker management of the factories-the old, deep-rooted, foolish, beautiful, indestructible dream of self-determination.
At the canteen of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, new supplies were brought in before the police could start checking. It was done at night. Next morning workers and housewives came in from the suburbs, from Ohra and Troyl, Langfuhr and Neufahrwasser, maybe fifty thousand strong. They marched past the Central Station and assembled outside the Communist Party headquarters. There, since there wasn't much to make speeches about, they sang the Internationale a number of times. What discussion there was centered on Jan (who had been swept away from Maria in the crush), for Jan was overflowing with historical comparisons that he couldn't keep to himself. As usual, he began with the early Pomorshians, Sambor, Mestwin, Swanto-polk, and Damroka of the beautiful hair. At that point the shipyard workers were still listening, but when Jan got long-winded, lost himself in the labyrinth of medieval guild regulations, and compared the demands of the trades for seats and voices in the seated and standing councils with present demands for worker management of the factories, the workers turned a deaf ear.
Then the crowd sang the Internationale again. Only Maria, who had been pushed to one side, saw her Jan agi-tating-historically aware, without listeners, imprisoned in a balloon. She held her head slightly tilted, her lips moving slightly, on the verge of a smile.
They've all tilted their heads that way, just a bit frightened, but at the same time amused at so much talk and virile enthusiasm. Thus, but already poised for mockery, Abbess Margarete Rusch watched, and listened to, Preacher Hegge when on the Hagelsberg he conjured up eternal dam-
nation and all the devils from Ashmodai to Zaroe. Thus alarmed, but with a smile bordering on melancholy, the kitchenmaid Agnes Kurbiella looked over the poet Opitz's shoulder as, wordless, but inwardly rich in figures, he sat over blank paper. It was with just such an expression that Wigga, the Iron Age wurzel mother, received me when, sore of foot, I came limping home from the migration. And Lena Stubbe looked at me with similarly tilted head on Fridays, when I'd whopped her again with my razor strop and as on every such occasion looked for the rope and failed to find the nail. Dorothea smiled and tilted her head differently, scornfully, when I started talking guild business or counting up small change. Sophie, on the other hand, was full of tender concern as she tied up a package of gingerbread into which she had baked stimulating fly agaric, finely ground, for her Fritz, who was under fortress arrest. And my Mest-wina smiled in the same way when she saw Bishop Adalbert spooning up her fish soup. And after giving me (the stupid lummox) my extra feeding, Awa tilted her head, grave with ever-loving care, yet smiling in the certainty that there would never be enough, that hunger springs eternal and there would always be grounds for care.