To my friends in Sarajevo

Irresolute, no, shivering, I'd crashed a party in the private dining room of a hotel. It felt wintry indoors too, but none of the women in gowns and men in frock coats churning about the long dark-hued room seemed to mind the chill, so I had the tile stove in the corner all to myself. I hugged the fat, ceiling-high contraption - I would have preferred a hearthful of roaring fire, but I was here, where rooms are heated by stoves - then set to kneading some warmth back into my cheeks and palms. When I'd got warmer, or calmer, I ventured across my end of the room. From a window, through the thick scrim of soundlessly dropping snowflakes, backlit by a ring of moonlight, I looked down on the row of horsecabs and sleighs, on the coachmen swathed in coarse blankets dozing in their seats, on the rigid snow-dappled animals with bowed heads. I heard the bells of a nearby church strike the hour of ten. Some guests had bunched near the huge oak sideboard by the window. Half turning, I tuned into their conversation, which was mostly in a language I don't know but somehow I did understand it, and didn't question how. I was aware that I was in a foreign country, a country I'd visited once in my life, thirteen years ago, for two weeks; as I said, I didn't know the language. But their words reached me as sense. It was something vehement about a woman and a man, a scrap of information I promptly upgraded by assuming that the two were, why not, married. Then with equal vehemence it seemed to be about a woman and two men, so, never doubting that the woman was the same, I supposed that if the first man was her husband, the second must be her lover, chiding myself for imagining so conventionally. But whether it was a woman and a man, or the woman and two man, I couldn't understand why they were being talked about. If the story were familiar to everyone, there would of course be no need to recount it. But maybe the guests were deliberately speaking not to be understood too well, because, say, the woman and the man, or both men, if there were two, were also here at the party. This made me think of looking one by one at the women in the room, all buoyantly coiffed and, as far as I am any judge of the clothes of that time, stylishly dressed, to see if one stood out from the others. As soon as I looked, looked with this thought in mind, I saw her and wondered why I hadn't noticed her before. No longer in her first youth, as people then said of an attractive woman past thirty, of medium height, straight spined, with a mass of ash-blond hair piled on her head into which she nervously tucked a few ecsaping strands, she didn't seem to be exceptionally beautiful. But she became more compelling the longer I watched her. She could be, she must be, the woman they're discussing. When she moved about the room, she was always surrounded; when she spoke, she was always listened to. It seemed to me I'd caught her name, it was either Helena or Maryna - and supposing it would help me to decipher the story if I could identify the couple or the trio, what better start than to give them names, I decided to think of her as Maryna. Then I looked for the two men. First, I trawled for one who could be thought of as a husband. If he were a doting husband, as I imagined this Helena or Maryna, I mean Maryna, would have, then I'd find him close to her, never for long distracted by anyone else. And, sure enough, keeping Maryna in my sightline, it seemed obvious now that she was the one giving the party or that it was being given in her honor, I saw her being trailed by an angular bearded man, rather old-landed-family in manner, who nodded affably at whatever she said. That must be the husband, I thought, relishing my powers of detection. Now I had to find the other man, who, if he was the lover - or, just as interestingly, turned out not to be the lover - would probably be younger than the amiable-looking aristocrat. If the husband were in his mid-thirties, a year or two his wife's junior though of course he looked much older, this man would be, I guessed, in his late twenties, handsome enough, and with the insecurity of youth or, more likely, of inferior social position, a bit overdressed. He could be, let me see, a rising journalist or a lawyer. There were several men at the party answering to such a description. The one I took the greatest fancy to was a burly fellow with glasses who, at the moment I spied him, was being familiar with a maid laying out the hotel's hoard of best silver and crystal on the spacious table at the other end of the room. I saw him whispering in her ear, touching her shoulder, toying with her braid. I liked supposing that this might be the candidate lover of my ash-blond beauty: not an inhibited bachelor but a dedicated rake. It's he, I thought with lighthearted certitude, it must be he. But for all that I enjoyed being a little cynical about this young man, I decided to keep another youth in reserve for the part, a slender fellow in a yellow waistcoat, a bit Wertherish, should I become convinced that a more chaste or at least more circumspect swain would fit better with the identities of the other two. Then I wheeled my attention to another band of guests, though after some minutes more of alert eavesdropping I could make nothing further of the story that they, too, were debating. You might think that by now I'd be hearing the names of the two men. Or at least the husband, standing not far from me now in the group tightly surrounding his wife. But no one who addressed the husband, I was sure he was the husband, ever used his Christian name, and fortified by the unexpected gift of the woman's name - yes, I know it could have been either Helena or Maryna, but the point is that I didn't hesitate long, I decided that it would be, or must be, Maryna - I resolved to discover his name with or without auditory clues. What could be, I mean the husband, be called? Adam. Jan. Stanislaw. I tried to think of the name that would best suit him. For each person has such a name, which is, usually, the name that he or she has been given. Finally, I heard someone call him... Karol. I can't explain why this name didn't please me; perhaps, peeved by not being able to fathom the story. I was simply venting my frustration on this inoffensive man whose parents had chosen for him so euphonious a name. For even though I had no doubt about what I'd heard, I couldn't claim to be unsure, as I'd been with his wife's name (Maryna or Helena), I ruled he could not be a Karol, that I had misheard his name, and gave myself permission to rechristen him Bogdan. I know this isn't as attractive a name as Karol in the language in which I am writing, but I intend to get used to it, and hope it will wear well. Next, I turned in my mind to the other man, as I thought of him, who had dropped into a leather sofa to write something in a notebook (it seemed too long to be an assignation note to the maid). Certain that never since in a manner of speaking I'd joined the party had I heard his name, for his name I'd been neither cued nor miscued, I would have to be arbitrary and decided to plunge ahead and make of him a Richard, their Richard: Ryszard. His understudy in the yellow waistcoat, I was moving quickly now, I would call Tadeusz; though I was starting to think I'd have no use for him, at least in this role, it seemed easier to give him a name now, while I was thinking about it, while I was in the naming vein. Then I went back to listening, trying to ratchet up my sense of the story which, ever more audibly, was troubling most of the people invited to the dinner. It wasn't, at least this much I divined, that the woman was about to leave her husband for the other man. Of that I was sure, even if the scribbler on the sofa were in fact the lover of the woman with the ash-blond hair. I knew there had to be a few romances and adulteries at this party, as in any room filled with lively and fetchingly decked-out people who are also friends, colleagues, kin. But this, though the very thing one expects when primed for a story about a woman and a man, or a woman and two men, wasn't what was agitating these guests tonight. I heard, But her duty lies here. It's irresponsible and without any... And, But he's asked him to go ahead. It's right that he... And, But every noble idea seems like folly. After all, she... And, firmly, May God take them under His protection, this last uttered by an elderly woman wearing a mauve velvet hat, who then crossed herself as the others turned away with a delicate grimace. Hardly the way people discuss a love affair. But, like some love affairs, it bore the stamp of recklessness; and it seemed to bring out censors and well-wishers in equal measure. And while at first the story seemed to concern only the woman and the man (Maryna, Bogdan), or the woman and the two men (Maryna, and Bogdan and Ryszard), sometimes it seemed to include more than these two, or three, for I heard some of the guests standing about the room, holding their goblets of mulled wine in one hand and gesturing with the other, say we (and not only they), and I began hearing other names, Krystyna and Cyprian and Aleksander and Wanda, who seemed to be not only judging bystanders but part of the story, co-conspirators even. Perhaps I was moving too fast now. But, conspiracy or no, the thought of conspiracy came naturally to mind, since these people for all their swank and comforts had not done better than to get themselves born in a country subjected for decades to the variously vindictive decrees of a triple foreign occupation, so that many an ordinary action, by which I mean what people in my country would consider an ordinary exercise of freedom, would have had there the character of a conspiracy. And even if what they'd done or were planning to do turned out to be legal, I had still managed to understand that others, more than a few, had roles in this story of the woman and the man or the woman and two men (you know their names), including some of those nearby continuing to dispute whether it was "right" or whether it was "wrong". I don't know why I've put these words in quotes, it's not just because they are the words I heard spoken; it must be because in the time in which I really live these words are used much less confidently, even with apology if you are not a complacent bigot or a lethal avenger, while much of the fascination of these people, of their time, is that they knew, or thought they knew, what "right" and "wrong" were. Indeed, they would have felt quite naked without their "right" and "wrong", their "good" and "bad", which continue to lead a plaintive, withered afterlife in my own time, as well as their, now thoroughly discredited, "civilized" and "barbaric", "noble" and "vulgar", their, now incomprehensible, "selfless" and "selfish" - forgive the Quotation marks (I shall soon stop using them), I mean here only to give these words their proper, poignant emphasis. And it occurred to me that this might explain, partly, my presence in this room. For I was moved by the way they possessed these words, and regarded themselves bound by them to actions. I heard only ardor, sincerity, in their softly voiced should we, they shouldn't, how can we, how can she, how can they, if I were there, she still doesn't have the right, but honor demands. I was enjoying the repetition. Dare I say I felt at one with them? Almost. Those dreaded words, dreaded by others (not by me), seemed like caresses. Pleasantly numbed, I felt myself borne along by their music... until I heard a bald man with a little pointed beard observe, with more sharpness than I'd heard so far, Of course they can, if she wants. He's rich. That was a dose of reality. Whatever they were debating, it seemed to require money, a lot. Further, the remark suggested that nobody here was seriously rich, even if one had a title, the man I'd decided was the husband, and everybody sported signs of a conventional prosperity. More evidence of their status: that bits of their conversations regularly fell into the one foreign language I do speak well. For I knew that at this time, in their part of the world, the gentry as well as those with a liberal profession often chatted in the language of authoritative, far-away France. And just as I was acknowledging that it was a relief to hear French now and then, I heard the woman with ash-blond hair, my Maryna, exclaiming, Oh, let's not speak French any more. A pity, because she had been speaking the most vibrant French of all. She had a deeptoned voice, which rested deliciously on the final vowels. And she moved as she spoke, in a different rhythm from the others: with a pause at the end of each graceful gesture, each agile turn of her no longer slim body, when she passed, as if to receive their homage, from one cluster of guests to another. But sometimes she appeared irritated. And sometimes, I saw it, I don't know if anyone else did, she seemed just tired. I wondered if she had been recently ill. She didn't smile often, except at the little boy, I haven't mentioned that there was a child in the room, with a ripe gaze and floury hair, whom I had to assume was Maryna's son. He looked so much like her, there was nothing in him, of the man I'd chosen for her husband, the one I've called Bogdan, which made me wonder whether I had picked the right man. But it often happens that someone resembles only one parent while a small child , then as an adult resembles the other parent just as exclusively, instead of displaying a unique, ingenious bled of the features of both. He was trying to get Maryna's attention. Where was his nanny? Wasn't it late for a child his age, he was around ten, still to be up? These questions reminded me how little I was able to imagine their lives outside this large chilly room. Observing them at a late evening party, on something like good behavior, in state of appealing alertness, I couldn't know when anyone slept, or how. For example, whether the evening would end for husbands and wives in one ample bed, two beds pushed together, two beds separated by a carpet canyon, or in their separate rooms. My guess, if I had to guess, was that Maryna did not share bedroom with Bogdan, following the custom in his family, not hers. And I was still unable to name the deed or project whose rightness or wrongness the guests were debating, or so I thought - even as I was receiving a flurry of new clues, now they were going too fast, which I'll put in quotation marks too, but only to remember them: words like "abandon her public" and "national symbol" and "crisis of nerves" and "something irrevocable" and "noble savage" and "Nipu". Yes, Nipu. As it happens I had read, in translation of course, the book entitled The Adventures of Mr. Nicholas Wisdom, which describes Wisdom's sojourn in an ideal, consummately isolated community, in fact it is an island, called Nipu. But, while in no doubt that I was among well-read, I wouldn't have expected anyone here to evoke this classic of their national literature, written exactly a century before the time when the guests were standing about the private dining room of the hotel and I was thinking about them. Its account of life in an ideal society, artlessly influenced by both Voltaire and Rousseau, reflected all the quaint illusions of a bygone age. Surely these people would feel remote from such enlightened views, enlightened with a capital E. The history of their implacably dismembered country would, I thought, have kept them immune to any faith in human perfectibility or an ideal society. (And cured, forever, of that other great illusion with capital E, regarding which their greatest poet had declared, bitterly, that his country learned "by a great national experience that the European word had no political value. This nation, attacked by a formidable enemy, had on its side all the books, all the newspapers, all the eloquent tongues of Europe; and from this entire army of words came not a single action".) Yet here they were, in this sumptuous room with beamed ceiling and Persian carpets in the center of this magnificent old city, evoking Nipu, that stern blueprint for a stripped-down life of perfect, rustic comity. I began to wonder if I'd stumbled on a coven of tardy romantics (the romantic age was over), and I feared for them, for the illusions they might cherish in the face of all their experience. But, probably, they were simply patriots, of an unusually grandiloquent stripe. Perhaps I should mention that I had heard, several times, homeland, but not even once the Christ among nations - as patriots of their time were wont to call their martyred nation. I knew that the memory of injustice colored every sentiment among these people, whose country had disappeared from the map of Europe. Appalled by the lethal upsurge of nationalist and tribal feelings in my own time, in particular (you can be only in one place at a time) by the fate of one small nation pledged to a multi-tribal life, which is being remorselessly extinguished, its citizens slaughtered and driven into exile, which is about to disappear from the map (I'd spent the better part of last year in besieged Sarajevo), I wondered if they could be as exhausted as I was by the national question and by the betrayal, the deceit of Europe. But what could it mean to call someone - I assumed it was the woman with the ash-blond hair, the woman I'd decided to call Maryna - a national symbol? Not, I hoped, that she'd been used by a prominent painter or sculptor as the model for an image, like France's Marianne, which appeared on coins. But if for her own accomplishments, what could these be? So then, now, I had to admit to myself that, feminist though I am, I could not rewrite history, and that a woman of her time and country, if she had a profession in which she had enjoyed great success, would most likely have been on the stage. For at this time ( it's only eight years after the birth of supreme heroine of my own earliest childhood, Marya Sklodowska, future Madame Curie), there was hardly any other enviable profession open to a woman (she was not going to be a governess, or a teacher, or a prostitute). She was too old to be a dancer. True, she could have been a singer. But it would have been more illustrious, more patriotic, then, if she had been, I was certain she was, an actress. And that would explain how her good looks imposed themselves on others as beauty; the skillful gestures, the commanding gaze; and the way sometimes she brooded and balked, without penalty. I mean, she looked like an actress. And I told myself I needed to make a greater space for the obvious: that, mostly, people do look like what they are. I'd been watching another man, I decided to call him Henryk, a thin man slumped in an armchair who had been drinking too much. With his goatee and careless posture and melancholy stare, he was like the doctor in a Chekhov play, which is what he could be, since there was a good chance of finding a doctor in any cultivated entourage of this time. And if my Maryna was indeed an actress, I could count on there being other theater people here: say, the leading man in her current vehicle - I picked the tall beardless man with a ringing voice who had started, I didn't understand why, to hector Tadeusz - although the presence of other actresses, at least of Maryna's generation, seemed less certain (they would be rivals). Most likely, I'd find the general director of the city's main theater, whose season she animated each year with her quest appearances. And she would not have failed to number among her friends a drama critic, one who could be relied on always to give her the worshipful reviews she had earned (he was a gently rejected suitor from way back). Further, as befits a worldly gathering, someone should be a banker and there should be judge... Maybe I was moving too fast. I turned to the stove and, taking a deep breath, put my hands on the hot dark-green tiles, though really I was not chilled at all now, then went over to the window and gazed into the night. The falling snow was streaked with hail; it rattled the windowpanes. As I turned back to look at the quests, a stout man with a lorgnette was saying, Listen. Hardly anyone stopped talking. Mes enfants, he bellowed, that's what hail sounds like. Not like a dried peas dropped into a kettledrum! Maryna smiled. I smiled too, for a different reason (I didn't mind being proven right): so I was among theater people. I decided that this man must be a stage manager, since he was fretting about effects. And I christened him Czeslaw, in honor of my favorite living poet. On then to the rest of the cast, I said to myself with renewed confidence. Having yet to identify any of the other women, I realized that six could be the wives of the leading actor, the director of the theater, the critic, the banker, the judge, and the stage manager. The rumpled doctor, since I thought he was a doctor because he looked like Astrov in Uncle Vanya, I assumed to be not just unmarried but unmarriable. (And I needed to keep my Ryszard wifeless, the better to flirt and to pine, though I suspected that he would turn out , when much older, to be not only the marrying but the thrice-married kind). Then, returning to the other women, I stalled for a moment wondering if I hadn't misjudged Maryna. If too successful to keep an ex-mentor by her side, while not yet old enough to feel unthreatened by the young, she still might have included one younger actress in her circle of friends; and I found her quickly, a pale delicate woman with a large locket on her bosom, who kept brushing back her auburn hair with a gesture very much Maryna's. Oh, and one of the women could be a relative and, indeed, somebody I thought looked enough like Bogdan to be his sister was just at that moment talking to the doctor, leaning over his chair; I think she had noticed he was a bit drunk. I also wondered whether I would find one Jew, who would be a young painter named Maurycy, recently returned from two years of cosmopolitan art society in Rome. But as far as I could tell there was just one painter here, and not a Jew, his name was Michal: a red-haired stiff-gaited man around thirty, who had lost a leg in the uprising twelve years ago. Finally (for the time being), it seemed to me that at a party of this size and composition there should be at least two foreigners, but carefully as I scrutinized the guests I could find only the one I'd already noticed: a plump man with a full beard and a diamond in his cravat, with whom some people standing near another tall window had been speaking German. He might be an impresario who was on the verge of engaging Maryna's young protégée for some small roles next spring at his theater in Vienna, which is not far. I surmised this, that he was from Vienna, because I recognized his accent, my memory has a good ear, even though I've never learned to speak or understand German properly. Of course I didn't marvel at what superior linguists they all were; even to this day the educated of this country, restored to the map of Europe a mere seventy-six years ago, are notably polyglot. But I, with my command only of Romance languages (I dabble in German, know the names of twenty kinds of fish in Japanese, have soaked up a splash of Bosnian, and understood not a word of the language of the country in which this room is to be found), I, as I've said, somehow did manage to understand most of what they were saying. Still, I had yet to understand what they were really saying. For supposing I was right, I mean about who was an actress and who a stage manager and the rest, this wasn't helping me much to untie the knot of their talk, in which they continued to argue about whether what the woman, Maryna, and the man, Bogdan, or the two men, Bogdan and Ryszard, were doing or were planning to do, was right or wrong. (As you see, I've dispensed with my little crutches, the quotation marks). But even those who said it was wrong seemed to temper their judgment when it came to Maryna. It was obvious how much everyone admired her, not only her husband and the man (Ryszard, possibly Tadeusz) who may or may not be her lover. I had no doubt that all the men and several of the women must be at least a little in love with Maryna. But it was more, or less, than love. They were enthralled by her. I wondered if I could be enthralled by her, if I were one of them, not someone who didn't belong in this room and was merely watching, trying to figure them out. I thought I had time, for their feelings, and the story; and my own. They seemed - and I pledged myself to be like them, on their behalf - indefatigable. Yet this didn't strip me of my impatience. I was waiting for quick relief: to hear something, a sentence, that would bring me the heart and drift me of their concern. It occurred to me that perhaps I had been listening too avidly. Perhaps, I thought, it wasn't that I had to listen harder but should mull over what I'd already heard. (The phrase crisis of nerves had started to buzz in my head.) Perhaps, I thought, I should simply take off. (And what about abandon her public?) Perhaps only if I went downstairs and out into the blizzard and walked for a while (or simply parked myself in a snowdrift near the coachmen perched on their boxes, near the patient horses) would I manage to understand what was engrossing them. I had to admit, too, that I longed for a gust of fresh air. Just as, when I first entered the room, none of the guests seemed to mind the chill, so now they didn't seem to mind it being a little too warm. The bells of the nearby church struck eleven times, and I heard after that the far-away echo, raggedly synchronized, of other churches in the city. A fat, red-faced woman in a near-rhyming, tomato-red apron appeared from a side door with armful of wood and, clumsily brushing past me, opened the little door and pitched it into the stove. The room seemed to me smoky, I wondered if the flue wasn't drawing as well as it should, knowing that I could expect nothing better of the gas jets, unevenly fed and therefore leaking and sputtering as they always did then, before the advent of natural gas; but, however inevitable that I, a child of neon and halogen, would appreciate the look of gas lighting, unlike everyone else in the room I wasn't used to its acrid smell. And, of course, many of the men were smoking. I noted that Ryszard, who had been drawing caricatures of the guests to entertain the drowsy child I thought must be Maryna's son, was puffing away on a large, ornately carved meerschaum pipe - exactly the fetish one might expect an insecure, ambitious young man to possess. Several of the older men had lit datura cigars. And Maryna, now installed in a vast wing chair, held a long Turkish cigarette in her graceful hand - just the sort of mildly disreputable thing that a celebrated actress would be given license to do. She could even wear trousers like George Sand if she liked, and I could perfectly imagine her as Rosalind; she would make a splendid Rosalind, though a bit old for the role, but that's never stopped any famous actress: fifty-year-olds have appeared, and triumphed, as Juliet. I could also see Maryna playing Nora or Hedda Gabler, this being the time of the ascendancy of Ibsen... but maybe she wouldn't want to play Hedda any more than she would want to play Lady Macbeth, which would mean she wasn't truly a great actor, who's never afraid of being unattractive or playing monsters. I hoped she hadn't been made less of an artist by high-mindedness. Or by her self-regard. She was talking to the impresario from Vienna, and he was nodding, smiling cautiously. And others had drawn close to listen. My Tadeusz, having finally broken free of the speechifying leading actor - I heard, their last words, Sheer folly (from the actor) and Nothing is irrevocable (from Tadeusz) - now stood beside Maryna's chair, his thumbs in the armholes of his yellow waistcoat: a most unWertherish gesture, but who could reproach him for falling out of type, for being happy, for becoming confident, simply because he was standing near her. Ryszard, a little apart, had taken out his notebook again. She looked up and said, What are you writing? Hastily pocketing the notebook, he murmured, A description of you. I shall put it in a novel - he shook his head - if I ever find time, with all we have now to do, to write a novel. The man I'd decided was a drama critic clapped him on the back. One more reason, young man, not to embark on this foolishness, he said jovially. But Maryna had already lowered her gaze. She was addressing the impresario, with a controlling calm. Oh, that's not good enough at all, she said. More and more I saw the imperious woman, who did not have to persuade, whose word was law. I remember the first time I ever saw a diva close up: it was almost thirty years ago, I was new in New York and dramatically poor and a rich suitor took me to lunch at Lutèce, where, shortly after the first delicacies had materialized on my plate, my attention was galvanized by the (come to think of it) familiar-looking woman with high cheekbones, raven-black hair, and full red-painted mouth eating at the next table with an elderly man to whom she said loudly: "Mr. Bing. [ Pause.] Either we do things the Callas way or we do not do them at all". And the Mr. Bing in question fell silent for some minutes - as did I. Now I knew that Maryna, my Maryna, must have had her Callas-like moments, if she was what I thought she was, though not tonight, I supposed, when she was among friends, when she would have preferred to cajole. But I could see her grey eyes widen with irritation. How she must have longed, I was getting to know her, I think, how she must have longed to rise from the chair, upsetting everyone, and walk out of the room. To escape; to make an exit; not merely to get some fresh air, as I wanted to do. For, as I've said, I wouldn't have minded ducking out for a quarter of an hour, even to be hailed on - though I usually do mind the cold (I grew up in southern Arizona and southern California). I regretted thinking it was the cigarettes and pipes and cigars that were driving me out of the room, trying in these matters to remain more European than American, though even I, habituated to roomfuls of chain smokers (including myself) in Sarajevo, was beginning to feel a little queasy from the bad air. But I didn't dare leave, for fear of missing something said the moment after I'd quit the room that would have made everything clear to me. And, I saw, this was hardly the moment to descend into the snowy street. On the far side of the long table the headwaiter was making a discreet signal to Bogdan, as his four underlings bent over in near unison to light the four triple-branched silver candelabra. Maryna rose, smoothing down the front of her sage-green robe with one hand while extinguishing her cigarette with other. Dear friends, she began. You have waited so long. You have been so patient. She glanced slyly at Bogdan. Yes, he said. Adding something slothful as well as tender to the play of husbandly expressions crossing his face, he took her arm. How glad I was that I hadn't copped out when I'd wanted to but had remained at my station. My hope was that, once the guests were at dinner, the bits of overheard conversation would unite, and I would finally grasp what was absorbing them. For I thought it even possible that everyone turning, rising, tarrying, sliding toward the long table at one end of the room on the hotel's first floor (in my country it's the second floor) was privy to this deed or plan whose rightness or wrongness was still being disputed, keeping in mind that however many I might eventually discover were in on it, in anything undertaken by as few as two, one person is more responsible than another (though no one is entirely without responsibility, wherever there is consent there is responsibility), and with, say, twenty - actually I'd counted, there were twenty-five people in the room - not only would one person be more responsible than the others, but someone would have been at the helm, however much that person, if a woman, would probably, in that time, have disavowed the name of leader. To be explained, nevertheless: why anybody follows anyone else. Or, the same question, why anyone ever refuses to follow. (What writing feels like is following and leading, both, and at the same time.) I watched how everyone obeyed the long-awaited command to sit and be served. I didn't mind just watching, listening. I don't ever mind. Especially at parties, which invariably bring out my large reserves of shyness. But, as I've explained, not only was I not invited to this part, I was not even of the time when it was taking place, though I did imagine that, could they have become aware of my presence, amazed as they'd be at the intrusion of so exotic a stranger, a place would have been made for me at the table. (That I might be pushed out on the snowy street never crossed my mind. I thought I should assume these people would pride themselves on practicing one of their national virtues, hospitality.) Uninvited, unseen, I could look at them as long as I wanted, stare at them even: a piece of bad manners I usually can't practice because it's likely to incur a stare in return. As a child, I mean like many solitary children, I often wished I were invisible, the better to watch, I mean not be watched. But I also played, sometimes, at not seeing at all. Around thirteen, after the family pulled up tiny stakes and moved from Tucson to Los Angeles, this walking around with my eyes shut when I was alone or unobserved in the new house became, I recall, a favorite game. (My most memorable venture in blindness was when, on a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom, there was an earthquake.) I like the feeling of being reduced to my own resources. Of having to do nothing but cope. (Perhaps that's why I've felt so exhilarated, so numbingly at home as well as convulsed with dread, during six stays in besieged Sarajevo.) About time, the judge murmured irritably to his wife. She smiled and put two fingers to her lips. Will there be ice cream? said the little boy. The guests were approaching the table, Ryszard edging a little ahead, impatient to see how close to Maryna he had been seated, with Tadeusz right behind him, but it was Ryszard, hurrying his step, who reached the table first. I saw him scan for his place card and his grin told me that he was not dissatisfied. Once the guests had occupied all the chairs, while they were still unfolding their starched upright napkins, the squad of waiters began distributing the bounties of the first course. I had moved forward, too, and was sitting cross-legged in the deep embrasure of a tall window at the end of the room, and while I was trying to take in some first words at the table had to silence some words in my head: "sorrel soup", "carp à la juive", "sole au gratin", "boar's meat in grey sauce".. sorry about the quotes, they're just to mark what I lack the patience, right now, to describe; I would have plenty of time to describe , I thought, after I'd understood the story. Though I knew they had been kept waiting (as, in another way, had I), I was a little surprised that everyone tucked in without ado. Did I expect them to say grace? I suppose I did. And, actually, one person, Bogdan's homely sister, did mutter at length to herself before lifting her fork: I'm sure she was reciting a prayer. Though I hoped that they wouldn't have tired of arguing, for the moment everyone seemed diverted by the sumptuous meal. What I was watching now was the gamut of eating behavior, from dainty to wolfish, dotted with colorful comments about the food, and, even, the snowstorm. Good Lord, not the weather! Come back, noble idealists whom I've conjured up from the past. To be sure, not everyone was just eating. The doctor, I saw, much preferred the champagne and the Hungarian wine to the second courses. ("Turkey stuffed with walnuts", "baked black grouse and partridges"..) And young actress, who never took her eyes off Maryna's pearly unlined face, seemed to be chewing in slow motion; hardly anything was missing from her plate. Like her, like most of the guests, I found it hard not to keep Maryna at the center of my attention. I wondered what her real age was (after all, she was an actress). If this were happening now, I would have said she was at least in her mid-forties. The ample bosom and heavy jaw, the judicious movements, the bulky gown. But, knowing that even the well-off aged faster then, and that everyone not poor was, by our standards, overweight, I gave her no more than thirty-five. I think I haven't said that I'd been all along fiddling with the apparent age of everyone in the room: Ryszard, since he looked forty, had to be thirty, and so forth. Traveling back to the past, I expected there to be some frustrations (the towering, fire-concealing stove instead of a eyelevel, blazing fireplace) and a few adjustments (to estimate the age of anyone past his or her mid-twenties, deduct ten years) as well as the evident compensations and illuminations. The talk had evolved from pleasantries about the food to a rush of praise for Maryna's opening night performance earlier this evening. She accepted the compliments with a modesty that seemed as adamant as it was charming. How splendid it was, said Ryszard, his face aglow with admiration. You really did surpass yourself, if such a thing is possible, said the young painter. She always does, the leading actor said graciously, reprovingly. Dissociating herself from all this wet appetite, Maryna sat very still, she appeared scarcely to be breathing, a cambric handkerchief to her left cheek. É sempre brava, the doctor confided to the mystified waiter who was refilling his glass. Following a lull in the voices and a return to more dedicated eating, of course I was hoping for something else, the critic rose unsteadily, vodka in hand. To you, Madame. Every glass except Maryna's was lifted. To this evening's triumph. The doctor eased his glass toward his mouth. Hold on, not so fast, Henryk, the critic exclaimed with mock severity. Don't you see I haven't finished? Groaning, the doctor returned his arm to toast position. The critic cleared his throat, then intoned: And to that sublime and patriotic art which you honor with your beauty and genius. To the theater. Maryna nodded to him and the others, pursing her lips, then whispered something to the impresario, who was seated at her right. That wasn't fair, that's not one toast but three, said the doctor gaily. Three toasts, three infusions of this excellent vodka! He hailed one of the waiters. Not, dear Maryna, that I don't subscribe with all my heart to the sentiments just uttered, he said as his glass was again refilled. Then, raising it once more: To your performance tomorrow. And he emptied the glass. Next Bogdan, at the other end of the table, rose to his feet. Not wishing to vex our thirsty friend, he said, I shall limit myself to one toast. And it is - glass in the air - to friendship. Hear, hear, shouted Ryszard. Yes, said Bogdan, and to our sodality. Sodality, I thought. What does that mean? Look, he's doing it too, the doctor had shouted, vodka already to his lips and drinking so avidly that he had spilled some on his linen shirt. He can't help himself, cried the judge, laughing. Who. me? said the doctor, wiping his mouth. Everyone laughed except Maryna and Bogdan. I mean, Bogdan continued solemnly, to what we can accomplish together. Applause. Hear, hear, said Tadeusz. I am ready. An abashed silence, in which everyone turned to Maryna. She reached for her glass and pressed it against her brow. Then, without rising, she lifted it above her head. I really have only one toast to offer, not three pretending to be one. She directed a fond smile at Bogdan. I drink to one... divided into three. That will some day be one. Dramatic pause. To our homeland. Everyone broke into applause. Bravo, said the painter. Crowd-pleasing toasts, all - whose main effect, it seemed, was to drench everyone in melancholy. The little boy left his chair to tiptoe over to Maryna and whisper something I couldn't hear. She shook her head, looking (I'm sorry to report) a bit cross, and he returned to his seat next to Bogdan's sister, was received by her on her lap, and fell asleep against her neck. Of the ensuing murk of conversation, I didn't register much. I wish I could say that I was just feeling thinky, and so had closed my eyes to mount the next rung in the dark. You have given me so much to ponder, said a glum voice. Of course I want to broaden my horizons, said a lilting voice. No misgivings, none at all? said a peppery, self-assured voice. How I admire you, said a sad voice. Irrevocable, I heard again. And opened my eyes. This might have been the doctor, who'd plunged his head into his hands. I wondered if I had missed something. Silly thoughts had started to buffet my mind. Hearing someone trail off ( it was all I retained)...along with my milk brother, Marek, their son and identifying the speaker as the man with the plump unshaven cheeks sitting next to the banker's wife, I thought: what a greedy baby you must have been at that countrywoman's breasts! The eating seemed to me interminable, and I had not tried to follow the plot of the meal, assuming that it was, à la française, a three-act dinner, and that, whenever I wanted, I could always peek at one of the small handwritten menus provided with every setting, like theater programs, to see how much more there still was to go. As if he had read my mind, even though I was here to read his, Bogdan murmured, We don't have to eat like this. I, for one, would be happy to eat simply. I hoped they were nearing the dessert now. Bogdan had set down his fork and knife. Quo vadis? said the judge. Where goes thou? Ryszard smiled and took out his notebook. Where, yes. And how, said the banker. Everything must be thought through carefully. No reason for haste. There was a moment's quiet, as if everyone were indeed reflecting. Then I heard, in a singsongy voice, something like:

From the mountains, where they bore their heavy, awesome crosses,
They could see in the distance the promised land.
They could see the blue-hued light
towards which, in the valley, their tribe was heading -

from the elderly woman in the mauve hat. We need a piano, interrupted the stage manager. I can no longer hear this poem in Chopin's setting. The elderly woman, I had never decided whether she was somebody's wife or a maiden aunt, perhaps Bogdan's, looked offended. Please go on, said the young actress, Krystyna, I forgot to mention that I'd figured out her name. I had every intention of doing just that, said the elderly woman tartly. How does it go? You know very well. And the continued in his ringing baritone:

and yet they will never be there!
They will never sit at the feast of life,
and perhaps indeed be forgotten, forgotten, forgotten.

He was a fine elocutionist. Exactly, said the elderly woman. Then something happened that was mildly confounding. Maryna lifted her arms and declaimed in her warm alto tone:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards to contend.

And for a few moments I didn't realize that she was reciting in English. I can't say what I thought at first I was hearing, since I wouldn't have been startled to hear any language spoken at this gathering (any except Russian, the language of the most hated of the nation's three oppressors). Another foreign language that I don't know but somehow, tonight, was able to understand? Meanwhile the young actress had burst out with:

Therefore devise with me how we may fly,
Whither to go, and what to bear with us;
And do not seek to take your change upon you,
To bear your griefs yourself and leave me out;
For, by this heaven, now at our sorrows pale,
Say what thou canst, I'll go along with thee.

Her shiny voice trembled, stopped. If you knew As You Like It, you would have recognized the lines - of course, she would be Celia to Maryna's Rosalind - though they were barely intelligible, her accent was even thicker than Maryna's. She, Maryna, was not looking pleased. I butchered Shakespeare's glorious English, I heard her say to the drama critic, who was sitting on her left. Not at all, he exclaimed, you said it beautifully. I did not, Maryna answered sharply. And, in truth, she had not. I hoped they would do better when they spoke more English, as I suspected they were going to do, if I'd understood anything about what was being discussed. Undoubtedly, they will continue to speak English with an accent, as do many people in my country, as did my great-grandparents (maternal) and my grandparents (paternal), though naturally their children did not. For it should be mentioned, why not here, that all four of my grandparents were born in this country (hence, born in a country that had ceased to exist some eighty years earlier), indeed born around the very year to which I'd travelled in my mind in order to co-inhabit this room with its old-timey conversations, though the folks who engendered the couple that engendered me were quite unlike these people, being poor unworldly villagers with occupations like peddler, innkeeper, woodcutter, Talmud student. Having assumed that nobody here was a Jew, I hoped, this was a new thought, that I wouldn't hear anti-Semitic outburst from someone, which might oblige me to leave the room; but I hadn't, and somehow intuited that they were, if anything, philo-Semites. That this was the country my forbears chose to leave by crowded steerage hardly links me to these people, though conceivably it might make the name of this country resonate for me, might draw me to a room here rather than elsewhere (I've tried conjuring up a hotel dining room from the same era in Sarajevo, and failed), so I had had to accept where I was. But the past in the biggest country of all, and there is a reason one gives in to the desire to set stories in the past: almost everything good seems located in the past, perhaps that's an illusion, but I feel nostalgic for every era before I was born: and one is freer of modern inhibitions, perhaps because one bears no responsibility for the past, sometimes I feel simply ashamed of the time in which I live: but if it is the past, then it will also be the present, because it was I in the private dining room of the hotel, scattering seeds of prediction. I did not belong there, I was an alien presence, I would have to lean very close to listen, I would not understand everything, but even what I misunderstood would be a kind of truth, if only about the time in which I live, rather than the one in which their story took place. We must always ask more of ourselves, I heard Maryna say sternly. Always. Or am I speaking only for myself. Ah, that was an endearing note. I have a weakness for the earnest, the strenuous. If I thought of Maryna as a character in a novel, I could see something in her of Dorothea Brooke (I remember when I first read Middlemarch: I had just turned eighteen, and a third through the book burst into sobs, because I realized not only that I was Dorothea but that, a few months earlier, I had married Mr. Casaubon), yet there was nothing submissive or self-effacing, I could see that, in this woman with the ash-blond hair and the candid, intense grey eyes. She would want to do good for others, but she would never be seduced into forgetting herself. For someone whose ambition was to go on the stage, being female was not an obstacle: she had lived the competitive life, and she had won. But I thought I could put up with a good deal of vanity and selflove as long as she kept the desire for self-improvement, which I guessed she would as I studied the contrast between the impatient, over-watchful expressions crossing her face and that peculiar mannerism she had of holding herself very, very still. I suppose somebody could have described me, snugly ensconced in the embrasure of the window, in the same way. For, of course, I like action as much as the next person. In fact I'm rather impulsive (I had married Mr. Casaubon after knowing him for ten days) and would appear to have a taste for risk-taking (all my friends told me I was crazy to keep going to Sarajevo), but I'm also prone to the long drawn-out huddle in a corner that caring about duties bring on (it took me nine years to decide that I had the right, the moral right, to divorce Mr. Casaubon), so it was easy for me to feel indulgent toward these people mired in their dinner, in their debate about what some of them were going tot do. And easy for me to become exasperated with them. No one fidgeted. I hadn't even spied any hanky-panky under the table. No one seemed tired, except of course the little boy sleeping on another woman's lap instead of home tucked in his bed. His mother must have wanted him near tonight, he must be an only child, even if I hadn't seen her pay any attention to him for these last two hours at the table. They did seem to me, for all their flashes of agitation about the subject engaging them, a bit too sedate. To what could I attribute their immobility? The overcooked food continuing to be urged on the table? The perennial ineffectuality of the thinking classes? The stuffiness of the late nineteenth century? My own reluctance to imagine anything livelier? True, there was still time for something really vivid to happen. Someone might have a heart attack or whack a dinner partner over the head or sob and groan or toss a glass of wine into an offending face. But this seemed as unlikely as that I was going to charge out of my window-seat to dance on the table or spit in the soup or fondle a knee or bite someone's ankle. Humid thoughts: I needed some air. On Bogdan's signal, one of the waiters opened the window at the other end of the room, where I'd been lurking when I first arrived. I heard an eruption of street shouts and neighing horses. It was just after one o'clock by the church bells (and, yes, by my watch; I've admitted to turning restless). I hadn't been at the theater at seven o'clock for tonight's performance, of course I wished I had seen it, as they had, so the evening was longer for them than it was for me, but I wouldn't go until they did. And no one would get up until Maryna did. But I'd almost given up hoping that their argument about the rightness or wrongness of whatever they were discussing would reach a climax this evening, no matter how long they stayed at the table and I remained nearby, gazing at them, listening to them, thinking about them. For it's the nature of such debates, the debate about rightness and about wrongness, that you can always have misgivings, and a new thought, the next day, that looking back on the evening's conversation you may exclaim, what a fool I was to say that, or agree to that. Was I under the influence of so-and-so, or just being dopey or thoughtless, my moral thermostat turned down? So the next morning, you are of the opposite mind (perhaps you think the opposite precisely because of what you thought, or argued for, the night before, because that opinion needed an airing, in order to make way for this, the better one), you have something like a moral hangover, but you feel calm because you know now you're on the right track, while uneasily suspecting you could still think something different tomorrow; and meanwhile, the time for the decision you are weighing, the course of action which you may or may not follow, is approaching. It may be right now. Then Maryna did rise, and took a cigarette from her gold-beaded reticule and glided to the center of the room. The others stood up, and I assumed they would all leave now. But only Ryszard exuberantly kissed Maryna's hand, then made the rounds, touching her lips to the right hand of every woman in the room, I supposed that he was looking forward to capping the evening with a stop at his favorite bordello. Then the director of the theater and his wife took their leave, followed by the banker and the judge and their wives, then the leading actor and the stage manager and a few others. Nobody else seemed about to go. The doctor opened the bottle of Tokay on the sideboard. The child, who had been awakened and made ready for departure, lay curled in the wing chair rubbing his eyes. Maryna leaned gracefully against the back of the chair, surrounded by Bogdan, Tadeusz, the young actress, the impresario, Bogdan's sister, the doctor, and the one-legged painter. Here was one last chance for the conversation to ripen and their decision to be cinched like a purse. Well, of course, said Maryna, laughing emphatically, I don't always agree with myself. An encouraging thought. They went on talking quietly. I'd have to be patient with them, even if I've never been good at being patient with myself. As a precocious small child, I did concede that I was good at learning, But I was sure I wasn't "really intelligent" (please ignore the quotes), as I understood what that meant from books, from biographies, there being no one in my vicinity who seemed "really intelligent"(same request) either. Still, I thought that I could do whatever I set my mind to (I was going to be a chemist, like Madame Curie): that steadfastness and caring more than the others about what was important would take me wherever I wanted to go. And so, now, I thought if I listened and watched and ruminated, taking as much time as I needed, I could understand the people in this room, that theirs would be a story that would speak to me, though how I knew that I can't explain. There are so many stories to tell, it's hard to say why it's one rather than another, it must be because with this story you feel you can tell many stories, that there will be a necessity in it; I see I am explaining badly. I can't explain. It has to be something like falling in love. Whatever explains why you chose this story - it may, indeed, draw sap from some childhood grief or longing - hasn't explained much. A story, I mean a long story, or a novel, is like an around-the-world-in-eighty-days: you can barely recall the beginning when it comes to an end. But even a long journey must begin somewhere, say, in a room. Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen very carefully, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head. You can hear the fire cracking or the clock ticking or (if the window is open) the cry of a coachman or the vroom-vroom of a motorcycle in the alley. Or you may not hear any of this, if the room is full of voices. Raucous or soft-mannered people may be sitting down to dinner, saying something you don't quite understand, let's hope not because the television is on, and full-blast, but you'll catch the tenor. First it will only be phrases, or a name, or an urgent whisper, or a cry. If there are cries, no, screams, and you see something like a bed, you can hope that this isn't a room where someone is being tortured, but, rather, where someone is giving birth, although these sounds, too, are unbearable to listen to. You can hope that you have found yourself among large-hearted people, passion is a beautiful thing, and so is understanding, the coming to understand something, which is a passion, which is a journey, too. The servants were bringing Maryna and the others their wraps. They were ready to leave now. With a shiver of anticipation, I decided to follow them out into the world.

[ from "In America" ]

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