THE SARMATIAN REVIEW

Vol. XXVIII, No. 2 April 2008 Ethnic America No Slack At All

Kuryer Polski newspaper carrier with 40th anniversary issue (1928) in the Kuryer office, 435 Broadway Street, Milwaukee, WI. Courtesy of Collections at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries (“Milwaukee Neighborhoods: Photos and Maps 1885–1992,” Roman Kwasniewski Collection). 1376 SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 The Sarmatian Review (ISSN 1059- (review) ...... 1395 primitive religiosity. Some 5872) is a triannual publication of the Polish Institute The Last Mazurka, by Anna Muller postmodern religiosity is so of Houston. The journal deals with Polish, Central, (review) ...... 1396 and Eastern European affairs, and it explores their For More Than Bread: Community and sophisticated that it has lost touch implications for the United States. We specialize in with anything but itself. The ethnics the translation of documents. Sarmatian Review is Identity in American Polonia, by John indexed in the American Bibliography of Slavic and M. Grondelski (review)...... 1398 go to their churches and, while they East European Studies, EBSCO, and P.A.I.S. Letters ...... 1399 have not been trained to verbalize International Database. From January 1998 on, files On Just and Unjust Wars (excerpt), by their experiences, they more often in PDF format are available at the Central and Eastern European Online Library (www.ceeol.com). Stanisław of Skarbimierz ...... 1401 than not possess that sixth sense that Subscription price is $21.00 per year for individuals, About the Authors...... 1401 gives rise to a genuine spiritual life. $28.00 for institutions and libraries ($28.00 for Thank You Note ...... 1402 The flowers they leave at the icons individuals, $35.00 for libraries overseas, air mail). The views expressed by authors of articles do not of the Virgin Mary signify a certain necessarily represent those of the Editors or of the Our Take detachment from such priorities as Polish Institute of Houston. Articles are subject to winning at any price. editing. Unsolicited manuscripts and other materials Ethnic America are not returned unless accompanied by a self- Professor Knasas’s apt hen Michael Novak addressed and stamped envelope. Please submit your deconstruction of an ostensibly contribution electronically and, if requested, send a published Rise of the W learned and refined tome on printout by air mail. Letters to the Editor can be e- Unmeltable Ethnics in 1972, some mailed to , with an “security communities” (newspeak ethnics hoped that the book would accompanying mailing return address. Articles, letters, for “how to live in peace with your and subscription checks should be mailed to become a watershed, a Catholic neighbor”) is a good indication of The Sarmatian Review, P. O. Box 79119, Central European equivalent to how sturdy these ontological Houston, Texas 77279–9119. Martin Luther King’s “I have a The Sarmatian Review retains the copyright for all sensibilities are and how thin the dream.” Well, the money has not materials included in print and online issues. Copies discourse that tries to eliminate for personal or educational use are permitted by section been found, and the period of them is. 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Permission promoting underprivileged to redistribute, republish, or use SR materials in The ethnics described in Professor minorities seems to have passed. advertising or promotion must be submitted in writing Galush’s book are such people. to the Editor. American politics moves on with They read Henryk Sienkiewicz Editor: Ewa Thompson (Rice University). lightning speed, and the ethnics Associate Editors: Tamara Trojanowska (University rather than James Joyce. They of Toronto), Bogdan Czaykowski (1932–2007). remain left behind. No one has ever would identify with the defense of Editorial Advisory Committee: George Gasyna cut them any slack. They cannot (University of Illinois-Urbana), Janusz A. Ihnatowicz Sienkiewicz in the book reviewed claim minority status because they (University of Saint Thomas-Houston), Bozena by Professor Michael MikoÊ. Karwowska (University of British Columbia), Joseph are white, yet in many ways they In that connection, The Last A.Kotarba (University of Houston), Alex Kurczaba have been discriminated against (University of Illinois-Chicago), Marcus D. Leuchter Mazurka, Andrew Tarnowski’s because of their names, social (Holocaust Museum Houston),Witold J. Lukaszewski autobiographical book about the (Sam Houston State University), Theresa Kurk habits, and religious beliefs. Polish aristocracy reviewed in this McGinley (North Harris College-Houston), Michael This issue highlights these J. MikoÊ!(University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), Jan issue, shows that as citizens and as Rybicki (Kraków Pedagogical University), Dariusz unmeltable ethnics. The first part of human beings the Tarnowskis and Skórczewski (Catholic University of Lublin), Piotr Mary Grabar’s novel about Wilczek (University of Silesia). their kin rank well below the ethnics Slovenian Americans sounds Copy Editor: Cyndy Brown that Galush’s book speaks about. Web Pages: Lisa Spiro (Rice University). strangely familiar to Polish ears. Their sense of social responsibility Web Address: . Indeed, Grabar might as well have Sarmatian Council: James Burns (Houston), Iga J. is nil, and their interest is mainly in given her heroines Polish, Henderson (Houston), Marek Kimmel (Rice themselves. Perhaps one of the University), Leonard M. Krazynski (First Honorary Moravian, or Lithuanian names, for reasons why the Central European Polish Consul in Houston), James R. Thompson (Rice they partake of a life that has also University). ethnics have fared so poorly in been described by Suzanne claiming a share of political life in In this issue: Strempek Shea and Anthony America is that the upper classes of SR Data ...... 1377 Bukoski. their societies (who also emigrated) Mary Grabar, The Secret of Little Sister. Among the redeeming features of refused to discharge the Chapters 1 through 3 ...... 1379 these ethnics is their ontological BOOKS Books ...... 1392 responsibilities that used to be part sensibility. This is not a highfalutin Thinking Peaceful Change, by John X. of their station. ! Knasas (review) ...... 1393 name for something that has been Po co Sienkiewicz? Sienkiewicz a contemptuously dismissed as toÏsamoÊç narodowa, by Michael J. MikoÊ April 2008 SARMATIAN REVIEW 1377 Sarmatian Review Data Borderless Europe forever? Percentage of Austrians opposed to 21 December 2007 enlargement of the Schengen area in Europe (i.e., area without border controls): 75 percent. Countries admitted to the Schengen areas: the postcommunist countries of Central Europe including Poland, the Baltic Republics, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. Source: TV poll, as reported by BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7154196.stm), 21 December 2007. The mythology of Vladimir Putin Putin’s approval rating at the end of 2007: 80 percent. Health spending as percentage of GDP under Putin (between 2000–2005) and before Putin (1996–1999: 6 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively. Average number of murders per year in the “anarchic” years 1995–1999: 30,200 per year; in the “orderly” Putin years 2000–2004: 32,200 per year. Alcohol consumption per adult at the end of the 1990s and in 2004: 10.7 liters and 14.5 liters, respectively. Percentage of Russian men between 25–54 who die of alcoholism: 18 percent. Estimated percentage of Russians infected with HIV virus: 0.9 percent. Source: Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, “The Myth of the Authoritarian Model,” Foreign Affairs, January-February 2008. Vladimir Putin’s personal wealth Estimated amount of money President Putin indirectly owns by means of equities and partnerships: 40 billion dollars. Source: Russian politologist Stanislaw Belkowski in “Ist Putin bereits der viertreichste Mann der Welt?” Welt Online, 20 January 2008. Putin’s personal wealth as stated in official documents: 4,698 euro in salaries per month, 77 sq. meter apartment in Petersburg, two cars, 1,500 sq. meter lot in the suburbs of Moscow, 89,000 euro worth of stock in a Peters- burg bank. Source: “Ist Putin bereits der viertreichste Mann der Welt?” Welt Online, 20 January 2008, . Drug use in the Russian Federation Number of Russians who have used drugs: 5.9 million, or 4 percent of the population. The registered number of drug users in 2007: 231,000. Source: Interfaks, as reported by on 17 January 2008. American deficits, capital flow, and Russian observers Capital flow into the United States in December and November 2007, respectively: 60.4 billion dollars and 150.8 billion dollars. U.S. trade deficit in December 2007: 58.76 billion dollars. Source: , 16 February 2008, quoting U.S. Department of the Treasury. Roman Catholic vs. Anglican Mass attendance in Great Britain Number of people attending Sunday Masses in Britain, in 2006 in Roman Catholic churches and in Anglican churches: 862,000 and 852,000, respectively. Source: Telegraph (Internet edition), 12 December 2007. Sacrament of confession among Polish Catholics Percentage of Polish Catholics who said that they went to confession several times a year: 51.7 percent. Percentage of those who do so at least once a month: 47 percent. Source: Catholic Statistical Institute poll, as reported by Łukasz Cybiƒski in Rzeczpospolita, 26 February 2008. Polish exports soaring Percentage increase of Polish exports in 2007 (by comparison to 2006): 15 percent. Monetary value of Polish exports in 2007: 101 billion euro, or 152 billion dollars. Increase in value of the Polish zloty against the U.S. dollar: from Zl.2.80 per dollar in spring 2007 to Zl. 2.30 per dollar in spring 2008. Source: Polish Statistical Bureau (GUS), as reported by Michał Pawlak in Donosy, no. 4616 (29 February 2008). 1378 SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 Salaries of medical doctors in Poland Hospitals that pay the highest salaries: clinical hospitals where doctors make up to Zl.12,000, or about $5,000 per month. The official range of salaries and bonuses for doctors with the highest additional specialization for approxi- mately 200–300 hours of work per month: between Zl.3,580 and Zl.12,506; for doctors with no specialization, between Zl.2,930 and Zl.7, 977. Conclusions: the lowest salaries are paid in county hospitals; there is a vast difference in basic salaries of doctors working in hospitals; the income of those in private practice has not been evaluated. Source: Michał Jankowski in Donosy, no. 4590 (24 January 2008). University endowments and salaries of college professors in the United States American universities with the largest endowments in 2007: Harvard (35.6 billion dollars), Yale (22.5 billion), Stanford (17.2 billion), Princeton (15.8 billion), University of Texas system (15.6 billion). Average salary of full professors at Harvard in 2007: $177,000; at public research universities: $106,000. Source: Justin Pope (AP), “College endowment figures confirm disparity in wealth,” Houston Chronicle, 24 January 2008. Current account deficits (or surpluses) and inflation in Central and Eastern Europe Current account deficits as percentage of GDP (2007) estimate): Poland, -4 percent; Hungary, -5.6 percent; Ukraine, -3 percent; Romania, -14 percent; Russia, +6.2 percent. Inflation in 2007: Poland, 3.9 percent; Hungary, 7.4 percent; Ukraine, 16.6 percent; Romania, 6.6 percent; Russia, 11.9 percent. Source: EBRD; RZB Group; Thomson Datastream, National sources, as reported in Stefan Wagstyl, “Eastern Europe to feel credit squeeze,” Financial Times, 28 January 2008. Internet use in Poland, Russia, and the EU Number of people in Poland and Russia who used the Internet in 2007: 12.5 million and 28 million, respec- tively. Another estimate of Internet users in Poland (taking into account users under fifteen years of age: 14.1 million. Percentage of Poles vs. other EU members who used the Internet in 2007: 44 percent vs. 57 percent. Breakdown by gender (in Poland): 51 percent of users were men, 49 percent women. Source: Eurostat and NetTrack statistics, as reported by Rzeczpospolita, 8 February 2008; Michał Jankowski in Donosy, no. 1406 (19 February 2008). The decline of Tygodnik Powszechny Number of copies of TP sold in 1990, 1995, 2007, respectively: 70,000–80,000, 30,000, under 20,000. Minimum number of copies that need to be sold each week to assure financial self-sufficiency: 50,000. Print runs of contemporary Catholic competitors: GoÊç Niedzielny, over 200,000; Niedziela, 200,000. TP’s financial loss in 2002 when it separated itself from the Znak publishing house: Zl.300,000 ($130,000). Source: Agnieszka Rybak, “Nowy format pomnika,” Rzeczpospolita, 8 February 2008. Translating books: costs, procedures, other secrets Amount of money translator Eric Dickens (Estonian-English translator) charges per one thousand translated words: “Slightly more than the ‘industry recommended’ £80.” How publishers decide which foreign books to translate: “Very often, it will be the organization set up in the source-language country to promote its national literature” that provides funds for translators. “ The funding works like this: the publisher pays for editing, printing, and marketing, but the promotional organization pays the translator directly. All that’s needed is proof of a contract.” How Eric Dickens has upported himself recently: “I have more or less been living off the money paid by the Estonian Cultural Endowment for the past few years.” Source: Eric Dickens, “What’s a Translator to Do?” London Review of Books, vol. 30 no. 4 (21 February 2008). Winning Poles Name of the Kraków hostel voted the best in the world by tourists on Internet site in 2007: Hostel Flamingo. Categories considered by voters: security, location, atmosphere, service, cleanliness. Place where the award was handed out: Dublin, Ireland. Source: Michał Jankowski in Donosy, no. 4593 (29 January 2008). April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1379 lipped smile underneath a corn-silk mustache and a quick demonstration of the handy man abilities my The Secret of Little Sister mother needed so badly. He ran to his trunk for his tools and fixed a door that would not latch properly. A Novel He had the cash for the security deposit and first month’s rent. My mother saw that money there, $1,200 Mary Grabar in hundred dollar bills, the only form of paper to be trusted in the final analysis. Chapter 1 He smiled as he took the roll out of his camouflage cargo pants pocket, even showing his teeth, with breaks and gaps. arl finally left the old house, one of my mother’s “Yes, ma’am, I believe in cash,” he said as he peeled Erental properties, when it went up in flames. He out the bills for her. jumped bare-chested into his black-striped, How could he have known that she too believed in mustard-yellow 1974 Dodge Charger, screeching down cash, that she would pay her taxes with hundreds, the road, leaving twin plumes of blue smoke, and black putting $7,154 into an envelope from one of the rubber, in front of the two acres of anciently gnarled Catholic charities into her tan patent leather purse on grapevines, whose knee-high weeds testified further the passenger seat of the Buick, hit the lock button, to his irresponsibility. Charred glossies of shaved and drive it carefully to the county offices and count female crotches and breasts as big as genetic mutations them out to the flustered clerk? Did he know at that fluttered out of the top floor of the crooked structure point that she and her husband had paid cash for all that went up like a trash fire. The rat strand of hair that land and then cash to build the brick ranch house? emerging from his Genesee Cream Ale cap was the He had been given the catechism on industry, thrift, last anyone saw of him. and honesty. Had he been impressed by the immigrant In renting the place to him my mother had used her work ethic displayed for him by a brick ranch house judgment and determined that he shared a quality that ringed by a profusion of flowers, a clean-swept she very much admired: resourcefulness. Earl, taking driveway, small orchard, and a simple mother with off his cap as he walked up her drive after respectfully worker’s hands and shy daughter? parking his car on the shoulder of the road, had said, Earl relied on smell as much as anything. He was “Good afternoon, ma’am. I seen the sign for rent and one of those men. He could tell those farmer’s hands was wonderin if I could look at the place.” My mother longed to touch that cash. straightened from her chore of watering the geraniums “Ma’am, I’ll give you $600 for a receipt. I’d like to from a plastic watering can. My sister put out her move in Monday.” cigarette and came from around the back of the house “I need rent.” My mother prided herself on her with hope at the sound of the rumbling car and then its business acumen. exhaustion. Earl did see opportunities, in a woman “Well, I’m just gonna’ keep this $600 till Monday if whose broken English meant that his own lack of you don’t mind, ma’am.” education would not be held against him. As they cut My youngest sister was behind my mother, hunched. across the back yard of her other house, he listened as She glanced shyly at Earl, and drew into herself to she went on about work, about how she and her now- shrink her body closer to his size. He subtly flexed a deceased husband had come to this country, with tattooed bicep and gave a glance noticeable only to the nothing, nothing but five dollars in their pocket and perceptive and receptive. My sister gave a nervous two babies, how they had worked and saved to get what smile in response and twiddled her fingers clasped she now had, a three-bedroom all-brick ranch house around the waistline swathed in a bright pink t-shirt built in 1975, a slightly older wooden ranch house next appliquéd with three kittens in a basket of flowers, to it, and then the Depression-era structure with no right matching her mother’s in girth. angles, unstained surfaces, or non-leaky parts—all on “Ma’am, I need a place by Monday. You know I got 45 acres of flat, fertile land. It had been part of her the cash. And like you said, I could fix stuff around regularly featured sermon on Work, after she and her here. I got my own home remodeling business and audience had achieved a certain level of intimacy. With work the snowplow in the winter like I told ya. I ain’t Earl the moment had come rapidly. gonna let this place run down. I’ll keep it up and pay Earl had been able to hide a prison record for a string you cash every month.” of crimes, from shoplifting to dealing, with a close- 1380 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 He could smell my mother’s desire for the cash, knew turtle-like pace, for my mother because of her painful that it would overwhelm that other part of her brain hips, for my sister because the wind came over the that might remember the lease whose language she expanse of land and blew out the cigarette she was couldn’t understand anyway. He saw the change in trying to light. Over dinner on the rewashed plastic- demeanor, the sternness and anger leave her round face, coated paper plates from Memorial Day, my sister heard replaced by a satisfaction, almost post-coital in its pleasure. my mother’s sermon on work and saving. Not only He saw also the daughter, whose scared stare could was our mother a stern moralist who imparted her own send small children scurrying to their mothers in the code, but in her way an optimist. She could tell that lanes of the new Super Wal-Mart in Canal Port, eight Earl was a nice guy, not like the others, who were la-a- miles down the road. Though she had not said a word zy and grrrdy (dirty). She could tell by how he talked he summed up her need faster than any computer could. so nice, how he had called her Mrs. Mislovic. She Had Earl gotten as far as eleventh-grade English class swabbed the sauce off her plate with bread and then he might have taken to heart the theme of carpe diem wiped her mouth with a dishtowel. My sister smiled at in Andrew Marvell’s seduction poem. Certainly, there her secret fantasy and my mother took this for agreement. was a coyness to the hulking woman with frizzy hair The evening meal was one of their more pleasant ones. beginning to turn gray, who was holding back behind It would be less than a year later that the house would her mother like a two-year-old in the presence of a go up in flames, but after Earl had cheated my mother stranger. Her expression kept shifting from one of fear, out of three-and-a-half months rent, not to mention the to need, to shy flirtation. Suddenly, a smile would utilities for the first month, including the installation plaster on her mouth, then as quickly disappear. She charges. He had not even gotten to the point of most glanced frequently at her mother, as if for direction. tenants’ creative excuses for not paying rent: the He gave as close to a smile of kindness as he could to enormous fuel oil bills and a well that went dry, always her, and she saw in that missing toothed grin fulfillment by the time in summer vacation when kids were cranky to a hunger she could not explain. and needed to jump through a sprinkler or to hose each English class or no, Earl would have said “yes” to other down. Earl had simply shrugged, having intimate “Seize the day!” But he did as well with “Give it all knowledge of tenants’ rights laws in New York State, you got!” and “Go for the gusto!” Had Earl been a bit knowing just how long he had before the sheriff himself more sophisticated and read Alan Watts he would have would actually come to the house and throw his meager justified his lifestyle on his motto of “live in the moment.” possessions by the side of the road. The fire had occurred, Or perhaps Joseph Campbell’s “follow your bliss.” accidentally for sure and not through any direct fault of Whatever terms it was put into, this philosophy was his, a few days before that day of reckoning. The Dodge one that Earl applied, particularly to his love life. For Charger was the only real asset he had anyways. example, the previous night. Earl smiled as the image * * * of Candi came to mind, Candi who had given him more How my sister got involved with Earl begins long than just a lap dance, and he had not even had to pay before that day he pulled up in his souped-up Dodge extra! Well, only a little rock to get things started and Charger. Nor was Earl the first one. The story begins, then boy did they go! as most do, long before one’s birth even, before the My sister imagined that the smile meant that he was sperm in that cataclysmic moment attacks an egg and falling in love with her. My mother imagined that he sets into motion a continuation in some sense—and in was thinking about how happy he would be to live in spite of our best efforts—our parents’ story. her house and lend a helping hand and save a little I would not have known about Earl and all the other money in the process. My sister, in spite of her best Earls that had rented the decrepit house on that efforts to hide this from our mother, who now spoke to godforsaken stretch of road outside the dying town with Earl in serious tones about the duties of a tenant, let paint-peeling gingerbread houses testifying to its long- the blooming love affair blossom in her imagination, gone period of affluence—when mules pulled barges in the manner of Danielle Steele novels. She let her down the canal—had I not been reunited with my other mouth stay up at the corners. sister, Anna. Once negotiations were over, rules reiterated and My mother would have said it was my fault for what emphasized with a level of sternness that went up as happened between Earl and my sister and the house each double-crossing tenant had demanded, mother and being burned down, even though I was a thousand miles daughter made their way back to the brick ranch at a away. Earl had been the closest my mother had been April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1381 able to come to a reliable son-in-law, which after all favored eye-popping shades of pink, purple, lime- was the purpose of having daughters. That had been a green—and yellow. She could always find the shoes, part of my father’s scheme as well in buying all that bags, and hose to match the yellow dresses that gave land. But like all of my mother’s practical advice in her the appearance of a lady daffodil as she made her this country of foolishness and folly, it fell on deaf ears. way down the mile of sidewalks to our house. Her I had divorced a perfectly good husband, one better brilliant attire, however, belied the sorrow that always than I deserved, and Anna had packed the U-Haul in accompanied her, sorrow that the priests at Saint Michael’s two days after husband number three had been accused did not even have time to hear about, as much as she tried of stealing money from my mother’s bedroom while to translate from her Croatian to broken English. he had been fixing the toilet. My mother, having her own reasons for being nervosa, It would take many years for me to talk to Anna and would commiserate. This was a country that did not learn all that had happened to our youngest sister, who understand sorrow, or work, or suffering. at the age of forty still toddled after her mother. “But at least you have a good girl,” Mrs. Yellow would * * * say about me at the stove. My sister’s story begins on Lilac Lane, twenty miles Some days I’d wash the windows or arrange my from the lonely wind-swept cabbage and corn fields of mother’s underwear drawer, listening to the voices her adolescence and adulthood. From my parents’ front rising up, and imagining my abilities to banish bedroom upstairs on Lilac Lane, I could hear her and nervousness by a neat house at 5:30 when my mother Anna’s shrieks of terror and delight mingling with the would come home. I could count on her being delayed other neighborhood children’s. They rose in a enough to inspect my work. I awaited the day when it contrapuntal chorus from the Jungle, a lilac-suffused would be good enough to keep her there, happy to be patch of overgrown land behind a horse barn that stood home in her house with her children. as falling testament of better times in our neighborhood I would be reminded of the Jungle more than thirty in Rochester. Amid the short-living vines and remnants years later, by Anna at her kitchen table, her husband’s of once carefully pruned bushes, the neighborhood efforts to get us to talk finally panning out. children forgot that our tiny Lilac Lane was three bus The Jungle was owned by Mr. Hoffman, the only man stops from the brewery and five from a Kodak plant. on Lilac Lane who wore a suit and tie to work. Mr. My parents’ own first investment in real estate was a Hoffman, unlike the other fathers on the street, was runt of a house wedged in on a former side yard between tall and straight and fit. His posture and walk said the large, plain clapboard structures of the first part of Executive. On summer evenings, he would park his the century. This small, plain box-like structure stood black Cadillac on the street and raise a suited arm to as one of two such attempts at modernization with infill his audience of parents on front porches, smoking, and building. The other was an ugly white ranch house straining the webbing of lawn chairs. Then he would wedged in sideways, with a garage defiantly facing the vanish into his large window-shade-drawn house. His sidewalk. The final attempt at modernization was the name was spoken in hushed, reverential tones. It was paving of the brick on the street in 1963. But after rumored he traveled all over the world on business trips that, investors and city fathers gave up on Lilac Lane for Kodak. He provided another glimpse at the outside and surrounding working class streets. world that added to the pastiche gleaned from the I would be hanging my mother’s dresses in a closet evening paper dropped off by the paper boy, Walter that emitted traces of her factory sweat and Right Guard. Cronkite reporting on the malfeasance of a government I lingered as I carefully arranged the expanses of draped that was killing our boys in a jungle far away, or the cloth on the rack, dreaming that my efforts would ease dramas of the “stories” on TV in the afternoon and the her symptoms of nervosa. She and Mrs. Yellow were more salacious ones in True Confessions. We fond of discussing symptoms, causes, and lack of cures welcomed anything from the outside that provided over a beer and cold cuts and rye bread while I stood at variety to the rounds of dishwashing, laundry, the stove and measured ingredients from a library book. piecework, and the routine darkroom tasks of trick Both had their self-cures: Mrs. Yellow, whose real name shifts. For me, Mr. Hoffman’s arrival in his black was not “Yellow,” but Jancar, used color therapy. Cadillac provided excuse to look up from my Yellow—in shades of chiffon, lemon, gold, and embroidery or darning on my own lawn chair next to sunflower—lit up her and her husband’s small apartment. my mother on our driveway that served a porch’s Fortunate for her too the fact that the fashions of the times purpose, having no automobile to fill its space. 1382 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 Mr. Hoffman’s house, closed off as it was, stood as a negotiating the price of calico with the schoolmarm reminder of the more genteel Rochester of the nineteenth with hair teased and aerosol-sprayed in a curlicued century. Before the large, square practical houses were helmet, her breasts hoisted up and out from under a built around it, I imagined the expansive, ornate house blue gingham gown to add to her character’s aura of had provided the living quarters for a family of Victorian feminine frontier pluck, and to point the young man girls like the ones I read about in a series of pink books I west. Or say the neighbor that rings the doorbell to pulled off the shelf of the mote-filled Avenue D Library. borrow a cup of sugar at just the wrong time to catch These girls were fussed over. Much of the dialogue the main characters in an embarrassing position, and concerned what bows and ribbons to wear with their gowns at the right time for the laugh track. as they entertained visitors in their parlor. Mr. Hoffman was above getting involved in the daily In later years, but before I could work legally, I would disputes and squabbles and money worries of Lilac eye Mr. Hoffman’s house from the one next door. That Lane. It would have been ridiculous to imagine him side-by-side two-family structure was rented by a sharing a cigarette with Mrs. Shulman and discussing divorcée for whom I did laundry on Saturday mornings. the price of lettuce, which she now had to buy for the Unlike my mother, Jean owned a dryer, so the number children’s pet rabbit, thanks to my father’s instigation of clothes that needed to be hung on the line consisted by raising rabbits for food. Yes, she would have told only of the most delicate undergarments, which she him, the Mislovic family ate their rabbits while she wore for her boyfriend, upon whom I’d stumble when sent her husband to buy lettuce for an overgrown 15- I’d arrive at the top of the stairs with a basket of folded pound white bunny. laundry. They would be in their underwear, cuddling It was the same with their chicken, Henny-Penny, on her waterbed, the door ajar, and I’d look away, intended as the main attraction in a kosher dinner, but dropping the basket in the hallway. who now enjoyed such delicacies as leftover Kraft On those Saturday mornings as I pinned and unpinned macaroni and cheese. Her squawkings and own lacy under-wire bras from the line, I’d glance over to complaints from the backyard as she settled in to roost the falling down barn. The house, an old Victorian for the night in the doghouse verified the general out- lady, was as shut off in the back as it was in the front, of-control state of Mrs. Shulman’s life since she had with the old-fashioned dark window shades pulled been forced to marry at age 17 and six children ago. down against the sunshine. But the children never Henny-Penny had been spared, but only through seemed to bother Mr. Hoffman, who came and went incompetence on the part of the butcher at the farmer’s affably, as if entering and exiting a hotel. market. Once in Mrs. Shulman’s cluttered kitchen, Mr. Hoffman remains a shadowy extra in my reel of Henny-Penny had leapt out of her bag, squawking her Lilac Lane from the early days of color film, in a defiance and flapping around, knocking cups, papers, documentary of hazy scenes that I splice together as I and cigarette packs from counters and table. Mrs. try to figure out exactly what happened to my youngest Shulman’s tap on the head with the tablespoon had only sister, once a laughing, lean-legged sprite dancing in enraged the chicken more and sent it on a frantic flight the overgrowth of the Jungle, running to catch fireflies. around the cluttered kitchen. After she had managed That is the way I like to remember her, what she became to shoo the chicken into the backyard with a broom, once she left my arms and the confines of our little Mrs. Shulman put on a pot of coffee and lit a Lucky house and yard, when she was able to run off with her Strike, pushing away papers, dishes, playing cards, and giggly friends. But in this jittery home movie that plays toys on the kitchen table. From the age of seventeen, in my dreams, there is fire and water, and it seems that this had been her method of coping with Life. I slip from one terrible choice to another—from a She sent Rachel to call on my father for his expertise conflagration to the rush of water over my head. This in animal husbandry that complemented his expertise home movie of fragmentary scenes ends always with in gardening, viticulture, wine-making, and spirit- this one: I am throwing my sister a line and then see distilling. But by the time Mr. Schulz had dropped my that she is too far out in deep water to reach it. I wake, father off from the railroad where they both worked, always, with the realization that I cannot swim. the chicken had her name. She was the center of attention of the semicircle of fold-out lawn chairs with Chapter 2 women foregoing their “stories” and children coaxing her with bits of Wonder Bread. All screamed as they r. Hoffman was like one of those extras you see saw my father approach with a large knife in his hands. Min the background, say the general store owner April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1383 “What’re you gonna’ do?” Mrs. Shulman, exhaling machine. Let him think he was so smart. Let all the Lucky Strikes, would say, of a pleasant summer factory owners, bosses, and foreladies think they were evening. “I’ve got a pet chicken.” smart. My mother may not have had the opportunity “What’re you gonna’ do? Look!” Pulling the cat’s to go to school in this country or to even go beyond eye glasses to her face, she’d point to the circular in eighth grade in her own, but that did not mean that she her lap. “Here they got a coupon (she pronounced it cue- was stupid. She could play their game and wherever pon) for ten cents off. But you know when you get there there were opportunities she’d take them. Meditating the price is gonna’ be 20 cents more than last week.” on these thoughts, it was pleasant for her to sit as It’s ridiculous to think of Mr. Hoffman in his business darkness fell on Lilac Lane and a breeze washed over suit or even golf pants and shirt sitting there with Mrs. her weary, sweat-stained body. Even a working woman Shulman in her loose snap-front, poly/cotton needed time to contemplate and think. Even Mr. housedress spending his breath on ten cents for lettuce. Hoffman wasn’t so smart. My mother, on the other hand, did care. Ten cents was And ultimately, on this point, I would have to agree ten cents. Ten cents meant another seam to sew against with her. In what happened to my littlest sister, Mr. the glare of the Italian forelady who smiled at her Hoffman had a bit part only. It was one that could compatriots, greeting them with “Buon Giorno, Cara,” have been played by any number of actors. I like to and then gave them the more lucrative bundles to sew. think of him now as a Prufrock-ian fool, someone who My mother had to work for every penny. No one gave sets the action into motion, his role as interchangeable her anything, my mother would say, her beefy hands folded as his business suits. The main action was across the around her waist and glancing up at Mrs. Shulman on her street from his genteel Victorian house. Center stage porch next door. And here you were in a country where was on front porches with metal railings, where women children were forced to waste twelve years in school. in housedresses held forth, while husbands sat off She did not say the last thing directly to Mrs. Shulman smoking and listening to the Red Wings game on the or to any other Americanci, nor anything about how transistor radio. Mrs. Shulman herself was to blame for wasting her money on cigarettes and such frivolities as gas to drive Chapter 3 out to the country on Sunday afternoons. Another example, the fact that Mrs. Shulman spent so much on r. Hoffman, of course, provided a foil for my lettuce was owing to her own stupidity and Mmother as well as a large part of the setting for wastefulness. For the price of an initial packet of seeds, our story with the Jungle. one could have real, fresh lettuce. Of course, that required For me, the Jungle was a fictional place, filled with work, from digging up the dirt, to fertilizing it with rabbit the romance of childhood that I gleaned from books droppings and composted leaves, to planting, and weeding from the public library. Although it was only across a and watering. Hmph! What did she expect? That narrow street, it might as well have been the someone would hand over lettuce to her for free? The Midwestern prairie of the Wilder Sisters, the Alps that way they did for the lazy bums on welfare? Heidi climbed, or the shores of Assateague Island that No. And no one gave her anything! the ponies named by Marguerite Henry galloped along. My mother’s reaction would be a combination of As I washed the windows of my parents’ front bedroom sympathetic agreement and contempt for Mrs. or arranged my mother’s freshly laundered bras and Shulman’s inability to figure out how to beat the slips, barks of dogs and shrieks of delighted terror, system, not only through the practical old world “you’re it!” “Mother, may I?” would rise teasingly. methods my parents had brought with them, but in more Among those screaming was my middle sister, Anna, strategic ways. For the latter method a slight smile two years younger than I. I would be thankful that she belied my mother’s sympathy. Her shopping was there for that would mean she would not be in the expeditions after the nightly house inspections brought house, disturbing what I had cleaned. their own rewards of nylons, scarves, and slips which In the afternoon, I could take one of my library books would help equal out the injustice of the country’s to the back yard, set up a lawn chair under one of my economic system. father’s dwarf peach trees and scramble up an Alpine Mr. Hoffman, too, was one of those Americanci who mountainside with goats, sail a boat, or gallop bareback saw himself as above everyone else simply because he on a pony along the seashore. wore a suit and did not have to work at a factory The truth was that I was hesitant and clumsy. I had been denied dance lessons, even though the father of 1384 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 one the girls on the street had offered to drive me with I was, and was already talking about her crush on Paul her on Saturday afternoons. When my mother had Revere of Paul Revere and the Raiders. found a pair of tap shoes at the Salvation Army and “No, she’s not,” I had responded. gave them to me with an air of generosity, I felt like a “Yes, she is.” fool after my evening of tapping on the pavement did “How do you know?” not produce Shirley Temple-like rhythms and “Just look at her! Look at her stomach.” Luba’s own movements. My athletic abilities extended to learning stomach was completely flat, like those of most how to read while walking back and forth four times a American girls, even though she was Ukrainian. But day to school. my own stomach had remained rounded from the time But had I still had the inclination to run and jump and when my mother had been forced to stay home. She scream unselfconsciously I would not have been able would encourage me to finish the bowl of Farina she to do so. Donna’s arrival, in spite of my mother’s had cooked for me, I am sure in at least double portion. insistence to the contrary to this day, precluded the time The debate ended with Luba telling me that she had or freedom to engage in such activities. overheard her mother discussing it. She offered to place Donna’s actual impending arrival was to the contrary a bet on whether there would be a baby by fall. of my mother’s claims, as well. Even when I tentatively In the intervening weeks my mother’s belly had indeed posed to her the suggestion of could we possibly be grown beyond the size expected for weight gain. And expecting a younger brother (as I was convinced it she was wearing the new, loosely gathered dresses. And would be), she had set her jaw, faced straight ahead Maria had given us the clothes, pushing them at my and continued walking. We were pulling our shopping mother to take them, speaking in a placating Croatian, cart, loaded down now not with groceries, but used “Wait, you’ll see. You’ll be happy when it’s born. I diapers, bottles, stained rubber pants, and t-shirts. think it’s going to be a boy.” That summer, new loose cotton dresses, home sewn, I had secretly decided to offer the name of Joseph as had appeared in my mother’s closet. I would wonder a suggestion because of its associations with holiness. at them, smell her smells coming through traces of I sat flipping through back issues of Ladies Home Right Guard, and dare not allow myself to think the Journal, admiring the sparkling floors in the ads for thoughts that my off-and-on best friend Luba, who was Mr. Clean, imagining myself as svelte as the smiling ten and a year older than I, had planted in my head: women gesturing to deliciously set tables that graced that my mother was pregnant. the magazine’s pages. As Maria’s murmurs of I did not know the Slovenian word for “pregnant” optimistic encouragement came from the other room, and would not have dared to say such a word in either I imagined all the happiness the baby would bring us. language. But we were walking the mile back from On the way home, my mother was not even holding the house of a Croatian friend who had three boys the other side of the handle of the shopping cart as she ranging in age from three to six. I was pulling the did when we would walk from the grocery store. She shopping cart loaded down with baby paraphernalia was making her way more heavily now. Anna was and clothes. Luba and I had had debates regarding my about a block ahead, running so she could get to the mother’s gestational state, with me insisting that my Shulman’s. mother’s belly had always been big and round, as were I ventured politely, “So we’re going to have a baby?” the bellies of my aunt and other women from the old “What are you talking about? Don’t be crazy!” She country. I had accepted that this was the normal figure continued plodding on on swollen ankles, her jaw set, for a Yugoslavian woman. Those who still had her face straight ahead. waistlines were either rare exceptions or American. We * * * were walking from Otto’s, where Luba had spent the “Denial is not a river in Egypt,” I would hear said quarter her father doled out daily, for ice cream years later in rooms with fold-out chairs with middle- sandwiches for each of us and a Coke for herself. aged people admitting their own faults, anxieties, and “Your mother is pregnant,” she had said matter-of- addictions other than the more easily identifiable ones factly. I was in shock as much by her saying the word of alcohol or drugs. I would be with a German-born that had associations with the forbidden and sinful as I friend, a woman eighteen years my senior, who advised was by the announcement that I would have a new me, “Millie, you have to let go and let God.” sibling. But Luba was always much more daring than I would also be struggling with a counselor whom I was seeing in my quest for self-improvement for April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1385 overcoming my dependence on antidepressants. It With Linda gone, I nurtured my friendship with Mrs. would be a woman sitting pertly dressed up in a brightly Voigt. She helped me get over my fear of squirrels. colored suit, matching scarf, and heels, or a man in She had names for all of those that lived in her yard: Birkenstocks with a small statue of Buddha on his desk. Chester, Chatterbox, Moxie, Runt, and Chelsea. Some “Post-partum depression is common. It’s an illness,” of them took peanuts from her hands, while her cat, would be the refrain. Sylvester, twitched his tail in the picture window. She * * * would interpret their words for me. When one would Changes had been coming to Lilac Lane and the chase another up a tree, she would smile, sometimes surrounding streets we trod, to school in the morning, laugh, “That Moxie’s a tease now! She said, ‘I’ve got then back for lunch, and twenty minutes later back to that nut!’” school after I had heated up a can of corn or made Mrs. Voigt did not smile at any other time, and that Fluffernutter sandwiches for myself and Anna. We was why the children called her “The Witch.” She knew the sidewalks well, where the cracks were, a habit would shoo them off her yard if they should cut across I keep to this day. We knew also where the sidewalk it in a game of tag or kickball. She did not want them heaved up and how to navigate the shopping cart around disturbing the homes of the squirrels. it on Friday evenings, as well as on this Saturday On that Saturday afternoon, we rounded the corner afternoon as we pulled our haul of diapers, bottles, and to Lilac Lane. I was now pulling the shopping cart baby clothes. Children knew too where to draw myself, my mother’s eyes straight ahead. Set. We hopscotch patterns with multi-colored chalk, and I passed Mrs. Voigt’s curtain-drawn cottage. She stayed would step around the patterns carefully with my library on her porch with her bowl of peanuts, eyeing us book open before me, passing women with oddly bright suspiciously. orange hair pushing reel lawn mowers, smiling Back in the relatively carefree days I was called upon benevolently at me. One even said, “You go ahead, occasionally to run down to Otto’s for a can of cat food, honey, pick all the violets you want,” as I guiltily for which Mrs. Voigt would sometimes give me the plucked them from her lawn. leftover pennies. But first we would have the But two summers before, the barber shop that my preliminaries of conversation. She got to know when father walked to for his bi-monhly trims had been I would be walking home from school and would be in ransacked in the riots. So had Otto’s from where we the front yard with the peanuts in her threadbare apron, had bought our penny candy, mine from the nickel stooping over stiffly and holding them out in a claw. I earned walking a kindergartner to and from school. would stop at a respectful distance to not disturb The family of the one other new house on our street Chester or Chelsea as he or she gingerly took the peanut built on a narrow lot between two big older houses had and then scampered away. been abandoned and was up for sale. The talk on the As I stopped with my books in my arms and my small porches and driveways was about decreasing property patent leather purse hanging over my shoulder, she’d values and fear that the house would be sold to blacks blaze her dark eyes amidst the straying gray hair at me or Puerto Ricans. We tugged locked doors an extra conspiratorially and begin with her commentary about time before leaving the street. Some of the small her daughter-in-law who spent her days spying on her business owners placed guns behind the counter. from her house behind her own. The topic would then Mr. Hoffman must have gotten divorced because his turn to the neighbors, and finally the government. That wife, who had rarely been seen to begin with, was never was why she liked squirrels, and Sylvester. They had around. Nor was his daughter, a sullen girl four years no ulterior motives. my senior, who had lured me into friendship, but in I never got to meet Sylvester in person, for I saw only exchange for my devotion, had tormented me one a glimpse of the inside of her dark house piled with winter during my first year of school by forcing me to boxes and newspapers, as I waited for her to get her sit in the middle of the snow-covered street as we change purse. But she sang his praises like a proud walked home. mother. Sylvester always washed his paws so neatly That had gone on for a few weeks until Mrs. Voigt after eating. He knew when it was time for his had gotten her son to come out of the house behind her breakfast, 6:30 on the dot every morning. He curled own. He had freed me from the captor who had needed himself up in her lap so nicely. only to say the word for me to obey her. Shortly after These observations went along with what I had been that time, we no longer saw Linda or her mother. reading in the Dr. Doolittle books from the library. 1386 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 Though we did not have any animals—Anna’s one crying for them. From my mother’s tales as we washed goldfish having flopped out of its bowl and dehydrated mud off our lettuce at the outdoor spigot or stretched on the multi-toned brown carpeting—I paid attention strudel dough on the kitchen table, I felt I knew them to Mrs. Voigt’s techniques and her patience. My better than the children around me. Indeed, I felt as if experience in attempting to nurture a friendship with I knew that little Alpine country better, that I was Heidi Linda had not turned out well. Luba, my sometimes wrongly transported to a place where little children best friend, was almost in the popular crowd, even were wasteful and disrespectful. I belonged in a much though she was Ukrainian. She never read books she greener land, where spring came sooner, where people didn’t have to. She was slim and physically confident were warm and worked hard together. I did not belong enough to put me on the handlebars of her bike, even in this alien land where one was judged by what she though I outweighed her. She had gotten her mother wore. I was not invited to the birthday parties of the to buy her go-go boots. She had straight blonde hair. popular clique in school, although I was asked to help If you took away her grouchy stooped-over cleaning with homework. I was different. I did as I was told, lady Ukrainian mother and tired old father clad in and that included going through the daily motions of Dickies work clothes, she could be American. the Pledge of Allegiance, with my hand on my heart, But my leisurely confabs with Mrs. Voigt would soon mouthing the words, but not saying them out loud. come to an end. On that Saturday afternoon she stared Yet, I had faith that things would turn out all right. I as she watched me pulling a shopping cart piled high would be as good as my cousins in Slovenia. Though with plastic bags of goods, a pace behind my very my mother had stopped saying nightly prayers with pregnant, red-faced mother, whose eyes blazed with me after I had betrayed her by admitting my love for determination into the far distance that no one else my aunt and father under cross-examination, I still said could see. the prayers for my grandmother, who had fallen off a Our father was in the basement as usual when we got hay wagon during our stay in Austria. I would do what home. I could to spring her from Purgatory—even though I The bags were unloaded from the shopping cart. I did not remember her personally. arranged the baby clothes and diapers in a chest of * * * drawers that our father had salvaged from the curb and My mother’s water broke during Lawrence Welk. It painted and placed next to an old crib in the hallway had been some time since I had been called upstairs by upstairs, between the small bedrooms of our little my mother who sat in the tubful of water Anna and I house. had just bathed in and handed the washcloth to scrub I had the same feeling I had the previous Christmas her back. Though Anna and I had gone through our Eve. All around me had been happiness and weekly bathing ritual our mother had sat uncomfortably anticipation, our dark and ancient Carthage #8 school on a straight-back chair from the dining room. Nor building festooned with green and red and gold. But a had there been the usual banter about the wide-grinning fight had erupted despite my mother’s and my efforts Bobby and Cissy leaping around in a vigorous polka, to make the best pugache. Our guests from Toronto with my father’s teases about how schlenk, or skinny left angrily and my father looked quizzically at a dining these American women were. Nor was there his room chair he had busted. I made things worse for my tickling of Anna on his Naugahyde recliner. mother by crying; she had rebuked me. “What are you The water had seeped to the carpet and my mother crying for?” Nor had the Barbie doll appeared among said some of those words in Slovenian that I knew the presents the next morning. intuitively not to repeat. And now Mrs. Voigt, my confidante, kept her distance My father put down his Topper beer with a worried from me when I appeared with my mother. Would she look. He called Toni from whose wife we had acquired too join the other forces, the children who had taunted the baby supplies. He was over within twenty minutes, me for my braids, for wearing their hand-me-downs, booming his greetings with a smile under his dark, little who had plucked hard green grapes from my father’s Hitler mustache. I locked the door behind them after cemented pipe trellis, hurling them into the driveway they helped my mother into his Plymouth. with “Yu-bo-SLOB-ian”? * * * Indeed, these children could be the demonic opposite Our father was back in his room when we woke up of my cousins in Slovenia, the children of my mother’s the next morning. He was alone, so Anna and I felt widowed sister to whom the Virgin had shown herself, April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1387 free to enter and climb into his bed. He was happy “Bugles!” even though he had had nothing to drink. “Ah, you don’t need it!” “Is the baby here?” we asked breathlessly. “But I want it!” “Yes, yes,” he said. “You don’t need it.” “Girl or boy?” “It’s good!” “Girl.” “How much is it?” My mother would scrutinize the It did not diminish my joy. price sticker. “Fifty-nine cents. That’s too much! Put “What color eyes does she have?” it back.” “Black.” “But Rachel’s mom buys it!” “What color hair does she have?” “No.” “Brown.” “I want it.” “When can we see her?” “Put it back.” “Today. This afternoon.” “Ple-e-ase!” “But we didn’t buy her any baby food,” I added. “It’s too much.” My father chuckled. “Ah, you don’t need to worry “But it’s good.” about that.” “Look at your sister. She isn’t carrying on the way “But what is she going to eat? We have to have you are.” something for her to eat!” “I don’t care about her.” He continued smiling and chuckling. “Don’t you Anna would take hold of the side of the shopping cart worry. Don’t you worry,” he said. and start hopping up and down. * * * “Opica.” The hospital required a transfer and the buses ran even Monkey. It was my mother’s favorite term for her. more sporadically on Sundays. So, after mass, my She never used it for me. But she would say it as Anna’s uncle came from the suburbs to pick us up in his red screams came from the basement on Sunday afternoons Impala. from where she was wrestling our cousin John, a year I admired the expanse of white polished floor that in age between us. She would say it when we walked greeted us as soon as we walked in. Our shoes squeaked over Driving Park Bridge to the “Rose Park” or the on it. We got only so far as the waiting room, though. zoo on a Sunday afternoon and she ran ahead and Children under twelve were not allowed. I did not get insisted on climbing every wall or playground structure to see our newborn sister that day. we came across. My preference was for the daydream- Anna did. She convinced my uncle to sneak her in. inspiring whirl-a-gigs or swings, where I could once But I waited patiently, sitting on the vinyl-covered again imagine myself on my horse galloping along the furniture, reviewing the recipes and household hints seashore or prairie. in the tattered women’s magazines. Anna came running But “opica” was a grudging term of endearment. My back, beaming her gap-toothed smile victoriously. mother said it with a slight smile. Being an “opica” Even when adults approved transgression I would not was okay, as long as didn’t involve anything extra on take part. It was my claim to superiority. Shopping my mother’s part. For that I made sure. Anna’s messes trips had been tests. Anna would beg, plead, whine, were confined to her room where her clothes piled in stomp, and cry to get the latest sugary treat, while I the middle of her floor and into which I would simply stood back with the disapproving look of a church lady. throw her items after cleaning the house for my It would begin this way, at the A & P. mother’s inspection. On weekends, she’d give the My mother would be loading up on the usual: flour, guests a tour, opening the door to my room with its onions, cabbage, meat, bread crumbs, sugar, lard, when dresser of dusted horse figurines and the Holy Family Anna would come running back, all knobby scraped and my little metal desk lined up with schoolbooks and knees with a bright package of new cereal, cookies, or pencils. Then she’d open the door to Anna’s room to snack in her hand, calling out, “Can I have this? Can I show them the contrast. have this? Can I have this?” “I don’t know how she lives that way,” she’d say. “I My mother would grab the package from her. “What tell her over and over: clean up you room!” is this?” The guests would murmur about their own children “Bugles.” being lax or that’s the way children are (if they were “What is that?” old and childless, like Mrs. Yellow). 1388 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 This would come, of course, after the chorus of She did not reply. The baby was fussing in her arms, approval of my room, everything dusted and kept so but she continued looking away. nice, even the Easter candy in foil I wouldn’t eat. Mrs. Shulman went over to her and took the baby We’d all proceed down to the dining room or living from her arms and started cooing at Donna. room where I would serve them the nice cold cuts. “Well, you are just a doll, you know that? You are In the A&P, once the tears started welling up, my just a precious little doll.” mother would relent and allow Anna to place the My mother stared up into the corner of the ceiling package into the cart. Until she’d come back with the away from them both. next item, we’d make our way slowly down the aisle. Mrs. Shulman continued, “Well, I don’t think I’ve ever I was her scout, spying out the best deals for her. seen a cuter baby doll girl. You are just so cute. Yes, I’d pick up a bag of Wondra flour: “Look, it’s on sale! you are. You gonna give a little smile? Give me a Do we need more?” little smile. Come on. Oh, I see you’re trying. Yes, She’d take the bag from me, thinking. you are. Pretty soon. You’re gonna be such a pretty “Yes, I paid forty-nine cents last time. Put it in! Put little girl. All the little boys’ll be chasing you.” it in!” My father soon opened the screen door and placed I would reserve my requests for the new cleaning his metal lunchbox on the kitchen counter and stood in products I’d see advertised on television. As we got the doorway to the dining room. closer to the check-out, when Anna came running back “How she is?” he asked Mrs. Shulman. with her package of two Hostess treats, devil’s food “Well, she’s just having a little trouble feeding her. cupcakes with white filling, pink marshmallow and And she hasn’t eaten anything herself either. She coconut covered Snowballs, or Twinkies, my mother wouldn’t touch my chicken soup.” She was still would turn to me and say, “Do you want something rocking her in her arms. “And we’ve got a hungry too?” little baby. A hungry little baby girl, don’t we?” Alas, my saintliness could not go as far as resisting a My father glanced over at Donna as if he did not package of such treats, especially when I knew that know what to do with the fragile object that had entered Anna would be eating hers in front of me, getting filling his house. all over her mouth and having the sweet smell meet “Vat ve do?” He was looking at Mrs. Shulman for my nostrils once the cellophane was ripped off. help. Besides, they were two packages for a quarter. “We can try the formula.” So, I’d reply, “Okay. I think I will. Thank you.” Hope came to my father’s face. The fact that Anna had to wait until we got home to “Most women in this country use formula anyway,” eat hers made her run ahead or lag behind complaining. Mrs. Shulman added. “It’s much more nutritious. We I, as usual, held to the other side of the shopping cart just need to get the right kind. Did they tell you what handle, helping my mother pull. kind to get at the hospital? ” * * * My father looked worried, as he did whenever A few days after my father’s Sunday morning something complicated like this came up. “I no announcement, the baby was at her breast and I dared remember,” he said. to sneak only glances. A cot and crib had been set up “Did they give you any brochures or write anything downstairs in the dining room. The answer to the down? Do you have any papers from the hospital, the mystery had been revealed. I had been given the task doctor?” of changing the diapers and rinsing them in the toilet This my father recognized and he pulled open the upstairs. I had come home from school, just changed drawer next to the silverware drawer in the hutch. He the baby and she was at her pendulous breast, looking handed over a large pink envelope with a teddy bear up at her, but my mother was looking away. Mrs. border. Shulman had been called in for some whispered Mrs. Shulman put the pacifier in Donna’s mouth. consultations. My father’s optimism gave way to a “There you go, sweet baby girl. I’m right here.” secretive moroseness. He would slink away from her She placed a red-lipstick kiss on her cheek, set her in glares, to his basement. the bassinette, and then lit a cigarette. She pulled the Now Mrs. Shulman knocked at the door. glasses that had been hanging from a chain to her face “Hi, honey,” she said, “I just wanted to check in.” and began reading through the material. Finally, she “How you doing, Irene?” she asked my mother. April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1389 said, “Oh, here it is! Similac. Yes, that’s a good brand. I arrived to find that Mrs. Yellow had taken all the I am sure Levine’s has it.” dishes out of the cupboard and was wiping down the Levine’s was the drugstore on Saint Paul Street. shelves with a dishtowel dipped in a toxic-smelling “I’ll go get it,” I said. solution of Mr. Clean. “Okay, hun,” said Mrs. Shulman. “You gotta a piece I told her in Slovenian that that was one of our good of paper? I’ll write it down for you.” dishtowels, not intended to be a rag, but she just kept I ran up to my room for a piece of notebook paper wiping until I was afraid the paint would come off. and Mrs. Shulman wrote down the name of the formula She kept muttering in Croatian to the Holy Virgin. in large round script. My father handed me a five- I asked where my mother was. dollar bill with a relieved air. Upstairs trying to rest. “You don’t have to worry, Irene,” she said to my Where was the baby? mother who was still glaring at the corner of the room Next door. As I ran out of the house, I heard her say, “You got I walked through the strangely quiet house suffused some good kids, Mr. Mislovic. Good kids.” with the smell of cleaning liquid and up the stairs to * * * my room to put away my books. I was glad to have something to do, to be entrusted My bed, which had been made up neatly as usual with this important mission by Mrs. Shulman who was before I had left, was now a wild mix of tangled now in our house, over from her own, into which I blankets and sheets. My closet door, oddly, was open would often look as I washed dishes at the sink. as well. And from within it I heard groaning. Looking across the narrow driveway, I would gaze into Pulling my few dresses and the dresses my mother the bay dining room window; there I would often stored in there aside, I spied her in a new nylon observe meals, card games, and social gatherings, my nightgown, given as a recent gift, hunched in the corner, sister Anna often in attendance. her short permed hair tussled up. She shot me a look I went down the baby aisle of Levine’s, a trip I had of hatred. “What do you want? Leave me alone!” made once before when I had bought a rattle from my I did not see anyone take her away. There were no birthday money as a gift for Donna in the days we were sirens. Mrs. Shulman kept me in the back of her house, waiting for her to come home. in the kitchen, with Donna. Her three teenage boys, Now I searched the lower shelves, where the large and Rachel and Sammy, trooped home for lunch and cans and bottles of formula were stacked. I took two we all had egg salad sandwiches. I ate everything, even cans, walked past the magazine aisle where Ladies though I did not like the chopped olives in them. Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Archie and *** Veronica comic books, True Confessions, and Playboy The next evening as I sat darning my father’s sock were lined up. A man in a dark suit was pulling out over a soup ladle on Mrs. Shulman’s porch, I asked one of the latter, with Miss September’s smile over a her, “I didn’t think you had to go to the hospital twice cascading cleavage greeting him. Mr. Hoffman glanced when you have a baby.” sideways at me without recognition. “Well, that happens sometimes, honey.” I ran home with the life-saving bag. Mrs. Shulman was rocking Donna in a little bassinette * * * and smoking a cigarette. We began the school year with a new baby at home. She continued, “Don’t worry. Your mother will be Mrs. Shulman checked in on my mother every couple okay. We’ll take care of your baby sister. You just go hours that first week. But I was called out of class for home and take care of everything there.” the first time. The principal stood in the doorway For the previous night’s dinner, we had had a casserole talking to Miss Zimmer. I heard my name, then given to us by one of the ladies my mother had cleaned “postpartum,” “new baby” in low tones. Finally, Miss for. But with its unidentifiable ingredients, most of it Zimmer said, “Okay, but I don’t know what a nine- had gone uneaten. year-old can do.” Now my father was home and had taken to heart the The class was astir. Even though Miss Zimmer had neighbors’ advice that he had to be strong, that he had instructed everyone to keep reading, a low buzz went to take care of his kids. He had decided to cook us around from desk to desk. dinner. Mrs. Angelo, the principal said, “Go get your things, He called me in and told me to get my sister. dear. Your mother wants you home.” 1390 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 It was an odd sight to have him at the stove, frying “But I want the Chips Ahoy!” potatoes in a pan. Our father looked anxious. He had not spent any time “Set the table,” he ordered me. in the basement since he had gotten home from work I placed the three dishes and place settings on the table and had instead set to immediately peeling potatoes. and poured some green Kool-Aid into Flintstones jelly “You can’t have Chips Ahoy for dinner!” I glasses for me and Anna, who placed her black elbows commanded. on the plastic table cloth. “Shut up! You’re not my mother!” “Ah! Look at you!” our father said. “You have to A panicked look drifted over our father’s face. “You wash up before you get in the bed.” can have one cookie. But then you have to eat “Yeah, and look at her hair,” I said, smirking at her something else, whatever Milka fixes.” blonde rat’s nest. “See?” She stuck her tongue out at me again and then “Why didn’t you comb your hair this morning?” he turned once more to the cupboard. She climbed on the asked. countertop and began pulling packages out of the top “I didn’t have time,” she replied, adding to me, “and shelf. mind your own beeswax.” She stuck out her tongue. “You get off of there!” I commanded. I stared straight ahead. “Shut up!” My father scraped the fried potatoes out of the black Our father stood up and came to the cupboard. pan with a bit of difficulty. But after he had piled up a “Here, I’ll help you find them.” He pulled out a mound in the middle of each our plates, we recited the crumpled bag of Pecan Sandies. Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary in Slovenian as we always “I don’t like those!” did before dinner. “You’re just too fussy,” I commented. After making the sign of the cross we looked at the “Shut up, you faggot!” gold, crispy potatoes. “See. She called me a faggot. I’m just trying to teach Anna stabbed hers with her fork and brought it to her her right.” mouth. She immediately spat it back onto her plate. “I don’t need you to teach me!” I had not had a chance to taste mine yet, but looked at I began calmly spreading mustard on white bread. her glob on the plate. “Gross,” I said. Our father said, “You have to listen to your older “They’re gross. I’m not eating them!” sister.” This was my opportunity to prove her wrong again. “But I had baloney for lunch already.” Anna, in addition to being sloppy, was a fussy eater. I, “Well, it’s all we have,” I said sternly. however, would eat cabbage, spinach, endive, every “Girls! We’ll go shopping soon.” vegetable my mother set in front of me. “Good! I’m getting the Chips Ahoy, and you can’t I put a forkful in my mouth. have any,” said Anna. Though a big fan of salted things like potato chips, “You can’t tell me if I can’t have something to eat in these fried potatoes tasted as if they had a cupful of this house.” salt in them. But I continued taking a few tiny forkfuls. “You probably already ate them yourself, you fat pig.” Our father too had only a few forkfuls, and then finally At this I would have hit her except that our father was said, “Ah! I put too much salt in them! No good! It’s there. Instead, I continued spreading mustard, and women’s work. Tomorrow, Milka, you make calmly turned to our father and said, “See? This is something.” what she does when I try to teach her right.” “But I’m still hungry!” Anna complained. He looked up to the ceiling of the kitchen. “Oh, dear He sighed, his black brows furrowed in worry. “Go God, what have you rained down upon me? What did find something to eat.” I do to deserve these troubles?” and then to us: “Things “I think we have some baloney,” I offered, getting up are bad enough without you two fighting.” and going to the refrigerator. “She started it.” Anna, though, opened the food cupboard and scanned Anna began crying. “I’m hungry.” its shelves. My father reached into his wallet, handed her a dollar “Where’s the Chips Ahoy?” bill, an amount of money she had never been entrusted “You can’t have cookies for dinner,” I said. with before. “Here, run down to Otto’s and buy your “Shut up!” cookies.” Then he went down to the basement, while I My father jumped in. “Don’t say ‘shut up.’” April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1391 ate my baloney sandwich. Needless to say, we forgot She turned to my mother and touched her arm lightly. to say our customary after-dinner prayers that evening. “Come on, Mrs. Mislovic.” * * * We both went up and kissed her cheek that she turned To buy anything other than penny candy, a Drumstick towards us. Then she turned away, towards the window ice cream cone, or the emergency quart of milk or loaf framed in white. of bread from Otto’s was quite an extravagance. But I remembered the fruit. the following week I was given a five-dollar bill and “We brought her this.” instructed to walk to Otto’s and pick out the choicest The nurse took the bags from us with a gentle smile. fruit for my mother. We were going to go see her in She peered in them. the hospital on the following day. “I’m sure your mommy will enjoy these later. That This was only the second time I had been entrusted was so sweet of you.” Then she gently led our slim with such a large sum of money, and I spent a mother away. considerable amount of time picking out bananas, * * * oranges, apricots, and plums. I also bought a package Better than Chips Ahoy cookies were the ones brought of wafer cookies as instructed. out to us the next time we went to the hospital to visit. Food was the cure. One needed to stay strong to fight These were the ones our mother made. They were soft illness and my parents were exemplars of that in the and full of melted chocolate chips. I could not hold new country. Who cared what the doctors said? Just back on those. Anna and I gorged ourselves, while our like the priests, all they wanted was money. All their father and aunt and uncle spoke to our mother in low advice—as on weight—went contrary to common tones in that shining reception area. sense. For example, two years earlier when our mother Each of us also had a sock monkey that she had made. had come home to announce that the doctor had just Had my prayers come true? I was hopeful that making diagnosed her with a bad heart and told her that her cookies and sock monkeys had transformed her, not time with us was limited, and Anna and I had shrieked only taking away her nervousness, but making her more and cried, our mother had reminded us how important like the mothers on the street who gathered and drank it was to be good and not make her nervosa. coffee some mornings, while their children played So it was doubly a surprise to see my mother for the around them. My aunt admired each beaming monkey first time in ten days, at the same hospital, but in a with its button eyes and red mouth. different wing. She wore a new dress, oddly out of “How clever!” she remarked, as she asked our mother style, cinched at the waist. Now she had a waistline. in detail how she made them. She looked almost American. She looked away, making a batting motion with her But she barely looked at us as we each held forward a hand. “Oh, they forced me to make those! I didn’t bag of fruit we had been in charge of on the long bus want to. I want to go back to work.” trip. * * * “Oh, I can’t eat,” she moaned, and began crying. “Well, yes, electroshock was used quite commonly Then my father did something I had never seen him back in the sixties,” the counselor would say. “She must do before. He put his arm on her shoulder and turned have gone through a lot. Is the one hundred milligrams to kiss her. still working for you?” “Leave me alone,” she cried. “Look at me! 135 Yes, I would nod, dabbing eyes, straightening my suit pounds. What I weighed in Slovenia! I am not well.” skirt for another afternoon at my desk or in my boss’s My father shook his head in worry. It was the look office, trying to sell more cars and hotel weekend that preceded a trip to his basement, but in the white getaways. polished building there was no relief. The medication was allowing me to sleep. The “Irena, Irena, Irena. Don’t cry.” screaming matches with Vince had abated, and I settled He dabbed his eyes with a neatly folded white into a pattern of getting along, grateful for the nights handkerchief. he would spend with me in my one-room apartment, “You put me here! Do you know what they did to happy to visit his parents’ house with his four sisters me! You pig. . .” and brothers-in-law, happy to help with the dishes and A beautiful nurse with piled high blonde hair came the making of spaghetti and meatballs, cannoli, and over, “Your mommy needs some rest.” Italian spice cookies. ∆ 1392 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 Catholicism to a “belief” that the pope has the ulti- BOOKS Books mate authority. The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on The “Roman Catholic Church” entry begins with Media Law, 42nd edition. Edited by Norm Goldstein. the following: “The church teaches that its bishops have New York: Basic Books, 2007. x + 419 pages. ISBN been established as the successors of the apostles 13: 978-0-465-00489-8. Paper. $18.95. through generations of ceremonies in which authority irst published in 1977, this “bible of the was passed down by a laying-on of hands” (213–14). F newspaper industry”—so named on the cover What a clever way to avoid saying what the Church page—informs us of its success by saying, also on actually believes, or acknowledging its role in creating the cover page, that “more than two million copies the cultural entity called Europe. The Catholic Church [of it have been] sold.” Consequently, the is reduced to “generations of ceremonies.” Nothing is recommendations given therein have exerted and said about the credibility of the Church’s origins. The continue to exert a major influence on how the world’s format in which the ostensibly non-judgmental problems are perceived by Americans. The book is information about “generation of ceremonies” is not only a guide in matters such as spelling or correct offered encourages skepticism about the intrinsic value meaning of words, but also in thinking about the world. of such an organization. A church that can be described It indirectly counsels what to include and what to as “generations of ceremonies” could hardly have done exclude, and how to navigate political, social, cultural, anything significant in history. In contrast, “Eastern technological, psychological, and other events. Orthodox Church” is described in a way that affirms Who does not want to be reassured about the correct the validity of its beliefs, as a church that “has roots in way to use capitalization (39), the proper spelling of the earliest days of Christianity.” abbreviated state names (231), or the correct names of It is this kind of subtle bias that makes this book an agencies in the National Institutes of Health (163)? untrustworthy tool for journalists. Better to use A However, Mr. Goldstein also gives definitions of Manual of Style published by the Chicago University problems and institutions that are often saddled with Press. (SB) bias, prejudice, and unfair historical generalizations. Consider “Eastern Europe,” said to be “no longer a Sibirskoe likholet’e [The years of Siberian tragedies], separate political unit.” Has it ever been such? by Szymon Tokarzewski [spelled wrongly as Consider the implications of the suggestion that it used “Tokarzewsky” on the bibliography page]. Translated to be a “separate political unit.” The only conceivable into Russian by Meri Kushnikova, edited by Viacheslav period of such unity was military occupation by the Toguev. Kemerovo, Russia: Kuzbassvuzizdat, 2007. Soviets, with all the violence, stunted growth, and 979 pages. Indices of names and places. ISBN 5-202- population tragedies this occupation entailed. But the 00079-0. Hardcover. In Russian. expression “a separate political unit” suggests a certain remarkable collection of the writings of Polish nostalgia, or at least a possibility that it might return Apolitical writer Szymon Tokarzewski, twice to being such a “unit” some time in the future. There sentenced to hard labor in the Gulag. Other than the may be political forces that would love to see that big mistake in the spelling of his name, the book is happen; however, from the standpoint of almost two carefully edited and translated, and a lengthy hundred million citizens of “Eastern Europe” who introduction is executed in a scholarly fashion. We celebrated the fall of Sovietism twenty years ago, a published excerpts from Tokarzewski’s works in the return to such a “political unit” is unthinkable. Do we 2005 issue of Sarmatian Review, available on the Web. perceive a slight anti-Eastern European bias here? A review to follow. Or consider the difference in the description of Eastern Orthodoxy on the one hand, and Roman Catholicism Biuletyn Instytutu Pami∏ci Narodowej, no. 4 (75), on the other. The first is said to be distinguished by April 2007, 116 pages; nos. 5–6 (76 –77), May-June “hav[ing] roots in the earliest days of Christianity,” 2007, 148 pages; no. 7 (78), July 2007, 116 pages. while the second is said to refer to “those who believe Warsaw: Institute of National Memory (ul. Towarowa that the pope, as bishop of Rome, has the ultimate 28, 00-839 Warsaw, ). ISSN 1641- authority in administering an earthly organization 9561. Zl. 6.50 plus postage from the publisher. In Polish. founded by Jesus Christ.” Note the affirmative and his monthly bulletin contains accounts of what used factual value of “having roots in the earliest days of T to be forbidden history: the real history of the Christianity” and the reduction of Roman April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1393 Polish lands occupied by Soviet Russia between 1944– II celebrations, ski weekends, fundraisers for poor 1989. Reviews to follow. children, and so on. The laudatory pieces about Polish Americans who led worthwhile lives will be of interest Polish Americans in California, edited by Gene mainly to their descendants and friends. The preface Harubin Zygmont, Artur Zygmont, Gillian Olechno- thanks various people who are said to have read the Huszcza (Part I), and Henrietta Simons (Part II). manuscript and provided “valuable suggestions.” They National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs and Polish apparently knew nothing of how to compose and edit American Historical Association [no place given], books. 1995. xii+ 269 pages. ISBN 0-940798-08-5. Paper. A chapter or two of conclusions and lessons learned collection of miscellaneous texts about various from all those activities would have vastly improved APolish organizations (or their chapters) in the book. For that the editors should have addressed a California, and the biographies of people active in these social science professor of Polish background willing organizations. The book has “Volume II” written on and able to dedicate time to streamlining, rearranging, its title page; from the introduction we learn that vol. I deleting repetitious parts, demanding that authors of Polish Americans in California was published in provide source material—in short, making sense of all 1977. these short pieces presented here in a raw form. An The book might provide some secondary material to inability to make contact with the academic world has the researcher who will finally write a critical history been an Achilles’s heel of Polonia throughout the of the Polish American presence in the United States. United States: perhaps books such as this one will serve It shows that Polish communities in California led a as a warning that, Father Jacek Przygoda’s good will vigorous communal life and that they fared well as far notwithstanding, some professionalism is required if as income was concerned. However, the book implies Polonia wants to gain a place at the table of American that these communities led a rudderless and ghettoized social life. ∆ life, without any serious goals except the tasks at hand. A number of concerts, balls, meetings, and so on took place, but they all occurred outside the mainstream, so Thinking Peaceful Change to speak. They were ghetto activities even if attended by non-Poles, and led to nothing in particular. The Baltic Security, Policies and Polish community in California, like virtually all other Security, Community Building Polish communities in the United States, urgently needs civic leaders to lead them out of their ghettos. By Frank Möller. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse In a way common to Polonian publications, the book University Press, 2007. xvi + 379 pages. Appendix of goes off in various directions without any attempt by security documents, bibliography, index. ISBN 13- the editors to “gather it all together” and provide an 978-0-8156-3108-8. Hardcover. $39.95. interpretation of trends, directions, and perspectives for the future (or at least suggest them). It is more like a laudation of various persons (including the Reverend John X. Knasas Jacek Przygoda without whose “leadership and inspiration” the volume would not have been produced, ith trepidation that the distillation of a it is said). T. S. Eliot once wrote that some people learn Wreview will do an injustice to this more from one play by Shakespeare than others from multifaceted volume, I would say that the the entire British Library. Toutes proportions gardées, work consists of two main parts: a description of this volume is like the British Library, with no selection Security Communities (SC) and Möller’s analysis of or ordering of priorities in sight. It is inadequate as the vagaries of putting together an SC in the Baltic Sea primary material for researchers, because it lacks area. A Security Community is a relation between bibliographical documentation. As an interpretation of groups of people in which the expectation for a peaceful Polish life in California, it also falters: there is no resolution of disputes has replaced that of force (13). indication in it of any planning for the future, just a Möller is a proponent of SC’s in the vein of Karl story of how people made music, received awards, Deutsch. Möller’s thesis is that the opportunities for excelled in their professions, and attended John Paul an SC in the Baltic area have not been exploited. An SC arises when values perceived as compatible 1394 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 translate into a sense of community. Its two forms are not follow from cosmic or natural laws, divine will, or amalgamated and pluralistic. The pluralistic SC retains geography” (113). Furthermore, “language constructs a legal independence of governments and Möller admits rather than reflects what is considered reality” (146, it is the most realistic (28). Disarmament, starting with 234). Postmodernism appears to come into play in this withdrawal of troops from common borders, is the manner. To avoid counterargument one first ultimate proof of a commitment to peaceful change deconstructs the supposed rational bases for the (38). Democracy is one of a number of paths to an SC contradictory claims. Next, in the light of that (45). embarrassment and the threat of continued conflict, one encourages a compromise and a retreat to compatible A deep spiritual and philosophical price is to be values. For example, to cool Baltic hotheads from paid for realization of the Security Community antagonizing Russia and obstructing the development project. . . . [it is implied that] no basis in reason of a Baltic SC (since Russia has already demonstrated exists for values. Values simply reflect the way commitment to peaceful change, 252–53) and that individuals have decided to exercise power. This is commitment is taken for granted, one points out that postmodernism in a nutshell. Europe has already moved beyond a Westphalian notion of a sovereign state by understanding the sovereign In the Baltic area opportunities for an SC include: state for the social construction that it is. Hence, Balts the nonviolent Soviet reactions to the Baltic should get in line with this change and not carry on independence drives, the nonviolence of the mass with so much autonomy and disrespect for the movements themselves (9), and the American Northern “legitimate interests” (297) of others. Europe Initiative (NEI) during the Clinton years (193– 95). The NEI shifted from interstate cooperation to the Next comes the suggestion that Europe has already use of NGOs and demilitarized security by following moved beyond a Westphalian notion of a sovereign a comprehensive conception of security (202). What state. Sovereign states are just social constructions left these opportunities fallow were security sectors in whose time has run out. the various Baltic countries (113). For their own interests, these sectors defined Russia as the radically The problem with Möller’s thesis can be expressed other (when scholarly evidence indicated otherwise, in at least two ways. First, if everything is a social pp. 252–53) that needed to be opposed in the mold of construction, then the “legitimate interests” of others Westphalian states. This Baltic self-imaging caused a is simply a function of how much trouble others could selected reading of the past for purposes of a certain cause. If you think that you have the power to deal idea of identity, stifled true democratic discussion of with that possible trouble, then the other’s legitimate security issues, and perpetuated security issues rather interests evaporate. From the viewpoint of great power, than resolving them. Even though this negative there are no legitimate interests of others. Hence, stereotyping of Russia was modulated for purposes of Mšller postmodernist enlargement on Isaac Deutsch NATO acceptance, Möller believes that it still simmers easily collapses back into that of the realists discussed below the surface of NATO proposals, and more so in in chapter 2. Second, can humans be satisfied the Bush years. Möller does acknowledge that Baltic postmoderns? Undoubtedly some can; but what about leaders were not so headstrong as to jeopardize most? Can a transcendent truth to which most of us negotiations for a Russian troop pullout (142). Möller aspire to be faithful be obliterated from the human makes all of the above points and others against a richly mind? In his Progress and Religion [1929], Christopher narrated backdrop of Baltic history from the late 1980s Dawson offers an arresting narrative of the history of until 2005. He also provides some discussion of culture from its most primitive forms to its twentieth- postwar Baltic guerilla struggles. century forms. The story shows the “religious impulse” Apparently a deep spiritual and philosophical price as the dynamic of culture. By this condition Dawson is to be paid for SC realization. SC members must means the recognition of something transcendent to become postmoderns. I understand that to mean that which one is obliged. Its identity oscillates, on the one no basis in reason exists for values. Values simply hand, between a being, e.g., the Wakan of the Dakota reflect the way individuals have decided to exercise Indians, Cagn for the Australian Bushmen, the Sun god power. Möller says that “all human actions are for the Egyptians, or nature itself and its patterns — expressions of power relations within society and do and, on the other hand, an interior moral code, e.g., the April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1395 Tao of Confucianism, the sacred books of India, or the Why Sienkiewicz? Eternal Right of Hellenic culture. Around these two poles swings the history of cultures. So, for example, Sienkiewicz and National Identity: With the autonomous Westphalian state is grasped as a Whom and Against Whom? product of Protestant culture that in its turn was the revenge of the personalist form of the religious impulse [Po co Sienkiewicz? Sienkiewicz a tožsamoÊç as it reacted against a certain kind of ossified ritualism narodowa: z kim i przeciw komu?] Edited by (e.g., the sale of indulgences) and other clerical abuses. Tadeusz Bujnicki and Jerzy Axer. Warsaw-Kiejdany- Łuck-ZbaraÏ-Beresteczko: Wydawnictwo DiG (http:/ The absence of religion in Thinking Peaceful /www.dig.pl), 2007. 430 pages plus color illustration. Change is especially glaring since. . . even the Soviets English summary, index of names, list of illustrations. acknowledged religion as a pillar of Lithuanian ISBN 83-9232-823-0. Hardcover. In Polish. identity and sought to eradicate it. Michael J. MikoÊ Dawson’s analysis stands on its own. Yet in my opinion, a philosophical understanding of the human ince May 2, 1883 when the first installment of as a natural, spontaneous, though often unconscious With Fire and Sword appeared in the Warsaw intellector of being underwrites Dawson’s writings. S newspaper Słowo, Sienkiewicz has reigned as Being is an intelligible object of unspeakable richness. the most popular Polish novelist surrounded by public Everything is included in being under pain of reduction admiration and critical acclaim. This volume contains to nonbeing. Hence being is also called the good. the proceedings of a two-phased conference held in Though anything will suffice for the abstractive Poland and Lithuania 21–28 October 2003, and in visualization of being, being can become intensely Ukraine 7–11 July 2004. The meetings brought associated with some things rather than with others, together scholars, mostly from the host countries, who for example, with the mountains, or oceans, or sky, gathered to reevaluate Sienkiewicz’s oeuvre and his even the self. A heightened presentation of being is place in the post-1990 world. They focused on two quite in line with Möller’s remarks about the legendary substantive issues: the multifaceted myth of Kresy (or, role of the vast forests in the Baltic psyche (242), as in Jerzy Giedroyc’s modern version, the historical well as with Kant’s remark about thinking of God when territories of Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus), and the observing the starry night. In deference to being as culture of the Sarmatian Baroque, both essential for the good, different cultures will organize around these understanding the Trilogy. Conference presentations heightened coincidences of object and being. were amplified by polemics and interlaced with Nevertheless, the intuition of being will guarantee a comments and panel discussions. Appendix I registered commensurability between cultures. Establishing a reports on Reading Sienkiewicz at school, while compatibility of values will not mean a deconstruction Appendix II listed responses to a questionnaire titled of that truth, but learning to distinguish things that truly Our opinion of Sienkiewicz’s place in contemporary embody being, i.e., are epiphanies of being, from other literature in which several Polish writers and critics, things that are merely associated with being. among them Czesław Miłosz (like Stanisław The absence of religion in Thinking Peaceful Change Brzozowski and Witold Gombrowicz before him), is especially glaring since, for example, even the revealed their negative fascination with Sienkiewicz. Soviets acknowledged religion as a pillar of Lithuanian In the introductory paper, “Sienkiewicz’s Place in identity and sought to eradicate it. If Dawson and Polish Literature and National Consciousness,” philosophers like Aristotle and Aquinas are correct, the Tadeusz Bujnicki recounts conditions in partitioned religious impulse will take its revenge on Security Poland during the nineteenth century. He presents Communities founded on postmodernism because the Sienkiewicz as the author of a national patriotic prerogatives of being cannot be eliminated from the program designed “to uplift men’s hearts” that drew human person and therefore from human communities its inspiration from the cult of the past. In her paper as well. ∆ “Sarmatism and Baroque in the Trilogy,” Anna Nowicka-JeÏowa reconstructs Sienkiewicz’s vision of the Sarmatian Baroque, its religiosity and love of freedom; its integrative formula of a multiethnic Poland 1396 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 comprised of Polish, Lithuanian, and Ruthenian the Ukrainian ethos. Natalia Jakowenko concentrated peoples; and its fidelity to the cultural tradition of on the difference between historical and literary truth. Latinate Western Europe. In “Sienkiewicz’s Reading Addressing the same topic, Tadeusz Bujnicki pointed of the Bible,” Jolanta Sztachelska identifies the Bible out that Sienkiewicz was writing about the history of as a covert source of Sienkiewicz’s writing, while in the seventeenth century in the nineteenth century, while “Sienkiewicz’s ars scribendi” she discusses his poetics, we in turn are analyzing his novels over one hundred aesthetics, and artistic strategies, placing his novels in years later. Stanisław Uliasz concluded that the topic the tradition of antiquity and the Polish Baroque. of Kresy as the cultural borderlands, forbidden by Sztachelska defines Sienkiewicz’s style as classical and communist censors, returned in the 1980s and has romantic, with strong reliance on the genres of world recently become a topic of vigorous research in Poland literature such as epic, drama, Shakespearian theater, and other countries. Similarly, the notion of Sarmatism, Baroque romance, and melodrama. Analyzing understood as a model of the nobleman’s worldview, Sienkiewicz’s art, Bogdan Mazan describes the culture, behavior, and knightly ethos, has become the development of his style that ranges from realistic subject of renewed study. chronicles to epics in the tradition of Homer, In other sessions a number of speakers took part in a Shakespeare, Dickens, Scott, and Dumas, seasoned discussion of “Sienkiewicz’s Cossacks and Gogol’s with elements of legend, fable, comic book, and Cossacks,” and a panel discussed “Kisiel, Chmielnicki, Western. Several participants describe Sienkiewicz as WiÊniowiecki—were they good Ukrainians?” Teresa a superb stylist and storyteller, and point out that his Âw∏tosławska read a paper on “Christians and the language finds resonance in the Polish ear to this day. Ancient World in Quo Vadis,” Jerzy Axer on “Rome in Thanks to his knowledge of historical and literary Quo Vadis” and “The Trilogy As a Role-playing Game,” sources, especially chronicles, memoirs, diaries, and while Andrzej Mencwel talked about Sienkiewicz and oral tales, Sienkiewicz succeeded both in creating a Brzozowski, Bogdan Mazan about Sienkiewicz and stylized language of the sixteenth and seventeenth film, and Tadeusz Îabski about Sienkiewicz and mass centuries and in fashioning a classical diction based culture. The conference also paid tribute to Henryk on Greek and Latin sources. Sienkiewicz the man, described by Ignacy Paderewski Discussing the issue of Kresy, Ewa Kosowska in 1915 as “the most praiseworthy, most estimable of assesses “Sienkiewicz’s Anthropology of Polishness,” all the living sons of Poland.” while Marceli Kosman identifies Sienkiewicz as a Pole, The rich material culled from the conference European, and Slav who showed particular interest in produced a variety of topics, approaches, and the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Beata interpretations, making for uneven reading at times. Kal∏ba reports that during the period of the national Yet a vigorous exchange of ideas advanced from revival Lithuanian critics took exception to different national perspectives affirms Sienkiewicz’s Sienkiewicz’s version of their country’s history. art, and opens vistas for new research in a postcolonial Tadeusz Bujnicki recalls “A Romantic Picture of spirit. ∆ Ukraine,” seeing it as a historic vision based on the tradition of the “Ukrainian school” in Polish literature The Last Mazurka represented by Antoni Malczewski, Józef Bohdan Zaleski, Juliusz Słowacki, and others, and promoted A Tale of War, Passion, and Loss by the “Cracovian school” of history (Karol Szajnocha amd Michał Bobrzyƒski). This romantic fiction, By Andrew Tarnowski. New York: St. Martin’s Press, captured in the paintings of Józef Brandt, advances the 2007. xv + 348 pages. ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36740-4. topos of the Wild Steppes, a world steeped in Ukrainian Paper. $24.95. folklore, myth, and historical legend and inhabited by Cossacks, Ruthenians, and Sarmatians, who are Anna Muller entangled in a ruthless fraternal struggle. The Ukrainian point of view on Sienkiewicz was also emoirs and family sagas provide a unique insight present. In a discussion devoted to Ukrainian history Minto a world that no longer exists, into stories and Ukrainian revival, Wołodymyr Krawczenko not recorded by history textbooks, and into the ways discussed formation of the nation and national myths, that people learn to cope with their reality. These stories, paying special attention to the role of the Cossacks in taking place against the backdrop of better-known April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1397 historical events, personalize and add a particular flavor Andrew Tarnowski received a good education at private to history. Andrew Tarnowski’s memoir is such a book. schools. After a short visit to Poland in 1967, he Driven by the need to explain his origins to his children, returned to Poland in 1987 for almost five years as a Tarnowski tells the story of a Polish aristocratic family Reuters Warsaw Bureau chief. throughout the twentieth century: the turbulent birth This memoir is an attempt to piece together numerous of an independent Poland after the First World War, pieces of stories that emerged from the author’s their escape from Poland across Europe at the dawn of conversations with family members into a narrative that the Second World War, and finally their settlement in would compensate for his family’s cultural losses as postwar England. By depicting this aristocratic family, well as provide an identity and heritage that he missed Tarnowski opens a world full of conflicts and dramas— as a child of immigrants. It is also a quest to recover in other words, wounds that might not yet have healed some of the splendor of the ancestral aristocratic legacy for many members of his family. that the Tarnowski family was deprived of by Poland’s The story begins in 1914 with the marriage of the neighbors’ aggression. Not surprisingly, the book author’s grandparents, Wanda Zamoyska and Hieronim describes many more family dramas than actual Tarnowski. This arranged marriage, which took place historical events or problems. For example, readers ten days after the assassination of the Archduke Franz learn about the Nazi and Soviet invasions of 1939, and Ferdinand, turned out to be disastrous from the wedding yet they are kept far away from the miseries of the night (with Hieronim attempting suicide after failing war. As Tarnowski stresses, some members of his to consummate the marriage) and eventually led to a family not only managed to survive but even thrived family scandal (Wanda became pregnant by her lover “on a heady mix of high society, hard work, and exotic Alfred Potocki) and a divorce. According to Tarnowski, adventures” (275). apart from being terribly mismatched, there was another Yet, by the same token, the aristocratic perspective reason why his grandparents should never have is perhaps what makes this book interesting. The married—Wanda and Hieronim were probably first memoir reveals an impressive network of aristocrats cousins. But Tarnowski adds, “Perhaps the family did helping those in a similar social position, from not consider the issue worth raising, since such affairs aristocratic Romanian families sharing their clothes and were common among the Polish aristocracy” (19). toiletries with aristocratic Poles to the Egyptian Prince After revealing his grandparents’ deeply hidden secrets, Youssef Kamal ed-Dine. Another remarkable aspect Tarnowski discloses the unhappy stories of Wanda and of this story is that of Polish aristocrats who decided Hieronim’s children, StaÊ and Sophie, who followed not to return to Poland after the war. This quandary is their parents’ path of miserable relationships. The well reflected in the life of Andrew’s father, StaÊ, who, author’s father, StaÊ Tarnowski, emerges as a hard- after having some heroic moments during the war, drinking and abusive husband who used to beat his moved to England where he lived in obscurity and wives out of pure frustration. His marriages—first to penury until he decided to move back to Poland. Tarnowski’s mother Zofia (nicknamed Chouquette after A quick look at Tarnowski’s father as well as his a French pastry) and then to Ada Lubomirska—were father’s numerous female life companions highlights full of extramarital misadventures. After the Second yet another interesting dimension of the account. In World War StaÊ moved from England to Poland, where the book men are usually portrayed as abusive, hyper- he lived a dysfunctional life with his children, wife, masculine, and yet weak in the face of challenges posed lover, and his lover’s lover. to them by the world. Women, on the other hand, are gentle, feminine, beautiful, and yet resourceful, and in Tarnowski’s book raises interesting questions moments of need they express formidable self-control about gender dynamics within the Polish aristocracy and unbreakable courage. Despite the fact that the men and even gender stereotypes in memoir literature. and women in this book appear at times overly one- dimensional (at least in Tarnowski’s descriptions), his The author himself was born in Geneva, Switzerland discussion raises interesting questions about gender in 1940 where his parents stayed for a short while after dynamics within the Polish aristocracy and even gender fleeing Poland via Romania and France. From stereotypes in memoir literature. Switzerland he was shuffled across Europe through One of the merits of the book is the author’s rich Italy to Egypt. After the war, his mother Chouquette descriptions. Tarnowski describes in full detail old and her second husband moved to England, where Polish dances such as mazurkas, aristocratic rituals, 1398 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 even oddities in an individual’s gait. He pays They thus distinguish these economic migrants from significant attention to objects—many of historical post-World War II political refugees, or emigracja significance, such as the flag of King Charles Gustavus polityczna. Fleeing a lack of economic opportunity in of Sweden captured in the seventeenth century, and a partitioned Poland, the economic migrants provided some of sentimental value, such as the wallet and red the backbone for America’s urban industrialization. rose that Andrew’s mother gave her husband as Christmas presents when he lay in hospital after the One of American Polonia’s achievements was to siege of Tobruk in 1941. These objects—the wallet forge a common Polonian identity on foreign shores scuffed with age and the crumbled remains of rose from among disparate groups of Pomeranians, petals that Tarnowski still keeps—serve as captivating Mazovians, and Galicians that came from palimpsests, little pieces that pushed Tarnowski to write partitioned Poland. a narrative that would tie the objects and recollections together. While the emigracja za chlebem may have been For these very reasons this very emotional and at economically motivated, Galush’s book shows that times disturbing narrative is also a problematic Polonia did not live on bread alone. Galush is professor document. With its colorful descriptions comes the of history emeritus at Loyola University in Chicago. author’s tendency to be overly sentimental and His monograph examines how those Polish immigrants nostalgic. Narrating stories heard in Aunt Sophie’s created and developed communities built on competing “absurdly untidy kitchen,” Tarnowski passes along his visions of Polishness (polskoÊç) in four localities: family’s longings and admiration for archaic traditions Cleveland, Ohio; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Utica, New and great men who had once held power in Poland. In York; and New York Mills, New York. His work doing so he also repeats without much of a critical eye generally agrees with other recent research (e.g., Karen some of the stereotypical images of Poles, such as Majewski’s Traitors and True Poles [2003]), and it “traditional Polish bravery,” or Polish readiness to fight encourages scholars to revisit the intellectual and for other countries’ freedom that “became almost cultural history of these immigrants. They may have second nature to Poles after the eighteenth-century been limited in terms of formal educational attainment, Partitions” (138). but it does not follow that they neither thought nor read. Regardless of these shortcomings, this is a very Far from being Stanley Kowalski-like “dumb readable book. Even with its one-dimensional Polacks”—short on brain but long on brawn—the characterizations, absence of criticism, and omissions emigracja za chlebem was sufficiently ethnically and of some topics, it offers plenty of interesting insights. ethically conscious that its contemporary elite was able If paired with other recollections from the same time to forge a common Polish identity on foreign shores period it could make a valuable addition to the syllabi from among disparate groups of Pomeranians, of courses on the twentieth-century history of Poland Mazovians, and Galicians that came from partitioned or Central Europe. ∆ Poland. Galush studies how that Polonia constructed For More than Bread community in a variety of contexts, but primarily parishes, fraternal organizations, and schools. He also Community and Identity in American observes the process of forging a Polonian identity, Polonia neither completely Polish nor totally assimilated American, but a blend of both. He probes how the By William J. Galush. Boulder, CO: Eastern European First World War constituted a watershed moment for Monographs distributed by Columbia University Press, Polonia: on the one hand, the old country’s 2006. 312 + xi pages. Index. ISBN 0-88033-587-4. independence was imminent; on the other, pressures Hardbound. $40.00. on immigrants to “Americanize” were never greater. He also studies how the generation of immigrants’ John M. Grondelski children acquired a separate Polonian identity, one that distanced itself from now-independent Poland and one olish Americans refer to the Great Immigration of that would reshape the cultural and institutional life of PPoles to the United States between 1880 and 1920 Polonia as it then existed. as emigracja za chlebem, or economic emigration. April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1399 What particularly commends this study is its focus New gender roles, economic assimilation and success on four relatively small Polonian communities, two in by the first generation born in America, as well as the Rust Belt and two in New York State mill towns. changing styles of leadership are further examined by Monographs on the emigracja za chlebem tend to focus this book. All in all, Galush provides insights into the on Chicago or larger metropolitan areas to the neglect dynamic and community life of nineteenth- and of other Polonian communities (although James S. Pula twentieth-century American Polonia. While some has written comprehensively on the Polonia of New critics have contended that this book does not offer York Mills). Galush overcomes that bias, and his sufficient generalizations and analysis, in my opinion attention to Polonia in the mill towns should stimulate such criticism misses the mark. The significance of this yet-nonexistent research on Polonian settlements in book should be sought in the data it provides. Polonia New England. still needs basic field research, such as represented by This book does not arrive at new and radical Galush’s book, before it begins to theorize itself. ∆ generalizations or conclusions. Its value lies in the details of field research. It seeks to probe the fabric of Polonian communities. For example, in his discussion of the Polonian parish in chapter 4, Galush sensitively Letters discusses the delicate interplay of clerical and lay influences in a specific parish. While conceding that What is “Eastern Europe?” pastors needed to “persuade as well as command,” The September 2007 issue of the Sarmatian Review Galush acknowledges that contemporary sacerdotal published a short review of my book Euro-Orientalism, self-image “encouraged an authoritarian style.” which I find fallacious and arbitrary. I do not mind Galush’s particular contribution is acknowledging that being criticized for my opinions and interpretations. factors unique to America impacted clerical leadership But I find this case disturbing, as the author, Ms. Sally styles. On the one hand, parishes were often launched Boss, argues against opinions I do not hold. She makes as lay initiatives, sometimes including the recruitment me appear as having exactly the opinions I criticize in of a priest. On the other hand, Polish clergy in America my book, and invents statements that are alien to my were not constrained by wealthy szlachta benefactors work. She says that I claim that “Euro-orientalism was and instead benefited from the emphasis in American an Orientalism avant la lettre.” My book argues exactly Catholicism on “clerical dignity” (71). Galush pays the opposite. It is Larry Wolff’s Inventing Eastern attention to the mediating role of Polonia’s clergy, Europe that has such claim (Wolff argues that there acculturating Polish Catholics to the Catholic Church was a discourse, a body of scholarship and “specialists” in America while simultaneously defending the in Eastern Europe already in the eighteenth century). interests of their parishioners vis-a-vis diocesan bishops My work shows that Wolff is wrong, and that there is and chanceries who regarded a successful ethnic parish no Euro-orientalism properly speaking before the as sooner or later doomed to extinction. second half of the nineteenth century (see page 246); I Galush’s treatment of education in chapter 5 tells us explicitly say that Orientalism, as studied by Said, more about Polonia through its details than its broader emerged well before. Another example. The reviewer conclusions. Parochial schools were founded because says: “Adamovsky conflates Russia and the countries immigrants wanted their children to obtain a situated between Germany and Russia, calling all of religiously-based education. But they also emerged them ‘Eastern Europe’”, and accuses me of making no because parochial schools were encouraged by the distinction between Russia (which the reviewer seems American Catholic Church, eager to shield young to consider truly “Oriental”) and countries like Poland, people from Protestant-influenced public schools. Czech Republic, etc. which the reviewer considers Galush argues that parochial schools often had to “Central European.” But the whole point of my book compete with public schools: immigrants were tempted if that “Eastern Europe” is an ideologically biased by free public education. He also suggests another concept, and therefore makes no sense to use it neither factor: kindergartens existed in Austrian and Prussian for Russia nor for any other European country. I do Poland and in American public schools, but sometimes not “call” those countries “Eastern Europe:” if not in Polish parochial schools (101). This additionally anything, I argue AGAINST calling them Eastern tempted parents familiar with†such kindergartens in Europe! That is the main point of the whole book. Third the old country to opt for public schools. example: Ms. Boss argues that I am wrong in claiming 1400 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008 that Western intellectuals and academics shaped the Ms. Boss responds: image of Russia prevalent in the West in the period of Professor Adamovsky does not see the elephant in the my research. On the contrary, she says, it was Russia room and instead goes off on tangents. The elephant to that “imposed on the West an image of Russia;” and which my review referred was the fact that the book she accuses me of ignoring this “fact.” But my book about “Russia” took the French Enlightenment image explores the two moments in which Russians and of “Russia” for granted, without pointing out its Russophiles managed to seriously influence public fundamental flaw — namely, that much of what was opinion in Western Europe: with the myth of Peter the taken to be “Russian” belonged in fact to the other Great en the eighteenth century, and with the myth of nations of the empire. Whether Adamovsky is for or the Russian “democratic” peasantry in the nineteenth against the usage of the expression “Eastern Europe” century. My work devotes two entire chapters (nos. 1 is irrelevant; what is relevant is that he writes about and 4) to exploring the degree of that influence. So it “Eastern Europe” without mentioning a single Eastern cannot be said that I “ignore” the participation of European non-Russian writer. Russians and Russophiles in the making of discourses. Adamovsky is so deeply entrenched in the But my book also proves that the liberal image of Enlightenment paradigm of “Eastern Europe” that he Russia, which was entirely created in the West, does not notice what my review was about. His combated those Russophile representations and bibliography confirms that the Enlightenment construct eventually became hegemonic. Finally, the reviewer called “Russia” is the only construct about the region says that my “unstated premise” is that “Western he is prepared to entertain. He is unfamiliar with basic epistemology (based on Aristotelian logic) is just one histories of the region by authors such as Andrzej of the many epistemologies of equal value in the Nowak, Jan Kieniewicz, Michał Bobrzyƒski, world.” From that, she jumps into accusing me of Aleksander Gieysztor, Henryk Wisner, Thomas believing that the opinions of “present-day Masaryk, and others. While ostensibly arguing against Russophiles” are of equal worth as those of the main Orientalization of “Russia,” he engages in a classically Western philosophers or academics. This is simply orientalizing enterprise with regard to the cultures and ridiculous. I do not even mention any “present-day countries of the region by simply ignoring their Russophile,” nor do I endorse any of their claims. I do existence and not pointing out that the French not believe or say in my book that “Western Enlightenment’s view of “Russia” was fundamentally epistemology” has anything to do with Euro- flawed. While it is true that these countries were wiped Orientalism (and I certainly do not deal with, or even off the map owing to Russian expansionism, their mention Aristotle’s logic). Quite the opposite, I argue existence in the region should have weighed in on AGAINST postmodern authors who believe that the Adamovsky’s critique of French theorizing. It did not. different types of Eurocentric discourses (such as Euro- Adamovsky does not seem to understand that the Orientalism) are nothing but a peculiar Western great conflict in the territory he calls “Russia” was that “episteme” (pp. 267–69). My work explicitly says that of the Catholic and Protestant countries colonized, Euro-Orientalism is not an “episteme” as valid as any suppressed, and exploited by the Muscovite Kingdom other, but a form of “class ideology” which is therefore whose political system and traditions derived from the of little value when it comes to helping us understand nearly infinite Mongol greed for land. This conflict was reality. The Introduction of my book argues extensively entirely suppressed by the French Enlightenment against postmodern “textual” approaches and in favor writers, and also by Adamovsky, who follows them in of “social” analysis of discourses. When rereading Ms an uncritical manner. By not challenging the flawed Boss review, it becomes to me very clear that she has Enlightenment narrative of Russia versus Eastern not read the book at all, but rather gave it a “quick Europe, Adamovsky elevates it to the status of accepted look.” I feel sad that my work of ten years was so historical truth. disrespectfully treated in a serious and valuable journal Adamovsky protests that he too is against the like the Sarmatian Review. Let me say it once again: I expression “Eastern Europe.” He is, but not for the do not complain about being criticized (that’s part of reasons indicated above. Nowhere in his text is there a the deal in academic life). I just find it totally unfair hint that the author comprehends the conflict between having to deal with the opinions of someone who the Muscovite land kleptomania and Muscovite obviously has not read my book at all. westward expansion on the one hand, and on the other Ezequiel Adamovsky, University of Buenos Aires the “Eastern European” desire to be left alone to pursue April 2008 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW 1401 the region’s multiple identities. Adamovsky readily follows the Enlightenment and Russian usage that On just and unjust wars (excerpts) compresses Russia’s western colonies and ethnic Russia. In other words, Adamovsky ignores the fundamental Stanisław of Skarbimierz (1360–1437) problem of the region. He consents to the misleading From Sermones de sapientia selectae/Mowy wybrane o word usage initiated by the corrupt intellectuals in màdroÊci, edited by Mirosław Korolko (Kraków: Arcana, France (Catherine II bestowed significant financial gifts 1997). Translated by permission. on Diderot and Voltaire), and concentrates on what Russian and Russian-influenced French writers have “Do not pick a quarrel with a man for no reason, if he to say about the region. One cannot write this way these has not done you a bad turn,” counseled King Solomon days even about black Africa: why should Eastern (Proverbs 3:30). Even more so, do not start a war Europe remain the sole territory where orientalism is against the entire nation, kingdom, principality or not challenged? society that did you no wrong. Jesus told us, “All who Incidentally, Edward Said’s use of the word take the sword die by the sword (Matt. 26:52).” “orientalism” gave a radically new meaning to this This has been said about those who take up arms term. Contrary to Adamovsky’s suggestion, without an explicit order from a monarch or a judge. “orientalism” after Said means something different than As St. Augustine says in Book 2 of his treatise against what Adamovsky suggests. In speaking of “Orientalism the Manicheans (Contra epistolam Manichaei quam avant la lettre” I meant precisely this relationship dicumnt fundamenti), “taking the sword” means taking between Said’s radical and creative usage, and up arms without the order or permission from the historical interpretations of “Russia” and “Eastern authorities. If the monarch or the judge commands us Europe” to which it can be applied. to take up arms, then the sword is used because Sally R. Boss, Houston, Texas someone else ordered us to use it, and the user is not to be punished. Those who ordered it, if the cause is unjust, will be punished. . . . About the Authors Thus kings, princes, counts and barons should diligently consider the question of whether the wars Slovenian-born Mary Grabar teaches English at Emory they wage are just or unjust. The Psalmist says: “Be University and Georgia Perimeter College. Her short mindful then, you kings; learn your lesson, rulers of stories and poetry have been published in The Pedestal the earth: worship the Lord with reverence (Ps. 2:10– Magazine, The Saint Ann’s Review, Ballyhoo 11).” This also means: before you begin a war, find Stories,and elsewhere. out whether it will be just or unjust, so that you know John M. Grondelski (PhD, Fordham) is an independent whether justice is on your side. scholar living in Washington, D.C. He was formerly Therefore, no king or prince is allowed to rise against Associate Dean of the School of Theology at Seton another kingdom or principality without a just reason; Hall University in New Jersey. such actions are forbidden by God and the law. If the John F. X. Knasas is Professor of Philosophy at the king or ruler does not obey, he can look forward to the Center for Thomistic Studies, University of St. Thomas most severe punishment, and the greater the damage in Houston, Texas. he caused and the larger the number of people he killed, Michael J. MikoÊ is Profesor of Slavic Languages at the more severe the punishment will be. the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His new In some cases, a person can take the sword to regain book, Polish Literature from 1918 to 2000, will be stolen property or to defend his homeland without an published in 2008. order of a king or the Church; such is the opinion of Anna Muller is a graduate student in history at Indiana Brother Wilhelm from Rennes and Pope Innocent IV. University. Of course one has to pay attention to the circumstances. Stanisław of Skarbimierz was appointed Chancellor But if a king or a monarch attacks someone’s country, of Jagiellonian University in 1400. He assisted Polish occupies its cities and steals its wealth; and if the representative Paweł Włodkovic at the Council of aggrieved party cannot instantly produce an army to Konstanz (1414–1418) where Poland argued her case take the cities or the wealth back, but does so only after against the Teutonic Knights bent on seizing Polish a period of time, say a few months—that party is entitled territory. to take back whatever was taken away from it. ∆ 1402 THE SARMATIAN REVIEW April 2008

Announcements and Notes Give Kevin Hannan’s untimely death Kevin Hannan, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Łódê, died in January 2008 in that city. where it really counts He was one of our reviewers; the January 2008 issue of Sarmatian Review carried his essay on a book about support the Tatra Mountains. Born in Texas, he received his doctorate in Slavic Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Borders of The Sarmatian Review Language and Identity in Teschen Silesia (1996) which received the 1996 Orbis Books Prize, and of a bilingual volume of essays Moja Polska: Eseje o polskoÊci/My Poland: Essays on Polish Identity (2005). My Poland expresses the author’s ardent sympathy and even love for Poland, its people, and its history. Kevin also showed deep empathy for other Slavic peoples, particularly for Russians and the Moravian Czechs. He was in his 50s and complained of poor health for some time. He will be missed. Requiescat in pace. Pilgrimage Tour to Poland by one of our subscribers Victoria Travel, Inc., of Waterford, Michigan, will lead a tour to Warsaw, Toruƒ, Cz∏stochowa, Wadowice, Kraków and other historical sites in Poland, between May 5–19, 2008. Cost: $2,595.00 (includes airfare, bus transportation inside Poland throughout the tour, admission charges, accommodations, and most meals). The Anya Tish Gallery More information and reservations: Victoria Travel, 4411 Montrose # C, Houston, Texas 77006-5854 Inc., 1061 Cobblers Road, Waterford, MI 48327, tel. phone/fax: 713-524-2299 248-738-6266. Artwork and paintings from Central and Eastern Europe

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