Read Online Swans Are Fat Too by Michelle Granas - Free Book Online
Authors: Michelle Granas
Tags: Literary, Literature & Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Women, Women's Fiction, World Literature, Eastern European
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the prisoners of inter-tribal warfare were sold to Roman traders, later from raids of the Vikings and Slavs living along the Baltic. Sometimes also, impoverished parents sold their children.
Sell Maks? Hmm, there was an idea.
...The adoption of Christianity did nothing to stop the practice. Bolesław the Wrymouth, a 12 th century king of Poland, supposedly took 8,000 maidens and children to sell after he conquered Pomerania. Czechs, Danes, and Poles sold one another back and forth. Prague, too close to Poland for comfort, joined Dublin and Marseille as a European centre of the export trade to Muslim and Byzantine markets.
Isn't it appalling, Hania added as a postscript, that the slave trade still goes on in our day?...At least old women are now safer. The numbers you give of those executed in Poland over the centuries for witchcraft are also bloodcurdling––even if they were less than in the Holy Roman Empire or France. Still, it's rather intriguing what you say about the end of the pagan rites on Mt. Łysogóra and Mt. Slęża, and how witches were later said to come there riding on broomsticks. It's like the Walpurgis Night celebrations on the Brocken mentioned in Goethe, isn't it?
'…the whole length of the mountain side,
The witch-song streams in a crazy tide.'
Do you suppose women really did gather on the mountains?
Hania added a word or two about the number of marriages recounted in the text, and sent the message off. Then she sat thinking about women who were witches and warriors. She rose and went to a bookshelf that covered one wall to head height. It was way too early to wake the children yet. It was the time change that had pulled her out of bed at this hour. She stood before the books. They were practically lost under sheaves of music that had been stuffed in over the tops of the bindings, but by lifting the papers she could see beneath. There were the usual books of music theory, a number of lives of great composers and pianists, correspondence between musicians, and the usual array of Polish classics: Reymont, Żeromski, Orzeszkowa, Dąbrowska, the Nobel Prize winner Sienkiewicz. She paused before his Deluge. There, that was exactly what she was thinking of: what a revolting passage that was where the patriotic young woman thinks her fiancé has joined the wrong side during the Swedish invasion and sternly consents to his execution. What a strain of iron in the soul. Like the young woman insurgent of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, who composed the song ' hey boys, get your bayonets out .' Brrr. Hania shivered. She'd posed for the mermaid statue too, that one; it's holding a sword, of course.
Well, thought Hania, she was glad none of the Polish women she knew displayed those martial capacities, and as for herself, she was just a young musician, whose life had revolved around piano practice, who had lived rather too long in America, and who was beginning to doubt her ability to cope with practical matters. Perhaps if she ate something, then dealing with the children wouldn't seem so bad. Determination always carried one through, she thought, as she finished off four eggs.
She prepared breakfast for the children, and then sat at a piano and played reveille fortissimo with the sustain pedal down, and when that didn't rouse them, she marched down the hall, banging on their doors: Kalino! Maksiu! Get up! We have important things to discuss!
"What? What's so important?" Kalina growled as she sat beside Maks at the kitchen table. "Why'd you wake us up like this?"
Hania could see that curiosity was gnawing them, keeping their rudeness just slightly in check.
"I'll tell you when you've eaten." A pause. "And it might be your last meal for a long time, so eat up. Go on." She folded her hands on the table and waited, her face calm.
Maks looked at her with interest, Kalina gave her a half glance under the lids and a small sneering lift of the lip, but both started to eat.
She waited until they were
Sell Maks? Hmm, there was an idea.
...The adoption of Christianity did nothing to stop the practice. Bolesław the Wrymouth, a 12 th century king of Poland, supposedly took 8,000 maidens and children to sell after he conquered Pomerania. Czechs, Danes, and Poles sold one another back and forth. Prague, too close to Poland for comfort, joined Dublin and Marseille as a European centre of the export trade to Muslim and Byzantine markets.
Isn't it appalling, Hania added as a postscript, that the slave trade still goes on in our day?...At least old women are now safer. The numbers you give of those executed in Poland over the centuries for witchcraft are also bloodcurdling––even if they were less than in the Holy Roman Empire or France. Still, it's rather intriguing what you say about the end of the pagan rites on Mt. Łysogóra and Mt. Slęża, and how witches were later said to come there riding on broomsticks. It's like the Walpurgis Night celebrations on the Brocken mentioned in Goethe, isn't it?
'…the whole length of the mountain side,
The witch-song streams in a crazy tide.'
Do you suppose women really did gather on the mountains?
Hania added a word or two about the number of marriages recounted in the text, and sent the message off. Then she sat thinking about women who were witches and warriors. She rose and went to a bookshelf that covered one wall to head height. It was way too early to wake the children yet. It was the time change that had pulled her out of bed at this hour. She stood before the books. They were practically lost under sheaves of music that had been stuffed in over the tops of the bindings, but by lifting the papers she could see beneath. There were the usual books of music theory, a number of lives of great composers and pianists, correspondence between musicians, and the usual array of Polish classics: Reymont, Żeromski, Orzeszkowa, Dąbrowska, the Nobel Prize winner Sienkiewicz. She paused before his Deluge. There, that was exactly what she was thinking of: what a revolting passage that was where the patriotic young woman thinks her fiancé has joined the wrong side during the Swedish invasion and sternly consents to his execution. What a strain of iron in the soul. Like the young woman insurgent of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, who composed the song ' hey boys, get your bayonets out .' Brrr. Hania shivered. She'd posed for the mermaid statue too, that one; it's holding a sword, of course.
Well, thought Hania, she was glad none of the Polish women she knew displayed those martial capacities, and as for herself, she was just a young musician, whose life had revolved around piano practice, who had lived rather too long in America, and who was beginning to doubt her ability to cope with practical matters. Perhaps if she ate something, then dealing with the children wouldn't seem so bad. Determination always carried one through, she thought, as she finished off four eggs.
She prepared breakfast for the children, and then sat at a piano and played reveille fortissimo with the sustain pedal down, and when that didn't rouse them, she marched down the hall, banging on their doors: Kalino! Maksiu! Get up! We have important things to discuss!
"What? What's so important?" Kalina growled as she sat beside Maks at the kitchen table. "Why'd you wake us up like this?"
Hania could see that curiosity was gnawing them, keeping their rudeness just slightly in check.
"I'll tell you when you've eaten." A pause. "And it might be your last meal for a long time, so eat up. Go on." She folded her hands on the table and waited, her face calm.
Maks looked at her with interest, Kalina gave her a half glance under the lids and a small sneering lift of the lip, but both started to eat.
She waited until they were
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