'And to visit Mr. George,' I reminded him. The room was cold, the ceiling too high for the elaborate tiled stove to make much difference, and I looked at Uncle Nico's shawl with ever-increasing envy.

'Oh, dear!' said Uncle Nico. 'Ach Weh!' and from then onwards spoke in German.

Dicky's entrance was more considered than mine. He kissed Aunt. Mary's hand in the approved Polish style. He smiled and, using a low resonant voice, did the warm-and-delightful-.shy-young-man act that he used on anyone influential, infirm and over fifty. Dicky went to the stove and laid both hands on its top hopefully. Disappointed, he patted the sides of the stove and then felt its chimney. Finally he turned to us, smiled again and slapped his hands together, rubbing his arms to encourage circulation.

Through the partly open folding doors I caught sight of the dining room and the polished mahogany table where cut glass, silver and starched linen had been arranged as if for a banquet. It looked promising; I was cold and hungry and the water hadn't warmed enough to provide a hot bath. Karol offered us a drink. It was potato vodka from Danzig or tap water. I decided upon vodka.

'Dinner,' announced Karol suddenly as if to a roomful of strangers.

As we went into the dining room half a dozen more people — mostly young — quietly appeared and sat down at the table with us. Dicky's hot bath and a change of clothes had worked wonders upon him. Even before I had my napkin tucked into my collar, Dicky had found out that Uncle Nico was writing a book. He'd been working on it for more than twenty years, thirty years perhaps. It was a biography of Bishop Stanislaus, the Bishop of Cracow, who had been canonized in 1253 and became the patron saint of Poland.

With vivid movements of the hand and head, Uncle Nico related the story of the saint's death. According to Uncle Nico, King Boleslaw the Bold personally beheaded the bishop upon a tree trunk, before having him chopped into pieces and dumped into a nearby pond. That was in 1079, since when pond, tree trunk and saint have become unrivaled objects of pilgrimages.

Dicky nodded and told us that the mortal remains of Saint Stanislaus are to be found in the Wawel Royal Cathedral in Cracow. Dicky had discovered this in a guidebook he'd been reading in the car. Showered with praise for displaying this knowledge he smiled modestly, as if keeping some succulent morsels about the doings of Saint Stanislaus to himself. My vodka finished, I picked up the cut-glass tumbler and its contents: water. There was no wine in evidence; just tumblers of water, one at each place setting.

'When will the book be published?' Dicky asked.

Perhaps the book would never be finished said Aunt Mary. But it did not matter. The writing of the book was essential to the household, and indeed to the nearby village. She spoke of the book, as everyone was to do, in a hushed and respectful voice. Each night Uncle Nico told his family assembled round the dinner table some aspect of the book that he felt they should know. Often this was something they had all heard many times, but that did not matter. AD that mattered was that a long and seemingly important book about Poland's medieval history was being written in this house, and they were all sharing the glory of it.

A young servant girl in a black dress and starched frilly apron served vegetable soup from a large chinaware tureen, measuring each ladleful with care. It took a long time.

The dining room was memorable for the large stuffed, and somewhat moulted, bird of prey that, cantilevered from the wall, seemed about to swoop upon the table. It was a huge creature, about six feet from tattered wing tip to wing tip, with realistic glass eyes and open beak. The flickering candles encouraged the illusion that. it was alive. Residents no doubt soon grew accustomed to dining under the sharp talons of this menacing creature, but I noticed Dicky glancing up at it apprehensively while the soup was being served, as I admit I did too.

'Did you read the Premier's speech?' Uncle Nico asked the assembled diners, tapping the weekly newspaper that was jutting from his coat pocket. When no one replied he repeated his question, holding his head to one side and fixing us, one after the other, with his glassy stare.

Still no one replied until I told him, no, I hadn't.

'More reforms,' he said. 'Capitalism mixed with socialism.'

'Is that good?' Dicky asked, smiling.

'Is champagne good when mixed with prussic acid?' the old man asked sarcastically. Dicky didn't answer. Uncle Nico drank some water. Someone at the other end of the table picked up a basket of roughly sliced bread and passed it around.

Karol tore up his thick slice of dark bread and dropped pieces of it into the fruity vinegar-flavored vegetable soup. While doing this he said: 'There will be no reforms; the Soviet Union will prevent Poland making reforms. '

'By invading us?' said Aunt Mary.

'Why invade us? The Kremlin have already made sure that apparatchiks have the key positions in Poland. Their job is to block or sabotage all meaningful reforms here. They will say yes and do nothing. In that way the men in the Kremlin can sleep soundly.'

It seemed to be the accepted view, for no one argued; they just drank their soup. In the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev had come to power. The optimists in Warsaw were saying that the men in the Kremlin were too concerned with their own troubles to wield Soviet military power against their neighbors as belligerently as once they had done. But Mikhail Gorbachev, for all his posturing, was a dedicated Marxist, and, as we had seen on the road from Warsaw, he had his soldiers discreetly positioned should he decide the Poles were changing things too quickly. So the going was slow. Uncle Nico sighed deeply, and in that way that families communicate without speech, a sudden mood of resignation followed the exchange. Or was it a reluctance to speak frankly in front of the servants?

'Art is long,' proclaimed Dicky encouragingly. 'Life is short, opportunity . . .'

Before Dicky could continue with this provocative display of classical learning, Uncle Nico interjected, 'The Premier? The communists? These are the people who suppressed Dostoevsky!'

As if heading off a diatribe, Aunt Mary picked up a small porcelain bell and jingled it loudly as a signal for the soup dishes to be cleared. From upstairs there came the sudden sound of the piano. The technique was the same as the afternoon performance: Chopin played with precision. But again it was given a slow deliberate tempo that marred its graceful melodies.

The main course was stewed cabbage with flecks of bacon hiding in it. Even the privileged, with a the countryside to forage, did not eat meat on a regular basis.

'It's getting better,' said Dicky, investigating the cabbage suspiciously with his fork. 'The generals are becoming more tolerant towards Solidarity aren't they?'

Uncle Nico snorted. 'Because in some parts of the country Solidarnosc branch leaders advertise their meetings and hold them, and no one gets arrested? Is that what you've been told? Don't believe the newspapers. Only the ineffective groups are tolerated. Hardnosed Solidarnosc activists remain in prison. Anyone talking of strikes or demonstrations is likely to disappear for ever.'

Karol the secretary asked for the salt to be passed to him. He did it in such a manner that Uncle Nico began eating and said no more. The plates were soon emptied and the maidservant brought the next course: crêpes with stewed apple.

'The generals and the Party leaders are paralyzed by indecision,' said Karol, adding to the conversation for the first time. 'But the army has a tricky course to steer between Moscow's tanks and the Solidarity hotheads.' His voice was moderate, as if hoping to calm Uncle Nico's temper. 'Do you know how much cash Poland owes to the Western banks? It's alarming. And rising higher and higher every minute. Who will lend us more?'