A Common Touch, a Bit of Vanity, and Growing Anxiety

As the months went by and the confrontation that he feared came closer, the strain began to tell on Lech Walesa. His face turned puffy, he smoked as many as two packages of cigarettes daily (often Dunhills given him by newsmen), he developed a chronic, hacking cough and began to suffer from migraine headaches. He was seldom alone, seldom out of reach of someone who had a problem to solve. One night he was awakened by a person whose car had broken down. He read (in translation, if necessary) every letter addressed to him (sometimes just to "Lech Walesa, Poland") and dictated a polite reply, no matter how bizarre the issue being raised.

Every day. when he was in town, Walesa ran a meeting of the twelve-man Solidarity presidium at the union's national headquarters in Gdansk. The five-story building used to be a cheap hotel for itinerant shipyard workers. Black plastic numbers were still over the doors. Walesa's two-room suite (No. 63) was furnished with grimy, Scandinavian-style chairs. A large closet had been strategically placed to hide the stained washbasin. On the walls were a crucifix and a bas-relief of Pope John Paul II. A shelf held souvenirs from Walesa's barnstorming visits around the country: three miner's lamps, a steel-and-porcelain statue of a steelworker, two dolls in peasant dress.

Walesa often seemed ill at ease in the hubbub of the headquarters, protected by two secretaries and connected to the world by one gray telephone. Confessed an aide: "When he sits in the office, he doesn't know what to do." The excitement and euphoria of the early days of Solidarity had long since dissipated and been replaced by a growing anxiety. Clutching brief cases, frowning young union officials brushed past each other in the narrow corridor with its grub by carpet of faded red. There was a thick haze of cigarette smoke and the constant sound of slam ming doors. Solidarity's staff habitually closed themselves in, partly to keep out the cold, partly because of a deep-rooted East European sense of caution and secretiveness.

As he became famous, Walesa grew vain in minor ways. He delighted in receiving presents from admirers: a bottle of champagne or a fancy new Irish pipe. One acquisition he liked to show off was a Japanese digital watch that could play 26 international tunes. He would play a song named Kalinka and smile slyly. "You recognize this?" he would ask with a laugh. "Russian."

When Solidarity published a Who's Who of the leadership, it included pictures and biographical notes of Walesa's secretary and bodyguard. Quipped one Solidarity adviser: "In the next edition, he'll include his dog."

Whatever his disclaimers, Walesa gave numerous outward signs of relishing his fame. He once remarked, accurately, that no other man, not even the Pope, had remained the top item in the news in Poland for so long. Bogdan Borusewicz, one of the original organizers of the shipyard strike, said this month that he could no longer stand "the pharaoh-like style of Walesa."

Still, he remained through it all a son of the working class and seemed to draw strength from his contacts with ordinary Poles. He liked nothing better than to show up unannounced at the home of an average family. Driving back to Gdansk from Warsaw one evening, Walesa suddenly directed his driver to stop at the next private home so that he could watch the evening news. When he found that his surprised host was celebrating his saint's day, Walesa stayed to drink vodka with the family.

Compared with the majority of Poles, Solidarity's leader lived well. His union salary came to about $700 a month, three times the Polish average. (To cover Solidarity's $235 million annual budget, each member pays 1% of his salary as dues to the organization.) Before the August 1980 strikes, Walesa, his wife and their six children occupied a two-room apartment. But afterward, the government allocated the family a six-room apartment in a drab district of prefabricated high-rises outside of Gdansk. The apartment has three bathrooms, a small palm tree in the living room, fairy tales painted on the walls of the children's rooms and a small TV room equipped with a color set.

Danuta Walesa, 32, a handsome, forthright woman who was a florist before she married the electrician in 1969, was uncomfortable with the attention her husband and family were receiving. Now pregnant with her seventh child, she was spared the ordeal of standing in queues by Solidarity aides, but she went out enough to hear an occasional envious and nasty remark about her new status. While shopping for flowers for herself and a friend, she overheard a waiting customer mutter, "Well, Mrs. Walesa can afford anything." Some people walked by her apartment regularly, she said, "to see how often we change our curtains."

But what really hurt was the fact that she saw her husband so rarely and that he was invariably exhausted when she did see him.

Correspondents joined Walesa at breakfast (hot tea, hot cereal, kielbasa sandwiches) and interviewed him as he shaved at 7 a.m. Walesa tried to reserve Sundays to go to the beach or fish in a nearby lake or play soccer with his four sons, who range in age from five to eleven. He tried, but he did not often succeed.

"I would like him to stop this activity," said Danuta. "I am worried about his health ..." Her voice trailed off. "The people expect him to fulfill all their desires. That is impossible."

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