Salt of the Earth

by Józef Wittlin

  “Perhaps Your Excellency will be so good as to remind me how many troops I have?”

  “Thirty-eight divisions in peacetime, not counting the Landwehr or the Honvéds.”

  “Thank you. I have thirty-eight divisions!”

  Thirty-eight divisions! Franz Joseph relished in his imagination every division individually, delighting in the multitude and the diversity of colours represented by these numbers, sworn to serve him in life and death. He conjured up in his mind the last parades at which he had been present, the last simulated battles, in which the enemy’s soldiers were identified by red ribbons in their caps. On that occasion he had personally, on horseback, led one of the warring armies, and his adversary had been none other than Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, murdered four weeks earlier. His memory did not fail him here. That was unforgettable! Old passions were revived in the old man as he recalled it. For a while, he felt the old aversion for his mock enemy in the manoeuvres, whose actual death he and the entire Imperial and Royal Army were now bound to avenge. The old man felt a rush of blood to his head at the thought that this obstinate opponent, who had waited in vain for so many years for him to die a natural death, still gave him no peace even after his own death. Something in the old man’s mind declared, triumphantly, “Look, I have outlived him after all!” But even this single unspoken victory was moments later overshadowed by sorrow for his unforgettable only son Rudolf, who had also been unfortunate: “Mir bleibt nichts erspart!”*

  An uncomfortable silence descended on the room. Berchtold’s cloying perfume was in the air, drifting like incense over the bodies of the murdered. “Adieu, Parisian perfumes!” The road is cut off. The Triple Alliance, the Triple Entente! Count Berchtold knew very well what this meant. He recognized the odour of the impending course of history. It smelt of restriction to local products. But in the eerie silence not even the jovial Krobatin noticed that scent. He had never smelt powder either, but he was Minister for War, nonetheless.

  The Emperor was deep in thought. His light blue, watery eyes grew dim behind his spectacles. His clean-shaven chin sank into his golden collar; only the whiskers of his sideburns protruded. The glittering cross on the crown of St Stephen leant even farther, threatening to fall on the old man’s head. He remained silent, engrossed in the sombre catacombs of cadaverous recollections.

  The tension continued to mount at the round table. The old armchairs were creaking. The sclerosis in the veins of the paladins advanced another step. Eventually, the Crown Council’s impatience broke the bounds of etiquette. The generals began to whisper.

  “Time is running out! He must sign.”

  Krobatin could not last any longer without a cigarette. At this point, Berchtold touched Count Paar’s elbow. The latter placed a large sheet of paper before the Emperor. The second replica of the Emperor held a pen with (as court ceremonial procedures dictated) a new, unused steel nib. All eyes were turned towards the Emperor’s dried-up, frail hand. At last, he came to and adjusted his spectacles. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

  The monarch spent several minutes coldly perusing the rigid black rows of letters. He paid strict attention to every word, every punctuation mark. But after he had read the first sentences, his eyelids reddened and he had a burning sensation in his eyes. His spectacles misted up. Lately, the old man had found reading very tiring, especially in artificial light. He now looked away from the sheet of paper and, noting the Crown Council’s impatience, dipped the pen with a trembling hand into the open black maw of the inkwell. The hand returned with the nib now steeped in the poisonous fluid and settled shakily on the paper like a pilot feeling for the ground below as he lands. Soon the left hand came to its assistance, holding the paper steady.

  The Emperor was placing his signature, so long awaited by the ministers. As soon as the name “Franz” was written, the pen ran out of liquid breath; the ink ran dry. As the Emperor reached for the inkwell once more, the quivering pen slightly scratched the thumb of his left hand. A tiny drop of blood squirted from his thumb. It was red. No one noticed that he had scratched his thumb; he quickly wiped it and, with a single flourish, added “Joseph”. The ink was blue.

  Count Berchtold picked up the document. The following day it was translated into all the languages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was printed and displayed at all street-corners in cities, towns and villages. It began “To my peoples…”. For the illiterate, it was read aloud by town criers.

  The Emperor rose with the assistance of his aides-de-camp. He was not accustomed to shaking hands with his officials. On this occasion, however, he shook the hand of the prime minister. In the doorway, he turned once more and said—it was unclear to whom—

  “If I am not mistaken, blood will be spilt.”

  Then he left. Archduke Friedrich offered Finance Minister Biliński a Havana cigar. From down below, the crash of the hobnailed boots of the 99th Regiment infantrymen was heard. A crash of rifle butts on the command to order arms. At the nearby barracks the lights-out bugle call was sounded. It was nine o’clock.

  At nine o’clock, the soldiers throughout the Austro-Hungarian Empire go to bed.

  III

  The guards locked the gates at ten o’clock, as was the custom, opening them to latecomers in return for the customary twenty-heller tip. The eagles stamped on the faces of the nickel coins they unceremoniously pocketed were old and worn out. No one hurried home, though. In Vienna, the beds of even the most respectable citizens remained unoccupied until long after midnight. Only the children were asleep. Only the factory workers were snoring away, exhausted, concerned about nothing and prepared for anything, as the night shift had relieved them at eight o’clock. The sellers who set off to market every day at dawn were asleep; the postmen who had been going up and down flights of steps all day were asleep. Prisoners in their cells were sleeping, or pretending they were asleep. In hospitals, in clinics and smart sanatoria, bodies wracked by civilian diseases lay in a drugged stupor brought on by sleeping-draughts. In the cemeteries, the dead were sleeping. Somewhere far away the Emperor was sleeping.

  The city was brimming with life. It was idly giving over its vast body to the pleasures of the night. It contentedly drank lemonade and ate sausages in cheap cafés, or squandered its superfluous means in costly establishments of unbridled excess.

  Work proceeded as usual in the bakeries and printing houses. Bread and newspapers were produced during the night. Bakers, stripped to the waist, pushed lumps of dough into the ovens with long-handled shovels. Soon afterwards, they pulled out steaming loaves of bread, covered with a brownish glaze.

  Compositors stood, bent over their type-cases, unconcernedly baking early-morning bread for the souls of the populace. Steaming, odorous words. It was the compositors who were the first to start trembling that night. From the countless stores of microbial leaden characters, among which the history of the world lies atomized, the shirtless compositors had picked out three letters. Each of these letters is meaningless on its own, but when joined together they spell a chemical formula for disaster. While typesetting, the hand of one of the compositors began to shake. Then, for a moment, his mind went blank. When his confused consciousness returned to normal after a short while, he rubbed his eyes and realized that he had set a meaningless word: waf. Sadly, he removed the letter f and threw it back into the type-case, where hundreds of its brothers were resting. With a sense of guilt, he picked out the correct letter with hesitant fingers and confirmed the truth he could not believe. Then he washed his hands.

  The row ended up crooked and entered the printing press like that. The dreadful word came off the press into the world, trailing in its wake a black, mournful train of printing ink smeared over the letters.

  The apprentices kneading dough on long breadboards in the bakeries suddenly stopped working. Scraping off with knives the remains of the dough clinging to their fingers, they ran out i
nto the street.

  The trams suddenly came to a halt in the busiest parts of the city. With a hiss, green sparks flashed from the overhead cables, as if they were short-circuiting. The electric current ran along the nerves of passengers, conductors and drivers. They could not even wait for the next stop. They all got off in the middle of the road and made a dash for the newspapers. Then, for the first time, they noticed that the letters were black.

  Mr M. Rosenzweig from Drohobycz, biggest shareholder of the Anglo-Rosenzweig Oil Company, who had interrupted his journey to Venice and was about to spend the first night of his honeymoon in one of the luxury hotels, got out of bed, dressed in a hurry and dashed collarless to the hotel lobby to obtain a copy of the special edition of the Neues Wiener Journal.

  Even lovers embracing on benches in the municipal gardens or intoxicated with each other in the undergrowth at the Prater suddenly broke off. Love, startled by death’s icy breath, deserted its perfumed or smelly refuges and made for the bustling boulevards. The rushing sound of Old Father Danube could be heard as usual beyond the Prater, carrying its eternal peace out to sea, into the Black Sea, for safekeeping. The Danube’s last wave carried away with it for an age the enchanting melody of this city, a melody that would never return, just as good blood sapped from the people would never return to their hearts.

  The news spread by word of mouth. The mouths bit it, chewed it, ground it and crunched it until suddenly a million mouths spat one word out onto the pavement like a bitter almond. War had already pervaded all the cafés, bars and restaurants. Orchestras everywhere were already playing Old Master Haydn’s Imperial anthem. The one, two and five-crown coins, with the eagle on one side and the Emperor’s head impressed on their obverse, made a sound different from the usual one; somehow, they gave a more metallic ring on the veined marble tabletops when alarmed officers called for their bills.

  War took over all public establishments. It leapt over the fences of the moonlit, sleepy villas on the slopes of the Gersthof vineyards, squeezed its way through the gaps in the old inner-city walls, predatory as a she-cat in March frolicking on the Opera House’s green copper roof. It lay in wait in the cloakrooms of the cabarets, and sprang at the throats of the high-spirited, unsuspecting customers bringing their numbered tabs to collect their hats and coats. Like a sudden attack of the plague, it began playing havoc with the citizens’ relaxed minds. Like a mysterious nightmare, it befuddled the brains of happy Pilsner drinkers. A blissful yet deadly shudder shook hearts prone to suffer from apoplexy. Vague, garish images arose from old, long-forgotten school textbooks. Random historical battle scenes, known only from cheap fly-blown prints that used to hang in hairdressers’ salons, began to penetrate the sanctuaries of bourgeois souls, taking by storm the long-lived peacefulness of previous years. There suddenly appeared before one’s eyes every wet-nurse’s dream, familiar from shoe-polish tins, a martial Hussar-shoeblack standing to attention, with his upturned black moustache. Something crumbled away in everyone’s brain.

  Lights are flickering at the windows of the barracks. Something that hasn’t been seen for many years—it’s past midnight, and lights on in the barracks! The soldiers are rolling up their coats, fastening their backpacks, filling their ammunition belts, cleaning their mess kits, oiling the knives they call bayonets. In the stables, the cavalry officers stroke their mounts’ sleek haunches with a rag and comb their manes. The poor horses whinny, noisily chomping on their oats. The corporals are inspecting the harnesses and saddles, cursing the Dragoons over missing buttons. The sergeants are hurrying as though possessed from one office to another. In the officers’ quarters, the lieutenants’ wives have been dragged out of bed to wax waterproof socks and have thermos flasks ready with hot tea.

  It’s the same in all the towns.

  Only the villages are asleep, the eternal reservoir of all kinds of soldiery, the inexhaustible source of physical strength. The villages are asleep among Danubian meadows; the villages are asleep along the banks of the Vistula, the Dniester and the Inn. The villages are asleep behind enclosures in the Alps, in Transylvania and the Sudetenland. Everywhere, red-faced farmworkers lie in the straw beside their horses, their bellies full of potatoes and rye bread. They sleep sweatily. The cattle in the cowsheds are breathing heavily, calmly, in biblical peace.

  A startled signalman in distant Hutsul country wakes up every now and then, rubs his eyes, pulls up his trousers, pulls his cap down over his sticking-out ears, and picks up his red flag. He keeps lowering the level-crossing barrier. So many trains that night, and all bound for Hungary.

  “What’s up?” he asks the engine driver of a stationary goods train.

  “War!”

  “War?” repeats the signalman, his jaw dropping. Either he hasn’t heard properly, or he can’t believe it. He stands stiffly to attention, saluting the windowless wagons carrying ammunition and pigs.

  At dawn, a swarm of locusts descended on every town. The darkness of that night had spawned a swarm of blue insects—centipedes stabbing with bayonets, wasps armed with deadly stings. Are these the same soldiers who entertained us last Sunday with a fine parade?

  Cars full of generals noisily speed along the streets. The tunics’ red facings flash before the crowds of onlookers like matadors’ red capes.

  IV

  Hurry, don’t overdo the sentimentality. Seamstresses, no more kissing your boyfriends; stuff your crumpled photographs into their pockets and say your goodbyes. Cooks, dry your eyes with your greasy aprons, and with your fingers that smell of browning stroke the clumsily shaved heads of your lance corporals. Everyone must own something from which they could be parted. The wives have husbands, the mothers have sons. The children say goodbye to their fathers, highly amused by their new appearance, especially the whistle and the compass on its blue cord. They have realized at last that their parents are children too, especially when they cry. Somebody must have beaten them, or they are about to. Some children are pleased that their fathers are going into the field. There will be nobody to beat them now. Where is this field, though?

  The magistrate’s widow hurries to court to gift to the state her only keepsake, her gold wedding ring, receiving an iron one in exchange. After all, everyone must own something they could part with.

  The fragrant Countess Lili has her hair cut short. Wearing a white cap and cloak, she goes to the Academy of Fine Arts, where the Red Cross flag is fluttering. She is keen to carry out the bedpans of the wounded in her dainty, feminine hands. The war has not yet lost its virginity; the hospitals are still empty.

  The bridges across the river have begun vibrating. The reservists are already on the march from the railway stations to the barracks. Black wooden trunks on their backs, flowers in their caps. In the school playgrounds, the steam of boiling water is rising from the field kitchens. A young soldier, a one-year recruit who is a philosophy student, is eating meat with a spoon, for the first time in his life. An old reservist, an agent of the Provident Insurance Company, is lying on the bare ground, for the first time in his life. Uniforms have not been issued yet. The men are still in their own skins. A fitter from the Siemens works is dissatisfied. He does know that he will be assigned to a technical unit, actually, but that’s still army. For now, he is enjoying the cigarettes he got from a pretty girl at the station.

  Things have begun to stir. The new recruits are parting with their own personalities. This is the hardest parting of all. Full of contempt and sadness, they cast aside the former individual along with their civilian clothes, parting, as they don the worthy Imperial tunic, with their health and their life.

  Cattle-drovers from Tisá, swineherds from the Puszta and mountain shepherds from the Carpathians are now wearing the blue uniform. First of all—to the canteen! Farmworkers from Galicia, Moravia and Styria have all taken on the same colour. The Bosnians wear a fez on their shaved heads. A gesture to Islam on the part of the Catholic
authorities. The one-year recruit, the philosophy student, has never seen puttees before in his life. He consoles himself with the thought that Napoleon apparently wore them as well. The Dragoons wear helmets with shiny eagles, but they have to cover them with a greyish-blue slipcase, or wax them, so they don’t glint in the sun at a distance, drawing enemy fire. For the same reason, the higher ranks cover up the insignia on their collars with a handkerchief. Only the Hussars keep their plumes, though they too must cover their helmets with oilcloths. You would look in vain for the proud cockerel plumes on the Chasseurs’ caps. The Chasseurs will march in caps with matt buttons like the ordinary infantry. The priest has changed his clothes as well. He wears a habit, but he is still a captain and he will sprinkle holy water on the regiment as it sets off into the field. He will render unto God what is God’s and unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. He will bury the slain and absolve the seriously wounded of the mortal sin of killing. He will distribute books with comforting content in the field hospitals.

  The corps, divisions, regiments and brigades have already been formed. In the first company of every brigade, standard-bearers carry the flag. Endless retinues of mummers in weird attire obediently await orders from their directors. Only their faces lack masks. But faces are no longer of any significance. Today, all that counts is someone’s torso, their limbs and what kind of stars and buttons are sewn onto them. Buttons! Above all, the buttons must be in order. Actually, masks will have their day too. Gas masks.