Salt of the Earth

by Józef Wittlin

  Following ancient tradition, the soldiers of the Imperial and Royal Army set sprays of oak leaves in their caps. In every soldier’s trouser pocket there nestles, like a code and price label from a shop, a discreet metal identification tag, the death capsule, which will be removed from the dead by the orderlies. This concludes definitively the transaction with the conquered territory.

  Attention! The lieutenants, field glasses and maps slung round their necks, are now leading their companies out. The captains are on horseback at the head of the battalions. They are followed by the adjutants and the buglers. With their sabres, the mounted regimental commanders salute the onlookers, who shout patriotic slogans, throwing flowers that are trampled under the horses’ hooves. The regimental band strikes up the Radetzky March. Sweat runs down the faces of the Czechs blaring away on their brass helicons and bass tubas. A small drummer boy, a child soldier, beats away with all his might on the calf-skin of his drum. A little donkey carries the big drum on its back.

  Mobilization. The officers’ and ensigns’ sabres glint. Oh dear, you sabres will not glint in the sun’s rays much longer, will you? You will soon be done away with on the orders of His Excellency the Minister for War, so the enemy will be unable to distinguish officers from privates. Your place will be taken by the bayonet, the ordinary, crude bayonet.

  Mobilization. The company bugles sound and the drummers’ sticks start to beat. Oh dear, you drums will not beat time for the infantry much longer, will you? You will soon be done away with on the orders of His Excellency the Minister for War.

  Mobilization. Men, horses, donkeys, mules and cattle are on the move. Iron, brass, wood and steel are on the move. Baggage trains rattle on, lorries start up grindingly, and ammunition wagons begin rumbling off, full of grenades, shells and bombs stacked in boxes like bottles of mineral water. Mortar, cannon and howitzer carriages lurch forwards. Animate and inanimate numbers are walking, driving, gasping, numbers worked out in the heads of the staff officers. In rows straight as a die, a host of heads in caps and helmets is marching, bodies in blue, grey and green tunics swaying like a field of wheat. Armies of buttons, whistles and belt straps flow upon armies of people in new, yellow, unpolished boots. The backpacks and grey mess tins sway on Polish, German, Czech, Italian and Hungarian shoulders. Haversacks, cartridge belts and bayonets are on the move, carried on foot, on horseback, by people, by horses, in wagons and in motor vehicles. Goods trains are loading up (40 men—8 horses) with masses of humans, animals, iron, wood, fabric, straps, and patience. Terror accumulated in such quantities does not know what to do with itself. For now, it is releasing itself in the form of trampling, clattering and rumbling noises.

  In these processions man was fraternizing with beast, iron and wood. Rifles have now taken the place of wives, in place of brothers haversacks are befriended, and water flasks replace favourite children. Dear child, kiss the thirsty infantryman’s parched lips.

  The benevolent grey, chestnut and dun horses toss their heads. The donkeys loaded with machine-gun parts calmly and silently look round for the last time from the wagon ramp.

  Mobilization. The railway stations at Vienna, Pest and Prague are weeping now, as are those at Lwów and Kraków. Answering sobs sound at stations in Belgrade and Moscow. Warsaw too.

  The sweaty, breathless, drunken numbers of heads, arms, legs and torsos flow like lava towards the east and the south, from east to west, from south to north, to satisfy someone’s ambitions, to someone’s greater glory. Healthy, strong lungs, hearts and stomachs set off in their thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, to all corners of the earth to a tournament of their own suffering, hunger and fever.

  From all airfields, from all hangars, propellers buzzing, two-winged and four-winged moths and dragonflies soar up and away as though leaving their chrysalis.

  They are advancing on land, at sea and in the air. Gunners on torpedo ships and battle-cruisers are keeping their powder dry. Submarines are preparing to dive; their periscopes scour the deep, seeking their prey. The equipment sings the praises of its inventors. Glory to the men on high, on land and under water!

  A swarm of swarthy, moustachioed Serbs from the Drina, Sava and Timok is on its way to face the blue host under their black-and-yellow flag. They smoke pipes and march to the rhythm of their singing. They steal through the rushes and wade across the swamps in their own country—and wait.

  Waves of Russians, urged on by blessings from their icons, roll on to face the Imperial host. Cossacks from the Amur, from Kazan and the Don ride their swift little horses. Slant-eyed Mongols bob along on their diminutive mounts. Graceful Circassians, slender-waisted like young girls, gallop with daggers in their belts on the banks of the Vistula, the Bug and the Niemen. Long, endless columns of Siberian infantry in fur hats and Caucasian front-line regiments in sand-coloured tunics head towards Poland at a rapid pace. Get the Kraut! Get the Kraut!

  Balalaikas, shepherds’ pipes and Jews’ harps are heard. During extended rest stops, harmonicas play a Styrian waltz.

  The 30th Lwów Regiment, the Iron Brigade, sings: “From Warsaw to Petersburg! Get the Muscovites, march on, march on!” “Na zdar!†” call out the Czechs, their throats lubricated with vodka and rum, as they pass by wagons full of Hungarians. “Eljen!” echo the Hungarian shepherds-turned-Honvéds. With responding cries of Živio! Hoch! Ewiva! and Harazd! the battalions of the polyglot monarchy greet one another as they pass. The trains race on like gigantic tin cans packed with human flesh, not yet drained of its blood.

  In distant Hutsul country, young yokels stand waving their hats, their shirts hanging loose, gaping at the troop trains rushing past.

  The man who is temporarily acting as signalman at signal box no. 86, on the Lwów–Czerniowce–Ickany line, cannot sleep. This signalman was called up the day before and he has joined his unit. Now he, a mere porter, has to look after the level-crossing barrier by day and by night, seeing to it that the movement of troops can proceed in orderly fashion, taking particular care to prevent “Muscovite sympathizer elements” placing blocks of wood on the track. He is amused by the graffiti chalked on the sides of the wagons, patriotic drawings of Tsar Nicholas and King Peter on the gallows. On one occasion, he was so distracted that he failed to hear an approaching locomotive and did not close the barrier. He nearly caused the death of a milkman who was driving across the track just as the train sped over the points. The nag took fright and could not be reined in; the shaft snapped. Virtually at the last moment, the “signalman” ran onto the track and just in time stopped the train, full of boisterous, singing Romanians. The racket the soldiers were making filled the entire Pokuttya plain. The stench of straw, human sweat and horses’ urine mingled with the sharp aroma of the new-mown hay beyond the embankment. A major in command of the transport operation leapt down from a passenger carriage and asked, in an unknown language, about the cause of the delay. The man with the flag gabbled something in Ukrainian, then in Polish, even a few words in broken Yiddish, then he pointed out the pool of milk on the track and the Jewish milkman, who had by now managed to get across to the other side with his horse and cart.

  “Schweinerei!” yelled the major. “—Ja czi bende anzeigen, ti oferma!—I’ll show you, you idiot!”

  Then he shook his riding crop at the Jew, gave a sign to the engine driver and returned to the carriage. The train got moving again, leaving the man with the flag alone in his shame.

  “Idiot,” he repeated.

  Now he knew he would be joining the reservists. As a matter of fact, he didn’t care. If it was war, then it was war, wasn’t it? War had already broken out.

  On 1st August 1914 a gunner on the Temes, an armoured cruiser on the Danube, aimed his cannon and fired on Belgrade. The Danube fleet began bombarding the city. On 2nd August, the German naval guns began to roar off the coast of Kurland, near Libau. On 3rd August, the French Alpine Chasseurs wer
e deployed among the summits of the Vosges. That same day French pilots attempted to blow up bridges on the Rhine. German cavalry crossed the Golden Gate of Burgundy and advanced into the woods around Delle to reconnoitre. The first encounter between Austria and Russia took place on the frontier between Bessarabia and Bukovina, near Novoselytsia.

  Unknown is the man who was the first to give his life in this war.

  Unknown is the man who killed him. Unknown is the last man to fall in this war.

  My word will raise him from the earth in which he lies; he will forgive me this exhumation.

  Unknown is the Unknown Soldier.

  * “I am spared nothing!”

  † “Hurrah!”

  Chapter One

  Into distant, forgotten corners of the Hutsul country—filled with the aroma of mint on summer evenings, sleepy villages nestling in quiet pastures where shepherds play their long wooden horns—comes the intruding railway. It is the only connection these godforsaken parts have with the outside world. It pierces the night’s darkness with the coloured lights of its signals, violating the silence, violating the immaculacy of the profound night-time peacefulness. The din of its illuminated carriages rends the membrane of darkness. A long-drawn-out whistle blast awakens hares from their slumber and arouses people’s drowsy curiosity. Like a great iron ladder nailed down onto the stony ground, shiny black rails on wooden sleepers stretch from one infinity towards another. Little white station buildings surrounded by hedges, vegetable plots, gazebos and flower-beds with coloured glass orbs on white-painted sticks, numerous little iron bridges crossing streams and countless small signal boxes give the lie to any impression that this part of the country was totally God-forsaken.

  At the small Topory-Czernielica railway station, a man who had emerged from the darkness had been dealing for some twenty years in grain, timber, potatoes and casks of locally brewed moonshine. Darkness was his home and his element, no less than water is that of the fish and earth is that of the mole. Like a mole, Piotr burrowed his way through the darkness, digging out underground passages essential to his existence. In the fresh air he desperately gasped for breath, like a fish out of water.

  He polished the station lamps, filled them with paraffin and swept the so-called waiting-room. When the need arose, he helped with repairs to the track, removing rotten sleepers, spreading gravel and occasionally riding the hand trolley with the inspection engineer. The fast trains did not even deign to do Topory-Czernielica station the honour of slowing down. They sped irreverently by, contemptuously puffing a cloud of smoke in its face. In summer, however, some townspeople would alight here. Schoolboys arrived with trunks they couldn’t lift on their own. The train stopped at Topory for only three minutes, and the young gentlemen, in order to conceal their helplessness, would call out “Porter!” in a commanding tone, like seasoned travellers. Thereupon Piotr, although he was no porter, had no railwayman’s cap, and did not even wear a brass porter’s badge on his chest, would dash into the carriage, seize the luggage and carry it to the horses waiting behind the station building. Sometimes the Greek Catholic priest travelled to town and he had to be helped onto the train. Sometimes there was hunting in the extensive forests, and certain gentry preferred to travel by train so as not to tire their horses. This used to earn him a little something, and a few cigarettes some count gave him could be hidden under his cap. Those were the days!

  And after the harvest came sacks of oats, and then of maize, so there were opportunities to make the occasional hole in a sack, saying, if necessary, that the sacks had been torn. They weren’t sealed, anyway.

  The stationmaster was human. Of course, he would box your ears, but he didn’t dismiss you. When the stationmaster struck you, you had to kiss his hand at once, beating your breast and saying: “I honestly swear to God I’ll never do it again,” but you didn’t have to return what you had stolen. That was the life!

  Piotr’s entire life involved carrying things. As a child, he had suffered from that infamous Hutsul affliction for which the human race had the French to thank, apparently. Its symptoms were the typical nose and certain defects of vision, which, however, did not develop further with age. Independently of the French influences, Piotr’s body was also subject to English ones, the rickets. And so France and England, those two warring elements that had done battle in the historical arena over so many centuries, settled their differences in the body of a Hutsul child. To the end of his life, Piotr remained bandy-legged.

  Not only that, but he wore his father’s sheepskin coat, and bore his surname too. He had never known his father. His mother was a Hutsul and she smoked a pipe, even in her old age. She had a fine bearing, dainty feet, several beautifully embroidered shirts and jerkins, and numerous children too, who died virtually as soon as they were born. Only Piotr and Paraszka survived. The latter, in the opinion of many earnest folk, would have been well advised not to have survived.

  The legendary father was Polish, apparently, name of Niewiadomski,* as—to avoid offending aristocratic gentlemen—children of uncertain paternity were known. But Piotr was a child from a legal marriage bed. The bed in question was situated in a cottage, now semi-dilapidated, at the far end of the parish of Topory. Thanks to this cottage with its thatched roof, Piotr had spent his entire life in Topory, not once submitting to the lure of Saxony, as he was frequently tempted to do. An orchard of just over an acre belonged to the cottage. One of the two apple trees had long since grown barren.

  Of course, it belonged to Paraszka, who had gone to town and “decayed”—as the parish priest used to say—in a certain public establishment.

  The neighbours’ children gorged on plums from the six plum trees every autumn. Piotr did not have any land of his own. However, the railway granted him the lease of a small plot adjacent to the track. There he planted potatoes, beans, maize, cabbages and a few sunflowers. Actually, it wasn’t he who did the planting, but a certain orphan girl called Magda. She was partial to sunflowers. After the death of Piotr’s old mother in the Year of Our Lord 1910, she began to hang about near Piotr’s cottage. Malicious female tongues wagged in the village, saying that on more than one occasion she brought him his milk in the evening and didn’t leave until nearly daybreak, just before morning milking time. Piotr had no cow of his own either. When he was young, he had indeed driven his mother’s cow and his mother’s geese to pasture, but no sooner was his mother buried than he sold the cow at market, sending half the proceeds to Paraszka, because that’s how it should be, and drinking the rest. He took the geese to the station as a gift for the stationmaster’s wife, just plucking a few feathers for himself first.

  A dog represented his entire modest possessions. But what a dog! A dog such as this is more than a mere dog; it’s an angel. True, it yielded no milk, but it was a good dog, meaning that it was fierce. Its mother was a mongrel and its father a wolf (Piotr did not care about the breed; he was cross-bred himself). The dog was called Bass, suggesting that he had a powerful voice. When he got a bit older, he did not exactly mellow, but he became indifferent and nobody in the village feared Bass any longer. He was porter Piotr Niewiadomski’s one and only love.

  Why didn’t Piotr marry Magda? This was a question often asked by people who favoured the sanctity of marriage, and the Greek Catholic priest once even put the question to Piotr directly, at his Easter confession.

  “I haven’t had any children with her,” Piotr told himself, “so I won’t be having any now.”

  Disregarding the dreadful consequences to be suffered in life beyond the grave threatened by the priest—who was prepared to make an exception and even accept a reduced fee, since it was a matter of saving the soul of an inveterate sinner—Piotr declared categorically:

  “I won’t marry her, because she isn’t a virgin.”

  But there were other reasons why Piotr, for the time being at least, had no wish to don the gold-plat
ed crown customarily placed on the heads of the bride and groom as prescribed by the Greek Catholic marriage ceremony. Piotr Niewiadomski was a dreamer. He had in mind a quite different head covering. It might not be such a glittering one as the wedding crown, but on the other hand he could wear it to the end of his days and not just during the wedding ceremony. And if it really was a matter of outwardly resembling the great and the good of this world, Piotr was much closer to the mark in preferring a particular cloth cap instead of a metal symbol of doubtful value that was supposed to render him the equal of crowned kings. Anyway, it was only on playing cards that kings wore gold crowns, he believed, and he knew all about playing cards.

  Long ago, perhaps as far back as Metternich’s time, some state official in his wisdom designed the Austro-Hungarian uniform cap. He determined its shape, dimensions, cut and trim, and having gained approval at the highest level imposed it on the heads of all those who wished to serve the Emperor. The Emperor set an example by wearing one himself, as his own servant, and the Emperor’s relatives wore it, as did his ministers, marshals and generals, his senior councillors and commissioners, officers and clerks, gendarmes (retired), members of military bands, cab-drivers, postmen, school caretakers, prison warders, and railway officials down to the last signalman. It was the Imperial headgear. His Imperial Majesty appeared in it on the balcony and in his carriage, raising his trembling white-gloved hand to its shiny black peak whenever he was greeted by his subjects, of whom he possessed so many during the sixty-six years of his most gracious reign. Of course, the cut and the trim of the cap had undergone all kinds of changes during the course of so many years. Many a defeat and many a victory had left its mark on the Imperial cap. Also, taking into consideration forms of service and hierarchical status, the wise inventors and renovators of the cap thought up various subtle variations, not always perceptible to the layman’s eye. For example, officers’ caps were made of black cloth with a gold cord running round the lower edge, incorporating a fine black zigzag pattern. Lower-ranking functionaries had a yellow thread rather than a gold one. Just one thing was common to all—the Imperial monogram, which had to be embroidered or imprinted, always taking pride of place, identifying the Emperor’s servants like the Imperial handkerchiefs and the Imperial forks and spoons. So nobody could steal them, sell them or pawn them.