Salt of the Earth

by Józef Wittlin

  “Our people are still very uneducated, your Grace—at least eighty per cent of them are illiterate.”

  By referring to “them”, he had wanted to give her to understand that he counted himself among the educated.

  His hope was not in vain. Niewiadomski glanced helplessly at the sheet of paper and said:

  “If you would, corporal…”

  That was all the corporal needed. He had the satisfaction he had sought. He quickly broke the seal, looked at the date and announced sternly:

  “In five days’ time, at 9 a.m. sharp outside the recruiting office in Śniatyn.”

  He stressed the word “sharp” in a tone of voice that was meant to indicate that he, Durek, was fully in agreement with the senders of the call-up paper. However, Piotr wanted to know in detail what was written on the light blue paper, and he asked the gendarme to read it all aloud, from start to finish. Durek beamed. Not only that, but he also adopted an even sterner expression than usual, and his voice sounded like that of an actor announcing a death sentence. Durek placed particular emphasis on the words derived from Latin.

  “Mr Piotr Niewiadomski,” he declaimed, “is to report for inspection—”

  “It can’t be so bad if they address me as ‘Mr’,” Piotr thought, giving a sigh of relief. His ears gulped in every word as he struggled to digest it all. Some words were indigestible, however. They were as sharp and cruel as bayonets. “‘The individual summoned for inspection is to report in a sober condition and washed’—I’ll have to bathe in the Prut and tell Magda to wash my shirt—‘Failure to report at the time indicated will result in forcible removal to the recruiting office and punishment by arrest and fine as under paragraph 324, article 12, and paragraph 162, article 3, of the regulations pertaining to civil mobilization, 1861.’ What does all that mean? First of all they write ‘Mr’, addressing me politely, expressing confidence, but if anyone disobeys, then it’s fixed bayonets and jail.”

  Piotr could already picture Corporal Durek getting the handcuffs out of his bag and holding a bayonet to Piotr’s throat. He had once witnessed Corporal Durek escorting the bandit Matviy, known as The Bull, away in chains, by train.

  The gendarme finished reading, carefully folded the call-up paper and returned it to the recruit, observing the effect of his declamation. Piotr was silent and he seemed unperturbed. The gendarme was dissatisfied by this. It had completely failed to have an impact. So, to inflate the gravity of the situation and at the same time to allude to his own authority, he said:

  “But do you know how we deal with deserters now? Court martial and a bullet through the head!”

  “That’s how it should be!” retorted Niewiadomski.

  Durek was taken aback. To conceal his consternation, he smiled, baring his gold tooth, and ostentatiously unslung his rifle. He examined the safety catch to make sure it was secured, and leant the rifle against the wall. He removed his helmet, mopped his brow with a handkerchief and sat down on the threshold. Then he took a shiny imitation-silver cigarette case out of his pocket, full of the cigarettes he had been given at the mansion. The hands which could at any moment change into the hands of justice presented it to Piotr. As Piotr took out a “lady’s” cigarette, he noticed a beguilingly revealing pink female figure in lace underwear on the enamelled lid of the cigarette case. He felt a warm sensation in his spine as he recalled that Magda was supposed to bring the milk after sunset. They smoked in silence.

  Suddenly, Emperor Franz Joseph’s eyes were on Piotr Niewiadomski. He was observing him from a cross attached to the red-and-white ribbon on the gendarme’s tunic, commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of his coronation. A golden bust of the Emperor, encircled by a wreath, was mounted at the point where the arms of the cross met, for God and the Emperor always accompany one another. Franz Joseph’s cold, metallic eyes pierced Piotr’s tunic and his sweaty shirt, penetrating into his very conscience. Anyone failing to voluntarily obey the Emperor’s call from the cross at such a time would forgo the pardon of Jesus Christ himself on the day of judgement.

  Piotr had appeared in court twice in his life. On both occasions as a witness, in cases of theft on the railway. He swore on the crucifix which stood between two gleaming candles on a green table. The judge, wearing a long black cassock and a cap resembling a priest’s beret, pronounced the sentence: “In the name of His Imperial Majesty…” Then everyone had to rise, as in church during Holy Mass. The judge and the whole bench stood up, the gendarmes stood up, the accused and the witnesses stood up, the guilty and the innocent stood up. But they did not have to kneel. Above the green table, directly above the crucifix, there hung an enormous portrait of the Emperor.

  Piotr finished his cigarette, and noticed that he had thrown the Imperial eagle to the ground together with the butt. The eagle was printed on the cigarette paper, for they were Imperial cigarettes.

  “Everything in this world belongs to the Emperor. Or to God,” thought Piotr. The Prut and the Czeremosz, the Carpathians and the cows, dogs and people belong to God. But the railway, all the rolling stock and the locomotives, the signal boxes and the level-crossing barriers, even every scrap of rusty wire, even a rotten sleeper, all is the Emperor’s property. Anyone stealing a railway sleeper harms the Emperor and an Imperial gendarme places him under Imperial arrest. He has the right! The most important thing in the world is, of course, money. And whose money is it? It belongs to him whose head is engraved on it. The Emperor gives people money, just as God gives them life. Both of these are merely on loan. The Emperor has different interests from those of God, which means he has the right to take someone’s life, borrowed as it is from God.

  “Well,” said Niewiadomski out loud, “then I’ll join up.”

  But the gendarme had shouldered his rifle again, donned his helmet and fixed the black regulation chin-strap.

  “You’ve nothing to fear. They’ll take you in any case—they’re taking everybody, but I reckon the whole thing will be over by Christmas.”

  He said “by Christmas”, but he was convinced that the war would be over in four weeks.

  Then he saluted and left. Piotr forgot that he was wearing an Imperial cap and he doffed it in civilian fashion. Bass jumped up again and started barking. Piotr silenced him with a kick. The wires twanged and the gendarme was now back on the other side of the track. His footsteps were soon lost in the silence.

  The light blue sheet of paper rested in Piotr’s motionless hands like a holy image between the stiff fingers of a corpse. He was afraid of the writing, which he could not understand. As long as the gendarme had stood here the letters had been human, but now the devil was in them, scaring him. This sheet of paper, this dead writing, had power over a living person. His fate now depended on these plump black circles, these straight, slender strokes. To be rendered so helpless by letters of the alphabet, not even knowing what words they made! Looking at the word “punctually”, he imagined the word “arrest”. A dark cell, iron bars in the tiny window. He sensed the chain of letters binding his arms like the links of iron fetters. He could already see the red welts they made. Then something was aroused in him resembling a sense of freedom, which he ought to defend. He did not understand how a sheet of light blue paper could take it away from him. He despaired at his powerlessness in the face of an enemy that he could crumple in his hands and tear to pieces, that would not even offer any resistance.

  Perhaps none of this was true? What if the gendarme had deceived him? How could a lifeless piece of paper have any power over a living person? Why were people so stupid as to give credence to pieces of paper? Suddenly, to his consternation, he realized that train tickets are mere pieces of paper too, yet of course people pay money for them. And money is only paper as well, especially the most valuable—ten- and twenty-crown notes, and woe betide someone who loses them! He himself had suffered torment all his life in order to get 10 paper crowns and 5
silver ones on the first of every month. So this was all the devil’s doing! What if somebody destroyed the call-up papers? At best, he would be cheating himself, not the devil. Until then, Piotr had thought that you were captured only when a living person stronger than you tied your hands, seized you by the neck and threw you to the ground. But a piece of paper? Today he knew that there were also invisible forces which can overpower you and take away your freedom. They exist somewhere else, but they know all about us and can determine everything to do with us, even sending us to death. Human intelligence and human will are of no avail, because those tiny black, lifeless letters are the ends of invisible threads running like telegraph wires all the way from Vienna and the Emperor himself. These words were written by the Emperor himself. That is obvious; otherwise they would not wield such power. So that’s how it is? So the Emperor knows about me? He knows that porter Piotr Niewiadomski, son of Wasylina, has lived in the municipality of Topory-Czernielica, in Śniatyn Province, on the Lwów–Czerniowce–Ickany line, and served Him for many years? So the Emperor knows me? He needs me, and so he is addressing me as “Mr”? “Mr Piotr Niewiadomski!” That sounds good!

  Piotr imagined the Emperor sitting in his Chancellery in Vienna behind a big desk with gilt corners, writing letters to all the Hutsuls. The Messrs Hutsuls.

  Night was now beginning to draw its shrouds over the Hutsul land and move its shining lights across the sky. Mist and haze were rising from both its rivers. Piotr stood up, gave a deep sigh, took the pot of raw potatoes and turned his back on the sky, the earth and the night that was closing in. He left Bass in the yard. He went inside and placed the potatoes on the hearth, where the fire had gone out. He didn’t feel like eating. He lay down on the bed with his boots on. Suddenly he gave a start. He went over to the door and turned the key in the lock. He had never done that. He lay down on the bed again, on his back. He was trying to see nothing and to think about nothing. There was much that he could see, however. So he shut his eyes. But that didn’t help either. Reality crept into his brain even through his closed eyelids, tormenting him with images. Piotr could see and feel the hands of gendarme Corporal Jan Durek touching him, the menacing hands of justice.

  At that time of day the cows, having had their fill of green grass and flowers, were returning from the pastures. The solemn procession occasionally came to a standstill on the way, scratching their backs with their horns and wishing to dispose of the excessive burden that oppressed their udders. They lowed skywards, like steamers’ sirens. In this bovine chorus could be heard the primeval forces of life and vegetation, milk and maternity. The voices of the cattle were breaking, as though anticipating slaughter. In this plaintive call for relief, for relaxation, for sleep, Piotr Niewiadomski recognized the voice of his own soul. It was heavy and overburdened and it too was nourished by grass. It was now with difficulty digesting its fate, indigestible as raw meat.

  The frogs had begun their nightly disputes, the crickets pierced the stillness with their chirping. Bass was also recalling former upsets, perhaps from a former existence, but he was not barking at the war any more. He just howled at the rising moon. He might have had toothache.

  Piotr lay with his eyes open, staring dolefully into the darkness.

  All over the world, gendarmes were spoiling people’s appetites.

  Chapter Three

  During those days, men’s bodies were weighed and measured. They were sorted by categories, picked over like potatoes, like fruit shaken off the tree of life. They were handled en masse, by the score, by the hundredweight, by the wagon-load, everything puny, tainted or sick being rejected. For there had been a great harvest of human bodies since the last war. Neither struck by natural disasters nor decimated by epidemics, two generations of bodies were now going to waste and decaying, not having experienced war. But the trust invested in the instinctive cultivation of the species had not been nurtured in vain. The service unwittingly rendered by the parents was being paid its due homage today.

  For the first time in many years we were not being judged according to the way we dressed. On the contrary, today we were only worth anything without our clothes. Only as naked bodies could we display our greatest merits. All they were interested in was whether we were fit. They looked at our teeth as you look horses in the mouth at the sales; they looked us over from the front, they checked us over from behind, tapping our bellies to make sure our innards were not infested with worms.

  Up till then, we had been mere names. All the calculations of the War Ministry and the General Staff were based on the numbers of names. The names moved around the world, grew fat and multiplied, to be converted on the day of mobilization into bodies.

  The judging of bodies took place in vast drinking saloons, dance halls and popular inns. At the larger venues, the influx of bodies was so great that the premises of the district headquarters were unable to cope with it. So they crowded onto verandas, and nobody bothered if they broke the panes of glass. They waited for hours out in the gardens where intermingled melodies from the Merry Widow, The Magic of the Waltz and The Gay Hussars still wafted. Here and there, colourful Chinese lanterns still hung from wires stretched between the chestnut trees, like the heads of decapitated revellers from last Sunday’s party. Lording it over the untidy garden in the distance, amid greasy wrappers and sausage skins, stood a bandstand which had been commandeered as a furniture store. Green armchairs and small green tables were piled up any old how on top of one another, crammed into the pavilion surmounted by a golden four-stringed lyre.

  That’s what it was like in the large towns, but Śniatyn is not a large town. The famous town of Śniatyn is a small town and the recruiting authorities operated in their own building there. They merely requisitioned chairs from the nearby pubs.

  From early morning on, Piotr Niewiadomski waited his turn. It was a blisteringly hot day. Piotr felt like a drink of the beer which was flowing at Schames’s pub a couple of feet away, but he resisted the temptation, mindful of the ban mentioned in his call-up papers. He would have a drink after the inspection was over. He waited among the crowd of farm labourers, Jews and various young gentlemen. He was surprised to see such a motley group of different social classes and types of dress. Every now and then, a fat little sergeant appeared in the doorway to the recruiting offices, minus his cap and sabre. The crowd fell silent. The sergeant read out surnames from large sheets of paper. Every name required the response in German:

  “Hier!”

  This word “here” sounded like a hiccup in the mouths of the peasants. They all had their eyes on the sergeant’s lips, as the names hissed forth from them like so many buzzing insects. Piotr waited and waited. His throat was so dry he didn’t even feel like talking,

  The long wait at the entrance to the offices had its good points. They knew nothing about us yet; we were still mere surnames. There was till time; one could withdraw and everything could change at the last minute. Among those waiting in front of the district recruiting headquarters there was no shortage of optimists who in their heart of hearts still believed in miracles, who were in denial of all common sense, hoping that the war would be over before the sergeant called their names. Piotr Niewiadomski was not one of them. He could not care less.

  On the opposite side of the street there was a school. A rectangular one-storey building with a red roof. Above the entrance to the school, Piotr noticed a bell similar to those he had seen in cemetery chapels, and on the roofs of certain farm buildings, where they chimed midday—whereas at the cemeteries…

  Piotr was not afraid of death, but he preferred not to see its accessories. Then his attention was drawn to the classroom benches that had been carried out into the yard. They were mostly covered in ink-stains. They were a visible reminder of his illiteracy. On one side stood a large blackboard, which could have been the devil’s own coat of arms. Many heads wearing hats and caps were leaning out of the open windows. They were
not children’s heads. Some were even grey-haired.

  Around midday, Niewiadomski’s name flew out from under the sergeant’s black moustache. It was the fourth one on the list. Niewiadomski shouted out “Hier!” and the word, the printed word that had wandered among books and registers, became a flesh-and-blood body. Of the forty names called out, three received no response. They had disappeared somewhere in the wide world. Everyone present turned their heads to look for the lost names. But they did not find them.

  Up the stone steps smelling of carbolic acid, the sergeant led the group into a hall on the ground floor. He gave orders to undress quickly, telling them smoking was forbidden. There was no smell of carbolic acid here. There was a very muggy atmosphere; an unpleasant odour given off by the naked and half-naked bodies milling around in that hall gave the impression of a fresco representing hell. Clothes deposited higgledy-piggledy on all the benches round the walls and lying about on the dusty floor made the foul air even worse. Muddy trousers, sweaty, old, threadbare shirts and coats, filthy underpants, jerkins, and shabby coats hanging from nails and pegs on the walls presented an eerie sight, rather like rotting remains of the hanged. Under the benches all kinds of footwear nestled ashamedly, from stylish, fashionable American shoes to coarse Hutsul sandals. Numerous men’s jackets, waistcoats, artificial silk shirts with upturned collars, colourful silk ties and straw Panama hats were swamped by the overwhelming mass of rustic attire. The eau de Cologne from Johann Maria Farina’s in Jülichplatz, that destroyer of bad odours from time immemorial, chickened out and absconded. This is what the waiting-room for the day of judgement will probably look like, when one day all human differences are erased. Here all the men were naked, and the foul odour, that characteristic earthy smell, was the dominant element. Each body brought with it the odours of its home, the stench of its daily labours—hence the stink of smoky, unventilated mud huts. Those who worked on the land smelt of the soil and of grain, the shepherds smelt of sheep’s urine and the Jews smelt of the hostelry, the mill and the Sabbath. Although nobody had brought any food with them, one could tell by their bodily odours what each of them ate. The carbolic acid did not help, disinfecting did not help; from the very first day of the inspection, the hall stank of stables and cowsheds. In this battle with smells waged by civilization and hygiene, nature was victorious. At least in this hall, which served as a cloakroom. From time to time a menacingly silent soldier entered the room, carrying a canister full of water. He refused to answer any questions put by the civilians. He smoked as he sprinkled the floor in order to quell the dust, Mother Earth ground down to powder. The dust resisted, however. Having performed his task, the self-important soldier returned whence he had come, indifferent to the outcome of his endeavours.