Nobody looked after the discarded clothing. Anybody who wanted to could steal it. However, nobody was lured by the property of others. (The owners took their so-called valuables—money and wrist-watches—with them to the inspection.) Some magic spell or charm appeared to watch over the clothes abandoned by their owners, rendering them untouchable, taboo. It was as if the souls of the owners remained in those shirts, trousers and shoes, while their bodies were being judged by the recruiting committee.
But before the bodies underwent the scrutiny of the committee, they were obliged to submit to the ordeal of the chairs. In the doorway leading to what was assumed to be the recruiting panel, the same sergeant appeared who had called out the names down below at the gateway. He was reading them out for a second time now, but just two at a time. Suddenly, Piotr Niewiadomski was flung by the voice of the sergeant into a rectangular room where rows of chairs lined the four walls. On each chair sat a body stripped bare of all its earthly shrouds, embellishments and pretences. A Jew with a long black beard went in together with Piotr. Facing the doorway through which they had entered, Piotr noticed a heavy, deep red curtain. On the sergeant’s orders, each of the two fresh arrivals had to occupy the nearest available seats to the right of the door. At more or less regular intervals, some invisible hand drew back the curtain and one or two bodies emerged, making their way back to the changing room. As they did so, an imperious voice called out “Next!” And once more the curtain swallowed two bodies sitting on the nearest chairs. In this manner, all the bodies proceeded mechanically from the cloakroom door to the door behind the curtain. As though in some eerie circus, the silent, naked bodies moved on from one chair to another and from that chair to the next. In peacetime, the residents of the town of Śniatyn spent pleasant hours in those chairs, dreamily drinking beer, smoking their pipes and playing cards. But now those same chairs had become Stations of the Cross for the damned. As if there was only one possible sentence on the day of judgement: hell.
Piotr Niewiadomski shifted from chair to chair in the direction of the enigmatic curtain. It was the first time in his life that he had seen so many naked bodies at close quarters. He saw shrivelled, flabby arms alongside powerful, muscular ones; sunken, consumptive chests alongside heroic busts. Hollow, concave stomachs like deflated balloons sat alongside bulging, fattened-up, blubbery bellies; bent spines and protruding shoulder-blades alongside perfect, classical forms. Hairy torsos and shapeless masses of flesh wobbled next to smooth, shapely, svelte, supple and sometimes downright girlish figures. One man had a striking buffalo-like neck, powerful shoulders and an enormous belly, supported by very slender legs. Piotr was surprised that these spindly legs could carry such a burden. Before his eyes teemed sweaty, crooked, straight, swarthy, red, pale, hirsute, gentlemanly and boorish legs, legs, legs… Nearly all the toes were vulnerable, innocent and bashful, like little girls, even those of people whose hands looked as though they were tools for crime.
Undoubtedly all those bodies had souls of their own, speech of their own; some were garrulous while others were taciturn and reserved, even though in their nakedness they could no longer conceal anything. From chair to chair. Wily bodies and sincere bodies, cowardly bodies and brave bodies. Some were intimate with the sun, the earth and the wind, making their nakedness seem entirely natural; in fact, they would have appeared unnatural when fully dressed. Others were pale and their nakedness was alien to them, because they had never come into direct contact with the earth and the atmosphere, communicating with it only through animal skins, wool, cotton and linen. The bodies of the Jews were especially pale and unaccustomed to the earth. Their black beards contrasted uncannily with their pale complexions. Piotr Niewiadomski had never seen naked Jews before. Previously he had always seen them in their full-length black kaftans, and he imagined that these people had no white skin on their bodies, apart from the hairless parts of their faces and hands. He had always wondered what a Jew looked like without his kaftan. Now he had a naked Jew before him and he kept taking over his chair. This Jew’s very prominent, hairy Adam’s apple was strangely unsettled. He was still wearing his little circular velvet skull-cap.
On seeing so many bodies, so many physical defects, disabilities and signs of obvious strength, Piotr felt as though he was sitting among those savages who go around naked and live in caves. He had heard that somewhere, beyond America, there existed such people. They were indistinguishable from the animals, jumping from tree to tree, not believing in God and living on human flesh (though perhaps this was untrue). Piotr Niewiadomski fell to pondering about nudity and clothing. He recalled the first human being in the Holy Scriptures, who was a gardener in the Garden of Eden. He moved unconcernedly among the wild animals, among lions and tigers, who were as naked as he was. Wild beasts did him no harm; they did not gnaw him, they did not attack him, nor did he torment them or kill them. They mutually respected one another and all was well with them. They always kept warm, they had food to eat, the human did not have to work or plough or sow, there was no need for money—and this was known as happiness. Suddenly Piotr thought of Eve and memories of nights spent with Magda came flowing back to him. This was the sin inherited from the proto-parents. It was for this that the angel had driven them out of Paradise with a flaming sword; ever since, people have had to work for their crust in the sweat of their brows.
Piotr Niewiadomski began to feel ashamed of his nakedness, as Adam did when he had eaten of the tree of knowledge, able to distinguish good and evil. He was ashamed for himself and all those now bouncing from chair to chair. Only the marriage sacrament grants absolution from original sin, consecrating carnal pleasure, and people must go about in the world fully dressed so as not to cause a scandal. This was the only moment in Piotr Niewiadomski’s life when he was truly contrite for living with Magda without the sacrament. He hid his shame under the documents he held in his hand—his certificate of baptism and his call-up papers (confirmation that his soul belonged to God and of the Emperor’s claim on his body).
His embarrassment grew as he drew closer to the enigmatic curtain. He involuntarily looked towards his comrades, to see whether they too were ashamed of their nakedness. Indeed, some of them were discreetly concealing their lower parts under documents, briefcases or bags, but generally speaking there was no sense of mutual embarrassment; they were men among men. They were very concerned about looking after the valuables they were holding, removed for safety’s sake from the clothes they had abandoned to fate in the changing room. A broad-shouldered, moustachioed fellow was over-cautiously clasping a bulging leather wallet with both hands. Many hands held watches—mostly the thick, onion-shaped Rosskopf pocket watch with a double lid, and a cover of yellowish mica rather than glass. On the heavy, tarnished chains hung enamelled miniatures—portraits of children, or serious women with austere coiffures. Around the necks of many hung consecrated metal tags, little crosses, medals, mementos of indulgences and pilgrimages, or cloth scapulars. One slim, close-shaven man, who might have been about forty years old, had strange tattoos on his chest—a heart pierced by an arrow, a small flag, a mouse (or it might have been a rat), the initials “F.H.” and the number “1903”. He had probably been in prison, or he might have served in the navy.
Nobody paid any attention to anybody else. They were all totally absorbed in themselves, everyone was trying to guess what sort of fate was in store for them behind that curtain.
During those days impetuous, mindless Mars, who in peacetime did not conceal his contempt for Asclepius, had suddenly begun to take him seriously. Ingratiatingly fawning on him, he openly sought his favours. For without the consent of Asclepius the body of no man could be placed at his disposal, inasmuch as the course of the war was determined first and foremost by the doctors. This profound change of course among the gods was accompanied by equally profound changes in the minds of ordinary mortals—mortals in the most dreadfully literal sense of the word. What this change actually revea
led was how very relative the concepts of good and evil are, fixed in people’s minds since the time when Adam’s eyes were opened in Paradise. Until then, health had been generally regarded as a treasure to be enjoyed and cared for. Health was a natural human instinct, whereas illness was always considered an evil. Today, the alliance between Mars and Asclepius was to be blamed for a complete reversal of values. What had been an evil before the 28th of July—for example catarrh of the lungs, heart disease, chronic gastroenteritis or a hernia—was after the 28th of July not only a source of joy but something akin to a cast-iron defence against death. It turned out that there were two ways of departing this life, namely civilian death, as a result of domestic suffering and affliction, as we call it, and military death, which is violent, attacking a perfectly healthy body. Such a death arouses panic in the human imagination because of its immediacy, and also because everything is being done, both on “our” side and on that of the “enemy”, to make it easily attainable.
No wonder, then, that among the people leaping from one chair to the next in the waiting-room of the Imperial and Royal Recruiting Commission many were regretting their flourishing good health and were suddenly seeking in their mortal frame at least a hint of some defect, some blemish which would have the effect of commuting the presumptive sentence of death. Some of them sought to arouse pity in Asclepius by agonized facial expressions and gaunt figures. They had conscientiously prepared to make a bad impression by not eating or sleeping for days. Instead, they had drunk excessive quantities of black coffee in order to weaken their hearts. People who before the 28th of July had scowled at the very sight of a cigarette in the smoking compartments on trains, indignantly stepping out into the corridor, now inhaled the strongest brands of this poison, blessing the memory of Mr Jean Nicot (1530–1600), the French diplomat born in Nîmes who introduced tobacco to France. To intensify the harmful effect of the nicotine, they rolled their cigarettes using newspapers instead of delicate cigarette paper. In order to simulate symptoms of asthma, innumerable rapid ascents of staircases from the ground floor up to the fifth and sixth were undertaken. Steep hills, cathedral spires and the peaks of synagogues and minarets were climbed. These activities were known collectively as “scourging”, and all such efforts for the purpose of dodging military service were known as malingering. Already here, in the waiting room, men were posing as incurable sufferers, as though they feared that their act would be unsuccessful if left until the last moment.
Piotr Niewiadomski was not among them. It’s true, he did have bandy legs, the traditional Hutsul syphilis (actually dormant), as well as mild emphysema caused by many years of lifting heavy loads; sometimes he felt sharp pains around the heart, but he considered himself fit and he had no intention of deceiving the Emperor. Not only was he no malingerer, but it never even occurred to him that such people existed. Now he was only a few chairs away from the curtain. The closer he came to the last chair the faster his heartbeat became, but not because he was afraid; it was just the awareness of being about to appear naked before the Imperial Recruiting Commission. The Adam’s apple of the Jew sitting next to him was moving up and down ever more rapidly. He was probably swallowing a lot of saliva. Piotr was unconcerned about what he was in for. He felt that he was committed to the Emperor now, and burdened with new, entirely unknown responsibilities. To grapple with the concept of finding ways to dodge the call-up was beyond him. It was all right for the intrepid, who never lost hope that some last-minute notion would come to mind, out of the blue, about how they could influence the Commission’s decision; or they trusted that luck would be on their side, leading the doctors to discover some invaluable physical defect. From chair to chair.
There, behind the curtain, numerous bodies were ashamed of their shortcomings, but the majority were proudly paraded as tokens of certain victory. The Jews, in particular, displayed their varicose veins, crooked spines, haemorrhoids, hernias and fallen arches. They had a great respect for medicine. They were familiar with the terminology of diseases and everything concerning human pathology, so they knew the names of their allies, real or imaginary, whereas the peasants were not even capable of naming something they actually suffered from. They pointed to parts of their bodies where they felt pain. Some Jews cast trusting glances at the doctor, hopeful that they would find in him someone who shared their faith and that the underlying voice of their shared blood would—following instincts which had aided this race to make its way, over so many centuries, through all history’s barbed wire fences—lead him to give them total or partial exemption. All the greater was their dismay when the doctor—who did indeed turn out to be Jewish—declared them fit for frontline service.
In Śniatyn, the fate of the bodies advancing from chair to chair in the direction of the deep red curtain rested in the hands of the regimental doctor Oskar Emanuel Jellinek, a reservist. Those delicate hands, somewhat hairy, adorned with a massive wedding ring, were allegedly not averse to taking bribes. The Jews knew this. At that time, the first letters of the Latin alphabet were a hundred times more significant to them in terms of destiny, fear and clemency, than all the Hebrew letters in the Torah and the Talmud. So they wracked their brains for nights on end, wondering how to get Dr Jellinek to replace the dreadful, deadly letter “A” by at least a “B”, if not a “C”. In those days not even sufferers from chronic gastroenteritis, unilateral pneumonia, cardiac neurosis or rheumatism could dream of a “D”. The most merciful of all, the blessed letter “D”, was granted exclusively to confirmed consumptives, epileptics, cases of incurable renal failure, the insane, the blind, deaf and lame. The fit and the frail dreamt of it as a giant chocolate biscuit. The cherubim bore it on their wings and it melted in the mouth, leaving a taste of heavenly sweetness. Those who did not merit this letter had to pay Dr Jellinek dearly for it, but it meant total exemption from military service, while a “C” (non-combatant service in the orderly room or the stores) cost half as much, and a letter “B” (guard duty, but not at the front line) could be had for a mere hundred crowns. The Jew sitting next to Piotr did not possess even that measly hundred crowns, which is why he began to shiver so much when the curtain was drawn back, swallowing up the two of them.
At a long green baize-covered table, among clouds of bluish smoke, sat a dozen men of varying ages, some in uniform and some in civilian dress. Some of them were busily writing, others were reading newspapers, and some NCO at the end of the table was consuming bread and sausage in a most laid-back manner. Nearly all of them were smoking. To the left of the curtain stood a weighing machine, identical to the one at Topory-Czernielica. Next to the scales Piotr noticed a sort of strange wooden post with an adjustable horizontal bar. This post looked like a gallows. Could it be that deserters were already being executed here? Amusing pictures were hung round the walls—red, green and yellow circles, large ones and small ones, coloured squares and dots. There were also numbers and letters of varying sizes. But the main wall opposite the curtain bore a portrait of the Emperor. Everyone in this hall was tightly buttoned up, and crosses and medals glinted on the close-fitting tunics.
As soon as he caught sight of the Jew, a stout man wearing a long white gown which fell almost to the soles of his feet, called out: “First, off with the cap!” He was standing by the weighing machine. At the heels of his brown boots his spurs clinked with a light, silvery sound. The gold facings of a staff officer’s uniform were protruding from the collar of the white gown. The black ear-piece of a stethoscope was visible in his left pocket. This was Surgeon-Major Dr Jellinek.
The Jew did not want to remove his skull-cap. It isn’t done. Even a goy ought to know that an orthodox Jew stands with his head bared on one single occasion only—after death, facing the Eternal. But in his lifetime and in the presence of others, even if they are the representatives of the Emperor, or indeed the Emperor himself, he may not bare his head. This is why the skull-cap is worn underneath the hat. In courtrooms and administrative office
s, at court and in the presence of a mayor, only the hat is removed, while the skull-cap is kept in place.
When he continued to stand in silent defiance, refusing to remove his skull-cap, Corporal Kuryluk approached and viciously swept it off. The Jew remained silent, but his eyes emitted dark flames, scorching Dr Jellinek’s white gown.
“Another candidate for the office of rabbi!” exclaimed the surgeon-major with a sneering smile directed towards the Commission, which was presided over by a grey-haired, dried-up old colonel brought out of retirement as a wartime measure. Only the two clerks gave it cognizance, while the tribunal ignored it. Notwithstanding the alliance between Mars and Asclepius, the Commission held Dr Jellinek in contempt. But nobody present despised Jellinek as much as he despised himself. He found his own remark most distasteful. From the depths of this distaste emerged the impact of all the bitter pain that had afflicted him throughout his life. It was hurtful to him that he was obliged for no good reason to pretend to the Commission, and to the whole world, on which he wanted to make an impression, that he was not Jewish. Everyone knew he was. As for the sneer, by which he intended to ingratiate himself with the colonel, the exclamation “Another candidate for the office of rabbi!” was justified in so far as so many Jews pretended to be candidates, because candidates for the priesthood of all creeds were automatically exempt from military service. Embarrassed by his failure to impress, Jellinek decided that he had to rehabilitate himself, not only in the eyes of the Commission but also in the eyes of his victim, and above all in his own eyes. Jellinek had never held a good opinion of himself, either in a military or a medical capacity. The army looked down on him because he was merely a doctor, and a Jew at that, while the medical world looked down on him because he served in the army. Even his closest relatives availed themselves of his expertise only to a very limited extent, in trivial cases such as a sore throat or stomach upsets. In more serious cases they called on “proper” doctors. And so life spared him no humiliation, and he took his revenge on life by humiliating those who were weaker than himself. Before the war, he had often had to dine in the mess with junior officers, although as a staff officer he was entitled to dine alongside the captains. And it sometimes happened that captains, especially cavalry captains, would salute him in the street in a casual, non-committal manner. There were situations in which Dr Jellinek would gladly have given up his medical degree if he could have commanded more personal respect from his fellow officers.
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