Salt of the Earth

by Józef Wittlin

  He wore his spurs all the time. He had the right to a mount, but he had not ridden a horse for years. His spurs were for his own encouragement, not for spurring on a horse. Those spurs were not for goading the flanks of his steed, but to spur himself on. The sound of his own spurs revived his flagging, so frequently trampled dignity. He was deluded into thinking that his spurs made an impression on those around him, not just on himself. He would not part from them all day. He wore them from morning till night, unwilling to take them off even when he was alone. He would have liked most of all to attach them to his slippers and fall asleep to the sound of their jingling. Or to his bare feet, so as not to wake in the morning to the customary unpleasant sensation. He wished to take the first step of the new day both morally and physically fully armed. The jingle of his spurs sometimes called up visions of famous horsemen, proud knights that he had learnt about in world history classes—heroes, not doctors of medicine. He identified with the image of those cavalrymen. On his imaginary charger, brandishing his sabre, he overcame every obstacle life presented him with because he was Jewish. He galloped over the dead bodies of those numerous enemies he in reality met with a friendly greeting. He massacred them with his sabre, trampled them beneath his horse’s hooves. Including that German language teacher at the Gymnasium in Olomouc, who teased him for his guttural pronunciation of the letter “R”. For how many Jews in Central and Eastern Europe has this letter been the bane of their lives! Including the colleagues at Prague University, who had denied him the satisfaction of the “honourable solution”, and all those ladies who declined to dance with him at garrison balls. He hacked and cut his way through, and trampled, all the affronts and calamities of his life, smashed down all the doors where he had been denied entry, pulverized all the pedestals he was unable to clamber on. Such was the potency of those spurs. At this moment, however, in the presence of the colonel, who remained silent, they lost their magical power. The colonel had spurs too. There was only one thing for it: act simple. By treating the Jew “humanely”, Jellinek hoped to retrieve his reputation at the Recruiting Commission, at the same time as recovering his own self-esteem. He glanced benignly at the pale, fearful body, the sunken cheeks nestling among a dark, irregular beard which must never be clipped. Beneath the heavy eyelids with no lashes, his deep-set eyes were bloodshot. Beneath the bloated belly, which was out of proportion to the narrow chest, the symbol of his manhood hung pitifully among densely matted hair. The proud symbol of the covenant between Ephroim Chaskiel Blumenkrantz and his Creator was revealed before the eyes of Doctor Jellinek, the eyes of the entire Commission, the eyes of the whole world, and even the eyes of the Emperor in the portrait. “And God said unto Abraham, Thou shalt keep my covenant therefore, thou, and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.” (Genesis 17:9–10).

  This symbol therefore united Ephroim Chaskiel Blumenkrantz with staff surgeon Jellinek. But they were united only in the eyes of the Lord. An appeal to the brotherhood of Israel would be in vain, now that the war with Tsar Nicholas had turned everyone in Śniatyn and throughout the Empire into brothers of Emperor Franz Joseph. Dr Jellinek did not wish to throw the defenceless body of Blumenkrantz to the Sodomites or to the Amalekites, or even to the Egyptians, but to the Russians or the Serbs, of whom there is no mention in the Holy Scriptures of Moses. How poor now were the loins in which God had placed a promise of the eternal seed!

  However, it was the arms that were most deserving of mercy. They still showed the marks of the thongs from morning prayers. They hung limply like withered boughs of trees in the Jewish cemetery. This is what the biblical Joseph must have looked like when his brethren stripped his clothes from him and cast him into a pit, later to sell him to the Ishmaelites. Jellinek was filled with pity at the sight of this man. Calmly, with no trace of irony, he asked:

  “What is your civilian occupation?”

  “A Kestkind!” replied Blumenkrantz in an expressionless voice, showing neither fear nor contempt. Jellinek was now completely taken aback. So the Jew was in no doubt that staff surgeon Jellinek would understand Yiddish? Dr Jellinek? Dr Jellinek did understand Yiddish. He knew that a “Kestkind” was a son-in-law enabled by his wife’s parents to freely study the Holy Scriptures, being accepted into their home and supported at their cost. He recalled his own father and his own youth. His father had been storeman at a brewery in Olomouc. He had lain at rest in the Jewish cemetery in Prague for thirty years now. Twice a year, on the Day of Atonement and on the anniversary of his death (according to the Jewish calendar), Dr Jellinek offered prayers at Yiskor and Kaddish services for the peace of his father Hersch’s soul in the reformed synagogue, where he went in civilian dress, wearing a top hat. Frequently, however, he was represented at these services by specially hired Jews. Just such a one was the Jew who now stood before him, naked and at his mercy. He gave them money for candles, entrusting to them the care of his father’s soul, just as he had once, on the day of his death, entrusted them to wash his body and place him in the coffin. By then he was a medical student. He earned money as a tutor to support his mother, but he was unable to continue his expensive studies without financial support. This support was provided by the army. He became a Kestkind of the Emperor. In return for this, he undertook to stay on as an army doctor after the completion of his studies. He began his service as an assistant surgeon in the garrison hospital at Olomouc. A few years later he was promoted, whereupon they transferred him to Galicia. He was forced out of Jarosław by colleagues, army doctors, because he did not accept bribes as they did. At his own request, he was transferred to Wadowice as a regimental doctor attached to one of the regional defence regiments stationed there. There he married a poor girl who also came from the Czech lands. In Wadowice his elder daughter Klara was born. He arranged a good education for her in Prague, including piano lessons at the conservatory. Klara was unattractive. Nevertheless, a certain lawyer from Moravská Ostrava was inclined to marry her. But lawyers in those parts do not marry without a dowry. Dr Jellinek was a good son and a good husband, so why would he not be a good father? Although nothing could be proved, his growing income aroused suspicion, especially in a small town like Wadowice. So he was transferred from Galicia (where the boundary between virtue and transgression is very flexible, as is well known) to Innsbruck, this time at his own request. Tyrol is famous for its honesty, its piety and its aversion to Jews. The Alpine climate, full of ozone and Aryanism, was not congenial to Dr Jellinek. He was not at ease among edelweiss, yodellers and the traditions of Andreas Hofer. When Klara finally got married, he resigned and transferred to the reserve as a staff surgeon. The war found him in Karlsbad, where he struggled to acquire rich patients from Russia and Romania. He wore uniform once more, attached his spurs, kissed his wife and kissed his younger daughter Hermina, whose dowry he now had to muster (“Mein Kind, mein innig geliebtes Kind,”* he later wrote to her in letters from the field)—and set off to war. He began at Lwów in Reserve Hospital No. 1, at the polyclinic. Several days later he was assigned to the Recruitment Commission at Śniatyn.

  It followed that the matter of Miss Hermina Jellinek’s dowry—apparently one of her father’s Karlsbad failures, forgotten till now—had now unexpectedly re-emerged. The impeccability of Doctor Jellinek’s source of income was in fact ensured by the grey-haired, desiccated colonel who (supposedly) chaired the Commission mainly for this purpose. In practice, however, he chaired it in name only. In reality Doctor Jellinek was all-powerful around here and could pass judgement in the light of his own conscience and his own needs. Jellinek was always correct in the eyes of the colonel. Injustices committed in favour of those who were capable of distinguishing between “A” and “B” and between “C” and “D”, and of assigning a value to these distinctions in jingling cash, were balanced by indiscriminately declaring fit for military service the bodi
es of all illiterates as well as those unable to pay. However, he was not always governed by good sense and dispassionate calculation. Sometimes his heart also ruled, and whether he merely took pity on the naked Jew Blumenkrantz or whether it also had something to do with the memory of his father, he decided to give him complete exemption. For now, he wanted to forget him. He postponed the examination. Summoning what was left of his tattered pride, he pulled himself together and clicked his heels. His spurs rang out. Doctor Jellinek turned away from the Jew.

  He went over to the weighing scales, on which at that moment there stood a body—Niewiadomski. Corporal Kuryluk was already moistening his chest with a wet sponge. Then he took an indelible pencil and wrote the number 67 on his chest. Sixty-seven kilograms live weight. Piotr did not understand why they were weighing him. He felt like a slaughtered beast at the abattoir. Indeed, these numbers written on human chests were reminiscent of veterinary officials’ purple stamps. It was official confirmation that our flesh contained nothing toxic and was fit for consumption. Next, Corporal Kuryluk ordered Piotr to stand by the post which looked like a gallows. He lowered the crossbar onto his head. It was a device for accurately measuring height. The crossbar was reminiscent of the skimming-stick used in pubs to remove superfluous foam from mugs of beer. Here, however, it was used to remove from people’s heads any delusions of taller stature their hair might have given them. Hair did not count. Having carried out this task, Kuryluk drew a slanting line below the number 67 and added the height measurement—169. Piotr was now approached by another NCO with a tailor’s tape-measure.

  “Raise your arms!” he shouted, seeing that Piotr was covering his private parts with the documents. He took the papers from him and put them on the table at which the Commission was seated. Then he took Piotr’s chest measurement. Piotr started trembling—not because of the cold and not because he was frightened, but out of embarrassment. Only now, in this hall where all the men, both military personnel and civilians, were sitting fully dressed and buttoned up to the chin did his embarrassment reach its peak. In the changing room out there, where all the bodies were naked, Piotr’s shame had been rather a religious sense of nakedness, a mournful reminder of original sin, a revelation of the secret of love and death. Here, not only did it scorch his body and torment his soul, but it turned into anger. No, there had never been anything like it! Nobody had ever seen his shame in broad daylight. He always went to women in the dark and wearing a nightshirt. He extinguished the light when he lay down with Magda. No man intentionally looked on his own shame, even in the bath.

  So here was an embarrassed man standing with his body before the people. The very nakedness of this body, the last possession of a pauper, was no longer his own property. He felt like an animal, a dog, like Bass. He would not have been surprised if they had now ordered him to go on all fours. Let them kick him, let them beat him, as long as they did not look him over like this. Of course, he had come naked from the womb of his mother Wasylina, and he would one day emerge naked from the womb of Mother Earth to stand before the final Commission in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. But here no archangels’ trumpets are heard. From time to time cars honked out on the road.

  A storm was brewing in Piotr’s body. It rose from his feet, which seemed to be rooted to the spot, so difficult was it to lift them. It rose from the tough, hardened skin of his feet, emerging through the cracks in his toenails, flowing upwards, powerful and wild. At any moment it would explode in his mouth as some inarticulate yell, the roar of a primitive human or a primitive beast, when it suddenly stopped in its tracks, settling in his knees. Piotr’s knees gave way. They began to tremble. His protest was alarmed at its own vehemence and returned whence it had come—back to the earth. Piotr’s body was once more submissive and patient. A fly, coming in at the window and making for the buttered bread-roll one of the clerks was eating just then, settled on Piotr’s shoulder, sought some morsel of nourishment, and immediately flew off.

  The gentlemen at the table, like connoisseurs of antique statuary, admired his muscular physique. These weakly citizens were torturing the physically fit, sentencing them to arduous, deadly tasks from which they themselves were exempted. What were they staring at him like that for? Why were they scrutinizing his body so closely? What had they discovered about him? They saw only a broad skull covered with fair hair, they saw prominent cheek-bones, a drooping moustache, squinting eyes that were small, bright but sad, and a short, flat nose. The attention of the commission appeared to be riveted on the powerful, broad chest, on which the purple numbers were already fading. Unbeknown to Piotr Niewiadomski, they were only looking at his eyes to be sure that they would be able to see a target they were aiming at; they were only inspecting his ears to check whether they would hear commands and recognize explosions. The arms were valuable only insofar as they had lifting power. The legs were the most important. They were intended for marching. Anyone with weak legs was unfit for the infantry and was drafted to the cavalry. The teeth were also examined, in view of the tough regimental bread and rusks. But perhaps this was a ritual surviving from the times when the tips of cartridges had to be bitten off.

  Some young officer questioned Piotr in Ukrainian and noted down his responses. They were all chatting in some incomprehensible language. Only the colonel, a grey-haired, desiccated little old man, was sitting beneath a portrait of His Imperial Majesty as silent as His Majesty himself.

  Doctor Jellinek came over and stood so close to him that Piotr could feel his heavy breathing, like the softly wafting wind. First the doctor tapped him, telling him to take a deep breath. He placed his left hand over his collar-bone, tapping three times with the middle finger of his right hand on the middle finger of his left, on which he wore a gold wedding ring. He repeated the procedure on the other collar-bone. Then he pressed his stethoscope to the collar-bones. He listened at the broad, flat end, then he moved the stethoscope downwards, to the left, to the right, then back up again. Through the narrow black duct of its trumpet the reverberations of Piotr’s lungs made their way into his ear, his head, his mind and his conscience. Piotr’s ribs rose and fell like the gills of a fish. Suddenly, Jellinek removed the stethoscope.

  “Hold your breath!”

  Piotr obeyed. Then Jellinek turned him round and placed his head on his left breast. He snuggled up to it as though it was a woman’s breast, a mother’s breast, on which he desired to repose. The doctor’s head was cool, round and bald. Yet it was a little rough and gave off an aroma of shaving-powder. For a moment, it lay motionless on Piotr Niewiadomski’s breast. Doctor Jellinek was in direct contact with his heart. There was something mystical in this embrace; like the communion of a pair of lovers. At that moment of suspended breathing, Piotr saw his mother Wasylina and himself—a child on her lap. He experienced a sweet sensation and came close to tears. In his blood was heard the rustling of forests, thickets and poor fields of wheat; he heard his own blood pounding against the walls of his heart.

  Jellinek listened for a long time to the subcutaneous sounds of Piotr’s life. He laid his ear against the naked body, as if wishing to convince himself that under the covering of skin there really was a heart beating, and blood flowing. That was, of course, what mattered most in those days. Live reservoirs of blood had to be checked before they were tapped. So the doctors listened to the murmuring, inspecting the manometers of life, and laid their ears against the sons of the earth as though against the earth itself. The juice from these fruits of the earth was not valued highly, but it had to be fresh. The doctors examined the bodies, running their fingers over them as if they wanted to select in advance the place where a bullet would strike. This is how joiners make pencil marks on timber boards, where the nails are to go. The eyes of the Commission were as cold as lead bullets piercing through the bodies.

  Something must have been amiss with Piotr’s heart, since Doctor Jellinek spent such a long time examining it. He even frowned, pondering someth
ing or other, but no one noticed. Jellinek listened exclusively for his own purpose. What value could the life of a stranger have, for someone who considered his own life to have been wasted? Jellinek was sending people to their death without any pangs of conscience. He took his revenge on life (Life with a capital “L”), delivering its most handsome specimens to death. The more a body exuded life, the more readily he sacrificed it to death. What role did he actually fulfil? What part did he play in this tragicomedy? He was a supplier of bodies, a legal intermediary between the Emperor and death. The Emperor did not obtain the necessary raw material personally. For this, he had trusty Jew-boys, sworn expert factors. What was wrong with Jellinek’s cheating both death and the Emperor—granting exemption to fit bodies for a financial consideration, while making up for it by delivering others that were not so fresh? This money was his commission.