The windowpanes rattled and the ground shook rhythmically, as though in spasms of amorous passion. The dull, faint, distant explosions were not so frightening in the stillness of the night, indeed they were even stimulating. Throughout the night the cricket, that Mozart of peasants’ hearths, made music for them. Only the whining of the banished Bass filled the night with anxiety and touched on old wounds.
The moon was determinedly hatching something that night. It did not appear, although it ought long since to have been looking down on Topory. Only around midnight did it majestically appear beyond Czernielica, flooding the night sky and the sleeping lovers with its cold, silvery light. Silvery Piotr and silvery Magda emerged from the gloom like two silver phantoms. Piotr was snoring. The windowpanes rattled like silver.
At that moment, death, quitting the battlefields, penetrated the confines of the Vatican. In vain the Swiss Guard kept watch with their halberds, preventing anyone from entering. Death eluded their watchfulness, forcing its way to the bedchamber where old Joseph Melchior Sarto lay. Cardinals and prelates were already administering the last rites. One of His Holiness’s domestic prelates offered the dying man the cross for him to kiss. Pope Pius X’s death took place at twenty minutes past one. Cardinal Chamberlain della Volpe confirmed it personally. Then the cardinals began reading the requiem mass. Death, having carried out its task, returned to the battlefields. The Battle of Lorraine was just beginning. Piotr Niewiadomski was snoring.
The stars were fading and the night was nearly spent when Magda woke with a loud cry. She was having a nightmare. She had dreamt about Piotr. He was lying in the courtyard at Iwan Bury’s. He lay there stark naked, with a huge, ugly wound in his abdomen. Old Maryna Prokipczuk’s sow was burying its snout in the wound, lapping blood so loudly, so loudly…
Magda’s sobbing woke Piotr. Everywhere else was in complete silence. Just before dawn, the shelling had stopped, as though to catch its breath. The windowpanes were not rattling. Only the cricket continued to chirrup in the crack in the kitchen floor. Piotr was alarmed by the sudden calm of the earth and by Magda’s crying.
“What’s the matter,” he asked, tenderly embracing the weeping woman and adding—as though he had only just noticed for the first time the orphan’s misery, his own misery, all the misery of his own people—“my child?”
Magda, shuddering all over because of the cold, because of her fear, or because she was overflowing with love, stammered out through her tears:
“If… if… you wanted me to, I would love you until death.”
She told him about her dream. Piotr laughed, but they now shared the word “death”. She was still crying, and sighing. Eventually, Piotr calmed her down. And for the last time in his life he fell asleep in the slender arms of the orphan Magdalena Mudryk.
* “Axes”.
Chapter Six
The 21st of August dawned just like any other day that summer—bright, sunny and warm. It promised to be very fine. Not a cloud in sight. The birds’ dawn chorus began early and the crowing of the cockerels lasted so long and was so fanatical it gave the impression that once again somebody was going to forsake his Master.
He who until today had been the successor to St Peter, the fisher for souls, did not forsake his Master. A few hours previously, taking his leave of the world, he had renewed his vows in the presence of the cardinals, and so he could fearlessly face the King whose earthly interests he had defended persistently, though not always with success. To the last, he had remained faithful to his motto: Restore all things in Christ.
A few days after the death the Rome Tribune wrote: “The Pope is a victim of the war. In his last days the Holy Father personally dictated many messages in an attempt to avert this European catastrophe.” He did not avert it. By his death, which came at a critical moment, he renounced all moral association with the perpetrators of this butchery.
It was for the death of the Pope that the cockerels were crowing today in Czernielica and throughout the Catholic world.
The garrisons of the Roman God were numerous throughout the world. Even such a tiny gathering of souls as Czernielica possessed (in common, that is, with the Topory and Bogatyn parishes, the neighbouring hamlets of Nowopole and Wierbiąż, and the Biłousy settlement) its own plot of consecrated ground and a ruined relic of some saint of the Greek religion, the core of a church. And where there is a church there is also a bell-tower and a priest and a deacon or a sacristan.
News of the Pope’s death reached the presbytery of Czernielica at eleven o’clock in the morning, communicated by gendarme Corporal Jan Durek. Durek had been at the station that morning and heard the news from the stationmaster, who had been informed by telephone. At the time the priest, Father Makarucha, had his head stuffed inside one of his thirty beehives, covered by a protective wire-mesh mask. At first he was incredulous at the sad news, for he was one of those designated by the Master as of little faith. He had not read a newspaper for a long time and knew nothing about the Pope’s brief illness. The first duty of a priest on the death of any church dignitary was to toll the bell. So if the Pope himself dies, what does that call for! However, Father Makarucha did not perform his obligation straight away. The death of The Holy Father is too great an event to be believed immediately and to be acted on straight away. Besides, in those days the most incredible rumours were about and it was not becoming to the dignity of a priest to take everything seriously.
To toll or not to toll?
The decision was indeed a difficult one. For if the Pope had really died, yet the bells in Father Makarucha’s parish remained silent, the negligent priest would be a sinner. But if the rumour was false, or indeed premature, then by tolling the bells he would risk being called to account for his excessive zeal. However, the soul of a living pope would come to no harm. On the other hand, a great wrong would be inflicted on the soul of a deceased pope by a failure to toll for him. That was the last thing Father Makarucha wanted. Father Makarucha wished for only one thing—official confirmation. It could not arrive quickly, because of the war, the evacuation and the general upheaval. What was to be done? Should he mourn the passing of the Head of the Church or wait a bit longer?
On that day Father Makarucha already had plenty to worry about. There were the five-kilogram pots of his purest honey, ten of which were lined up at the station, waiting to be loaded onto the Lwów train. Now that passenger and goods trains had been held up, the fate of this (purest) honey was uncertain. In fact, as of today it was quite certain; the consignment would not be despatched to Lwów. What should he do? Toll or not toll? Narodna Torhowla of Lwów had sent a deposit before the war started. This deposit amounted to only one fifth of the amount Father Makarucha was supposed to receive on delivery of the goods. Perhaps he should seek his wife’s advice on the matter of tolling? But, well, what advice could a woman give in such cases? Better to decide for oneself. He would be ridiculed either way, but by whom, actually? If the rumour proved to be false, he would tell people that the bell had been tolled for a quite different reason.
It really was an outrage about that honey! Had it been worthwhile to slave away all year, and run the risk of getting stung by the bees?
It’s true that Father Makarucha never went near the beehives without a net over his face or without wearing gloves and an apron. In this get-up he looked like the high priest of some heretical sect. But in certain circumstances he liked to emphasize the danger he faced in his bee-keeping work. All the more so since he faced no great danger in the course of his pastoral duties. Father Sydir Makarucha made no secret of the fact that he favoured the bees over those meek, mangy sheep, his parishioners. True, these sheep did not sting, but neither did they produce any honey. Nor did they make any payment for christenings, weddings or burials. Christenings, especially, were a limited source of joy for Father Makarucha; every second married couple was childless. But it was common knowledge that t
he Hutsuls were doing penance for the French sins of their forefathers. And while the virtues of his parishioners brought the priest of Czernielica little income, for their greatest virtue was poverty—who knows, perhaps it was indeed their only virtue—so, likewise, he gained little from their sins. People did not want to get married; they lived in sin and, what is more, they did not give birth to any children.
Sins, sins. How could one make a living from the sins of others in such an indigent, infertile parish? It was hardly surprising, then, that Father Makarucha stuck to his honey, being—if one may be permitted to say so—attached body and soul to his beehives. The more so because, although he was not a Hutsul, God had not deigned to give him children either. The sweet honeycombs, those masterpieces of insect architecture, were of greater interest to him than the sweet balm with which he was obliged to heal wounds in the Hutsuls’ souls. From this wax, his wife made excellent candles for use at home and in the church. She also supplied the candles she made to neighbouring parishes, making a tidy profit.
Not infrequently, the honey flowed over from the beekeeping to the priest’s actual profession. Whenever he mentioned the land of milk and honey in his sermons, those of the faithful who were endowed with a more lively imagination knew that Father Makarucha had in mind his own honey. It was indeed excellent honey. The priest never adulterated it by adding sugar.
He hated vodka drinkers. Interpreting the meaning of the Promised Land, he would say: “So you can see, dear brothers and dear sisters, that God did not promise the Jews a land flowing with milk and vodka, only with milk and honey.” Once, during Easter meditation, he even committed a bad slip of the tongue, declaring that “We receive the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and honey.” He corrected this to “wine” only when it was too late and the church was filled with suppressed laughter like the buzzing of a beehive.
To toll the bells or not to toll? That was the question that continued to trouble the priest long after the gendarme had left. A further inhibition was secretly troubling the priest; if the rumour turned out to be false, the tolling of the bells would entail a grave danger. Father Makarucha recalled with horror his colleagues who had been hanged in the northern districts. He was loyal, no Muscovite sympathizer. But could all the officers of the Imperial and Royal Army be aware of that? All those Germans, Hungarians, Croats and Czechs? Only the locals know of it. The chairman of the council in Śniatyn knew as well. But he had probably already moved the council offices to some safer location. To toll or not to toll? The deacon had been enlisted in the army and there never had been a sacristan, so if it came to anything there would be no one else to blame. Since the deacon had been enlisted, Father Makarucha himself had usually been the bell-ringer. Now that it was a matter of the peace of the soul, not of any old parishioner, but of the Pope of Rome himself, was he really supposed to have someone else stand in for him? Quite inappropriate. Father Sydir Makarucha was no coward, so he didn’t want to look as if he was, even in his own eyes. So he decided to toll. But when he grasped the rope that was supposed to toll the two heavy bells, he could not rid himself of a persistent delusion that this rope was strangling him.
His self-confidence was bolstered by his imagination, which revived in Father Makarucha’s soul the infamous long-standing feud between the Empire and the papacy. The priest of Czernielica now engaged in a kind of battle over the Investiture, which was not, however, resolved in Canossa. He revolted against the state’s supremacy over the church and, although he valued his own life, he was prepared to sacrifice it for the faith.
All right, let them suspect him, but God in heaven knows that Sydir Makarucha is innocent; he is fulfilling his sacred duty.
He sensed the great power of his soul. His thoughts went out to all the martyrs he knew of, his thoughts went out to all the innocent Ruthenian priests who had been hanged, and with the palm of his own martyrdom before his eyes he tugged at the rope. He set both bells in motion, informing the parish of the unconfirmed death of the Holy Father Pius X.
Not long after that the bells tolled in the neighbouring parishes. So it was true; the Pope had indeed passed away. Father Makarucha felt deeply relieved, but at the same time he was loath to see himself relinquishing the role of martyr. His palm had withered before it had time to germinate.
Soon the bells—purchased with parishioners’ contributions or with generous donations from devout ladies of landed families, and the well-to-do who had recovered from their illnesses—were resounding throughout the district of Śniatyn. They resounded from church to church, from village to village, and their tones traced invisible circles in the clear, bright sky.
The Pope of Rome has died! Oh, our Pope, our Pope of Rome, of Rome, has died!
All the cardinals were mourning him, all the bishops and suffragans, the prelates and canons, the monks in their monasteries and the little sisters, all the saints in heaven and the devout on earth who had heard the news. The Metropolitan of Lwów himself, Count Szeptycki, a great man, a Polish nobleman who had resigned from the Imperial cavalry to serve God, who had renounced the Latin rites of the gentry in order to lead the Ruthenian people on the road to salvation wearing the Greek golden tiara, was mourning the Pope of Rome. And all the clerics and all the seminarists were mourning him, and the priests, deacons and sacristans were singing for him, and Father Sydir Makarucha, parish priest of Czernielica, tolled away.
Meanwhile in Rome eight Swiss Guards were at this moment bearing the body of the Pope into the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. The coffin was followed by a funeral procession consisting of a body of armed guards, all the courtiers and twenty-two cardinals led by Chamberlain della Volpe.
Piotr Niewiadomski was greatly surprised to hear the tolling of the bells. In those days the church bells rang only on Sundays, after the service. So was it a funeral?
No, when there is a funeral they only ring in the parish of the deceased, but now the bells were heard not only in Czernielica; the clearest echoes came from the distant bells of Horbacz and Nyrków on the Czeremosz. So if it was not a funeral, then what was it? Perhaps it was marking the departure of the last cohorts of the reserve militia? Were they bidding them farewell with the tolling of bells as if we were no longer among the living?
News of the Pope’s death was first brought by Magda. She also brought provisions for the journey—a kilo of pork fat, two loaves of whole-grain bread and some cheese. With her own money she had bought a packet of cheap shag. She had been unable to get hold of goose fat anywhere (Piotr was very partial to goose fat). She was dropping by in a great hurry. She had to return to the haymaking. That was where she earned her money. She would come to the station in the evening to see him off.
Piotr found the death of the Pope very upsetting. Like the Rome Tribune, he believed the war was to blame. Simple people in Hutsul country found it hard to accept that great people die just like lesser people, through illness or old age. The death of the powerful on this earth is usually associated with events of world significance.
I suppose—Piotr surmised—it’s because the clergy permit killing. Not only do they permit it; they expressly demand it. It now seems that the killing of a Muscovite is not a sin at all, or it is just a half-sin, like the killing of a Jew. Although it isn’t the same. Jews are non-believers, whereas Orthodox Christians believe in Jesus Christ. Piotr knew some Orthodox Christians; they lived not far away, in Bukovina. They were Romanians, it’s true, but they were subjects of Emperor Franz Joseph, just like the Hutsuls. They even dressed like them. On the railway, they talked of the wonders of the residence of the “Orthodox” archbishop of Czerniowce. Of course Count Szeptycki, the Golden Metropolitan himself, had visited—it must be four years ago now. On that occasion, the Hutsuls erected a magnificent triumphal arch in Śniatyn and welcomed their metropolitan with bread and salt, music and horsemen in traditional costumes. He passed this way, through Topory-Czernielica station, in a
private saloon compartment. If the Orthodox congregations had been non-believers, he would not have come to visit them. This is all very confusing. You can no longer tell who is with us and who is the enemy, who is righteous and who is a sinner. They say the Muscovites are retreating, yet they tell us to run away. They say the Muscovites must be thrashed, because they are Orthodox and recognize their beloved Tsar instead of the Holy Father in Rome, and the Romanians are Orthodox as well, yet they are loyal to our Emperor and care nothing for the Tsar. But today the Lord has taken away his earthly deputy and nobody knows if that is a punishment, or…
The death of God’s deputy evoked certain gloomy associations. It brought to mind the murder in Lwów of the Tsar’s governor in Poland, Count Andrzej Potocki, seven years earlier. The murderer was a Ruthenian, a Ukrainian. The entire Ruthenian people were tainted with the blood of the victim of this political assassination. Piotr Niewiadomski was a Ruthenian too, though his father was Polish. One’s religion was the deciding factor. National consciousness had never been Piotr’s strong point. If the expression may be permitted, Piotr was poised on the very threshold of national consciousness. He spoke Polish and Ukrainian, he believed in God according to the Greek-Catholic rites while serving the Austro-Hungarian Emperor. Ukrainian insurgents had reached Topory, it’s true, but they had not succeeded in undermining Father Makarucha’s authority, which was dependent on good relations with the landed gentry—and not only in respect of his dealings in honey. During the elections for the Galician Diet, the priest spoke out from the pulpit, encouraging his congregation to vote for the Old Ruthenian party, but he was not too upset when a certain Polish count was elected thanks to the support of Hutsul voters. The parliamentary elections proceeded in a similar fashion, although in certain more enlightened constituencies Hutsuls voted for Hutsuls. Piotr Niewiadomski consumed the sausage donated by the Ukrainian candidate, but he voted for the count—he was a safer bet. It was common knowledge that counts, princes and the baronial classes have always ruled the world, and always will. And they are close to the Emperor. The Emperor talks to them, and he listens to them. What can some peasant deputy do? He has no chance of intruding in the gentry’s circles and getting involved in government affairs.
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