Salt of the Earth

by Józef Wittlin

  The station was teeming. Everyone had arrived much too early, as they felt that hurrying off to war was unseemly, just as unseemly as hurriedly burying the deceased. Going to war is a solemn affair, so a long time should be spent saying goodbye, and waiting. Everyone was in a state of great agitation, especially after those stressful hours of darkness. Those who had been the most terrified by the eclipse were now coming out with the boldest jokes about the end of the world. The stationmaster in his red cap bustled about like a master of ceremonies at a ball, appearing every now and then on the platform and immediately disappearing again. Provisional Cadet Hopfenzieher, the actual stationmaster, carried a sabre, and the Czech soldiers bore rifles. Three gendarmes—the entire gendarmerie of Czernielica—were keeping order today: two corporals, one of whom was Durek, and their commander.

  That day, the platform was crowded with people who had never travelled by train before. All the old women had emerged from their cottages, the Wasynas, the Horpynas, the Warwaras, the oldest women and the oldest men had shuffled their way here. Children and dogs chased all over the platform, so that the Czech gendarmes had difficulty keeping order. Even deaf old Wasyl Horoch turned up, moving from group to group, arousing general hilarity with his slurred gibberish. Those now departing were grateful to him for coming to provide a distraction from their dark and gloomy thoughts. They teased him, but only good-naturedly. The men were trying to keep calm at all costs. And to put a good face on things. Some were dead drunk, staggering about and tripping over their bundles, embracing strange women, singing obscene songs, punctuated by hiccups. Some tousled peasant vomited on the platform, to the anger of the Czech corporal. “Ty prase!”— he yelled in Czech—bloody pig!

  The station was filled with the stench of vodka, sweat, woollen scarves and aprons. Emotions grew in intensity as six o’clock approached, but with the increasing agitation the noise gradually subsided. All eyes kept turning in the direction from which the train was expected to approach. Everyone was waiting for Father Makarucha; he had promised to come and bless those who were going to war. The deaf-mute Wasyl Horoch wandered about the platform like anxiety incarnate until one of the soldiers seized him by the scruff of the neck and frog-marched him off. Horoch struggled with the soldier, pitifully protesting: “Mu-mu-mu…”

  Around six o’clock, the whole of Topory and the whole of Czernielica had gathered on the platform. One had the impression that all the cows in the village would be turning up as well, and all the horses, all the sheep and the pigs, that the stream flowing through the middle of the village would come by, and that the sacred Hutsul rivers Prut and Czeremosz would break their banks to bless the men who had come to them to bathe and to water their horses and cattle.

  The station was seething. Final words of advice, final exhortations and final curses flew back and forth in a heavy atmosphere of anxiety, fear and pain—muffling the pounding of the artillery. Nobody was thinking about the approaching Muscovites now; everyone’s thoughts were directed far beyond the sapphire evening horizon above which the reborn sun reclined, reconciled with earth and people. Everyone’s thoughts were drifting towards the unknown little Hungarian towns, where the sons of the Hutsul land were already being expected in the barrack yards by the dreaded sergeants with their threatening bushy moustaches. The heads of anonymous corporals, sergeants and captains kept emerging from nowhere, from out of the ground, sprouting from the gravel and from the railway tracks, popping out from behind telegraph poles. Not even obtaining a platform ticket, death wandered at will all around Topory-Czernielica station, breathing cold air down the collars of one man after another.

  Six o’clock came and went, but there was no sign of the train. Those waiting to depart became really impatient. They would have preferred to be on their way, rather than endlessly prolonging the moment of parting. After the strange events of that day, the sun was setting like a splendid, perfectly round dish, and shortly mist and haze began to form above the rivers.

  It was not until a few minutes to seven that a heavy rumbling sound was heard, accompanied by wheezing, and finally the clanking of iron moving at speed. Everyone held their breath. Silence fell on the platform and the silence was so profound that you could hear the telegraph tapping in the stationmaster’s office. A brief, hysterical whistle brutally pierced the silence. Preceded by clouds of white steam and black smoke, a long train made up entirely of goods wagons pulled into the station. It was hauled by an iron camel, the product of Floridsdorf locomotive works. The camel with a massive hump, the boiler, was sweating. Its iron skin was covered with long, winding veins of copper pipes. It passed the station building, coming to a halt far beyond the pump. All the ironwork was clanking. The locomotive’s buffers had struck the buffers of a coal wagon, and they passed the impact on until it reached the last wagon. All the chains clanged and the train reversed a step, like someone bumping into a wall in the dark. The pistons, the locomotive’s sinews, relaxed their tension. The camel relieved itself by letting off steam.

  Although he was a railwayman, Piotr Niewiadomski felt as though he was seeing a train for the first time in his life. The wagons were already full of reserve militia who had boarded at previous stations.

  The boarding of the train began. The great commotion resumed. Mothers and wives, sisters and fathers kissed and hugged the departing men. Everyone jostled each other, as if all of a sudden they were in a great hurry. The gendarmes and the soldiers had to chase away the old women crowding towards the wagon, using their rifle butts. Magda sobbed softly, not venturing to embrace her man in the presence of all these legitimate wives and mothers. She could not bring herself to express her illegitimate anguish. She wept in some impersonal way; her inward sobbing might just as well have been for all those departing men as for a particular man. Piotr shook her hand as if it was that of a man, once again giving instructions to take care of Bass. At the moment when he had fought his way through the crowds to reach the wagon, the incident with Bass occurred. Doing his damnedest to get into the wagon, the dog dug his teeth into Piotr’s tunic. Gendarme Corporal Jan Durek noticed this and separated the dog from the man, delivering a heavy kick with his hobnailed boot. Bass gave a pitiful whelp and sprang back, tearing off a piece of cloth. He clenched this relic saturated with Piotr’s scent firmly in his teeth. Piotr turned to the gendarme and, all red in the face, shook his fist in anger. But the gendarme did not notice. Before the dog was able to launch a renewed assault on the train, he had already been separated from his master by the boots, trousers, backs, bundles and boxes of strangers.

  “Get in! Get in!”, shouted the soldiers and gendarmes. Everyone boarded. And when they were all aboard, the stationmaster gave the signal with his whistle, but, not sure that the driver had heard it among the great commotion, also raised his hand. Yet the train did not move. It refused to obey civil authority. It was standing on the track as though spellbound or as though waiting for someone else. Then the stationmaster shouted in a thundering voice: “Ready!” The call was echoed by the soldiers on duty at the station. This had the required effect. A military cap leant out from the footplate of the locomotive and immediately a hiss of steam was heard. A prolonged whistle sounded and the wagons juddered. The station fell silent. Even the dogs went quiet. The steam concentrated in the boiler was forced through the internal pipes into the cylinders and the pistons came to life. Puffs of heavy black smoke burst from the stack and slowly, slowly, like caravans leaving a house of mourning, the wagons began to move, pushing away, repelling, tearing away, literally tearing away the bodies of those who were going to war from those who remained in Topory.

  At that moment, two old Jewish women gave a loud scream. In their withered wombs the juices stirred once more, reviving the pain that had seared them in childbirth like the scorching heat of the desert. Deadened by the passing years, it now flared up like embers below the ashes. This was the signal for universal weeping. The whole station caught fire from the
Jewish flames, shaking and sobbing. The women yelled like tragic choir leaders, the Hutsul women yelped like bitches being whipped, toddlers whimpered, dogs, led by Bass, who had released from his teeth the scrap of cloth torn from his master, barked. The gendarmes beat them with rifle butts and chased the women away. Only the old men and women sobbed without shedding a tear. Not a sound came from their throats, not a single drop of moisture drove out the grief from their glazed, sunken eyes. They shivered and trembled like withered shrubs in the wind. Father Makarucha had not come.

  The train made its way through human pain and despair as through snowdrifts in winter. The stationmaster stood to attention, visually checking each wagon in turn, as though counting them. He gave a military salute to the guard on the train and for the last time Piotr Niewiadomski saw the golden winged wheel on his red cap, glinting in the rays of the dying sun.

  For a long time after the departure of the train, silent, motionless women remained standing on the platform. Their helpless eyes were glued to the track. This track had once led to the world, to life, to Kołomyja, Stanisławów, to Lwów. Now it led only to war, directly to death. A cloud of white smoke, the last visible trace of the train, floated for a while above the track and slowly descended to the embankment, torn by the branches of the spruce and fir trees like fine gauze. Until it dispersed into nothingness.

  From the group of silent women some old woman emerges. She hobbles to the middle of the track. Her colourless hair, dead as crumpled hemp, protrudes from under her white headscarf. She mumbles something toothlessly. From her eyes devoid of eyelashes some liquid drips, like resin from rotten bark. The old woman is saying something to the rails, explaining something to the rails, which no one hears. Then in a hieratic gesture she raises her trembling bony hands and makes a gigantic sign of the cross on the rails, the triple Greek sign.

  Chapter Seven

  The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was, as the name indicates, made up of the countries represented in the Viennese parliament, namely Austria and Hungary—that is to say, the lands of the Crown of St Stephen.

  The Crown of St Stephen (in Hungarian “A Magyar Szent Korona”) is very old and very heavy. Nevertheless, every Hungarian king must place it on his head once in his life. Clad in a magnificent cloak and wearing the crown, he rides on a white steed to the top of the highest hill in Buda, where he symbolically brandishes a giant sword. This is the culminating moment of the coronation ceremony. After that, the crown sleeps for years in a vault in the castle of Buda, awaiting a new king. It rests peacefully, unless someone steals it. This has occurred more than once in Hungary’s history. For this reason, in 1846 it was buried by patriots near the village of Orșova on the Danube. It lay in the ground for ten years. But the gold and precious stones did not put out any shoots. Only the cross on the top of the crown worked loose and today it leans to one side—as when Christ fell beneath it. Everyone in the kingdom, even a beggar into whose outstretched hand they drop 20 hellers, knows what the Crown of St Stephen looks like. Because actually the mint was common to both countries, as indeed was the entire treasury; it issued the coinage in both countries—both the Austrian and the Hungarian. So even Piotr Niewiadomski carried around many Crowns of St Stephen in his pocket, and he often wondered why its cross was crooked.

  During peacetime in Śniatyn district, people showed little interest in Hungary, close neighbour though it was. And yet every Hutsul child knew that the Hungarians’ emperor was no emperor, only a king. Truth to tell, no one in Śniatyn district gave any thought to why that was the case. It only became an issue when certain of the Emperor’s subjects, and the best of them at that, had to go to Hungary.

  The wagons in which Emperor-and-King Franz Joseph was transporting his soldiers (40 men), or his livestock (8 horses), were secured in two ways, depending on who the passengers were. If they were horses, cattle or pigs, a single wooden door without windows was drawn. People enjoyed greater freedom; anyone who wanted to could even jump off the train, because instead of a door the way to death, disability or freedom was blocked merely by a simple iron bar.

  Leaning against this bar were Piotr Niewiadomski and his compatriots. It was a privileged place, the only one in the dark, stuffy wagon where there was access to oxygen and nitrogen and where the world could be seen slipping away. The small opening in the roof was good only for animals’ lungs. As for humans, it wasn’t even any good for their morale. It was covered by a grating, as in a jail. Piotr owed this benefit to his fellow passengers’ ethical principles. An unspoken pact applied in the wagon—those passing through their home territory had the right to stand at the front. Then, when the train entered unfamiliar districts, you were supposed to give way to others (let them too get their breath, let them have a look), and lie down on the straw in the reeking, gloomy inner depths.

  All were supposed to take turns in this way throughout the journey, because they still believed there was justice in this world. Piotr also believed there was justice in the world, but only as far as Delyatyn station. He stood by the bar and everything he could see was still familiar, close, sometimes even intimately known to him. First of all the train passed the plot of land the railway had given him in fief. Magda’s sunflowers were already drooping, and Piotr thought this meant they were turning their heads towards him, black and yellow like Imperial and Royal banners. The spreading, steel-blue cabbage leaves were eaten away by caterpillars; what a shame. For some considerable time, the wooden church on a hill in Czernielica was reluctant to disappear from the horizon. It circled around the train, showing now one side, now the other (was it on the right or on the left?), playing hide-and-seek with the train. It would suddenly disappear, and then its three cupolas would unexpectedly re-emerge from the ground like the heads of three divers in a swimming pool. Piotr had been christened in this church; here he was given his name—once a year he went to Father Makarucha for confession, and before that to the old parish priest, who had died sixteen or seventeen years ago. He would undoubtedly have got married there if he had eventually found a wife. And certainly it would be nowhere else but in this consecrated ground where Czernielica church stood that he would be buried. His mother lay there. Suddenly, the memory of his mother, still so close to the train, pierced his heart like a sharp bayonet, filling it with condensed regret for everything he had lost that day. But the church had already disappeared from view, this time irrevocably.

  The train redoubled its speed, as though spurred on by a whiplash. It plunged down the wooded slopes. The telegraph poles passed by at regular intervals like the refrain of an old, never-ending song. The cables stretched between them undulated rhythmically, turgid with news of the war. On the mown meadows horses leapt at their tethers—the train had startled them. Keeping close to the mares, unfettered foals were frolicking. Motionless regiments of geese stirred at the sight of the roaring train and without breaking formation, without spoiling the symmetry, menacingly distended their necks. The most exposed ranks of geese spread their wings wide, and beating their wings as if in response to a command rose effortlessly above the ground. These goose storm troops, prepared to attack the train, looked like a detachment of white, heraldic eagles. All along the track, particularly on marshy riverbanks, the mobilization of storks was under way as the 25th of August approached, the traditional holy day of departure to warmer countries.

  The train reached the first station, took on new people with bundles and trunks, and again women were crying. And so it went on until Kołomyja. Piotr noticed that all the station signs were in place, although the army was in charge everywhere. So the relegation of Topory-Czernielica station had been the stationmaster’s whim.

  The ancient rule of travel imposes on passengers a heightened reserve towards new passengers. In this wagon too, those who had been travelling to war for over an hour looked down on the newcomers for a while. However, after half an hour they were all equals. At each station, an invisible hand stoked the iron fur
naces of war with fresh fuel—human bodies. But nowhere did so many reserve militia soldiers board the train as at Topory-Czernielica. Apparently, the rest had gone by other trains. Piotr wondered how many trains carrying this cargo for the Emperor were running at the moment on all the monarchy’s railways? A hundred, maybe even more?

  None of these hordes of travellers, who for the first time in their lives were allowed to travel free, knew where they were going. Everyone knew only one thing: they were going to Hungary, where people gobble paprika and where His Imperial Majesty is merely a king.

  But Hungary, the land of the Crown of St Stephen, is a big country.

  The wagon was overcrowded, and the train had long since left Piotr’s homeland. Despite this, Piotr still occupied his privileged place. This was thanks to his railwayman’s cap and his railwayman’s manner of speech. One of the new passengers insisted on knowing when the train would reach Kołomyja. It was as though his concern involved some urgent business in Kołomyja, not that he was on his way to Hungary in the interests of the Emperor.

  “Should be there at twenty-one sixteen!” Piotr declared in the tones of a timetable compiler. To say “nine sixteen” would be beneath the dignity of a railwayman, for whom there are neither mornings nor evenings, and day and night are one body like a husband and wife, the twenty-four-hour body. A true railwayman knows only one nine o’clock—the one in the morning.