Salt of the Earth

by Józef Wittlin

  Pandemonium ensued. Other gendarmes who had up to that point been busy getting the Slovaks onto the train now rushed to the assistance of the devil under threat. They hit out with their rifle butts, and soon restored the dignity of their colleague, along with the seized rifle. At the same time some soldiers, all Hungarians of course, dashed over and drove the Hutsuls back. Alarmed by the hellish uproar, the escort, who had overall responsibility, rushed out of the buffet. They did not understand Hungarian, but they did understand that people had a right to drinking-water. They reacted rather hesitatingly and ineffectively. And if it had not been for the Jews, who were around even before the Tower of Babel, and who knew all languages, a great war between the peoples of the Emperor and the peoples of the King might very well have broken out at Huszt station. A railway official called on the Jews in broken German to explain to those savages that the gendarme was keeping them away from the well in their own interest. In their own interest. It was suspected that the water in the well was infected with typhus, dysentery and other diseases, which accompany all wars, as is well known. Drinking-water, sterilized water, was to be found at the other end of the platform in a wooden barrel. Too late. Some of the Hutsuls had already slaked their thirst and their rage with typhus and dysentery.

  It could just be that on that particular day at Huszt station the notorious seeds of hatred towards the local population had germinated among Galician soldiers quartered with Hungarian regiments, above all towards the Honvéds and the Hussars. This animosity was restrained at first, but later fierce brawls frequently broke out.

  And many litres of superb Imperial and Royal blood were spilt in Hungarian taverns and inns instead of on the fields of glory for the monarch’s benefit. At the time, they managed to stop the fire spreading, and not only by dousing it with water. Wine also had a good deal to do with it. One Izrael Glanz, a spice merchant from Kołomyja, casually remarked that there was no point in fighting over water when you could get cheap wine at the station buffet.

  Wine?—Piotr Niewiadomski suspected this was some Jewish swindle. He had never drunk wine in his life. Vines grew only in the Holy Land, in warm countries, in Rome, which is why priests drank it during mass. It was hard to imagine Hungary as the Holy Land—quite the opposite. A few minutes later he was quite happy to declare that wine was also a layman’s drink, available in Hungary even to ordinary mortals. The gendarmes, now operating hand in hand with the military escort, had difficulty separating the Emperor’s men from the Hungarian wine. But they managed it. Without protest or resistance, they returned to their places in the wagons. The wine was already coursing in their veins, awakening the muses. Polyhymnia and Terpsichore. Especially the younger recruits sang melancholy heroic ballads about past military expeditions or imitated the bleating of rams, bagpipes and shepherds’ long pipes. The kołomyjka dance broke out, with a lively drumming of heels. Three wagon-loads of Slovaks listened in to the Hutsul bacchanalia. Stirred to indulge in friendly competition, the Slovaks summoned up their finest songs from the depths of their souls. They too imitated the bagpipes and shepherds’ horns. They were on the point of fraternizing with the Emperor’s men, but this was prevented by the devils in cocks’ feathers. The Slovaks were strictly forbidden to leave the wagons.

  The train moved on, resounding with song. Only Piotr Niewiadomski kept a straight face. It turned out that he was a vin triste type. Once again he stood by the iron bar, in the company of the wagon’s older men who had not been affected by the wine. But the pagan god Dionysius had his way; Piotr was reconciled with the railway.

  Suddenly, Telesfor Zwarycz, a man from Widynów, remarked that such loud singing and dancing was inappropriate when they were supposed to be in mourning for the Holy Father:

  “The Pope of Rome is still warm, they haven’t laid him in his coffin yet.”

  Indeed, the Pope was not yet lying in his coffin. Not in the first one, made of cypress wood, nor in the second one, a lead casket, nor in the third and last one, made of elm. The people of Rome were still viewing his catafalque in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament.

  Of all Zwarycz’s arguments, what most appealed to the Hutsuls’ conscience was this:

  “What will these Calvinists think of Greek Catholics carousing when the Pope has just died?”

  “Calvinists? What Calvinists?”

  Apart from the Jews, no one in the wagon had heard that some Hungarians subscribe to the doctrine of Calvin. Telesfor Zwarycz was of the opinion that there were no Catholics at all in Hungary. They were all heretics, worse than Lutherans. Piotr was not inclined to believe this, somehow. Heretics, yet St Stephen is their patron saint? Can a saint be a heretic?

  Matters of religion were debated at length. In the end, Piotr allowed himself to be convinced that Hungarians are not Catholics at all. Secretly, he was even pleased about it when he finally realized why in this accursed country Emperor Franz Joseph is only a king. At the same time, the mystery of the leaning cross on the crown of St Stephen was solved for him. Wherever the Christian faith falters, the cross leans over. All his fellow Hutsuls felt very proud to have not one but two reasons to feel superior to the Hungarians. Firstly, as soldiers of the Emperor, and secondly as true Catholics. Naturally, everyone fell silent and everyone was saddened when the Pope died. And once again the Church of Rome had vanquished the pagan deities—wine, song and dance.

  For some time now, ever since they had left Máramaros-Sziget, a companion had latched on to the train, not leaving it for several hours. This was the river Tisza. It ran alongside the train, as though to win a bet on who would be first. Hour by hour it became wider and its roar grew louder. But the landscape had not changed much since the previous day. The Hungarian Carpathians were very similar to the Galician. Only the style of the buildings on the hillsides and in the valleys had changed. The wooden cottages and huts had long since disappeared, long gone were the little wooden churches with their triple layered roofs reminiscent of Chinese pagodas or sailing ships with three masts. This was what temples inhabited by the true God looked like. Temples of the false God were stonebuilt, white-washed, and had plain or red galvanized roofs. Most of them had slender clock-towers. There were many walls in this country, lending the villages a very urban appearance. Telesfor Zwarycz exaggerated grossly, however. Not all Hungarians were Calvinists, and in any case there were none here in the land of the Slovaks. The train had not yet reached the Calvinist districts. But the Hutsuls, educated by Zwarycz, had already formed their own opinion about the Hungarian churches. They considered them all to be nests of heresy.

  In spite of that, they did like the Hungarian countryside. As a child, Piotr had always taken an interest in any new scenery. Why should he hide the fact? This was not just the longest but also the most beautiful journey he had ever undertaken. And if he had not been aware that he was going to war, he would have enjoyed it very much. In peacetime he would never have travelled so far. What interest could he have in Hungary? What surprised him most about the journey was that, while being ever closer to the war, he was continually moving away from it. What could be the explanation for that? The Hungarian land was extremely quiet; the war zones lay somewhere beyond it, hundreds of kilometres away. Here, deep peace reigned. Everything had an air of prosperity and security; this carefree land was not shaken by artillery barrages, nor did it anticipate the coming of the Muscovites. Ordinary passenger trains were running, nobody was guarding the bridges, and the railway crossing guards stood by their booths, wearing the same caps that Piotr used to wear. But, of course, he was going to war.

  The mountains came to an end. The train sped alongside the broad river Tisza, and when the latter was suddenly lost in the steppe the train came to a stop at Beregszász station, as if it had lost its power along with the river.

  No, there is no justice in the world. When they resumed their journey, they found the vast steppe quite charming. These Calvinists have such a beautif
ul land, while the Catholics were close to snuffing it on their hillsides, which could yield for them at best a little rye and miserable oats. Oh, and maize in the valleys. And the cattle the wretched Hungarians had? Those pigs! Even the Hungarians’ worst enemies, contemplating the countless masses of cattle on the steppe, had to admit, objectively, that they had never seen cattle like this. The horns of the oxen were perhaps a metre in length. But why do the shepherds in these parts go around in skirts like women?

  Already on the last slopes of the Carpathians vast plantations of some unknown species of beans had been seen. Then, where the steppe began, the beans disappeared. They spent half a day traversing the steppe with the hot sun beating down (Piotr wondered whether the end of the world had not occurred here too the day before), and suddenly the beans reappeared. More and more of them kept coming, climbing up higher and higher poles.

  “How is it that these Hungarians wolf down so many beans?”

  “It’s vines, not beans,” explained one of the Jews. He kept scribbling and sketching in his notebook, calculating—it seemed—the annual income from these vineyards.

  They travelled on and on among vineyards along the river Bodrog. On and on. All of those who had shaved before setting off to war had heavy stubble by now. They had grown weary of this unending journey. The passing milestones were bringing them closer to the war and the elapsed miles felt like years. On a long journey, time is sometimes measured in spatial terms. Some people were deluded into thinking that the war would end once the journey was over. They would arrive at their post, and the sergeant would say, “Go home. You are not needed now. The Emperor thanks you. We are at peace.”

  The men, dazed by a great rush of impressions, were experiencing their second night on Hungarian soil… Time and space had knocked the stuffing out of them. They were subdued, resigned to their fate. So they fell asleep, but this lasted for two hours at most. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, they were exposed to broad daylight. The opposite of a solar eclipse. Bright daylight amidst the dark night. They were awakened by a powerful jolting as the entire train staggered and regained its balance, swaying as it swung over the points, again and again. They passed an entire encampment of wagons waiting in countless sidings. A deafening medley of sound: clanking iron, bells and whistles. Slowly, very slowly, they pulled into a colossal shed of glass and iron resembling the nave of a massive church. The vault of the glass domed roof was supported by arched iron girders. A great hubbub filled this remarkable church of the railways, where a dozen locomotives prayed fervently, emitting columns of smoke and incense in steam. Suspended at various heights, huge opal glass apples shone as brightly as daylight. They were the source of that brilliance. Large illuminated clocks showed the sacred railway time.

  It was only 23.13.

  “Everybody out! Get your luggage!” called the escort. Everyone rushed to collect their belongings and jumped down from the wagons. “Follow me! Follow me!” called the authority-conscious members of the escort. “Mind you don’t get lost! Keep together!”

  So finally they had reached the garrison. Piotr’s countrymen staggered like drunks, making their way among the crowd of strangers—soldiers, officers, civilians and women. Such a commotion, such a row had erupted here, regardless of the night-time hour! This was not night-time; the war had abolished night-time—it was broad daylight. From all sides the Hutsuls were inundated with torrid Hungarian speech.

  It was not the barracks, but the railway station in Budapest. Like a flock of frightened sheep, they shuffled along after their guides, awkward, bemused, at their mercy. They dashed down the steps, through dimly lit underground labyrinths and again up the steps to reach the brightly lit, noisy platforms, from platform to platform—when would they finally escape the railway’s vicious circle?

  Again they were told to get in the wagons, but this time they were passenger carriages. Thank goodness, there are benches; they would travel as human beings. As they had not had a hot meal for ages, they were overcome with delight when benevolent ladies came along the carriages, distributing coffee, tea and even sausages and cigarettes. They were very polite, very refined, and they smiled, but they prattled away in Hungarian. They kept saying “Teszek, teszek”—“Here you are… Here you are.”

  The eagerness of the patriotic women was so great that it extended beyond the uniformed heroes. Their kindness was lavished even on those who were only just on their way to join the army. They anticipated their heroism, committing to it with coffee, tea, sausages and cigarettes.

  Fed, watered and delighted by the kindness of the Hungarian women, they travelled on in high spirits. They contemplated their earlier impressions, reviewing their premature judgements. Gradually, they began to show conciliatory tendencies.

  “You know,” explained Semen Baran, “they are Royal and we are Imperial, but only in civilian life. In the army it’s all the same. The military is Imperial and Royal. Only the Honvéds, the Hungarian Landwehr, is Royal, not Imperial. I tell you, lads, don’t ever have anything to do with the Honvéds!”

  Piotr was already dozing off. He was aware only of snatches of what Semen Baran was on about: “Imperial and Royal…”

  He was sitting on a bench by the window, nodding and sleeping. He began to have visions of honking geese, then the geese were followed by heavy Hungarian oxen with metrelong horns and wonderful, wonderful pigs. Suddenly, the geese started gabbling in Hungarian, German and Slovak. Even the oxen were talking in Hungarian. Even the pigs spoke Hungarian. Then all the languages mingled in their beaks, snouts and muzzles, merging into a single dense mass of sounds, that proto-language spoken by the human race once upon a time, before the construction of the Tower of Babel. Piotr Niewiadomski understood every word, every single word of that proto-language.

  Suddenly he was dazzled by a massive glare of electric light. Piotr entered the focus of that glare, and what was revealed to him? The interior of the church in Czernielica. Hungarian ladies were singing the wedding song ‘Long Life to You’ in Ukrainian. The parish priest, Father Makarucha, wearing a floral robe embroidered in gold, leads him to the altar. He is wearing a cap with cock’s feathers. At that moment, a gorgeous young bride blooms forth at his side. Father Makarucha anoints Piotr’s forehead with some oily, viscous liquid. (He recalls the moment when Father Makarucha brought holy oil to his dying mother, Wasylina.) Unexpectedly, the priest takes a gleaming golden crown from the altar and places it on Piotr’s head. Piotr groans. This crown is too heavy to carry; it weighs perhaps fifty kilos. No one can wear fifty kilos on his head. Piotr collapses under the weight of the crown. The Crown of St Stephen.

  It was dawn when they reached the military post.

  Chapter Eight

  They arrived at the garrison and sat on their trunks, waiting for the war to end. But the war was not about to end. It had not even been unleashed in earnest, although many fortresses, particularly in Belgium, lay in ruins and numerous Gothic cathedrals had lost their spires, many Ruthenian villages had been consumed by fire, and lead had rent hundreds of thousands of souls from human flesh.

  Newspapers throughout the monarchy were publishing enthusiastic reports from the “theatres of war”, which differ from other theatres in that the actors are also the audience and the audience are the actors. Every day, images of the directors and prima donnas of the war looked out at you from the newsprint, profiles of old men in uniform, avidly seeking applause, flaunting their own immortality gained at the expense of the deaths of others. As to the spectacle itself, the newspapers illustrated their enthusiasm not so much in photographs, which often speak with the grim and distorted mouth of truth, as in fanciful drawings of crowd scenes in which the artist’s ingenuity, adapted to the requirements of propaganda, triumphed no less gloriously than military victories. In such drawings it was only enemies who perished, their mutilated corpses trampled by the splendid regiments of our cavalry, galloping in perfect ca
lm and in perfect formation. If sometimes, to set a good example, it was appropriate to depict wounded Austrians or Germans, there would be at most one soldier, slightly wounded in the leg. And if for the sake of decency it was necessary to include in the composition several dead on our side as well, these trivial losses never caused a breach in the ranks of the victorious and they never spoilt the harmony; on the contrary, they added a certain piquancy to it.

  However, the lists of casualties published in the same newspapers told a different story, growing longer and longer every day. Few families could congratulate themselves that their names were not among those endless litanies of people killed, people wounded, missing and captured. Fortunately, not all families in the monarchy were able to enjoy the benefits of the written word and the art of printing. Hutsul families, for example. So our people did not know why the flags were out all over the town of Andrásfalva, through which they walked from the station to the garrison. Huge red, white and green as well as black-and-yellow bunting hung triumphantly from turrets, balconies and windows, fluttering above the passers-by, responding obediently to gusts of warm breeze, which playfully blew them onto the roofs or wrapped them round the flagpoles. How could Piotr’s comrades know that this fairy-tale display of bunting in the Hungarian town was to mark the battle of Kraśnik and the victories of the Imperial and Royal Army under Cavalry General Viktor Dankl? They did not even know the fate of the regiment whose losses they would be adding to with their own bodies. This regiment belonged to another army, as famous as the Imperial, but not for its victories. For that reason it should remain nameless. The lists of casualties were saturated with names of the fallen in that army, which would probably have ceased to exist in a few days if their decimated ranks had not been continually replenished with fresh recruits.