No town in the monarchy raised black flags to mourn General B—’s routed army. They sat in the courtyard at the garrison in the scorching heat of the midday sun, waiting for the end of the war.
The garrison was located in an old disused brewery belonging to Farkas, Gjörmeky & Co., with wooden sheds added. The planks these sheds were made of still gave off an aroma of the pine forest. Their inner life had not yet died out. Here and there drops of sticky resin oozed from the planed walls. The recent hot weather had prevented them from setting and they dripped onto the soldiers’ straw mattresses like fragrant tears.
The huge complex of buildings comprising the garrison was four kilometres away from the town of Andrásfalva, reached by a fine, smooth asphalt road. On both sides there were extensive ploughed fields. The rich black furrows gleamed in the sunlight. Dense vegetable gardens, already wilting, bore witness to the fertility of the soil. Tall, sweetly scented linden trees, their foliage covered in grey dust, lined the road to the nearest village, obscuring the view. The towers and chimneys of the town could be seen only from the second floor of the main building, where the officers and the one-year volunteers were quartered.
One set of regulations, one timetable, was in force here, and a different one in the town. Over there, the factory sirens announced noon at twelve o’clock, whereas at the garrison it was an hour earlier. The town’s nightfall was in accordance with the seasons and the duration of sunlight; the military nightfall disregarded the revolutions of the heavenly bodies; in winter and in summer lights-out was sounded at the guardhouse at nine o’clock. Then the lights were extinguished throughout the garrison (with the exception of the officers’ and NCOs’ quarters, the canteens and the sick-bay) and the bodies of the privates, uniforms removed and stretched out on straw mattresses, obediently awaited the blessing of prescribed sleep. Sometimes sleep lingered, came late, unwilling to interrupt the stories whispered in the darkness from pallet to pallet, but in general it complied with the regulations. It arrived from its distant nurseries a few minutes after nine, removed weary souls from the weary bodies and released them for a few hours of freedom.
The garrison remained aloof from the town. It lived a life of its own, creating a small town apart, a world apart—men only. They were divided from the world of women and Hungarians by high fences, barbed wire and—speech… However, town life found its way in. It crept onto the parade ground, into the huts and into the brewery as distant voices and muffled rumbling; it made its way inside by way of howling factory sirens and the ringing of bells. It was disturbing and provocative, and tempting, even though it seemed to be such an alien, hostile intrusion—indeed, perhaps for that very reason. It should not be forgotten that most of the inmates of the garrison were country people.
At first they were allowed to walk into town during off-duty hours. After all, the battalion was made up of men who had served in peacetime and were used to discipline. However, after the regimental doctor Dr Badian began to be approached by increasing numbers of victims of the Hungarian Venus needing to be referred to specialist hospitals instead of being sent to the front line, this liberal regime came to an end. From then on, you could go into town only with a pass, and a pass was not easy to obtain when you were serving at a garrison of His Imperial and Royal Highness. Under these conditions, the soldiers took risks and went out without a pass. Sometimes they got away with it, but military police patrols, always Hungarians, often rounded up these risk-takers in the town, in the taverns and brothels, depriving them of their dignity, that is to say their bayonets, and escorted them to their own guardroom. Men seduced by the siren song of the town had to appear the next day before their company commander, and persistent offenders came before the regimental commander himself. Punishment ranged from ten days’ confinement to barracks to twenty days’ solitary confinement. On two occasions, the regiment marched into town in full complement: once to church and once for rifle practice. The rifle range lay far beyond Andrásfalva, on the other side of the railway in the north. These official marches went down the middle of the road, preventing soldiers from making individual contact with the civilian population. A man in the ranks is only one of the strokes or spots on the move making up the geometric figure called a “column on the march”. But even the smallest speck among the ranks has eyes and a mouth, which can send a smile to a woman in a window or on the pavement.
Sometimes the town itself came close to the garrison. It virtually rubbed up against it, passing by just below the fences and barbed wire. But it brought with it no life, only death. Before dawn, before the souls of the soldiers returned from their nightly holiday called to awareness by bugles sounding the reveille, herds of cattle, calves, rams and pigs passed by. Soon afterwards, when the entire garrison was already on its feet, the frightful squeals of the animals being slaughtered were heard in close proximity. And in the afternoons, at least once a week, funeral processions passed slowly by along the road—hearses preceded by Catholic or Calvinist clergy, sometimes even with music and banners, but usually ordinary black boxes on trolleys, without ornamentation or wreaths and without the presence of priests. Only a cross carried by a boy with his head bared testified to the fact that a poor dweller of the town of Andrásfalva also had a soul worthy of heavenly grace.
So the closest neighbours of the garrison were two public institutions, the municipal abattoir and a cemetery. It might seem that people going to their death were deliberately accommodated near shrines of death so that they got accustomed to it in good time. But people having to go to their death had no time to think about it. The proximity of the abattoir—well, it was even enjoyable. At any rate it was a reminder of food, and therefore… of life.
Our people were hungry now. For hours they had been sitting on the vast square between the brewery and the huts, surrounded by barbed wire, beset by uncertainty and growing fear. They had already finished off the last of the bread grown on their stony home ground, and when they had swallowed the last morsel they were overcome by misery. Everyone had the feeling that only now they were truly parting company with their homeland.
From now on the Emperor was supposed to feed them. The Emperor was supposed to provide seven hundred grams of bread and three hundred grams of meat per head, per day. They had not yet rendered him any service, but already His Majesty deigned to cook a whole ox for them in in the regimental kitchen. Not personally, of course, but through Lance Corporal Mayer and his assistants, the so-called “spud-bashers”.
At home, the Hutsuls rarely ate meat. Once or at most twice a year, usually at Easter. Unless a calf happened to die on them. But now, under the Emperor, every day would be Easter. Every day (except Fridays, because on Fridays even the army had to fast) they were to get fresh beef, sometimes pork, not something that had just happened to die. Those were the days!
At eleven o’clock barracks the world over are filled with the smell of broth. This pleasant aroma reached the nostrils of Piotr and his companions long before the duty corporals announced dinner. The general rejoicing was marred only by technical difficulties; what were they to serve the meat on, what was the soup to be eaten out of? It was a Sunday, and the demigods of war, that is to say the NCOs, were unwilling to issue the mess kits. Mess kits are issued together with the entire kit only after a roll-call, when it is confirmed who is to be “incorporated” and “drafted to a unit”, and who is to be sent on—to hospital, to a different unit, or to hell. It was a Sunday. No self-respecting garrison holds a roll-call on a Sunday. God himself, after creating the world, rested on the Sabbath. So even demigods, who are more susceptible to exhaustion than the Creator, ought to rest. God created the world in six days and then he rested, whereas NCOs have to spend weeks on end turning people into soldiers, that is to say into real men. For man as created by God is—you have to admit it—merely material for making a man, the raw material.
“I will make men of you!”
That is how the gar
rison’s iron-fisted Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk had greeted each new cohort of recruits for the past sixteen years. It was no idle boast. In a few weeks, he produced truly excellent specimens of humanity. But today Bachmatiuk was absent. He was enjoying a privilege that no one else in the regiment shared, not even platoon commanders, and of which no superior dared to deprive him. Contrary to regulation, on Sundays he was allowed to vanish unannounced for the whole day. No one knew where Bachmatiuk went. According to some, he wore mufti. But it is easier to imagine the devil getting baptized than Bachmatiuk wearing mufti. At any rate, no one had yet seen him dressed like that.
He returned from his secret expeditions well after midnight, dead drunk—he whose sobriety was supposed to set an example to all ranks. On his return, he was incredibly aloof, not recognizing anyone, not responding to the smart salutes of the night sentries, and not saluting anyone in return either, not even the garrison commander. The officers he met on the steps when leaving the mess pretended not see him, averting their gaze. The entire camp could go up in flames and the whole Imperial and Royal Army could desert without disturbing the RSM’s Sunday indifference, which ceased at dawn with the first notes of the reveille. After several hours of deep sleep Bachmatiuk sobered up. It was unknown for him to be as much as one minute late on a Monday. And during the sixteen years Bachmatiuk had never been off sick on a Monday. In general, he was rarely taken ill. And if his body had to part with his uniform for a few days as he was confined to bed, the RSM’s mind would never sympathize with his body, remaining on duty, fully conscious, alert and all-seeing. If garrisons have souls, Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk was the soul of this one. And the garrison had to come to terms with the fact that its soul deserted it every Sunday.
When Bachmatiuk disappeared, the pulse of life at the barracks weakened and all ranks, even including the officers, fell into a stupor. Duties were carried out aimlessly and carelessly, and blunders occurred.
Today everyone had a grievance against Bachmatiuk, for not making preparations for the arrival of the new draft, such a numerous one at that. He had not even arranged for the warehouse to issue mess kits. What is more, he had taken with him the keys to the “supplementary” stores. In vain the garrison commander Lieutenant-Colonel Leithuber and his aide Lieutenant Baron Hammerling tried to conceal their impotent fury. They did not have the courage to grumble out loud about Bachmatiuk. Both of them felt dependent on him. And, in the absence of the regimental sergeant-major, the NCOs could not be bothered. They did not even read out the list of names, merely accepting the escort’s general report and passing it on to the duty officer—transport arrived, consisting of 567 men. None of these men yet existed as far as the military were concerned, either as a person or as a surname. Today the only statistic was 567 stomachs.
It was the responsibility of the duty officer to ensure that the kitchen issued 567 servings. This obligation was carried out. By what means those servings were to reach the stomachs of the new arrivals was another matter, and its solution was not the responsibility of the duty officer. Let the men sort that out themselves.
At about twelve o’clock the battalion returned from church. They were a good three quarters of an hour late for dinner, because on this Sunday Lieutenant Smekal was in command.
Reserve Lieutenant Smekal, a removals contractor in civilian life, enjoyed inspecting the parade on the town square after the service. During the week, he was just a company commander, but on a Sunday he sometimes led the whole battalion to church. Andrásfalva market square is very broad and is ideal for this kind of display. Especially on Sundays, when many of the civilian population of the female species gather on the footpaths shaded by double rows of chestnut trees. Lieutenant Smekal’s dream would actually be a parade on the market square of quite another town, namely the one where he was born, where he went to school and where his furniture removal vans often passed by. Well, unfortunately war cannot make all dreams come true. Having duly gathered his laurels on the Hungarian market square (for this purpose he adopted a picturesque pose beneath the small statue of the great Hungarian statesman Ferenc Deák), and after momentarily slaking his thirst for power, Smekal felt the pangs of mundane physical hunger. It was purely thanks to this circumstance that the exhausted battalion was finally allowed to return for dinner. To the thunderous tramping of rhythmically moving feet, the battalion entered the garrison quadrangle in a cloud of dust. Fortunately, they were marching on that occasion without full kit and without rifles. Now, had it not been for Piotr Niewiadomski and his 566 comrades, the lieutenant would undoubtedly have dismissed them.
At the sight of such a large crowd of civilians, the removals contractor could not resist temptation and although there was not a single woman among the new arrivals he decided to hold a minor parade. Once again he set in motion the living, two-hundred-metre-long strip of grey-blue cloth, bordered by two bright rows of sunburnt faces and hands. Once again the steady tread of hobnailed boots was heard, trampling, trampling the foreign soil, as if wanting to trample to death every last blade of grass. For several minutes, this entire resounding wall of uniforms passed before the dumbfounded Hutsuls. Everyone began to realize that behind this rhythmic display of hobnailed boots lay a deep hidden meaning, something inhuman, even though it was produced by human feet. The beauty of the march was out of this world. Some invisible forces were at work here, probably the same ones that generate electric light and the power that drives distilling machines. People were marching, but they were not people. And it seemed that even the magician himself, Lieutenant Smekal with his short legs, was nothing but a tool of these invisible forces, obediently carrying out their will.
Suddenly the lieutenant cast a new magic spell on the wall of electrified cloth and the entire wall made an about-turn on the march, without changing its rhythm or pace. Then at one point, suddenly prompted to make a decision, Smekal took about ten rapid steps backwards. In a changed voice that rose two octaves, he let out a fearful bark. In response to this bark, four nimble figures wrested themselves from the depths of cloth, springing to one side with sabres drawn. All four barked in unison, whereupon in an instant the monolithic wall split open, forming four walls marching in sequence, separated by a few paces. Each company now formed two ranks, marching one behind the other, facing the commander. The trained kilograms of human bodies struck the ground heavily. The sleeves swung rhythmically, left, right, left, right, as if mowing either some invisible meadows or simply the air, accompanied by the metallic clanking of bayonets held to the left hip. A prolonged, harsh cry came from the lieutenant’s throat. The squad took one more step and froze. Silence fell on the square, as though not a single living soul was present. The only interruption was a hoarse singing coming from a gramophone record in the officers’ mess:
Puppchen, du bist mein Augenstern
Puppchen, hab dich zum Fressen gern! *
The bewitchment lasted only a few seconds. Casting a new spell into the sweltering midday silence, the lieutenant broke up the entire rectangular structure. But he did not destroy it. He barked in monosyllables and the walls swayed and shook slightly as all left legs were extended. Then the tension was relaxed. All the heads and arms swayed individually, out of rhythm. But the cloth walls stayed rooted to the spot. At that moment, the respective components of the structure revealed themselves so that you could distinguish the faces imprisoned in the grey-blue cloth, the sweaty faces, human faces. And it turned out that the battalion’s grand title referred mainly to residents of Śniatyn, Kołomyja, Nadwórna and several Bukovina districts who had joined up at the beginning of the war as reservists. Our people found it strange to see that their fellow men looked so different, and that they were capable of performing such difficult routines. They took fright at the invisible powers which would probably succeed in making moving walls of them too.
“What will happen,” they wondered, “when we are ordered to march like th
at?” Fortunately, however, not everyone had enough imagination to anticipate the torture of parade drill.
Lieutenant Smekal was about to go to the mess with the officers and cadets when the duty officer came running from the building. He stood to attention, saluting sharply, and for a few minutes they discussed something or other. Suddenly the lieutenant yelled across the square:
“Doroftein!”
Sergeant Doroftein detached himself from the right flank of the leading company. He ran up at the double and stood to attention. Smekal gave him the order to stand at ease. For some time they spoke naturally, as though they were equals. Meanwhile, the men in the ranks, enjoying the command to stand at ease, lifted their caps, which were soaked in sweat, from their close-cropped heads and mopped their sodden brows with handkerchiefs. The men in the front rank turned to look at the civilians.
And when the officers had gone off to the mess, to which they were enticed by toreador Escamillo’s aria, Sergeant Doroftein took command of the battalion. Facing the squad at an appropriate distance, he shouted in a gruff voice:
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