Salt of the Earth

by Józef Wittlin

  “Battalion! On my command—Atten—tion!” And he turned the people back into a wall. But immediately he ordered them to stand at ease and then addressed them in Ukrainian.

  “Lads,” he said, “the battalion will be issued with its meal as usual, by company. The first two companies are to eat up promptly and wash their plates. They will then pass them on to these recruits. The corporals of both companies are to be present at the issue of the meal, but each man is to ensure nobody steals or refills his plate. Understood?”

  The “lads”, many of whom were over forty, understood. And even if they had not understood, no one was allowed to speak up. The sergeant’s question was rhetorical. Many such questions are put in the army, and woe betide the soldier in the ranks who dares to respond. But some soldier in the second row of the first company carelessly gave himself away. A feeble grunt came from the pit of his stomach rather than from his mouth, but it was his mouth that betrayed him. He grimaced in doubt or protest, God knows what that grimace meant.

  Sergeant Doroftein suffered from persecution mania. This ailment often affects weak people who find themselves in positions of power. He thought every soldier was laughing at him. If they laughed at him when off duty, well, he couldn’t do anything about it. But on duty, well, there were plenty of ways of dealing with that! Sergeant Doroftein had a beady eye, though nothing like Bachmatiuk’s, which could see through walls. Picking out the soldier who had apparently mocked him, Doroftein first insulted him in particular, and then carried over his anger to the entire company. That was how he operated. Casting aspersions on the mothers of more than two hundred men was quite something! It gave him a sense of self-importance and he took pleasure in it. In being just one man, capable of reviling a whole company with impunity.

  Streams of invective in Romanian, Ukrainian, German and Polish now poured from his mouth, defiling the squads standing there in silence. But the company preferred to hear their mothers besmirched by the sergeant to doing punishment drill, which he was accustomed to inflicting first on the culprit and, later, on the whole detachment. However, Doroftein’s rage usually died down as quickly as it flared up. In a voice still shaking with rage, he now yelled:

  “Attention! Double file! Right wheel!” And having achieved what he intended by that voice, he relaxed into a familiar tone, issuing the command “First Company! Follow me—quick march!” and he led the First Company into the barracks. The other companies followed under the command of their own sergeants. Only civilians remained on the square.

  Earlier, when Sergeant Doroftein was talking with the officers, Piotr Niewiadomski had convinced himself that magic was practised in the army. Discovering familiar faces in the squad, he and a few civilians took the liberty of approaching them. He wanted to greet his fellow countrymen, to speak to the familiar faces. It was in vain. The men in the ranks turned out to be as dumb as that Vasyl Horoch of Czernielica. What had happened? Why didn’t they answer, why did they stay silent? Only their eyes seemed to say: “Keep away from us! Run away from here!” And with their hands, which could move quite freely, they desperately warded off their countrymen. But it was only the privates who had lost their tongues. The NCOs had the gift of speech, and most unpleasant it was too. They also used it to ward off the civilians, for between the army division and the rest of the world lay an invisible but very dangerous zone which nobody was allowed to cross in either direction. It was like a zone of death, if not physical death.

  And suddenly these civilians realized that terror reigned in this garrison. It controlled all this demesne given over to the war; this is where the oath solemnly sworn to the Emperor leads you. Terror, terror turns living people into rigid rectangular formations, rhythmically marching columns. All these fine marches and parades arise from human terror. Terror would one day lead these penal formations beyond the confines of the Farkas and Gjörmeky brewery, it would lead them beyond the Hungarian land, driving them far away, to their encounter with death. Terror—in the face of something more menacing and more powerful than the officers and sergeants, maybe even than the Emperor himself, and death. They did not yet know the name of this deity, but they could already sense that they were in its sharp clutches. They did not know about Discipline, but they were already frozen by its icy breath.

  The former brewery’s spacious machine room housed the soldiers’ kitchens. Here too terror reigned, here too there was Discipline. It could be sensed even in the aromas from the cooking and the smell of bulls’ blood. Thanks to it the serving of meals was carried out fairly calmly and in a fairly orderly manner, even though Bachmatiuk, the great high priest of Discipline, was absent today. Our people had already unwittingly submitted to it. Voluntarily imitating the behaviour of men in uniform, they had fallen into line of their own accord. But what ranks they were! God of war, have mercy!

  The recruits took their meals in company messes III and IV. I and II would take their turn last today. Every day a different company went into the kitchen first. Justice prevailed under the Emperor.

  At lunchtime it became clear that no one in the battalion had lost his tongue in the army. Everyone continued to talk as freely as at home. Not on parade, however, when the command to stand at ease did not permit conversation. Not with companions, and even less with someone who was on the other side of the danger-zone.

  The recruits were clumsy with the mess kits. Many of them spilt the entire liquid contents of the metal dishes over their own and others’ trousers. The especially thick, hot mashed beans, ladled onto shallow dishes by the spud-bashers. In less than an hour a whole ox, the pride of the Hungarian steppe, disappeared into the Hutsul bellies. Such fine, long horns it had only the day before!

  Food banished terror from the Hutsuls’ souls. The army was not so bad, since it even fed you with meat, and soup, and beans. At least you knew you were not serving for nothing.

  After issuing the rations, head chef Lance Corporal Mayer noticed that he still had thirty-six portions on the wooden counter, not counting those put aside for the detainees. What did that mean? Had the administration made a mistake? That was impossible, the administration never made mistakes. What then? Perhaps not all the new arrivals had reported to the mess?

  That was actually the case. Not everyone had reported. Thirty-six men could not stomach that dinner. They found the mere sight of the meat repulsive. And even though they knew it was not pork or hare or venison, or meat of the weasel, eagle, griffin, ostrich or owl, or of any other animal that does not chew the cud or have a cloven hoof and is therefore unclean—it was from the ox, which chews the cud and has a cloven hoof—yet they did not want to touch it. For how could they be sure that the muscles and all the veins of the ox had been removed before it was cooked? How could they be sure? No, there was no such certainty. The meat had probably been cooked in its own blood along with the veins. But did not the Lord say unto Moses, “Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off”?

  Thirty-six reserve militia recruits declined to eat the soul of an ox, so as not to die and lose their own souls. And when was death more likely than in these times of war? And who was going to suffer it if not the soldiers of His Imperial and Royal Highness, who on enlistment had been assigned to category “A”? And although the Sons of Israel (including those who failed to observe the rituals of cooking) would not be the only ones to perish in the war, they might be more likely to die. Of course, this whole war was not kosher and it reeked of sins a hundred times worse than eating unclean food. Flesh, veins and all, was wallowing in rivers of its own blood and the slaughter of human cattle was by no means according to ritual, no! But as long as the Jewish bodies wore kaftans rather than uniforms, as long as Discipline did not force them to eat, they could and must abstain from everything unclean. As the ancestors of these thirty-six righteous men did, so would they. Tomorrow their beards would be shaved, tom
orrow their side-locks would be cut off, and the Emperor would dress their submissive bodies in uniform, like shrouds. Tomorrow, but not today. Tomorrow they would be delivered to higher powers and they would therefore be free of the obligation to be kosher. And they would go to the regimental kitchen with their mess kits, like goyim, for their unclean meal.

  And they would eat. One day the Emperor himself would answer to the Almighty for their tainted souls.

  Although food is something we are accustomed to consider subordinate to so-called higher needs, a serving of beef may also provide comfort for the soul. Every meal prolongs our existence on this earth, offering our bodies the promise of their continuation. Otherwise the idea of last requests for the condemned would make no sense. How often they abandon the consolation of religion, the last rites rendering their souls immortal, to request immediately before the execution just one thing—pork roast, veal stew or fish. Perhaps they are subconsciously clinging to the false hope that it will enable them to live a little longer, that death would not so easily claim a healthy body containing freshly introduced life-giving substances. Perhaps, for those who do not believe in the immortality of the soul, food is the only drug capable of anaesthetizing the terrified soul?

  Piotr Niewiadomski was not a condemned man in the true sense of the word. And he did believe in the immortality of the soul. But the hot beef consumed before the soup gave him courage to fight the terror that permeated the atmosphere of the whole garrison. It was not the fear of death. The chemical composition of the terror in the garrison could not be precisely defined. It was some invisible, odourless gas. It exuded from the flaking walls of the Farkas and Gjörmeky brewery, it wafted powerfully from the ten barracks buildings which stood in rows, one next to another, new, wooden, oblong, like giant coffins. In the shadow of these coffins, emitting an odour of resin, now sat uniformed men next to men in civilian attire, resting, eating and smoking. For the duration of mealtimes and while the food was being digested, an armistice with fear prevailed.

  The men in uniform were very pleased by the arrival of their compatriots. The latter, for their part, were glad to find in Hungary so many of their own kind. A good number of them came from the Śniatyn district, from Iliniec, Biełełuja and Chlebiczyn. Hutsuls made friends with Hutsuls, Poles with Poles, Jews with Jews, German settlers from Mariahilf in Kołomyja and Baginsberg with Germans. People of the same nation recognize one another by their sense of smell. Hutsuls can sense Hutsuls, Jews can sense Jews at ten paces, even if they are wearing Turkish rather than Imperial uniform. It was heartening for all concerned when they mingled. For a moment both parties even accepted the illusion that the distance separating Hungary from Pokuttya had lessened and that the homes left in the care of their women were on the move and were to be found somewhere just around the corner…

  The civilians brought a great deal of interesting news from their home, about their cattle, their wives, children and lovers, about the harvest and also about the war. It turned out that the battalion soldiers were actually less well informed about the war than the civilians. They were far away from the fighting, but any day now they would have to go to join it. The war had not started for them yet. It was just being born in the safety of the barracks courtyard, the surrounding stubble fields, the calm, sweet meadows and the shooting range. They had come here to refresh the strict ABC of war, which they had forgotten during the years that had passed since they had been on active service. Since that time a few new letters had been added to the ABC, but it had also been simplified. They already knew how to march, they were able to drop to the ground on command and get up again, to kneel and crawl on their stomachs; they were familiar with the Mannlicher and Werndl rifles, they could use small spades to dig trenches to protect themselves from gunfire. But above all they knew how to listen and keep quiet. On the other hand, the civilians had heard with their own ears the roar of real guns, and seen with their own eyes trains full of real wounded. For they had come from the war zone, from a land burning underfoot. This was the advantage they had over the battalion soldiers and they were proud of it.

  The men in uniform talked about the great victory at Kraśnik that the commanding officer had solemnly announced in an order of the day. They were not very enthusiastic about it, somehow. The great victory at Kraśnik was all very well, but a matter of much greater importance was the weapons inspection scheduled for the next day. Only someone unacquainted with Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk could consider the victory at Kraśnik of greater importance than a weapons inspection. Only someone who had never seen Bachmatiuk squinting his left eye, applying his right eye to the muzzle to check the rifling, and checking for pollen, soot or rust, could take this ceremony lightly! The civilians did not yet know Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk, but they were also indifferent to the victory at Kraśnik. For them, everything taking place at the front line at the time was merely a prelude. The real war, unless it ended in the near future, would begin in earnest only when they took part in it. It could hardly be said that they had a burning desire to get involved. They could easily get over the fact that the greatest victories were occurring without them. Victory or defeat—they were as bad as each other. Not even Piotr Niewiadomski was so naive as to suppose that lives were not lost in times of victory too. He remembered from the Russo-Japanese War that victors die as well as the vanquished, sometimes even more of them. As they said in 1905, the Japanese fell “like flies” at Mukden. Piotr had never seen any Japanese, but he had seen flies expiring on long yellow strips of honey-covered flypaper. He had himself hung up such flypapers in the stationmaster’s office at Topory-Czernielica. He had thrown them in the rubbish himself too. The Japanese died like this, and yet it was they who won the war, not the Russians. So what did the Japanese corpses gain from such a great victory? Probably about as much as the dead flies.

  “When a war is over,” Piotr told himself, “the emperors sit down in their palaces, take paper and pencil and count corpses. It would seem to be just like a game of cards; whoever lost more is the loser. But what actually happens? Quite the opposite. At Kraśnik too we probably lost more men than the Muscovites did.”

  He ate the soup. Next to him sat a soldier, Dmytro Tryhubiak from Czernielica. An old acquaintance. He had lent Piotr his bowl. He talked about relations at the garrison, explained the mysteries of parade-ground drill and the sequence of military training, and complained about the NCOs. They hit you in the gob, although physical assault was banned in the army. Victims of physical violence could complain on parade, but woe betide anyone who did so. Tryhubiak talked at length about punishments. He described the different forms of detention. It apparently gave him satisfaction. Personally, he even preferred detention to marching in the heat in full equipment. You could always get some rest.

  The things the soldier was talking about seemed trivial compared with the real war in which people killed one another. Piotr was surprised to hear the soldiers exaggerate the importance of garrison life, as if “the field” existed for the benefit of the barracks and its detention regime, rather than the other way round. Suddenly he stopped listening to Tryhubiak, because he saw a woman’s face emerging from the tin mess bowl. The eyes and mouth immediately seemed familiar. Whose face could it be, unless, unless… Piotr had a shock. He recognized her. It was his mother’s face. Not the worn-out, hieratic woman she became in the last years of her life (Wasylina Niewiadomska’s face looked like that in the photograph he kept in the trunk). It was still a young, wrinkle-free face, as he barely remembered it from his childhood. He had never seen it with such clarity before. And that is what scared him. In other circumstances, he would undoubtedly have been very pleased. But why, after all these years, had this forgotten face appeared to him? What paths had it taken to make it all the way here, to Hungary, to find the troops? She became clearer and clearer to him. He recognized the red scarf on her head. He recognized the strings of corals around her neck, corals hanging over him
.

  It was the aroma of the Imperial soup that had lured his young mother from the netherworld. Memories sped at a staggering pace on invisible waves of fragrance. They floated around in disorderly heaps like thawing ice floes on the Prut. Suddenly they came to a standstill, gathering around clearly recalled events. Into Piotr’s mind came a now distant winter, as severe as the disease which, as he was only a small boy, debilitated him for weeks. In Śniatyn district illnesses have no names. They visit people namelessly and namelessly they pass. Piotr lay for weeks on end behind the stove, wrapped up in any scarves and any rags that were to be found in the house. It was as though his mother concentrated all the heat in the cottage on her dying child. For Piotr was dying. Hutsul children’s illnesses mostly end in death, since there are no doctors to treat them. A mother’s last resort in that part of the world is a bath. In the case of chest pains and fever, a bath of incense, sage and thyme. Wasylina Niewiadomska repeatedly bathed her son according to this ancient superstition, but in vain. So she took to fumigation. She fumigated the boy with smoke from burning horses’ hooves and from wild poppies, but it was no use. The Jewish divine commandments propagating fumigation of a sick child, and the Jewish matzah blessed in the church with the paskha at Easter, were not accessible to her. Well, she gave up her superstitions. She had stopped believing in them. But she took advice from a certain wise old woman who in her younger days had been in domestic service in the town. This old woman believed passionately in God and in hot soup. From then on, Wasylina prayed every day before the holy images and daily brewed greasy, hot broth with beef bones. She bought the bones from a Jew in Bogatyn. She added liberal amounts of groats to the soup—millet, barley or ordinary buckwheat, Piotr didn’t remember which it was now.