“Salutiert—eins! Zwei! Drei!”
The old torso rose with a struggle and the hands carried out the salute in the three stages.
“Setzen!”
The old eyes, like a couple of beggars, sought mercy in the eyes of Discipline. But they did not find it. Discipline could not see human eyes. It watched only hands, feet and caps. Intoxicated by the rhythm of its own command, it chanted:
“Salutiert—eins! Zwei! Drei!”
The old body hesitated for a moment, as if slightly swaying, but in good time rose from the ground. This was repeated five more times. In the end, eyes met eyes. After the eighth “setzen!” no further “salutiert!” followed; relief came from the commands to stand at ease and carry on:
“Ruht! Weitermachen!”
After that, the old man could do with his body as he wished. Having eaten its fill of salutes from a sitting position, Discipline smiled kindly from the young man’s mouth, showing two rows of strong, healthy teeth.
“Garbacz!” whispered one of the soldiers in Piotr’s ear.
So that was Cadet Garbacz! Piotr compared him with the conception of the man he had formed on the basis of his surname. Wrong! Tryhubiak had been right. Garbacz did not look like a “dog”, although he had tortured a tired old man. Everyone who knew Garbacz was aware that, personally, he could not care less whether people saluted him. He was indifferent to polite greetings. But bad saluting he could not tolerate. Only those officers who considered bad saluting a mark of personal disrespect could overlook it, as it was they who were looking, not Discipline. Cadet Garbacz had no right to give away something that was not his own property. On the other hand he could, for example, offer people his own cigarettes. He actually wondered whether he should give one to the old soldier. He did not give him one. The uninitiated might think he regretted what he had done. But he did not regret it. He had a clear conscience. If people saluted so badly in the very first month of the war, what would happen later on? The war might last until Christmas. Was it permissible to condone sloppy saluting in the presence of the new recruits, who were still civilians? It was actually because of the civilians that he had to react so strictly. He would not give him a cigarette. On the other hand, it would be good to speak to the civilians. Don’t let them think that they are dealing with some blunt, bigoted blockhead of an official.
“Well, you fellows, was the meal all right?”
He knew it was all right, although he himself did not eat in the soldiers’ canteen. He was on his way back from the officers’ mess, where he had been dining on something akin to ambrosia and nectar. His question was intended to indicate that he was partly human, even if the rest of him was not.
He did not wait to hear the response, which was a positive one of course, chanted in unison. He saluted first, and, arm in arm with his companion, who had observed the spectacle with indifference, set off in the direction of the town.
Piotr Niewiadomski now knew for sure that this was no “son of a bitch”. But how could you recognize those with a heart of gold round here?
If Cadet Garbacz had been a son of a bitch, by now he would have been running around with his tongue lolling out, in this heat. The stuffy Hungarian air was contaminated with rabies germs. Piotr thought of his Bass—would he be able to stand this inferno? Of course he would. The men were dreaming of the cool mountain rivers, of the Prut or the Czeremosz. The feebler souls among them were ready to sell themselves to the devil and betray the Emperor in return for the chance to soak their bodies in running water. They enquired of the soldiers whether there was a river, a pond or a brook anywhere nearby. There was a pond, on the other side of town on the way to the firing range, but it was dried-up and abandoned. So they eyed the luxuriant row of linden trees lining the main road, the garden surrounding the brewery officials’ cottage, but help was not forthcoming from any direction. One by one, the soldiers abandoned their compatriots and retired to the straw mattresses in their quarters, where it was cooler. Although it was a Sunday, there was still work for them to do—cleaning weapons for the inspection on the following day.
Presently, two figures appeared from somewhere inside the red walls of the brewery. First came an unshaven giant of a man in crumpled uniform. He shuffled along in ungainly fashion in boots from which the laces had been removed. His trousers were slipping down and he kept pulling them up with his elbows. Both hands were full—he was carrying buckets. He was closely followed by another soldier. His trousers were not slipping down, his boots were no problem, on his shoulder was a rifle with fixed bayonet. At his waist, on both sides of the brass eagle on his belt, hung two bulging pouches like a pair of black udders filled with the leaden milk of death. The space between these two men was charged with some deadly current. Again a death zone. This time a physical one. It was amazing that the insects carelessly flitting between the two soldiers did not drop dead.
“A deserter,” thought Piotr to himself at the sight of the prisoner. “Perhaps he is a traitor, one of those who, carrying the colours…”
But this was no deserter, nor was he a traitor.
“Hello, Huk! Hello, Ilko! Come over here and roll one! Oh, you’ve grown a beard!” called out the giant’s comrades from the third company. Some of them temptingly offered him their tobacco pouches. But no one was seriously thinking of giving any to him. Ilko Huk had had enough tobacco in detention. Throughout the monarchy detainees secretly obtained tobacco. The soldier carrying the buckets threw his comrades a friendly glance, winking at them knowingly, and gestured with his bearded chin. The soldier with the rifle kept his eyes on the other’s back. He was obviously afraid.
“He’s going to the kitchens to fetch rations for the men under arrest,” explained one of the soldiers.
“Who is he?”
“Some Polish comrade. Very fond of girls. After he went out last Saturday, without a pass of course, he didn’t come back until Monday, after the physical exercises. But the man’s in luck! The captain likes him. He only got twelve days. The captain would give anyone else twenty-one, and irons as well, because it was the second time he’d bunked off.”
“What are irons?” asked Piotr Niewiadomski. Tryhubiak had not said anything about those.
The initiates of the first category burst into ironic laughter and Lance Corporal Zubiak shook his head:
“Don’t you know what irons are, conductor, sir? Have you got a mother?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“That’s a shame, because when they cuff your left hand to your right leg or your right hand to your left leg and you have to sit like that for two hours, three, four—whatever you’ve earned—your liver will swell and you’ll curse your mother that you were ever born.”
The initiates roared with laughter once more. A few civilians joined in. Piotr frowned. Snippets of the vision of his mother feeding him soup flickered before his eyes and her words still echoed in his ears. And a stranger tells me to curse such a mother? Perhaps the devil deliberately evoked this image in the infernal heat of the midday sun? Curse her! What for? For the left hand, for the right hand, for the right leg… Piotr looked at his hands. For God’s sake, which is the right and which is the left? Was he never going to learn that unless he was placed in irons?
The soldier carrying the buckets and the soldier with the rifle had already passed the most menacing place in the garrison, the command headquarters, from where they could be observed by the officers. The tension between them had subsided a good deal. The soldier carrying the rifle was now more relaxed, walking like a human being instead of marching. As they were about to turn towards the machine room, the prisoner turned, lifting the buckets without caring what happened to his trousers. He struck them triumphantly and they resounded like cymbals.
Piotr was still upset, despite the amusement the prisoner had aroused among his comrades. The soldiers lost no time in explaining to th
e civilians that the guard with the loaded rifle was infantryman Ołes Hnidej from the same third company as infantryman Ilko Huk. That day, the third company was on guard duty. Lieutenant Smekal was to blame for a two-hour delay in the changing of the guard. Ilko Huk had been guarded by his comrades for twenty-six hours instead of twenty-four. In half an hour, new men from the first company would take over. Ołes Hnidej would lay down his weapon and be released from guard duty. He would hand over to the guard commander in person the live cartridges, which he was obliged to fire at a comrade should he attempt to escape. The gendarme, the detention guard, the enemy, would become a friend once more. The prisoner was also one of the initiated. He was familiar with the metamorphic nature of discipline. He knew that in a few days, when he was released from detention, everything could be reversed. Today’s gendarme could become a prisoner, and the prisoner become a gendarme.
Piotr Niewiadomski could think of nothing else all day until evening came with the sweet black coffee. Arrests, solitary confinement, dark cells, fasting and the irons. Enough of this in the service of the Emperor, enough! And the worst of it is that comrades face each other with loaded weapons, like Corporal Durek and the bandit Matviy, known as The Bull. Except that a gendarme was a gendarme all his life, a thief was a thief, but under the Emperor you are a gendarme today and tomorrow you’re a thief…
He could not come to terms with this new order of things. He had been around in this world for forty-one years and still he was rediscovering it, and always from different perspectives that kept getting worse and worse.
“All right,” he told himself, “it’s war. We know that. But why has the Emperor visited so much fear, so much anger, so much punishment on his own people? Would it not be better to save all his anger for the Muscovites? After all, it’s them he is at war with, not us. Why spill good, Catholic Austrian blood?”
Piotr Niewiadomski was a friend of Emperor Franz Joseph’s. He considered the whole Imperial and Royal Army to be friends of the Emperor’s. With the exception of traitors, of course. “My beloved peoples, my beloved army,” wrote His Majesty in his proclamations. Perhaps he did not write this? But writing, the devil’s signs, is one thing, and the truth is something else. “My beloved peoples…” A fine sort of love that is.
After the coffee he relaxed. Military caffeine had exactly the opposite effect from the civilian variety; it soothed troubled hearts. Nevertheless, many hearts were now beating rapidly on the square, by the huts, and the cause of this was not the heat, it was fear. Nightfall was approaching, and no one knew whether they would have to sleep under the stars. Among the civilians there were those who had never slept on the bare ground. Somehow it seemed unlikely that they would be given accommodation for the night. People who were now afraid of the night, the starry sky and the bare earth were descended from an old tribe of shepherds. Centuries ago, their fathers spent many a night in the dew and many a night sleeping in the desert, with burnt grass, hot sand or hair of live camels as their only bedding. When storms raged in the sky, they sheltered in canvas tents. In the darkness of the night they feared only God and jackals. Oh, how long ago it was that the tents of Israel had crumbled to dust! The descendants of ancient shepherds, pursued by sneering, evil fate, now wander the deserts of brick cities and towns, afraid of the land, afraid of the sky, and afraid of the rain.
Since the beginning of the war, almost four weeks ago now, there had been no rain. It was as if the sky had renounced the privilege of watering the soil, waiving it in favour of human blood. But human blood, however profusely it flowed, brought no benefit to the land.
Around seven o’clock clouds began to gather on the horizon to the west. The clear blue sky darkened in many places. The sun had not yet reached its final position beyond the town of Andrásfalva; it had only just left the garrison boundaries. It floated down towards the clouds. And the clouds swelled, growing dark. People who in other circumstances would welcome the relief of a storm now anxiously watched this mobilization up above. Where could you shelter from the downpour, which could last all night? No one was allowed to enter the huts without express permission. Only a command could release them from their oppression, but no one gave such an order.
By eight o’clock, it was clear that it was not going to rain. When the sun collided with the cloud bank, the clouds parted. Then, as if blushing with embarrassment, the clouds separated into numerous flocks of fleeing dirty sheep, chased by the fiery dog into an abyss. The sun’s victory was something wonderful, like the victory at Kraśnik. Jews and town-dwellers breathed a sigh of relief.
The night beneath the Hungarian sky held no terrors. Stars flashed on the clear firmament, one after another, glorious, mature, brilliant. It was nights like these that gave birth to astronomy. The close atmosphere which had been so oppressive during the daytime seemed to have relented in the face of people’s anxiety before the storm. The sky set in motion its hushed, invisible fans. A pleasant coolness wafted from the north. A northerly breeze gently caressed the faces of the new arrivals. The moon had not yet appeared.
In distant huts they were singing, in chorus, each verse beginning with “Oi!” It was a sigh developed into a melody, sheer Ukrainian nostalgia condensed into sound. Homesickness, longing for the steppe, the mountains, for love, for a lost paradise. Our men lay on their trunks and their bundles. They were waiting for their dreams to come true, they were waiting for the war to end.
The summer night slowly slid down on them. It rendered their features gentler, erasing their dullness and roughness. The night covered the commonest of faces with a patina of holiness. It closed mouths, but opened hearts. But no one here had anything to confess. They had not yet experienced the kind of shared misery that robs souls of their pride and their shame. Everyone kept their secrets to themselves. There would come a day when no one could keep them in any longer. In the absence of a priest they would confess to one another.
Nobody could sleep. The first night in the army held some secrets. Everyone was waiting for something.
As a cloud drifted in front of the moon, from the depths of the brewery came a long-drawn-out bugle call. The Emperor’s lullaby for well-behaved children. The communal singing in the barracks died down. Nine o’clock. Soldiers throughout the monarchy go to bed at nine. With the exception of those on the front line. A few moments later, from the mysterious depths of the brewery, from where the prisoner had been led that afternoon, and from where the notes of the lights-out bugle call were now drifting, a small detachment of armed men emerged. Bayonets glinted on the rifle barrels. They marched in double file. They came to a halt in front of the command headquarters. An officer or a sergeant gave a lengthy explanation to the soldiers. The light from the windows of the headquarters building was reflected in his sabre. He spoke in a hushed voice. Then they set off towards the square. They paused here and there to leave one soldier behind. The stars on the NCOs’ collars glinted. The garrison was posting the night sentries. The duty sergeant was positioning them at the boundary fences, at each barracks hut, by the barbed wire and at the main gate, embellished with fir branches and banners in honour of the victory at Kraśnik—an armed soldier now paced to and fro.
They did not trust us. We were surrounded on all sides as in a prison camp.
Piotr Niewiadomski could not swear to it, but he imagined that one of the sentries was Dmytro Tryhubiak from Czernielica.
The prisoners fell silent, although no one had forbidden them to speak. They spoke to each other in whispers. In the army, night-time of itself ordered silence. Nervously, they lent each other matches and seemed to be smoking furtively, even though no one had banned it. Eyes wandered round at night, clinging to the walls of the brewery, red in the daytime and now white as chalk, clinging to the huts, and plunging into the dark mass of linden trees lining the road. Neither the walls nor the linden trees could restore their lost freedom.
“Thus far,” said the borders
of the earthly horizon, “and no farther!”
So they raised their eyes towards the heavens, where constellations with names known to astronomers but not to dwellers of Śniatyn district shone with ever greater radiance. Piotr Niewiadomski did know a few stars. He knew which was the Great Bear, the Plough. He knew that the path of stars strewn across the sky was the Milky Way. It was there that the Plough broke an axle. The prisoners’ eyes anxiously ran backwards and forwards across the Milky Way like starving dogs. Maybe the sky would throw them a bone as consolation?
At this time of year only stars fell from the sky.
Seeing how often they fell, a merchant from Kołomyja, Izrael Glanz, thought God was dismantling the heavens. Perhaps the stars were going over to the Muscovites as well.
The camp was going to sleep. Disappointed by sky and earth, the men curled up and retired into themselves. They drifted away into the dark depths of their beings. Piotr Niewiadomski looked at his comrades and saw them all placed in irons. The left hand to the right foot, right hand to the left foot. Everyone silently cursing their mothers. There was a great silence, interrupted by snoring, coughing and groaning, and there were stars in the sky, and stars on the collars of the NCOs.
* “Little doll, you are the apple of my eye,
Little doll, I could gobble you up!”
Chapter Nine
The alarm clock on the table rang shrilly. It shook as it made its sharp but impotent attack, merely obeying its own spring. No need. The man who had wound it up the evening before was no longer asleep. He was lying here on the bed, half-covered with a white woollen blanket, smoking a cigarette. (This smoking on an empty stomach was probably the reason for his hoarse voice.) The alarm clock ejected the extent of fury prescribed by the mechanism, then it fell silent. Now it was just an ordinary ticking clock.
This had been going on since time immemorial. Since time immemorial Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk had awoken a few minutes—sometimes even more than ten minutes—before the alarm clock launched its attack. All the same, he would set it every evening. In summer for five o’clock, in winter for six o’clock. Was it just an old bachelor’s unthinking, eccentric habit? Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk was an old bachelor, but he was not eccentric. Everything he did had a purpose. This alarm clock fulfilled an important function for him. Every day it noisily acknowledged the superiority of the RSM over the forces of the night. Additionally, on Mondays it sounded his victory over alcohol. Punctuality and discipline were not imposed on Bachmatiuk by powers alien to his nature. Over the dozen or so years of his service, these virtues had entered his bloodstream and penetrated his tissues like lime. Bachmatiuk demanded nothing more from his alarm, just a loud affirmation of this fact, which he wanted to hear repeated every morning. It was his soaking therapy. And when the alarm rang Bachmatiuk had the impression that he was in control not only of himself, his will and consciousness, but also of the time he allotted to himself. The alarm clock faithfully carried out its duty; it did not wake him. So far, it had never failed. It was obedient, eating out of the hand that wound it up, as it were. Bachmatiuk never disappointed either. He always woke up of his own accord; he was always the first past the post. But whose hand wound up the springs that worked Bachmatiuk?
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