Salt of the Earth

by Józef Wittlin

  The RSM battled Chronos not only on the minor scale of the clock. He also fought against time’s heavy calibre, that is to say his own ageing. He had already passed fifty, and it was not only his temples that were turning grey; he had a grey moustache too. He could shave it off, thereby maintaining a semblance of youth. He did not do so, because he served in the infantry, and infantry regulations expressly encouraged the cultivation of a moustache. In the Imperial and Royal Army only one regiment had the right, indeed the privilege, of shaving the beard and moustache, in honour of their famous ancestors who fell in the prime of life. That was the Windischgrätz Dragoons. Bachmatiuk was not a Dragoon but an infantryman by vocation and he respected the regulations of this arm of the service to a fanatical degree. As for outward signs of ageing, he had means of suppressing them which were just as effective as the razor.

  After finishing his cigarette, he closed his eyes and immersed himself in deep meditation. After a while he sat up in bed and barked a loud command to himself: “Get up!” Accustomed to obey any command, even from his own lips, he leapt up in a flash, put on his morning slippers and marched towards the wash-basin that rested on a chair. He plunged his head into the cold water to wash away the remnants of sleep from his large, dark, badly bloodshot eyes. He shaved in front of a little mirror which maliciously distorted his handsome, weather-beaten face. Then he cleaned his teeth. After that he engaged in a struggle with time. From a table drawer he produced all his armoury: a little box of blacking, some muslin netting and a child’s toothbrush. He spent a long time dyeing his broad, dense moustache, which overnight had lost its artificial lustre and its black, artificial symmetry. Finally, he applied a pink strip of muslin, attaching it round his ears. It looked like a bandage, drawing back his upper lip to reveal the pale gums and the long, yellow, equine teeth.

  He sat back down on the bed and meditated. He was wondering which trousers to wear. The short grey-blue breeches to go with his tall boots, or the long black evening ones? He chose the latter, although he would not be visiting any drawing-room. Huts, storerooms and dust were what awaited him. Black trousers were impractical on duty, of course, but they did have a certain advantage, not to be underestimated. If you were asked about Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk’s stature, you would have to say it was Napoleonic. Short stature is no disadvantage to anyone, of course. But the majesty of the Emperor of the French, who usually appeared before his troops on a historic white charger, clad in the historic grey greatcoat—well, that is one thing; quite another matter is the authority of a chief instructor in an Imperial and Royal Galician infantry regiment. Sometimes, long black trousers were to Bachmatiuk what the charger and greatcoat were to Napoleon. They elevated his status, enhancing his authority over subordinates. In those days Bachmatiuk set great store by authority. The trousers for evening wear were old and shabby and the seat was shiny. But all down the outer seams on both sides ran two narrow purple strands. Modest miniatures of general’s stripes. The choice of trousers determined the choice of footwear. In the nature of things, the tall boots standing to attention against the wall had to give way to the ordinary shoes that the orderly would bring along with the coffee.

  The orderly appeared just as Bachmatiuk was combing his thick black hair; it was naturally black, not dyed. A white, perfectly straight parting ran down the middle, as if traced with a ruler. It ran from his forehead all the way to the nape of his neck. The parting in his hair and the stripes on his trousers all seemed to make the same statement.

  In the doorway stood a soldier, a paunchy fellow with the complexion of a hermaphrodite. The skin of his pale, bloated face resembled parchment and it glistened like butter. Nature had endowed him with a perpetual lack of facial hair, making him an ideal Dragoon for the Windischgrätz regiment. However, he had been drafted into the infantry. Since the beginning of the war he had been unofficially polishing the RSM’s shoes, tidying up his quarters and bringing his meals. Now he was holding the polished shoes in one hand and a mess tray in the other, as the RSM was accustomed to drink black coffee from a pot like an ordinary soldier. He did not avail himself of the facilities of the NCOs’ kitchen, which issued white coffee in glasses and mugs.

  He did not even look round. With an experienced eye, he glanced in the mirror, quickly scanning the shiny surface of his shoes to establish that they had the correct appearance. He did not acknowledge the creator of this shine with a single word. In general, he rarely conversed with him. He had only had him since the outbreak of war and he did not want them to be on too familiar terms. He issued all commands in an official tone. Fatso generally carried them out conscientiously. His name was Hawryło (Gabriel) Kistoczok and he came from Bukovina, Bachmatiuk’s homeland. It was probably to this circumstance that he owed the privilege of his position. Bachmatiuk seemed to like him. Once, in a fit of good humour, he made a joking allusion to the fact that the shoe-shiner had an archangel’s name. In the presence of several soldiers, he called out:

  “Hey, Hawryło, Michajło, Rafajło, go to the orderly room and fetch the orders!”

  After that, wherever infantryman Gabriel Kistoczok appeared, he was met with calls of “Hawryło, Michajło, Rafajło!”

  The battalion’s soldiers taunted him, but instinctively they showed him respect. In any case he roamed at will in the lion’s den, sweeping it out every day, and he dwelt at the very source of fear; he was steeped in the intimate aroma of power. Someone like this must know a thing or two. So they bombarded him with questions—such as when would there be a weapons inspection, when was the general’s inspection to take place, when would they be entering the battlefield, when would the war be over. They sucked up to Hawryło and even tried bribing him with vodka, sausages and tobacco. Hawryło acted as though he really did know something. He intimated that he was a confidant of the RSM, and his smile was as moronic as it was enigmatic. But his answers were mostly vague and ambiguous. In the end, the soldiers decided that Hawryło, Michajło, Rafajło knew about as much as they did. Nevertheless, they still looked up to him, so that every day his self-esteem grew and grew. Alongside Bachmatiuk, however, he felt increasingly insignificant.

  Now he blurted out, with some difficulty:

  “Regimental Sergeant-Major! Reporting, the straw has arrived, sir!”

  “Dis—miss!”

  Hawryło clicked his heels, silently put down the coffee and the shoes, silently took away the basin of dirty water and silently departed. He would return to the tidying up once the RSM was no longer in the room.

  The RSM had a small room to himself on the second floor of the regimental headquarters. The other “professional” NCOs were quartered two or three to a room. Mostly they were married, with children. In the Stanisławów garrison they had apartments, with sideboards, gramophones with huge loudspeakers, chamber-pots, rubber-plants, rhododendrons, little dogs and canaries. The war and the evacuation had suddenly driven them out of their cosy nests. Deprived of their creature comforts, they found it difficult to adapt to the new conditions at their Hungarian barracks. Bachmatiuk was in his element here. For almost thirty years he had lived with the regiment and it was all the same to him where the regiment was stationed. He never had his own furniture, he did not even possess his own bed-linen, and as for the family—the military was his family. It was hard to imagine him ever having had parents. Regulations seemed to be his father and Discipline his mother. While Bachmatiuk was on military service, he sometimes spent his holidays at “home”. He used to visit his father, the mayor of a prosperous municipality near the river Sereth, and his younger siblings. But after transferring to the regular army, he broke off relations with the whole family and he was seen in the affluent municipality by the Sereth only once—at his father’s funeral. “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,” said the Lord to the apostles. Like a nun, married to the Lord in her innocence, Bachmatiuk lived for years away from his family, loving th
e deity more than himself.

  The earthy parents he chanced to have, as if foreseeing that their first-born son would one day become a source of support for the military might of the Habsburgs, christened him with the archducal name of Rudolf. Throughout his life, Bachmatiuk sought to prove himself worthy of that name. He was Ukrainian by birth, but in the course of many years in the army his nationality dissolved without a trace in the black-and-yellow substance. Today he was simply an Austrian. It would also be naive to mention his religious affiliation as indicated in the register of baptisms and likewise in the regimental records, according to which he was a Greek Catholic, since the only faith that he ardently professed and nurtured was the army. He attained the rank of RSM by honest means; he was as strict with himself as with his subordinates, selfless and pure as a vestal virgin. His vows of purity were addressed to his own conscience, but it was the late legendary Captain Knauss who ordained him a priest of Discipline.

  Bachmatiuk knew he had no chance of further promotion. The rank of RSM was the apogee of his career. He did not care about promotion, as he was not a careerist. He served his deity disinterestedly, maintaining his celibacy. He treated his task of turning men into men as that of a missionary. He not only created foot soldiers fit for parade and for combat, but above all he turned out Austrians. The duty of a priest, especially his missionary work, makes exclusive demands on a man. That was why Bachmatiuk was not married. Those unable to understand the meaning of true faith had their own explanations for Bachmatiuk’s avoidance of women. Some considered him to be impotent from birth. The fools! In any case, we have scant knowledge of the RSM’s private life. He did not keep the company of anyone in the barracks when off duty. Apparently, he had acquaintances in the town at Stanisławów. As the sole RSM, he occupied a totally isolated position in the regiment. He treated the sergeants as beneath him, but on the other hand he was modest and considerate enough not to approach the cadets and the junior officers, the subalterns.

  His little room at the Farkas and Gjörmeky brewery resembled a monk’s cell, indeed that of a monk belonging to some strict order. A camp-bed, a shelf above the bed, and on the shelf—bread, salt, butter, tobacco and an old parade helmet. Everywhere in the room—on the window, on the table, on the walls and on the floor—everything you saw had some connection with the army. Dummy ammunition, magazines with blank rounds in colourful boxes and odd spent shells. Everywhere there were piles of paperwork, old typewritten orders of the day already carried out, service notes, report books, forms, maps and service reports. On the floor, leaning against the walls, were faulty range-finders which he was repairing, rifle-practice targets, a large wooden box with live ammunition and two heavy, padlocked trunks. It could be that in one of these trunks he kept the civilian clothes about which the wildest rumours circulated. On one wall hung a brass trumpet. The following sacrosanct books lay on the table:

  Service Regulations, Part I, i.e. D.1

  Service Regulations, Part II (Field Service), D.2

  Service Regulations, Part III, D.3

  Exercise Regulations for Infantry, I.

  Rifle Training

  and a small manual for NCOs—the Handbuch für Unteroffiziere by H. Schmidt, with a portrait of the Emperor in colour on the cover. There was no trace of his private life anywhere. The wall above the bed was adorned with picturesque ornaments—a sabre, a belt and a pistol in a brown leather case. Nearby was the only picture in the cell—a large photograph in a black frame, under glass. It contained the figure of a handsome middle-aged officer in field uniform with field-glasses on his chest and a bunch of flowers. This was Captain Knauss. Captain Siegfried Knauss, setting off into the field, had offered Bachmatiuk only a small amateur photograph. He perished in the first days of the war on the Russian front. Bachmatiuk idolized Captain Knauss. Everything he knew about the army, that is to say about life, he had learnt thanks to him. None other than Captain Knauss had turned Bachmatiuk into a “man”. At the news of the captain’s death, the regimental sergeant-major—the man of iron—reportedly wept like a baby. After that, he lost interest in the fortunes of the regiment at the front. If the entire regiment were wiped out to the last man, it would be less of a loss than that single death. With that death, the regiment had already lost the war. Bachmatiuk took the likeness of the dead man to the best photographer in Stanisławów and ordered an enlargement, to be set in a beautiful black frame. Nobody would have been surprised to see an olive lamp burning underneath this photograph one day.

  After the orderly had left, he looked out through the closed window. Hundreds of people were milling around down below. On the main route leading from the brewery to the highway a convoy of wagons fully loaded with straw was drawn up. The horses were impatiently stamping their hooves. Bachmatiuk opened the window and leant out over the window sill. The hubbub from the people on the square seemed to calm down slightly. The regimental sergeant-major’s torso made an impression even in his vest. Civilians were washing at the wells. The soldiers were fetching coffee. From the east, from the direction of the abattoir, came muffled bellowing.

  “Reszytyło!” yelled Bachmatiuk at the NCO standing by the wagons. “What are you waiting for? Move on to the fourth barracks building! And see to it that nobody smokes! If fire breaks out you will be in for it, not me! Get a move on!”

  The wagons started moving. Bachmatiuk remained standing by the window for a while. This window and two storeys separated him from the anonymous masses which he had to knock into shape. He was supposed to infuse spirit into these ostensibly living beings who were ignorant of discipline. This work had aged him. Before the war, he had trained sixteen intakes. But what had previously been achieved calmly over a period of years now had to be done while you wait, in the stifling heat, in the space of a few weeks. Besides that, up till now the raw material had been young men of similar ages and types, whereas these days nothing but old clapped-out recruits were being rushed in from all over the place.

  The migration of Imperial and Royal peoples was already under way. Throughout the monarchy, reserve militia recruits were being transported from the mountains down to the plains, from the Carpathians to the Alps, from Dalmatia to Tyrol, from Galicia to Bosnia, to Bohemia and to Hungary. Some Hutsul transports had already proceeded from Andrásfalva to Styria. To replace the Hutsuls, about seventy Styrians had arrived. Mostly miners from the Knittelfeld region. The one-year volunteers, those “lawyers”, as Bachmatiuk contemptuously referred to them, were despatched to their special training centres, and the sick and the malingerers were taken to hospital. Hundreds of healthy bodies, mostly peasants, were waiting down below for the privilege of being enrolled and given uniforms trimmed with the regimental colour, a beautiful orange. In peacetime, the “owner”, that is to say the regimental commander, was a certain Balkan sovereign with whom the Imperial and Royal Monarchy was at war today. Despite this the regiment’s name was unchanged. It could still afford the luxury of this courtesy. It continued to be the 10th Infantry Regiment of King N.

  At the mention of King N, Bachmatiuk smiled. He had seen him during the great Imperial manoeuvres in 1904. King N had visited “his own” regiment at the time, along with His Majesty. Until the carriage stopped in front of the first company, who were the colour-bearers, it was difficult to identify who was the guest and who was the Emperor. Franz Joseph sat dressed in Balkan uniform with broad silver epaulettes, wearing a white fur hat with a red plume, while the Balkan ruler wore a shako and the full-dress tunic of an Imperial and Royal infantry colonel (with orange lapels and cuffs). Such masquerades used to be common before the war. They were part of the official routine of royal visits. Many foreign uniforms hung in the wardrobes at the Burgtheater and at Schönbrunn Palace. Intoxicated by the mothballs, they dreamt of bygone days of friendship between the crowned heads.

  “What will they do now with all those enemy uniforms?” wondered Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachm
atiuk when war broke out. “Will they return them or take them prisoner? It is uniforms, after all, that are taken prisoner, isn’t it? It is of no consequence what bodies are wearing them. An Austrian in Serbian uniform is a Serb.”

  When war broke out, Bachmatiuk got drunk, although it was not a Sunday, but a Tuesday. At one point he thought he could see his Emperor, strolling in Balkan regalia on the streets of the Austrian garrison of Stanisławów. He was frightened, and began to shout so the whole tavern could hear: “Turn back, Your Majesty, take cover!” He very nearly got arrested by the gendarmerie.