Salt of the Earth

by Józef Wittlin

  At the garrison things were not as in Basarab’s story; at the garrison all the souls were returning to their bodies. It was only on one occasion that Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk let out a soldier’s soul for it never to return.

  That concerned Łeś Nedochodiuk’s soul. What was it like, big or small, pretty or ugly, or—well, we don’t know. For the human soul is like that line of fire; it is known to exist, but who has ever seen it?

  The body is different. Even Łeś’s worst enemy could not deny that he was handsome. Łeś Nedochodiuk was tall and slim, but the gracefulness of his movements was in harmony with his strength. He walked lightly, even in heavy army-issue boots, and he swung his hips as if wafted by a gentle breeze. There was something tree-like about him, so it seemed strange that he did not rustle in the wind. The dark skin covering his entire body gave the impression of delicate bark. Cut it or saw through it, and surely resin would flow. And no flesh would be revealed, no bones, just the rings of a tree. And no stench would erupt from Łeś’s belly, but the aroma of a sawmill.

  His element was the forest. He worked in the forest and he was imbued with its spirit. He had no great devotion to his herds. The beasts smelt like liquid manure. The army abused him—they cut off his shiny chestnut locks, but they did not touch his light moustache. He trimmed it himself in the English manner. His sweaty exercise uniform did not look good on him. In uniform, Łeś looked like an animal whose charm and dignity are in its nudity, whereas in any attire, not necessarily belonging to the circus, he arouses only pity and laughter. The Imperial cap also sat uneasily on his shaved head. His big blue eyes stared out from under its peak with the innocence of an animal. His long eyelashes softened the cold, wild look in his eyes. The bloodshot left eye seemed particularly severe.

  Apart from his handsome appearance, Łeś had no distinguishing features. And yet he was respected by his countrymen. They respected his strength, his breeding and his family origins. He had only one claim to fame—his success with women. It was said that he had several wives simultaneously, but that was not true. There was one woman he was married to, also good-looking and of noble birth and, well, one mistress. And if there was some coquettish woman who could not resist the handsome young man from Dzembronia, she was the one to blame, not Łeś. Łeś Nedochodiuk found it hard to resist Hutsul women, and not only Hutsuls, as a spreading oak offers shade to anyone who lies down beneath it. Even the goddess of the forest would succumb to him.

  He had three legitimate children. About the illegitimate ones never a word was spoken in the land of the Dzembronia and Czeremosz rivers. The father and mother still lived in their cottage, but the whole farm had long since been in the hands of Ostap’s eldest son. This Ostap had brought his beautiful wife Kajetanna from Kuty. She looked a little Jewish, but she was not a Jew—heaven forbid! She was Armenian.

  Good times and bad times, peacetime and wartime passed over Łeś like a waterfall on the Czeremosz. Noisily, but without any harm to him. Łeś Nedochodiuk paid no attention to historical events. It was all the same to him who ruled the world, Austria and all the Hutsul lands. He was unconcerned about the Emperor or the enemies of the Emperor. He could read, but he did not read newspapers. Łeś was not alone in this. Many generations of Hutsuls had been buried with their eyes closed to anything that was not Hutsul. It was only extra-terrestrial matters that Łeś cared about. He believed in heaven, he believed in hell, the holy saints, angels and archangels, but also in Arch-Judas, the king of the devils, evil spirits, spirits of the night, spirits of the forest, and in the whole supernatural world of his pagan ancestors.

  This man of the wood was incompatible with machinery. He was decidedly inimical to products of the metallurgical industry. Machines were not well disposed towards him either. Not just machines, but metal in general. Twice in his life he had been tricked by iron. Once, in his childhood, he was almost blinded. At Kłym Kuczirka’s forge in Żabie-Słupejka, a spark from a red-hot horseshoe flew into his eye. He had to go for treatment to a quack doctor in Kosov, who gave him herbs and ointments that helped Łeś regain his sight after a few days, though his eye was painful for a long time afterwards. It was a miracle. Perhaps St Nicholas himself, the children’s friend, helped the Kosov quack. Many years later, when Łeś was working on his own, the axe with which he was chopping wood to make a raft cut off half of the thumb on his left hand. In peacetime, a minor disability is sufficient for exemption from military service. But in wartime you can enlist with half a left thumb missing. As long as the other hand is all right.

  This was the heyday of iron rather than of wood. It was manifested in the persecution of bodies of all kinds—human, animal, vegetable—by means of machinery. The infantry had not really ceased to be the queen of armoury, but her realm was no longer that of a world that killed with rifles and bayonets. The Mannlicher had been superseded in the Imperial and Royal Infantry by the Schwarzlose automatic rapid-firing machine gun, model 07/12, calibre 8. At the outbreak of the war, two machine guns were allocated to each infantry battalion. But when it turned out that Tsar Nicholas had actually won a victory over Emperor Franz Joseph thanks to the superiority of automatic weapons, the high command of the Imperial and Royal armed forces began rapidly creating new machine-gun units, but also training as many of the infantry as possible to operate this weapon.

  Sometimes, in combat, the enemy would manage to take out all the machine-gunners, who would then have to be replaced by whoever was at hand, without waiting for qualified replacements to be sent from the rear. Therefore, in Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk’s opinion, no marching formation was ready for the front until all its members were familiar with the machine gun, at least superficially. Of course, not every cretin could be permitted to have access to such a delicate and unpredictable machine. Piotr Niewiadomski, for example, was not under consideration here. It would be criminal to allow any man (if he was indeed a real man) to come into close contact with the Schwarzlose not knowing his left hand from his right. He did not know which was which, although he already had experience of being clapped in irons. He did not know which was which although the garrison commander himself, Lieutenant-Colonel Leithuber (the one with the withered right hand) had struck him twice in the face with his left hand. If necessary, you can entrust the less important parts of the machine gun to anyone—the shield, the tripod base, the ammunition boxes. But only to carry them. Piotr Niewiadomski was a porter on the railway in civilian life. Let him do the carrying. In peacetime, mules and Hutsul ponies of Turkish origin, which fed exclusively on hay, were used in the Imperial and Royal Army to transport machine guns. In our garrison there were actually mules, but not enough to carry the increased numbers of machine guns. So the machine guns were dismantled and people had to carry them.

  Bachmatiuk took a liking to Łeś Nedochodiuk at first sight. If the RSM had still been capable of loving anybody after Knauss’s death, he would have loved Łeś. Much in the way that a man of the cloth might sense that someone had a vocation to serve God, Bachmatiuk spotted Łeś as a potential NCO. He wondered whether to recommend him for NCO training before the battalion set off for the front. He gave Łeś numerous special, but on the face of it insignificant, dispensations, avoiding doing so ostentatiously. Nedochodiuk seemed not to notice. He did not realize that Bachmatiuk exempted him from cleaning latrines or helping in the kitchen, or clearing-up jobs, more often assigning him to more subtle tasks. For example, he was honoured with the functions of an inspection lance corporal, and during training exercises Bachmatiuk sent him on patrol as leader of a reconnaissance detachment. Łeś did not notice any of this. It also escaped his notice that Bachmatiuk never mocked him, did not address him as “Your Excellency” or “Your Grace”. He accepted these privileges as if they were conferred by the Emperor himself and were not even worth acknowledging. Throughout the training of the recruits Bachmatiuk waited for some response from Łeś—for at least some small sign of app
roval, if not gratitude. He saw none. Łeś Nedochodiuk carried out all orders impeccably, but nothing more. When the battalion began practising with machine guns (all of iron and steel, only the rear handles being made of wood), Łeś’s behaviour changed. It was very obvious that he found it repulsive to touch the machine gun. When it came to firing, Bachmatiuk asked Łeś if he would care to transfer to the machine gun detachment permanently. Łeś drew himself up on the command to stand to attention.

  “Begging your pardon, Regimental Sergeant-Major, I cannot.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  By way of answering, Łeś Nedochodiuk showed his left hand. Bachmatiuk understood this: with a missing thumb you cannot fire the Schwarzlose. So he ordered him to lie down beside the gunner and the gun-layer, hold the ammunition belt and collect the cases of used rounds. Drowsily, sluggishly, Łeś fed the cartridge belt through his fingers. He did so with an expression on his face as if he was feeding acorns to pigs rather than handling Imperial and Royal ammunition. And when Bachmatiuk, taken aback by this attitude, ordered him to remove the barrel from the tripod, Łeś took hold of it as if it was something unclean.

  Other Hutsuls did not trust the machine either. They could not get on with it. How does a Hutsul know how a machine gun lives and breathes? Had his mummy taught him that?

  And so they lay in the fields at Andrásfalva alongside the Emperor’s machine guns, as if they were guarding some precious livestock, as though they were watching over it as it grazed there. They pretended to be caring for its well-being, although they would rather have drowned it. Łeś Nedochodiuk made no such pretence. He openly displayed his disgust for the machine gun. Bachmatiuk took it all in and it troubled him, but he was unable to fault Łeś, who worked impeccably. But when Nedochodiuk displayed aversion to this beautiful weapon for a second and third time, as it were spitting on it, this was too much for Bachmatiuk. With a voice coming from the depths of his suppressed anguish, he cried out in a tone in which he had never before spoken to Łeś:

  “Careful there with the machine gun, Your Grace! A machine gun is no slut!”

  No slut! There was a flash in Nedochodiuk’s bloodstained eye. Open conflict had occurred only after live firing of the machine gun.

  It was a beautiful autumn morning when the third company of the 2nd Battalion (2MB / III) marched through the town, singing as they went. The chestnuts at the market were displayed in the glory of yellow leaves gleaming with water droplets. The rain which had lasted all night had cleared the dust from the pavements and streets. The great Hungarian statesman Ferenc Deák stood with his foot of stone protruding as if he was tapping it in time to the Ukrainian song. Then the recruits, tired of singing, were relieved by the company trumpeter Hryć Podbereznyj.

  Our men were in good spirits. They preferred live firing to the boring parade drill by the barracks, to the accompaniment of bellowing from the Farkas and Gjörmeky brewery’s bloody neighbour, the municipal slaughterhouse. Down the middle of the road at the head of the detachment marched Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk with a sheathed sword. The officers walked on the pavement so as not to stain their puttees.

  When they reached the field where live ammunition drills were held, Lieutenant Lewicki, the battle training manager, ordered the burdens to be removed from the mules and the men. He allowed a short break. The mules were fed, and the men stretched out on the damp ground, which had been flattened by the garrison’s constant practice manoeuvres. Soon a sharp whistle interrupted the hubbub. The men jumped to their feet. They stiffened. And one of those military silences ensued as when words with the significance of life and death were uttered. On Bachmatiuk’s order to “Fall in!” the men rushed for their rifles stacked in pyramids, to their dismantled machine guns, and to their equipment, prepared according to regulations. The Indian summer had enfolded the damp rifle butts in thin silvery strands. On the command to shoulder equipment, they hurriedly took up their packs and fastened their belts. When they were ready, Bachmatiuk ordered them to shoulder arms and stand at ease. Then he posted sentries to check the boundaries of the firing zone and chase away all living creatures, Hungarians and cows, if they came near. After the sentries had left, the machine guns were assembled and set up in trenches.

  The firing began. At first with hand-held weapons only. Soon the machine guns supported by their tripods started shuddering epileptically in their muddy nests. Fiery tongues flared out of their narrow muzzles and the whole space was filled with an incessant clatter, as though storks were indulging in insane orgies. It was a simulation of the company’s means of defence against a frontal attack by the enemy. Live fire saturated the foreground cleared of all living beings perceptible to the naked eye or field glasses. Moles and mice were burying themselves in the shelters they had made in good time. To begin with, on the Emperor’s orders, the men had to use their imagination to picture the enemy in the wasteland before them. But soon there was no need for that. Suddenly, our men spotted the enemy they were shooting at. Through his binoculars, Bachmatiuk picked out something in the wilderness and he started waving two flags, a blue one and a yellow one. He was sending secret signals to invisible forces, and there, no more than a hundred and fifty metres away, blurry grey-blue figures began jumping up. They were Muscovites. As they came under fire and were hit, they tottered and fell to the ground; then they reappeared, now here, now there, ever more clearly silhouetted against the bright sky. This was how Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk had power here even over the Muscovites. He killed them and brought them back to life again.

  The sun was now getting hot; the machine guns, churning up the mud, were rattling away, firing deliriously, when one of them began to falter; then it failed completely and fell silent. Bachmatiuk came running, touching the barrel as a mother feels a sick child’s forehead, and hissed. He waited until the barrel cooled a little, then checked the radiator. Of course, the water had run out. Three litres was not that much, given the continuous firing. The radiator needed refilling. But what with? The water was far away, where the “Muscovites” were dug in. Where the mules would be fed after the exercises. But you couldn’t go to the enemy emplacements to fetch water for the machine guns that were strafing them! You had to sort it out yourself. The men had water in their mess tins, but Bachmatiuk did not want to deprive them of their drinking-water on such a hot, strenuous day. Besides, he wanted to simulate with them the “extreme eventualities” likewise provided for in the Regulations concerning firearms instruction.

  “Nedochodiuk!” he shouted. “Pick up the barrel and piss on it!” Łeś Nedochodiuk did not understand. He just stood there, not making a move.

  “Nedochodiuk, did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes, Regimental Sergeant-Major.”

  “Well, why aren’t you pissing on it?”

  Nedochodiuk still did not understand, so some of his comrades tried to help by making appropriate gestures. To no avail.

  “Nedochodiuk!” shouted Bachmatiuk. “Why are you standing there like an idiot?”

  “Regimental Sergeant-Major, I, I—”

  “‘I, I’! What do you mean, ‘I’? In the army there’s no such thing as ‘I’!”

  “Regimental Sergeant-Major, begging your pardon, I can’t.”

  “Who says? Your Grace Count Potocki? His Excellency Prince Schwarzenberg?”

  Not only was Nedochodiuk’s left eye all bloodshot, the redness began to spread to both his cheeks. Nedochodiuk reported:

  “Regimental Sergeant-Major, Reserve Militiaman Łeś Nedochodiuk…”

  Bachmatiuk did not let him finish.

  “Your Grace cannot? Why not? Has he caught the clap?”

  For a short while they exchanged fierce glances. Suddenly, Bachmatiuk turned away from Łeś and shouted:

  “His Existence Reserve Militiaman Niewiadomski!”

  “Present!”

  �
��Unfasten His Grace’s trousers!”

  Piotr Niewiadomski went up to Łeś, but when he was about to face him he hesitated. He could not even bring himself to face him. Bachmatiuk yelled right into his ear:

  “That’s an order!”

  He had received an order. His Existence Piotr Niewiadomski stretched out his hands before him like a blind man or a sleepwalker. With trembling fingers, he began searching for Łeś’s buttons.

  Something extraordinary occurred. Łeś’s hands, motionless along the seams of his trousers as he stood to attention, rose and pushed Piotr away. They pushed him with such force that Piotr lost his balance and would have fallen on top of the RSM if the latter had not supported him with the cooling machine gun barrel. Without losing his temper, Bachmatiuk gave Piotr the barrel to hold and slowly approached Łeś like a predatory animal. He knew that Łeś would not dare to raise a finger against him. And with calm deliberation he unfastened his buttons. Then he tore the barrel from Piotr’s hands and in a voice trembling with supernatural force he declaimed:

  “In the name of the Highest Command, I order you—piss!”

  Łeś Nedochodiuk was trembling. With his right hand he reached for his trousers, but he immediately withdrew it. Bachmatiuk paled. Was this the end of the world, or wasn’t it? Bachmatiuk knew he must make a decision immediately, if the world was not to end. But what was that decision? If Łeś’s behaviour was an offence, or, as the Regulations stated, an infringement of discipline, he should arrest him on the spot and court-martial him. However, it could not be a question of insubordination unless there was no doubt that Reserve Militiaman Łeś Nedochodiuk could urinate on the Schwarzlose barrel, but was unwilling to do so. Difficult to prove, if there is no evidence and no doctor is to hand. Here, it was necessary to appeal to the deity and save one’s own authority, taking care to avoid inviting ridicule by interfering in the laws of nature, which could be just as intransigent as discipline in the Imperial and Royal Army.