Other posters and announcements were attached there too. A now very faded coloured poster, an invitation to attend the Vienna Eucharist Congress—ceremonies that had long since taken place and been forgotten. Pedigree turkeys and chickens invited you to the Third Regional Poultry Exhibition. A smiling, corpulent waiter in tails carrying frothing jugs of beer in both hands offered this beverage on behalf of the Lwów Brewery Company. An attractive sphinx-woman with massive earrings was smoking a cigarette wrapped in fine Abadia paper. All these adornments on the drab walls of the waiting-room at Topory-Czernielica station owed their presence over the years to Piotr Niewiadomski, who had pasted them up personally.
Two new notices had been drying out on the door for the last hour. Large, white, severe, bereft of illustrations, smiling waiters and sphinx-women. They were identical and inseparable, like Siamese twins, and their presence was also due to Piotr. There was a provocative freshness about them.
At around seven o’clock passengers began to gather. A gamekeeper in a green cap turned up, a couple of old women with baskets, a few Hutsul men in red trousers and some black-coated Jews. They all crowded round the new notices, talking loudly in their impatience and perplexity. Shortly, the stationmaster appeared. He wanted to announce in person that the passenger train was cancelled. That the line had been placed at the disposal of the military. Suddenly, glancing at the posters he had ordered Piotr to display that morning, he flew into a rage.
“Where’s Niewiadomski?” he shouted. “I’ll knock his block off!”
Niewiadomski didn’t know why.
“The dozy nincompoop! The Emperor’s proclamation—he’s got the Emperor’s proclamation upside down!”
It took him a long time to calm down. Finally, he dashed to the office for more posters and pasted them up himself. The people who had gathered in the waiting-room began reading aloud the words of the proclamation to the beloved nations. To begin with, one word at a time, if their reading ability allowed, then in chorus with the illiterates. They repeated each word like a litany in church. In these distant lands, their faith in Emperor Franz Joseph united Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, Armenians and Jews in one shared universal church. Piotr involuntarily removed his cap as he listened open-mouthed to the Emperor’s solemn imputation. The Emperor had despatched it here, to the very limits of his domains, so that good people might take pity on him and take up the cause of the injustice to his gracious person. The Emperor’s faithful subjects did not disappoint him. In the universal agitation that overcame the Topory-Czernielica station waiting-room, Piotr Niewiadomski forgot his personal shame, because he was thick-skinned but soft-hearted. In a biblical, hieratic, moving style, the Emperor’s proclamation railed against the wicked, subversive Serbs for obliging him to take up the sword instead of permitting him to eventually die in peace.
“What sort of sword?” Piotr wondered. “It must be the large silver pen-knife that His Majesty carries around in his pocket, and only takes out in the event of war.”
Two days later, the stationmaster called Piotr into his office once again. Piotr thought he was going to be punished for the lèse-majesté he had committed by attaching the proclamation upside-down. By way of justification he could only say that he was illiterate, and that there were no illustrations on the Emperor’s posters allowing him to tell top from bottom. However, the stationmaster received him calmly and amicably. Evidently, it was forgotten. Mobilization had smothered all else. For many a criminal, it brought a pleasant, unexpected amnesty.
“Niewiadomski,” said the stationmaster, “you are an ass, but I have nobody else I can turn to. One after another they are being conscripted into the army. You have to go to 86; Banasik has received his call-up papers and he is joining the reservists. Today you have to go down to the track, take his cap and flag and look after the level-crossing barrier. Banasik will show you everything. The war won’t last long, three weeks, four at the most. In a week’s time we’ll enter Belgrade, in two weeks we’ll take Warsaw, and in three weeks we’ll be in Moscow, God willing. Then we’ll all return home; Banasik will return, unless he gets killed. Until then you have to stay at 86 and carry out his duties. Just don’t let me hear any complaints, because war is no joking matter. You’ll be out on your ear and not even the dog will bark for you.”
When he said “we’ll enter Belgrade” and “we’ll take Warsaw”, the stationmaster did not have in mind participating in the expedition personally, as he was, at least for the time being, exempted from that on account of his occupation and his age. He was merely using the pronoun “we” popular in wartime, as a manifestation of solidarity with those who go to war.
Piotr was not familiar with the subtle metaphors employed by civilized people since time immemorial. He took every word literally. So he imagined that the stationmaster would go to war together with the signalman. Piotr thought this was detrimental to his own interests. If Piotr had been able to think as civilized people do, he would have wished that the war might continue as long as possible, or that signalman Banasik would never return. For in either case he would have a chance of staying in signal box 86 for ever. But Piotr was not capable of such far-reaching speculation. He accepted the news of this so long-desired turn of fate with great calm, bordering on resignation. After what the stationmaster had said, he took his unexpected conditional promotion as more of a demotion. After all, he had become a signalman only by default and not in recognition of his personal deserts and abilities.
So Piotr Niewiadomski donned his dreamt-of railwayman’s cap, his Imperial cap. It was in fact made of navy blue cloth, not black, and it did not have a little eagle with the Emperor’s monogram, but it sported a fine metal railway-carriage wheel running towards infinity, with outstretched wings spreading on each side as though from the shoulders of an angel. Unfortunately this cap, received in such circumstances, was no promotion, and Piotr took no pleasure in it. Its charm had passed; its magic had vanished as soon as it became reality. Piotr was the victim of his own imagination.
The news that Piotr Niewiadomski was wearing a railwayman’s cap was received by the world with indifference. Piotr was not so naive as to look on the changes taking place on the 28th of July as being the result of his own promotion. Nevertheless, he was surprised that the people closest to him, who were not familiar with the details of his appointment, paid it no attention. Even Magda remained quite aloof. A young author, seeing his name in print for the first time, experiences similar feelings, surprised to find that people in the street don’t point him out. Actually, Piotr had no worldly ambitions. The only thing that upset him was the fact that the high point of his life passed unnoticed, being associated rather with an unpleasant, downright humiliating memory, dissolving without trace in the general chaos and pathos of those momentous days. His head soon became so full of thoughts about the changes in the world that little room was left in it for thoughts about his actual role in that world. He did not even enjoy the saluting that was now his right, observing so many people in uniform who were obliged to salute.
He locked up his cottage and set off down the track, taking Bass with him. The signalman’s wife continued to live in the signal box for a few days, but she soon left with her children and went to town to join her family. Niewiadomski was then alone; just once a day, at noon, Magda brought him food. The signal box stood on open land, high up on the embankment. Entry was gained via ladder-like steps. Before Piotr’s eyes trains, trains and more trains began to flash by incessantly, loaded with military freight. He had ten sleepless nights; there was so much work with the level-crossing barrier. On one occasion, there was even an unpleasant event: a Jew and his horse were nearly run over, and it was Piotr’s fault. Piotr lost his head completely after he started wearing the Imperial cap. It was rather too big for him, and it fell over his ears. The war intimidated him with the roar of the wagons, the rattle of the guns on their carriages, and the multilingual babble of the soldiers.