After ten days and ten nights, fewer and fewer military trains were sent along that line, and the soldiers’ singing became less and less frequent. Finally, the transports ceased altogether in those parts. Everything went quiet. Passenger trains were gradually reinstated; however, the window in the so-called waiting-room at Topory-Czernielica station opened only once a day, and the timetable gave no guarantee of punctuality. Piotr was awakened in the night most often by goods trains. From time to time, such a silence descended on the track and the air was so fresh that he could hear the humming of the telegraph poles and the sound of the machinery at the distant sawmill.
Chapter Two
There was silence in the sky, there was silence on the ground, the dogs were not barking and the cocks were not crowing, when Emperor Franz Joseph announced general mobilization. The Emperor’s voice did not reach as far as Hutsul territory, but the Emperor’s post did. The parish clerks and the gendarmerie reached those places the post could not.
Sergeants and long-serving corporals sat in offices retrieving dusty, yellowing lists of conscripts, dating back to the earliest years. They extracted all the men’s names, knowing nothing about these people beyond the mere fact that they had names. For each name, they prepared an individual call-up card and sent it to the municipality. Many of those being called up had long since been buried in the parish cemetery or lay rotting in foreign soil. Names do not die as quickly as people, however, and death keeps its records more diligently than the sergeants. So the Emperor was calling up the living and the dead.
Piotr Niewiadomski was on the call-up roster for the year 1873. He was unaware of this himself, not knowing much about figures, but the municipality knew. The municipality knows everything. The municipality also keeps records and fills in the forms on which is recorded in ink for all posterity who has come into this world and when, and who has departed for the next. In peacetime, the municipality identifies every man who has reached the age of twenty-one, and they all have to report for military service. Blind, lame, deaf, hunchbacked—it makes no difference. Once in their lifetime they have to report for military service, though, as in the Holy Scriptures, many are called, but few are chosen.
In peacetime, Piotr had been exempted. He was the sole breadwinner in his family, which consisted at the time of his elderly mother and Paraszka’s illegitimate child. Soon afterwards they both died, first of all the bastard, then the old woman, but Piotr benefited anyway—he was not enlisted in the army. He thought they had forgotten about him by now, but he was mistaken, because the Emperor has a good memory. If necessary, he’ll remember you even twenty years later. The Emperor had not forgotten Piotr, he was just putting him by for a darker hour.
That hour had now come, not the darkest hour, but an early evening time when it is still light, when a stillness comes over the earth as though it is being caressed by the hand of the angel for whom bells are ringing in all the churches. A clear sky like the Virgin Mary’s azure robe softly cloaks the earth, dampening all conflict and din. Swarms of midges, exhausted by their endless circling in the hot atmosphere, muffle the buzzing of their wings. The oppressive heat begins to recede and abate, opening unseen valves. At this time even people’s quarrelsome hearts beat more calmly and the most impetuous creatures of this world recognize the blessing of peace and quiet.
Piotr became very calm and settled. He had forgotten about the war raging somewhere beyond the disappearing horizon and beyond the boundaries of his weary senses. In the cooling atmosphere, the whine of the distant sawmill had finally ceased, and above the greenery of the bushes that hid the village from view bluish smoke began to rise from all the cottages. Everywhere supper was now being prepared. The cottages that had chimneys sent their smoke upwards in a vertical column that dispersed in the blue sky, whereas from the poor huts it spread out in a lazy, low-lying cloud. Piotr set about peeling potatoes. The last train of the day had passed signal box no. 86. It would be another two hours before a goods train was due. Piotr sat down on the doorstep of his little cabin and took off his cap. Bass was lying beside him with his nose to the ground, watching the ants milling around. In the quiet of the evening he did them no harm. His breathing sounded calm and regular.
All of a sudden, the dog raised his head and pricked up his ears. He had heard some suspicious rustling below the bank. A moment later he leapt up and adopted a watchful stance. Somebody must have bumped into the wires joining Piotr’s lever to the level-crossing barrier, making them twang gently. They were slung low, just above ground level, and they continued to vibrate for some time in the prevailing silence. Something was moving in that silence, something was approaching the signal box. Piotr took no notice of the dog’s concern. He continued to peel the potatoes, throwing them into an earthenware bowl filled with water. But Bass had sensed danger and he began to growl. As the rustling sound continued to draw closer, he could stand it no longer and started barking. He was barking so hard in his fear, anger and protest that he started to choke. The danger slithered silently, snake-like, through the undergrowth, gleaming golden flashes among the green vegetation; it was lost, and then flashed again.
“Quiet, Bass!” shouted Niewiadomski, pushing aside his potatoes. Bass lowered his head and stopped his angry barking, just growling softly. Among the bushes there was the flash of a bayonet, reflecting the rays of the setting sun like a mirror. Then the golden spike of a yellow helmet showed itself and suddenly war appeared over the embankment. It marched in black hobnail boots up the steps, bearing a rifle and sabre, to face Piotr Niewiadomski in the shape of the gendarme Corporal Jan Durek.
Piotr was always disturbed at the sight of a gendarme. Not that he had anything on his conscience, but a gendarme gives off the smell of jail and of the handcuffs he carries hidden in his leather bag, just in case. Corporal Durek was well known to Piotr. Piotr often talked to him at the railway station and he was proud to be acquainted with such a man. In Piotr’s eyes, this gendarme represented the pinnacle of intelligence and good taste. The smell of a certain type of shaving cream used by the corporal never failed to make an impression on Niewiadomski. Above all, however, he was impressed by the gold tooth that shone in the gendarme’s mouth whenever he opened it, whether this was on official business or privately. That tooth set Jan Durek apart from Piotr as a personality more decidedly than all the gold on his helmet and uniform, his ominous black chin-strap, or his rifle and sabre. It inspired respect for the man himself, so that even if Corporal Durek stripped naked that gold tooth would protect him from any familiarity.
On this occasion Durek opened his mouth on official business, but he embellished it condescendingly with a private smile.