The frogs had begun their nightly disputes, the crickets pierced the stillness with their chirping. Bass was also recalling former upsets, perhaps from a former existence, but he was not barking at the war any more. He just howled at the rising moon. He might have had toothache.
Piotr lay with his eyes open, staring dolefully into the darkness.
All over the world, gendarmes were spoiling people’s appetites.
Chapter Three
During those days, men’s bodies were weighed and measured. They were sorted by categories, picked over like potatoes, like fruit shaken off the tree of life. They were handled en masse, by the score, by the hundredweight, by the wagon-load, everything puny, tainted or sick being rejected. For there had been a great harvest of human bodies since the last war. Neither struck by natural disasters nor decimated by epidemics, two generations of bodies were now going to waste and decaying, not having experienced war. But the trust invested in the instinctive cultivation of the species had not been nurtured in vain. The service unwittingly rendered by the parents was being paid its due homage today.
For the first time in many years we were not being judged according to the way we dressed. On the contrary, today we were only worth anything without our clothes. Only as naked bodies could we display our greatest merits. All they were interested in was whether we were fit. They looked at our teeth as you look horses in the mouth at the sales; they looked us over from the front, they checked us over from behind, tapping our bellies to make sure our innards were not infested with worms.
Up till then, we had been mere names. All the calculations of the War Ministry and the General Staff were based on the numbers of names. The names moved around the world, grew fat and multiplied, to be converted on the day of mobilization into bodies.
The judging of bodies took place in vast drinking saloons, dance halls and popular inns. At the larger venues, the influx of bodies was so great that the premises of the district headquarters were unable to cope with it. So they crowded onto verandas, and nobody bothered if they broke the panes of glass. They waited for hours out in the gardens where intermingled melodies from the Merry Widow, The Magic of the Waltz and The Gay Hussars still wafted. Here and there, colourful Chinese lanterns still hung from wires stretched between the chestnut trees, like the heads of decapitated revellers from last Sunday’s party. Lording it over the untidy garden in the distance, amid greasy wrappers and sausage skins, stood a bandstand which had been commandeered as a furniture store. Green armchairs and small green tables were piled up any old how on top of one another, crammed into the pavilion surmounted by a golden four-stringed lyre.
That’s what it was like in the large towns, but Śniatyn is not a large town. The famous town of Śniatyn is a small town and the recruiting authorities operated in their own building there. They merely requisitioned chairs from the nearby pubs.
From early morning on, Piotr Niewiadomski waited his turn. It was a blisteringly hot day. Piotr felt like a drink of the beer which was flowing at Schames’s pub a couple of feet away, but he resisted the temptation, mindful of the ban mentioned in his call-up papers. He would have a drink after the inspection was over. He waited among the crowd of farm labourers, Jews and various young gentlemen. He was surprised to see such a motley group of different social classes and types of dress. Every now and then, a fat little sergeant appeared in the doorway to the recruiting offices, minus his cap and sabre. The crowd fell silent. The sergeant read out surnames from large sheets of paper. Every name required the response in German:
“Hier!”
This word “here” sounded like a hiccup in the mouths of the peasants. They all had their eyes on the sergeant’s lips, as the names hissed forth from them like so many buzzing insects. Piotr waited and waited. His throat was so dry he didn’t even feel like talking,
The long wait at the entrance to the offices had its good points. They knew nothing about us yet; we were still mere surnames. There was till time; one could withdraw and everything could change at the last minute. Among those waiting in front of the district recruiting headquarters there was no shortage of optimists who in their heart of hearts still believed in miracles, who were in denial of all common sense, hoping that the war would be over before the sergeant called their names. Piotr Niewiadomski was not one of them. He could not care less.
On the opposite side of the street there was a school. A rectangular one-storey building with a red roof. Above the entrance to the school, Piotr noticed a bell similar to those he had seen in cemetery chapels, and on the roofs of certain farm buildings, where they chimed midday—whereas at the cemeteries…
Piotr was not afraid of death, but he preferred not to see its accessories. Then his attention was drawn to the classroom benches that had been carried out into the yard. They were mostly covered in ink-stains. They were a visible reminder of his illiteracy. On one side stood a large blackboard, which could have been the devil’s own coat of arms. Many heads wearing hats and caps were leaning out of the open windows. They were not children’s heads. Some were even grey-haired.
Around midday, Niewiadomski’s name flew out from under the sergeant’s black moustache. It was the fourth one on the list. Niewiadomski shouted out “Hier!” and the word, the printed word that had wandered among books and registers, became a flesh-and-blood body. Of the forty names called out, three received no response. They had disappeared somewhere in the wide world. Everyone present turned their heads to look for the lost names. But they did not find them.
Up the stone steps smelling of carbolic acid, the sergeant led the group into a hall on the ground floor. He gave orders to undress quickly, telling them smoking was forbidden. There was no smell of carbolic acid here. There was a very muggy atmosphere; an unpleasant odour given off by the naked and half-naked bodies milling around in that hall gave the impression of a fresco representing hell. Clothes deposited higgledy-piggledy on all the benches round the walls and lying about on the dusty floor made the foul air even worse. Muddy trousers, sweaty, old, threadbare shirts and coats, filthy underpants, jerkins, and shabby coats hanging from nails and pegs on the walls presented an eerie sight, rather like rotting remains of the hanged. Under the benches all kinds of footwear nestled ashamedly, from stylish, fashionable American shoes to coarse Hutsul sandals. Numerous men’s jackets, waistcoats, artificial silk shirts with upturned collars, colourful silk ties and straw Panama hats were swamped by the overwhelming mass of rustic attire. The eau de Cologne from Johann Maria Farina’s in Jülichplatz, that destroyer of bad odours from time immemorial, chickened out and absconded. This is what the waiting-room for the day of judgement will probably look like, when one day all human differences are erased. Here all the men were naked, and the foul odour, that characteristic earthy smell, was the dominant element. Each body brought with it the odours of its home, the stench of its daily labours—hence the stink of smoky, unventilated mud huts. Those who worked on the land smelt of the soil and of grain, the shepherds smelt of sheep’s urine and the Jews smelt of the hostelry, the mill and the Sabbath. Although nobody had brought any food with them, one could tell by their bodily odours what each of them ate. The carbolic acid did not help, disinfecting did not help; from the very first day of the inspection, the hall stank of stables and cowsheds. In this battle with smells waged by civilization and hygiene, nature was victorious. At least in this hall, which served as a cloakroom. From time to time a menacingly silent soldier entered the room, carrying a canister full of water. He refused to answer any questions put by the civilians. He smoked as he sprinkled the floor in order to quell the dust, Mother Earth ground down to powder. The dust resisted, however. Having performed his task, the self-important soldier returned whence he had come, indifferent to the outcome of his endeavours.