Nobody looked after the discarded clothing. Anybody who wanted to could steal it. However, nobody was lured by the property of others. (The owners took their so-called valuables—money and wrist-watches—with them to the inspection.) Some magic spell or charm appeared to watch over the clothes abandoned by their owners, rendering them untouchable, taboo. It was as if the souls of the owners remained in those shirts, trousers and shoes, while their bodies were being judged by the recruiting committee.
But before the bodies underwent the scrutiny of the committee, they were obliged to submit to the ordeal of the chairs. In the doorway leading to what was assumed to be the recruiting panel, the same sergeant appeared who had called out the names down below at the gateway. He was reading them out for a second time now, but just two at a time. Suddenly, Piotr Niewiadomski was flung by the voice of the sergeant into a rectangular room where rows of chairs lined the four walls. On each chair sat a body stripped bare of all its earthly shrouds, embellishments and pretences. A Jew with a long black beard went in together with Piotr. Facing the doorway through which they had entered, Piotr noticed a heavy, deep red curtain. On the sergeant’s orders, each of the two fresh arrivals had to occupy the nearest available seats to the right of the door. At more or less regular intervals, some invisible hand drew back the curtain and one or two bodies emerged, making their way back to the changing room. As they did so, an imperious voice called out “Next!” And once more the curtain swallowed two bodies sitting on the nearest chairs. In this manner, all the bodies proceeded mechanically from the cloakroom door to the door behind the curtain. As though in some eerie circus, the silent, naked bodies moved on from one chair to another and from that chair to the next. In peacetime, the residents of the town of Śniatyn spent pleasant hours in those chairs, dreamily drinking beer, smoking their pipes and playing cards. But now those same chairs had become Stations of the Cross for the damned. As if there was only one possible sentence on the day of judgement: hell.
Piotr Niewiadomski shifted from chair to chair in the direction of the enigmatic curtain. It was the first time in his life that he had seen so many naked bodies at close quarters. He saw shrivelled, flabby arms alongside powerful, muscular ones; sunken, consumptive chests alongside heroic busts. Hollow, concave stomachs like deflated balloons sat alongside bulging, fattened-up, blubbery bellies; bent spines and protruding shoulder-blades alongside perfect, classical forms. Hairy torsos and shapeless masses of flesh wobbled next to smooth, shapely, svelte, supple and sometimes downright girlish figures. One man had a striking buffalo-like neck, powerful shoulders and an enormous belly, supported by very slender legs. Piotr was surprised that these spindly legs could carry such a burden. Before his eyes teemed sweaty, crooked, straight, swarthy, red, pale, hirsute, gentlemanly and boorish legs, legs, legs… Nearly all the toes were vulnerable, innocent and bashful, like little girls, even those of people whose hands looked as though they were tools for crime.
Undoubtedly all those bodies had souls of their own, speech of their own; some were garrulous while others were taciturn and reserved, even though in their nakedness they could no longer conceal anything. From chair to chair. Wily bodies and sincere bodies, cowardly bodies and brave bodies. Some were intimate with the sun, the earth and the wind, making their nakedness seem entirely natural; in fact, they would have appeared unnatural when fully dressed. Others were pale and their nakedness was alien to them, because they had never come into direct contact with the earth and the atmosphere, communicating with it only through animal skins, wool, cotton and linen. The bodies of the Jews were especially pale and unaccustomed to the earth. Their black beards contrasted uncannily with their pale complexions. Piotr Niewiadomski had never seen naked Jews before. Previously he had always seen them in their full-length black kaftans, and he imagined that these people had no white skin on their bodies, apart from the hairless parts of their faces and hands. He had always wondered what a Jew looked like without his kaftan. Now he had a naked Jew before him and he kept taking over his chair. This Jew’s very prominent, hairy Adam’s apple was strangely unsettled. He was still wearing his little circular velvet skull-cap.
On seeing so many bodies, so many physical defects, disabilities and signs of obvious strength, Piotr felt as though he was sitting among those savages who go around naked and live in caves. He had heard that somewhere, beyond America, there existed such people. They were indistinguishable from the animals, jumping from tree to tree, not believing in God and living on human flesh (though perhaps this was untrue). Piotr Niewiadomski fell to pondering about nudity and clothing. He recalled the first human being in the Holy Scriptures, who was a gardener in the Garden of Eden. He moved unconcernedly among the wild animals, among lions and tigers, who were as naked as he was. Wild beasts did him no harm; they did not gnaw him, they did not attack him, nor did he torment them or kill them. They mutually respected one another and all was well with them. They always kept warm, they had food to eat, the human did not have to work or plough or sow, there was no need for money—and this was known as happiness. Suddenly Piotr thought of Eve and memories of nights spent with Magda came flowing back to him. This was the sin inherited from the proto-parents. It was for this that the angel had driven them out of Paradise with a flaming sword; ever since, people have had to work for their crust in the sweat of their brows.
Piotr Niewiadomski began to feel ashamed of his nakedness, as Adam did when he had eaten of the tree of knowledge, able to distinguish good and evil. He was ashamed for himself and all those now bouncing from chair to chair. Only the marriage sacrament grants absolution from original sin, consecrating carnal pleasure, and people must go about in the world fully dressed so as not to cause a scandal. This was the only moment in Piotr Niewiadomski’s life when he was truly contrite for living with Magda without the sacrament. He hid his shame under the documents he held in his hand—his certificate of baptism and his call-up papers (confirmation that his soul belonged to God and of the Emperor’s claim on his body).
His embarrassment grew as he drew closer to the enigmatic curtain. He involuntarily looked towards his comrades, to see whether they too were ashamed of their nakedness. Indeed, some of them were discreetly concealing their lower parts under documents, briefcases or bags, but generally speaking there was no sense of mutual embarrassment; they were men among men. They were very concerned about looking after the valuables they were holding, removed for safety’s sake from the clothes they had abandoned to fate in the changing room. A broad-shouldered, moustachioed fellow was over-cautiously clasping a bulging leather wallet with both hands. Many hands held watches—mostly the thick, onion-shaped Rosskopf pocket watch with a double lid, and a cover of yellowish mica rather than glass. On the heavy, tarnished chains hung enamelled miniatures—portraits of children, or serious women with austere coiffures. Around the necks of many hung consecrated metal tags, little crosses, medals, mementos of indulgences and pilgrimages, or cloth scapulars. One slim, close-shaven man, who might have been about forty years old, had strange tattoos on his chest—a heart pierced by an arrow, a small flag, a mouse (or it might have been a rat), the initials “F.H.” and the number “1903”. He had probably been in prison, or he might have served in the navy.