Piotr Niewiadomski found himself back in the waiting-room. The bodies bouncing from chair to chair no longer made such an impression on him. In Piotr’s eyes, those still waiting to be assessed had a lesser value than his own body, which now belonged to the Emperor. There, before the Commission, he had thought they would immediately put him in uniform. Why else would they have taken his measurements? Now they had told him to crawl back into his old skin. Slightly disappointed, he dressed in his civilian trousers and his old tunic. He no longer felt at home in this garb. Only the railwayman’s cap gave him a feeling of superiority over other rustic men. In the changing room he found out that after the swearing-in he could go back home. His cohort would be not be called up for another six weeks. He found this news disappointing too. The Emperor did not need him immediately, then? He was not mobilizing him on the spot? Piotr had not expected to return to his signal box, thinking that they would give him at most a day or two to sort out his personal affairs. What was all the fuss about, if the war was going to be over in six weeks? He felt good at the thought of the war being over. Perhaps he would not be called up at all? Piotr was now like a piece of furniture, commandeered by the bailiff and left for a certain period of time in the home of a citizen who has failed to pay his taxes.
The corpulent sergeant led the whole contingent of men passed fit for service out of the recruiting offices to the school building opposite. When they passed the piled-up benches and entered the school, Niewiadomski was alarmed. Who knows, perhaps they would now force him to sit down at one of these benches, press a slate pencil into his hand and order him to draw on the black slate tablet—white signs of the devil. But he soon calmed down. In the extensive hall they entered with the sergeant, there was not a single bench. On the other hand, there was a row of yellow ladders attached vertically to the wall. At the end of the room stood four polished climbing poles, reaching from floor to ceiling. Nearby, like horses’ bodies with their heads, necks and tails cut off, stood two straddle-legged vaulting horses. Beyond them could be seen a springboard and some dusty mattresses. Underneath the vaulting horses lay masses of iron weights, prominent among them a heavy black bar with spheres the size of human heads attached to each end.
There was no lack of human heads here. New bodies continually flocked in. Over in the Recruitment Commission building all the diseases, weaknesses and infirmities remained. Here, where children’s physical prowess was developed on the yellow ladders, poles and trapezes, only those bodies that had been passed fit by the commission were given access. But these people had not been brought to the gymnasium in order to have their strength and agility tested. Here it was all about their souls. For Emperor Franz Joseph acknowledged not only the human body. He was not an adherent of materialist doctrine or an advocate of Haeckel’s theory. He was an adherent of dualism and he would not deny that even the most wretched of his subjects, the most backward Hutsul, possessed a soul. Nonetheless, he must have order. He took bodies and souls separately. They are two different things and they may not be mixed up. In the building of the district recruiting office, bodies were acquired for the Emperor; here, in the gymnasium of the seven-year provincial lower school, it was souls. Bodies one at a time, souls collectively.
Although it was strictly forbidden, they smoked and spat on the floor. Spitting could not be unhygienic, because they were all healthy. Health was somehow being made the most of. The moment the sergeant left, the hall was full of voices. The nervous tension that had built up in the room over there in anticipation of the decision was now relaxed here. The younger men leapt onto the trampoline, climbed the poles and slid down to the floor laughing. Even Piotr was tempted by the weights. Especially the large bar-bells. He raised them effortlessly with one hand.
All of a sudden, the hall fell silent. The younger men hurriedly jumped down from the gymnastic apparatus. Unfinished cigarettes were thrown on the floor and extinguished underfoot. In the open doorway there appeared a young officer wearing a cap similar to Piotr’s railwayman’s cap. He wore a sabre at his hip and military decorations on his chest. They stood back to let him through. He was followed at an appropriate distance by the portly sergeant carrying a sheaf of papers in each hand. He wore neither sabre nor cap.
The young officer was delegated to receive the souls, but he remained silent throughout the ceremony. Just once he whispered something to the sergeant, whereupon the sergeant burst out laughing. First of all, the sergeant divided those present into three groups, according to the languages they spoke. He separated a small German group, consisting almost without exception of Jews, from the Polish and Ukrainian ones. Everyone could take the oath in the language of their choice, because the liturgy of the military did not impose its Latin, as it were—that is to say, the German language—on those who did not understand it. In the Imperial and Royal Army only commands were to be issued to everyone in German. Then the sergeant explained to the souls, divided into three groups, the technicalities and the significance of the ritual. Everyone had to remove their caps. Including the Jews.
Piotr noticed that the Jew who had stood next to him in the queue at the recruiting office was not present in the room.
Everyone had to raise two fingers of their right hand, the middle and index fingers, keeping them at eye level the whole time, until they reached the word “Amen”.
“Everyone is to repeat all the words after me, loud and clear. After swearing the oath,” the sergeant explained, “all of you, though still civilians, are effectively soldiers. You are liable to military punishment. You are forbidden to do this and you are forbidden to do that. Many things are forbidden.”
The young officer, an emissary of the Emperor, stood motionless and silent, like an allegorical statue. But he did not remove his cap. Priests too sometimes lead prayers in a biretta, whereas the faithful are obliged to be bare-headed.
First the German group took the oath, then the Ukrainian, and finally the Polish. Piotr Niewiadomski joined the Polish group. The sergeant read out the oath, and Piotr repeated it word for word in chorus:
“Before Almighty God we solemnly swear faith and allegiance to his Apostolic Majesty, our Supreme Ruler Franz Joseph the First, by the grace of God Austrian Emperor, King of Bohemia and so forth…”
“And so forth,” came the thunderous response.
“…to the Apostolic King of Hungary that we will honour and defend His Majesty, his generals and all our other superiors, following their commands and directions at all times, against all enemies whoever they may be and wherever his Imperial Majesty’s will shall demand of us.”
“…shall demand of us,” they chanted in unison. In Piotr’s soul, invisible kettle-drums were beating and unseen fanfares were blaring.
“…On water and in the air, by day and by night, in battles, assaults, skirmishes and operations of every kind—in other words, wherever we may be, we will fight gallantly and courageously…”
Piotr Niewiadomski already pictured himself fighting on water, on land and in the air. He was dripping water and blood. Blood and water were getting in his mouth, his ears and his nostrils; he was drowning, but summoning what remained of his failing strength he thrust the enemy to the riverbed with his bare hands. The enemy was now a long-bearded Muscovite, rather like that Jew whose Adam’s apple had been jumping, now a superhumanly powerful moustachioed Serb. The latter struck Piotr on the forehead with his rifle butt but Piotr dispatched him with his bayonet. Evidently, some old engraving of the Balkan war had come to mind.