He burst out laughing so loudly that Bass was startled. What silly thoughts come into one’s head! Pretend to be a deaf-mute! Above all, the Muscovites are still far from Topory. (Although he was certain about that, he still glanced in the direction of the window to make sure it wasn’t rattling. It wasn’t.) And then, who around here is going to help out the Muscovites, anyway? An Imperial and Royal soldier? As if he was not bound to His Illustrious Majesty by the oath sworn by Almighty God in Śniatyn? Piotr was provided with an oath as a document bears a seal, as the deceased are administered the extreme unction. In four weeks’ time at the latest he would personally be going to strike at the Muscovites on behalf of the Emperor. In four weeks’ time… But they are saying that the Muscovites have already taken Czerniowce. Our illustrious regiments, the Imperial Fusiliers with their plumed helmets, the Vienna Deutschmeister and the proud Windischgrätz Dragoons are said to have been routed. The muzhiks are driving them into captivity like cattle. What about the oath? What about the loyalty? What will become of the entire 1873 intake, if the Muscovites reach Topory before Piotr is even in training?
So Piotr Niewiadomski became distressed.
The thoughts of the lone signalman in box 86 on the Lwów–Czerniowce–Ickany line were interrupted by the ringing of the bell. Topory-Czernielica station was signalling the approach of a train. Piotr donned his official cap, that tangible evidence of his loyalty to the Emperor. He went out to stand in front of the signal box with his little red flag. Deeply convinced that in doing so he was serving the Emperor, he began to turn the winch. He carried out his government function slowly, almost solemnly. He just regretted that no one witnessed it. The wires twanged and the barrier came down. And half of the burden fell from Piotr’s heart. That was a good thing. As long as he felt he was useful, unpleasant thoughts were unable to penetrate to his soul. The level-crossing barrier barred the way to evil thoughts.
A long goods train full of troops passed before Piotr in the direction of Kołomyja. Soldiers had not travelled in that direction for ages.
Piotr returned to the signal box and removed his cap, carefully placing it on the shelf above his bed. Around it played the aura of Imperial majesty.
Anxiety grew in Topory day by day, and especially in Piotr Niewiadomski’s heart. It almost turned to panic when troop trains began to appear on their line with increasing frequency. The soldiers, who had been so cheerful, proud and full of song two weeks earlier, were now silent, sombre and angry. The army returning from the front line looked like an army of extinguished lanterns. And even the wagons that brought them from abandoned positions back into the heartland bore the marks of defeat. They were bespattered with mud, battered, and stank of death. They sped at a crazy pace, as though falling into an abyss. They bore no trace of the drawings or slogans that had so recently reflected the soldiers’ high spirits. Now they sped, crude and bare, like the naked truth of a war for which the army had already lost heart. Day and night, Piotr saw trains, trains, trains. The endless ringing of signal bells kept him awake, as in the first days of mobilization. He heard a buzzing in his head like that in Father Makarucha’s beehive. The passenger coaches carried the officers. They were unkempt, unwashed, unshaven for days, without their tunics and with no insignia of rank, like ordinary people. All the finery had faded, the show was over. In one of the compartments Piotr noticed some officers playing cards. They were playing rummy, trying to forget their defeat. There followed numerous cattle wagons packed with soldiers. Some were barefoot, lying on rotting straw. Their faces wore deadly serious expressions and they appeared withdrawn into themselves, oblivious to the world around them. Some had heads bandaged with filthy, bloodstained rags or an arm in a sling. At the larger stations people stared at them, eager to catch a glimpse of those returning from the jaws of death. For all these soldiers had witnessed death; they had cheated it, and now life reeked of rotten corpses. All life’s affairs had become insignificant in their eyes, tobacco excepted. Nearly all of them were smoking, eagerly inhaling the smoke of the rationed cigarettes, the soldier’s last remaining solace.
At other times Piotr saw wagons marked with a huge red cross. They passed by very slowly, giving off a sharp stench of disinfectants. Piotr knew that these wagons were carrying slaughtered human flesh. He listened out for any sound of groaning, but the Red Cross wagons were as quiet as the grave. They passed by slowly, softly, silently, as though on rubber wheels. In the corridors and at the windows stood young women all in white, like angels. Occasionally, one of the angels would be smoking a cigarette.
“Crosses, more crosses,” thought Piotr, and he wondered whether he ought not to raise his cap and cross himself at the sight of those red crosses.
The wagons carrying cattle to be slaughtered were less disturbing, since it was prescribed that human flesh, cannon-fodder, had to be fed on the flesh of animals. Horses too were escaping from the front line. Entire stables of horses, gently nuzzling each other’s sad heads, passed by the signal box. Now and then, the approach of a train was heralded by an ominous rumbling sound. That was the flatbed wagons carrying artillery. The sprays of birch adorning the gun-carriages on the day they had set off had long since withered. The heavy and light artillery was now returning stripped of its splendour, the green paint peeling off like scabby skin. The artillery was covered by tarpaulins, hiding its shame, you might say. On every wagon a motionless rifleman stood guard over the guns. Mud-spattered cars with smashed windscreens and ripped tyres, the remnants of military equipment, the incarnation of taxes extracted from citizens—search-lights, coils of barbed wire, sheets of corrugated iron, field telephones, field kitchens—continually flashed by on flatbed wagons in a westerly direction. Imperial property must be salvaged! Like itinerant circuses, on went these pitiful supply trains, hurriedly withdrawn from endangered front-line positions. In the end the ground rumbled day and night and Piotr could no longer tell whether it was caused by the trains or by approaching artillery fire.
On 20th August, around seven o’clock in the morning, he spotted a strange train packed with civilians. It could not be an ordinary passenger train; they were no longer running. These were goods wagons with benches installed. Israel was on the move. It had with it live geese, cushions, cradles, pots and pans, sacks, boxes and a crowd of screaming children. Jewish women in shiny black wigs were bustling about just as at home, even cooking on Primus stoves. Some of the men were tightly wrapped from head to toe in long white tablecloths, bordered at the bottom with strips of black and embroidered at the top in gold and silver. The shimmering gold and silver covered their foreheads, to which they had attached little square black boxes. Beards—grey, ginger and dark, black beards—trembled among the gold and silver embroidery of the tablecloths, giving these Jews the appearance of ridiculous, pathetic kings. They rocked rhythmically to and fro to the rhythm of the clanking wagon-wheels, as though they wanted to impart to this clanking some new, more exalted meaning.
It was not the first time that Piotr had seen Jews at prayer. As a child, he sometimes used to go and peer in at the windows of an old inn, now demolished, where the Jews assembled every Saturday for prayers. In Topory there was no synagogue. Large candles burned in brass candlesticks, and praying, bearded Jews in similar shawls were swaying over massive books, virtually dancing, crying and wailing out loud. The Jews’ singing scared Piotr, but at the same time amused him. One Saturday, as he stood staring and listening underneath the windows, something happened that he was unable to comprehend until long afterwards. The door was suddenly opened, and there stood a tall red-bearded Jew in a velvet smock tied at the waist with a black cord. Instead of shoes he wore soft slippers, with white stockings like a young lady’s reaching up to his knees. On his head he had a weird square fox-brush cap. You could have sworn that the cap and the beard were one and the same thing. Piotr took fright. He thought this Jew had seen him through the window and had come to beat him. But the Jew took him by the hand, asking in a very kindly voice: