But Piotr never took Magda with him into his dreams. The orphan remained on the threshold of his sleep and his wakefulness, just as she did not venture to address him as she would a husband in the daytime. Piotr was alone when he was asleep, even though he lay in her embrace. Often his mother visited him in his dreams, sometimes even his wretched sister Paraszka, but never Magda. She often dreamt of him, though. Tonight, she was completely conjoined with him. She first dreamt of him as an infant suckling at her breast, then the child suddenly grew up…
The windowpanes rattled and the ground shook rhythmically, as though in spasms of amorous passion. The dull, faint, distant explosions were not so frightening in the stillness of the night, indeed they were even stimulating. Throughout the night the cricket, that Mozart of peasants’ hearths, made music for them. Only the whining of the banished Bass filled the night with anxiety and touched on old wounds.
The moon was determinedly hatching something that night. It did not appear, although it ought long since to have been looking down on Topory. Only around midnight did it majestically appear beyond Czernielica, flooding the night sky and the sleeping lovers with its cold, silvery light. Silvery Piotr and silvery Magda emerged from the gloom like two silver phantoms. Piotr was snoring. The windowpanes rattled like silver.
At that moment, death, quitting the battlefields, penetrated the confines of the Vatican. In vain the Swiss Guard kept watch with their halberds, preventing anyone from entering. Death eluded their watchfulness, forcing its way to the bedchamber where old Joseph Melchior Sarto lay. Cardinals and prelates were already administering the last rites. One of His Holiness’s domestic prelates offered the dying man the cross for him to kiss. Pope Pius X’s death took place at twenty minutes past one. Cardinal Chamberlain della Volpe confirmed it personally. Then the cardinals began reading the requiem mass. Death, having carried out its task, returned to the battlefields. The Battle of Lorraine was just beginning. Piotr Niewiadomski was snoring.
The stars were fading and the night was nearly spent when Magda woke with a loud cry. She was having a nightmare. She had dreamt about Piotr. He was lying in the courtyard at Iwan Bury’s. He lay there stark naked, with a huge, ugly wound in his abdomen. Old Maryna Prokipczuk’s sow was burying its snout in the wound, lapping blood so loudly, so loudly…
Magda’s sobbing woke Piotr. Everywhere else was in complete silence. Just before dawn, the shelling had stopped, as though to catch its breath. The windowpanes were not rattling. Only the cricket continued to chirrup in the crack in the kitchen floor. Piotr was alarmed by the sudden calm of the earth and by Magda’s crying.
“What’s the matter,” he asked, tenderly embracing the weeping woman and adding—as though he had only just noticed for the first time the orphan’s misery, his own misery, all the misery of his own people—“my child?”
Magda, shuddering all over because of the cold, because of her fear, or because she was overflowing with love, stammered out through her tears:
“If… if… you wanted me to, I would love you until death.”
She told him about her dream. Piotr laughed, but they now shared the word “death”. She was still crying, and sighing. Eventually, Piotr calmed her down. And for the last time in his life he fell asleep in the slender arms of the orphan Magdalena Mudryk.
Chapter Six
The 21st of August dawned just like any other day that summer—bright, sunny and warm. It promised to be very fine. Not a cloud in sight. The birds’ dawn chorus began early and the crowing of the cockerels lasted so long and was so fanatical it gave the impression that once again somebody was going to forsake his Master.
He who until today had been the successor to St Peter, the fisher for souls, did not forsake his Master. A few hours previously, taking his leave of the world, he had renewed his vows in the presence of the cardinals, and so he could fearlessly face the King whose earthly interests he had defended persistently, though not always with success. To the last, he had remained faithful to his motto: Restore all things in Christ.
A few days after the death the Rome Tribune wrote: “The Pope is a victim of the war. In his last days the Holy Father personally dictated many messages in an attempt to avert this European catastrophe.” He did not avert it. By his death, which came at a critical moment, he renounced all moral association with the perpetrators of this butchery.
It was for the death of the Pope that the cockerels were crowing today in Czernielica and throughout the Catholic world.
The garrisons of the Roman God were numerous throughout the world. Even such a tiny gathering of souls as Czernielica possessed (in common, that is, with the Topory and Bogatyn parishes, the neighbouring hamlets of Nowopole and Wierbiąż, and the Biłousy settlement) its own plot of consecrated ground and a ruined relic of some saint of the Greek religion, the core of a church. And where there is a church there is also a bell-tower and a priest and a deacon or a sacristan.
News of the Pope’s death reached the presbytery of Czernielica at eleven o’clock in the morning, communicated by gendarme Corporal Jan Durek. Durek had been at the station that morning and heard the news from the stationmaster, who had been informed by telephone. At the time the priest, Father Makarucha, had his head stuffed inside one of his thirty beehives, covered by a protective wire-mesh mask. At first he was incredulous at the sad news, for he was one of those designated by the Master as of little faith. He had not read a newspaper for a long time and knew nothing about the Pope’s brief illness. The first duty of a priest on the death of any church dignitary was to toll the bell. So if the Pope himself dies, what does that call for! However, Father Makarucha did not perform his obligation straight away. The death of The Holy Father is too great an event to be believed immediately and to be acted on straight away. Besides, in those days the most incredible rumours were about and it was not becoming to the dignity of a priest to take everything seriously.
To toll or not to toll?
The decision was indeed a difficult one. For if the Pope had really died, yet the bells in Father Makarucha’s parish remained silent, the negligent priest would be a sinner. But if the rumour was false, or indeed premature, then by tolling the bells he would risk being called to account for his excessive zeal. However, the soul of a living pope would come to no harm. On the other hand, a great wrong would be inflicted on the soul of a deceased pope by a failure to toll for him. That was the last thing Father Makarucha wanted. Father Makarucha wished for only one thing—official confirmation. It could not arrive quickly, because of the war, the evacuation and the general upheaval. What was to be done? Should he mourn the passing of the Head of the Church or wait a bit longer?
On that day Father Makarucha already had plenty to worry about. There were the five-kilogram pots of his purest honey, ten of which were lined up at the station, waiting to be loaded onto the Lwów train. Now that passenger and goods trains had been held up, the fate of this (purest) honey was uncertain. In fact, as of today it was quite certain; the consignment would not be despatched to Lwów. What should he do? Toll or not toll? Narodna Torhowla of Lwów had sent a deposit before the war started. This deposit amounted to only one fifth of the amount Father Makarucha was supposed to receive on delivery of the goods. Perhaps he should seek his wife’s advice on the matter of tolling? But, well, what advice could a woman give in such cases? Better to decide for oneself. He would be ridiculed either way, but by whom, actually? If the rumour proved to be false, he would tell people that the bell had been tolled for a quite different reason.