The train made its way through human pain and despair as through snowdrifts in winter. The stationmaster stood to attention, visually checking each wagon in turn, as though counting them. He gave a military salute to the guard on the train and for the last time Piotr Niewiadomski saw the golden winged wheel on his red cap, glinting in the rays of the dying sun.
For a long time after the departure of the train, silent, motionless women remained standing on the platform. Their helpless eyes were glued to the track. This track had once led to the world, to life, to Kołomyja, Stanisławów, to Lwów. Now it led only to war, directly to death. A cloud of white smoke, the last visible trace of the train, floated for a while above the track and slowly descended to the embankment, torn by the branches of the spruce and fir trees like fine gauze. Until it dispersed into nothingness.
From the group of silent women some old woman emerges. She hobbles to the middle of the track. Her colourless hair, dead as crumpled hemp, protrudes from under her white headscarf. She mumbles something toothlessly. From her eyes devoid of eyelashes some liquid drips, like resin from rotten bark. The old woman is saying something to the rails, explaining something to the rails, which no one hears. Then in a hieratic gesture she raises her trembling bony hands and makes a gigantic sign of the cross on the rails, the triple Greek sign.
Chapter Seven
The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was, as the name indicates, made up of the countries represented in the Viennese parliament, namely Austria and Hungary—that is to say, the lands of the Crown of St Stephen.
The Crown of St Stephen (in Hungarian “A Magyar Szent Korona”) is very old and very heavy. Nevertheless, every Hungarian king must place it on his head once in his life. Clad in a magnificent cloak and wearing the crown, he rides on a white steed to the top of the highest hill in Buda, where he symbolically brandishes a giant sword. This is the culminating moment of the coronation ceremony. After that, the crown sleeps for years in a vault in the castle of Buda, awaiting a new king. It rests peacefully, unless someone steals it. This has occurred more than once in Hungary’s history. For this reason, in 1846 it was buried by patriots near the village of Orșova on the Danube. It lay in the ground for ten years. But the gold and precious stones did not put out any shoots. Only the cross on the top of the crown worked loose and today it leans to one side—as when Christ fell beneath it. Everyone in the kingdom, even a beggar into whose outstretched hand they drop 20 hellers, knows what the Crown of St Stephen looks like. Because actually the mint was common to both countries, as indeed was the entire treasury; it issued the coinage in both countries—both the Austrian and the Hungarian. So even Piotr Niewiadomski carried around many Crowns of St Stephen in his pocket, and he often wondered why its cross was crooked.
During peacetime in Śniatyn district, people showed little interest in Hungary, close neighbour though it was. And yet every Hutsul child knew that the Hungarians’ emperor was no emperor, only a king. Truth to tell, no one in Śniatyn district gave any thought to why that was the case. It only became an issue when certain of the Emperor’s subjects, and the best of them at that, had to go to Hungary.
The wagons in which Emperor-and-King Franz Joseph was transporting his soldiers (40 men), or his livestock (8 horses), were secured in two ways, depending on who the passengers were. If they were horses, cattle or pigs, a single wooden door without windows was drawn. People enjoyed greater freedom; anyone who wanted to could even jump off the train, because instead of a door the way to death, disability or freedom was blocked merely by a simple iron bar.
Leaning against this bar were Piotr Niewiadomski and his compatriots. It was a privileged place, the only one in the dark, stuffy wagon where there was access to oxygen and nitrogen and where the world could be seen slipping away. The small opening in the roof was good only for animals’ lungs. As for humans, it wasn’t even any good for their morale. It was covered by a grating, as in a jail. Piotr owed this benefit to his fellow passengers’ ethical principles. An unspoken pact applied in the wagon—those passing through their home territory had the right to stand at the front. Then, when the train entered unfamiliar districts, you were supposed to give way to others (let them too get their breath, let them have a look), and lie down on the straw in the reeking, gloomy inner depths.
All were supposed to take turns in this way throughout the journey, because they still believed there was justice in this world. Piotr also believed there was justice in the world, but only as far as Delyatyn station. He stood by the bar and everything he could see was still familiar, close, sometimes even intimately known to him. First of all the train passed the plot of land the railway had given him in fief. Magda’s sunflowers were already drooping, and Piotr thought this meant they were turning their heads towards him, black and yellow like Imperial and Royal banners. The spreading, steel-blue cabbage leaves were eaten away by caterpillars; what a shame. For some considerable time, the wooden church on a hill in Czernielica was reluctant to disappear from the horizon. It circled around the train, showing now one side, now the other (was it on the right or on the left?), playing hide-and-seek with the train. It would suddenly disappear, and then its three cupolas would unexpectedly re-emerge from the ground like the heads of three divers in a swimming pool. Piotr had been christened in this church; here he was given his name—once a year he went to Father Makarucha for confession, and before that to the old parish priest, who had died sixteen or seventeen years ago. He would undoubtedly have got married there if he had eventually found a wife. And certainly it would be nowhere else but in this consecrated ground where Czernielica church stood that he would be buried. His mother lay there. Suddenly, the memory of his mother, still so close to the train, pierced his heart like a sharp bayonet, filling it with condensed regret for everything he had lost that day. But the church had already disappeared from view, this time irrevocably.
The train redoubled its speed, as though spurred on by a whiplash. It plunged down the wooded slopes. The telegraph poles passed by at regular intervals like the refrain of an old, never-ending song. The cables stretched between them undulated rhythmically, turgid with news of the war. On the mown meadows horses leapt at their tethers—the train had startled them. Keeping close to the mares, unfettered foals were frolicking. Motionless regiments of geese stirred at the sight of the roaring train and without breaking formation, without spoiling the symmetry, menacingly distended their necks. The most exposed ranks of geese spread their wings wide, and beating their wings as if in response to a command rose effortlessly above the ground. These goose storm troops, prepared to attack the train, looked like a detachment of white, heraldic eagles. All along the track, particularly on marshy riverbanks, the mobilization of storks was under way as the 25th of August approached, the traditional holy day of departure to warmer countries.
The train reached the first station, took on new people with bundles and trunks, and again women were crying. And so it went on until Kołomyja. Piotr noticed that all the station signs were in place, although the army was in charge everywhere. So the relegation of Topory-Czernielica station had been the stationmaster’s whim.
The ancient rule of travel imposes on passengers a heightened reserve towards new passengers. In this wagon too, those who had been travelling to war for over an hour looked down on the newcomers for a while. However, after half an hour they were all equals. At each station, an invisible hand stoked the iron furnaces of war with fresh fuel—human bodies. But nowhere did so many reserve militia soldiers board the train as at Topory-Czernielica. Apparently, the rest had gone by other trains. Piotr wondered how many trains carrying this cargo for the Emperor were running at the moment on all the monarchy’s railways? A hundred, maybe even more?