In Śniatyn district, especially since war broke out, any number of foreign languages had resounded in people’s ears. Hutsul eardrums were gradually beginning to get used to the incredibly harsh-sounding German speech and the so-called Army Slav, that mishmash of all Slav languages. They had started to come to terms with the Czechs’ snub-nosed manner of speech, apparently devoid of all vowels. They had long been familiar with the melodic Romanian of their neighbours in Bukovina, and even that established resident of the region, Yiddish, with its garlic and onion flavour, sounded familiar to Hutsul ears. In Śniatyn district people sometimes worked certain Jewish words into their speech, indeed even entire phrases, in most cases using them incorrectly. So they could not be suspected of total ignorance or hatred of foreign languages. It was something else, though, to hear incomprehensible babble at home, where both Ukrainian and Polish are, always were and always would be, master and landlord, whereas foreign speech would always take a back seat, like a tenant or a guest. And it was a different matter altogether when you suddenly found yourself surrounded by foreigners, where no one understood anything you said—apparently out of spite. At home you could laugh, you could mock those who spoke differently, but abroad not only did they make fun of you, but you were quite lost. You were as helpless as a little child, as a blind man groping in the dark. Piotr suddenly realized what a great crime, what a great sin it must have been to build the Tower of Babel, since it was on account of it that the Lord had confused people’s languages. Piotr had never given any thought to the magnitude of this disaster before. He had never wondered why people cannot understand one another. It was not until he reached Huszt station in Hungary that he felt terrified by the utter profundity of the fact that this gendarme had eyes, ears and a mouth just like anyone else, and yet this mouth did not emit human sounds. No, Hungarian speech was not human. It was fire, brimstone and paprika. The gendarme had ears, so why could he not hear what Semen Baran, a very wise man, was explaining to him in German? (Baran had spent three years in Saxony and he had travelled widely.) He could hear, he could hear all right, but between him and Semen Baran there was a massive, impenetrable wall. A fragment of the Tower of Babel. If only he had been an enemy, a Muscovite or a Serb, but he was supposed to be one of the Emperor’s men… No, he was not one of the Emperor’s men. An Emperor’s man always understands an Emperor’s man somehow, in German at any rate. This gendarme is the King’s man. Because to the Hungarians the Emperor is only a king. Evidently, the Hungarians did not even deserve an Emperor. Not with mugs like that, and not with a language like that!
And what does this devil want, exactly? Is he banning them from drinking the water? Perhaps he is afraid the Emperor’s men would poison their stinking Hungarian water? Why doesn’t he speak like a human being if he wants people to pay attention to him?
The Emperor’s men ignored the gendarme. They offered him passive resistance, as they were in an overwhelming majority and felt they had a God-given right to the water. Even cattle have the right to quench their thirst, and they were not cattle. The Royal gendarme, in order to defend not so much the water as his own authority, resorted to force. He took his rifle from his shoulder, expecting to repel the Emperor’s men from the well by lashing out blindly with the butt. He trusted in his uniform and cock’s feathers, otherwise he would have held back. He was facing an entire mob on his own. But his stars of office and his cock’s feathers let him down. The Emperor’s men considered themselves obliged to obey only the Emperor’s authority, not the King’s. Their passive resistance turned to action. They pushed the gendarme aside, wresting the rifle from his grasp. They began swearing in their own language, assailing the devil with the ugliest curses and insulting his mother. Of course, many of them were well aware what active resistance to the gendarmerie entailed; Piotr in particular was afraid of unpleasant consequences. But the Hutsuls’ keen sixth sense, their awareness of reality, told them they were in command of the situation by dint of their sheer numerical superiority. They knew perfectly well that the attack on the Hungarian gendarme would go unpunished, since they were going to war.
Pandemonium ensued. Other gendarmes who had up to that point been busy getting the Slovaks onto the train now rushed to the assistance of the devil under threat. They hit out with their rifle butts, and soon restored the dignity of their colleague, along with the seized rifle. At the same time some soldiers, all Hungarians of course, dashed over and drove the Hutsuls back. Alarmed by the hellish uproar, the escort, who had overall responsibility, rushed out of the buffet. They did not understand Hungarian, but they did understand that people had a right to drinking-water. They reacted rather hesitatingly and ineffectively. And if it had not been for the Jews, who were around even before the Tower of Babel, and who knew all languages, a great war between the peoples of the Emperor and the peoples of the King might very well have broken out at Huszt station. A railway official called on the Jews in broken German to explain to those savages that the gendarme was keeping them away from the well in their own interest. In their own interest. It was suspected that the water in the well was infected with typhus, dysentery and other diseases, which accompany all wars, as is well known. Drinking-water, sterilized water, was to be found at the other end of the platform in a wooden barrel. Too late. Some of the Hutsuls had already slaked their thirst and their rage with typhus and dysentery.
It could just be that on that particular day at Huszt station the notorious seeds of hatred towards the local population had germinated among Galician soldiers quartered with Hungarian regiments, above all towards the Honvéds and the Hussars. This animosity was restrained at first, but later fierce brawls frequently broke out.
And many litres of superb Imperial and Royal blood were spilt in Hungarian taverns and inns instead of on the fields of glory for the monarch’s benefit. At the time, they managed to stop the fire spreading, and not only by dousing it with water. Wine also had a good deal to do with it. One Izrael Glanz, a spice merchant from Kołomyja, casually remarked that there was no point in fighting over water when you could get cheap wine at the station buffet.
Wine?—Piotr Niewiadomski suspected this was some Jewish swindle. He had never drunk wine in his life. Vines grew only in the Holy Land, in warm countries, in Rome, which is why priests drank it during mass. It was hard to imagine Hungary as the Holy Land—quite the opposite. A few minutes later he was quite happy to declare that wine was also a layman’s drink, available in Hungary even to ordinary mortals. The gendarmes, now operating hand in hand with the military escort, had difficulty separating the Emperor’s men from the Hungarian wine. But they managed it. Without protest or resistance, they returned to their places in the wagons. The wine was already coursing in their veins, awakening the muses. Polyhymnia and Terpsichore. Especially the younger recruits sang melancholy heroic ballads about past military expeditions or imitated the bleating of rams, bagpipes and shepherds’ long pipes. The kołomyjka dance broke out, with a lively drumming of heels. Three wagon-loads of Slovaks listened in to the Hutsul bacchanalia. Stirred to indulge in friendly competition, the Slovaks summoned up their finest songs from the depths of their souls. They too imitated the bagpipes and shepherds’ horns. They were on the point of fraternizing with the Emperor’s men, but this was prevented by the devils in cocks’ feathers. The Slovaks were strictly forbidden to leave the wagons.