“What will happen,” they wondered, “when we are ordered to march like that?” Fortunately, however, not everyone had enough imagination to anticipate the torture of parade drill.
Lieutenant Smekal was about to go to the mess with the officers and cadets when the duty officer came running from the building. He stood to attention, saluting sharply, and for a few minutes they discussed something or other. Suddenly the lieutenant yelled across the square:
“Doroftein!”
Sergeant Doroftein detached himself from the right flank of the leading company. He ran up at the double and stood to attention. Smekal gave him the order to stand at ease. For some time they spoke naturally, as though they were equals. Meanwhile, the men in the ranks, enjoying the command to stand at ease, lifted their caps, which were soaked in sweat, from their close-cropped heads and mopped their sodden brows with handkerchiefs. The men in the front rank turned to look at the civilians.
And when the officers had gone off to the mess, to which they were enticed by toreador Escamillo’s aria, Sergeant Doroftein took command of the battalion. Facing the squad at an appropriate distance, he shouted in a gruff voice:
“Battalion! On my command—Atten—tion!” And he turned the people back into a wall. But immediately he ordered them to stand at ease and then addressed them in Ukrainian.
“Lads,” he said, “the battalion will be issued with its meal as usual, by company. The first two companies are to eat up promptly and wash their plates. They will then pass them on to these recruits. The corporals of both companies are to be present at the issue of the meal, but each man is to ensure nobody steals or refills his plate. Understood?”
The “lads”, many of whom were over forty, understood. And even if they had not understood, no one was allowed to speak up. The sergeant’s question was rhetorical. Many such questions are put in the army, and woe betide the soldier in the ranks who dares to respond. But some soldier in the second row of the first company carelessly gave himself away. A feeble grunt came from the pit of his stomach rather than from his mouth, but it was his mouth that betrayed him. He grimaced in doubt or protest, God knows what that grimace meant.
Sergeant Doroftein suffered from persecution mania. This ailment often affects weak people who find themselves in positions of power. He thought every soldier was laughing at him. If they laughed at him when off duty, well, he couldn’t do anything about it. But on duty, well, there were plenty of ways of dealing with that! Sergeant Doroftein had a beady eye, though nothing like Bachmatiuk’s, which could see through walls. Picking out the soldier who had apparently mocked him, Doroftein first insulted him in particular, and then carried over his anger to the entire company. That was how he operated. Casting aspersions on the mothers of more than two hundred men was quite something! It gave him a sense of self-importance and he took pleasure in it. In being just one man, capable of reviling a whole company with impunity.
Streams of invective in Romanian, Ukrainian, German and Polish now poured from his mouth, defiling the squads standing there in silence. But the company preferred to hear their mothers besmirched by the sergeant to doing punishment drill, which he was accustomed to inflicting first on the culprit and, later, on the whole detachment. However, Doroftein’s rage usually died down as quickly as it flared up. In a voice still shaking with rage, he now yelled:
“Attention! Double file! Right wheel!” And having achieved what he intended by that voice, he relaxed into a familiar tone, issuing the command “First Company! Follow me—quick march!” and he led the First Company into the barracks. The other companies followed under the command of their own sergeants. Only civilians remained on the square.
Earlier, when Sergeant Doroftein was talking with the officers, Piotr Niewiadomski had convinced himself that magic was practised in the army. Discovering familiar faces in the squad, he and a few civilians took the liberty of approaching them. He wanted to greet his fellow countrymen, to speak to the familiar faces. It was in vain. The men in the ranks turned out to be as dumb as that Vasyl Horoch of Czernielica. What had happened? Why didn’t they answer, why did they stay silent? Only their eyes seemed to say: “Keep away from us! Run away from here!” And with their hands, which could move quite freely, they desperately warded off their countrymen. But it was only the privates who had lost their tongues. The NCOs had the gift of speech, and most unpleasant it was too. They also used it to ward off the civilians, for between the army division and the rest of the world lay an invisible but very dangerous zone which nobody was allowed to cross in either direction. It was like a zone of death, if not physical death.
And suddenly these civilians realized that terror reigned in this garrison. It controlled all this demesne given over to the war; this is where the oath solemnly sworn to the Emperor leads you. Terror, terror turns living people into rigid rectangular formations, rhythmically marching columns. All these fine marches and parades arise from human terror. Terror would one day lead these penal formations beyond the confines of the Farkas and Gjörmeky brewery, it would lead them beyond the Hungarian land, driving them far away, to their encounter with death. Terror—in the face of something more menacing and more powerful than the officers and sergeants, maybe even than the Emperor himself, and death. They did not yet know the name of this deity, but they could already sense that they were in its sharp clutches. They did not know about Discipline, but they were already frozen by its icy breath.
The former brewery’s spacious machine room housed the soldiers’ kitchens. Here too terror reigned, here too there was Discipline. It could be sensed even in the aromas from the cooking and the smell of bulls’ blood. Thanks to it the serving of meals was carried out fairly calmly and in a fairly orderly manner, even though Bachmatiuk, the great high priest of Discipline, was absent today. Our people had already unwittingly submitted to it. Voluntarily imitating the behaviour of men in uniform, they had fallen into line of their own accord. But what ranks they were! God of war, have mercy!
The recruits took their meals in company messes III and IV. I and II would take their turn last today. Every day a different company went into the kitchen first. Justice prevailed under the Emperor.
At lunchtime it became clear that no one in the battalion had lost his tongue in the army. Everyone continued to talk as freely as at home. Not on parade, however, when the command to stand at ease did not permit conversation. Not with companions, and even less with someone who was on the other side of the danger-zone.
The recruits were clumsy with the mess kits. Many of them spilt the entire liquid contents of the metal dishes over their own and others’ trousers. The especially thick, hot mashed beans, ladled onto shallow dishes by the spud-bashers. In less than an hour a whole ox, the pride of the Hungarian steppe, disappeared into the Hutsul bellies. Such fine, long horns it had only the day before!