“Thus far,” said the borders of the earthly horizon, “and no farther!”
So they raised their eyes towards the heavens, where constellations with names known to astronomers but not to dwellers of Śniatyn district shone with ever greater radiance. Piotr Niewiadomski did know a few stars. He knew which was the Great Bear, the Plough. He knew that the path of stars strewn across the sky was the Milky Way. It was there that the Plough broke an axle. The prisoners’ eyes anxiously ran backwards and forwards across the Milky Way like starving dogs. Maybe the sky would throw them a bone as consolation?
At this time of year only stars fell from the sky.
Seeing how often they fell, a merchant from Kołomyja, Izrael Glanz, thought God was dismantling the heavens. Perhaps the stars were going over to the Muscovites as well.
The camp was going to sleep. Disappointed by sky and earth, the men curled up and retired into themselves. They drifted away into the dark depths of their beings. Piotr Niewiadomski looked at his comrades and saw them all placed in irons. The left hand to the right foot, right hand to the left foot. Everyone silently cursing their mothers. There was a great silence, interrupted by snoring, coughing and groaning, and there were stars in the sky, and stars on the collars of the NCOs.
Chapter Nine
The alarm clock on the table rang shrilly. It shook as it made its sharp but impotent attack, merely obeying its own spring. No need. The man who had wound it up the evening before was no longer asleep. He was lying here on the bed, half-covered with a white woollen blanket, smoking a cigarette. (This smoking on an empty stomach was probably the reason for his hoarse voice.) The alarm clock ejected the extent of fury prescribed by the mechanism, then it fell silent. Now it was just an ordinary ticking clock.
This had been going on since time immemorial. Since time immemorial Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk had awoken a few minutes—sometimes even more than ten minutes—before the alarm clock launched its attack. All the same, he would set it every evening. In summer for five o’clock, in winter for six o’clock. Was it just an old bachelor’s unthinking, eccentric habit? Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk was an old bachelor, but he was not eccentric. Everything he did had a purpose. This alarm clock fulfilled an important function for him. Every day it noisily acknowledged the superiority of the RSM over the forces of the night. Additionally, on Mondays it sounded his victory over alcohol. Punctuality and discipline were not imposed on Bachmatiuk by powers alien to his nature. Over the dozen or so years of his service, these virtues had entered his bloodstream and penetrated his tissues like lime. Bachmatiuk demanded nothing more from his alarm, just a loud affirmation of this fact, which he wanted to hear repeated every morning. It was his soaking therapy. And when the alarm rang Bachmatiuk had the impression that he was in control not only of himself, his will and consciousness, but also of the time he allotted to himself. The alarm clock faithfully carried out its duty; it did not wake him. So far, it had never failed. It was obedient, eating out of the hand that wound it up, as it were. Bachmatiuk never disappointed either. He always woke up of his own accord; he was always the first past the post. But whose hand wound up the springs that worked Bachmatiuk?
The RSM battled Chronos not only on the minor scale of the clock. He also fought against time’s heavy calibre, that is to say his own ageing. He had already passed fifty, and it was not only his temples that were turning grey; he had a grey moustache too. He could shave it off, thereby maintaining a semblance of youth. He did not do so, because he served in the infantry, and infantry regulations expressly encouraged the cultivation of a moustache. In the Imperial and Royal Army only one regiment had the right, indeed the privilege, of shaving the beard and moustache, in honour of their famous ancestors who fell in the prime of life. That was the Windischgrätz Dragoons. Bachmatiuk was not a Dragoon but an infantryman by vocation and he respected the regulations of this arm of the service to a fanatical degree. As for outward signs of ageing, he had means of suppressing them which were just as effective as the razor.
After finishing his cigarette, he closed his eyes and immersed himself in deep meditation. After a while he sat up in bed and barked a loud command to himself: “Get up!” Accustomed to obey any command, even from his own lips, he leapt up in a flash, put on his morning slippers and marched towards the wash-basin that rested on a chair. He plunged his head into the cold water to wash away the remnants of sleep from his large, dark, badly bloodshot eyes. He shaved in front of a little mirror which maliciously distorted his handsome, weather-beaten face. Then he cleaned his teeth. After that he engaged in a struggle with time. From a table drawer he produced all his armoury: a little box of blacking, some muslin netting and a child’s toothbrush. He spent a long time dyeing his broad, dense moustache, which overnight had lost its artificial lustre and its black, artificial symmetry. Finally, he applied a pink strip of muslin, attaching it round his ears. It looked like a bandage, drawing back his upper lip to reveal the pale gums and the long, yellow, equine teeth.
He sat back down on the bed and meditated. He was wondering which trousers to wear. The short grey-blue breeches to go with his tall boots, or the long black evening ones? He chose the latter, although he would not be visiting any drawing-room. Huts, storerooms and dust were what awaited him. Black trousers were impractical on duty, of course, but they did have a certain advantage, not to be underestimated. If you were asked about Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk’s stature, you would have to say it was Napoleonic. Short stature is no disadvantage to anyone, of course. But the majesty of the Emperor of the French, who usually appeared before his troops on a historic white charger, clad in the historic grey greatcoat—well, that is one thing; quite another matter is the authority of a chief instructor in an Imperial and Royal Galician infantry regiment. Sometimes, long black trousers were to Bachmatiuk what the charger and greatcoat were to Napoleon. They elevated his status, enhancing his authority over subordinates. In those days Bachmatiuk set great store by authority. The trousers for evening wear were old and shabby and the seat was shiny. But all down the outer seams on both sides ran two narrow purple strands. Modest miniatures of general’s stripes. The choice of trousers determined the choice of footwear. In the nature of things, the tall boots standing to attention against the wall had to give way to the ordinary shoes that the orderly would bring along with the coffee.
The orderly appeared just as Bachmatiuk was combing his thick black hair; it was naturally black, not dyed. A white, perfectly straight parting ran down the middle, as if traced with a ruler. It ran from his forehead all the way to the nape of his neck. The parting in his hair and the stripes on his trousers all seemed to make the same statement.
In the doorway stood a soldier, a paunchy fellow with the complexion of a hermaphrodite. The skin of his pale, bloated face resembled parchment and it glistened like butter. Nature had endowed him with a perpetual lack of facial hair, making him an ideal Dragoon for the Windischgrätz regiment. However, he had been drafted into the infantry. Since the beginning of the war he had been unofficially polishing the RSM’s shoes, tidying up his quarters and bringing his meals. Now he was holding the polished shoes in one hand and a mess tray in the other, as the RSM was accustomed to drink black coffee from a pot like an ordinary soldier. He did not avail himself of the facilities of the NCOs’ kitchen, which issued white coffee in glasses and mugs.