Ah, what fine caps and costumes people have worn as they die for their kings and emperors! They have died in all colours, in iron armour, and in shining coats of mail. They have snuffed it in helmets, in busbies, in enormous headgear the size of wine jugs with glittering brass plates, in capes and helmets sporting birds’ feathers or horsehair. And so that a private could not be distinguished from his comrades in the regiment, so that he totally lost the appearance he had in the world as a son, a father and a husband, emperors ordered military tailors to make the same caps, the same tunics and the same trousers for everyone in the regiment. The only regret they had was that they could not convert all the faces to conform to a single model.
But long gone were the days when a foot soldier went to his death immaculate, colourful and resplendent as a peacock. Now, emperors were more concerned with hiding infantrymen from the eyes of the enemy than dazzling those eyes with a fine uniform. So everywhere armies adopted uniforms that were grey, matching the earth or the sand. They had the illusion that this way they would manage to fool the enemy and their long-range field glasses. In their concern for the life of the soldier they tried to make him look like the Mother Earth he was supposed to defend with his body. But Mother Earth has more colours than the cloth dyers have dreamt of. If only they could come up with a material that changed like opal, according to all the colours of the terrain and all the seasons! Now white as the snow, now yellow like the stubble, now grey-blue like the forest or colourless like water. Who knows, perhaps not a single Hutsul would die in the war. But what kind of war would that be, in which no Hutsuls perished?
However, the most garish colour of all—red—was not immediately banished from the Imperial and Royal Army. In the first months of the war they kept it on the trousers of the Uhlans and the Hussars—to let them enjoy it for a while longer. But when this speeded up the wiping out of the cavalry, red was completely banned in the army and from then on red was represented only by blood. It would be untrue to say that all soldiers were immediately dressed in field uniforms. In Andrásfalva, for example, the reserve militia received old castoffs from their predecessors to wear during training. The issuing of uniforms was a ritual carried out under the supervision of Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk.
Before Piotr Niewiadomski’s eyes there opened up stores containing everything due to him from the Emperor. A soldier consisted of a tunic, trousers, an overcoat, boots, a rifle, belt, two cartridge pouches, a bayonet, knapsack, haversack, spade (or pickaxe), bowl, flasks, two blankets, one canvas tent sheet, a large quantity of straps, and himself. Oh, and a cap. Without a cap, he was almost a cripple, he was like a lamp without a shade, a stem without a blossoming crown.
The barracks clothing store was stacked to the ceiling with shelving full of grey-blue and dark blue uniform garments. All this cloth smelt of malt barley, because the store was set up in the former brewery malt house. With a long pole ending in a fork, the storekeeper reached for the uniforms and cast them on the ground. In a fragrant cloud of dust, cloth legs and cloth sleeves descended, birds of cloth one just like another, thread for thread, button for button. The old tunics had orange squares on the collars; the new ones had only a narrow braid showing the colour of the regiment. The recruits casually tried on the Imperial uniform, but some pulled faces; this was too wide, this was too tight. They were behaving as though they had paid for these uniforms to be made to measure. Pious Jews recoiled from putting on old sweaty trousers and smelly caps. Who knows what the previous owners had put in their pockets as they crawled about? Perhaps they were getting all this from men who had fallen in the war?
Bachmatiuk stood to one side, staring at the empty uniforms. He cast a loving eye over the most beautiful creation to come from the tailors’ shears. An empty infantry uniform was dearer to him than the man who was to wear it. He begrudged each item taken away by some dolt. He begrudged Piotr Niewiadomski the uniform he was trying on. He stood gazing at the piles of tunics, coats and trousers and the pyramid of caps, as if giving them his blessing.
They collected more or less everything from this store that was due to them from the Emperor, throwing the whole load over their shoulders, then they set off, following Bachmatiuk.
A thousand rifles with fixed bayonets in dull sheaths awaited them in the murky arsenal. They lay in rows on the shelves—quiet, innocent, sleeping. But the tawny barrels and rusty butts glinted disturbingly. How powerless were rifles without human hands! Now the hands were reaching out that would extract the roar of death from this mute iron. Slowly, slowly! Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk watched intently as the platoon gunsmith handed the weapons to the recruits, recording a number against each name. If a uniform was dearer to Bachmatiuk than the man, what then of a rifle, the chief organ of the infantryman, more important than his heart and his brain! For Bachmatiuk people did not exist; there were only annual intakes, material that was cheaper than the Mannlichers produced in Steyer at over 100 crowns apiece. And what was a man in comparison with a Mannlicher, and even an old Werndl that lives longer than a man? That is why Bachmatiuk became so indignant when people said of a regiment that it consisted of three thousand soldiers. An infantry regiment is made up of three thousand rifles, a cavalry regiment of two thousand sabres.
Piotr Niewiadomski received a Mannlicher and bayonet no. 46 821. He knew his numbers, but such a long number, engraved on the flintlock and on the hilt of the bayonet, was not easy to make out. As for memorizing it, that was out of the question. Piotr had not yet had to deal with such large numbers. His salary on the railway was 15 crowns, the signal box where he worked as substitute signalman bore the number 86. And now all of a sudden forty-six thousand eight hundred and twenty-one. Such a powerful number associated with his person filled him with pride and he felt more important than before, but at the same time he realized that from that moment he was no more than an additional property of the number 46 821. This weapon was not new. Many others must have made use of the number 46 821 before Piotr. God knows if they are still alive. And if God permits you to come back from the war with a healthy weapon, you have to give it back to the armoury; let it rest, let it have a good sleep—until the next war. Yes, Piotr himself felt that the weapon was more important than he was. Wagons were also more important; they too had big numbers written on them.
“How many dead bodies can all these weapons cause?” he asked himself, looking at the hundreds of rifles in the hands of the recruits. Five thousand? Ten? He was reminded of the Hutsul legend of self-firing rifles and of weapons inside which the ghosts of those who had been shot would hide. And suddenly ghosts began to circle round beneath the vaulted ceiling of the murky brewery cellar. Silently they swooped down, catching hold of arms and snatching at legs. Phantoms emerged from the darkness, arms pulled elongated grains of lead out from torn breasts, bellies and foreheads, pleadingly offering them to Piotr. Piotr was terrified, thinking that the Hungarian brewers Farkas and Gjörmeky were not brewers but devils, and that it was not beer that they stored here, bitter beer made from hops and barley, but blood.