In the third company there was no swine who would rush to report Łeś, so as soon as Lieutenant Lewicki ordered a half-hour break, Łeś Nedochodiuk went with the others to a place in the open field where there was a lone oasis of shrubs—wild roses and blackberries, and there he relieved his full bladder. Although Bachmatiuk had portended the letting out of Łeś’s soul so quietly that only those closest to him, Piotr Niewiadomski for example, had heard him, mortal fear overcame everyone. They all felt they had a soul too, for here was someone who could let it out, if only for a day, an hour, a moment. Everyone also sensed that Bachmatiuk’s prediction was not just a threat that would lead to the familiar punishments. They knew something they had never experienced before would happen that day. A sixth sense told these defenceless people that their comrade Łeś Nedochodiuk’s soul would shortly depart from his body, flying from his mouth and his nose, his immortal soul for whose redemption he had prayed from a book with gilt edges.
Piotr Niewiadomski sensed the presence of the devil. He could have sworn that he saw the devil evaporating from the barrel of the Schwarzlose machine gun and forcing himself into the soul of a Hutsul who was unwilling to expose himself in front of others.
None of the witnesses of the incident had the courage to approach Łeś, let alone speak to him. Łeś was already taboo. An invisible chalk circle had been drawn round his body. No living person dared to cross this borderline between life and death. But Łeś Nedochodiuk walked among his comrades, who fell silent at the sight of him, like a king who had just been excommunicated by the church. The faithful are supposed to shun even an excommunicated king. So the disciples of Imperial and Royal Discipline avoided Łeś, while at the same time admiring him for daring to challenge the deity, endangering his soul in an unequal battle. Some were rash enough to mutter about the incident, fearing to speak of it out loud. They tried to guess what Bachmatiuk would do now, and by means of what punishment he would expel Łeś’s soul. Meanwhile Bachmatiuk, like Łeś, stood to one side, smoking a cigarette. He was probably wondering the same thing as the men.
He did not devise anything special. The sanctions he had at his disposal were rather mild. Bachmatiuk had no right to impose disciplinary punishments. Only the company commander could impose detention or solitary confinement, while szpanga (clapping in irons, cuffing the left arm to the right leg and the right hand to the left leg) and Anbinden (tying hands behind the back and binding to the post) were the exclusive privilege of the commanding officer.
However, even within his limited powers, Bachmatiuk had enough ways of letting out Łeś’s soul.
And he did let it out.
Nobody could tell exactly how it happened.
Most of his countrymen supposed that Corporal Reszytyło, whom Bachmatiuk had instructed to carry out punishment exercises with Łeś, tortured him to unconsciousness with constant sit-ups, “frog leaps”, running, falling and getting up again in full marching gear, all while holding a Mannlicher. Łeś collapsed from exhaustion, they said, although he was such a strapping fellow. Or maybe he suffered a sudden haemorrhage. Some saw him fall on the second day of his punishment exercises, dropping the weapon and failing to get up after repeated commands to do so.
“He’s malingering,” said Bachmatiuk when Corporal Reszytyło reported it. But Lieutenant Lewicki was disturbed. He drew his sabre and applied the blade to the lips of the man who had fainted, and when he had convinced himself that he was breathing, ordered stretcher bearers to carry the unconscious “malingerer” to the sick-bay.
However, many Hutsuls, among them Reserve Militiaman Piotr Niewiadomski, were convinced that Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk had accomplices from another world. She-devils had come for the soul of Łeś, of whom it was known, and not only in Dzembronia by the Dzembronia River, that he had sinned and sinned as an adulterer. And now the same devils that had incited Łeś to commit this sin out there in the remote Hutsul land—and Łeś committed adultery not only with the wives of strangers, but also with his brother Ostap’s wife, that beautiful Armenian from Kuty, Kajetanna—those same devils suddenly turned into guards and avengers of the flouted sixth commandment. The cursed she-devils took advantage of the fact that there was a war on, that their patron Arch-Judas (one should spit at the very mention of his name) had stolen the whole fifth commandment from God and sold it to the Emperors. Because it was only thanks to this that Regimental Sergeant-Major Bachmatiuk was able to drive out Łeś’s soul. And the she-devils had come to take it off to hell.
On the third day, Łeś Nedochodiuk was lying in the sickbay, behind a Chinese screen, fighting for his life. The sick-bay consisted of only one room with ten beds. Not all were occupied. When it became clear that Łeś’s condition was hopeless and that not even the leeches bought at a pharmacy in town by medical orderly and garrison barber Glück were any help, Regimental Doctor Badian ordered a Chinese screen to be brought from his quarters in Andrásfalva. He wanted to spare others, mostly patients with mild ailments, the sight of the dying man. True, this happened in the army and during the war, and perhaps it was time to familiarize the soldiers with death. But Dr Max Badian, the regimental doctor in reserve, preferred to shield the dying patient with a screen, since it was otherwise impossible to isolate him. However, since in such a sad situation neither Łeś’s healthy comrades nor the sick ones who came to enquire about his health were amused by the comical figures of Chinese men with long drooping moustaches and locks of hair on shaved heads painted on the screen, Dr Badian had the screen covered with a sheet.
There was another, more serious, reason why Dr Badian shielded the dying Łeś with this screen.
Łeś Nedochodiuk felt that he was dying. He was not afraid of death, but he was afraid of hell. He requested a candle and a priest. There was no candle at the garrison. There was neither a Greek priest nor a Roman Catholic one. The regimental chaplains of both confessions were in the field, that is, at the division headquarters. It had been correctly agreed at the Department of Pastoral Functions of Christian Faiths of the Imperial and Royal Ministry of War at the Stubenring in Vienna that care of the souls of soldiers is needed first and foremost where the soldiers are constantly in danger of death, and therefore on the front line, not in the safe garrisons. Especially when they had been evacuated from the home garrisons presently occupied by the Muscovites. So our people, at least for now (since the Stubenring promised to send a Greek-Catholic priest later), were deprived of their own pastors and pastoral sustenance. Not entirely, however. Every Sunday and on every church holiday Catholics marched to the garrison church in Andrásfalva, where the parish rector of the church and the military chaplain simultaneously celebrated mass in Latin, only the sermon being given in Hungarian. Regimental Doctor Badian, like so many physicians in those days, was an atheist. If he believed in anything at all, it was just the laws of nature. The development of natural sciences was supposed to guarantee mankind a bright future. This belief was slightly undermined by the war, which Dr Badian considered a senseless anachronism. He saw in it only the last convulsions of the dying world of irrational, and therefore false, ideas. However, as a true liberal, he respected all religions. He understood that even in the army Christian mortals should not be deprived of the sacraments in the face of death.
So he went to the garrison commander with a proposal to bring a Honvéd chaplain to the dying soldier. It was the first fatal accident at this garrison, and Lieutenant-Colonel Leithuber responded favourably to the doctor’s initiative. But, personally, he did not want to call the chaplain of the unpopular Honvéds. So Dr Badian dealt with this. He drove to the city in the garrison commander’s carriage and found the priest not in the barracks but at the rectory of the garrison church. Father Dr Géza Szákaly, a chaplain with the rank of captain, immediately agreed to Dr Badian’s proposal. However, scarcely had he (in German) expressed his agreement to prepare Łeś for his death than he came up against a brick wall. The wall of the Tower of Babel. It was supposed to bring people closer to heaven and therefore to God, but the result of this undertaking was the opposite; it was fatal. The Tower of Babel had distanced people not only from God, but from one another. They ceased to understand one another. So Father Géza Szákaly hesitated. He spoke only Hungarian and German. How could he undertake confession for a man who does not know these languages? Łeś Nedochodiuk spoke only Hutsul dialect, and a little Polish. Dr Badian, wishing to help the priest out of such an embarrassing situation, proposed confession with the help of an interpreter. Father Szákaly, surprised rather than shocked by this unheard-of proposition, seeing the good will of a doctor unfamiliar with rituals, explained to him that confession through an interpreter was impossible. It would be a violation of the seal of the confessional. After a long struggle with his own conscience, however, he acknowledged that mercy is more valuable than knowledge of foreign languages. In any case, God, in whose name he, a modest priest, was to receive the confession of a dying Hutsul in an unfamiliar language, certainly knows all languages. Ukrainian too. After all, the Merciful Almighty punished only human pride with the confusion of tongues, not Himself. Therefore, the confession requested by the poor sinner in the 10th Infantry Regiment of King N would be valid despite the language difficulties. So Father Szákaly decided to go to him. Dr Badian wanted to take the priest back with him, but he declined. He had to prepare first, for such important functions as taking the confession of a dying man, holy communion and final anointing. He promised to follow soon. He only asked for a table at the bedside, covered with a white cloth, two candles and a few balls of cotton wool. The crucifix he would bring himself.