And after the harvest came sacks of oats, and then of maize, so there were opportunities to make the occasional hole in a sack, saying, if necessary, that the sacks had been torn. They weren’t sealed, anyway.
The stationmaster was human. Of course, he would box your ears, but he didn’t dismiss you. When the stationmaster struck you, you had to kiss his hand at once, beating your breast and saying: “I honestly swear to God I’ll never do it again,” but you didn’t have to return what you had stolen. That was the life!
Piotr’s entire life involved carrying things. As a child, he had suffered from that infamous Hutsul affliction for which the human race had the French to thank, apparently. Its symptoms were the typical nose and certain defects of vision, which, however, did not develop further with age. Independently of the French influences, Piotr’s body was also subject to English ones, the rickets. And so France and England, those two warring elements that had done battle in the historical arena over so many centuries, settled their differences in the body of a Hutsul child. To the end of his life, Piotr remained bandy-legged.
Not only that, but he wore his father’s sheepskin coat, and bore his surname too. He had never known his father. His mother was a Hutsul and she smoked a pipe, even in her old age. She had a fine bearing, dainty feet, several beautifully embroidered shirts and jerkins, and numerous children too, who died virtually as soon as they were born. Only Piotr and Paraszka survived. The latter, in the opinion of many earnest folk, would have been well advised not to have survived.
The legendary father was Polish, apparently, name of Niewiadomski,[4] as—to avoid offending aristocratic gentlemen—children of uncertain paternity were known. But Piotr was a child from a legal marriage bed. The bed in question was situated in a cottage, now semi-dilapidated, at the far end of the parish of Topory. Thanks to this cottage with its thatched roof, Piotr had spent his entire life in Topory, not once submitting to the lure of Saxony, as he was frequently tempted to do. An orchard of just over an acre belonged to the cottage. One of the two apple trees had long since grown barren.
Of course, it belonged to Paraszka, who had gone to town and “decayed”—as the parish priest used to say—in a certain public establishment.
The neighbours’ children gorged on plums from the six plum trees every autumn. Piotr did not have any land of his own. However, the railway granted him the lease of a small plot adjacent to the track. There he planted potatoes, beans, maize, cabbages and a few sunflowers. Actually, it wasn’t he who did the planting, but a certain orphan girl called Magda. She was partial to sunflowers. After the death of Piotr’s old mother in the Year of Our Lord 1910, she began to hang about near Piotr’s cottage. Malicious female tongues wagged in the village, saying that on more than one occasion she brought him his milk in the evening and didn’t leave until nearly daybreak, just before morning milking time. Piotr had no cow of his own either. When he was young, he had indeed driven his mother’s cow and his mother’s geese to pasture, but no sooner was his mother buried than he sold the cow at market, sending half the proceeds to Paraszka, because that’s how it should be, and drinking the rest. He took the geese to the station as a gift for the stationmaster’s wife, just plucking a few feathers for himself first.
A dog represented his entire modest possessions. But what a dog! A dog such as this is more than a mere dog; it’s an angel. True, it yielded no milk, but it was a good dog, meaning that it was fierce. Its mother was a mongrel and its father a wolf (Piotr did not care about the breed; he was cross-bred himself). The dog was called Bass, suggesting that he had a powerful voice. When he got a bit older, he did not exactly mellow, but he became indifferent and nobody in the village feared Bass any longer. He was porter Piotr Niewiadomski’s one and only love.
Why didn’t Piotr marry Magda? This was a question often asked by people who favoured the sanctity of marriage, and the Greek Catholic priest once even put the question to Piotr directly, at his Easter confession.
“I haven’t had any children with her,” Piotr told himself, “so I won’t be having any now.”
Disregarding the dreadful consequences to be suffered in life beyond the grave threatened by the priest—who was prepared to make an exception and even accept a reduced fee, since it was a matter of saving the soul of an inveterate sinner—Piotr declared categorically:
“I won’t marry her, because she isn’t a virgin.”
But there were other reasons why Piotr, for the time being at least, had no wish to don the gold-plated crown customarily placed on the heads of the bride and groom as prescribed by the Greek Catholic marriage ceremony. Piotr Niewiadomski was a dreamer. He had in mind a quite different head covering. It might not be such a glittering one as the wedding crown, but on the other hand he could wear it to the end of his days and not just during the wedding ceremony. And if it really was a matter of outwardly resembling the great and the good of this world, Piotr was much closer to the mark in preferring a particular cloth cap instead of a metal symbol of doubtful value that was supposed to render him the equal of crowned kings. Anyway, it was only on playing cards that kings wore gold crowns, he believed, and he knew all about playing cards.
Long ago, perhaps as far back as Metternich’s time, some state official in his wisdom designed the Austro-Hungarian uniform cap. He determined its shape, dimensions, cut and trim, and having gained approval at the highest level imposed it on the heads of all those who wished to serve the Emperor. The Emperor set an example by wearing one himself, as his own servant, and the Emperor’s relatives wore it, as did his ministers, marshals and generals, his senior councillors and commissioners, officers and clerks, gendarmes (retired), members of military bands, cab-drivers, postmen, school caretakers, prison warders, and railway officials down to the last signalman. It was the Imperial headgear. His Imperial Majesty appeared in it on the balcony and in his carriage, raising his trembling white-gloved hand to its shiny black peak whenever he was greeted by his subjects, of whom he possessed so many during the sixty-six years of his most gracious reign. Of course, the cut and the trim of the cap had undergone all kinds of changes during the course of so many years. Many a defeat and many a victory had left its mark on the Imperial cap. Also, taking into consideration forms of service and hierarchical status, the wise inventors and renovators of the cap thought up various subtle variations, not always perceptible to the layman’s eye. For example, officers’ caps were made of black cloth with a gold cord running round the lower edge, incorporating a fine black zigzag pattern. Lower-ranking functionaries had a yellow thread rather than a gold one. Just one thing was common to all—the Imperial monogram, which had to be embroidered or imprinted, always taking pride of place, identifying the Emperor’s servants like the Imperial handkerchiefs and the Imperial forks and spoons. So nobody could steal them, sell them or pawn them.
Piotr too belonged to the Emperor. He never ceased to be aware of who he served. On the face of it, he merely shifted loads for the young squires, on the face of it he served the Jews who dealt in grain and potatoes in these parts. In reality, he shifted all this for the Emperor. In return, the Emperor paid him and protected him with exceptional rights. Just let any merchant make so bold as to lay a finger on Piotr when he was on duty! This would constitute an insult to an Imperial and Royal personality, and it would therefore be no laughing matter. Such an offence was punishable by imprisonment.