Salt of the Earth

by Jozef Wittlin

Genres: Classics; War & Military

Synopsis

The classic pacifist novel by a major Polish writer, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize

'Only the villages are asleep, the eternal reservoir of all kinds of soldiery, the inexhaustible source of physical strength'

The villagers of the Carpathian mountains lead a simple life at the beginning of the twentieth century - much as they have always done. They are isolated and remote, and the advances of the outside world have not touched them. Among them - Piotr, a bandy-legged peasant, whose 'entire life involved carrying things'. A notional subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, all he wants in life is an official railway cap, a cottage with a mouse-trap and cheese, and a bride with a dowry.

But then the First World War comes to the mountains, and Piotr is drafted into the army. Unwilling, uncomprehending, the bewildered Piotr is forced to fight a war he does not understand - against his national as well as his personal interest.

In a new translation, authorised by the author's daughter, Salt of the Earth is a strongly pacifist novel inspired by the Odyssey, about the consequences of war on ordinary men.

Release date: February 5, 2019

Publisher: Pushkin Press

Print pages: 384

Sample

ii
Everyone stood up. The old rococo armchairs heaved a sigh
of relief, suddenly free of the burden of venerable bodies.
Below, outside the gateway, the crash of the palace guard’s
hobnailed boots rang out. Traditionally, soldiers of the 99th
Moravian Infantry Regiment had the privilege of guarding
these sacred places.
“Gewehr heraaaaaus!” yelled the sentry, like a locomotive
whistle administering the last rites to victims of a disaster.
The guard presented arms.
A tall, bald-headed, distinguished-looking man, smiling
frostily beneath a thin black moustache, cleared his throat.
Today it was he who was to fulfil the most important role.
Already as a child he had been fond of history. Very. Once
more he glanced provocatively in the direction of the ministers
poised stiffly in anticipation. Their faces, which now took
on a ceremonial expression, though they were customarily
sour and morose, bore witness to a severe hardening of the
arteries. The worn-out vessels were now having difficulty
pumping these gentlemen’s true-blue blood to their hearts.
It was common knowledge whom these hearts were beating
for. History itself would testify to whom they had promised to
give the “last drop” of their blood. Especially as nobody had
asked it of them. Meanwhile, the blood was battling against
its own degeneration.
The agreeable gentleman’s gaze next came to rest on
Maria Theresa’s silver wig; from the enormous portrait, she
was sizing up the bald heads and beards gathered around the
table with her large, unashamedly masculine eyes. Above the
wig, over the gilt frame, the large stones set in the crown of
St Stephen surmounted by its leaning cross glowed with fiery
reds, greens and purples. The crown blazed in the glow of the
setting sun; it shed multi-coloured tears, but the Empress’s
eyes glowed even more intensely. Her arteries had never
hardened.
A carriage rumbled up to the gateway. A crash of rifle butts
on the command to order arms. Down below a dry cough.
The magnificent double doors were flung open. Two
svelte guards officers had assumed their positions either side
of the entrance, as motionless as two statues in the foyer of
the court theatre. A secret ritual suddenly enclosed the two
living bodies in deep silence, as though in chilly niches of
marble. The ringing of the spurs, sounding like broken glass,
was muffled in that silence.
Ceremonial expressions rapidly came over the gentlemen’s
faces. The short, stocky Chief of the General Staff knitted his
bushy eyebrows. He inclined his greying, close-cropped head
slightly to one side towards his left breast, where the most
illustrious crosses and stars were soon to blossom. The bald,
elegant gentleman, the Foreign Minister, shifted impatiently
from foot to foot. The patent-leather shoes that he had to
wear on official occasions had given him bunions. One had
to create a good impression at the embassy! He was the only
one in this company to wear a fragrance. Very discreetly, mind
you. He was accustomed to importing his fragrances directly
from Paris. He didn’t trust the local products.
All of a sudden, two old men in general’s uniform, with
sashes the colour of scrambled eggs draped across their chests,
escorted in a third old man in a bright blue tunic. He was
stooping, leaning on a silver-handled cane. All three of them
had grey sideburns and they were as alike as peas in a pod. The
life they had shared over many years—the shared boredom
and the shared pleasures—had conferred on them the same
appearance. If it were not for the Golden Fleece beneath the
third button on the breast of the stooping figure, a stranger
in this house would be unable to tell which of the three old
men was by the grace of God Emperor of Austria, Apostolic
King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, King of Dalmatia, Croatia
and Slavonia, King of Galicia and Lodomeria, King of Illyria,
Archduke of Upper and Lower Austria, Grand Duke of
Transylvania, Duke of Lorraine, Carinthia, Carniola, Bukovina
and Upper and Lower Silesia, Prince-Count of Habsburg and
Tyrol, Margrave of Moravia, King of Jerusalem, etc., etc., and
which were the two aides-de-camp, Count Paar and Baron
Bolfras.
The ministers and the generals bowed their heads. Just one
of them, a third replica of His Majesty with sideburns, stood
erect. He had the right to do so. On his breast—considerably
younger than the Emperor’s, it’s true—he also wore a Golden
Fleece. He was, after all, the grandson of the victor of Aspern,
Archduke Karl.
The armchair the Emperor sat down on was covered in
red plush and it stood close to Maria Theresa’s portrait. For a
moment, the Empress’s eyes seemed to be searching, over the
top of Franz Joseph’s head, for the bushy eyebrows of little
Baron Conrad, Chief of the General Staff, in order to remind
him that the highest decoration an officer of the Imperial and
Royal Army could be awarded is, was, and always would be
her own Order, the Order of Maria Theresa. Conrad knew
how one gained it. He knew Heinrich von Kleist’s Prince of
Homburg virtually off by heart.
Just then, dusk began to sprinkle fluff on the old portraits,
exaggerating their outlines. The portraits grew and grew and
grew, eventually merging into a continuous grey mass along
with the wallpaper and the wood panelling of the elegant
room. Prince Eugene of Savoy, with a final glint of his sleek,
mirror-like black armour, disappeared into the gloom, where
only a moment earlier his golden sceptre and the signet ring
on his finger had clearly stood out. Maria Theresa’s crinoline
billowed like a gigantic, bulbous cushion filling with water.
One might have expected that at any moment the old matriarch
of the Habsburgs would emerge from her gilt frame,
powerfully elbowing aside these old sclerotics, and casually
sit down next to the wilting offspring of her exuberant lifeblood.
She would embrace the old man in her plump arms,
injecting vigour into his pale, withered being, and burst into
lusty peals of laughter.
But the lights in the crown of St Stephen are going out one
by one; the fiery glints in her eyes grow dim.
A valet enters. He turns on the electric lights in the crystal
chandeliers. Not all of them, however, because His Imperial
Majesty cannot bear bright lights. With a trembling hand, he
dons his spectacles. After a short while, he removes them again
and spends a long time cleaning them with a handkerchief.
At this point the bald Count Berchtold, the Foreign Minister,
loses his patience. He takes some documents from his briefcase,
casting his gaze sternly, yet respectfully, in the Emperor’s
direction. His Parisian fragrances not unpleasantly tickle
the nostrils of his immediate neighbour, His Excellency von
Krobatin, the Minister for War. This aroma at dusk arouses
in him memories of his youth. Those wonderful Hungarian
girls really know how to kiss!
The Emperor has finished polishing his spectacles. The
starchy faces of the highest state dignitaries come back to life.
Not a trace of sclerosis now.
The Emperor is speaking. In a dull tone of voice, he is
thanking them for something or other. What his dear Count
Berchtold spoke about yesterday had greatly saddened him.
If he was not mistaken, that meant—if his memory served
him correctly—Belgrade? He was happy to acknowledge that
feelings were growing strong among his beloved peoples, who
were demanding, demanding…
The Emperor could not recall what it was that the beloved
peoples were demanding.
So they began explaining to him. There was something the
Emperor, despite everything, was still unwilling to understand
at any price, apparently. At first, they explained matters to him
patiently, like a mother to her child, but eventually they lost
their composure and started gesticulating. When the light
finally dawned, they began bargaining with him. The Emperor
went on the defensive for some time, resisting, hesitating,
coughing, and recalling the murdered Empress Elisabeth. At
one point he even stood up unassisted, striking the table so
forcibly with his silver-handled cane that the two statuesque
guardsmen flinched and Maria Theresa’s eyes sparkled.
Archduke Friedrich, the grandson of the one of Aspern
fame, leapt to his feet. He approached His Majesty and bent
over the pink ear from which wads of grey cotton wool protruded.
At some length, he poured certain weighty words
into that ear. As he bent over, the two Golden Fleeces on the
Habsburgs’ chests found one another and for a few moments
they swung in unison. Then the Emperor conceded. He
yielded to the will of his beloved peoples.
He had just one wish; let them display the traditional
oak leaves on their helmets. And they must sing. Here the
monarch was interrupted again by Archduke Friedrich,
who spoke up to remind him that in the twentieth century
his soldiers no longer wore helmets, only soft caps. The
Emperor apologized; he hadn’t been on manoeuvres for such
a long time. He was visualizing the old heads of veterans of
Novara, Mortara and Solferino, the Pandours, Radetzky…
Shamefacedly, he turned to the Minister for War as a pupil
to his teacher.
“Perhaps Your Excellency will be so good as to remind me
how many troops I have?”
“Thirty-eight divisions in peacetime, not counting the
Landwehr or the Honvéds.”
“Thank you. I have thirty-eight divisions!”
Thirty-eight divisions! Franz Joseph relished in his imagination
every division individually, delighting in the multitude and
the diversity of colours represented by these numbers, sworn
to serve him in life and death. He conjured up in his mind the
last parades at which he had been present, the last simulated
battles, in which the enemy’s soldiers were identified by red
ribbons in their caps. On that occasion he had personally, on
horseback, led one of the warring armies, and his adversary
had been none other than Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the
throne, murdered four weeks earlier. His memory did not fail
him here. That was unforgettable! Old passions were revived
in the old man as he recalled it. For a while, he felt the old
aversion for his mock enemy in the manoeuvres, whose actual
death he and the entire Imperial and Royal Army were now
bound to avenge. The old man felt a rush of blood to his head
at the thought that this obstinate opponent, who had waited
in vain for so many years for him to die a natural death, still
gave him no peace even after his own death. Something in
the old man’s mind declared, triumphantly, “Look, I have
outlived him after all!” But even this single unspoken victory
was moments later overshadowed by sorrow for his unforgettable
only son Rudolf, who had also been unfortunate: “Mir
bleibt nichts erspart!”*
An uncomfortable silence descended on the room.
Berchtold’s cloying perfume was in the air, drifting like
incense over the bodies of the murdered. “Adieu, Parisian
perfumes!” The road is cut off. The Triple Alliance, the Triple
Entente! Count Berchtold knew very well what this meant.
He recognized the odour of the impending course of history.
It smelt of restriction to local products. But in the eerie
silence not even the jovial Krobatin noticed that scent. He
had never smelt powder either, but he was Minister for War,
nonetheless.
The Emperor was deep in thought. His light blue, watery
eyes grew dim behind his spectacles. His clean-shaven chin
sank into his golden collar; only the whiskers of his sideburns
protruded. The glittering cross on the crown of St Stephen
leant even farther, threatening to fall on the old man’s head.
He remained silent, engrossed in the sombre catacombs of
cadaverous recollections.
The tension continued to mount at the round table. The
old armchairs were creaking. The sclerosis in the veins of
the paladins advanced another step. Eventually, the Crown
Council’s impatience broke the bounds of etiquette. The
generals began to whisper.
* “I am spared nothing!”
“Time is running out! He must sign.”
Krobatin could not last any longer without a cigarette. At
this point, Berchtold touched Count Paar’s elbow. The latter
placed a large sheet of paper before the Emperor. The second
replica of the Emperor held a pen with (as court ceremonial
procedures dictated) a new, unused steel nib. All eyes were
turned towards the Emperor’s dried-up, frail hand. At last,
he came to and adjusted his spectacles. Everyone heaved a
sigh of relief.
The monarch spent several minutes coldly perusing the
rigid black rows of letters. He paid strict attention to every
word, every punctuation mark. But after he had read the first
sentences, his eyelids reddened and he had a burning sensation
in his eyes. His spectacles misted up. Lately, the old man had
found reading very tiring, especially in artificial light. He now
looked away from the sheet of paper and, noting the Crown
Council’s impatience, dipped the pen with a trembling hand
into the open black maw of the inkwell. The hand returned
with the nib now steeped in the poisonous fluid and settled
shakily on the paper like a pilot feeling for the ground below
as he lands. Soon the left hand came to its assistance, holding
the paper steady.
The Emperor was placing his signature, so long awaited by
the ministers. As soon as the name “Franz” was written, the
pen ran out of liquid breath; the ink ran dry. As the Emperor
reached for the inkwell once more, the quivering pen slightly
scratched the thumb of his left hand. A tiny drop of blood
squirted from his thumb. It was red. No one noticed that he
had scratched his thumb; he quickly wiped it and, with a single
flourish, added “Joseph”. The ink was blue.
Count Berchtold picked up the document. The following
day it was translated into all the languages of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire. It was printed and displayed at all
street-corners in cities, towns and villages. It began “To my
peoples…”. For the illiterate, it was read aloud by town criers.
The Emperor rose with the assistance of his aides-de-camp.
He was not accustomed to shaking hands with his officials.
On this occasion, however, he shook the hand of the prime
minister. In the doorway, he turned once more and said—it
was unclear to whom—
“If I am not mistaken, blood will be spilt.”
Then he left. Archduke Friedrich offered Finance Minister
Biliński a Havana cigar. From down below, the crash of the
hobnailed boots of the 99th Regiment infantrymen was heard.
A crash of rifle butts on the command to order arms. At the
nearby barracks the lights-out bugle call was sounded. It was
nine o’clock.
At nine o’clock, the soldiers throughout the Austro-
Hungarian Empire go to bed.