Song of the Legions (25 page)

All across occupied Poland, the Church bells were ringing, for it was
Wigilia
. We were crouched beside a forest track. A farmer drove by, and we watched him closely. His two horses had bells twined into their harnesses and the bells jingled as they trotted by. Behind them, his cart was heaped with food.

“He’s getting away,” Sierawski muttered, hand to sword.

“We’re no thieves,” I reminded him, “We’ll pay him, even if it’s by chopping wood and feeding the animals for our supper. Come on.”

We were cold and hungry. Snow began to fall.

“Hail there, fellow!” I called, “
Wesolych Swiat!
Merry Christmas!”

Tanski was huddled in the shadows, sword drawn. We had no powder or shot left, from firefights with scattered patrols. Besides, steel is surer than lead. I kept my own sword sheathed, so as not to startle the man. If he ran, or raised an alarm, we should have to kill him. We had done it before.

“
Wesolych Swiat
,” the farmer said, evenly, measuring the distance from the trees to the field with his eyes as we rode over. “What are you fellows doing out in this filth, on Wigilia? It’s cold as hell!”

“Freezing our balls off!” I replied, and we laughed, and the farmer reached into his kontusz. As you can imagine, our hearts leapt. My own hand flew to my sword, but the farmer merely produced a bottle, and passed it around. Cautiously, I beckoned to the three Beardlings. Birnbaum and the others were wrapped against the storm, with only the slits of their eyes showing. We were all armed, and ragged. We must have appeared to be a band of the most vicious and desperate vagabonds. I watched the farmer closely. Fortunately, he was quite drunk.

“Follow me, boys, come on in out of the storm,” said this ham-faced fellow, his cheeks flushed with good cheer. He was immune to the cold, for he was wearing an overcoat of one hundred per cent proof vodka. So we all drank ourselves cloaks of the same tailor who lived in that blessed bottle.

Gladly, we followed the farmer. Tanski did not show himself, but stepped in our footsteps, a ghostly shadow. For if we were betrayed, led into ambush, or overwhelmed, we should have a surprise up our sleeve.

“Visitors!” roared the farmer, as we trooped into his poor home. There was no porch – these were good honest peasants. As we stood, ravenously hungry, and dripping water like wet dogs, we glanced around the single room of the dwelling. Unthreshed sheaves of wheat had been placed in the four corners, for here the Christmas supper was about to take place.
Heavenly scents of fish, cabbage and beetroot filled the air.

Sure enough, a redoubtable
basia
stood by the stove with a knife, her hands stained red from where she had been paring beetroot. Two tiny pairs of eyes peeked, terrified, from behind her apron strings. At the sight of us, of course the wife began to protest, but the farmer waved a hand.

“Five more places at table, Basia!” he cried, for that was indeed his wife’s name. “When a guest enters the house, God enters also!”

The old basia, who was called Basia, scowled, and clutched her knife like a sabre. We stood there, wrapped up like Siberians, big as bears, with our rusty swords and empty guns. Thankfully, the farmer had recognised us for what we were. This was why he was not afraid.

“These are no Austrian scum, woman,” the farmer spat, “these are our boys!”

Wise old Basia was unmoved, and stood her ground like a grenadier, knife raised. Finally I had the wit to pull out a red and white pennant, and handed it over, like a crumpled flower. At this, Basia smiled, put up her knife, wiped her hands on her apron, and then threw her arms around my chest. She put her hand to my whiskery face and I smelled the pink beetroot. It ran in my beard with my tears of joyful thanks.

“Thank you, dear
Pani
,” I said, “we have a long road behind us, and a long road ahead.”

“Who are these boys?” Basia said, peering at the Beardlings suspiciously. Birnbaum and the other two sat in their skullcaps, putting away the borsch as fast as they could.

“Are they Cossacks?” she said to me, warily. There were still a few loyal Cossacks, but even these tame Cossacks had a terrible reputation for drunkenness and wenching. Still, God alone knew what these people would make of a houseful of Jews at Wigilia. I decided not to put it to the test.

“Why, these are Poles, mother, from the west!” I said smoothly, and winked at her. “Soldiers of the Republic, like us. Birnbaum and his lads here are from Wroclaw. They wear their beards long over there, in the German fashion.”

“Bloody Germans,” the farmer said bitterly, tearing at the bread, without even glancing up from his borsch. Basia shrugged.

“Watch your money when you play cards with them – they are Jews, my lad!” Basia whispered to me as she passed. She went back into the kitchen. Then the moment passed, without any further disasters. I breathed a sigh of relief. At last I turned to my soup bowl.

Suddenly there came a fresh commotion. Tanski was at the door with a stout lad of fourteen, and a girl of perhaps sixteen. The girl was dark-haired and blue-eyed, and slender as a roe deer.

“Are you being murdered then, lads?” he laughed.

“Old Basia here will murder you if you don’t get your hands off that girl,” I said, disentangling him from the daughter, who was already making doe eyes at him, after scant seconds of acquaintance. By God, much as I loved Tanski as a brother, I loathed him sometimes! For his pride, his arrogance, and his foolishness. Most of all, though, for his success with the ladies.

After this stupid business was concluded, we found ourselves amongst friends, and not foes. Vodka was poured and ‘Wesolych Swiat!’ cried out in chorus. All of the customs were observed in this fine little house. We spread the hay under the tablecloth, to tell our fortunes. Even the Jews joined in, for they knew our customs, just as we knew theirs.

What luck awaited us? None good, we knew. Sure enough, every man pulled a blackened blade of hay, and we laughed heartily each time. For this meant bad luck, spoiled meat, spilled milk, broken bread, star-crossed love, unrequited ambition, cuckolds’ horns, empty beds, grave goods, marked cards and shaved dice. Only the girl drew a green blade. It was the only blade I ever saw that frightened Tanski. For he feared but one thing – matrimony!

Then, the most blissful moment of the year. The farmer broke the wafer, and passed a tiny white piece of unleavened bread for each one of us. Kisses and greetings and best wishes were exchanged. All sins were forgiven. We were reconciled, all of us, even Tanski and I, our long feud at last forgotten. An empty place of honour stood at the end of the table.We cried and shed tears for those we had lost, tears flowing like blood. A great shared joy welled up within the tears. There, in our hearts, burned solidarity’s eternal flame.

In those days, at Wigilia, all men and women, from highest to lowest, ate until their bellies burst. Supper commenced with red borsch and uszka. Next came a hearty dish of pike, a noble fish.
We were served kutia with this, which is a sweet cereal dish. This was a custom in these parts, for we were now deep in the eastern lands of Poland – or what was once Poland, at any rate – on our way to Lwow.

Then, of course, the king of the feast – the royal carp!
This was done proud with peas, green cabbage, dried brown mushrooms, and grey sauce. Basia cut the carp crosswise, and ladled on the grey sauce, which she had flavoured with pimento, horseradish, onions, bay leaves and salt. Besides this we had endless potatoes under chopped dill. Sometimes the carp is served with a glass of plum brandy, but instead we had vodka, and wine. It was not the Thursday Dinners. Instead of listening to the learned conversation of eminent men, I heard naught but the happy belching of my comrades, their gulps, snorts, and farts. They stuffed themselves like pigs, pausing only from their repast to gulp down a glass of wine or spirits. Aye, it may not have been the Thursday Dinners, but by God it was a fine, hearty, meal.

In those days we were not the milksops you are in these feeble times. There you sit, gnawing on leaves and stalks, like mice, whining temperance and moderation, God help you. So we fairly demolished the board between us, leaving only bones and gristle for the wolves. At length I was asked to take out these scraps, so observing the custom. This I did, slopping them outside the gate to appease the howling packs of wolves that roamed out in the ancient forest beyond. Icy fangs of the hungry gale gnawed at my face in vain. By now, I had drunk enough of the magic potion not to pay it any heed.

An idiotic custom, this – the invitation to the wolves is meant to appease them, so they will leave the house in peace. What foolishness! Our whole land was surrounded by wolfpacks, and over the years we had thrown out scraps at the gate for them. Treated so well, they came back for more. So we had thrown them more scraps. Still they were not satisfied. Thus we threw out the borsch, the uszka, the pike, the carp, and the pierogi besides. Then, when the food was all devoured, we had thrown them our silver, and gold, and lastly the lead from the church roofs! Of course the wolves had licked their lips, and, after eating all this, had eaten us whole.

I am not superstitious, but I always observe the customs, out of respect, and for good luck. I never cast bread on the ground, or set a place for thirteen guests. Hence, here I was, throwing slops to the wolves. I should have been throwing them to the good, honest, blameless beasts of burden who stood nearby, huddled together in the barn – horse, cow, pig, sheep, and dog. I saw the animals circled around in a wheel, huddling their heads together. They do this to keep warm, but in my fancy, I perceived them to be conversing.

Another foolish superstition that my mother always held firm to her breast was that, at midnight on Wigilia, the beasts conversed with human voices. To overhear them brought unspeakable, ruinous, damnable bad luck. As I stood, my empty bucket clanking in the wind, the animals raised their heads. They spoke to me, but thank God, they spoke in their own tongues. Sheep bleated and brayed, cows lowed, dogs barked. I laughed, and turned back inside to warmth, drink, and cards.

Then a cloud passed across the face of the moon, and all was dark in Twardowski’s realms above and below. I did not run, to be sure, I walked away, but quickly, exactly as one does under musket fire. As I was crossing the threshold, I fancied that I heard the animals speak one single word, borne on the teeth of the wind –
“Bonaparte.”

Before we departed our Christmas sanctuary, the young lad had begged to come with us, as a drummer boy.

“Out of the question – you have no military experience,” Tanski said coldly.

“Besides, he’s too young,” Sierawski added.

He wouldn’t last a week, I thought to myself. Basia, his mother, was torn by pride, and fear, throughout the exchange.

“Join the legions when you are of age, boy,” I told him gently, “we will return.”

It seemed a hollow promise, one that, even if fulfilled, was likely to augur doom. The clouds broke and we rode off in pouring rain. Of course, a day later we found the boy following us. We gave him a hiding, and sent him back to Basia. Finally we journeyed on from the plains, with their farmers and woodsmen, into the deep dark hanging groves of the forest. On we rode through a wall of towering pines and firs, like the masts of an enormous fleet of ships. On we rode over logs, roots and stumps, and pine cones scattered like empty cartridge cases after a battle. As if passing from this world into another, we rode into a realm of green.

This was a place of spirits and shadows, a realm of wood, trees yawning like great longbows being slowly drawn. At their feet, a thousand arrows of light were scattered about the forest floor. Our horses walked on a carpet of rotting brown leaves and pine needles, soft as sable cloaks, muffling their hoof beats to a whisper.

Above us the sky narrowed to a long trench of grey and blue, as it is glimpsed by a man peering through a prison window. Even in the heavens, there was warfare. On high, ranks of crows and ravens cawed, sounding their battle cry, until driven off by eagles and kites, which fell upon them like cavalry. These trees were as old as God, and they brooded on the secrets of ages. They closed ranks about us, and we rode in single file, meandering through lost tracks and forgotten trails, following streams and river beds frozen with snow.

At last, we began to relax our guard, for we were no longer being pursued. None but the wolves followed us here, in this ancient wilderness. A companionable silence fell among us as we listened to the songs of the forest. Sweet scents of pine filled our noses, our lungs, our daydreams. Yet the forest was not free of perils. Here were wild and dangerous beasts – the dread bison, the ferocious brown bears, and the wild boars, with their great tusks like ivory lances. Creeping in the thick carpet of sweet pine needles were rats, snakes, and wolverine. In the night, we fancied that we saw the gleam of yellow eyes beyond the circle of our campfire. But it may simply have been the fireflies, or the spirits. All of us had heard tell of the other things that haunted the forest – fell creatures of the night. Werewolves. Vampires. Rusalka. Witches.

After a few months Wigilia was but a memory. We saw not a living soul in that time beyond our own small party of partisans. Each day, two of us would gather food, while the others rested and tended to the horses. One strange day, Tanski and I went out to collect mushrooms. Sierawski had shot a stag, and while the others were roasting and smoking the meat, we hunted the noblest and rarest jewel of the forest – the noble boletus. The real mushroom.

There were rows and rows of mushrooms, silver, gold, red and white. Some with scalloped edges, some as round as plates, some like upturned goblets, and yet others, funnel shaped, slim as champagne flutes. This pretty display reminded me of the cups and plates on the sideboard of that ruined house in Wola, where dear Cyprian led us against the Prussians. Alas! Was Cyprian alive or dead?

Now, some years are fat, and some years are lean. This proved another lean year. We picked not a solitary boletus. But we found the famed orange agaric, almost as tasty as the boletus, and good both fresh and salted for our journey. As we strayed still further into the dark and uncharted beyond, we found, in abundance, a fine staff of pretty colonels!

“Aha!” Tanski cried, “here is another Vixen – that’s the Lithuanian name – to add to my collection! A virgin, too, I’ll be bound – not a single worm or beetle has befouled her virtue!” Tanski held the luscious brown-capped mushroom aloft, like a trophy. He had a string of them in his czapka already.

“Damn, this place is quiet!” he called out, “What a shame that it wasn’t Basia’s daughter who followed us, instead of the boy! This place needs a woman’s touch,” Tanski remarked, idly, twirling his moustaches, as we picked amongst the logs and leaves and shrubs and ferns and fallen stumps.

“That it does,” I agreed. “I’ll bet there hasn’t been a woman in this forest for a hundred years,” I laughed, flinging a toadstool at him, “unless you count the Rusalka, of course!”

The toadstool was an ugly plug of poison, virulent enough to kill a barracks full of men. Tanski laughed, caught it, and lobbed the black knob away into the darkness, like a grenade. I followed the graceful arc of the deadly fungus with my eye as it spun down a ravine and watched where it fell. Beyond it, a lazy black finger curled up into the air, as if it was the flash after a shell burst.

“Smoke,” I said. At this, Tanski dropped to his knees, spilling his maidens onto the forest floor. He was ever careless with female hearts! We drew our sabres, and set off down the slope towards the smoke. At the end of the ravine, there was a lopsided hut, leaning like an evil grin. Around it were slick bottomless quicksands to swallow a horse whole, dead pools gleaming with rusty bloodstains. A steaming vapour clung about, stinking of suphur and damnation.

“Perhaps it’s the Rusalka’s house,” I said. Tanski grinned, but despite himself his face was pale, and his sabre shook in his hand. The Rusalka, you will know, is an evil spirit that takes the form of a delightful, charming, captivating and beautiful young maiden. She dances naked in the woods, and lures unwary foolish men to their deaths. Suddenly unnerved, we touched the crosses at our throats. Overgrowing grass spilled over in the pools, like strands of long brown hair. The twisted trees hunched over the bottomless pool like witches over a cauldron. Bald of leaves and bark, they grasped with wormy fingers into the rich black soils, like a miser after gold.

The wooden hut was clothed in a coat of green moss that crawled over every inch of the rough-hewn planks. There was no chimney, and no door. Smoke rose through a hole in the roof. A blanket hung across the threshold. Tanski rapped on the wooden wall with his sword hilt. It swayed. No answer came. Inside was a raddled old crone, a storybook witch. Her nose curled over her chin like an ancient bird’s beak. She wore a patchwork of filthy clothes. Her feet were bare and black as a beast’s, with horny toes. A long cable of thick, matted hair hung down to her waist. Her rheumy old eyes, though, were as bright as a crow’s. Childlike, she hid them behind her bony hands. She said nothing, yet she did not shrink from us.

“If she’s the Rusalka,” I remarked, somewhat unchivalrously, “I’d say she’s seen better days.”

Cautiously, so as not to startle this strange lady, we ventured into the hut, and, removing our czapkas, we sat down on our cloaks. The hut stank of damp, and dried herbs, and all-pervading woodsmoke. All the while, the woman – who must have been as old as God – sat and watched us, peeking over her long talons of fingernails. A battered copper kettle, sitting on the fire, began to whistle, and the pair of us nearly jumped out of our skins! At this, the old woman cackled, and began to mutter incomprehensibly to herself, to us, to the air, or, for aught we knew, to her familiar spirits. Then she scuttled away, spiderlike, and began scrabbling bunches of herbs together.

“I have been expecting you, my brave boys,” crooned the Witch. She spoke in Old Polish, in an archaic accent, but she was quite lucid. “You are late,” she scolded us, which was damned peculiar. We shrugged. We even apologised.

“Here, drink, and I will tell your fortunes,” she croaked. We watched as the woman began to pour us what appeared to be tea, sieving the brew through a rag.

“You are from these parts,” Tanski whispered to me, “is this a five-nippled Witch?”

I was, of course, not from these parts, but it was close enough. I knew the countryside and its ways better than he.

“This woman is – or was – a Goralka, a hill woman,” I told him. “An outcast, no doubt, from those wild folk. Perhaps she has a deformity, as you say, or perhaps she bore a child outside wedlock, and was thrown out by her family. Who can say? I doubt she remembers it herself. Look at her – she’s probably been here since the Swedish Wars.”

The old woman set cups of evil-smelling liquid before us. It was reminiscent of the stagnant pool outside, with its rusty bloodstained surface and green mantle of muck. We choked down the scalding tea. It tasted of fennel and mandrake, wormwood and aniseed, and the woody tang of mushroom. A brackish, metallic taste remained in my mouth, like sucking on a bullet. After we had drunk, the crone snatched away our teacups and held out her wizened claw for payment. I had a few worthless coins in my wallet and handed them over. The old crone simpered, a corpse’s smile through a mouthful of gravestones, her lips as parched and cracked as dried worms. She stared at the coins, transfixed by their gleam, then bit into them with her few remaining teeth. Satisfied, she hid the coins within her stinking and ragged robes.

Then, with a wild grin and a cackle, she rooted around in a corner, scattering weeds and rubble, then levered up a rotten wooden board.

“What fresh madness is this?” Tanski snapped, “Clearly, the woman’s mind has gone. Let us be off.”

From under the board she produced, to our immense surprise, wrapped in a filthy cloth, a silver chalice, carved all over with strange symbols. This she filled from a pitcher of water, and bid us look. She set herself on her knees, as if in prayer, and bent over this divination bowl, and stared into it.

“In the water,” she hissed. We all stared into the cauldron. We stared hard until white spots boiled before our eyes. Still, stare as we might, we saw nothing but our own ugly mugs peering back at us, as if from the bottom of a well.

“What is in the water?” Tanski grumbled, “your sanity?”

“Silence!” she cried. “See what is written in the water.”

Abruptly Tanski bent over and was violently sick.

“To hell with this,” he muttered, storming out of the hut. I sat awhile longer with the Witch. We stared into the water. Sweat ran down my forehead in rivulets. My head spun and my sight blurred. I tasted the vile tea, and thick vomit in my belly, and choked back bitter bile. Pictures took shape in the water, or perhaps in my head. I saw our Legions marching into Vienna, into Berlin, and finally, into Moscow itself. I saw the Kremlin ablaze. I saw the three Black Eagles scatter, in full flight before the White.

At last, I tore my gaze away, triumphant, and stared at the Witch. She met my eyes.

“So we win, old woman?” I demanded.

The woman said nothing. She merely gathered herself into a ball, and rocked on her heels. Then she laughed and laughed, and laughed again, laughing fit to split her corsets, as if this were the greatest joke in all creation.