Song of the Legions (28 page)

“Blumer – cut down that fucking blackbird before the garrison arrives,” he snarled.

“Yes, Sir!” I grinned, drawing my sword.

We left Lwow on a black dark night for unknown shores, our mouths filled with the taste of our mothers’ tears. Not long after we had retired to bed, the girl who kept the tavern burst into our rooms. We didn’t know whether to reach for our pantaloons or our pistols.

“Fly! Fly!” she shrieked, “you are betrayed!”

At this, we heard the crack of muskets. Sierawski stuck his head out of the window, but he was too crafty to return fire and give away our position. Besides, it was so dark one couldn’t have hit the side of a barn with a handful of grain.

“Our friends from Tulczyn?” I asked, wearily, burying my head under the pillows.

“No,” Sierawski replied, shaking his head. “I hear German. It’s the Austrians.”

“Have we not enough enemies in this cursed world!” I lamented. In truth we had not exactly ingratiated ourselves during our sojourn in Lwow. The incident at the café had been the final straw. Downstairs, Cyprian was drinking coffee and eating bread and jam. His gun lay on the table beside him.

“You look terrible,” he said, offering me the coffee.

“Thanks!” I laughed, wishing myself back under the warm blankets, but the gunfire sounded closer at hand now.

“Nobody has shot at us for six months,” Sierawski said jovially, stuffing his bag with food, “it couldn’t last.”

“Yes,” I agreed, rubbing my eyes until I saw stars, and splashing water on my face, “I was beginning to miss it!”

Tanski scowled and stalked out to the stables. We always kept a few horses saddled. Hunted as we were, such a day would always come. We had little enough by way of baggage – rusty sabres, guns, a handful of bullets, a knapsack, a saddlebag or two. Besides this I had my bundle of books, Sierawski had his engineers tools, and Tanski had the flag. Tanski vaulted onto his horse theatrically and caracoled it, flashy as always. His hands were empty.

A line of horsemen were already hurtling away into the distance. We watched as the night swallowed them up. Our comrades were heading east, and we with them.

“The flag, you damned fool!” I roared at Tanski, as soon as I had sat my horse. “Where is it?”

“It’s here, Blumer,” Godebski replied, walking across the flagstones. He tossed the flag to Tanski, who caught it, and unfurled it. It fluttered in the breeze, antique talisman of our long dead king, Sobieski. A hundred years ago Sobieski had chased the Turks out of Austria. Now the ingrate Austrians were chasing us out of Lwow, out of our own country, and into exile beyond.

A crack of shots, like the crash of cymbals, rent the air. Austrian bugles sounded – mere minutes away.

“The bloody trumpets of war!” Godebski laughed, checking his pistols and grenades, and slinging a musket across his back.

“This is madness! They’ll arrest you,” I protested, “they’ll put you in a dungeon with Zayonczek! They’ll kill you!”

Godebski shook his head. “No they won’t. Good luck, boys,” said the poet, saluting, “follow the Little Negro, he’ll see you right. See you in Italy.”

“Good hunting, Captain,” I cried, clasping my friend’s hand. “See you in Italy.”

“See you in Italy, Blumer!” Cyprian smiled, tossing a grenade up in the air like an apple. Turning on his heel, he walked back into the inn, whistling the mysterious mazurka of the Third of May. Then he was gone.

There were no more bugles thereafter, only gunshots. A heavy moon hung overhead, with a big gleaming belly. Pan Twardowski was mocking us. The old sorcerer was lighting up the fields, like a ballroom is lit up with candles, with an eerie silvery glow. We rode hard for the tree line. As we did, a line of Austrian cavalry made to cut us off, swinging like a stable door on a hinge. It was a quite beautifully executed manoeuvre, for which they were to be commended, and moreover carried out at night. I watched it all with a professional eye – I felt strangely detached and unafraid. It was as if I were watching an opera.

I quite forgot my sickness, and my mind was lucid and clear. Austria was the third deadly enemy to be reckoned with. She was slow, but she was implacable. Like a giant mill, her wheels ground slowly – but they ground small. These, her cavalry, were excellent, the very best in the world. Strong men on heavy steeds, cuirassiers with gleaming metal breastplates and great plumed metal helmets, like Roman centurions. Moonlight glinted on the steel, shining like quicksilver in the dark. This heavy armour, magnificent in aspect, weighed them down mightily. Thus, we were faster.

We six – for the three Beardlings still rode with us – we too were horsemen, down to our boots. We dug in our spurs until the rowels ran with our horses’ blood. The ground and the heavens hammered in a wild tattoo, the roaring wind stinging tears from our eyes. Our horses, sensing the danger, set their ears against the sides of their heads and foamed at the mouth. It was good ground, thank the Lord God. Not one of their hooves found a furrow or a rabbit hole to fall into.

As the noose closed, we shrank to a single file, and spurred our horses until their flanks ran red. Shots sounded, the reports snatched away on the wind, sounding like cloth-wrapped hammers beating on stones. Tanski lowered the flag like a lance.

We split their line like threading the eye of a needle, and then a cloud passed across the moon, thank God. Darkness at last veiled the earth, and we vanished.

We spent an ill-starred Christmas out on the steppe. The wind howled down as if the very devils of Siberia were calling us home to their gulags. I was huddled in the shelter, wrapped in a blanket. The blanket was as cold as iron, and seemed to have been drenched with icy water. Dusk had fallen, and the moment the evening star appeared, we sat down for supper – for it was Wigilia again. Reluctantly I stuck my head out of the shelter, which was a rough stockade of piled branches. One end of the shelter was propped up with Sobieski’s antique standard, the old soldier pressed into service yet again.

“Sierawski! Birnbaum!” I called, “Get your bloody arses in here! Merry Christmas!”

Tanski and I huddled over a battered pot that sat on a heap of mouldering grass. It gave off few flames and little heat, but vast clouds of acrid, evil-smelling smoke. The smoke stung our eyes and chafed my throat. I coughed until there were silver stars in front of my eyes and Tanski clapped me on the back. We had some old dry beetroot, and were boiling it up with snow to make a broth that could perhaps be called borsch.

“Fish!” Sierawski cried triumphantly, as he came into the tent. “Fish!” for as you know, no good Catholic eats meat on Christmas Eve.

“You should see the net and line Sierawski rigged up,” Birnbaum enthused, “the boy’s a genius, the greatest engineer of our time!”

“Spare us the engineering claptrap!” Tanski shouted. He had fallen out with Sierawski. “If the honoured Lieutenant Sierawski were any sort of real engineer, he’d magic us up a balloon, so we could float to Italy!”

“God’s blood,” I roared, staring at the fish. “Is that your bait or your catch? It’s tiny!”

“Piss off and catch you own, then,” Sierawski retorted, “you pair of tits!” He clutched two small pike in his hands. They were dangling from hooks and still bloodied where their heads had been beaten in with a rock.

“I already did, comrade,” I replied, pointing to a fat, ugly carp I had caught earlier that day. My fish sat among the embers, its eyes already swelling up white, and red blood congealed around its gills.

“
Touché
,” Sierawski admitted, and we set his catch beside ours. Here we had another fine allegory of Poland, I shivered, for we had both pike and carp, and both of them hanging from the gallows! I kept this pretty thought to myself.

“Grey sauce for us, quartermaster, and quick about it,” I ordered Tanski grandly, snapping my fingers. He growled angrily back, like a dog. The rest of us grinned, and we watched him cook the fish. The smoke made me cough again and I had to leave the shelter until it had subsided, the wind beating my bones like a rent collector’s knout.

“
Sto lat!
Cheers!” we cried, each taking a small gulp of vodka. The bottle was running light as air, a few more sips and it would blow away on the wind. We looked at the meagre food. We had some ragged strips of bread, and a few dried mushrooms, and the fish. Birnbaum stared at this gentile repast with suspicion.

“Remember the old days!” we all said, dreaming of Christmases and Chanukahs.

“I thought last year was bad, but by God! The Devil take this year!” Sierawski lamented. The fish took an age to cook on that feeble campfire. We were so hungry on that Christmas Eve, our stomachs could have burst like empty bladders. At last, the fish was ready. It smelled so heavenly, I cannot think that even the legendary Thursday Dinners had such a grand aroma. It was such a consolation to anticipate the borsch, the fish, and the sacred wafer.

“Now, boys, who has the wafers?” Tanski asked. Sierawski looked at him blankly.

“Not us,” Birnbaum said indignantly. “We are Jews!”

“Then we have none!” went out a pathetic cry over the steppes.

“Hell’s teeth,” I said to my Christian comrades, “you miserable sinners would be lost without me!”

“What, Father Ignatius,” Tanski sneered, “you have some wafers in your chasuble, then?”

“That I have, my son, that I have!” I laughed, pulling an old army biscuit from my bag. It was dried bullet-hard. I could have fired it from my musket. Very solemnly, I turned my back. Then I laid the biscuit on a saddlebag, and, wrapping myself in a blanket and imitating the unctuous actions of a priest, blessed it as best I could. I blessed it with a prayer, and a sprinkling of water that was holy to me, for it was from the rivers of our land.

“Praise be for the Podolian Pope!” Tanski laughed, and the others capered about, laughing, bowing and genuflecting.

“The Lord be with you,” I said, unctuously, tracing a cross in the air, and they gave the response – “and also with you!” – and then we fell about laughing. The newly blessed ‘wafer’ was so hard I had to break it into pieces with the butt of a pistol.

For dessert, we dreamed of delicacies. A confection of air and dreams, of smoke swirling from the towers of an imaginary castle.

“Oh for hot coffee,” Sierawski moaned.

“Oh for poppy seed cake!” Tanski muttered, eyes closed.

“Oh for Chanukah!” Birnbaum whined, wrapped in his cloak.

“Oh for another glass of vodka,” I said quietly.

That year we left no slops for the wolves, for they ate well enough. Wolves sat at high table, in regal attire, with silver knives and forks, the length and breadth of our country, from the Wawel Castle to Krakow Cathedral.

Over the new year, we departed from Christendom. Mark you, the way our fellow Christians had treated us Poles of late, we may as well have worn turbans. There was not a living soul for miles. The towns and the markers had run out weeks ago. We pushed on into the blank uncharted regions of the map. In Poland we had been driven into hiding. Now we had been driven off the very edge of the world.