Leon Makarewicz’s Last Class
by Will Collins
“And who was shooting at you this time?”
An uneasy chuckle rippled through class as the two shamefaced boys made their way to their seats. Hard not to think of them as boys, though their older brothers would have been in the war and not a few of them had participated in the recent street fighting. He could scan the rolls and guess, based on family names, who sympathized with the Poles and who favored the Ukrainians.
In Vienna, the students had been soft-skinned and well fed. In Lwów, which he still called Lemberg, they were hollow-eyed and gaunt. Even students from the better families had an air of alertness about them. An optimistic lecturer might mistake this for interest in his material. Makarewicz knew better. It was the wary posture of prey, or perhaps predators. He had seen students wearing armbands and tearing up cobblestones.
The two boys had found their assigned seats and were now staring intently at their copybooks. Neither ventured a response to Makarewicz’s facetious inquiry. Humor was rare in An Introduction to Imperial Criminal and Penal Law. Karl the Last may have abdicated, the joke went, but the Makarewicz regime endures.
“Messieurs, generous soul that I am, I will ignore your lateness in light of the . . . situation in the city. Do not mistake this lenience for laxity! I remind you that your examinations are rapidly approaching.”
The professor slammed shut the leather-bound attendance book and straightened himself from behind the podium. He wore a dark tie and a somber charcoal suit. His white mutton chops recalled daguerreotypes of the old Emperor, Franz Josef. One such portrait hung behind the lectern. It had not been replaced when Franz Josef died. It would not be replaced now that his dynasty had ceased to rule.
The Austrian dialect was usually soft and pliable. Makarewicz imbued it with a booming parade-ground cadence.
“Gentlemen, as you surely recall, we are studying instances in which military jurisdiction supersedes civil authority. Last class, we examined the case of a miners’ strike in Brünn. After local police were unable to restore order, The Prince Carl Stephan Infantry Regiment under Colonel X was called in to suppress the lawbreakers.”
One student, emboldened by Makarewicz’s unprecedented display of leniency at the beginning of class, or perhaps by the ambient sense of disorder that had crept in from the outside world, raised his hand tentatively.
Makarewicz’s eyebrows transformed from rolling hills to snow white peaks. He glanced at the seating chart on his lectern. “Mr . . . Jodorowsky. You have something to add to my account?”
Jodorowsky was dressed in the fashionable manner of a betyár and was one of the few students who would answer Makarewicz’s tangled hypotheticals. He usually splayed out in an easy manner on his uncomfortable wooden seat. Today he sat erect and motionless.
“Professor, forgive the interruption.” Makarewicz was so startled by the sincerity of this remark that he nodded for Jodorowsky to continue.
“Since the war, Habsburg law seems as relevant as the proclamations of the Jagiellon Dynasty. How long must we pretend that these case studies still matter?”
The class was utterly still. Makarewicz bowed his head, as if in prayer or deep contemplation. He sighed softly and then raised himself up to his full height.
“Whatever barbarism follows, Mr. Jodorowsky, I should think the next generation of barristers would benefit from familiarity with a civilized judicial system.”
This comment managed to simultaneously insult the Poles, the Ukrainians, and the Jews, all of whom had their own ideas about who should inherit Lwów. The room stirred, but Makarewicz’s authority was unassailable. He returned to his account of Colonel X, who, after dispersing the striking miners with a bayonet charge, had judiciously hanged eight of the ringleaders.
Two days later, a stray bullet found Makarewicz on his regular evening constitutional. After a brief interregnum, An Introduction to Imperial Criminal and Penal Law was inherited by Professor Dubnow, who made no changes to the syllabus out of respect for his august predecessor. Makarewicz’s students wore black for the remainder of the semester. No one touched the old photograph of Franz Joseph hanging from behind the lectern.
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