The Good Soldier Svejk (10 page)

for being an idiot, two days per week without any grub, a month's C.B., forty-eight hours in irons. 'Lock him up on the spot,' he says. 'Don't give him anything to eat; tie him hand and foot; show him the army doesn't need any idiots. We'll knock the newspaper nonsense out of your head, you ruffian,' he says. Well, while I was serving my time, there was some rum goings-on in the barracks. Our colonel stopped the troops from reading at all, and in the canteen they wasn't allowed even to wrap up sausages or cheese in newspapers. That made the soldiers start reading and our regiment had all the rest beat when it came to showing how much they'd learned. We used to read all the papers and in every company there were chaps who made up verses and songs guying the Colonel. And whenever anything happened in the regiment there was always some smart chap among the rank and file who wrote a bit about it to the papers and called it 'Soldiers Tortured.' And that wasn't enough for them, mind you. Why, they used to write to our M. P.'s at Vienna asking them to take their part, and so they began to ask questions in Parliament, one after another, all about our colonel being a brute and that sort of stuff. Some minister or other sent a commission to look into it, and in the end a chap named Franta Henclu got two years, because he was the one who had complained to the M. P.'s in Vienna about a smack in the eye that he got from the Colonel on the parade-ground. Afterward, when the commission had cleared off, the Colonel had us all drawn up, the whole blessed regiment, and he says, a soldier's a soldier and he's got to hold his tongue and do his duty, and if there's anything he doesn't like, then it's infringement of subordination. 'You gang of ruffians,' he says, 'you thought the commission was going to help you. Well, it helped you damn well,' he says. And now you'll march past me company by company and repeat aloud what I've just said.' So away we went, one company after another, eyes right, with our hands on our rifle-straps and yelled at the Colonel : 'You gang of ruffians ; you thought the commission was going to help you. Well, it helped you damn well.' The Colonel was laughing fit to bust, till the eleventh company marches past. Up they came, stamping their feet, but when they got alongside the Colonel they never said a word. The Colonel turns as red as a beetroot and sends the elev-

enth company back to do it all over again. They march past and keep their mouths shut, but each file as it came up just stares at the Colonel as bold as brass.
'Ruht
!'
¹
says the Colonel and walks across the barrack square, cracking his whip across his top-boots. Then he spits and suddenly comes to a standstill and yells
'Abtreten!'
²
mounts his old nag and was outside the gate like a shot. We was waiting for the eleventh company to cop out, but nothing happened. We waited one day, two days, a whole week, and still nothing happened. There was no sign of the Colonel in the barracks, and everybody—men, N. C. O.'s and officers was all chortling about it. Then we got a new colonel and we heard that the old one was in a sanatorium or something because he'd written a letter to the Emperor to tell him that the eleventh company had mutinied."

The time had now come for the doctor to pay his afternoon visit. Dr. Grunstein went from bed to bed, followed by a medical corps orderly with a notebook.

"Macuna."

"Present, sir."

"Clyster and aspirin. Pokorny."

"Present, sir."

"Stomach to be rinsed out and quinine. Kovarik."

"Present, sir." Clyster and aspirin. Kotatko."

"Present, sir."

"Stomach to be rinsed out and quinine."

And so the process continued with, one after another, mercilessly, mechanically, incisively.

"Schweik."

"Present, sir."

Dr. Grunstein gazed at the newcomer.

"What's the matter with you?"

"Beg to report, sir, I've got rheumatism."

During the period of his activities, Dr. Grunstein had adopted a delicately ironical manner, which proved far more effective than shouting.

¹
"Halt!"
²
"Dismiss !"

"Aha, rheumatism," he said to Schweik. "You've got a frightfully troublesome illness. It's really quite a coincidence to catch rheumatism at the very moment when a war starts and you've got to join the army. I expect you're horribly upset about it." "Beg to report, sir, I
am
horribly upset about it." "Just fancy now, he's upset about it. It's frightfully nice of you to think of us with that rheumatism of yours. In peace time the poor fellow skips about like a goat, but as soon as war breaks out he's got rheumatism and can't use his knees. I suppose your knees hurt you?"

"Beg to report, sir, my knees hurt me something cruel." "And night after night you can't sleep, eh? Rheumatism is a very dangerous, painful and troublesome illness. We've had some very satisfactory results with rheumatic patients here. Absolute diet and our other methods of treatment have proved extremely efficacious. Why, you'll be cured quicker here than at Pistany and you'll march up to the front line leaving clouds of dust behind you."

Then, turning to the N. C. O. orderly, he said : "Write this down: 'Schweik, absolute diet, stomach to be rinsed out twice daily, clyster once daily' ; and then we'll see in due course what further arrangements are to be made : In the meantime, take him into the surgery, rinse out his stomach, and when he comes to, let him have the clyster, but thoroughly, till he screams blue murder and scares his rheumatism away."

And then, turning to all the beds, he delivered a speech brimful of wise and charming adages :

"Don't imagine you're dealing with the sort of nincompoop who lets himself be humbugged by any bit of hanky-panky. Your dodges don't worry me in the least. I know you're all malingerers who want to shirk the army. And I treat you accordingly. I've managed hundreds and hundreds ot soldiers like you. These beds have accommodated whole swarms of men who had nothing wrong with them except a lack of the military spirit. While their comrades were fighting at the front, they thought they'd loll about in bed, get hospital diet and wait till the war stopped. Well, that's where they made a damn big mistake, and you're all making a damn big mistake, too. In twenty years to come you'll still scream

in your sleep when you dream you're trying to swing the lead on me."

"Beg to report, sir," announced a quiet voice from the bed near the window, "that I'm quite well again. My asthma sort of disappeared in the night."

"Name?"

"Kovarik, beg to report, sir, I'm for the clyster."

"Good ; you'll have the clyster before you go, to help you along on your journey," decided Dr. Grunstein, "so you can't complain we didn't cure you here. And now, all the men whose names I read out are to follow the N. C. O. and get what's coming to them."

And each one received a lavish portion as prescribed. Schweik's bearing was stoical :

"Don't spare me," he urged the myrmidon who was applying the clyster to him, "remember, you've sworn to serve the Emperor. And if it was your own father or your brother who was lying here, give 'em the clyster without turning a hair. Remember that Austria stands as firm as a rock on these clysters and victory is ours."

On the next day when Dr. Grunstein came round he asked Schweik how he liked the military hospital.

Sçhweik replied that it was a first-class and well-managed establishment. As a recompense for which he was given the same as on the day before, together with aspirin and three quinine pills, which he had to take in a glass of water there and then.

But Socrates did not drink his cup of hemlock with such composure as Schweik the quinine. Dr. Grunstein now tried all the grades of torment on him.

When Schweik was wrapped up in a wet sheet in the presence of the doctor, and the latter asked him how he liked it, he replied :

"Beg to report, sir, that it's like being in a swimming bath or at the seaside."

"Have you still got rheumatism?"

"Beg to report, sir, that it doesn't seem to be getting any better, somehow."

Schweik was subjected to fresh torments.

Now about this time, the Baroness von Botzenheim, the widow

of an infantry general, took a lot of trouble to discover the soldier about whom the newspaper
Bohemia
had published an account of how he had, though a cripple, had himself wheeled along in a Bath chair and while in the Bath chair had shouted "To Belgrade!" which demonstration of patriotism had acted as an incentive to the editor of
Bohemia
to invite his readers to collect money for the benefit of the loyal and heroic cripple.

At last, as the result of an inquiry at the police headquarter she ascertained that it was Schweik, and further inquiries were easy. The Baroness von Botzenheim, accompanied by her lady companion and a footman, proceeded to pay a visit to Schweik with a hamper of food.

The poor baroness did not know what it meant when someone is in the infirmary ward of a military prison. Her visiting card opened all doors and in the office they treated her with extreme courtesy. Within five minutes she was told that "the brave soldier Schweik," for whom she was inquiring, could be found in hut No. 3, bed No. 17. Dr. Grunstein, who was flabbergasted at this turn of events, accompanied her in person.

Schweik was just sitting on the bed after the usual daily moil prescribed by Dr. Grunstein, surrounded by a group of starved and emaciated malingerers, who had not yet given in and were stubbornly struggling with Dr. Grunstein upon the basis of absolute diet.

Anyone listening to them would have had the impression that he was in the society of culinary experts, at an advanced school of cookery or at a course of training for gourmets.

"Even plain hashed fat is eatable," one man was just saying— he was there for "chronic catarrh of the stomach"—"if it's warm. When the fat fries, you squeeze it out till it's dry, add salt and pepper and I tell you, hashed goose-fat isn't a patch on it."

"That be blowed for a yarn," said a man with "cancer of the stomach," "there's nothing like hashed goose-fat. All your pork dripping and whatnot isn't in the same street with it ; of course, it's got to be fried till it's nice and brown, like the Jews do it. You take a fat goose, strip the fat with the skin and fry it."

"You're all wrong in what you say about pork dripping," said Schweik's neighbour. "Of course, it stands to reason I'm talking

about home-made dripping. It's not brown and it's not golden. It's got to be something between the two. And it mustn't be too soft or too hard. It mustn't crackle, that's a sign it's overdone. It ought to melt on your tongue and make you feel as if your chin was being soaked with dripping."

"Did any of you ever eat horse dripping?" inquired a strange voice, to which, however, nobody replied, because the N. C. O. of the medical corps came running in : "Get into bed all of you. There's an archduchess or somebody coming here and don't let anybody show his dirty feet under the blanket."

No archduchess could have entered with such pomp as was displayed by the Baroness von Botzenheim. She was followed by a regular procession, including the quartermaster-sergeant of the infirmary. He interpreted this as the hidden hand of a combing-out board which would remove him from his fleshpots on the home front and fling him under some barbed-wire entanglements at the mercy of shrapnel.

He was pale, but Dr. Grunstein was paler still. Before his eyes danced the old baroness's visiting card bearing the words : "General's widow," and all that this might involve, such as : connections, influence, complaints, transfer to the front and other awful things.

"Here's Schweik," he said, preserving an artificial calm and leading the Baroness von Botzenheim to Schweik's bed. "He's bearing up very patiently."

The Baroness von Botzenheim sat down by Schweik's bed on the chair which had been placed there for her and said in broken Czech :

"Czech soldier; prave soldier; cripple soldier; prave soldier. Much like Czech Austrian."

So saying, she stroked Schweik's unshaven face and continued :

"I read it all in de paper ; I pring you someting to eat ; to smoke ; to trink, Czech soldier : prave soldier,
Johann, hommen Sie her."
³

The footman, a person with bristly whiskers, pulled a capacious hamper toward the bed, while the old baroness's lady com-

³
"John, come here."

panion, a tall lady with a lachrymose face, sat down on Schweik's bed and smoothed the straw bolster behind him, under the firm impression that such was the service which should be rendered to sick heroes.

Meanwhile, the baroness was extracting the gifts from the hamper. A dozen roast fowls, wrapped up in pink tissue-paper and decorated with a silken black and yellow ribbon, and two bottles of some wartime liqueur bearing a label inscribed:
"Gott strafe England."
The other side of the label showed Franz Josef and Wilhelm holding hands as if they were about to play cat's cradle.

She then extracted from the hamper three bottles of wine for convalescents and two boxes of cigarettes. She arranged everything very elegantly on the empty bed next to Schweik, and added a nicely bound book entitled :
"Episodes from the Life of Our Emperor."
Among the other things on the bed were some packets of chocolate also bearing the inscription :
"Gott strafe England,"
and again with the effigies of the Austrian Emperor and the German Kaiser. Then there was a nice tooth brush inscribed :
"Viribus unitis,"
so that whenever the owner cleaned his teeth he would be reminded of Austria. An elegant and very suitable gift for the front and the trenches consisted of a manicure set. On the box was a picture which showed some shrapnel bursting and a man in a helmet rushing forward, bayonet in hand. Under this:
"Fur Gott, Kaiser und Vaterland!"
There was a box of rusks without any picture, but to make up for that, it was inscribed with the following verse in German, followed by a Czech translation :