The Good Soldier Svejk (14 page)

At last he came to a standstill by his table.

"Now just you listen," he said to Schweik, who was staring unconcernedly into vacancy. "If you cross my path again, I'll give you something to remember me by. Take him away."

When Schweik had been taken back to Number 16, Bernis sent for Staff-Warder Slavik.

"Schweik is to be sent to Mr. Katz pending any further decision about him," he said curtly. "Just see that the discharge papers are made out and then have Schweik escorted to Mr. Katz by two men."

"Is he to be put in irons for the journey, sir?"

The provost-marshal banged his fist on the table.

"You're a damned fool. Didn't I tell you plainly to have the discharge papers made out?"

And all the bad temper which Bernis had been accumulating during the day as a result of his dealings with Captain Linhart and Schweik was now vented like a cataract upon the head of the staff-warder and concluded with the words :

"You're the biggest bloody fool I've ever come across."

This upset the staff-warder and on his way back from the provost-marshal's office, he relieved his feelings by kicking the prisoner on fatigue duty who was sweeping the passage.

As for Schweik, the staff-warder thought he might as well spend at least one night in the detention barracks and have a little more enjoyment, too.

The night spent in the detention barracks will always be one of Schweik's fondest memories.

Next door to Number 16 was a cell for solitary confinement, a murky den from which issued, during that night, the wailing of a soldier who was locked up in it and whose ribs were being broken by Sergeant-Major Repa, at the orders of Staff-Warder Slavik, for some disciplinary offence.

When the wailing stopped, there could be heard in Number 16 the crunching noise made by the fleas as they were caught between the fingers of the prisoners.

Above the door in an aperture in the wall an oil lamp, provided with wire netting to protect it, gave a faint light and much smoke. The smell of the oil blended with the natural effluvia of unwashed bodies and with the stench from the bucket.

In the corridors could be heard the measured tread of the sentries. From time to time the aperture in the door opened and through the peep-hole the turnkey looked in.

At eight o'clock in the morning Schweik was ordered to go to the office.

"On the left-hand side of the door leading into the office there's a spittoon and they throw fag-ends into it," one man informed Schweik. "And on the first floor you'll pass another one. They don't sweep the passages till nine, so you're sure to find something."

But Schweik disappointed their hopes. He did not return to Number 16. The nineteen men in their underclothes wondered what could have happened to him and made all sorts of wild guesses.

A freckled soldier belonging to the defence corps whose imagination was extremely lively, declared that Schweik had tried to shoot an officer and that he was being taken off that day to the exercise ground at Motol for execution.

10.

Schweik Becomes the Chaplain's Orderly.

I.

Once more began his Odyssey under the honourable escort of two soldiers with bayonets, who had to convey him to the chaplain.

By reason of their physical peculiarities, his escort supplemented each another. While one was lanky, the other was stumpy and fat. The lanky one limped with the right foot, the stumpy warrior with the left. They were both home-service men, having been entirely exempted from military service before the war.

They jogged on solemnly alongside the pavement and from

time to time took a peep at Schweik who marched between them and saluted everybody. His civilian clothing, including the military cap in which he had answered his calling-up notice, had got lost in the storeroom at the detention barracks. But before discharging him, they gave him an old military uniform which had belonged to some pot-bellied fellow who must have been a head taller than Schweik. Three more Schweiks could have got into the trousers he was wearing. They reached beyond his chest and their endless folds attracted the notice of the passers-by. A vest tunic with patches on the elbows, and covered with grease and grime, dangled round Schweik like a coat on a scarecrow. The military cap, which had also been issued in exchange at the detention barracks, came down over his ears.

Schweik replied to the smiles of the passers-by with sweet smiles of his own and glances which beamed with warm goodnature.

And so they proceeded on their way to Karlin where the chaplain lived.

It was the stumpy, stout one who first addressed Schweik.

"Where are you from?" he inquired.

"Prague."

"You won't give us the slip?"

The lanky man joined in the conversation. It is a most remarkable thing that while short, fat men are mostly apt to be good-humoured optimists, the lanky spindle-shanked ones, on the
other hand, are of a more skeptical turn of mind.

And so the lanky fellow said to the dumpy little man : "He'd run away if he could."

"Why should he?" retorted the fat little man. "He's practically free, now that they've let him out of the detention barracks. It's all in the doings I've got here."

"And what's in the doings you've got for the chaplain?" inquired the lanky man.

"I don't know."

"There you are, you don't know and yet you're talking about it."

They crossed the Charles Bridge in complete silence. In Charles Street the fat little man again addressed Schweik :

"Don't you know why we're taking you to the chaplain?"

"For confession," said Schweik casually; "they're going to hang me to-morrow. It's always done. They call it spiritual comfort."

"And why are they going to . . .?" the lanky fellow asked cautiously, while the fat man gazed at Schweik pityingly.

"I don't know," replied Schweik with a good-humoured smile. "It's all a mystery to me. I suppose it's fate."

"You must have been born under an unlucky star," remarked the little man sympathetically and with the air of an expert.

"If you ask me," said the lanky man skeptically, "they don't hang a man for nothing at all. There must be some reason for it."

"Yes, when there isn't a war on," remarked Schweik, "but when there's a war, they don't care whether a man gets killed at the front or is hanged at home. As far as they're concerned it's six of one and half a dozen of the other."

"I say, you're not one of those political prisoners, are you?" asked the lanky man. From the tone of his voice it was clear that he was beginning to take to Schweik.

"I should jolly well think I am," said Schweik with a smile.

"You're not a National Socialist, are you?" The fat little man was beginning to get cautious now. He thought he'd better have his say. "It's no business of ours, anyway, and there's lots of people about who've got their eyes on us. It's these blessed bayonets that make them stare so. We might manage to unfix them in some place where we can't be seen. You won't give us the slip? It'd be damned awkward for us if you did. Wouldn't it, Tonik?" he concluded, turning to the lanky man, who said in a low voice :

"Yes, we might unfix our bayonets. After all, he's one of our chaps."

He had ceased to be a skeptic and he was brimming over with pity for Schweik. So they looked for a convenient spot where they unfixed their bayonets, whereupon the fat man allowed Schweik to walk by his side.

"You'd like to have a smoke, wouldn't you?" he said, "that is, if ..." He was about to say : "If they let you have a smoke before you're hanged," but he did not complete the sentence, feeling

that under the circumstances it would scarcely be a tactful remark.

They all had a smoke and Schweik's escort began to tell him about their wives and children, and about their five acres and a cow.

"I'm thirsty," said Schweik.

The lanky man and the fat man looked at each other.

"We might drop in somewhere for a quick one," said the little man, who knew by a sort of intuition that the lanky man would agree. "But it must be some place where we shouldn't be noticed."

"Let's go to The Gillyflower," suggested Schweik. "You can shove your harness in the kitchen. Serabona, the landlord, belongs to the Sokols, so you needn't be afraid of him.

"They play the fiddle and harmonica there," continued Schweik. "The company's good too—tarts and people like that who wouldn't go to a really swell place."

The lanky man and the little man looked at each other again and then the lanky man said :

"Well, let's go there then. It's a good step yet to Karlin."

On the way Schweik told them some good stories and they were in good spirits when they reached The Gillyflower. There they did as Schweik had suggested. They put their rifles in the kitchen and went into the taproom where fiddle and harmonica were filling the premises with the strains of a song then much in vogue.

A girl was sitting on the lap of a jaded youth with his hair carefully parted, and singing hoarsely :

"I had a girl, I had a girl But now another man's got her."

A drunken vendor of herrings was sleeping at a table, and every now and then he woke up, banged his fist on the table, mumbled: "It's gotter stop," and fell asleep again. Behind a billiard table and beneath a mirror three girls were pestering a tram conductor: "Come on, kid, let's have a drop of gin." By the door a soldier was sitting with a number of civilians and telling them about the way he was wounded in Serbia. His arm was

bandaged up, and his pockets were full of the cigarettes they had given him. He said he couldn't drink any more and one of the company, a bald-headed old man, kept on urging him : "Have another with me, lad, who knows when we'll meet again? Shall I get them to play you something? Is 'The Orphan Child' one of your favourites?"

This was the tune which the bald-headed old man liked best, and presently the fiddle and harmonica were reproducing its lachrymose melody. The old man became tearful and with quavering voice joined in the chorus.

From the other table somebody said : "Stow it, can't you? Go and eat coke. Buzz off, you with your bloody orphan child."

And to emphasize these suggestions, the hostile table began to sing:

"Oh, it's hard, it's hard to part, Sorrow's gnawing at my heart."

"Franta !" they called to the wounded soldier, when, after another spell of singing, they had succeeded in outdinning "The Orphan Child," "give 'em a miss and come over to us. Bring some cigarettes along. Never mind those bastards."

Schweik and his escort watched all these goings-on with interest. Schweik remembered how he used to go there often before the «war. But his escort had no such reminiscences. For them it was something entirely new and they began to take a fancy to it. The first to attain complete satisfaction there was the little fat man, for such as he, besides being optimistic, have a very great propensity for epicurism. The lanky man was still struggling with himself. And as he had already lost his skepticism, so too he was gradually losing his reticence and what was left of his forethought.

"I'm going to have a dance," he said after his fifth drink, when he saw the couples dancing a polka.

The little man was now having a thoroughly good time. Next to him sat a girl who was talking smut. His eyes were fairly sparkling.

Schweik kept on drinking. The lanky man finished his dance and
returned with his partner to the table. Then they sang and

danced, drinking the whole time and cuddling the girls who had joined them. In the afternoon a soldier came up to them and offered to give them blood-poisoning for five crowns. He said he had a syringe on him and would squirt petroleum into their legs or hands.
¹
That would keep them in bed for at least two months, and possibly if they kept applying spittle to the wound, as much as six months, with the chance of getting completely out of the army.

When it was getting toward evening, Schweik proposed that they should resume their journey to the chaplain. The little fat man, who was now beginning to babble, urged Schweik to wait a little longer. The lanky man was also of the opinion that the chaplain could wait. But Schweik had now lost interest in The Gillyflower and threatened that if they would not come, he would go off by himself.