The Good Soldier Svejk (16 page)

resistance by trying to jump out of the cab. He said that he wouldn't go a step further, because he knew that they were on their way to Podmokly and not to Budejovice, as they ought to be. Within a minute Schweik had settled his attempt at mutiny and forced him to resume his previous posture on the seat, at the same time taking care to stop him from falling asleep. His mildest remark in this connection was : "Keep awake, or you'll be a dead 'un."

All at once the Chaplain was overcome by a fit of melancholy and he began to cry. Tearfully he asked Schweik whether he had a mother.

"I'm all alone in the world, my friends," he shouted from the cab, "take pity on me !"

"Stop that row," said Schweik. "Shut up, or everybody'll say you're boozed."

"I've not drunk a thing, old boy," replied the Chaplain. "I'm as sober as a judge."

But suddenly he stood up and saluted :

"Beg to report, sir, I'm drunk," he said in German. And then he repeated ten times in succession, with a heartfelt accent of despair : "I'm a dirty dog." And turning to Schweik he persistently begged and entreated :

"Trrow me out of the cab. What are taking me with you for?"

He sat down again and muttered : "Rings are forming around the moon. I say, Captain, do you believe in the immortality of the soul? Can a horse get into heaven?"

He started laughing heartily, but after a while he began to mope and gazed apathetically at Schweik, remarking: "I say, excuse me, but I've seen you before somewhere. Weren't you in Vienna? I remember you from the seminary."

For a while he amused himself by reciting Latin verses :

"Aurea prima satas œtas, quœ vindice nullo."

"This won't do," he then said, "throw me out. Why won't you throw me out? I shan't hurt myself.

"I want to fall on my nose," he declared in a resolute tone. Then, beseechingly, he continued :

"I say, old chap, give me a smack in the eye."

"Do you want one or several?" inquired Schweik.

"Two."

"Well, there you are then."

The Chaplain counted out aloud the smacks as he received them, beaming with delight.

"That does you good," he said, "it helps the digestion. Give me another on the mouth.

"Thanks awfully," he exclaimed, when Schweik had promptly complied with his request. "Now I'm quite satisfied. I say, tear my waistcoat, will you?"

He manifested the most diverse desires. He wanted Schweik to dislocate his foot, to throttle him for a while, to cut his nails, to pull out his front teeth. He exhibited a yearning for martyrdom, demanding that his head should be cut off, put in a bag and thrown into the river.

"Stars round my head would suit me nicely," he said with enthusiasm. "I should need ten of them."

Then he began to talk about horse racing and rapidly passed on to the topic of the ballet, but that did not detain him for long, either.

"Can you dance the czardas?" he asked Schweik. "Can you do the bunny-hug? It's like this . . ."

He wanted to jump on top of Schweik, who accordingly began to use his fists on him and then laid him down on the seat.

"I want something," shouted the Chaplain, "but I don't know what. Do you know what I want?" And he drooped his head in complete resignation.

"What's it matter to me what I want?" he said solemnly, "and it doesn't matter to you, either. I don't know you. How dare you stare at me like that? Can you fence?"

For a moment he became more aggressive and tried to push Schweik off the seat. Afterward, when Schweik had quieted him down by a frank display of his physical superiority, the Chaplain asked :

"Is to-day Monday or Friday?"

He was also anxious to know whether it was December or June and he exhibited a great aptitude for asking the most diverse questions, such as : "Are you married? Do yuu like Gorgonzola

cheese? Have you got any bugs at home? Are you quite well? Has your dog had the mange?"

He became communicative. He said that he had not yet paid for his riding boots, whip and saddle, that some years ago he had suffered from a certain disease which had been cured with permanganate.

"There was no time to think of anything else," he said with a belch. "You may think it's a nuisance, but, hm, hm, what am I to do? Hm, hm. Tell me that. So you must excuse me.

"Thermos flasks," he continued, forgetting what he had just been talking about, "are receptacles which will keep beverages and food stuffs at their original temperature. Which game do you think is fairer, bridge or poker?

"Oh yes, I've seen you somewhere before," he shouted, trying to embrace Schweik. "We used to go to school together.

"You're a good chap," he said tenderly, stroking his foot. "You've quite grown up since I saw you last. The pleasure of seeing you makes up for all my troubles."

He waxed poetic and began to talk about the return to the sunshine of happy faces and warm hearts.

Then he knelt down and began to pray, laughing the whole time.

When finally they reached their destination, it was very difficult to get him out of the cab.

"We aren't there yet," he shouted. "Help, help ! I'm being kidnapped. I want to drive on."

He had to be wrenched out of the cab like a boiled snail from its shell. At one moment it seemed as if he were going to be pulled apart, because his legs got mixed up with the seat. At last, however, he was dragged through the entrance hall and up the stairs into his rooms, where he was thrown like a sack on to the sofa. He declared that he would not pay for the cab because he had not ordered it, and it took more than a quarter of an hour to explain to him that it was a cab. Even then he continued to argue the point.

"You're trying to do me down," he declared, winking at Schweik and the cabman. "We walked all the way here."

But suddenly in an outburst of generosity, he threw his purse

to the cabman. "Here, take the lot,
ich kann besahłen.
³
A kreutzer more or less doesn't matter to me."

To be strictly accurate, he ought to have said that thirty-six kreutzers more or less didn't matter to him, for that was all the purse contained. Fortunately, the cabman submitted it to a close inspection, referring the while to smacks in the eye.

"All right, then, you give me one," replied the Chaplain. "Do you think I couldn't stand it? I could stand five from you."

The cabman discovered a five-crown piece in the Chaplain's waistcoat pocket. He departed, cursing his fate and the Chaplain who had wasted his time and reduced his takings.

The Chaplain got to sleep very slowly, because he kept making fresh schemes. He was anxious to do all kinds of things, to play the piano, to have a dancing lesson, to fry some fish and so on. But at last he fell asleep.

III.

When Schweik entered the Chaplain's room in the morning, he found him reclining on the sofa in a very dejected mood.

"I can't remember," he said, "how I got out of bed and landed on the sofa."

"You never went to bed, sir. As soon as we got here, we put you on the sofa. That was as much as we could manage."

"And what sort of things did I do? Did I do anything at all? Was I drunk?"

"Not half you wasn't," replied Schweik, "canned to the wide, sir. In fact, you had a little dose of the D. T.'s. It strikes me, sir, that a change of clothes and a wash wouldn't do you any harm."

"I feel as if someone had given me a good hiding," complained the Chaplain, "and then I've got an awful thirst on me. Did I kick up a row yesterday?"

"Oh, nothing to speak of, sir. And as for your thirst, why, that's the result of the thirst you had yesterday. It's not so easy to get rid of. I used to know a cabinetmaker who got drunk for the first time in 1910 on New Year's Eve and the morning of

³
"I can pay."

January ist he had such a thirst on him and felt so seedy that he bought a herring and then started drinking again. He did that every day for four years and nothing can be done for him because he always buys his herrings on a Saturday to last him the whole week. It's one of those vicious circles that our old sergeant-major in the 91st regiment used to talk about."

The Chaplain was thoroughly out of sorts and had a bad fit of the blues. Anyone listening to him at that moment would have supposed that he regularly attended those teetotal lectures, the gist of which was : "Let us proclaim a life-and-death struggle against alcohol which slaughters the best men," and that he was a reader of that edifying work :
A Hundred Sparks From the Ethical Anvil.
It is true that he slightly modified the views expressed there. "If," he said, "a chap drank high-class beverages, such as arak, maraschino or cognac, it'd be all right. But what I drank yesterday was gin. It's a marvel to me how I can swallow so much of the stuff. The taste of it's disgusting. It's got no colour and it burns your throat. And if it was at least the real thing, distilled from the juniper like I've drunk in Moravia. But the gin I had yesterday was made of some sort of wood alcohol mixed with oily bilge. Just listen to the way I croak.

"Brandy's poison," he decided. "It must be the real original stuff and not produced at a low temperature in a factory by a pack of Jews. It's the same with rum. Good rum's a rarity. Now, if I only had some genuine cherry brandy here," he sighed, "it'd put my stomach right in no time. The sort of stuff that Captain Schnabel's got."

He began to search in his pockets and inspected his purse.

"Holy Moses ! I've got 36 kreutzers. What about selling the sofa?" he reflected. "What do you think? Will anyone buy a sofa? I'll tell the landlord that I've lent it or that someone's pinched it from me. No, I'll leave the sofa. I'll send you to Captain Schnabel to see if you can get him to lend me 100 crowns. He won some money at cards the day before yesterday. If he won't fork out, try Lieutenant Mahler in the barracks at Vrso-vice. If that's no go, try Captain Fischer at Hradcany. Tell him I've got to pay for the horse's fodder and that I've blued the money on booze. And if he don't come up to scratch, why we'll

have to pawn the piano, and be blowed to them. I'll write a note that'll do just as well for one as the other. Don't let them put you off. Say that I'm absolutely stony broke. You can pitch any yarn you please, but don't come back empty-handed or I'll send you to the front. And ask Captain Schnabel where he gets that cherry brandy, and then buy two bottles of it."

Schweik carried out his task in brilliant style. His simplicity and his honest countenance aroused complete confidence in what he said. He deemed it inexpedient to tell Captain Schnabel, Captain Fischer and Lieutenant Mahler that the Chaplain owed money for the horse's fodder, but he thought it best to support his application by stating that the Chaplain was at his wit's end about a paternity order. And he got the money from all of them.

When he produced the 300 crowns on his victorious return from the expedition, the Chaplain, who in the meanwhile had washed and changed, was very surprised.

"I got the whole lot at one go," said Schweik, "so as we shouldn't have to worry our heads about money again to-morrow or the next day. It was a fairly easy job, although I had to beg and pray of Captain Schnabel before I could get anything out of him. Oh, he's a brute. But when I told him about our paternity case -"

"Paternity case?" repeated the Chaplain, horrified.

"Yes, paternity case, sir. You know, paying girls so much a week. You told me to pitch any yarn I pleased, and that's all I could think of. Down our way there was a cobbler who had to pay money like that to five different girls. It fairly drove him crazy and he had to go and borrow from people, but everyone took his word for it that he was in the deuce of a fix. They asked me what sort of a girl it was and I told them she was a very smart little bit, not fifteen yet. Then they wanted to have her address."

"You've made a nice mess of it, I must say," sighed the Chaplain and began to pace the room.

"This is a pretty kettle of fish," he said, clutching at his head. "Oh, what a headache I've got."

"I gave them the address of a deaf old lady down our street," explained Schweik. "I wanted to do the thing properly, because orders are orders. I wasn't going to let them put me off and I had

to think of something. And now there's some men waiting in the passage for that piano. I brought them along with me, so as they can take it to the pawnshop for us. It'll be a good thing when that piano's gone. We'll have more room and we'll have more money, too. That'll keep our minds easy for a few days. And if the landlord asks what we've done with the piano, I'll tell him some of the wires are broke and we've sent it to the factory to be repaired. I've already told that to the house porter's wife so as she won't think it funny when they take the piano away in a van. And I've found a customer for the sofa. He's a second-hand furniture dealer—a friend of mine, and he's coming here in the afternoon. You can get a good price for leather sofas nowadays."

"Is there anything else you've done?" inquired the Chaplain, still holding his head and showing signs of despair.

"Beg to report, sir, I've brought five bottles of that cherry brandy like Captain Schnabel has, instead of the two you said. You see, now we'll have some in stock and we shan't be hard up for a drink. Shall I see about that piano before the pawnshop closes?"