The Good Soldier Svejk (22 page)

And, noticing that Schweik was carrying the bottle of consecrated oil, he growled :

"The best thing you can do with that oil is to clean my boots with it. And your own as well."

"I'll try it on the lock, too," added Schweik. "It creaks something terrible when you come home at night."

And so ended the administration of extreme unction which didn't come off.

14.

Schweik Becomes Batman to Lieutenant Lukash.

I.

Schweik's good fortune did not last long. Unrelenting fate severed the friendly relations between him and the Chaplain. While up to this incident, the Chaplain had been a likeable personality, what he now perpetrated was enough to strip him of all likeable quality.

The Chaplain sold Schweik to Lieutenant Lukash, or, to put it more accurately, he lost him at cards. Just as they used to dispose of the serfs in Russia. It happened quite unexpectedly. Lieutenant Lukash gave a party and they were playing poker.

The Chaplain kept on losing, and at last he said :

"How much will you advance me on my batman? He's a champion idiot and a regular card, quite unique in his way. I bet you've never come across a batman like him."

"I'll advance you a hundred crowns," said Lieutenant Lukash, "and if I don't get them back by the day after to-morrow, you'll let me have this rare specimen. My present batman's an awful fellow. He goes about pulling a long face, he's always writing home, and on top of all that he steals every blessed thing he can lay hands on. I've tried giving him a good hiding, but it isn't the slightest use. I clump his head every time I see him, but he's as bad as ever. I knocked out a few of his front teeth, but there's no curing the fellow."

"Right you are, then," said the Chaplain recklessly. "A hundred crowns or Schweik the day after to-morrow."

He lost the hundred crowns and went sadly home. He was quite certain, beyond all manner of doubt, that he would never manage to scrape together the hundred crowns within the specified time, and to all intents and purposes he had basely and despicably sold Schweik.

"I might just as well have said two hundred," he grumbled to himself, but as he changed trams he was overcome by a sentimental feeling of self-reproach.

"It was a rotten thing of me to do," he pondered, as he rang his bell. "For the life of me I don't know how I'm to look him in the face, damn him."

"My dear Schweik," he said when he was indoors, "a very unusual thing happened. I was most infernally unlucky at cards. I blued every cent I had."

There was a short silence, and he continued :

"And I wound up by losing you. I got an advance of a hundred crowns with you as security, and if I don't give it back by the day after to-morrow, you won't belong to me, but to Lieutenant Lukash. I'm really very sorry about it."

"I've got a hundred crowns left," said Schweik. "I can lend it to you."

"Give it here," said the Chaplain, brightening up. "I'll take it to Lukash on the spot. I should really be sorry to part with you."

Lukash was very surprised to see the Chaplain again.

"I've come to pay you that debt," said the Chaplain, gazing round him triumphantly. "Let's have a flutter."

"Double or quits," declared the Chaplain, when his turn came.

And at the second round he once more went the whole hog.

"Twenty wins," announced the holder of the bank.

"My total's nineteen," said the Chaplain, very crestfallen, as he put into the bank the last forty crowns left over from the hundred-crown note which Schweik had lent him to redeem himself from fresh serfdom.

On his way home the Chaplain came to the conclusion that this settled matters once and for all, that nothing could now save Schweik, that it was predestined for him to become the orderly of Lieutenant Lukash.

And when Schweik let him in, he said to him :

"It's all no use, Schweik. Nobody can go against his fate. I've lost you and your hundred crowns as well. I've done everything I could, but fate was too much for me. It's thrown you into the clutches of Lieutenant Lukash, and the time has come for us to part."

"And was there a lot in the bank?" asked Schweik with composure. Whereupon he plunged into a long rigmarole about a tinker named Vejvoda and his gambling misadventure with a chimney sweep, which had led to a raid by the police.

"The bank amounted to millions and millions in I. O. U's," said Schweik, "and there was fifteen hundred in ready cash. When the police inspector saw what a lot there was, he didn't half stare. 'Why,' he says, 'I never saw the like of this before. It's worse than Monte Carlo.' "

Schweik then went to brew some grog and the end of it was that the Chaplain, when Schweik succeeded, late at night and with some difficulty, in getting him into bed, burst into tears and sobbed :

"I have sold you, comrade, shamefully sold you. Overwhelm me with curses, strike me. I will endure it. I throw myself at your mercy. I cannot look you in the face. Maul me, bite me, destroy me. I deserve no better fate. Do you know what I am?"

And the Chaplain buried his tear-stained face in the pillow, as

in a soft and gentle voice he murmured : "I'm a thorough-paced blackguard," and fell sound asleep.

The next day the Chaplain avoided Schweik's glance, went away early and did not return until nightfall, with a fat infantryman.

"Show him, Schweik," he said, again avoiding Schweik's glance, "where the things are kept, so as he can find his way about, and teach him how to brew grog. Report yourself to Lieutenant Lukash early to-morrow morning."

Schweik and the new man spent a pleasant night together brewing grog. In the morning the fat infantryman was standing on one leg and was mumbling to himself a queer medley of various popular songs. "Oh, there's a tiny stream that flows, my sweetheart serves the crimson beer, O mountain, mountain, thou art lofty. The maidens fared along the highroad. On the White Hill the peasants till."

"There's no need for me to worry about you," said Schweik. "A chap like you is bound to
get
on with the Chaplain like a house afire."

And so it came about that in the morning Lieutenant Lukash beheld for the first time the frank and honest countenance of Schweik, who quoth :

"Beg to report, sir, I'm Schweik who the Chaplain lost at cards."

II.

Officers' orderlies are of very ancient origin. It would appear that Alexander the Great had his batman. I am surprised that nobody has yet written a history of batmen. It would probably contain an account of how Fernando, Duke of Almavir, during the siege of Toledo, ate his batman without salt. The duke himself has described the episode in his
Memoirs
and he adds that the flesh of his batman was tender, though rather stringy, and the taste of it was something between that of chicken and donkey.

Among the present generation of batmen there are few so self-sacrificing that they would let their masters eat them without salt. And there are cases where officers, engaged in a regular life-and-death struggle with the modern type of orderly, have

to use all possible means to maintain their authority. Thus, in 1912, a captain was tried at Graz for kicking his batman to death. He was acquitted, however, because it was only the second time he had done such a thing. On the other hand, a batman sometimes manages to get into an officer's good graces, and then he becomes the terror of the battalion. All the N. C. O's try to bribe him. He has the last say about leave, and by putting in a good word for anyone who has been crimed he can get him off. During the war, it was such batmen as these who gained medals for bravery. I knew several in the 91st regiment. There was one who got the large silver medal because he was an adept at roasting geese which he stole. And his master worded the proposal in support of the decoration as follows:

"He manifested exceptional bravery in
the field, showing a complete disregard for his own life and not budging an inch from his officer while under the heavy fire of the advancing enemy."

To-day these batman are scattered far and wide throughout our republic, and tell the tale of their heroic exploits. It was they who stormed Sokal, Dubno, Nish, the Piave. All of them are Napoleons : "So I up and tells our colonel as how he ought to telephone to brigade headquarters that it was high time
to
get a move on."

III.

Lieut. Jindrich Lukash was a typical regular army officer of the ramshackle Austrian monarchy. The cadet school had turned him into a species of amphibious creature. In company he spoke German, he wrote German, but he read Czech books, and when he was giving a course of instruction to a group of volunteer officers, all of them Czechs, he would say to them in a confidential tone :

"I'm a Czech just the same as you are. There's no harm in it, but nobody need know about it."

He looked upon the Czech nationality as a sort of secret organization which was best given a wide berth. In other respects he was not a bad fellow. He was not afraid of his superior officers, and at manœuvres he looked after his squad, as was right and

proper. He always found comfortable quarters for them in a barn, and although his pay was modest enough he often treated his men to a barrel of beer. He was popular with the rank-and-file because he was extremely fair to everyone. When in his presence the N. C. O's shivered in their shoes and within a month he could turn the most cantankerous sergeant-major into a lamb.

Although he could shout if he wanted to, he never bullied. He always was most careful in his choice of words and phrases. "You see," he would say, "I don't like having to punish you, but I can't help myself, because the efficiency of the army depends on discipline. If your uniform isn't just as it should be, if the buttons are not properly sewn on or are missing, that shows you are forgetting the duty you owe to the army. It may be that you cannot understand why you should get C. B. because a button was missing from your tunic on parade yesterday. You may think it's a trifling little detail which in civil life you'd never worry about. Yet you see, in the army, neglect of your appearance brings punishment in its train. And why? The point is not that you have a button missing, but that you must accustom yourself to discipline. To-day you omit to sew on a button and you begin to get slack. To-morrow you'll decide that you can't be bothered to take your rifle to pieces and clean it, the day after that you'll leave your bayonet in a pub or even go to sleep while on sentry-go, simply because you began to get slack over this wretched button. That's how it is, and that's why I'm punishing you, so as to save you from a worse punishment for some breach of discipline you might commit through slowly but surely forgetting your duties. So I'm going to give you five days' C. B. and I should like you, over your bread and water, to reflect that punishment is not revenge, but a means of training, the purpose of which is to correct and improve the soldier who is thus punished."

He ought to have been a captain long ago, but his cautious attitude toward racial matters was of no advantage to him, because he was very outspoken toward his superior officers. In regimental affairs he never toadied. This was his heritage from the peasant stock in southern Bohemia, where his birthplace was —a village among the dark forests and the fishponds.

While he acted fairly towards the rank-and-file, he detested his

orderlies, because it had always been his luck to get hold of the most objectionable batmen. And he refused to regard them as soldiers. He used to smack their faces or cuff their heads, and altogether tried, by word and deed, to make them mend their ways. He had pursued this plan unsuccessfully for several years. They came and went continuously and at last he used to sigh to himself when a new one arrived :

"Here's another low brute been palmed off on to me."

He was remarkably fond of animals. He had a Harz canary, an Angora cat and a stable dog. All his previous orderlies had treated these pets about as badly as Lieutenant Lukash treated the orderlies when they had done something sneakish.

When Schweik came to report himself to Lieutenant Lukash, the latter took him into his room and said :

"Mr. Katz recommended me to you, and I want you to live up to his recommendation. I've had a dozen or more orderlies, and there wasn't one of them settled down properly with me. I give you fair warning that I'm strict and I drop very sharply on all meanness and lying. I want you always to speak the truth and to carry out all my orders without any back answers. If I say : 'Jump into the fire,' why, into the fire you've got to jump, even if you don't want to. What are you looking at?"