The Good Soldier Svejk (49 page)

The previous night, Marek, who had returned from the divisional court-martial, had made his appearance in the guard room, where he had been kept under close arrest. Together with him, an extremely muddled report from the divisional court-martial had reached the colonel's office. The report pointed out

that this case could not be construed as mutiny, because the cleaning of latrines formed no part of a volunteer officer's duties, but that the accused had been guilty of "infringement of subordination," which offence could be made good by distinguished conduct in the field. For these reasons the accused was sent back to his regiment and the proceedings in respect of infringement of discipline were to be suspended until the end of the war, but should be renewed on the next occasion of any charge that might be brought against the accused.

Then there was another matter. Marek, on his arrival at the guard room, was accompanied by a certain Teveles, a bogus sergeant. This gentleman had recently come under the notice of the regiment, to which he had been sent from the military hospital at Zagreb. He wore the large silver medal, the badges of a volunteer officer and three stars. He told some stirring tales about the doughty deeds of the 6th draft in Serbia, of which he claimed to be the sole survivor. As the result of inquiries, it was discovered that at the beginning of the war there had been a Teveles in the 6th draft, but that he was not entitled to claim the rank of a volunteer officer. The brigade to which the 6th draft had been attached after retiring from Belgrade on December 2, 1914, reported that there was no Teveles on the list of names recommended for, or decorated with, silver medals. Whether Private Teveles, however, had been promoted to sergeant during the Belgrade campaign could not be ascertained at all, because the whole of the 6th draft, officers included, had got lost at St. Sava's Church in Belgrade. Before the court-martial Teveles had defended himself by the argument that he had been promised the large silver medal, and that he had therefore bought one from a Bosnian, while in hospital. As regards the volunteer officer's badges, he had sewn them on while drunk, and he had continued to wear them because he was always drunk, owing to the weakening of his constitution by dysentery.

When the
Besprechung
started, before dealing with these two matters, Colonel Schroder emphasized the necessity for frequent deliberations before their impending departure. He had been informed by the brigade commander that they were awaiting divisional orders. The rank-and-file must be in fighting trim and

company commanders must carefully see to it that nobody was missing. He once more repeated everything that he had uttered the previous day. He again gave a survey of recent military events and insisted that nothing must be allowed to impair the army's fighting spirit and eagerness for war.

On the table before him was fastened a map of the battle areas, with little flags on pins, but the little flags had been disarranged and the battle fronts reshuffled. Pins with the little flags attached to them were lying about under the table.

The whole of the war areas had been scandalously disarranged in the night by a tomcat, the pet of the military clerks in the regimental office. This animal, after having relieved himself all over the Austro-Hungarian areas, had made attempts to bury the resulting mess and had dragged the little flags from their places and smeared the mess over the positions ; whereupon he had wetted on the battle fronts and bridgeheads, and soiled all the army corps.

Now Colonel Schroder was very shortsighted. With bated breath the officers of the draft watched Colonel Schroder's finger getting nearer and nearer to the small heaps.

"From here, gentlemen, to Sokol on the Bug—" began Colonel Schroder with a prophetic air, and thrust his forefinger by rote toward the Carpathians, the result being that he plunged it into one of the cat's attempts to impart a plastic character to the map of the war areas.

"It looks, sir, as if a cat's been—" remarked Captain Sagner, very courteously on behalf of all present.

Colonel Schroder rushed into the adjacent office, whence could thereupon be heard a terrible uproar and the grisly threats of the colonel that he'd have all their noses rubbed in it.

There was a brief cross-examination. It turned out that the cat had been brought into the office a fortnight previously by Zwiebelfisch, the youngest clerk. When this fact had been established, Zwiebelfisch gathered together all his goods and chattels and a senior clerk led him off to the guard room, where he was to remain until further orders from the colonel.

This practically concluded the conference. When the colonel, very red in the face, returned to the assembled officers, he forgot

that he still had to deliberate about the destiny of volunteer officer Marek and the bogus sergeant, Teveles.

He therefore said curtly :

"I should be glad if you would kindly remain in readiness, gentlemen, and await my further orders and instructions."

And so the result was that the volunteer officer and Teveles remained in the guard room, and when later they were joined by Zwiebelfisch they were able to play poker. After that they badgered the sentry in charge of them to catch the lice on their straw mattress. Later on, a Lance-corporal Peroutka of the 13th draft was added to their company. When on the previous day there had been a rumour in the camp that they were off to the front, he had got lost and was subsequently discovered by the patrol next morning at The White Rose in Bruck. His excuse was that before leaving he was anxious to visit the famous greenhouse of Count Harrach in Bruck, and on his return he had lost his way and, deadbeat, had only managed to discover The White Rose at the break of day. (Actually, he had spent the night with the barmaid of that hostelry.)

The situation became more and more perplexing. Were they leaving, or were they not? Schweik, sitting at the telephone in the office of the 11th draft, overheard the most varied opinions, some pessimistic and some optimistic. The 12th draft telephoned that somebody in their office had heard that they were going to wait till they had been trained in shooting at moving targets and that they would not leave until they had completed the usual course in musketry. This optimistic view was not shared by the 13th draft, which telephoned to say that Corporal Havlik had just come back from the town, where he had heard from a railwayman that the carriages were waiting in the station.

Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek snatched the receiver from Schweik's hand and shouted excitedly that the railway blokes knew damn-all, and that he'd just been in the regimental office.

Schweik sat on at the telephone with a genuine attachment to his job, and in reply to all questions his answer was that he knew nothing definite. Then, when Lieutenant Lukash inquired :

"Any news at your end?"

Schweik replied in stereotyped terms :

"Nothing definite come through yet, sir."

"You jackass, hang up the receiver."

Then came a series of telephonic messages which Schweik received after lengthy misunderstandings. In particular, there was one which could not be dictated to him during the night when he had failed to hang up the receiver and was asleep. This referred to those who had been, or who had not been, inoculated.

Then there was a belated message about tinned rations, companies and regimental sections.

"Copy of brigade telephonic message No. 75692. Brigade order No. 122. When indenting for cookhouse stores the requisite commodities are to be enumerated in the following order : I. Meat, 2. Tinned goods, 3. Fresh vegetables, 4. Preserved vegetables, 5. Rice, 6. Macaroni, 7. Oatmeal and bran, 8. Potatoes; in place of the foregoing, 3. Preserved vegetables, 4. Fresh vegetables."

When Schweik read this out to the quartermaster-sergeant, the latter declared solemnly that he threw messages like that into the latrine.

"It's only a stunt that some bloody fool on the staff has thought of, and then they send it out to every blessed division and brigade and regiment."

After that Schweik received another message which was dictated so rapidly that when he had taken it down it looked like something in cipher:

"Subsequently closer permitted however has been nevertheless or thus has been notwithstanding the same to be reported."

"That's all a lot of useless bunk," said Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek, when Schweik, vastly astonished at what he had written, read it aloud three times in succession. "It's all damn nonsense. Christ knows what they think they're up to. Of course, it may be in cipher, but that's not our job. Chuck it away."

"You're about right, Sergeant," said Schweik. "If I was to report to the lieutenant that he's got to 'subsequently closer permitted however has been nevertheless or thus has been notwithstanding the same to be reported,' I don't mind betting he wouldn't like it.

"Some people are terribly touchy," continued Schweik, plunging into reminiscence again. "I remember once I was riding in a tram, and at one of the stopping places a chap named Novotny got in. As soon as I spotted him, I went over and joined him and started telling him we both came from the same town. But he started shouting he didn't know me and told me to go away and not to bother him. So then I started explaining to him how when I was a little boy I used to visit their house with my mother, whose name was Antonia and my father's name was Prokop, and he was an overseer on a farm. But even then he still made out he didn't know me. So I started telling him some details, just to convince him, and told him how there were two chaps named Novotny in our town, Tonda and Josef. And Josef, so they told me, had shot his wife because she kept grumbling at him for going on the booze. And then he lifted his arm, and I dodged him, so that he smashed a large pane of glass in the tram, right close to the driver. So they ejected us from the tram and took us to the police station, and there it turned out that the reason he was so touchy was because his name wasn't Novotny at all, but Dou-brava, and he'd come over from America to visit some relations."

The telephone interrupted his narrative and a hoarse voice from the machine-gun section again inquired whether they were leaving. The owner of the voice said that he'd heard there had been a
Besprechung
with the colonel that morning.

Then Cadet Biegler, the biggest jackass in the company, made his appearance in the doorway. He was extremely pale, and beckoned to Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek to follow him into the passage, where he had a long talk with him.

When Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek returned, he smiled contemptuously.

"He's a bloody fool, he is," he said to Schweik. "We haven't half got some rum specimens in this draft. He was at the
Besprechung
and at the end of it the lieutenant ordered all squad commanders to hold a rifle inspection and to make it a hot 'un. And now he comes and asks me if he ought to crime Zlabek for cleaning his rifle with paraffin."

Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek became quite heated about it.

"He comes and asks me about that sort of flapdoodle, when he knows we're off to the front."

"Here," said Schweik suddenly, "what about that new batman you were told to get? Have you found one yet?"

"Talk sense," replied Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek. "All in good time. As a matter of fact I wouldn't mind betting that the lieutenant'll get used to Baloun. He'll sneak a bit of grub from him every now and then, but he'll drop all that when we get to the front. By that time neither of 'em'll have anything to eat. If I say that Baloun's got to stop, why, that's all there is to it. That's my job, and the lieutenant can't interfere. There's no hurry."

Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek lay down on his bed again.

At this juncture Lieutenant Lukash was in his den, studying a cipher message from the staff which had just been handed to him, together with instructions how to decode it and secret orders in cipher about the direction in which the draft was to proceed to the Galician frontier :

7217—1238—475—2i2i35=Mazony.

8922—375—7282=Raab.

4432—1238—7217—3 5—8922—3 5=Komarom.

7282—9299—310—275—7881—298—475—7929=Budapest.

As he decoded this rigmarole, Lieutenant Lukash sighed and exclaimed :

"To hell with it all!"

BOOK III

1.

Across Hungary.

At last the moment came for them all to be crammed into a railway truck in the proportion of forty-two men to eight horses. The horses, it must be said, travelled more comfortably than the men, because they could sleep in a standing posture. Not that it mattered. The important thing was that the military train was conveying to Galicia a fresh batch of mortals who had been hounded to the shambles.