The Good Soldier Svejk (65 page)

At this point Chodounsky began to nod and soon fell fast asleep on the table.

The incumbent, who was not asleep and who kept walking all over the parsonage, opened the kitchen door, and for the sake of economy blew out the stump of church candle which was burning at Chodounsky's elbow.

In the dining room nobody, except Lieutenant Dub, was asleep. Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek, who had received from the brigade headquarters at Sanok a new schedule relating to supplies, was studying it carefully, and he discovered that the nearer the troops got to the front, the less food they were given. He could not help laughing at one paragraph in the schedule which prohibited the use of saffron and ginger in the preparation of soup for the rank-and-file. The schedule also contained a remark to the effect that bones were to be collected and sent to the base for transfer to divisional stores. This was rather vague, as it did not specify whether it referred to human bones or those of other cattle which had been slaughtered.

When in the morning they left Liskowiec on the way to Starasol and Stambov, they carried the wretched cow with them in the field cooker. It had not yet been cooked, and they decided that this was to be done as they went along. Then, halfway between Liskowiec and Starasol, where they were to halt for a rest, they would eat the cow.

Black coffee was served out to the troops before they started.

Lieutenant Dub was again put into the two-wheeled cart of the ambulance section, because he had taken a turn for the worse. Lieutenant Lukash was on horseback, with Schweik as a close companion, marching forward so briskly that it looked as though he begrudged every moment's delay which kept him from coming into contact with the enemy. As he stepped out thus, side by side with Lieutenant Lukash, he said :

"I don't know if you've noticed it, sir, but some of these chaps here are a weak-kneed lot. What they got on their back don't weigh fifty pounds, and it's all they can do to stick it. Somebody ought to give 'em lectures about it like what Lieutenant Buchanek —he's dead now, poor blighter—did to us. He made us halt and

gather round him like a lot of chickens round a hen, and then he begins to tell us what's what. 'You blackguards you,' he says, 'you don't seem to realize you're marching along the surface of the earth, you gang of boobies, it's enough to make anyone sick to look at you. Why,' he says, 'if you was marching along on the sun, where a man who weighs twelve stone on this planet would top the scale at more than two tons, that'd finish you off. That'd be something like marching,' he says, 'if you was carrying more than three hundredweight of stuff in your haversacks and your rifle weighed close on two hundred pounds. That'd give you a gruelling and make you hang your tongue out of your mouths like a lot of broken-winded dogs.' Well, there was a teacher chap on our squad and he ups and says : 'Begging your pardon, sir, but in the moon a man who weighs twelve stone here would only weigh about two stone. It'd be easier for us to march in the moon, because our haversacks would only weigh ten pounds there. In the moon we should just go floating along in the air, we shouldn't have to march at all.' 'Oh, you wouldn't, wouldn't you?' says poor old Lieutenant Buchanek. 'You wretched lout, you're asking for a smack in the eye. And think yourself lucky,' he says, 'that I'm only going to give you a common or garden smack in the eye, an earthly smack in the eye. If I was to give you one like you'd get on the moon,' he says, 'you'd be so light, you'd go sailing away to the Alps and you'd get smashed to smithereens against them. And if I gave you a heavy smack,' he says, 'like you'd get in the sun, it'd make mincemeat of your uniform and your head'd go flying away to Africa or somewhere.' So he gave him just a common or garden smack in the eye and then we marched on. And this teacher chap, he kicked up such a row about that smack in the eye, sir, that Lieutenant Buchanek had him up in the orderly room afterward and he got fourteen days and he had another six weeks to serve, but he didn't finish 'em off because he had a rupture and they made him do a circle on the horizontal bar and that settled his hash and he died as a malingerer in hospital."

"It's a very funny thing, Schweik," said Lieutenant Lukash, "but, as I've told you several times before, you've got a strange way of poking fun at officers."

"Oh, no, sir," replied Schweik breezily. "I only wanted to show

you, sir, how people get themselves into trouble in the army. That
chap thought he was cleverer than Lieutenant Buchanek, and he wanted to score off him and take him down a peg or two in front of all the men, and so when he got that common or garden smack in the eye, we was all very much relieved. You take it from me, sir, we wasn't a bit sorry for him, in fact, we was all very pleased that the lieutenant answered him back and told him off properly and saved the situation, as you might say."

At this point Lieutenant Lukash seemed to be tired of the conversation, and he galloped his horse forward to overtake the vanguard.

Lieutenant Dub's condition had now so much improved that he was able to get out of the two-wheeled cart, and he began to address the company like a man in a dream. He delivered a long speech which made the troops feel wearier than did their packs and rifles. It abounded in such profundities as these :

"The attachment of the common soldier to the officer makes it possible for incredible sacrifices to be made. It does not matter, in fact, far from it, whether this attachment is something innate in the soldier, for if not, it must be enforced. This attachment is no ordinary attachment, it is a combination of respect, fear and discipline."

All this time Schweik was marching along on the left, and while Lieutenant Dub was speechifying, he kept his head turned toward him, as if he had received the order "Eyes right !" At first Lieutenant Dub did not notice this, and he continued :

"This discipline, this compulsory obedience, this compulsory attachment of soldier to officer evinces itself very concisely, because the relation between soldier and officer is very simple : one obeys, the other orders. We have often read in books on military tactics that military brevity, military simplicity is the virtue at which every soldier must aim. Every soldier, whether he likes it or not, must be deeply attached to his superior officer, who in his eyes must be the ingrained paragon of an unswerving and infallible will."

At this point he perceived Schweik's fixed posture of "eyes right." It suddenly gave him an uneasy feeling that his speech was becoming very involved and that he could find no outlet from

this blind alley of the attachment of the soldier to his superior officer. Accordingly, he bellowed at Schweik :

"What are you staring at me like that for?"

"Beg to report, sir, I'm just carrying out orders, just like you yourself told me to. You said that when you was talking I was to keep my eyes fixed on your mouth. And because every soldier has got to be attached to his superior officer and carry out all his orders and always remember -"

"You look the other way!" shouted Lieutenant Dub. "And don't you let me catch you staring at me, you brainless booby."

Schweik changed over to "eyes left" and went on marching along by the side of Lieutenant Dub in such a rigid attitude, that at last Lieutenant Dub shouted out :

"What are you looking that way for, while I'm talking to you?"

"Beg to report, sir, I'm carrying out your orders and facing eyes left."

"Good God !" sighed Lieutenant Dub, "what a devil of a nuisance you are ! Hold your tongue and keep at the back, where I can't see you."

So Schweik stayed at the back with the ambulance section, and jogged comfortably along with the two-wheeled cart until they reached the place where they were to rest, and where, at last, they all had a taste of the soup and meat from the baleful cow.

"This cow," said Schweik, "ought to have been pickled in vinegar for a fortnight at least, and so ought the man who bought it."

A courier came galloping up from brigade headquarters with a new order for the nth company. Their line of route was changed so as to lead to Felstyn ; Woralycz and Sambor were to be avoided because, owing to the presence of two Posen regiments, it would be impossible for them to find billets there.

Lieutenant Lukash immediately issued instructions. He told Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek, together with Schweik, to find a night's quarters for the company at Felstyn.

"And see you don't get into any mischief on the way, Schweik," said Lieutenant Lukash. "Above all, behave properly toward any of the people you come across."

"Beg tb report, sir, I'll do my best. But I had a nasty dream

when I dozed off early this morning. I dreamed about a wash tub that kept slopping over all night in the passage of the house where I lived, till it had all dripped away and soaked the landlord's ceiling, and he gave me notice on the spot. The funny part of it is, sir, that something like that really happened. At Karlin, behind the viaduct -"

"Look here, Schweik, you'd better drop all that twaddle and have a look at this map and help Vanek to find out which way you're to go. From this village you bear to the right till you reach the river, and then you follow the river as far as the next village. From there, at the spot where the first stream, which you'll find on your right, flows into this one, you cut across the fields upward due north, and that'll bring you to Felstyn. You can't miss it. Can you remember all that?"

Schweik thought he could, and so he set out with Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek in accordance with these particulars.

It was the beginning of the afternoon. The landscape seemed to be wilting in the swelter, and the stench of decay was wafted from the pits in which soldiers had been buried and not properly covered up. They now entered a region where fighting had taken place in the advance to Przemysl and where whole battalions had been mown down by machine guns. In the small thickets by the river could be seen the havoc wrought by the artillery. There were large areas and slopes which had once been dotted with trees, but all that was left of them was jagged stumps jutting from the ground. And this wilderness was furrowed with trenches.

"This looks a bit different from Prague," said Schweik when the silence was becoming oppressive. And then, after a pause, he continued :

"There'll be a fine harvest here after the war. They won't have to buy any bone meal. It's a good thing for farmers when they've got a whole regiment rotting away on their fields. There's no manure can beat it. That reminds me of Lieutenant Holub, who used to be in the barracks at Karlin. Everybody thought he was a bit dotty because he never called us names and always kept,his hair on when he talked
to
us. One day we reported to him that our bread rations wasn't fit to eat. Any other officer would have made it hot for us, for having the cheek to grouse about our grub, but

not he, oh dear no ! He just stood there as cool as you please, he didn't call anyone a skunk or a swine or a bloody fool, and he didn't give anyone a smack in the eye. He just makes the men stand round him and says to them, as civil as could be : 'First of all,' he says, 'you must bear in mind that a barracks ain't a delicatessen store where you can get pickled eels and sardines in oil and assorted sandwiches. Every soldier ought to have enough sense,' he says, 'to eat his rations without any grousing, and he's got to show enough discipline not to make any fuss about the quality of the stuff that's given him to eat. Just suppose,' he says, 'there's a war. Well, the ground you get buried in after a battle don't care a damn what sort of bread you've been eating before you pegged out. Mother earth,' he says, 'just takes you apart and eats you up, boots and all. Nothing gets lost, and from what's left of you there'll be a fresh crop of wheat to make bread rations for other soldiers, who'll perhaps start grousing like you except that they'll come up against someone who'll shove them into clink and keep them there till God knows when, because he's got a right to. So now,' he says, 'I've made it all clear to you, and I hope you'll bear it in mind and nobody will come here with any more complaints.' Well, it got the men's back up, the way he kept a civil tongue in his head. 'Why don't he tell us off properly?' they says to each other, and so one day they picked me out to go and tell him that we all liked him but we didn't sort of feel we was in the army as long as he never told us off properly. Well, off I goes to call on him and I asks him not to be so smooth-spoken, because chaps expect to get it in the neck when they're in the army and they're used to being told every day that they're skunks and bloody fools, or else they don't have any respect for their superior officers. At first he wouldn't hear of it, and talked a lot of stuff about intelligence and how it ought to be a thing of the past for men to be ruled with a rod of iron, but in the end he saw my point and gave me a smack in the eye and kicked me downstairs, so as we should think all the more of him. When I told the other chaps what had happened, they was all very pleased, but then he went and spoiled everything the next day. He comes up to me in front of everyone and says : 'I acted a bit hasty yesterday, Schweik, so

here's a gulden to drink my health with.' You can't get away from it, an officer ought to know better than that."

Schweik now inspected the landscape.

"It strikes me," he said, "that we've taken the wrong road. Lieutenant Lukash explained it to us all right. We've got to gc up and down, then to the left and to the right, then to the right again, then to the left, and we're keeping straight on. I can set some crossroads in front of us, and if you ask me, I should say we ought to go to the left."