The Good Soldier Svejk (59 page)

"Yes, sir. I've done all my training as a volunteer officer more or less in clink, but since being discharged by the divisional court-

martial, where my innocence was established beyond the slightest doubt, I've reverted to my former rank and been appointed keeper of the battalion records."

"You won't be that long," yelled Lieutenant Dub, very red in the face. "I'll see to that !"

"I wish to be reported to the orderly room, sir," said the volunteer officer solemnly.

"Don't trifle with me," said Lieutenant Dub. "I'll give you orderly room. We'll meet again before long, and then you'll be damned sorry for yourself, because you don't know me yet ; but you will."

Lieutenant Dub went out wrathfully, and in his annoyance he quite forgot that only a few moments previously he had fully intended to call Schweik to say to him : "Breathe on me," as a final method of establishing Schweik's unlawful alcoholism. He did not remember this until half an hour afterward, and it was then too late, because in the meanwhile the rank-and-file had been served out with an issue of black coffee with rum. When he got back to the truck, Schweik was already up and doing, and on being summoned by Lieutenant Dub, he skipped out of the truck like a lamb.

"Breathe on me !" Lieutenant Dub bawled at him.

Schweik breathed forth upon him the complete contents of his lungs, and it was like a hot wind sweeping the fragrance of a distillery into a field.

"What's this I smell, you brute?"

"Beg to report, sir, you can smell rum."

"Oh, I can, can I?" exclaimed Lieutenant Dub victoriously. "I've got you at last."

"Yes, sir," said Schweik without any sign of uneasiness. "We've just had an issue of rum for our coffee and I drank the rum first. But of course, sir, if there's some new regulation that we got to drink coffee first and rum afterward, I'm very sorry, and I'll see it don't happen again."

"And why were you snoring when I was here half an hour ago? They couldn't wake you up."

"Beg to report, sir, I couldn't sleep a wink all night for thinking of the times when I was in the manœuvres at Vesprem. That

was when there was a first and second army corps crossing Styria and Western Hungary and they surrounded our fourth army corps which was camping in Vienna and thereabouts where we'd got fortifications all around us, but they managed to outflank us and got to the bridge that the pioneers had built from the right bank of the Danube. We was supposed to start an offensive and be backed up by some troops from the North, and then, later on, by some more from the South, from Vosek. In the orders we read that a third army corps was coming to help us so as we shouldn't be cut to pieces between Lake Balaton and Pressburg when we started our big push against the second army corps. But it wasn't any use. Just when we was winning, they sounded the retreat, and it was the chaps with the white bands round their caps who won."

Lieutenant Dub, without saying another word, shook his head with perplexity and departed, but he immediately came back again and said to Schweik :

"Just remember, all of you, that the time will come when I'll make you squeal for mercy." That was all he could manage, and he then returned to the staff carriage. He felt the need to hear himself talk, and he therefore said to Captain Sagner in a confidential, free-and-easy tone :

"I say, Captain, what's your opinion about -?"

"Excuse me a moment," said Captain Sagner, and got out of the carriage.

A quarter of an hour later they started off toward Nagy-Czaba, past the burnt-out villages of Brestov and Great-Radvâny. They could now see that they were getting into the thick of it. The slopes of the Carpathians were scored with trenches, which stretched from valley to valley, and on both sides there were large shell holes. Across the streams flowing into the Lahore, the upper course of which was skirted by the railway, they could see the new bridges which had been built and the charred beams of the old ones. The whole valley had been gouged and scooped out and the trampled state of the ground made it look as if hosts of gigantic moles had been toiling there. At the edges of the shell holes there were tattered shreds of Austrian uniforms which had been uncovered by downpours of rain. Be-

hind Nagy-Czaba, on a charred old fir tree, in the tangle of the branches, hung the boot of an Austrian infantryman, with a piece of shinbone left in it. The forests without foliage or pine needles, the trees without tops and the isolated farms riddled with shot bore witness to the havoc which had been wrought by the artillery fire.

The train moved slowly forward along embankments which had been newly built, so that the whole battalion was able to feast its eyes on the joys of war, and by scanning the military cemeteries with their white crosses, which formed gleaming patches on the devastated hillsides, they had an opportunity of preparing their minds gradually but surely for the field of glory which terminated with an Austrian military cap, caked with mire and dangling on a white cross.

Mezô-Laborcz was the stopping-place behind a shattered, burnt-out railway station from the sooty walls of which twisted girders projected. A new long timber hut, which had been hastily constructed in place of the burnt station, was covered with placards bearing the inscription : "Subscribe to the Austrian war-loan" in various languages. Another long hut contained a Red
Cross centre from which emerged two nurses with a fat doctor, who, for their amusement, imitated various animal noises and made unsuccessful attempts to grunt.

At the bottom of the railway embankment lay a broken field kitchen. Schweik pointed it out to Baloun and said :

"Look at that, Baloun, and see what's in store for us before very long. They were just going to issue the rations when a shell came across and upset the old apple cart."

"This is a shocking business," lamented Baloun. "I never thought anything of that sort was in store for me."

The men were informed that a meal would be served beyond Palota in the Lubka Pass, and the battalion quartermaster-sergeant-major, accompanied by the company cooks and Lieutenant Cajthaml, with four men as a patrol, proceeded into the parish of Meczi. They returned after less than half an hour, with three pigs tied up by their hind legs, the squalling family of a Ruthenian peasant, from whom the pigs had been requisitioned, and the fat military doctor from the Red Cross hut. He was

vociferously explaining something to Lieutenant Cajthaml who only shrugged his shoulders.

The controversy came to a head in front of the staff carriage, when the military doctor began to tell Captain Sagner in downright terms that the pigs were reserved for the Red Cross hospital, while the peasant flatly contradicted this and demanded that the pigs should be restored to him, as they were his only property and he certainly could not let them go at the price which had been paid him. He thereupon thrust the money which he had received for the pigs into the hand of Captain Sagner, whom the peasant's wife was holding by the other hand ; she was kissing it with the servility which has always been a prominent feature of that region.

Captain Sagner was quite startled, and it was a long time before he managed to shake off the old peasant woman. Not that it mattered, for she was replaced by her younger offspring, who again began to slobber over his hands.

Lieutenant Cajthaml, however, affirmed in very businesslike tones:

"This fellow's got another twelve pigs, and he's been properly paid, according to the latest divisional instructions, No. 12420, economic section. According to paragraph 16 of the instructions, the price paid for pigs in localities unaffected by the war must not exceed 1 crown 3 hellers per pound of live stock, while in localities affected by the war 15 hellers per pound of live stock may be added, making a total of 1 crown 18 hellers per pound. Note further the following: If it is ascertained in localities affected by the war that the supply of hogs which can be used as a source of food supply for the troops passing through the locality in question has remained intact, an extra payment of 7 hellers per pound of live stock is to be made, as in the case of localities unaffected by the war. If the matter is not entirely clear, a commission is to be set up on the spot, comprising the owner of the live stock, the officer commanding the detachment concerned and the officer or quartermaster-sergeant in charge of the commissariat."

Lieutenant Cajthaml read all this from a copy of the divisional orders which he always carried about with him, and he practically knew by heart that in the zone of hostilities the regulation

price per pound of carrots was increased to 15 1/2
hellers and the price of one pound of cauliflowers for the officers' mess in the same zone was increased to 95 hellers. The gentlemen in Vienna who had drawn up these schedules seemed to imagine that the zone of hostilities was a land flowing with carrots and cauliflowers. But Lieutenant Cajthaml read his piece to the excited peasant in German and then asked him whether he understood it. When the peasant shook his head, he bellowed at him :

"Do you want a commission, then?"

The peasant understood only the word "commission," wherefore he nodded, and while his hogs were dragged off to the field-kitchen for execution, he was surrounded by soldiers with fixed bayonets, who had been detailed for the requisitioning, and the commission proceeded to his farm to ascertain whether he was to get 1 crown 18 hellers per pound or only 1 crown 3 hellers. But scarcely had they set foot on the road leading to the village, than the threefold mortal squealing of hogs could be heard from the field kitchen. The peasant realized that all was up, and shouted desperately in the Ruthenian dialect :

"Give me two guldens for each of them."

Four soldiers edged close to him and the whole family dropped on their knees in the dust in front of Captain Sagner and Lieutenant Cajthaml. The mother and the two daughters clutched at their knees, calling them benefactors, until at last the peasant yelled at them to stand up. He added that the soldiers could eat the pigs if they wanted, and he hoped they'd die of it.

Accordingly, the idea of a commission was dropped, and as the peasant began to shake his fist angrily, each soldier hit him with the butt-end of his rifle, whereupon all the members of the family crossed themselves and took to their heels.

Twenty minutes later the battalion quartermaster-sergeant-major, assisted by Matushitch, the battalion orderly, was smacking his lips over a dish of pig's fry, and while he was gorging himself, he remarked gibingly to the military clerks:

"I bet you wouldn't mind a feed like that. Oh, my lads, that's only for the N. C. O.'s. The livers and lights for the cooks, brains and breast for the quartermaster-sergeant-major, and double rations for the clerks from what the rank-and-file ought to get."

Captain Sagner had already issued instructions as regards the officers' mess.

"Roast pork with savoury sauce. Pick out the best meat and see it isn't too fat."

And so it came about that when the rank-and-file received their rations in the Lubka Pass, each man discovered two tiny morsels of meat in his soup, and those who had been born under an un-luckier star discovered only a piece of skin.

On the other hand, the clerks' mouths shone greasily and the stretcher bearers puffed with fullness, while all around this divine plenty could be seen the unremoved traces of recent fighting. The whole place was littered with cartridge cases, empty tins, shreds of Russian, Austrian and German uniforms, parts of broken vehicles, long, bloodstained strips of gauze and cotton wool which had been used for bandages.

A shell, which had not burst, had hit an old pine tree near the former railway station, of which only a heap of ruins remained. Fragments of shells were scattered everywhere, and it was evident that corpses of soldiers had been buried in the immediate vicinity, because there was a terrible stench of putrefaction. And on all sides lay lumps of human excrement emanating from all the nations of Austria, Germany and Russia.

A half-smashed cistern, the wooden hut of a railway watchman, and, in fact, everything which had any walls, was riddled like a sieve with rifle bullets.

This spectacle of military delights was rendered even more complete by clouds of smoke which were rising from behind a hill near by, as if a whole village were burning there. This was where they were burning the cholera and dysentery huts, to the great joy of those gentlemen who were concerned with the establishment of a hospital under the patronage of Archduchess Marie, and who had filled their pockets by presenting accounts for nonexistent cholera and dysentery huts. Now one row of huts was being removed for all the rest, and amid the stench of burning paillasses the whole swindle of the archduchess's patronage was rising heavenward.

Behind the railway station on a rock the Germans had already hastened to set up a monument to the fallen Brandenburgers,

with the inscription : "To the heroes of Lubka Pass," and a huge German eagle, carved in bronze. The base of the monument bore an inscription to the effect that the eagle had been constructed from Russian guns captured during the liberation of the Carpathians by German regiments.

In these queer surroundings the battalion was resting after its meal, while Captain Sagner, with the battalion adjutant, was still unable to make head or tail of the cipher telegram from brigade headquarters, on the subject of the further movements of the battalion. The messages were so muddled that it seemed as though they ought not to have entered the Lubka Pass, but should have proceeded in an entirely different direction from Neustadt, because the telegrams mentioned something about: "Cap-Ungvar; Kis-Béreznai Uzok."