No Man's Land (45 page)

The adjutant bowed, put some documents on the table and made haste to disappear on tiptoe, without noise, for fear the general should unload his fury on his own head.

In the middle of the courtyard Apostol Bologa gazed around him as if this were the first time he had been there in his life. The enclosure was large, with a wooden paling on the street side. The new plank door which had been let into it was now open. There were a few carts in a file at the back, near the stables, and the motor-car in which he had come stood there abandoned, its doors gaping. The stone house, roofed with old tiles and as immense as a barracks, was pitted with shrapnel dating from the period when the war had passed over the village and when a shell had actually exploded in the little front garden, tearing from its roots the twin of the tree in which a pair of noisy sparrows were now quarrelling. The sky had cleared and filled the atmosphere with a blue more tender than usual. The sun smiled in the west, yellow and frail as the face of a gay old man, and the light of it kissed the earth like a beneficent dew, diffusing joy and awakening hope everywhere.

Apostol stood a while with his eyes turned towards the sun, drinking in thirstily the smiling light. He felt relieved, as if he had just eased by a spell of passionate weeping a long-standing ache. His thoughts no longer oppressed him but bent docilely to his will, and had he wished he could have strung them nicely, like glass beads, on a thread.

He left the courtyard. In the street, opposite the mess-room, he saw a lorry loaded with equipment, ready to leave for the front. He jumped on. He wanted to get back as soon as possible to his battery. He was in a hurry…

Born in 1885 in Tarlisue, Transylvania, then part of Austro-Hungary, Liviu
Rebreanu
lived from 1909 in Bucharest. During the war, he was a reporter for the Romanian left-wing daily
Adevarul
. In 1920, he published
Ion
, a book about the harsh lives of the peasants of Transylvania before the war, which is the first great Romanian novel.
The Forest of the Hanged
was published in 1922. Based on the life of Rebreanu's brother Emil, it tells the story of Apostol Bologa, the son of a Romanian lawyer who becomes a decorated officer and in a court-martial even votes in favour of the death sentence for a Czech officer who has deserted. Sent to fight against his countrymen in the Carpathians, Apostol walks towards the Romanian lines. Caught and tried for desertion, he, like the Czech officer he helped condemn, is hung. Surreal and bitter,
The Forest of the Hanged
forcefully conveys what the war was like for the many ethnic minority members conscripted to fight against their fellow countrymen. Rebreanu died in Valea Mare, Romania, in 1944.

JAROSLAV HAÅ EK

Å VEJK GOES TO THE WAR

from
The Good Soldier Å vejk

translated by Cecil Parrott

A
T THE TIME WHEN THE FORESTS
on the river Raab in Galicia saw the Austrian armies fleeing across the river and when down in Serbia one after the other of the Austrian divisions were taken with their pants down and got the walloping they had long deserved, the Austrian Ministry of War suddenly remembered Å vejk. Why, even he might help to get the Monarchy out of the mess.

When they brought Švejk the order to report within a week for a medical examination on Střelecký Ostrov, he happened to be lying in bed, stricken once more by rheumatism.

Mrs Muller was making coffee for him in the kitchen.

‘Mrs Muller,' Švejk called softly from his room, ‘Mrs Muller, come here for a moment.'

When the charwoman stood by his bed, Švejk repeated in the same soft voice: ‘Sit down, Mrs Muller.'

There was something mysterious and solemn in his voice.

When she had sat down, Švejk drew himself up in bed and announced: ‘I'm going to the war!'

‘Holy Mother!' shrieked Mrs Muller. ‘What ever are you going to do there?'

‘Fight,' answered Švejk in sepulchral tones. ‘Things are going very badly for Austria. Up above they're already creeping on us at Cracow and down below on Hungary. They're crushing us like a steam-roller on all sides and that's why they're calling me up. I read you yesterday from the newspaper, didn't I, that dark clouds were enveloping our dear fatherland.'

‘But you can't move.'

‘That doesn't matter, Mrs Muller, I shall go to the war in a bathchair. You know that confectioner round the corner? Well, he has just the right kind of bathchair. Years ago he used to push his lame and wicked old grandfather about in it in the fresh air. Mrs Muller, you're going to push me to the war in that bathchair.'

Mrs Muller burst into tears: ‘Oh dear, sir, shouldn't I run for the doctor?'

‘You'll not run anywhere, Mrs Muller. Except for my legs I'm completely sound cannon-fodder, and at a time when things are going badly for Austria every cripple must be at his post. Just go on making the coffee.'

And while Mrs Muller, tear-stained and distraught, poured coffee through the strainer, the good soldier Å vejk started singing in bed:

The panic-stricken Mrs Muller under the impact of this awe inspiring war-song forgot about the coffee and trembling in every limb listened in horror as the good soldier Å vejk continued to sing in bed:

Mrs Muller burst out of the door and rushed for the doctor. She returned in an hour's time, while Å vejk had slumbered off.

And so he was woken up by a corpulent gentleman who laid his hand on his forehead for a moment and said:

‘Don't be afraid. I am Dr Pávek from Vinohrady – let me feel your pulse – put this thermometer under your armpit. Good – now show me your tongue – a bit more – keep it out – what did your father and mother die of?'

And so at a time when it was Vienna's earnest desire that all the peoples of Austria-Hungary should offer the finest examples of loyalty and devotion, Dr Pávek prescribed Švejk bromide against his patriotic enthusiasm and recommended the brave and good soldier not to think about the war:

‘Lie straight and keep quiet. I'll come again tomorrow.'

When he came the next day, he asked Mrs Muller in the kitchen how the patient was.

‘He's worse, doctor,' she answered with genuine grief. ‘In the night he was singing, if you'll pardon the expression, the Austrian national anthem, when the rheumatism suddenly took him.'

Dr Pávek felt obliged to react to this new manifestation of loyalty on the part of his patient by prescribing a larger dose of bromide.

The third day Mrs Muller informed him that Å vejk had got even worse.

‘In the afternoon he sent for a map of the battlefield, doctor, and in the night he was seized by a mad hallucination that Austria was going to win.'

‘And he takes his powders strictly according to the prescription?'

‘Oh, no, doctor, he hasn't even sent for them yet.' Dr Pávek went away after having called down a storm of reproaches on Švejk's head and assured him that he would never again come to cure anybody who refused his professional help and bromide.

Only two days remained before Å vejk would have to appear before the call-up board.

During this time Švejk made the necessary preparations. First he sent Mrs Muller to buy an army cap and next he sent her to borrow the bathchair from the confectioner round the corner – that same one in which the confectioner once used to wheel about in the fresh air his lame and wicked old grandfather. Then he remembered he needed crutches. Fortunately the confectioner still kept the crutches too as a family relic of his old grandfather.

Now he only needed the recruit's bunch of flowers for his buttonhole. Mrs Muller got these for him too. During these last two days she got noticeably thinner and wept from morning to night.

And so on that memorable day there appeared on the Prague streets a moving example of loyalty. An old woman pushing before her a bathchair, in which there sat a man in an army cap with a finely polished Imperial badge and waving his crutches. And in his button-hole there shone the gay flowers of a recruit.

And this man, waving his crutches again and again, shouted out to the streets of Prague: ‘To Belgrade, to Belgrade!'

He was followed by a crowd of people which steadily grew from the small group that had gathered in front of the house from which he had gone out to war.

Å vejk could see that the policemen standing at some of the crossroads saluted him.

At Wenceslas Square the crowd around Švejk's bathchair had grown several hundreds and at the corner of Krakovská Street they beat up a student in a German cap who had shouted out to Švejk:

‘
Heil! Nieder mit den Serben!
'
^*

At the corner of Vodičkova Street mounted police rode in and dispersed the crowd.

When Švejk showed the district police inspector that he had it in black and white that he must that day appear before the call-up board, the latter was a trifle disappointed; and in order to reduce disturbances to a minimum he had Švejk and his bathchair escorted by two mounted police all the way to the Střelecký Ostrov.

The following article about this episode appeared in the
Prague Official News
: