The Good Soldier Svejk (30 page)

"Beg to report, sir, they're making out I stopped the train. The railway company have got very funny plugs on their emergency brakes. It's better to keep away from them or else something'll go wrong and they'll ask you to fork out twenty crowns, the same as they're asking me."

The head guard had already blown his whistle and the train was starting again. The passengers returned to their seats and Lieutenant Lukash, without another word, also went back to his compartment. The other guard remained with Schweik and the railwayman. He took out a notebook and began to draw up a report on the whole affair. The railwayman gazed spitefully at Schweik, who coolly asked :

"How long have you been working on the railway?"

As the railwayman did not reply, Schweik proceeded to explain that he had known a certain Frantisek Mlicek of Uhrineves near Prague who had also pulled an emergency brake and it had so scared him that he had lost his speech for a fortnight and only recovered it when he was paying a visit to a gardener named Vanek at Hostivar, and had a fight with someone there. "That happened," added Schweik, "in May, 1912."

The railwayman thereupon went and locked himself in the lavatory.

The guard now called upon Schweik to pay a fine of twenty crowns, as otherwise he would have to take him before the station master at Tâbor.

"That's all right," said Schweik. "I like talking to educated people. It'll be a fair treat for me to see that station master at Tâbor."

When the train arrived at Tâbor, Schweik with all due ceremony went to Lieutenant Lukash and said :

"Beg to report', sir, I'm being taken before the Station master."

Lieutenant Lukash did not reply. He had become completely indifferent to everything. It struck him that the best thing he could do was not to care a rap about anybody, whether it was Schweik or the bald-headed major-general, and to sit quietly where he was, to leave the train at Budejovice, to report himself at the barracks and to proceed to the front with a draft. At the front, if the worse came to the worst, he would be killed and thus get away from this appalling world in which such monstrosities as Schweik were knocking about.

When the train started again, Lieutenant Lukash looked out of the window and saw Schweik standing on the platform and engrossed in a solemn colloquy with the station master. Schweik was surrounded by a crowd of people in which several railway uniforms were visible.

Lieutenant Lukash heaved a sigh. It was not a sigh of pity. His heart felt lighter at the thought that Schweik had been left behind on the platform. Even the bald-headed major-general did not seem to be quite such a horrid bugbear.

The train had long since puffed its way into Budejovice, but there was no diminution in the crowd of people round Schweik. Schweik was asserting his innocence and had so convinced the assembly that one lady remarked :

"They're bullying another soldier again." The assembly accepted this view and a gentleman announced to the station master that he was prepared to pay Schweik's fine for him. He was convinced that the soldier had not done what he was accused of.

Then a police sergeant made his appearance and, having grabbed hold of a man in the crowd, led him away, saying :

"What d'you mean by causing all this disturbance? If that's the way you want soldiers treated, how d'you expect Austria to win the war?"

Meanwhile, the worthy person who believed in Schweik's innocence had paid the fine for him and had taken Schweik into the third-class refreshment room, where he had treated him to beer. And having ascertained that all his papers, including his railway warrant, were in the possession of Lieutenant Lukash, he gener-

ously presented him with the sum of five crowns for a ticket and sundry expenses.

When he was leaving, he said confidentially to Schweik :

"Look here, if you happen to get taken prisoner in Russia, remember me to Zeman, the brewer at Zdolbunov. I've written it down on a bit of paper for you. And keep your wits about you so as you won't have to stay long at the front."

"Don't you worry about that," said Schweik. "It's a good wheeze to see foreign parts for nothing."

Schweik stayed where he was, and while he was quietly drinking his way through the five crowns, the people on the platform who had not witnessed Schweik's interview with the station master, and had only seen a crowd in the distance, were telling each other that a spy had been caught taking photographs of the railway station, but a lady contradicted this rumour by declaring that it wasn't a spy at all, but she had heard that a dragoon had struck an officer near the ladies' lavatory because the officer was following his (the dragoon's) sweetheart. These fantastic conjectures were brought to an end by the police, who cleared the platform. And Schweik went on quietly drinking; he wondered with a tender concern what Lieutenant Lukash had done when he reached Budejovice and found no signs of his orderly anywhere.

Before the departure of the slow train, the third-class refreshment room became packed with travellers, consisting mostly of soldiers belonging to the most varied units and nationalities. The tide of war had swept them into hospital and now they were again leaving for the front to be wounded, mutilated and tortured once more, so as to qualify for a wooden cross on their graves. One of these hapless wretches, who had just been discharged from hospital after an operation, in a uniform stained with patches of blood and mud, came and sat down next to Schweik. He was undersized, skinny, woebegone. He put a small bundle on the table, took out a tattered purse and counted his money. Then he looked at Schweik and asked :
"Magyarul
?"
¹

¹
"[Do you speak] Hungarian?"

"I'm a Czech," said Schweik. "Have a drink, mate."
"Nem tudon, baratom."
²

"Never mind that, mate," urged Schweik, putting his full glass in front of the woebegone soldier ; "just you have a good drink of that."

He understood, drank and said
"Kessenem szivesen"
by way of thanks. Then he went on examining the contents of his purse and ended with a sigh. Schweik realized that the Magyar would have liked to get himself some beer, but had not enough money, and so he ordered some for him, whereupon the Magyar again thanked him and began to explain something to Schweik with the help of gestures. He pointed to his wounded arm and said in an international language : "Piff, paff, puff."

Schweik nodded sympathetically and the undersized convalescent informed Schweik, by lowering his left hand to within half a yard from the floor, and then raising three fingers, that he had three little children.

"Nincs ham, nincs ham,"
he continued, by which he meant that they had nothing to eat at home, and he wiped tears from his eyes with the dirty sleeve of his military greatcoat, where the hole made by the bullet which had entered his body in the interests of the King of Hungary could still be seen.

It was not surprising that as a result of this entertainment Schweik gradually lost possession of his five crowns and that he slowly but surely cut himself off from Budejovice, since every glass of beer to which he treated himself and the Magyar convalescent lessened his chances of buying a railway ticket.

Another Budejovice train passed through the station and Schweik was still sitting at the table and listening to the Magyar, who repeated his :

"Piff, paff, puff !
Hârom gyermek
³
nines ham, éljen."
He uttered the last word when they clinked glasses. "Drink away, old chap," replied Schweik. "Shift the booze. You Magyar blokes wouldn't treat us like that."

²
"I don't understand, friend."
³
"Three children."

"Ihre Dokumente, vasi tokûment,"
a sergeant-major of the military police now remarked to Schweik in German and broken Czech. He was accompanied by four soldiers with fixed bayonets. "You sit,
nicht fahren,
sit, drink, keep on drink," he continued in his elegant jargon.

"Haven't got none,
milacku,"
^4,
replied Schweik. "Lieutenant Lukash of the 91st regiment took them with him and left me here in the station."

"Was ist das Wort: milacekf"
⁵
asked the sergeant-major, turning to one of his soldiers, an old defence corps man, who replied :

"Milacek, das ist wie: H err Feldzvebel."
⁶

The sergeant-major continued his conversation with Schweik :

"Papers, every soldier, without papers, lock up
auf Bahnhofs-militarkommando, den lausigen Bursch, wie ein toller Hund."

They took Schweik accordingly to the military transport headquarters. The guardroom was decorated with lithographs which at that time were being distributed by the War Office among all military departments. The good soldier Schweik was welcomed by a picture which, according to the inscription, represented Sergeant F. Hammel and Corporals Paulhart and Bachmayer of the Imperial and Royal 21st artillery regiment, encouraging their men to hold out.

The sergeant-major now appeared on the scene and pointing to Schweik, told the corporal of the defence corps to take the lousy so-and-so to the lieutenant, as soon as he arrived.

"The lieutenant's larking about again with the telegraph operator at the station," explained the corporal after the sergeant had left. "He's been after her for the last fortnight and he's always in a hell of a temper when he gets back from the telegraph office. Says he :
Dos ist aber eine Hure; sie will nicht mit mir schlaj en."

On this occasion too he was in a hell of a temper, and when, after an interval, he arrived, he could be heard banging books on the table.

⁴
"Darling."

⁵
"What does
'milacek'
mean?"

⁶
"Milacek,
that's the same as sergeant-major."

"It's no use, chum, you've got to get it over. So in you go," said the corporal to Schweik in a sympathetic tone.

And he led Schweik into an office where behind a table littered with papers sat a small lieutenant who looked exceedingly fierce. When he saw Schweik with the corporal, he remarked : "Aha !" in a significant manner. Whereupon the corporal explained :

"Beg to report, sir, this man was found in the station without any papers."

The lieutenant nodded as if to indicate that years and years ago he had guessed that precisely on that day and at that hour Schweik would be found in the station without papers, for anyone looking at Schweik at that moment could not help feeling convinced that it was quite impossible for a man of such appearance and bearing to have any papers on him. At that moment Schweik looked as if he had fallen from heaven or from some other planet and was now gazing with artless wonder at a new world in which he was being asked for papers, some species of nonsense hitherto unknown to him.

The lieutenant nodded as if to indicate that he should say something and he should be questioned about it.

At last he asked :

"What were you doing in the station?"

"Beg to report, sir, I was waiting for the train to Budejovice, because I want to get to my regiment where I'm orderly to Lieutenant Lukash, but I got left behind on account of being taken to the station master to pay a fine through being suspected of stopping the express we were travelling in, by pulling the alarm signal."

"Here, I can't make head or tail of this," shouted the lieutenant. "Can't you say what you've got to say in a straightforward manner, without drivelling away like a lunatic?"

"Beg to report, sir, that from the very first minute I sat down with Lieutenant Lukash in that train that was to take us to our 91st imperial royal infantry regiment without any hanging about we had nothing but bad luck. First of all we lost a trunk, then by way of a change, there was a major-general, a bald-headed cove -"

"Oh, good Lord !" sighed the lieutenant.

"Beg to report, sir, but I got to go into all this so as I can sort of get it off my chest and give you a proper idea of the whole business like a friend of mine used to say, a cobbler he was and his name was Petrlik, but he's dead now, well, before he began
to
give his boy a good walloping, he always told him to take his trousers down."

And while the lieutenant fumed, Schweik continued : "Well, somehow or other this bald-headed major got his knife into me at the very start, and Lieutenant Lukash, that's the officer I'm orderly to, he sent me out into the corridor. Then in the corridor I got accused of doing what I've told you. And while they were looking into it, I got left behind on the platform. The train was gone, the lieutenant with his trunks and his papers and with my papers was gone too, and there I was left in the lurch like an orphan, with no papers and no nothing."

Schweik gazed at the lieutenant with such a touching air of gentleness that the latter was quite convinced of the absolute truth of what he was hearing from the lips of this fellow who, to all appearances, was a congenital idiot. He now enumerated to Schweik all the trains which had left for Budejovice since the departure of the express, and he asked him why he had missed them as well.

"Beg tq report, sir," replied Schweik, with a good-humoured smile, "that while I was waiting for the next train, I got into more trouble through having a few drinks."

"I've never seen such a fool," pondered the lieutenant. "He owns up to everything. I've had plenty of them here and they all swear blind they've never done anything. But this chap comes up as cool as a cucumber and says : I lost all the trains through having a few drinks."