The Good Soldier Svejk (31 page)

He summed up these considerations in a single sentence, with which he now addressed Schweik :

"You're a degenerate. Do you know what it means when anyone's called a degenerate?"

"Beg to report, sir, down our way there was another degenerate. His father was a Polish count and his mother was a midwife. He was a crossing sweeper and in all the pubs he used to go to he made everyone call him 'Count.'"

The lieutenant decided that the time had now come to settle the matter once and for all. He therefore said in emphatic tones :

"Now then, you blithering idiot, you fat-headed lout, go to the booking office, buy a ticket and clear off to Budejovice. If I see any more of you, I'll treat you as a deserter.
Abtreten
!"
⁷

As Schweik did not move, but kept his hand at the salute at the peak of his cap, the lieutenant bellowed :

"Quick march outside,
abtreten,
didn't you hear what I said? Corporal Palânek, take this drivelling idiot to the booking office and buy him a ticket to Budejovice."

After a short interval Corporal Palânek again appeared at the lieutenant's office. Behind Palânek, through the open door, peeped Schweik's good-humoured countenance.

"What is it now?"

"Beg to report, sir," whispered Corporal Palânek mysteriously, "he's got no money for a ticket and I've got none, either. They won't let him ride free because he's got no papers to show he's going to the regiment."

The lieutenant promptly delivered a judgment of Solomon to settle the quandary.

"Then let him walk there," he decided, "and when he gets there they can shove him in clink for being late. We can't be bothered with him here."

"It's no use, chum," said Corporal Palânek to Schweik when they were outside the office again, "you'll have to walk to Budejovice, old sport. We've got some bread rations in the guard room. I'll give you some to take with you."

And half an hour later, when they had treated Schweik to black coffee and besides the bread rations had given him a packet of army tobacco to take with him to the regiment, he left Tâbor at dead of night, singing a song, an old army song :

"When we're marching on our way, Marvellous it is to say—"

And heaven knows how it happened that the good soldier Schweik, instead of turning southward toward Budejovice, went

⁷
"Dismiss!"

due west. He trudged through snow, wrapped up in his army greatcoat, like the last of Napoleon's guards returning from the march on Moscow, the only difference being that he sang blithely :

"Oh, I went out for a stroll, for a stroll Into the grassy meadows—"

And in the stillness of the night it reechoed among the snow-covered woods till the dogs began to bark in the village.

When he got tired of singing, Schweik sat down on a pile of gravel, lit his pipe and after having a rest, trudged on, toward new adventures.

2.

Schweik's Anabasis.

Xenophon, the warrior of antiquity, tramped all over Asia Minor and heaven knows where else, without any maps. The ancient Goths likewise achieved their expeditions without any topographical knowledge. An anabasis involves marching straight ahead, penetrating unknown regions, being surrounded by enemies who are on the look-out for a chance of wringing your neck. Anyone who has his head screwed on properly, like Xenophon or all the tribes of marauders who poured into Europe from the Lord knows where as far as the Caspian Sea or the Sea of Azov, can do miracles on the march.

When Csesar's legions were somewhere up in the remote north, which incidentally they had managed to reach without maps, they decided they would get back to Rome by a different road, so as to see a little more of the world. And they got there, too. Hence, probably, the saying that all roads lead to Rome.

In the same way all roads lead to Budejovice, a circumstance of which the good soldier Schweik was fully persuaded, when instead of the region of Budejovice, he beheld a village in the vicinity of Milévsko. But Schweik kept trudging on in a westerly direction and on the road between Kvetov and Vraz he met an old woman who was returning from church and who hailed him with the Christian salutation :

"Good-day, soldier, which way are you going?"

"I'm off to Budejovice to my regiment," replied Schweik. "I'm off to the war, Ma."

"But you're on the wrong road, soldier," said the old woman with alarm. "You'll never get there that way. If you keep straight on, you'll come to Klatovy."

"Well, I expect I can get to Budejovice from Klatovy," said Schweik with an air of resignation. "It's a tidy step, of course, especially when I'm in such a hurry to join my regiment, because it'd be rough luck on a man like me who wants to do his duty if I was to get into trouble for not turning up in good time."

The old woman looked at Schweik pityingly and said :

"You wait in that thicket and I'll bring you some potato soup to warm you. You can see our cottage from here, just behind the thicket a little bit to the left. You can't go yonder past our village, the police are as thick as flies down that way. You go afterward as far as Malcin, but when you leave there, keep away from Cizovâ. The place swarms with police and they're on the watch for deserters. You go straight through the woods to Sedlec near Horazdovice. The policeman there's a decent fellow, he lets 'em pass through the village. Have you got any papers on you?"

"No, Ma."

"Well, don't go there, then. You'd better go to Radomyśl, but see you get there in the evening, because all the policemen are at the village inn by then. You'll come to a cottage lower down the road, painted blue, and you can ask there for Melicharek. That's

my brother. Tell him I sent you and he'll show you how to get to Budejovice from there."

Schweik waited more than half an hour in the thicket for the old woman, and when he had warmed himself, with the potato soup which the poor old woman brought him in a basin tied up in cloth to keep it from getting cold, from a bundle she took a hunk of bread and a piece of bacon which she slipped into Schweik's pocket, made the sign of the cross over him and said that she had two grandsons at the front. She then repeated very carefully the names of the villages he was to pass through and those he was to avoid. Finally she took a crown-piece from her skirt pocket and gave it to him to buy himself some brandy with, because it was a long way to Radomyśl.

Schweik followed the route recommended by the old woman. When he got to Malcin he was joined by an itinerant concertina player whom he met at the village inn, where he was refreshing himself with brandy because it was a long way to Radomyśl. The concertina player thought Schweik was a deserter and offered to go with him to Horazdovice, where he had a married daughter, whose husband was also a deserter. The concertina player had evidently had a drop too much.

"She's got her husband hidden away in a stable for the last two months, and she'll hide you there, too, till the war's over," he urged Schweik, "and with two of you there, it'll make things more cheerful for both."

When Schweik politely declined this offer, the concertina player flew in a temper and threatened to denounce Schweik to the police at Cizovâ. He then made off across the fields.

When Schweik reached Radomyśl toward evening, he made his way to Melicharek, and gave him the old woman's message. But Melicharek was not at all pleased. He kept asking Schweik for his papers.

"It's all very well," he grumbled, "for a chap like you to run away from the army. You shirk your duty and then you go trapesing about the country, picking up whatever you can lay your hands on. If there was nothing against you, you'd show your papers without beating about the bush and saying you haven't got -"

"That's all right, Dad; good-bye."

"Good-bye to you and let's hope the next man you meet'll be a bit greener than me."

When Schweik went out into the darkness, the old man still went on muttering to himself.

"He says he's going to Budejovice to join his regiment. From Tâbor. And the vagabond goes first to Horazdovice and then to Pisek. Why, drat me if he ain't going round the blessed world !"

Schweik walked on nearly all night, till somewhere near Putim he came across a haystack in a field. He was pulling the straw away when he heard a voice at his elbow :

"What regiment are you from? Where are you going?"

"The 91st. I'm off to Budejovice."

"What for?"

"My officer's there."

Close at hand could be heard laughter, proceeding not from one but three. When the mirth subsided, Schweik asked from what regiment they were. He discovered that two were from the 35th and one was from the artillery, also at Budejovice. The men of the 35th had escaped a month previously from a draft, and the artillery man had been on his travels ever since his mobilization. Putim was his home and the haystack belonged to him. At night he always slept there. The day before he had found the other two in the woods, and had taken them with him to his haystack.

They all hoped that the war would be over in a month or two. They imagined that the Russians had practically reached Budapest and Moravia. That was the general belief at Putim. In the morning before daybreak, the dragoon's mother would bring them breakfast. The men of the 35th would then proceed to Strakonice, because one of them had an aunt there and she knew someone in the hills who owned a sawmill where they could easily hide.

"And
you
can come with us if you like," they suggested to Schweik. "Tell your officer to go to he'll."

"That's not so easy," replied Schweik, and burrowed out a place for himself well inside the haystack.

When he woke up in the morning, they had all gone, and some-

one, apparently the dragoon, had left a hunk of bread for him to take away.

Schweik trudged on through the woods, and near Steken he encountered an old tramp, who invited him to have a swig of brandy, as if he had known him for years.

"Don't go about in those togs," he warned Schweik. "That there uniform'll land you, as like as not, in a devil of a mess. It fairly stinks of police round here, and you can't do any cadging while you've got that on. The police don't worry us like what they used to. It's only you chaps they're after now."

"It's only you chaps they're after now," he repeated, with such insistence that Schweik thought he had better say nothing about the 91st regiment. Let him go on thinking that Schweik was what he took him for. Why destroy the good old fellow's illusions?

"And where are you off to?" asked the tramp presently, when they had both lit their pipes and were walking slowly through the village.

"To Budejovice."

"Holy Moses !" said the tramp in alarm. "If you go there, they'll collar you before you know where you are. Why, you won't have the ghost of a chance. What you want is a suit of civvy clothes, with plenty of stains on 'em. Nice and dirty. Then you can pass yourself off as a cripple. But don't you be afraid. Now we'll hoof it to Strakonice, Volyne, Dub, and I bet you what you like we'll manage to lay our hands on a suit of civvies. Down Strakonice way there's plenty of mugs and pious people who don't lock their doors at night, and in the daytime they don't even shut 'em. In the winter they go to have a bit of a chat with one of their neighbours, and there's a suit of civvies for you on the spot. What do you want? You've got some boots. All you want is a few more togs. Is your army coat an old one?"

"Yes."

"Then you can stick to it. You can wear that all right among the yokels. You only want a pair of breeches and a coat. When we've got hold of that civvy suit we'll sell the breeches and coat you're wearing now. Herman the Jew, at Vodnany, he buys up government stuff and sells it again in the villages."

"To-day we'll make a start from Strakonice," he continued, elaborating his plan. "Four hours hoofing it from here'll bring us to a place where an old shepherd, a pal of mine, hangs out. We can stay there overnight and in the morning we'll get to Strakonice and find those togs for you somewhere in the neighbourhood."

The shepherd turned out to be an affable old fellow who could remember the tales his grandfather used to tell about the French wars.

"Yes, me lads," he explained, when they were sitting round a stove, on which potatoes were cooking in their jackets, "in those days my granddad, he done a bunk the same as this soldier here. But they copped him at Vodnany and walloped his backside for him till the skin peeled off in strips. And he got off lightly, he did. Why, there was a chap down Protivin way, he was the granddad of old Jaresh, the pond keeper, he got a dose of powder and shot at Pisek for slinging his hook. And before they put the bullets through him on the ramparts at Pisek, he had to run the gauntlet and got 600 whacks with sticks. When they'd finished with him, he was glad of the bullets to put him out of his misery. And when did you do a bunk?" he asked Schweik.