The Good Soldier Svejk (48 page)

"Zur Besprechung mor g en.
Ready? Repeat it."

"
'Zur Besprechung morgen.' "

"Um neun Uhr. Unterschrift.
Do you know what
Unter-schrift
is, you chump? It means 'signature.' Repeat it !"

"
'Um neun Uhr. Unterschrift.
Do you know what
Unterschrift
is, you chump? It means "signature." ' "

"You blithering idiot! Signature: Colonel Schroder, fathead. Got that? Repeat it !"

" 'Colonel Schroder, fathead.' "

"All right, you swab. Who received the message?"

"Me."

"Good God, who's me?"

"Schweik. Anything else?"

"No, thank the Lord. Any news?"

"No. Still carrying on as before."

"I bet you're glad, eh? I heard one of your chaps got tied up to-day."

"Only our lieutenant's batman, who ate his grub. Do you know when we're off?"

"The old man himself couldn't tell you that, chum. Good-night. Have you got many fleas there?"

Schweik hung up the receiver and began to rouse Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek from his slumbers. The quartermaster-sergeant offered a stout resistance and when Schweik began to shake him, he hit him in the nose. Nevertheless Schweik managed to make the quartermaster-sergeant rub his eyes and inquire in alarm what had happened.

"Nothing so far," replied Schweik. "But I'd like to have a little confab with you. We've just got a telephone message to say that

Lieutenant Lukash has got to go at 9 o'clock to-morrow morning to the colonel for another
Besprechung.
I don't know what to do about it. Am I to go and tell him now, or wait till the morning? I couldn't make up my mind for a long time whether I ought to wake you up or not, when you was snoring so nicely, but at last I thought I'd better ask your advice and -"

"For God's sake let me go to sleep," moaned Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek, with a tremendous yawn. "Go there in the morning, and don't wake me up."

He turned over on the other side and fell fast asleep immediately.

Schweik went back to the telephone, sat down and began to doze at the table. The telephone bell woke him up.

"Hallo, is that Draft No. 11?"

"Yes, it is. Who's speaking?"

"Draft No. 13. Hallo ! What do you make the time? I can't get on to the exchange. It seems to me I ought to have been relieved before this."

"Our clock's not going."

"Then you're in the same fix as we are. Do you know when we're starting? Haven't you been speaking to the regimental office?"

"They're like us. They don't know damn-all."

"Now then, none of that bad language. Have you drawn your tinned rations? Our chaps went to fetch them, but they didn't bring anything back. The regimental stores were closed."

"Our chaps never brought anything back, either."

"It's a false alarm, if you ask me. Where do you think we're going to?"

"Russia."

"I got an idea it's Serbia. Well, we shall know the worst when we get to Budapest. If they shunt us off to the right, that means Serbia, and if it's to the left, we're bound for Russia. I hear our pay's going to be raised. How many of you are there at the telephone? What, all by yourself? Give it a miss, then, and go to bed. Aha ! they've just come to relieve me. Well, pleasant dreams."

And Schweik once more dropped quietly off to sleep, without hanging up the receiver, so that nobody could disturb his slum-

hers, and the telephonist in the regimental office used much strong language at not being able to get through to draft No. 11 with a new message that by twelve the next morning the regimental officer was to be informed how many men had not yet been inoculated against typhus.

Meanwhile Lieutenant Lukash was still in the officers' club with the M. O., one Schanzler, who, sitting astride a chair, kept hitting the floor with a billiard cue at regular intervals, and delivering himself of such remarks as these :

"The wounded, on whatever side they may be, must receive proper attention."

"The cost of the medicine and nursing which they receive must be defrayed by the other side."

"Wounded prisoners are to be sent back under protection and guarantee from the generals, or else exchanged. But they can then continue on active service."

While expounding these and similar principles relating to the treatment of the wounded in warfare, Dr. Schanzler had already smashed two billiard cues, and he was still in the thick of his recital.

Lieutenant Lukash drank the rest of his black coffee and went home, where he discovered Baloun busy frying some salami in a small pot over the lieutenant's spirit stove.

"Sorry, sir," stammered Baloun. "Beg to report, sir, that -"

Lieutenant Lukash looked at him. At that moment he was like a big baby, and Lieutenant Lukash suddenly regretted having had him tied up because of his huge appetite.

"Carry on, Baloun," he said, as he unstrapped his sword. "Tomorrow I'll get them to issue an extra bread ration to you."

He then sat down at the table, and under the influence of his mood at the moment, began to write a pathetic letter to his aunt :

Dear Aunt,

I
have just received orders to be ready with my draft to leave for the front. It may be that this is the last letter you will ever receive from me, for the fighting is very severe and our losses are great. It is therefore difficult to conclude this letter by saying "au revoir." I think I ought rather to send you a last farewell.

"I'll finish it off in the morning," decided Lieutenant Lukash, and went to bed.

When Baloun saw that the lieutenant was sound asleep, he again began to meddle and ferret about all over the place. He opened the officer's trunk and was nibbling at a stick of chocolate, when the lieutenant stirred in his sleep. He started up in alarm and hastily put the chocolate back. For a while he lay low and then he stealthily peeped at what the lieutenant had been writing. He read it through and was deeply touched, especially by the reference to a last farewell. He lay down on his straw mattress by the doorway; amid thoughts of home and the slaughter of pigs there he dropped off into an uneasy sleep. He dreamt that he was haled before a court-martial for taking a piece of meat from the cook house. And then he saw himself hanging on one of the lime trees in the avenue which led through the camp at B ruck-on-the-Leitha.

When Schweik woke up with the awakening morning which arrived with the smell of coffee essence boiling in all the company cook houses, he mechanically hung up the receiver, as if he had just finished talking on the telephone, and started off on a short morning stroll through the office. He hummed a tune to himself with such gusto that Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek woke up and inquired what time it was.

"They sounded the reveille a little while ago."

"Then I won't get up till I've had some coffee," decided the quartermaster-sergeant, who always had plenty of time for everything. "Besides, they're sure to chivvy us about again on some stunt or other, that'll only be a wash-out in the end, like they did yesterday with those tinned rations."

Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek yawned and asked whether he had been very talkative when he came home.

"Well, you was sort of flighty," said Schweik. "You kept on saying something about shapes, and that a shape ain't a shape, and what ain't a shape is a shape and this shape ain't a shape. But you soon got over that and began to snore so loud that it sounded as if somebody was sawing a plank."

The telephone rang. The quartermaster-sergeant answered

it and the voice of Lieutenant Lukash became audible. He was asking what had happened about the tinned rations. Then the sound of expostulation was heard.

"They're not, sir, I assure you," Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek shouted into the telephone. "How could they be? It's all a lot of eyewash, sir. The commissariat's responsible for it. There wouldn't be any point in sending the men there, sir. I was going to telephone to you about it. Have I been in the canteen? Well, yes, sir, as a matter of fact, I did drop in there for a bit. No, sir, I'm quite sober. What's Schweik doing? He's here, sir. Shall I call him?"

"Schweik, you're wanted on the telephone," said the quartermaster-sergeant, and added in low tones :

"If he asks you what I was like when I got home, tell him I was O. K."

Schweik at the telephone :

"Beg to report, sir, this is Schweik."

"Look here, Schweik, what's all this about those tinned rations? Is it all right?"

"No, sir, there ain't a trace of 'em."

"Now then, Schweik, I want you to report yourself to me every morning as long as we're in camp. And you'll keep near me until we start. What were you doing last night?"

"I was at the telephone all night, sir."

"Any news?"

"Yes, sir."

"Now, then, Schweik, don't start talking twaddle. Did anyone report anything of any importance?"

"Yes, sir, but not till nine o'clock. And I didn't want to disturb you, sir. Far from it."

"Well, for God's sake, tell me what it was."

"A message, sir."

"Eh, what's that?"

"I've got it written down, sir. 'Receive a message. Who's there? Got it? Read it.' Something like that, sir."

"Good God, Schweik, you're a devil of a nuisance. Tell me what the message was, or I'll give you a damned good hiding when I get at you. Now then, what is it?"

"Another
Besprechung
with the colonel, sir, this morning at nine o'clock. I was going to wake you up in the night, but then I changed my mind."

"I should think so, too. You'd better not have the cheek tc drag me out of bed when the morning'll do. Another
Besprechung!
To hell with it ! Call Vanek to the telephone."

Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek at the telephone :

"Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek, sir."

"Vanek, find me another batman at once. That hound Baloun has eaten up all my chocolate. Are you to tie him up? No ; we'll send him to the medical corps. A hefty chap like that ought to be all right for carrying wounded out of the front-line trenches. I'll send him to you now. Get that settled in the regimental office and then go back to your company at once. Do you think we're starting soon?"

"There's no hurry, sir. When the ninth draft was supposed to start, they kept us messing about for four days. It was just the same with the eighth. With the tenth it was a bit better. In the morning we had our kit all ready, at twelve o'clock we got orders to start, and we were off in the evening. The only thing was that afterward they chased us all over Hungary and didn't know which hole on which front we were to be stuffed into."

Since Lieutenant Lukash had been commanding the eleventh draft, he had spent much time in endeavouring to reconcile conflicting opinions. He therefore said :

"Yes, possibly, quite so, quite. So you don't think we're starting to-day? We've got a
Besprechung
with the colonel at nine o'clock. By the way, get me a list—Let's see, now, a list of what? Oh, yes, a list of the N. C. O.'s with their length of service. Then the company rations. A list of men according to nationality? Yes, that as well. But before you do anything else, send me a new batman. What's Ensign Pleschner doing to-day? Inspecting the men's kit? Accounts? I'll come and sign them after the rations have been served out. Don't let anybody go into the town. What about the camp canteen? For an hour after rations. Call Schweik."

"Schweik, you'll stay at the telephone until further notice."

"Beg to report, sir, I haven't drunk any coffee yet."

"Then go and fetch your coffee and stay there in the office till I call you. Do you know what an orderly is?"

"A chap who runs about, sir."

"Well, you've got to stop where you are till I call you. Tell Vanek he's got to find me another batman. Schweik—hallo! where are you?"

"Here, sir. They've just brought my coffee."

"Schweik—hallo!"

"I can hear, sir. My coffee's quite cold."

"You've got a good idea of what a batman is. Just you look him over and then let me know what sort of a chap he is. Hang up the receiver."

As Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek sat sipping his black coffee, into which he had poured rum from a bottle labelled "Ink" (for the sake of caution), he looked at Schweik and said :

"This lieutenant of ours didn't half yell into the telephone. I understood every word. You must know him pretty well by now, I should think."

"You bet I do," replied Schweik. "Why, we're as thick as thieves. Oh, yes, we been through a lot together. They've tried over and over again to separate us, but we've always managed to get together again. He relies on me for every blessed thing. Sometimes I can't help wondering why. You heard him just now telling me to remind you again to find him a new batman, and I've got to look him over and make a report on him. Lieutenant Lukash is particular about what sort of batman he gets."

In summoning another conference of the officers, Colonel Schroder was prompted by his great desire to hear himself orate. Besides this, some decision had to be reached on the subject of Marek, the volunteer officer who had refused to clean the latrines and who had therefore been sent by Colonel Schroder to a divisional court-martial.