The Good Soldier Svejk (51 page)

"What the hell do we care about that?" said Captain Sagner, with an expression of contempt and repugnance. "There can be no doubt that the system which I have been explaining to you is not only one of the best, but also quite safe against discovery. It'll dish all the counter-espionage departments of the enemy staff. They'll never be able to read our ciphers. Our system's quite unique. It's not based on any previous method."

The assiduous Biegler coughed meaningly.

"I should like to mention Kerickhoff's book on military ciphers," he began. "You can order it from the publishers of the
Military Encyclopœdia.
It contains a detailed description of the system I mentioned to you just now. It was invented by Colonel Kircher, who served under Napoleon I in the Saxon army. Kircher's code is based upon words and it was perfected by Lieutenant Fleissner in his
Handbook of Military Cryptography,
which can be obtained from the publishers to the Military

Academy in Wiener-Neustadt. Just one moment, sir -" Cadet

Biegler dived into his attaché case and produced the book he had been talking about. He continued :

"Fleissner quotes the same example as the one that's been given us. Here you are, you can see for yourselves :

"Telegram : On hill 228 direct machine-gun fire to the left. Key :
The Sins of the Fathers
by Ludwig Ganghofer, p. 161, Vol. II.

"And here you are again : 'Cipher : Thing—with—us—that— we—look—in—the—promised—which,' and so forth. Exactly as we were told just now."

There was no disputing this. The wretched Biegler was right. One of the generals on the staff had considerably lightened his labours. He had discovered Fleissner's book on military ciphers, and the thing was done.

While all this was being revealed, Lieutenant Lukash might have been observed grappling with a curious mental agitation. He was biting his lip, was about to say something, but in the end, when he did speak, he changed his mind and spoke about something else.

"There's no need to take it so seriously," he remarked in an oddly embarrassed tone. "While we were stationed at Bruck several changes were made in the system of coding telegrams. And before we leave for the front there'll be a fresh lot introduced, but personally I don't think we'll have much time at the front for solving conundrums. Why, before any of us could work out the meaning of a code message like that we, the company, the battalion and the brigade would all be blown to smithereens. It's got no practical value."

Captain Sagner assented very reluctantly.

"In actual practice," he admitted, "as far as my experience on the Serbian front goes, nobody had any time for solving ciphers. 1 don't say that codes had no value while we were in the trenches for any length of time. And, of course, they did change the systems."

Captain Sagner withdrew along the whole line of his argument:

"One of the chief reasons why the staffs at the front are using codes less and less is because our field telephones don't work properly, and especially during artillery fire make it difficult to distinguish the various syllables of words. You can simply hear nothing, and that causes a hell of a muddle."

He paused.

"Muddle is the worst thing that can happen in the field, gentlemen," he added in oracular tones.

"Presently," he continued, after a fresh interval, "we shall be at Rabb, gentlemen. Each man will be served out with five ounces of Hungarian salami. Half an hour's rest."

He looked at the time table.

"We leave at 4:12. Everybody must be in the train by 3:58. Alight by companies, beginning with No. 11. Rations to be issued one platoon at a time, from store No. 6. Officer in charge of issue : Cadet Biegler."

Everyone looked at Cadet Biegler, as much as to say :

"Now you're for it, you young whippersnapper."

But the assiduous Cadet Biegler was already extracting from his attaché case a sheet of paper and a ruler, drew lines on the paper to correspond with the number of squads, and asked the commander of each squad how many men there were in it, a detail which none of them knew with any exactitude. They could supply Biegler only with figures based upon vague jottings in their notebooks.

Meanwhile Captain Sagner began in sheer desperation to read the wretched
Sins of the Fathers,
and when the train stopped at Raab, he closed the book with a jerk and remarked :

"This chap Ganghofer doesn't write badly."

Lieutenant Lukash was the first to dash out of the staff-carriage. He proceeded to the truck in which Schweik was installed.

"Schweik, come here," he said. "Stop all your idiotic jabber and come and explain something to me."

"Delighted, sir."

Lieutenant Lukash led Schweik away, and the glance which he bestowed upon him was highly suspicious.

In the course of Captain Sagner's lecture, which had ended in such a fiasco, Lieutenant Lukash had been developing a certain ability as a detective. This was not unduly difficult, for on the day before they started, Schweik had announced to Lieutenant Lukash :

"There's some books for the officers, sir, up at battalion headquarters. I fetched them from the regimental office."

And so when they had crossed the second set of rails, Lieutenant Lukash said point-blank :

"Schweik, I want to know some more about those books you mentioned to me yesterday."

"Beg to report, sir, that's a very long story, and it always seems to sort of upset you, sir, when I tell you all the ins and outs of anything. Like when you was going to give me such a smack in the eye that time when you tore up the circular about war loan, and I was telling you how I once read in a book that in olden times, when a war was on, people had to pay a tax on windows, so much for each window, and then so much on geese

too------"

"We'll never get any further at this rate," said Lieutenant Lukash. He now proceeded with the cross-examination, after deciding that the strictly confidential part of the business would have to be kept entirely in the background, as otherwise that ruffian of a Schweik would only make further capital out of it. He therefore asked simply :

"Do you know Ganghofer?"

"Who's he?" enquired Schweik with interest.

"A German author, you blithering booby," replied Lieutenant Lukash.

"Lord bless you, sir," said Schweik with the expression of a martyr, "I don't know no German author personally, as you might say. I once knew a Czech author personally, a chap named Ladislav Hajek. He used to write for a paper called
The Animal World
and once I palmed off a scraggy sort of tike on him for a good bred Pomeranian. He was a cheerful gentleman, he was, and a good sort, too. He once went to a pub and read a lot of his stories there. They were very sad stories and they made everybody laugh, and then he started crying and stood us drinks all around and------"

"Look here," interposed Lieutenant Lukash, "drop all that. That's not what I asked you about. All I wanted to know was whether you had noticed whether those books you mentioned to me were by Ganghofer."

"Those books I took from the regimental office to battalion headquarters?" asked Schweik. "Oh, yes, they were written by

the fellow that you wanted to know whether I knew or not. I got a message by telephone direct from the regimental office. You see, sir, it was like this : They wanted to send these here books to the battalion office, but everyone there was away, orderly officers and all, because they had to be in the canteen when they're off to the front and nobody knows whether they'll ever get another chance of going to the canteen. Well, sir, there they all were, drinking for all they was worth, and I couldn't get hold of any of them by telephone, and as you told me to stay at the telephone until Chodounsky was sent to relieve me, I stuck to my post and waited till it was my turn. The regimental office kept kicking up a row because they couldn't get any answer and so they couldn't pass on the message that the draft office was to fetch some books for the officers of the whole company. Well, sir, you told me that things have got to be done promptly in wartime, so I telephoned to the regimental office and said I'd fetch those books myself and take them to the battalion office. There was a regular sackful of 'em and I had quite a job to get them into the company office. Then I had a look at those books, and that gave me an idea. You see, the quartermaster-sergeant in the regimental office told me that according to what the message said, the battalion office knew which volume of these books was wanted, Because, you see, sir, this book was in two volumes. One volume separate and another volume separate. Well, sir, talk about laugh ! I never laughed so much in all my life. Reading ain't exactly in my line, as you might say, but I never heard of anyone starting to read the second volume of a book before the first. Anyway, the quartermaster-sergeant says to me : 'There's the first volume and there's the second. The officers know which volume they've got to read.' So I thinks to myself, why, they must be all dotty, because if anyone's going to read a book like this
Sins of the Fathers,
or whatever it is, from the beginning, they got to start with the first volume, because we don't read books backward like what the Jews do. So then I telephoned to you, sir, when you got back from the club, and I reported about those books and asked you whether, being wartime, things was all topsy-turvey like, and books had got to be read backward, the second volume first and the first volume afterward. And you

told me I was a silly chump, if I didn't even know that the Lord's Prayer began with 'Our Father' and wound up with 'Amen.'

"Are you feeling queer, sir?" asked Schweik with concern, when Lieutenant Lukash turned pale and clutched at the step of a locomotive tender. His countenance, white as a sheet, showed no trace of wrath. But there was something of sheer despair in his expression.

"No, no, Schweik, that's all right. Get on with your story."

"Well, sir, as I was saying," continued Schweik in honeyed tones, "that's what I thought, too. Once I bought one of these thrillers all about the bloodthirsty bandit of the Bakony Forest and the first part was missing, so I had to guess how it started, so you see even in a tale like that, all about a bloodthirsty bandit, you can't do without the beginning. So it didn't take me long to see that there was no need for the officers to start reading Volume I afterward. What with one thing and another, it struck me that there was something very funny about those books. I knew that officers don't do much reading, anyway, and now with the war on and all that------"

"Oh, stop talking twaddle, Schweik," groaned Lieutenant Lukash.

"Well, sir, I at once telephoned to ask you whether you wanted the two volumes at one go, and you told me, the same as you did just now, to stop talking twaddle and did I think that they were going to lug a lot of extra books about with them. So I thought that if you felt that way about it, the other officers would, too. And then I asked our quartermaster-sergeant, Vanek, because he's had some experience of the front. And he said that the officers seemed to think that the war was a sort of damned picnic, taking a regular library with them as if they was going away for their summer holidays. He said there was no time for reading, because they was always on the run. Well, after that, I thought I'd better get your opinion again, so I telephoned to ask you what I was to do about those books and you said that once I got something into my silly fat head, I never let go of it until I got a smack across the jaw. So then, sir, I only took the first volume of this tale to the battalion office and I left the rest in our company office.. My idea was that when the officers have read the first

volume, they could have the second volume served out to them, like in a lending library, but suddenly the order came that we was leaving, and a message was sent all over the battalion that the rest of the books was to go into the regimental stores."

Schweik paused, and then continued :

"They've got all sorts of stuff in those stores, sir. Why, there's the top hat belonging to the choir master at Budejovice, the one he wore when he joined the regiment."

"Look here, Schweik," said Lieutenant Lukash, with a deep sigh, "let me tell you that you can't realize the amount of harm you've done. I'm sick of calling you an idiot. In fact, what you are is beyond words. If I call you an idiot, it's downright flattery, that's what it is. What you've just done is so appalling that the worst offences you've perpetrated since I've known you are angelic deeds in comparison. If you only knew, Schweik, what you've done ! But you'll never realize it. And if at any time anything should be said about those books, don't you dare to breathe a word about what I said to you when I telephoned with regard to the second volume. If anything's ever said about the first and second volumes and how the mistake arose, you take no notice. You've heard nothing, you know nothing, you can remember nothing. And if you get me mixed up in it, why I'll------"

Lieutenant Lukash paused, as if shaken by throes of fever, and Scbweik took advantage of this brief silence to ask innocently :

"Beg to report, sir, but I don't see why I should never know what I've done wrong. I hope you don't mind me saying so, sir, but it's only because I could avoid doing it another time. They do say that we learn by our mistakes, just like a man I used to know, Adamec his name was, and he used to work in an iron foundry, and one day he drank some spirits of salt by mistake, and------"