The Good Soldier Svejk (61 page)

"That's quite right, and if the sergeant wants us to have an even number, perhaps he wouldn't mind falling out, and then we shan't have any rumpus about it."

Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek then withdrew his suggestion and made a new and generous proposal by which Jurajda, the donor, was to be allowed to have two swigs at the bottle, but this

aroused a storm of opposition, because Vanek had already had one drink, having sampled the brandy when the bottle was first opened.

Finally they adopted the suggestion of the volunteer officer that they should drink in alphabetical order, after which they played cards, and when the game was over, Chodounsky had lost six months' pay in advance. He was very upset about it and the volunteer officer, to whom he owed the money, demanded a series of I. O. U.'s from him, so that he could receive Chodounsky's pay to square the debt.

"Don't you worry, Chodounsky," Schweik consoled him. "If you have any luck, you'll go west in the first dust-up we have, and then your I. O. U.'s will be worth damn-all to Marek. Sign for him and chance it."

The supposition that he might go west was extremely distasteful to Chodounsky, and he objected with emphasis.

"There's no likelihood of me going west, because I'm a telephone operator, and they're always in bomb-proof shelters."

The volunteer officer, however, expressed the view that telephone operators, on the contrary, are exposed to great danger and it was against them that the enemy artillery was chiefly directed. No telephone operator, he said, was safe in his bomb-prooff shelter. Even if he was at a depth of thirty feet underground, the enemy artillery would spot him just the same. The telephone operators were being wiped out wholesale, and the best proof of it was that when they had left Bruck, the twenty-eighth course for telephone operators was just being started.

Chodounsky looked very down in the mouth, and seeing his woebegone expression, Schweik said to him affably :

"You've been properly taken in."

And the volunteer officer said :

"Let's see what I've got you down for in my notes on the history of the battalion. Ah, here we are : 'Chodounsky, telephone operator, buried by a mine, telephoned from his living tomb to the staff : "I die congratulating my battalion on its victory." ' "

"You ought to be satisfied with that," said Schweik. "What more do you want? Do you remember that telephone operator on

the
Titanic
who kept telephoning into the kitchen while the boat was sinking and asking them when lunch would be ready?"

"Well, it's all the same to me," said the volunteer officer. "If you like, I'll make Chodounsky say, as he breathes his last: 'Give
my best wishes to the Iron Brigade.' "

4.

Quick March.

Sanok turned out to be the brigade headquarters of the "Iron Brigade," to which the battalion of the 91st regiment belonged by virtue of its origins. Although the railway communication was unbroken from Sanok to Lemberg and northward as far as the frontier, it was a mystery why the staff of the eastern sector had arranged for the Iron Brigade with its staff to concentrate the draft battalions for a hundred miles behind the line, when at this particular period the front extended from Brody on the Bug and along the river northwards toward Sokol.

This very interesting strategic problem was solved in a remarkably simple manner when Captain Sagner went to the

brigade headquarters at Sanok to report the arrival of the draft there.

The orderly officer was the brigade adjutant, a Captain Tayerle.

"I can't make out," said Captain Tayerle, "why you haven't been given definite instructions. It's all settled which way you've got to go, and, of course, you ought to have notified us beforehand about it. According to the arrangements made by the general staff, you've arrived two days too soon."

Captain Sagner's face flushed, but it never occurred to him to say anything about all the cipher telegrams which he had been receiving throughout the journey.

"I can't make it out," repeated Captain Tayerle, and mused somewhat. "By the way," he then continued, "are you a regular officer? You are? That's quite a different matter. A chap doesn't know where he is nowadays. We've had so many of these dud lieutenants passing through here. When we were withdrawing from Limanowa and Kraśnik, all these temporary gentlemen got the wind up, as soon as they set eyes on a Cossack patrol. We staff chaps can't stand all those hangers-on. They put on too much side just because they've passed some damn fool examination. They're a lot of bloody outsiders, that's what they are."

Captain Tayerle spat with contempt, and then confidentially patted Captain Sagner on the shoulder.

"You're staying here for about a couple of days. I'll show you round the town. We've got a few tasty bits of skirt here, I can tell you. There's a general's daughter, some hot baby she is. We all dress up in women's togs, and you ought to see the stunts she does then. She's a skinny piece, nothing much to look at, but, by Jove, she knows a thing or two. She's a saucy piece of goods. But you'll see for yourself.

"Excuse me," he broke off. "I must go out and spew. That's the third time to-day."

When he returned, he informed Captain Sagner, in order to show him what a jolly time they were having there, that it was the after-effects of the previous evening's spree, at which the pioneer section had done their bit.

Captain Sagner soon became acquainted with the commander

of this section. A lanky fellow in uniform with three gold stars dashed into the office, and without observing the presence of Captain Sagner, he addressed Captain Tayerle thus :

"Hallo, you dirty dog, what are you doing here? You made a fine old mess of the countess last night."

He sat down on a chair and flicking his thin bamboo cane across his calves, he continued, with a broad grin :

"The last thing I remember was you spewing into her lap."

"Yes," assented Captain Tayerle, "we had a jolly time last night."

He then introduced Captain Sagner to the officer with the bamboo cane, and they all three adjourned to the café. When they had installed themselves there, Captain Tayerle ordered a bottle of brandy and called for any of the girls who were disengaged to be sent in. It now turned out that the café was really a disorderly house, and as none of the girls were disengaged, Captain Tayerle flew into a temper and started bullying the manageress. He wanted to know who was with Miss Ella. When he was told that it was a lieutenant, he blustered more than ever.

The lieutenant who was with Miss Ella was none other than Lieutenant Dub, who, as soon as the draft had been billeted in the local grammar school, had called together his squad and made a long speech to them, particularly drawing attention to the fact that all along their line of retreat the Russians had left behind them brothels with diseased occupants, for the purpose of striking a treacherous blow at the well-being of the Austrian army. He therefore warned the troops against visiting such establishments. He added that he proposed to visit these places personally to see whether his orders were being carried out. They were now, he said, in the battle zone, and anyone caught infringing these regulations would be tried by court-martial.

So Lieutenant Dub had gone forth to see personally whether his orders were being obeyed, and as a starting point for his tour of inspection he had selected the sofa in Miss Ella's apartment, on the second floor of what was known as the "Municipal Café," and lolling in his pants upon this bug-infested sofa, he was having a thoroughly good time. While Miss Ella was telling him the tragic story of her life, the usual yarn about how her

father had been a factory owner and her mother a teacher at a young ladies' college at Budapest, and how she had been driven to her present life by an unhappy love affair, Lieutenant Dub was helping himself freely to a bottle of gin which, together with two glasses, stood on a small table within reach. By the time the bottle was half empty, Lieutenant Dub was quite fuddled, and thought that Miss Ella was Kunert, his orderly. He kept on addressing her in bullying tones :

"Now then, Kunert, you brute, wait till you get to know me from the bad side -"

Meanwhile, Captain Sagner had returned to his battalion. New divisional orders had been received, and it now became necessary to decide exactly where the 91st regiment was to go, because according to the new arrangements its original route was to be followed by the draft battalion of the 102nd regiment. It was all very complicated. The Russians were retreating very rapidly in the northeastern corner of Galicia, so that a number of Austrian units were mingling there, and, in places, units of the German army were also being thrust in like wedges, while the resulting chaos was supplemented by the arrival of new draft battalions and other military formations at the front. The same thing was happening in sectors which were some distance behind the front, as here in Sanok, where a number of German troops, the reserves of the Hanoverian division, had suddenly arrived. Their commander was a colonel of such hideous aspect that the brigadier was quite upset by the sight of him. The colonel of the Hanoverian reserves produced the arrangements of his staff, by which his troops were to be billeted in the local grammar school, where the men of the 91st regiment had already taken up their quarters. And for his staff he demanded the premises of the local branch of the Cracow Bank, which was occupied by the brigade headquarters staff.

The brigadier got into direct communication with divisional headquarters, to whom he gave an account of the situation. The cantankerous Hanoverian then had a talk to divisional headquarters, and the consequence was that the brigade received the following orders :

"The brigade will evacuate the town at 6 p. m. and will pro-

ceed in the direction Turowa-Wolsko-Liskowiec-Starasól-Sambor, where further orders will be received. The brigade will be accompanied by the draft battalion of the 91st regiment, as escort, thus : The advance guard will leave at 5:30 p. m. in the direction of Turowa, with a distance of 2 miles between the southern and northern protecting flank. The rear guard will leave at 6:15 p. m."

So a great hubbub arose in the grammar school. An officers' conference was to be held, but was delayed by the absence of Lieutenant Dub. Schweik was detailed to go and look for him.

"I hope," said Lieutenant Lukash to Schweik, "that you won't have any trouble in finding him. You two don't seem to hit it off together, somehow."

"Beg to report, sir," said Schweik. "I'd like to have my orders in writing. Then there won't be any mistake, and, as you say, sir, we don't seem to hit it off together."

While Lieutenant Lukash was jotting down on a leaf torn from his notebook a few words to the effect that Lieutenant Dub was to proceed immediately to the grammar school for the conference, Schweik continued :

"Yes, sir, you can safely leave it to me, like you always can. I'll find him all right, because the troops have been told that brothels are out of bounds, and he's sure to be in one to make sure that none of the chaps in his company are anxious for a court-martial, which is what he generally threatens them with. He told his company himself that he was going to search every blessed brothel in the town, and if he copped anyone, they'd get to know him from his bad side and they'd be sorry for it. And, as a matter of fact, I know where he is. He's in that café, just opposite, because all his company watched him, to see where he'd go first."

The Municipal Café, the establishment to which Schweik referred, was divided into two parts. Visitors who did not wish to pass through the café itself could go round to the back of the premises, where an elderly lady who was basking in the sun would extend a polyglot invitation in German, Polish and Magyar to inspect the female attractions of the establishment. When Schweik entered, he came into contact with this worthy person,

who brazenly denied that they had any lieutenant among the visitors, whereupon Schweik thrust her aside and proceeded with dignified tread to mount the wooden staircase to the second floor. This caused the polyglot matron to set up a terrific hullabaloo, as a result of which, the proprietor of the establishment, an impoverished Polish aristocrat, appeared on the scene, rushed upstairs after Schweik and tugged at his tunic, shouting to him in German that only officers were allowed on the second floor, and that the place for private soldiers was down below. Schweik pointed out to him that he was paying a visit there in the interests of the whole army, and that he was looking for a lieutenant without whom the army could not proceed to the front. When the proprietor began to show signs of more obstreperous tactics, Schweik pushed him downstairs and went on his way to inspect the premises.