The Good Soldier Svejk (12 page)

¹
"Take aim! Fire!"

In the detention barracks a trinity, comprising Staff-Warder Slavik, Captain Linhart and Sergeant-Maj or Repa, nicknamed "the hangman," were already carrying out their duties, and nobody knows how many they beat to death in solitary confinement. On receiving Schweik, Staff-Warder Slavik cast at him a glance of mute reproach, as much as to say :

"So your reputation's damaged, is it? Is that why you've joined us? Well, my lad, we'll make your stay here a happy one, the same as we do to all who fall into our hands."

And in order to lend emphasis to this figure of speech, he thrust a muscular and beefy fist under Schweik's nose, saying :

"Sniff at that, you damned swab."

Schweik sniffed and remarked :

"I shouldn't like a bash in the nose with that; it smells of graveyards."

This calm, thoughtful remark rather pleased the staff-warder.

"Ha," he said, prodding Schweik in the stomach, "stand up straight. What's that you've got in your pockets? If it's cigarettes, you can leave 'em here. And hand over your money so's they can't steal it. Is that all you've got? Now then, no nonsense. Don't tell any lies or you'll get it in the neck."

"Where are we to put him?" inquired Sergeant-Major Repa.

"We'll shove him in Number 16," decided the staff-warder, "among the ones in their underclothes. Can't you see that Captain Linhart's marked his papers,
Streng behiiten, beobachten?
²
Oh, yes," he remarked solemnly to Schweik, "riffraff have got to be treated like riffraff. If anybody raises Cain, why, off he goes into solitary confinement and once he's there we smash all his ribs and leave him till he pops off. We're entitled to do that. What did we do with that butcher, Repa?"

"Oh, he gave us a lot of trouble, sir," replied Sergeant-Major Repa, dreamily. "He was a tough 'un and no mistake. I must have been trampling on him for more than five minutes before his ribs began to crack and blood came out of his mouth. And he lived for another ten days after that. Oh, he was a regular terror."

²
"To be kept under strict watch and observation.

"So you see, you swab, how we manage things here when anyone starts any nonsense or tries to do a bunk," Staff-Warder Slavik concluded his pedagogical discourse. "Why, it's practically suicide and that's punished just the same here. And God help you, you scabby ape you, if you take it into your head to complain of anything at inspection time. When there's an inspection on, and they ask you if there are any complaints, you've got to stand at attention, you stinking brute, salute and answer, 'I beg to report, sir, no complaints, and I'm quite satisfied.' Now, you packet of muck, repeat what I said."

"Beg to report, sir, no complaints and I'm quite satisfied," repeated Schweik with such a charming expression on his face that the staff-warder was misled and took it for a sign of frankness and honesty.

"Now take everything off except your underclothes and go to Number 16," he said in quite civil tones, without adding such phrases as damned swab, packet of muck, or stinking brute, as he usually did.

In Number 16 Schweik encountered twenty men in their underclothing. They were the ones whose papers were marked:
"Streng behuten, beobachten!",
and who were now being looked after very carefully to prevent them from escaping.

If their underclothing had been clean and if there had been no bars on the windows, you might have supposed at a first glance that you were in the dressing room of some bathing establishment.

Sergeant-Major Repa handed Schweik over to the "cell-manager," a hairy fellow in an unbuttoned shirt. He inscribed Schweik's name on a piece of paper hanging on the wall, and said to him :

"To-morrow there's a show on. We're going to be taken to chapel to hear a sermon. All of us chaps in underclothes, we have to stand just under the pulpit. It won't half make you laugh."

As in all prisons and penitentiaries, the chapel was in high favour among the inmates of the detention barracks. They were not concerned about the possibility that the enforced attendance at chapel might bring them nearer to God, or that they might become better informed about morality. No such nonsense as that

entered their heads. What the divine service and the sermon did offer was a pleasant distraction from the boredom of the detention barracks. They were not concerned about being nearer to God, but about the hope of discovering the stump of a discarded cigar or cigarette on their way along the corridors and across the courtyard. God was thrust completely into the background by a small fag-end drifting about hopelessly in a spittoon or somewhere on the dusty floor. This tiny reeking object triumphed over God and the salvation of the soul.

And then too, the sermon itself, what a treat, what fun. Otto Katz, the chaplain, was such a jolly fellow. His sermons were so very attractive and droll, so refreshing amid the boredom of the detention barracks. He could prate so entertainingly about the infinite grace of God, and uplift the vile captives, the men without honour. He could hurl such delightful terms of abuse from the pulpit. He could bellow his
"Ita missa est"
so gorgeously from the altar, officiate with such utter originality, playing ducks and drakes with Holy Mass. When he was well in his cups, he could devise entirely new prayers, a liturgy of his own which had never existed before.

Oh, and it was too funny for words when he sometimes slipped and fell over with the chalice, the holy sacrament or the missal in his hand, whereupon he would loudly accuse the ministrant from the gang of convicts of having deliberately tripped him up, and would there and then hand out a dose of solitary confinement or a spell in irons. And the recipient thoroughly enjoyed it, for it was all part of the frolics in the prison chapel.

Otto, the most perfect of military chaplains, was a Jew. He had a very chequered past. He had studied in a business college, and there he acquired a familiarity with bills of exchange and the law appertaining to them which enabled him within a year to steer the firm of Katz & Company into such a glorious and successful bankruptcy that old Mr. Katz departed to North America, after arranging a settlement with his creditors, unbeknown to them and unbeknown also to his partner, who proceeded to the Argentine.

So when young Otto Katz had distinterestedly bestowed the firm of Katz & Company upon North and South America, he was

in the position of a man who has not where to lay his head. He therefore joined the army.

Before this, however, he did an exceedingly noble thing. He had himself baptized. He applied to Christ for help in his career. He applied to him absolutely confident that he was striking a business bargain with the Son of God. He successfully qualified for a commission, and Otto Katz, the new-fledged Christian, remained in the army. At first he thought he was going to make splendid progress, but one day he got drunk and took Holy Orders.

He never prepared his sermons, and everybody looked forward to hearing them. It was a solemn moment when the occupants of Number 16 were led in their underclothes into chapel. Some of them, upon whom fortune had smiled, were chewing the cigarette-ends which they had found on the way to chapel, because, being without pockets, they had nowhere to keep them. Around them stood the rest of the prisoners and they gazed with relish at the twenty men in underclothing beneath the pulpit, into which the chaplain now climbed, clanking his spurs.

"Habt Acht!"
³
he shouted, "let us pray, and now all together after me. And you at the back there, you hog, don't blow your nose in your hand. You're in the Temple of the Lord, and you'll be for it, mark my words. You haven't forgotten the Lord's Prayer yet, have you, you bandits? Well, let's have a shot at it. Ah, I knew it wouldn't come off. Lord's Prayer, indeed; two cuts from the joint with veg., have a regular blow-out, with a snooze to follow, pick your noses and be hanged to the Lord God, that's more in your line, isn't it?"

He stared down from the pulpit at the twenty bright angels in underclothing, who, like all the rest, were thoroughly enjoying themselves. At the back they were playing put and take.

"This is a bit of all right," whispered Schweik to his neighbour, who was suspected of having, for three crowns, chopped off all his comrade's fingers with an axe, to get him out of the army.

"You wait a bit," was the answer. "He's properly oiled again to-day. He's going to jaw about the thorny path of sin."
³
"Attention !"

True enough, the chaplain was in an excellent mood that day. Without knowing why he was doing it, he kept leaning over the side of the pulpit and was within an ace of losing his balance.

"I'm in favour of shooting the lot of you. You pack of rotters," he continued. "You won't turn to Christ and you prefer to tread the thorny path of sin."

"I told you it was coming. He's properly oiled," whispered Schweik's neighbour gleefully.

"The thorny path of sin, you thick-headed louts, is the path of struggle against vice. You are prodigal sons, who prefer to loll about in solitary confinement than return to your Father. But fix your gaze further and upward unto the heights of heaven, and you will be victorious and will harbour peace in your souls, you lousy crew. I'd be glad if that man would stop snorting at the back there. He's not a horse and he's not in a stable—he's in the Temple of the Lord. Let me draw your attention to that, my beloved hearers. Now then, where was I?
Ja, ilber den Seelen-frieden, sehr gut.
⁴
Bear in mind, you brutes, that you are human beings and that you must see through a glass darkly into distant space and know that all lasts here only for a time, but God abideth for evermore.
Sehr gut, nicht wahr, meine Herren?
⁵
I ought to pray for you day and night, asking merciful God, you brainless louts, to pour out His soul into your cold hearts and wash away your sins with His holy mercy, that you may be His for evermore and that he may love you always, you thugs. But that's where you're mistaken. I'm not going to lead you into paradise." The chaplain hiccoughed. "I won't lift a finger for you," he continued obstinately. "I wouldn't dream of such a thing, because you are incorrigible blackguards. The goodness of the Lord will not guide you upon your ways, the spirit of God's love will not pervade you, because the Lord wouldn't dream of worrying his head about such a gang of rotters. Do you hear me, you down there, yes, you in your underclothes?"

The twenty men in underclothes looked up and said, as with one voice :

"Beg to report, sir, we hear you."

⁴
"Yes, about the peace of the soul, very good."
⁵
"Very good, gentlemen, eh?"

"It's not enough just to hear," the chaplain continued his sermon, "dark is the cloud of life in which the smile of God will not remove your woe, you brainless louts, for God's goodness likewise has its limits, and you hog over there, don't you belch, or I'll have you put away till you're black in the face. And you down there, don't run away with the idea that you're in a taproom. God is most merciful, but only to decent people and not to the scum of the earth who don't follow His rules and regulations. That's what I wanted to tell you. You don't know how to say your prayers, and you think you go to chapel to have some fun, as if it was a music hall or a cinema. And I'm going to knock the idea out of your heads that I'm here to amuse you and give you a good time. I'll shove each and every one of you into solitary confinement, that's what I'll do, you blackguards. Here am I wasting my time with you, and I can see it's all no use. Why, if the field marshal himself was here, or the archbishop, you wouldn't care a damn. You wouldn't turn to God. All the same, one of these days you'll remember me and then you'll realize that I was trying to do you good."

Among the twenty in underclothes a sob was heard. It was Schweik who had burst into tears.

The chaplain looked down. There stood Schweik wiping his eyes with his fist. Around him were signs of gleeful appreciation.

The chaplain, pointing to Schweik, went on :

"Let each of you take an example from this man. What is he doing? He's crying. Don't cry, I tell you, don't cry. You want to become a better man. That's not such an easy job, my lad. You're crying now, but when you get back to your cell, you'll be just as big a blackguard as you were before. You'll have to ponder a lot more on the infinite grace and mercy of God ; you'll have to make a great effort before your sinful soul is likely to find the right path in this world upon which it should proceed. To-day with our own eyes we see a man here moved to tears in his desire for a change of heart, and what are the rest of you doing? Nothing at all. There's a man chewing something as if his parents had brought him up to chew the cud and another fellow over there is searching his shirt for fleas, and in the Temple of the Lord, too. Can't you do all your scratching at home? Must you

leave it till you're at Divine Service, of all places? And you're very slack about everything, too, Staff-Warder Slavik. You're all soldiers and not a pack of damn silly civilians. So you ought to behave in a soldierly manner, even though you are in church. Damn it all, get busy seeking God, and look for fleas at home. That's all I've got to say, you loafers, and I want you to behave properly at Mass, and not like the last time when some fellows at the back were swapping government linen for grub."

The chaplain descended from the pulpit and entered the sacristy, followed by the staff-warder. After a while the staff-warder made his appearance, came straight up to Schweik, removed him from the bevy of men in underclothes and led him away into the sacristy.