The Good Soldier Svejk (13 page)

The chaplain was sitting very much at his ease on a table, rolling a cigarette.

When Schweik entered, he said :

"Yes, you're the man I want. I've been thinking it over and I rather fancy I've seen through you, my lad. Do you get me? That's the first time anyone's ever shed tears here as long as I've been in this church."

He jumped down from the table and shaking Schweik by the shoulder, he shouted beneath a large, dismal picture of St. Francis of Sales :

"Now then, you blackguard, own up that you were only shamming."

And the effigy of St. Francis of Sales gazed interrogatively at Schweik. On the other side, from another picture, another martyr, whose posterior was just being sawn through by Roman soldiers, gazed distractedly at him.

"Beg to report, sir," said Schweik with great solemnity, staking everything on one card, "that I confess to God Almighty and to you, Reverend Father, that I was shamming. I saw that what your sermon needed was the reformed sinner whom you was vainly seeking. So I really wanted to do you a good turn and let you see there's still a few honest people left, besides having a bit of a lark to cheer myself up."

The chaplain looked searchingly at Schweik's artless countenance. A sunbeam frisked across the dismal picture of St. Fran-

cis of Sales and imparted a touch of warmth to the distracted martyr on the wall opposite.

"Here, I'm beginning to like you," said the chaplain, returning to his seat on the table, "what regiment do you belong to?" He began to hiccough.

"Beg to report, sir, I belong to the 91st regiment and yet I don't, if you follow me. To tell the honest truth, sir, I don't properly know how I stand."

"And what are you here for?" inquired the chaplain, continuing to hiccough.

From the chapel could be heard the strains of a harmonium which took the place of an organ. The musician, a teacher . imprisoned for desertion, was making the harmonium wail the most mournful hymn tunes. These strains blended with the hiccoughing of the chaplain to form a new Doric mode.

"Beg to report, sir, I really don't know why I'm here and why I don't complain about it. It's just my bad luck. I always look at everything in a good light, and then I always get the worst of it, like that martyr there in the picture."

The chaplain looked at the picture, smiled and said :

"Yes, I really like you. I must ask the Provost Marshal about you, but I can't stop here talking any longer now. I've got to get that Holy Mass off my chest.
Kehrt euchf!
⁶
Dismiss !"

When Schweik was back again among his fellow-worshippers in underclothes beneath the pulpit, they asked him what the chaplain had wanted him in the sacristy for, whereupon he replied very crisply and briefly :

"He's tight."

The chaplain's new performance, the Holy Mass, was followed by all with great attention and unconcealed approval. There was one man beneath the pulpit who laid a wager that the monstrance would fall out of the chaplain's hand. He wagered all his bread rations against two punches in the eye and he won his bet.

What filled the minds of all in chapel at the sight of the chaplain's ceremonials was not the mysticism of believers or the piety of the faithful. It was the same feeling that we have in a theatre

⁶
"About turn!"

when we are about to see a new play, the plot of which we do not know. Complications ensue and we eagerly wait to see how they will be disentangled.

With aesthetic gusto the congregation feasted their eyes upon the vestments which the chaplain had donned inside out and with a fervid appreciation they watched everything that was being done at the altar.

The red-haired ministrant, a deserter from the 28th regiment and a specialist in petty theft, was making an honest endeavour to extract from his memory the whole routine and technique of the Holy Mass. He acted not only as ministrant, but also as prompter to the chaplain, who with absolute aplomb mixed up whole sentences and blundered into the service for Advent, which, to everybody's delight, he began to sing. As he had no voice and no musical ear, the roof of the chapel began to reëcho with a squealing and grunting like a pigsty.

"He's well oiled to-day," those in front of the altar were saying with complete satisfaction and relish. "He isn't half canned. He's been out on the booze with the girls and no mistake."

And now for about the third time the chaplain could be heard chanting
"Ita missa est"
from the altar, like the war cry of Red Indians. It made the windows rattle. He then looked into the chalice once more to see whether any wine was left, whereupon with a gesture of annoyance he turned to his hearers :

"Well, now you can go home, you blackguards, that's the lot. I have noticed that you do not show the sort of piety you should, when you're in church before the countenance of the Holy of Holies, you worthless loafers. Face to face with God Almighty, you make no bones about laughing, coughing and sniggering, shuffling with your feet, even in my presence, although I here represent the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ and God the Father, you thickheaded louts. If that occurs again, I'll make things as hot for you as you deserve, and you'll discover that the hell I preached to you about not so long ago isn't the only one, but that there's a hell upon earth, and even if you save yourselves from the first one, I'll see you aren't saved from the other.
Abtreten!"
⁷

'"Dismiss !"

The chaplain departed to the sacristy, changed his clothes, poured some sacramental wine from a demijohn into a tankard, drank it up, and with the help of the red-headed ministrant mounted his horse which was tied up in the courtyard. But then he suddenly remembered Schweik, dismounted and went to the provost marshal's office.

Bernis, the provost marshal, was a man about town, an accomplished dancer and a thorough-paced bounder. His work bored him terribly. He was always losing documents containing particulars of charges, and so he had to invent new ones. He tried deserters for theft and thieves for desertion. He devised the most varied forms of hocus-pocus to convict men of crimes they had never dreamt of. He trumped up cases of lese majesty, and the imaginary incriminating evidence which he thus produced, he always assigned to somebody, the charge or evidence against whom had got lost in the inextricable muddle of official papers.

"Hallo," said the chaplain, shaking hands, "how goes it?"

"Rotten," replied Bernis, "they've got my papers into a mess and now it's the devil's own job to make head or tail of them. Yesterday I sent upstairs all the evidence against some chap who was charged with mutiny, and now they've sent it back because, according to them, he's not charged with mutiny, but with pinching jam."

Bernis spat with disgust.

"What about a game of cards?" asked the chaplain.

"I've blued every bean I had at cards. A day or two ago we were playing poker with that bald-headed colonel and he cleaned me right out. On the other hand, I've picked up a tasty bit of skirt. And what about your Holiness?"

"I need an orderly," said the chaplain. "I used to have an old chap, an accountant, but he was a smug brute. He kept on snuffling and praying to God to spare him, so I sent him off to the front. I've since heard that his particular crowd got cut to pieces. After that they sent me another fellow, but all he did was to go out boozing and charging it up on my account. He was a decent sort but he had sweaty feet, so I shoved him on a draft, too. Now to-day I've just discovered a chap who started crying just to rag me. That's the kind of fellow I want. His name's Schweik and

he's in Number 16. I'd like to know what he's there for and whether I couldn't wangle him out of it."

Bernis started looking for the documents relating to Schweik but, as usual, he could find nothing.

"Captain Linhart's got it, I expect," he said, after a long search. "God knows how all these papers manage to get lost here. I must have sent them to Linhart. I'll telephone to him at once. Hallo, Lieutenant Bernis speaking, sir. I say, do you happen to have any documents relating to a man called Schweik? . . . Schweik's papers must be in my hands? That's odd. ... I took them over from you? Most odd. He's in Number 16... . I know, sir, I've got the records of Number 16. But I thought that Schweik's papers might be kicking around somewhere in your office. . . . Pardon? I'm not to talk to you like that? Things don't kick around in your office? Hallo, hallo . . ."

Bernis sat down at his table and heatedly expressed his disapproval of the careless way in which investigations were carried out. He and Captain Linhart had been on bad terms for some time past, and in this they had been thoroughly consistent. If Bernis received a file belonging to Linhart, he stowed it away, the result being that nobody could ever get to the bottom of anything. Linhart did the same with the files belonging to Bernis. Also, they lost each other's enclosures.
⁸

(Schweik's documents were found among the court-martial records only after the end of the war. They had been placed in a file relating to someone named Josef Koudela. On the envelope was a small cross and beneath it the remark "Settled," together with the date. )'

"Well, Schweik's file has got lost," said Bernis. "I'll have him sent for, and if he doesn't own up to anything, I'll let him go and arrange for him to be transferred to your care. Then you can settle his hash when he's joined his unit."

After the chaplain had gone, Bernis had Schweik brought in, but left him standing by the door, because he had just received a telephone message from police headquarters that the receipt of

⁸
Thirty per cent, of the prisoners in the detention barracks remained there throughout the war without having their cases even heard. —Author.

requisite material for charge No. 7267, concerning Private Maixner, had been acknowledged in Office No. 1 under Captain Linhart's signature.

Meanwhile, Schweik inspected the provost-marshal's office.

The impression which it produced could scarcely be called a favourable one, especially with regard to the photographs on the walls. They were photographs of the various executions carried out by the army in Galicia and Serbia. Artistic photographs of cottages which had been burned down and of trees, the branches of which were burdened with hanging bodies. There was one particularly fine photograph from Serbia showing a whole family which had been hanged. A small boy with his father and mother. Two soldiers with bayonets were guarding the tree on which the execution had been carried out, and an officer was standing victoriously in the foreground smoking a cigarette. On the other side of the picture, in the background, could be seen a field kitchen at work.

"Well, what's the trouble with you, Schweik?" asked Bernis, putting the slip of paper with the telephone message away into a file, "what have you been up to? Would you like to admit your guilt, or wait until the charge is brought against you? We can't go on for ever like this. Don't imagine you're going to be tried in a law court by a lot of damn fool civilians. A court-martial is wha't you'll be up against—a k. u. k.
Militargericht.
⁹
The only way you can possibly save yourself from a severe but just sentence is to admit your guilt."

Bernis adopted a peculiar method when he had lost the charge papers against the accused. He considered himself so perspicacious that, although he was not in possession of the written evidence against a man and, indeed, even if he did not know what he was charged with, he could tell why he had been brought to the detention barracks, merely by observing his demeanour. His perspicacity and knowledge of men were so great that on one occasion a gypsy, who had been sent from his regiment to the detention barracks for stealing shirts, was charged by him with political offences, to wit, he had discussed with some soldiers in a taproom somewhere or other the establishment of an inde-
⁹
"Imperial and Royal Court-martial."

pendent national state, composed of the territories of the crowns of Bohemia and Slovakia, with a Slav king to rule over them.

"We have documents," he said to the unfortunate gypsy. "The only thing left for you to do is to admit your guilt, to tell us where you said it and to what regiment the soldiers belonged who heard you and when it was."

The unfortunate gypsy invented date, place and the regiment of his alleged audience.

"So you won't admit anything?" said Bernis, when Schweik remained as silent as the grave. "You won't say why you're here? You might at least tell me before I tell you. Once more I urge you to admit your guilt. It'll be better for you because it'll make the proceedings easier and you'll get off with a lighter sentence."

"Beg to report, sir," said Schweik's good-humoured voice, "I've been brought here as a foundling."

"How do you mean?"

"Beg to report, sir, I can explain it to you as easy as pie. In our street there's a watch maker and he had a little boy of two. Well, one day this little boy went off for a walk by himself and got lost and a policeman found him sitting on the pavement. He took the little chap to the police station and there they locked him up. You see, though this little fellow was quite innocent, he got locked up all the same. And even if he'd been able to speak and he'd been asked why he was locked up, he wouldn't have known. And I'm in the same boat as he was. I'm a foundling, too."

The provost-marshal's keen glance scrutinized Schweik's face and figure, but he was baffled by them. Such unconcern and innocence radiated from the personality standing before him that he began to pace furiously to and fro in his office, and if he had not promised the chaplain to send Schweik to him, Heaven alone knows how Schweik would have fared.