The Good Soldier Svejk (52 page)

He got no further with this modern instance, for Lieutenant Lukash interrupted him:

"Oh, shut up, you ghastly jackass ! I'm not going to waste time talking to you. Get back into your truck and tell Baloun that when we reach Budapest he's to bring me a roll and that liver paste that's at the bottom of my box, wrapped up in silver paper. Then

tell Vanek that he's a thickheaded lout. Three times I've asked him to let me have the exact number of men. To-day, when I needed the figures, I had to use the old list from last week."

"Right you are, sir," barked Schweik, and departed slowly to his truck.

Lieutenant Lukash walked to and fro on the tracks and thought to himself :

"I ought to have given him a few smacks in the jaw, and instead of that I talked to him as if we were old friends."

Schweik entered the railway truck with great solemnity. He had quite a high opinion of himself. It was not an everyday occurrence for him to do something so appalling that he could never be allowed to discover what it was.

"Sergeant," said Schweik, when he was sitting in his place again. "It strikes me that Lieutenant Lukash is in a jolly good temper to-day. He told me to tell you that you're a thickheaded lout because he's asked you three times to let him know the number of men in the company."

"God Almighty," said Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek, flaring up. "I'll make it hot for those bloody sergeants. Is it my fault if they're too damned lazy to let me know the number of men in their squads? How the hell can I be expected to guess how many men there are? This draft's in a fine state, upon my word. But I knew it, I knew it ! I guessed that everything'd be at sixes and sevens. One day there's four lots of rations missing from the cook house, and the next day there's three too many. They don't even let me know if anyone's in hospital. Last month I had a chap named Nikodem on my list, and I didn't discover until pay-day that he'd died of galloping consumption in hospital. And they kept drawing rations for him. A uniform was served out for him, too, but God knows where that went to. And then, on top of all that, the lieutenant calls me a thickheaded lout, just because he can't keep his company in order."

Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek strode up and down wrath-fully.

"I ought to be company commander ! I'd show 'em ! I'd make 'em toe the line ! I'd have my eye on every man-Jack of 'em. The

N. C. O.'s'd have to report to me twice a day. But these N. C. O.'s are a wash-out. And the worst of the whole lot is Sergeant Zyka. He's all right at telling funny yarns, but when he's told that a man's been transferred from his squad to the A. S. C, he keeps on giving me the same figures, day after day. And then I'm told I'm a thickheaded lout. That's not the way for the lieutenant to get popular. A company quartermaster-sergeant ain't a lance-jack that anyone can use to wipe his -"

Baloun, who had been listening with open mouth, now supplied the missing word before Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek had time to utter it.

"You shut your row," said the quartermaster-sergeant testily.

"Here, Baloun," remarked Schweik, "I've got a message for you, too. The lieutenant says that when we get to Budapest you've got to take a roll to him and the liver paste that's wrapped up in silver paper at the bottom of the lieutenant's trunk."

Baloun's long arms, like those of a chimpanzee, suddenly drooped, he bent his back, and he continued in this posture for quite a long while.

"I haven't got it," he then said in a low, despairing voice, with his eyes glued to the dirty floor of the railway truck.

"I haven't got it," he repeated brokenly. "I never thought... I unpacked it before we left. ... I just sniffed at it. . . . To see if it hadn't gone bad....

"I tasted it !" he exclaimed in accents of such genuine despair that it was clear to everyone what had happened.

"You ate it up, silver paper and all," said Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek, confronting Baloun. He was glad that a diversion had been created by the gluttonous Baloun and that the conversation now centred round a new set of tragic events. Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek felt a strong inclination to indulge in a little dour moralizing for Baloun's benefit, but in this he was anticipated by Schweik, who now intervened :

"Here, Baloun, you was telling me not so long ago that there was going to be slaughtering and curing done in your family and that as soon as we get to a place where letters can be sent, they'll let you have a parcel of ham. Now how would you like it if they was to send you this ham and then all the chaps in the

company was to cut off a bit of it and have a taste, and then another bit, because we liked the taste of it, till that ham looked like a postman I used to know, a man named Kozel, whose bones started crumbling, and so first of all they cut off his leg below the ankle, and then below the knee, and then below the hip, and if he hadn't died in time they'd have gone on cutting bits off him till he looked like a stump of lead pencil. So just fancy what it'd have been like, Baloun, if we'd cut your ham up, like you gobbled up the lieutenant's liver paste."

Baloun gazed at them all very dejectedly.

"It's only because of me putting in a good word for you," said the quartermaster-sergeant to Baloun, "that the lieutenant kept you as his batman. You was going to be transferred to the medical corps and carry wounded away from the front line. How'd you have liked that? Why, at the Dukla Pass there was three lots of stretcher bearers sent out, one after another, to fetch back a wounded officer who'd been shot in the belly in front of the barbed wire, and the whole lot of 'em went west, shot right through the heart. The fourth lot managed to reach him, but before they got him to the dressing station it was all up with him."

Baloun could restrain himself no longer. He began to blubber.

"Why, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Schweik, contemptuously. "Call yourself a soldier?"

"I was never meant to be in the army," lamented Baloun. "I know I'm always thinking about food and I can never get enough of it, but that's because I've been dragged away from the life I'm used to. And it runs in our family, too. My father, he's dead now, but he once made a bet that he'd eat fifty sausages at a sitting and two loaves of bread, and he won his bet. I once made a bet I'd eat four geese and two plates of dumplings with cabbage."

"Well," said Schweik, "you've been tied up once, and now you deserve to be sent to the front line. When I was doing your job as orderly to the lieutenant, he could rely on me in everything, and I'd never have dreamed of eating anything that belonged to him. When something special was served out, he'd always say to me: 'Schweik,' he said, 'keep it for yourself,' or: 'Oh, I don't

fancy that particularly ; let me have just a scrap of it and do what you like with the rest.' And when we was in Prague and he used to send me sometimes to fetch his lunch from a restaurant, so as he shouldn't think he'd got a small helping because I'd eaten half of it on the way, when I thought the helping was too small, I bought an extra helping with my own money, so as he could have a proper feed and not think any harm of me. Till one day, he spotted what I'd been up to. It was like this : I always had to bring him the bill of fare from the restaurant and then he chose what he wanted. Well, that particular day he chose some stuffed pigeon. Now when I saw they gave me only half a bird, I thought he might think I'd eaten the other half on the way, so I bought an extra portion with my own money and brought him such a grand helping that Lieutenant Seba, who'd been nosing round after some lunch that day, and had just come to pay my lieutenant a call, was able to have a feed of it as well. But when he'd finished, he says: 'Don't tell me that's a single portion. Why, there isn't a restaurant on earth where you can get a whole stuffed pigeon on the bill of fare. If I can scrape together some money to-day, I'm going to send out to that restaurant of yours for some lunch. Now own up ; that's a double portion, isn't it?' Well, the lieutenant asked me to bear him out that he'd only given me enough money for a single portion, because he didn't know that Lieutenant Seba was coming. So I said he'd only given me enough money for a single lunch. 'There you are,' says my lieutenant. 'And this ain't nothing,' he says. 'Why, the other day Schweik brought me two legs of goose for lunch. Just imagine Vermicelli soup, beef with horse-radish sauce, two legs of goose, dumplings and piles of cabbage and pancakes.' "

"Holy Moses !" exclaimed Baloun, and smacked his lips loudly.

Schweik continued :

"Well, that was the cause of the trouble. Next day Lieutenant Seba sends his batman to fetch his lunch from our restaurant, and he brings him a tiny little dollop of chicken and rice, about as much as you could hold in the palm of your hand, just enough for two spoonfuls. So Lieutenant Seba went for him and said he'd eaten half of it. And he said he hadn't. So then Lieutenant Seba gave him a smack across the jaw and told him how

much grub I was fetching for Lieutenant Lukash. Well, next day, when this chap who'd had a smack in the jaw for nothing went to the restaurant to fetch some lunch, he found out what I'd been doing, and told his boss and he told my lieutenant. So in the evening I was sitting having a read of the newspaper, all about the reports of the enemy staffs from the front, when my lieutenant comes in, as white as a sheet he was, and asks me point-blank how many of those double portions. I'd paid for out of my own pocket, and he said he knew all about it and it wasn't any use for me to deny it and he'd always thought I was a jackass but he'd never supposed I was as dotty as all that. He said I'd disgraced him so much that he felt like first blowing my brains out and then his own. 'Well, sir,' I says to him, 'the first day I came to you, you said that every batman was a crook and a rotter. And they was giving such small portions in that restaurant, that you'd be bound to think that I was rotter enough to sneak your grub.' "

"Lord help us !" murmured Baloun, and bent down toward the lieutenant's box, which he took into the background.

"Then," continued Schweik, "Lieutenant Lukash began to search in all his pockets, but he couldn't find anything, so he fetches out his silver watch and gives it to me. He was quite overcome, as you might say. 'Look here, Schweik,' he said, 'when I draw my pay I want you to write down how much I owe you. You can keep this watch as an extra. And another time, don't be a bloody fool,' he says. But after that we was both of us so desperate hard-up that I had to take that watch to the pawnshop."

"What are you up to, at the back there, Baloun?" inquired Quartermaster-sergeant Vanek.

Instead of giving any reply, the luckless Baloun hiccoughed. For he had opened Lieutenant Lukash's box and was gobbling up his last roll.

Shortly before this, a very tense conversation was taking place between Captain Sagner and Cadet Biegler.

"I'm surprised at you, Biegler," said Captain Sagner. "Why didn't you come and report to me immediately that those five

ounces of Hungarian salami were not being issued? I had to go out personally and ascertain why the men were coming back from the store. And the officers, too, as if orders were so much empty talk. What I said was : 'To the stores by companies, one platoon at a time.' That meant, that if no rations were served out, the
men
were to come back to the train one squad at a time as well. I told you to keep proper order, but you just let things slide. I suppose the fact is you were glad you didn't have to worry your head about counting out the rations of salami."

"Beg to report, sir, that instead of salami, the men received two picture postcards each."

And Cadet Biegler presented the battalion commander with two specimens of these postcards, which had been issued by the War Records Department in Vienna, at the head of which was General Wojnowich. On one side was a caricature of a Russian soldier, a Russian peasant with a shaggy beard who was being embraced by a skeleton. Underneath were the words :

The day upon which perfidious Russia is snuffed out will be a day of relief for our whole Monarchy.

The other postcard emanated from the German Empire. It was a gift from the Germans to the Austro-Hungarian warriors. On top was the motto
"Viribus unitis"
and underneath it a picture of Sir Edward Grey hanging on a gallows, with an Austrian and a German soldier blithely at the salute below. This was accompanied by a poem from Greinz's book
The Iron Fist.
The witticisms were described by the German papers as being so many strokes from a lash, full of rollicking humour and irrepressible wit. This particular stroke from a lash was as
follows :

Grey. The gallows should on high display Dangling now Sir Edward Grey. It should have happened long ago; Why did it not, then? You must know That every single tree refused As gallows for this Judas to be used.

Scarcely had Captain Sagner finished perusing this specimen of "rollicking humour and irrepressible wit" than battalion orderly Matushitch dashed into the staff carriage. He had been sent by Captain Sagner to the telegraph headquarters of the railway transport command to ask whether there had been any change of instructions, and had brought a telegram from the brigade. But there was no need to decode it. The telegram ran,
au clair:
"Quickly finish cooking then advance toward Sokal." Captain Sagner shook his head in perplexity.

"Beg to report, sir," said Matushitch, "the railway transport officer wants to see you. He's got another telegram there."

A conversation of a very confidential character then ensued between the railway transport officer and Captain Sagner.