by Pete Ayrton
Calling to Mary, Mother of the Lord.
Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan.’
The panic-stricken Mrs Muller under the impact of this awe inspiring war-song forgot about the coffee and trembling in every limb listened in horror as the good soldier Švejk continued to sing in bed:
‘With Mary Mother and bridges four,
Piedmont, strengthen your posts for war.
Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan.
At Solferino there was battle and slaughter,
Piles of corpses and blood like water.
Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan.
Arms and legs flying in the air,
For the brave 18th were fighting there.
Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan.
Boys of the 18th, don’t lose heart!
There’s money behind in the baggage cart.
Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan.’
‘For God’s sake, sir, please!’ came the piteous voice from the kitchen, but Švejk was already ending his war-song:
‘Money in the cart and wenches in the van!
What a life for a military man!
Rataplan, rataplan, rataplan.’
Mrs Muller burst out of the door and rushed for the doctor. She returned in an hour’s time, while Švejk had slumbered off.
And so he was woken up by a corpulent gentleman who laid his hand on his forehead for a moment and said:
‘Don’t be afraid. I am Dr Pávek from Vinohrady – let me feel your pulse – put this thermometer under your armpit. Good – now show me your tongue – a bit more – keep it out – what did your father and mother die of?’
And so at a time when it was Vienna’s earnest desire that all the peoples of Austria-Hungary should offer the finest examples of loyalty and devotion, Dr Pávek prescribed Švejk bromide against his patriotic enthusiasm and recommended the brave and good soldier not to think about the war:
‘Lie straight and keep quiet. I’ll come again tomorrow.’
When he came the next day, he asked Mrs Muller in the kitchen how the patient was.
‘He’s worse, doctor,’ she answered with genuine grief. ‘In the night he was singing, if you’ll pardon the expression, the Austrian national anthem, when the rheumatism suddenly took him.’
Dr Pávek felt obliged to react to this new manifestation of loyalty on the part of his patient by prescribing a larger dose of bromide.
The third day Mrs Muller informed him that Švejk had got even worse.
‘In the afternoon he sent for a map of the battlefield, doctor, and in the night he was seized by a mad hallucination that Austria was going to win.’
‘And he takes his powders strictly according to the prescription?’
‘Oh, no, doctor, he hasn’t even sent for them yet.’ Dr Pávek went away after having called down a storm of reproaches on Švejk’s head and assured him that he would never again come to cure anybody who refused his professional help and bromide.
Only two days remained before Švejk would have to appear before the call-up board.
During this time Švejk made the necessary preparations. First he sent Mrs Muller to buy an army cap and next he sent her to borrow the bathchair from the confectioner round the corner – that same one in which the confectioner once used to wheel about in the fresh air his lame and wicked old grandfather. Then he remembered he needed crutches. Fortunately the confectioner still kept the crutches too as a family relic of his old grandfather.
Now he only needed the recruit’s bunch of flowers for his buttonhole. Mrs Muller got these for him too. During these last two days she got noticeably thinner and wept from morning to night.
And so on that memorable day there appeared on the Prague streets a moving example of loyalty. An old woman pushing before her a bathchair, in which there sat a man in an army cap with a finely polished Imperial badge and waving his crutches. And in his button-hole there shone the gay flowers of a recruit.
And this man, waving his crutches again and again, shouted out to the streets of Prague: ‘To Belgrade, to Belgrade!’
He was followed by a crowd of people which steadily grew from the small group that had gathered in front of the house from which he had gone out to war.
Švejk could see that the policemen standing at some of the crossroads saluted him.
At Wenceslas Square the crowd around Švejk’s bathchair had grown several hundreds and at the corner of Krakovská Street they beat up a student in a German cap who had shouted out to Švejk:
‘Heil! Nieder mit den Serben!’*
At the corner of Vodičkova Street mounted police rode in and dispersed the crowd.
When Švejk showed the district police inspector that he had it in black and white that he must that day appear before the call-up board, the latter was a trifle disappointed; and in order to reduce disturbances to a minimum he had Švejk and his bathchair escorted by two mounted police all the way to the Střelecký Ostrov.
The following article about this episode appeared in the Prague Official News:
A CRIPPLE’S PATRIOTISM
Yesterday afternoon the passers-by in the main streets of Prague were witnesses of a scene which was an eloquent testimony to the fact that in these great and solemn hours the sons of our nation can furnish the finest examples of loyalty and devotion to the throne of the aged monarch. We might well have been back in the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans, when Mucius Scaevola had himself led off to battle, regardless of his burnt arm. The most sacred feelings and sympathies were nobly demonstrated yesterday by a cripple on crutches who was pushed in an invalid chair by his aged mother. This son of the Czech people, spontaneously and regardless of his infirmity, had himself driven off to war to sacrifice his life and possessions for his emperor. And if his call: ‘To Belgrade!’ found such a lively echo on the streets of Prague, it only goes to prove what model examples of love for the fatherland and the Imperial House are proffered by the people of Prague.
The Prager Tagblatt wrote in the same strain, ending its article by saying that the cripple volunteer was escorted by a crowd of Germans who protected him with their bodies from lynching by the Czech agents of the Entente.
Bohemie published the same report and urged that the patriotic cripple should be fittingly rewarded. It announced that at its offices it was ready to receive gifts from German citizens for the unknown hero.
If in the eyes of these three journals the Czech lands could not have produced a nobler citizen, this was not the opinion of the gentlemen at the call-up board – certainly not of the chief army doctor Bautze, an utterly ruthless man who saw in everything a criminal attempt to evade military service, the front, bullets, and shrapnel.
This German’s stock remark was widely famous: ‘The whole Czech people are nothing but a pack of malingerers.’ During the ten weeks of his activities, of 11,000 civilians he cleaned out 10,999 malingerers, and he would certainly have got the eleven thousandth by the throat, if it had not happened that just when he shouted ‘About turn!’ the unfortunate man was carried off by a stroke.
‘Take away that malingerer!’ said Bautze, when he had ascertained that the man was dead.
And on that memorable day it was Švejk who stood before him. Like the others he was stark naked and chastely hid his nudity behind the crutches on which he supported himself.
‘That’s really a remarkable fig-leaf,’ said Bautze in German. ‘There were no fig-leaves like that in paradise.’
‘Certified as totally unfit for service on grounds of idiocy,’ observed the sergeant-major, looking at the official documents.
‘And what else is wrong with you?’ asked Bautze.
‘Humbly report, sir, I’m a rheumatic, but I will serve His Imperial Majesty to my last drop of blood,’ said Švejk modestly. ‘I have swollen knees.’
Bautze gave the good soldier Švejk a blood-curdling look and roared out in German: ‘You’re a malingerer!’Turning to the sergeant-major he said with icy calm: ‘Clap the bastard into gaol
at once!’
Two soldiers with bayonets took Švejk off to the garrison gaol.
Švejk walked on his crutches and observed with horror that his rheumatism was beginning to disappear.
Mrs Muller was still waiting for Švejk with the bathchair above on the bridge but when she saw him under bayoneted escort she burst into tears and ran away from the bathchair, never to return to it again.
And the good soldier Švejk walked along unassumingly under the escort of the armed protectors of the state.
Their bayonets shone in the light of the sun and at Malá Strana before the monument of Radetzky, Švejk turned to the crowd which had followed them and called out:
‘To Belgrade! To Belgrade!’
And Marshal Radetzky looked dreamily down from his monument at the good soldier Švejk, as, limping on his old crutches, he slowly disappeared into the distance with his recruit’s flowers in his button-hole. Meanwhile a solemn-looking gentleman informed the crowd around that it was a ‘dissenter’ they were leading off.
Original illustrations by Josef Lada.
*‘Down with the Serbs.’
JAROSLAV HAŠEK
FROM HATVAN TOWARDS THE GALICIAN FRONTIER
from The Good Soldier Švejk
translated by Cecil Parrott
ŠVEJK GOT CAUTIOUSLY INTO HIS VAN and lying down on his greatcoat and pack said to the quartermaster sergeant-major and the others:
‘Once upon a time a man got sozzled and asked not to be disturbed…’
After these words he rolled over on his side and began to snore. The gases which he emitted by belching soon filled the whole compartment, so that Jurajda, inhaling the atmosphere through his nostrils, declared: ‘God! It certainly reeks of cognac here.’
Marek, who after all his tribulations had finally attained the rank of battalion historian, was sitting at a folding table.
He was engaged in writing up in advance the heroic deeds of the battalion, and it was obvious that he derived great pleasure from his look into the future.
Vaněk watched with interest how the volunteer was busily writing and laughing heartily in the process. Then he got up and leant over his shoulder. Marek started to explain to him: ‘You know, it’s enormous fun writing a history of the battalion in advance. The main thing is to proceed systematically. In everything there must be system.’
‘A systematic system,’ observed Vaněk with a more or less contemptuous smile.
‘Oh, yes,’ the volunteer said nonchalantly, ‘a systemized systematic system of writing the battalion’s history. We can’t march off straight away with a magnificent victory. Everything must go gradually according to a definite plan. Our battalion cannot win this world war all at once. Nihil nisi bene. The main thing for a conscientious historian like me is first to draw up a plan of our victories. For example, here I describe how our battalion – this will perhaps be in two months’ time – nearly crosses the Russian frontier, which is very strongly defended by, let’s say, the Don regiments of the enemy, while a number of enemy divisions surround our positions. At first sight it looks as if it’s all up with our battalion and that the enemy will make sausage-meat of us. But at this very moment Captain Ságner gives the following order to our battalion: “It is not the Lord’s will that we should perish here. Let’s flee.” And so our battalion starts to flee, but when the enemy division, which has encircled us, sees that we are actually running after them, they begin to retreat in panic and fall into the hands of our army’s reserve without firing a shot. It is at this point really where the whole history of our battalion begins. From unimportant events, to speak like a prophet, Mr Vaněk, far-reaching things develop. Our battalion goes from victory to victory. It will be interesting to read how it attacks the enemy when he is asleep. For this we obviously need the style of the Illustrated War News, which was published by Vilímek during the Russo-Japanese war. Well, as I said, our battalion attacks the camp of the enemy while he is asleep. Each man of us seeks out an enemy and with all his force thrusts a bayonet into his chest. The finely sharpened bayonet goes through him like a knife through butter. Only here and there a rib cracks. The sleeping enemy jerk convulsively in their death spasms. For a moment they roll and goggle their eyes, but they are eyes which no longer see anything. Then they give the death rattle and their bodies stiffen. Bloody saliva appears on their lips, and with this it’s all over and victory is on the side of our battalion. Or it will be even better in, say, three months’ time, when our battalion captures the Tsar of Russia. But we’ll talk about that later, Mr Vaněk. Meanwhile I must prepare in advance small episodes which testify to the battalion’s unexampled heroism. I’ll have to think out an entirely new war terminology for it. I’ve already invented one new term. I intend to write about the self-sacrificing resolution of our men, who are riddled through and through with splinters of shrapnel. As a result of an explosion of an enemy mine one of our sergeants, shall we say, of the 12th or 13th company, has his head blown off.
‘By the way,’ he said, hitting himself on the head, ‘I nearly forgot, sergeant-major, or if we’re to talk on civilian terms, Mr Vaněk, that you must get me a list of all the officers and N. C. O.s. Give me the name of a sergeant-major of the 12th company. – Houska? Good. Houska now will have his head blown off by that mine. His head flies off, but his body still marches one or two steps forwards, takes aim and shoots down an enemy plane. It’s quite obvious that in the future these victories and their repercussions will have to be celebrated within the family circle at Schönbrunn. Austria has very many battalions, but there is only one battalion like ours, which distinguishes itself so much that in its honour a small intimate family celebration is held in the Imperial Household. I visualize it in the following way, as you can see in my notes: the family of the Archduchess Marie Valerie moves from Wallsee to Schönbrunn for this celebration: the function is a purely private one and takes place in the hall next to the Monarch’s bedroom, which is lit with white candles, because, as is well known, they do not like electric bulbs at the court in case there should be a short circuit, to which the old monarch has strong objections. The ceremony in honour and praise of our battalion starts at six o’clock in the evening. At this moment His Majesty’s grandchildren are brought into the hall, which is actually part of the suite of the late Empress. Now it’s a question as to who will be present besides the Imperial Family. The Monarch’s general adjutant, Count Paar, must and will be there, and because during such family and intimate receptions someone occasionally feels faint (by which of course I don’t mean that Count Paar himself should vomit), the presence of the personal doctor, the Counsellor of the Court, Dr Kerzl, will be required. For the sake of decency, to ensure that the court footmen shouldn’t permit themselves any liberties with the ladies-in-waiting present at the reception, the Marshal of the Court, Baron Lederer, the Chamberlain, Count Bellegarde, and the principal Lady-in-Waiting, Countess Bombelles, will appear. The latter fulfils the same role among the ladies-in-waiting as madame does in the Prague brothel, U Šuh. As soon as these exalted gentry are assembled the Emperor is informed and appears accompanied by his grandchildren. He sits down at a table and proposes a toast in honour of our march battalion. After him the Archduchess Marie Valerie makes a speech in which she pays a special compliment to you, quartermaster sergeant-major. Of course, according to my notes our battalion will suffer heavy and severe losses, because a battalion without dead is no battalion at all. I shall still have to prepare a new article about our fallen. The history of a battalion should not consist merely of dry facts about victories, of which I have already recorded in advance some forty-two. You, for example, Mr Vaněk, will fall by a small stream, and Baloun, who’s staring at us here in such an extraordinary fashion, will die an entirely different death. It will not be by bullet, shrapnel or shell. He will be strangled by a lassoo, thrown down from an enemy plane at the very moment when he is wolfing his lieutenant’s dinner.’
Baloun stepped back, waved his hands desp
airingly and remarked dejectedly: ‘I’m sorry, you know, but I can’t help my nature! Even when I was in regular service I used to turn up some three times for mess in the kitchen until they put me in gaol for it. Once I had boiled rib of beef for dinner three times and because of that I was in quod for a month. May God’s will be done!’
‘Don’t be afraid, Baloun,’ the volunteer consoled him. ‘In the history of the battalion there’ll be no mention of the fact that you perished when you were guzzling grub on the way from the officers’ mess to the trenches. You’ll be mentioned together with all the men of our battalion who fell for the glory of our Empire, as for instance Quartermaster Sergeant-Major Vaněk.’
‘What kind of death are you preparing for me, Marek?’
‘Don’t rush me, please, sergeant-major. It doesn’t go as quickly as all that.’
The volunteer thought for a moment: ‘You’re from Kralupy, aren’t you? Then write home to Kralupy that you are going to be missing without a trace, but write cautiously. Or would you prefer to be seriously wounded and remain lying beyond the barbed-wire entanglements? You could lie beautifully like that with a broken leg the whole day. In the night the enemy lights up our positions with his searchlights and notices you; he thinks you’re spying and begins to riddle you with shells and shrapnel. You have performed a tremendous service for the army, because the enemy has had to expend on you as large a quantity of munitions as would have been needed for a whole battalion. After all these explosions your bits float freely in the air over you and, penetrating it with their rotations, sing a paean of glorious victory. In short everybody will have his turn, everyone of our battalion will distinguish himself so that the glorious pages of our history will overflow with victories – although I really would much prefer them not to overflow, but I can’t help it. Everything must be carried out thoroughly so that some memory of us will remain until, say, in the month of September there will be really nothing left whatsoever of our battalion, except these glorious pages of history which will carry a message to the hearts of all Austrians, making it plain to them that all those who will never see their homes again fought equally valiantly. And I’ve already written the end, you know, Mr Vaněk – the obituary notice. Honour to the memory of the fallen! Their love for the Monarchy is the most sacred love of all, for death was its climax. Let their names be pronounced with honour, as for instance the name of Vaněk. Those who felt deepest of all the loss of their breadwinners may proudly wipe away their tears. Those who fell were the heroes of our battalion.’
