JAROSLAV HASEK
THE ADVENTURES OF THE GOOD
SOLDIER SHVEYK IN THE WORLD WAR
VOLUME I
BEHIND THE LINES
TRANSLATED BY ANTHONY STANIS
June 29 2013 Email:
All Rights Reserved!
I. HOW THE GOOD SOLDIER SHVEYK ENTERED THE ARENA OF
THE FIRST WORLD WAR
“So they have killed our Ferdinand,” said Mrs. Müller to Mr. Shveyk her tenant, who years ago had quit the army when the military medical commission had definitively adjudicated him a patent idiot, and who sustained himself selling dog monstrosities, ugly mutts and curs that he obtained from animal shelters and was selling as thoroughbreds for which he had to falsify pedigrees, too.
Apart from this, he suffered from rheumatism and at this juncture patiently rubbed his knees with a salve of camphor oil.
“Which Ferdinand, Mrs. Müller?” asked Shveyk, massaging his knees. “I’m acquainted with two Ferdinands. One who is an apprentice in Prus’ Drug Store, and once by mistake drank a bottle of hair tonic and later all his hair fell out. Also I know Ferdinand Kokoska who cleans streets of dog droppings; neither of them a big loss.”
“No, no, Mr. Shveyk, they’ve killed His Highness from Vienna that pompous and very devout fat Archduke Ferdinand, the nephew of our Emperor.”
“Jesus Christ!” screamed Shveyk. “Wow, what an item. And where all this has happened to His Highness?”
“They’ve gunned him down in Sarajevo, with a revolver. He rode there with his archduchess in an automobile.”
“There you have it, Mrs. Müller, in an automobile. Naturally a rich gentleman like him can afford it, and it has never occurred to him that a leisure junket in an automobile could end in calamity. Yet in Sarajevo, that’s in Bosnia. Yes. The Turks must have done it. We ought not to have taken Bosnia from them. That’s how it looks, Mrs. Müller. So His Highness is now facing Saint Peter, awaiting the Last Judgment. Has he suffered much?”
“No, His Highness died instantly. You know well yourself, sir, how fast it goes with revolvers. Not long ago in our district a man was fooling with a revolver and shot all members of his family and a night porter who went up to find out who was doing the shooting on the third floor.”
“Certain revolvers, Mrs. Müller, won’t go off, no matter what, you could almost turn blue from trying, and there’s a whole array of different models. But for His Highness they chose one of superior quality, I’m sure of it. I also bet you, Mrs. Müller, that the chap who did the shooting was dressed in his best Sunday togs. Shooting at the Emperor’s nephew is not an easy task. It’s not like some lame poacher who takes a few potshots at a very officious gamekeeper. The most important thing here is how to get close to such a stately figure. Not clad in rags, no, a top hat ‘de rigueur’ otherwise the police will clap you in jail.”
“It appears there was a bunch of them.”
“That’s self-evident, Mrs. Müller,” Shveyk volunteered knowingly, finishing with his knees. “If you, ma’am, had planned to bump off an archduke or an emperor, you would have sought advice from many; several heads are far better than one. One would advise on this, the other on that, and a good deed would succeed, to quote our anthem, ‘with Godspeed.’ The main thing is to figure out the precise moment at which such a gentleman would be passing by. On par as it was with that anarchist Luccheni, you do remember, Mrs. Müller, who stabbed the late lamented wife of our Emperor, Empress Elisabeth, with a thin file while she was leisurely ambling in a park. Whom can we trust today? Since then no empress dares to go out for a stroll alone. A similar fate will befall other royals as well. Mark my words, Mrs. Müller, they’ll get to the Tsar and his Tsarina and, God forbid, to our Emperor Franz Josef. They have begun with Archduke Ferdinand, and the old gentleman has enemies, more than his nephew. Recently in a pub a chap was telling us that the time would come when all emperors and kings would fall one after another, and that even a chief of district police wouldn’t be able to help in cases of that sort. As it happened he didn’t have money to pay for his drinks, so the proprietor had to summon the police, and they took him to jail so he could come to his senses, because he whacked the proprietor on the face once and one of the policemen twice. Can you believe it, Mrs. Müller? What times are we living in? And to Austria without doubt that’s an egregious loss.”
“Years ago when I was serving in the army an infantryman there shot a captain. He loaded his rifle and went into the captain’s office. They told him he had no business being there, but he went on insisting to speak to his captain. The captain came out and at once gave him two weeks in the cooler. In response that infantryman leveled his rifle and shot the captain through the heart. The bullet passed cleanly through the captain’s back and made quite a mess of the office. It broke an inkwell and ruined some important company documents.”
“What happened to that soldier?” inquired Mrs. Müller.
Shveyk rolled back the legs of his trousers and continued with the story:
“He hanged himself with suspenders which were not his own. He borrowed them from a guard with the excuse that his trousers were falling down. And what?” he supplemented, cleaning his melon-shaped hat. “Should he have waited till they executed him? It’s not hard to guess, Mrs. Müller, that in these circumstances reasoning confounds the man and vice versa. The guard was demoted and got six months in addition, but didn’t serve it. He fled to Switzerland where he became a leader of some religious sect. Today there are but few honest people, Mrs. Müller. Can you imagine how His Excellency Archduke Ferdinand might have been disappointed at that fellow who shot him? He saw a well-dressed gentleman and in his mind he went: ‘Oh, a decent human being is giving me a cheer.’ Meanwhile that decent human being went at him: Bang! Was it once or a couple of times?”
“They write in the papers that His Highness was riddled like a sieve. They emptied a full clip into him.”
“It goes very fast, Mrs. Müller, frightfully fast. For myself I would buy a Browning for such purpose. It looks rather like a toy, but with a toy like that in a minute one can bump off twenty archdukes, thin or thick, though between us it’s much easier to hit a fat one. Do you remember, Mrs. Müller, when they bumped off their King in Portugal, and fat he was, wasn’t he? Naturally kings wouldn’t be starvelings.” Putting on his melon-shaped hat he amicably imparted upon Mrs. Müller: “Now I’m going to the Chalice Pub, and if by chance a buyer comes for a doggie for which I’ve already taken an advance, will you kindly tell him that I keep it in my kennels in the country and that I’ve just cropped its ears; that’s why it cannot be moved, not until its ears are healed otherwise it might catch cold. Please leave the key with the porter.”
There was but a lone patron in the Chalice Pub, an agent of the secret police, Bretschneider. The proprietor, Palivec, was washing glasses and saucers, whereas Bretschneider in vain attempted to draw him into a serious confabulation.
Palivec, though well-read, was notorious for his coarse language. Every second word out of his mouth was “ass” or “shit,” and to those particularly prudish or sensitive customers he often recommended to read up more upon the usefulness of the second word in one of the novels of Victor Hugo, quoting the last reply of Napoleon’s Old Guard to the English during the latter phase of the Battle of Waterloo.
“We have a beautiful summer,” chose Bretschneider as an opening.
“It all means shit to me,” Palivec uttered matter-of-factly, stacking saucers on the shelf behind the bar counter.
“They’ve brewed lots of bitter beer in Sarajevo,” Bretschneider proceeded cautiously.
“In which Sarajevo?” asked Palivec, “in that wine cafe Sarajevo in Nusle? They are grappling and quarreling there every day. What can we expect from the suburbs?”
“No, in Sarajevo, in Bosnia, Mr. Palivec. They’ve shot Archduke Ferdinand there. What are you going to say about it?”
“I’m not interested in that sort of dubious affairs and anyone who is can kiss my ass,” kindly retorted Palivec, lighting his pipe. “It’s not my business to pry and snoop. I have my trade and that’s all. If I have a customer I serve him a drink. All that gibberish about Sarajevo and the late lamented Archduke is not for me. Meddling in politics can get you locked up.”
Disappointed, sulking, Bretschneider swept his eyes around the empty pub.
“There used to be a portrait of our Emperor over there where a mirror is hanging now,” Bretschneider stated after a pause.
“Yes, you’re right, Mr. Bretschneider,” Palivec admitted, nodding his head. . “It was hanging there, indeed, but flies shat on it and I took it into the attic. You know how it is. Someone passes a stupid remark that will bring nothing but trouble. Do I need this?”
“But in Sarajevo it was a shameful deed, wasn’t it, Mr. Palivec?”
To this seemingly simple query Palivec answered evasively: “This time of year in Bosnia is very hot. I served there in the army, and we had to put ice on our lieutenant’s head.”
“Which regiment did you serve in, Mr. Palivec?”
“I can’t recall in my mind a stupid thing like that. I’ve never bothered myself with such affairs and they’ve never bothered me. Curiosity killed the cat.”
Secret agent Bretschneider withdrew into silence, and his gloomy face brightened a bit upon beholding the stocky figure of Shveyk entering the establishment.
Shveyk ordered a dark beer at the counter, adding significantly: “Today in Vienna they are in mourning, too.”
In Bretschneider’s eyes lit up glimmers of hope. He announced solemnly: “They are flying ten black flags over the Emperor’s castle.”
“They ought to fly twelve,” hinted Shveyk, taking a sip of his beer.
“Why do you reckon twelve?” quizzed Bretschneider.
“Because twelve is an even dozen, and it’s easy to count and buying is cheaper by the dozen,” Shveyk professed cheerfully.
Silence reigned, broken by Shveyk’s deep sigh.
“So he bites the dust, God bless his soul; didn’t live long enough to become an emperor. When I was in the army a general fell off his horse and died right on the spot. They tried to help him and put him back on his mount, but to their unfeigned surprise he was in effect dead. What luck? On the next day he was elected to be promoted to a field-marshal. Yes. This has occurred to him at the military review. I tell you, nothing good comes out of these reviews. In Sarajevo it was also a review. I remember once at the regimental review I had ten buttons missing from my uniform and got two weeks in the cooler for that plus two extra days where I lay naked like Lazarus, bound to a stick. But in the army there must be discipline otherwise nobody would pay any attention to anything. Our lieutenant, Makovec, used to lecture us at length on the subject of military discipline. He harangued us at the exercise ground: ‘You ignorant blockheads! There’s got to be discipline, you doltish baboons, otherwise you would climb trees like monkeys, but the army will make human beings out of you, you bastards!’ And he was right. Let’s imagine a park for instance the one by Charles Square, and in every tree there’s an undisciplined soldier. I was always afraid of that.”
“The Serbs had a hand in it, in Sarajevo,” Bretschneider threw in.
“There you are wrong,” Shveyk propounded tellingly. “The Turks did it for Bosnia and Herzegovina.” Here Shveyk displayed his own views on the international policy of Austria in the Balkans: “The Turks lost the War of 1912 to Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. They wanted Austria to bail them out and since Austria didn’t move a finger they shot Ferdinand.”
“Do you like Turks?” Shveyk asked Palivec. “Do you like them? Tell me the truth. You don’t like them.”
“To me a customer is a customer even if he is a Turk,” Palivec answered prudently. “For us tradesmen politics have no meaning. Pay for your drink, sit at your table and say whatever comes out of your mouth. These are my principles. Whoever did our Ferdinand in, a Turk or a Serb, a Catholic or a Muslim, an anarchist or a revolutionary, it’s all the same to me.”
“Well, Mr. Palivec,” interjected Bretschneider who with high hopes had counted on that one of them, Shveyk or Palivec, might fall into his trap. “You will agree with me that the murder of Ferdinand is a great loss to Austria.”
Shveyk responded for the proprietor:
“No one will deny it. It’s a terrible loss. You can’t simply replace Archduke Ferdinand with any nincompoop as they come. Though it’s too bad he wasn’t more obese.”
“Why is that?” Bretschneider put in inquisitively.
“Why?” Shveyk took time with his riposte. “Why? I’ll tell you why. If he had been more obese he would have dropped dead long ago running mad about his forest estate, chasing off old women gathering firewood and mushrooms there, and he wouldn’t have had to die in a shameful way. One cannot comprehend it. An emperor’s nephew bumped off by a common rogue, gaining spurious notoriety. Why, it’s a scandal, for his name is already in the papers. Several years ago in the Budejovice cattle-market in a petty squabble someone fatally stabbed Bretislav Ludvik, a cattle trader. This trader had a son named Bohuslav, and wherever this Bohuslav went to sell off his pigs no one wanted to buy from him. They often commented maliciously: ‘He is the son of the one who was stabbed, for certain quite a bastard, too.’ In the end this Bohuslav had to jump into the Malse River from the Krumlov Bridge. They had to pull him out, revive him, pump out the water, and he died in the doctor’s arms just as they were giving him an injection.”
“Where do you get these strange comparisons?” Bretschneider demanded emphatically. “First you talk about His Highness the Archduke and next about a cattle trader.”
“I do not compare people, God forbid if I did.” Shveyk vigorously defended himself. “The proprietor knows me. Tell us the truth, Mr. Palivec; have I ever compared anyone to anyone else? Though, I wouldn’t like to be in the Archduke’s widow’s shoes. The children are orphans and the estate has no master. Even if she remarried she’d take another trip with her husband to Sarajevo and might become a widow again. In Zliv near Hluboka lived a gamekeeper with rather an odd name, Pind’our, which in vernacular means ‘a little cock.’ The poachers killed him, and he left behind a widow with two babies. One year later that widow wedded a gamekeeper, Pepik Salvovy from Mydlovary. They shot him, too. Subsequently she married another gamekeeper, saying: ‘The third time’s lucky. If this doesn’t work I’ll be at the end of my tether.’ Sure, they shot him, too, and now she was left with six children. She even went to the office of the Count of Hluboka to complain about her bad luck with gamekeepers. So they recommended a water-bailiff from RaziceTower. I’ll tell you, gentlemen. They drowned that fellow as they were stealing fish from the lake, and she had two babies with him. In the last resort she wedded a butcher from a slaughterhouse in Vodnany. One night in autumn he whacked her over the head with an axe and surrendered to the police of his own volition. He was hanged in Pisek. But before they hanged him he bit off a piece of a priest’s nose, declared that he regretted nothing and yelled an odious obscenity at our Emperor.”
“You don’t know by chance what exactly did he say.” inquired Bretschneider with anticipation in his voice.
“That I can’t tell you due to the fact that nobody there had the temerity to repeat it. At any rate, it was so execrable that the court clerk lost his mind hearing it, and he is still locked up in a lunatic asylum to keep it secret. It was not a typical insult that every day drunkards offend His Majesty with.”
“What sort of typical insults do people indulge in when they are drunk?” Bretschneider again plied Shveyk with a cunning query.
“Please, gentlemen. Please, change the subject. Words fly off easily and consequently that might bring only trouble,” pleaded Palivec.
“What sort of insults do people engage in when they are drunk?” repeated Shveyk. “Various. Get drunk in a pub and request them to play the Austrian anthem, then you’ll be shocked to hear what you’ll be babbling. You’ll see what nasty expletives you’ll invent about His Majesty, and if only half of it were true His Majesty would be disgraced for the rest of his life. And the old gentleman does not deserve any of this. He has already endured enough. He lost his vivacious young son, Rudolf. His late lamented wife was stabbed with a thin file. He also lost John Ort and another brother of his, Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, was executed against the wall of some fortress there. Presently when he is old and lonely they shot his nephew. And everybody who gets drunk like a skunk jabbers with impunity offending the old gentleman. It makes my blood curdle. Damn it all! If the war starts I will volunteer right now and will serve His Majesty to the last drop of blood in my veins.”