The Good Soldier Švejk E-Book

Jaroslav Hasek

• Herausgeber: CLXBX
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 767

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek is one of the most celebrated satirical novels of the 20th century—a brilliantly comic and sharply critical portrayal of war, authority, and the absurdities of bureaucracy. Set during the early years of World War I, the novel follows the misadventures of Josef Švejk, an apparently simple and obedient soldier whose actions expose the chaos and contradictions of military life. When the war begins, Švejk enthusiastically volunteers to serve the Austro-Hungarian army. Though often dismissed as foolish or slow-witted, his relentless obedience and literal interpretation of orders lead to a series of hilarious and bewildering situations. Whether dealing with incompetent officers, endless paperwork, or the tangled rules of military command, Švejk navigates every challenge with unwavering calm and peculiar logic. As he moves from interrogation rooms to barracks, from hospitals to the front lines, Švejk encounters a colorful cast of characters—ambitious officers, corrupt officials, weary soldiers, and opportunists of every kind. Through these encounters, Hašek exposes the inefficiency, hypocrisy, and senselessness that permeate the institutions directing the war effort. What makes Švejk unforgettable is the ambiguity of his character. Is he genuinely naïve, or is his exaggerated obedience a clever form of resistance? By following orders so literally that they become ridiculous, Švejk turns the machinery of authority against itself. His endless stories, digressions, and calm persistence gradually reveal the absurdity of the system around him. Blending humor, satire, and social commentary, The Good Soldier Švejk paints a vivid portrait of life within a crumbling empire caught in the chaos of war. Hašek's wit and keen observation transform ordinary military routines into scenes of unforgettable comedy while simultaneously delivering a powerful critique of blind obedience and bureaucratic power. Both hilarious and thought-provoking, The Good Soldier Švejk remains a timeless classic—a novel that captures the absurdity of war and celebrates the quiet resilience of the individual in the face of overwhelming authority.

Leseprobe

The Good Soldier Švejk

Jaroslav Hašek

Copyright © 2026 by Jaroslav Hašek

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Contents

Preface

Book 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Book 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Book 3

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Preface

A great epoch calls for great men. There are modest unrecognized heroes, without Napoleon’s glory or his record of achievements. An analysis of their characters would overshadow even the glory of Alexander the Great. To-day, in the streets of Prague, you can come across a man who himself does not realize what his significance is in the history of the great new epoch. Modestly he goes his way, troubling nobody, nor is he himself troubled by journalists applying to him for an interview. If you were to ask him his name, he would answer in a simple and modest tone of voice: “I am Schweik.”

And this quiet, unassuming, shabbily dressed man is actually the good old soldier Schweik; that heroic, dauntless man who was the talk of all citizens in the Kingdom of Bohemia when they were under Austrian rule, and whose glory will not pass away even now that we have a republic.

I am very fond of the good soldier Schweik, and in presenting an account of his adventures during the World War, I am convinced that you will all sympathize with this modest, unrecognized hero. He did not set fire to the temple of the goddess at Ephesus, like that fool of a Herostrate, merely in order to get his name into the newspapers and the school reading books.

And that, in itself, is enough.

Book 1

Chapter1

Schweik, the Good Soldier, Intervenes in the Great War.

“So they’ve killed Ferdinand,” said the charwoman to Mr. Schweik who, having left the army many years before, when a military medical board had declared him to be chronically feeble-minded, earned a livelihood by the sale of dogs—repulsive mongrel monstrosities for whom he forged pedigrees. Apart from this occupation, he was afflicted with rheumatism, and was just rubbing his knees with embrocation.

“Which Ferdinand, Mrs. Müller?” asked Schweik, continuing to massage his knees. “I know two Ferdinands. One of them does jobs for Prusa the chemist, and one day he drank a bottle of hair oil by mistake; and then there’s Ferdinand Kokoska who goes round collecting manure. They wouldn’t be any great loss, either of ’em.”

“No, it’s the Archduke Ferdinand, the one from Konopiste, you know, Mr. Schweik, the fat, pious one.”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Schweik, “that’s a fine thing. And where did this happen?”

“They shot him at Sarajevo with a revolver, you know. He was riding there with his Archduchess in a motor car.”

“Just fancy that now, Mrs. Müller, in a motor car. Ah, a gentleman like him can afford it and he never thinks how a ride in a motor car like that can end up badly. And at Sarajevo in the bargain, that’s in Bosnia, Mrs. Müller. I expect the Turks did it. I reckon we never ought to have taken Bosnia and Herzegovina away from them. And there you are, Mrs. Müller. Now the Archduke’s in a better land. Did he suffer long?”

“The Archduke was done for on the spot. You know, people didn’t ought to mess about with revolvers. They’re dangerous things, that they are. Not long ago there was another gentleman down our way larking about with a revolver and he shot a whole family as well as the house porter, who went to see who was shooting on the third floor.”

“There’s some revolvers, Mrs. Müller, that won’t go off, even if you tried till you was dotty. There’s lots like that. But they’re sure to have bought something better than that for the Archduke, and I wouldn’t mind betting, Mrs. Müller, that the man who did it put on his best clothes for the job. You know, it wants a bit of doing to shoot an archduke; it’s not like when a poacher shoots a gamekeeper. You have to find out how to get at him; you can’t reach an important man like that if you’re dressed just anyhow. You have to wear a top hat or else the police’d run you in before you knew where you were.”

“I hear there was a whole lot of ’em, Mr. Schweik.”

“Why, of course, there was, Mrs. Müller,” said Schweik, now concluding the massage of his knees. “If you wanted to kill an archduke or the Emperor, for instance, you’d naturally talk it over with somebody. Two heads are better than one. One gives one bit of advice, another gives another, and so the good work prospers, as the hymn says. The chief thing is to keep on the watch till the gentleman you’re after rides past. . . . But there’s plenty more of them waiting their turn for it. You mark my words, Mrs. Müller, they’ll get the Czar and Czarina yet, and maybe, though let’s hope not, the Emperor himself, now that they’ve started with his uncle. The old chap’s got a lot of enemies. More than Ferdinand had. A little while ago a gentleman in the saloon bar was saying that there’d come a time when all the emperors would get done in one after another, and that not all their bigwigs and suchlike would save them. Then he couldn’t pay for his drinks and the landlord had to have him run in. And he gave him a smack in the jaw and two to the policeman. After that they had to strap him down in the police ambulance, just to bring him to his senses. Yes, Mrs. Müller, there’s queer goings-on nowadays; that there is. That’s another loss to Austria. When I was in the army there was a private who shot a captain. He loaded his rifle and went into the orderly room. They told him to clear out, but he kept on saying that he must speak to the captain. Well the captain came along and gave him a dose of C.B. Then he took his rifle and scored a fair bull’s eye. The bullet went right through the captain and when it came out the other side, it did some damage in the orderly room, in the bargain. It smashed a bottle of ink and the ink got spilled all over some regimental records.”

“And what happened to the private?” asked Mrs. Müller after a while, when Schweik was getting dressed.

“He hanged himself with a pair of braces,” said Schweik, brushing his bowler hat. “And the braces wasn’t even his. He borrowed them from a jailer, making out that his trousers were coming down. You can’t blame him for not waiting till they shot him. You know, Mrs. Müller, it’s enough to turn anyone’s head, being in a fix like that. The jailer lost his rank and got six months as well. But he didn’t serve his time. He ran away to Switzerland and now he does a bit of preaching for some church or other. There ain’t many honest people about nowadays, Mrs. Müller. I expect that the Archduke was taken in by the man who shot him. He saw a chap standing there and thought: Now there’s a decent fellow, cheering me and all. And then the chap did him in. Did he give him one or several?”

“The newspaper says, Mr. Schweik, that the Archduke was riddled with bullets. He emptied the whole lot into him.”

“That was mighty quick work, Mrs. Müller, mighty quick. I’d buy a Browning for a job like that. It looks like a toy, but in a couple of minutes you could shoot twenty archdukes with it, thin or fat. Although between ourselves, Mrs. Müller, it’s easier to hit a fat archduke than a thin one. You may remember the time they shot their king in Portugal. He was a fat fellow. Of course, you don’t expect a king to be thin. Well, now I’m going to call round at The Flagon and if anybody comes for that little terrier I took the advance for, you can tell ’em I’ve got him at my dog farm in the country. I just cropped his ears and now he mustn’t be taken away till his ears heal up or else he’d catch cold in them. Give the key to the house porter.”

There was only one customer at The Flagon. This was Bretschneider, a plainclothes policeman who was on secret service work. Palivec, the landlord, was washing glasses and Bretschneider vainly endeavoured to engage him in a serious conversation.

“We’re having a fine summer,” was Bretschneider’s overture to a serious conversation.

“All damn rotten,” replied Palivec, putting the glasses away into a cupboard.

“That’s a fine thing they’ve done for us at Sarajevo,” Bretschneider observed, with his hopes rather dashed.

“What Sarajevo’s that?” inquired Palivec. “D’you mean the wineshop at Nusle? They have a rumpus there every day. Well, you know what sort of place Nusle is.”

“No, I mean Sarajevo in Bosnia. They shot the Archduke Ferdinand there. What do you think of that?”

“I never shove my nose into that sort of thing, I’m hanged if I do,” primly replied Mr. Palivec, lighting his pipe. “Nowadays, it’s as much as your life’s worth to get mixed up in them. I’ve got my business to see to. When a customer comes in and orders beer, why I just serve him his drink. But Sarajevo or politics or a dead archduke, that’s not for the likes of us, unless we want to end up doing time.”

Bretschneider said no more, but stared disappointedly round the empty bar.

“You used to have a picture of the Emperor hanging here,” he began again presently, “just at the place where you’ve got a mirror now.”

“Yes, that’s right,” replied Mr. Palivec, “it used to hang there and the flies left their trade-mark on it, so I put it away into the lumber room. You see, somebody might pass a remark about it and then there might be trouble. What use is it to me?”

“Sarajevo must be a rotten sort of place, eh, Mr. Palivec?”

Mr. Palivec was extremely cautious in answering this deceptively straightforward question:

“At this time of the year it’s damned hot in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When I was in the army there, we always had to put ice on our company officer’s head.”

“What regiment did you serve in, Mr. Palivec?”

“I can’t remember a little detail like that. I never cared a damn about the whole business, and I wasn’t inquisitive about it,” replied Mr. Palivec. “It doesn’t do to be so inquisitive.”

Bretschneider stopped talking once and for all, and his woe-begone expression brightened up only on the arrival of Schweik who came in and ordered black beer with the remark:

“At Vienna they’re in mourning to-day.’

Bretschneider’s eyes began to gleam with hope. He said curtly:

“There are ten black flags at Konopiste.”

“There ought to be twelve,” said Schweik, when he had taken a gulp.

“What makes you think it’s twelve?” asked Bretschneider.

“To make it a round number, a dozen. That’s easier to reckon out and things always come cheaper by the dozen,” replied Schweik.

This was followed by a long silence, which Schweik himself interrupted with a sigh:

“Well, he’s in a better land now, God rest his soul. He didn’t live to be Emperor. When I was in the army, there was a general who fell off his horse and got killed as quiet as could be. They wanted to help him back on to his horse and when they went to lift him up, they saw he was stone dead. And he was just going to be promoted to field marshal. It happened during an army inspection. No good ever comes of those inspections. There was an inspection of some sort or other at Sarajevo, too. I remember once at an inspection like that there was twenty buttons missing from my tunic and I got two weeks’ solitary confinement for it, and I spent two days of it tied up hand and foot. But there’s got to be discipline in the army, or else nobody’d care a rap what he did. Our company commander, he always used to say to us: ‘There’s got to be discipline, you thickheaded louts, or else you’d be crawling about like monkeys on trees, but the army’ll make men of you, you thickheaded boobies.’ And isn’t it true? Just imagine a park and a soldier without discipline on every tree. That’s what I was always most afraid of.”

“That business at Sarajevo,” Bretschneider resumed, “was done by the Serbs.”

“You’re wrong there,” replied Schweik, “it was done by the Turks, because of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”

And Schweik expounded his views of Austrian international policy in the Balkans. The Turks were the losers in 1912 against Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece. They had wanted Austria to help them and when this was not done, they had shot Ferdinand.

“Do you like the Turks?” said Schweik, turning to Palivec. “Do you like that heathen pack of dogs? You don’t, do you?”

“One customer’s the same as another customer,” said Palivec, “even if he’s a Turk. People like us who’ve got their business to look after can’t be bothered with politics. Pay for your drink and sit down and say what you like. That’s my principle. It’s all the same to me whether our Ferdinand was done in by a Serb or a Turk, a Catholic or a Moslem, an Anarchist or a young Czech Liberal.”

“That’s all well and good, Mr. Palivec,” remarked Bretschneider, who had regained hope that one or other of these two could be caught out, “but you’ll admit that it’s a great loss to Austria.”

Schweik replied for the landlord:

“Yes, there’s no denying it. A fearful loss. You can’t replace Ferdinand by any sort of tomfool. Still, he ought to have been a bit fatter.”

“What do you mean?” asked Bretschneider, growing alert.

“What do I mean?” replied Schweik composedly. “Why, only just this: If he’d been fatter, he’d certainly have had a stroke earlier, when he chased the old women away at Konopiste, when they were gathering firewood and mushrooms on his preserves there, and then he wouldn’t have died such a shocking death. When you come to think of it, for him, the Emperor’s uncle, to get shot like that, oh, it’s shocking, that it is, and the newspapers are full of it. But what I say is, I wouldn’t like to be the Archduke’s widow. What’s she going to do now? Marry some other archduke? What good would come of that? She’d take another trip to Sarajevo with him and be left a widow for the second time. A good many years ago there was a gamekeeper at Zlim. He was called Pindour. A rum name, eh? Well, he was shot by poachers and left a widow with two children. A year later she married another gamekeeper from Mydlovary. And they shot him, too. Then she got married a third time and said: ‘All good things go by threes. If this turns out badly, I don’t know what I shall do.’ Blessed if they didn’t shoot him, too, and by that time she’d had six children with all those gamekeepers. So she went to the Lord of the Manor himself at Hluboka and complained of the trouble she’d had with the gamekeepers. Then she was advised to try Jares, a pond keeper. Well, you wouldn’t believe it, but he got drowned while he was fishing and she’d had two children with him. Then she married a pig gelder from Vodňany and one night he hit her with an axe and gave himself up to the police. When they hanged him at the assizes in Pisek, he said he had no regrets and on top of that he passed some very nasty remarks about the Emperor.”

“Do you happen to know what he said?” inquired Bretschneider in a hopeful voice.

“I can’t tell you that, because nobody had the nerve to repeat it. But they say it was something pretty awful, and that one of the justices, who was in court at the time, went mad when he heard it, and they’re still keeping him in solitary confinement so as it shouldn’t get known. It wasn’t just the ordinary sort of nasty remark like people make when they’re drunk.”

“What sort of nasty remarks about the Emperor do people make when they’re drunk?” asked Bretschneider.

“Come, come, gentlemen, talk about something else,” said the landlord, “that’s the sort of thing I don’t like. One word leads to another and then it gets you into trouble.”

“What sort of nasty remarks about the Emperor do people make when they’re drunk?” repeated Bretschneider.

“All sorts. Just you have too much to drink and get them to play the Austrian hymn and you’ll see what you’ll start saying. You’ll think of such a lot of things about the Emperor that if only half of them were true, it’d be enough to disgrace him for the rest of his life. Not that the old gentleman deserves it. Why, look at it this way. He lost his son Rudolf at a tender age when he was in the prime of life. His wife was stabbed with a file; then Johann Orth got lost and his brother, the Emperor of Mexico, was shot in a fortress up against a wall. Now, in his old age, they’ve shot his uncle. Things like that get on a man’s nerves. And then some drunken chap takes it into his head to call him names. If war was to break out to-day, I’d go of my own accord and serve the Emperor to my last breath.”

Schweik took a deep gulp and continued:

“Do you think the Emperor’s going to put up with that sort of thing? Little do you know him. You mark my words, there’s got to be war with the Turks. Kill my uncle, would you? Then take this smack in the jaw for a start. Oh, there’s bound to be war. Serbia and Russia’ll help us. There won’t half be a bust-up.”

At this prophetic moment Schweik was really good to look upon. His artless countenance, smiling like the full moon, beamed with enthusiasm. The whole thing was so utterly clear to him.

“Maybe,” he continued his delineation of the future of Austria, “if we have war with the Turks, the Germans’ll attack us, because the Germans and the Turks stand by each other. They’re a low lot, the scum of the earth. Still, we can join France, because they’ve had a grudge against Germany ever since ’71. And then there’ll be lively doings. There’s going to be war. I can’t tell you more than that.”

Bretschneider stood up and said solemnly:

“You needn’t say any more. Follow me into the passage and there I’ll say something to you.”

Schweik followed the plainclothes policeman into the passage where a slight surprise awaited him when his fellow-toper showed him his badge and announced that he was now arresting him and would at once convey him to the police headquarters. Schweik endeavoured to explain that there must be some mistake; that he was entirely innocent; that he hadn’t uttered a single word capable of offending anyone.

But Bretschneider told him that he had actually committed several penal offences, among them being high treason.

Then they returned to the saloon bar and Schweik said to Mr. Palivec:

“I’ve had five beers and a couple of sausages with a roll. Now let me have a cherry brandy and I must be off, as I’m arrested.”

Bretschneider showed Mr. Palivec his badge, looked at Mr. Palivec for a moment and then asked:

“Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“And can your wife carry on the business during your absence?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all right, then, Mr. Palivec,” said Bretschneider breezily. “Tell your wife to step this way; hand the business over to her, and we’ll come for you in the evening.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Schweik comforted him. “I’m being run in only for high treason.”

“But what about me?” lamented Mr. Palivec. “I’ve been so careful what I said.”

Bretschneider smiled and said triumphantly:

“I’ve got you for saying that the flies left their trade-mark on the Emperor. You’ll have all that stuff knocked out of your head.”

And Schweik left The Flagon in the company of the plainclothes policeman. When they reached the street Schweik, fixing his good-humoured smile upon Bretschneider’s countenance, inquired:

“Shall I get off the pavement?”

“How d’you mean?”

“Why, I thought now I’m arrested I mustn’t walk on the pavement.

When they were passing through the entrance to the police headquarters, Schweik said:

“Well, that passed off very nicely. Do you often go to The Flagon?”

And while they were leading Schweik into the reception bureau, Mr. Palivec at The Flagon was handing over the business to his weeping wife, whom he was comforting in his own special manner:

“Now stop crying and don’t make all that row. What can they do to me on account of the Emperor’s portrait where the flies left their trade-mark?”

And thus Schweik, the good soldier, intervened in the World War in that pleasant, amiable manner which was so peculiarly his. It will be of interest to historians to know that he saw far into the future. If the situation subsequently developed otherwise than he expounded it at The Flagon, we must take into account the fact that he lacked a preliminary diplomatic training.

Chapter2

Schweik, the Good Soldier, at the Police Headquarters.

The Sarajevo assassination had filled the police headquarters with numerous victims. They were brought in, one after the other, and the old inspector in the reception bureau said in his good-humoured voice: “This Ferdinand business is going to cost you dear.” When they had shut Schweik up in one of the numerous dens on the first floor, he found six persons already assembled there. Five of them were sitting round the table, and in a corner a middle-aged man was sitting on a mattress as if he were holding aloof from the rest.

Schweik began to ask one after the other why they had been arrested.

From the five sitting at the table he received practically the same reply:

“That Sarajevo business.” “That Ferdinand business.” “It’s all through that murder of the Archduke.” “That Ferdinand affair.” “Because they did the Archduke in at Sarajevo.”

The sixth man who was holding aloof from the other five said that he didn’t want to have anything to do with them because he didn’t want any suspicion to fall on him. He was there only for attempted robbery with violence.

Schweik joined the company of conspirators at the table, who were telling each other for at least the tenth time how they had got there.

All, except one, had been caught either in a public house, a wineshop or a café. The exception consisted of an extremely fat gentleman with spectacles and tear-stained eyes who had been arrested in his own home because two days before the Sarajevo outrage he had stood drinks to two Serbian students, and had been observed by Detective Brix drunk in their company at the Montmartre night club where, as he had already confirmed by his signature on the report, he had again stood them drinks.

In reply to all questions during the preliminary investigations at the commissariat of police, he had uttered a stereotyped lament:

“I’m a stationer.”

Whereupon he had received an equally stereotyped reply:

“That’s no excuse.”

A little fellow, who had come to grief in a wineshop, was a teacher of history and he had been giving the wine merchant the history of various political murders. He had been arrested at the moment when he was concluding a psychological analysis of all assassinations with the words:

“The idea underlying assassination is as simple as the egg of Columbus.”

Which remark the commissary of police had amplified at the cross-examination thus:

“And as sure as eggs are eggs, there’s quod in store for you.”

The third conspirator was the chairman of the “Dobromil” Benevolent Society. On the day of the assassination the “Dobromil” had arranged a garden party, combined with a concert. A sergeant of gendarmes had called upon the merrymakers to disperse, because Austria was in mourning, whereupon the chairman of the “Dobromil” had remarked good-humouredly:

“Just wait a moment till they’ve played Hej Slované.”

Now he was sitting there with downcast heart and lamenting:

“They elect a new chairman in August and if I’m not home by then I may not be reëlected. This is my tenth term as chairman and I’d never get over the disgrace of it.”

The late Ferdinand had played a queer trick on the fourth conspirator, a man of sterling character and unblemished scutcheon. For two whole days he had avoided any conversation on the subject of Ferdinand, till in the evening when he was playing cards in a café, he had won a trick by trumping the king of clubs.

“Bang goes the king—just like at Sarajevo.”

As for the fifth man, who was there, as he put it, because they did the Archduke in at Sarajevo, his hair and beard were bristling with terror, so that his head recalled that of a fox terrier. He hadn’t spoken a word in the restaurant where he was arrested—in fact he hadn’t even read the newspaper reports about Ferdinand’s assassination, but was sitting at a table all alone, when an unknown man had sat down opposite him and said in hurried tones:

“Have you read it?”

“No.”

“Do you know about it?”

“No.”

“Do you know what it’s all about?”

“No, I can’t be bothered about it.”

“You ought to take an interest in it all the same.”

“I don’t know what I ought to take an interest in. I’ll just smoke a cigar, have a few drinks, have a bit of supper, but I won’t read the papers. The papers are full of lies. Why should I upset myself?”

“So you didn’t take any interest even in the Sarajevo murder?”

“I don’t take any interest in any murders, whether they’re in Prague, Vienna, Sarajevo or London. That’s the business of the authorities, the law courts and the police. If anyone gets murdered anywhere, serve him right. Why does he want to be such a damn fool as to let himself get murdered?”

Those were his last words at that conversation. Since then he had kept on repeating in a loud voice at intervals of five minutes:

“I’m innocent, I’m innocent.”

He had shouted these words in the entrance to the police headquarters, he would repeat them while being conveyed to the Prague sessions, and with these words on his lips he would enter his prison cell.

When Schweik had heard all these dreadful tales of conspiracy he thought fit to make clear to them the complete hopelessness of their situation.

“We’re all in the deuce of a mess,” he began his words of comfort. “You say that nothing can happen to you, to all of us, but you’re wrong. What have we got the police for except to punish us for letting our tongues wag? If the times are so dangerous that archdukes get shot, the likes of us mustn’t be surprised if we’re taken up before the beak. They’re doing all this to make a bit of a splash, so that Ferdinand’ll be in the limelight before his funeral. The more of us there are, the better it’ll be for us, because we’ll feel all the jollier. When I was in the army, sometimes half the company were shoved into clink. And lots of innocent men used to get punished. Not only in the army, in the law courts, too. Once I remember there was a woman who was sentenced for strangling her newborn twins. Although she swore she couldn’t have strangled the twins, because she’s only had one baby, a female one, that she managed to strangle quite painlessly, she was sentenced for double murder. Once the court takes a thing up, there’s trouble. But there’s bound to be trouble. It may be that not all people are such crooks as they’re taken for. But nowadays how are you going to tell an honest man from a crook, especially now in these grave times when Ferdinand got done in. When I was in the army the captain’s pet dog got shot in the wood behind the parade ground. When he heard about it, he called us all out on parade and ordered every tenth man to step one pace forward. Of course, I was a tenth man, and there we stood at attention without moving an eyelash. The captain walked round us and said: ‘You blackguards, you ruffians, you scum, you scabby brutes, I’d like to shove the whole gang of you into solitary confinement over that dog. I’d chop you into mincemeat, I’d shoot you and have you turned into stew. But just to show you that I’m not going to treat you leniently, I’m giving you all fourteen days C. B.’ You see, that time the trouble was over a dog, but a fullblown archduke’s at the bottom of it all. That’s why they’ve got to put the fear of God into people, so as to make the trouble worth while.”

“I’m innocent, I’m innocent,” repeated the man with the bristly hair.

“So was Jesus Christ,” said Schweik, “but they crucified Him for all that. Nobody anywhere at any time has ever cared a damn whether a man’s innocent or not. Maul halten und weiter dienen, as they used to tell us in the army. That’s the best and wisest thing to do.”

Whereupon Schweik stretched himself out on the mattress and fell asleep contentedly.

In the meanwhile, two new arrivals were brought in. One of them was a Bosnian. He walked up and down gnashing his teeth. The other new guest was Palivec who, on seeing his acquaintance Schweik, woke him up and exclaimed in a voice full of tragedy:

“Now I’m here, too!”

Schweik shook hands with him cordially and said:

“I’m glad of that, really I am. I felt sure that gentleman’d keep his word when he told you they’d come and fetch you. It’s nice to know you can rely on people.”

Mr. Palivec, however, remarked that he didn’t care a damn whether he could rely on people or not, and he asked Schweik on the quiet whether the other prisoners were thieves who might do harm to his business reputation.

Schweik explained to him that all except one, who had been arrested for attempted robbery with violence, were there on account of the Archduke.

Mr. Palivec was annoyed and said that he wasn’t there on account of any fool of an archduke, but on the Emperor’s account. And as this began to interest the others, he told them how the flies had soiled the Emperor.

“They left stains on him, the vermin,” he concluded the account of his mishap, “and now I’ve been put into jail. I’ll pay those flies out for this,” he added menacingly.

Schweik went back to sleep, but not for long, because they soon came to take him away to be cross-examined.

And so, mounting the staircase to Section 3 for his cross-examination, Schweik bore his cross to the summit of Golgotha, although he himself was unaware of his martyrdom.

On seeing a notice that spitting was prohibited in the corridors, he asked the police sergeant to let him spit into a spittoon and beaming with good nature he entered the bureau, saying:

“Good-evening, gentlemen, I hope you’re all well.”

Instead of a reply, someone pummelled him in the ribs and stood him in front of a table, behind which sat a gentleman with a cold official face and features of such brutish savagery that he looked as if he had just tumbled out of Lombroso’s book on criminal types.

He hurled a bloodthirsty glance at Schweik and said:

“Take that idiotic expression off your face.”

“I can’t help it,” replied Schweik solemnly. “I was discharged from the army on account of being weak-minded and a special board reported me officially as weak-minded. I’m officially weak-minded—a chronic case.”

The gentleman with the criminal countenance grated his teeth as he said:

“The offence you’re accused of and that you’ve committed shows you’ve got all your wits about you.”

And he now proceeded to enumerate to Schweik a long list of crimes, beginning with high treason and ending with insulting language toward His Royal Highness and Members of the Royal Family. The central gem of this collection constituted approval of the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand, and from this again branched off a string of fresh offences, amongst which sparkled incitement to rebellion, as the whole business had happened in a public place.

“What have you got to say for yourself?” triumphantly asked the gentleman with the features of brutish savagery.

“There’s a lot of it,” replied Schweik innocently. “You can have too much of a good thing.”

“So you admit it’s true?”

“I admit everything. You’ve got to be strict. If you ain’t strict, why, where would you be? It’s like when I was in the army . . .”

“Hold your tongue!” shouted the police commissioner. “And don’t say a word unless you’re asked a question. Do you understand?”

“Begging your pardon, sir, I do, and I’ve properly got the hang of every word you utter.”

“Who do you keep company with?”

“The charwoman, sir.”

“And you don’t know anybody in political circles here?”

“Yes, sir, I take in the afternoon edition of the Narodni Politika, you know, sir, the paper they call the puppy’s delight.”

“Get out of here!” roared the gentleman with the brutish appearance.

When they were taking him out of the bureau, Schweik said:

“Good-night, sir.”

Having been deposited in his cell again, Schweik informed all the prisoners that the cross-examination was great fun. “They yell at you a bit and then kick you out.” He paused a moment. “In olden times,” continued Schweik, “it used to be much worse. I once read a book where it said that people charged with anything had to walk on red-hot iron and drink molten lead to see whether they was innocent or not. There was lots who was treated like that and then on top of it all they was quartered or put in the pillory somewhere near the Natural History Museum.

“Nowadays, it’s great fun being run in,” continued Schweik with relish. “There’s no quartering or anything of that kind. We’ve got a mattress, we’ve got a table, we’ve got a seat, we ain’t packed together like sardines, we’ll get soup, they’ll give us bread, they’ll bring a pitcher of water, there’s a closet right under our noses. It all shows you what progress there’s been. Of course, it’s rather a long way to the place where you’re cross-examined, along three corridors and up one flight of stairs, but the corridors are clean and there’s plenty going on in them. Some are being taken one way, others the opposite way, young and old, male and female. It’s nice to know you’re not alone. They all go wherever they’re taken and they’re absolutely satisfied, because they’re not afraid of being told in the bureau: ‘We’ve talked your case over and to-morrow you’ll be quartered or burned alive, according as you prefer.’ That must have been a nasty thing to have to look forward to, and I think, gentlemen, that it would have upset a good many of us. Ah, yes, nowadays things have improved for our benefit.’

He had just concluded his vindication of the modern imprisonment of citizens when the warder opened the door and shouted:

“Schweik, you’ve got to get dressed and go to be cross-examined.”

“I’ll get dressed,” replied Schweik. “I’ve no objection to that, but it strikes me there must be some mistake. I’ve been cross-examined once and they chucked me out. And what I’m afraid is that these other gentlemen who are here along with me are going to have a grudge against me because I’ve been called for a cross-examination twice running, and they’ve not been there at all yet this evening. It’s enough to make them jealous of me.”

“Clear out and shut your row,” was the reply to Schweik’s considerate representations.

Schweik again stood in the presence of the criminal-faced gentleman who, without any preliminaries, asked him in a harsh and relentless tone:

“Do you admit everything?”

Schweik fixed his kindly blue eyes upon the pitiless person and said mildly:

“If you want me to admit it, sir, then I will. It can’t do me any harm. But if you was to say: ‘Schweik, don’t admit anything,’ I’ll argue the point to my last breath.”

The severe gentleman wrote something on his documents and, handing Schweik a pen, told him to sign.

And Schweik signed Bretschneider’s depositions, with the following addition:

All the above-mentioned accusations against me are based upon truth.

Josef Schweik.

When he had signed, he turned to the severe gentleman:

“Is there anything else for me to sign? Or am I to come back in the morning?”

“You’ll be taken to the criminal court in the morning,” was the answer.

“What time, sir? You see, I wouldn’t like to oversleep myself, whatever happens.”

“Get out!” came a roar for the second time that day from the other side of the table before which Schweik had stood.

On the way back to his new abode, which was provided with a grating, Schweik said to the police-sergeant escorting him:

“Everything here runs as smooth as clockwork.”

As soon as the door had closed behind him, his fellow-prisoners overwhelmed him with all sorts of questions, to which Schweik replied brightly:

“I’ve just admitted I probably murdered the Archduke Ferdinand.”

And as he lay down on the mattress, he said:

“It’s a pity we haven’t got an alarm clock here.”

But in the morning they woke him up without an alarm clock, and precisely at six Schweik was taken away in the Black Maria to the county criminal court.

“The early bird catches the worm,” said Schweik to his fellow-travellers, as the Black Maria was passing out through the gates of the police headquarters.

Chapter3

Schweik Before the Medical Authorities.

The clean, cosy cubicles of the county criminal court produced a very favourable impression upon Schweik. The whitewashed walls, the black-leaded gratings and the fat warder in charge of prisoners under remand, with the purple facings and purple braid on his official cap. Purple is the regulation colour not only here, but also at religious ceremonies on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.

The glorious history of the Roman domination of Jerusalem was being enacted all over again. The prisoners were taken out and brought before the Pilates of 1914 down below on the ground floor. And the examining justices, the Pilates of the new epoch, instead of honourably washing their hands, sent out for stew and Pilsen beer, and kept on transmitting new charges to the public prosecutor.

Here, for the greater part, all logic was in abeyance and it was red tape which was victorious, it was red tape which throttled, it was red tape which caused lunacy, it was red tape which made a fuss, it was red tape which chuckled, it was red tape which threatened and never pardoned. They were jugglers with the legal code, high priests of the letter of the law, who gobbled up accused persons, the tigers in the Austrian jungle, who measured the extent of their leap upon the accused according to the statute book.

The exception consisted of a few gentlemen (just as at the police headquarters) who did not take the law too seriously, for everywhere you will find wheat among the tares.

It was to one of these gentlemen that Schweik was conducted for cross-examination. When Schweik was led before him, he asked him with his inborn courtesy to sit down, and then said:

“So you’re this Mr. Schweik?”

“I think I must be,” replied Schweik, “because my dad was called Schweik and my mother was Mrs. Schweik. I couldn’t disgrace them by denying my name.”

A bland smile flitted across the face of the examining counsel.

“This is a fine business you’ve been up to. You’ve got plenty on your conscience.”

“I’ve always got plenty on my conscience,” said Schweik, smiling even more blandly than the counsel himself. “I bet I’ve got more on my conscience than what you have, sir.”

“I can see that from the statement you signed,” said the legal dignitary, in the same kindly tone. “Did they bring any pressure to bear upon you at the police headquarters?”

“Not a bit of it, sir. I myself asked them whether I had to sign it and when they said I had to, why, I just did what they told me. It’s not likely I’m going to quarrel with them over my own signature. I shouldn’t be doing myself any good that way. Things have got to be done in proper order.”

“Do you feel quite well, Mr. Schweik?”

“I wouldn’t say quite well, your worship. I’ve got rheumatism and I’m using embrocation for it.”

The old gentleman again gave a kindly smile. “Suppose we were to have you examined by the medical authorities.”

“I don’t think there’s much the matter with me and it wouldn’t be fair to waste the gentlemen’s time. There was one doctor examined me at the police headquarters.”

“All the same, Mr. Schweik, we’ll have a try with the medical authorities. We’ll appoint a little commission, we’ll have you placed under observation, and in the meanwhile you’ll have a nice rest. Just one more question: According to the statement you’re supposed to have said that now a war’s going to break out soon.”

“Yes, your worship, it’ll break out at any moment now.”

“And do you ever feel run down at all?”

“No, sir, except that once I nearly got run down by a motor car, but that’s years and years ago.”

That concluded the cross-examination. Schweik shook hands with the legal dignitary and on his return to the cell he said to his neighbours:

“Now they’re going to have me examined by the medical authorities on account of this murder of Archduke Ferdinand.”

“I’ve already been examined by the medical authorities,” said one young man, “that was when I was had up in court over some carpets. They said I was weak-minded. Now I’ve embezzled a steam-threshing machine and they can’t touch me. My lawyer told me yesterday that once I’ve been reported weak-minded I can make capital out of it for the rest of my life.”

“I don’t trust the medical authorities,” remarked a man of intelligent appearance. “Once when I forged some bills of exchange I went to a lecture by Dr. Heveroch, and when they nabbed me I pretended to have an epileptic fit, just like Dr. Heveroch described it. I bit the leg of one of the medical authorities on the commission and drank the ink out of an inkpot. But just because I bit a man in the calf they reported I was quite well, and so I was done for.

“I am not afraid of their examination,” declared Schweik. “When I was in the army, I was examined by a veterinary surgeon and I got on first rate.”

“The medical authorities are a rotten lot,” announced a small, misshapen man. “Not long ago they happened to dig up a skeleton on my field and the medical authorities said the skeleton had been murdered by some blunt instrument forty years previously. Now I’m only thirty-eight, but they locked me up, though I’ve got a birth certificate, a certificate of baptism and a copy of the entry in the parish register.”

“I think,” said Schweik, “that we ought to look at everythingfair and square. Anybody can make a mistake, and the more he thinks about a thing, the more mistakes he’s bound to make. The medical authorities are human beings, and human beings have got their failings. That’s like once at Nusle, just by the bridge, a gentleman came up to me one night when I was on my way home and hit me over the head with a horsewhip and when I was lying on the ground he flashed a light on me and said: ‘I’ve made a mistake, that’s not him.’ And it made him so wild to think he’d made a mistake that he landed me another whack across the back. It’s just in the course of nature for a man to keep on making mistakes till he’s dead. That’s like the gentleman who found a mad dog half-frozen one night and took it home with him and shoved it into his wife’s bed. As soon as the dog got warm and came to, it bit the whole family, and the youngest baby that was still in the cradle got torn to pieces and gobbled up by it. Or I can give you another example of a mistake that was made by a cabinetmaker who lived in the same house as me. He opened the church at Podol with his latchkey, thinking he was at home, undressed in the sacristy, thinking it was the kitchen, and lay down on the altar, thinking he was at home in bed and he covered himself over with some of those counterpanes with scripture texts on them and he put the gospel and other sacred books under his head to keep it propped up. In the morning the verger found him and when he came to his senses, he told him in quite a cheerful sort of way that it was a mistake. ‘A fine mistake,’ said the verger, ‘seeing as now we’ve got to have the church consecrated all over again because of it.’ And here’s another example I can give you of a mistake made by a police dog at Kladno. A wolf hound belonging to a Sergeant Roter, whom I daresay you’ve heard of. This Sergeant Roter used to train these dogs and make experiments on tramps, till at last all the tramps began to give the Kladno district a wide berth. So he gave orders that the gendarmes must run in any suspicious person at all costs. Well, one day they ran in a fairly well-dressed man whom they found sitting on the stump of a tree in the woods. They at once snipped off a piece of his coat tails and let the police dogs have a sniff at it. Then they took the man into a brick works outside the town and let the trained dogs follow his tracks. The dogs found him and brought him back. Then the man had to climb a ladder into an attic, vault over a wall, jump into a pond, with the dogs after him. In the end it turned out that the man was a Czech radical M. P. who had taken a trip to the woods, through being so sick and tired of parliament. That’s why I say that people have their failings, they make mistakes, whether they’re learned men or just damned fools who don’t know any better. Why, even cabinet ministers can make mistakes.”

The commission of medical authorities which had to decide whether Schweik’s standard of intelligence did, or did not, conform to all the crimes with which he was charged, consisted of three extremely serious gentlemen with views which were such that the view of each separate one of them differed considerably from the views of the other two.

They represented three distinct schools of thought with regard to mental disorders.

If in the case of Schweik a complete agreement was reached between these diametrically opposed scientific camps, this can be explained simply and solely by the overwhelming impression produced upon them by Schweik who, on entering the room where his state of mind was to be examined and observing a picture of the Austrian ruler hanging on the wall, shouted: “Gentlemen, long live our Emperor, Franz Josef the First.”

The matter was completely clear. Schweik’s spontaneous utterance made it unnecessary to ask a whole lot of questions, and there remained only some of the most important ones, the answers to which were to corroborate Schweik’s real opinion, thus:

“Is radium heavier than lead?”

“I’ve never weighed it, sir,” answered Schweik with his sweet smile.

“Do you believe in the end of the world?”

“I have to see the end of the world first,” replied Schweik in an offhand manner, “but I’m sure it won’t come my way to-morrow.”

“Could you measure the diameter of the globe?”

“No, that I couldn’t, sir,” answered Schweik, “but now I’ll ask you a riddle, gentlemen. There’s a three-storied house with eight windows on each story. On the roof there are two gables and two chimneys. There are two tenants on each story. And now, gentlemen, I want you to tell me in what year the house porter’s grandmother died?”

The medical authorities looked at each other meaningly, but nevertheless one of them asked one more question:

“Do you know the maximum depth of the Pacific Ocean?”

“I’m afraid I don’t, sir,” was the answer, “but it’s pretty sure to be deeper than what the river is just below Prague.”

The chairman of the commission curtly asked, “Is that enough?” But one member inquired further:

“How much is 12897 times 13863?”

“729,” answered Schweik without moving an eyelash.

“I think that’s quite enough,” said the chairman of the commission. “You can take this prisoner back to where he came from.”

“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Schweik respectfully, “it’s quite enough for me, too.”

After his departure the three experts agreed that Schweik was an obvious imbecile in accordance with all the natural laws discovered by mental specialists.

The report submitted to the examining judge contained, among other remarks, the following passage:

The undersigned medical authorities base themselves upon the complete mental deficiency and congenital cretinism of Josef Schweik who was brought before the above-mentioned commission and who expressed himself in terms such as “Long Live our Emperor Franz Josef the First,” a remark which completely suffices to demonstrate Josef Schweik’s state of mind as an obvious imbecile. The undersigned commission therefore makes the following recommendations: 1. The proceedings against Josef Schweik should be suspended. 2. Josef Schweik should be removed to a mental clinic for observation purposes and to ascertain how far his mental state is dangerous to his surroundings.

While this report was being drawn up, Schweik was explaining to his fellow-prisoners: “They didn’t worry about Ferdinand. All they did was to crack some jokes with me about radium and the Pacific Ocean. In the end we decided that what we’d talked to each other about was quite enough, and then we said good-bye.”

“I trust nobody,” remarked the little misshapen man on whose field they had dug up a skeleton. “They’re all a pack of shysters.”

“If you you ask me, it’s just as well they are,” said Schweik, lying down on the straw mattress. “If all people wanted to do all the others a good turn, they’d be walloping each other in a brace of shakes.”

Chapter4

Schweik Is Ejected from the Lunatic Asylum.

When Schweik later on described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in terms of exceptional eulogy: “I’m blowed if I can make out why lunatics kick up such a fuss about being kept there. They can crawl about stark naked on the floor, or caterwaul like jackals, or rave and bite. If you was to do anything like that in the open street, it’d make people stare, but in the asylum it’s just taken as a matter of course. Why, the amount of liberty there is something that even the socialists have never dreamed of. The inmates can pass themselves off as God Almighty or the Virgin Mary or the Pope or the King of England or our Emperor or St. Vaclav, although the one who did him was properly stripped and tied up in solitary confinement. There was a chap there who kept thinking that he was an archbishop, but he did nothing but guzzle. And then there was another who said he was St. Cyril and St. Methodus, just so that he could get double helpings of grub. One fellow was in the family way and invited everyone to the christening. There were lots of chess players, politicians, fishermen and scouts, stamp collectors and photographers and painters there. They used to keep one man always in a strait-waistcoat, to stop him from calculating when the end of the world was coming. Everybody can say what he likes there, the first thing that comes into his head, just like in parliament. The noisiest of the lot was a chap who said he was the sixteenth volume of the encyclopædia and asked everybody to open him and find an article on sewing machines or else he’d be done for. He wouldn’t shut up until they shoved him into a strait-waistcoat. I tell you, the life there was a fair treat. You can bawl, or yelp, or sing, or blub, or moo, or boo, or jump, say your prayers or turn somersaults, or walk on all fours, or hop about on one foot, or run round in a circle, or dance, or skip, or squat on your haunches all day long, and climb up the walls. Nobody comes up to you and says: ‘You mustn’t do this, you mustn’t do that, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, call yourself civilized?’ I liked being in the asylum, I can tell you, and while I was there I had the time of my life.”

And, in good sooth, the mere welcome which awaited Schweik in the asylum, when they took him there from the central criminal court for observation, far exceeded anything he had expected. First of all they stripped him naked, then they gave him a sort of dressing gown and took him to have a bath, catching hold of him familiarly by the arm, during which process one of the keepers entertained him by narrating anecdotes about Jews. In the bathroom they immersed him in a tub of warm water and then pulled him out and placed him under a cold douche. They repeated this three times and then asked him whether he liked it. Schweik said that it was better than the public baths near the Charles Bridge and that he was very fond of bathing. “If you’ll only just clip my nails and hair, I’ll be as happy as can be,” he added, smiling affably.

They complied with this request and when they had thoroughly rubbed him down with a sponge, they wrapped him up in a sheet and carried him off into ward No. 1 to bed, where they laid him down, covered him over with a quilt, and told him to go to sleep.

Schweik still tells the story with delight: “Just imagine, they carried me, actually carried me along. It was a fair treat for me.”

And so he blissfully fell asleep on the bed. Then they woke him up to give him a basin of milk and a roll. The roll was already cut up into little pieces and while one of the keepers held Schweik’s hands, the other dipped the bits of roll into milk and fed him as poultry is fed with clots of dough for fattening. After he had gone to sleep again, they woke him up and took him to the observation ward where Schweik, standing stark naked before two doctors, was reminded of the glorious time when he joined the army. Almost involuntarily he let fall the word:

“Tauglich.”

“What’s that you’re saying?” remarked one of the doctors. “Take five paces forward and five paces to the rear.”

Schweik took ten paces.

“I told you,” said the doctor, “to take five.”

“A few paces more or less don’t matter to me,” said Schweik.

Thereupon the doctors ordered him to sit on a chair and one of them tapped him on the knee. He then told the other one that the reflexes were quite normal, whereat the other wagged hishead and he in his turn began to tap Schweik on the knee, while the first one lifted Schweik’s eyelids and examined his pupils. Then they went off to a table and bandied some Latin phrases.

“Can you sing?” one of them asked Schweik. “Couldn’t you sing us a song?”

“Why, with pleasure, gentlemen,” replied Schweik. “I’m afraid I haven’t got much of a voice or what you’d call an ear for music, but I’ll do what I can to please you, if you want a little amusement.”

And he struck up:

“O the monk in the armchair yonder,

In his hand he bows his head,

And upon his pallid visage,

Two bitter, glowing tears are shed.

“That’s all I know,” continued Schweik, “but if you like I’ll sing you this:

“My heart is brimming o’er with sadness,

My bosom surges with despair,

Mutely I sit and afar I gaze:

My yearning’s afar, it is there, it is there.

“And that’s all I know of that one, too,” sighed Schweik. “But besides that I know the first verse of ‘Where Is My Home?’ and ‘General Windischgratz and All His Commanders Started the Battle at the Break of Day’ and a few of the old popular favourites like ‘Lord Preserve Us’ and ‘Hail We Greet Thee with Thousand Greetings’ . . .”

The two doctors looked at each other and one of them asked Schweik:

“Has the state of your mind ever been examined?”

“In the army,” replied Schweik solemnly and proudly, “the military doctors officially reported me as feeble-minded.”

“It strikes me that you’re a malingerer,” shouted one of the doctors.

“Me, gentleman?” said Schweik deprecatingly. “No, I’m no malingerer, I’m feeble-minded, fair and square. You ask them in the orderly room of the 91st regiment or at the reserve head-quarters in Karlin.”

The elder of the two doctors waved his hand with a gesture of despair and pointing to Schweik said to the keepers: “Let this man have his clothes again and put him into Section 3 in the first passage. Then one of you can come back and take all his papers into the office. And tell them there to settle it quickly, because we don’t want to have him on our hands for long.”