MRS KOPECKA steps forward: Gentlemen, there are no black market deals going on at the Chalice.
BULLINGER: No? He slaps her across the face, I’ll show you whether there are, you dirty Czech bitch.
BRETTSCHNEIDER excitedly: I must ask you not to judge Mrs Kopecka without a hearing. I know her to be quite uninterested in politics.
MRS KOPECKA very pale: I won’t stand for being hit.
BULLINGER: What’s this? Contradicting me? Slaps her again. Take her away!
Since Mrs Kopecka now tries to attack Bullinger the SS man hits her over the head.
BRETTSCHNEIDER bending over Mrs Kopecka as she lies on the ground: You’ll have to answer for that, Bullinger. You won’t manage to distract attention from the Vojta dog that way.
SCHWEYK stepping forward: Beg to report, I can explain everything. The parcel doesn’t belong to anybody here. I know, because I put it down myself.
BULLINGER: So it was you, was it?
SCHWEYK: It belonged to a man who gave it me to keep an eye on while he went to the gents, at least that’s what he said. He was about medium height with a fair beard.
BULLINGER astonished at this unlikely story: Tell me, are you soft in the head?
SCHWEYK looking at him straight and seriously in the eye: I already told you I was. I’ve been officially declared an idiot by a board. That’s why I was kicked out of voluntary war work too.
BULLINGER: But you’re bright enough for the black market, is that it? When I get you back to headquarters you’ll find a hundred certificates are bugger all use to you.
SCHWEYK submissively: Beg to report, sir, that I quite realize they’ll be bugger all use to me, because I’ve been landing in this sort of a mess ever since I was a kid, when all the time I’ve meant well and tried to do whatever they wanted. Like the time in Lubova when I was going to help the caretaker’s wife at the school there to hang out her washing, if you’d come out into the passage I could tell you what happened. I got into the black market same way as Pontius Pilate got in the creed, a bit of an accident you might say.
BULLINGER staring at him: I just don’t know why I listen to you at all, and this is the second time too. Maybe because I’ve never seen as big a crook before and the sight hypnotizes me.
SCHWEYK: I suppose it’s like if you suddenly saw a lion in Charles Street, where you don’t usually come across them, or like the time in Chotebor when the postman caught his wife with the caretaker and stabbed her. He went straight to the police to give himself up, and when they asked him what he did afterwards he said that as he came out of the house he saw a man going round the corner stark naked, so they let him go, thinking he was soft in the head, but two months later it came out that just at that time a lunatic had escaped from the asylum there without any clothes on. They didn’t believe the postman even though it was the truth.
BULLINGER astonished: I keep on listening to you. I can’t drag myself away. I know what you’re thinking—that the Third Reich will last a year perhaps, or maybe ten years—but let me tell you we’re likely to be here for 10,000 years, put that in your pipe and smoke it.
SCHWEYK: You’ve come to stay then, as the sexton said when the landlady of the Swan married him and dropped her teeth in a tumbler for the night.
BULLINGER: Do you piss white or do you piss yellow?
SCHWEYK amiably: Beg to report, I piss yellowy-white, lieutenant, sir.
BULLINGER: And now you’re coming along with me, even if certain people—pointing to Brettschneider—are ready to stick out their neck for you so far they catch it in a noose.
SCHWEYK: Very good, sir. Order must prevail. The black market’s a bad thing and won’t stop till there’s nothing left to sell. Then we’ll have order, right?
BULLINGER: And we shall get the dog too.
Exit Bullinger with the parcel under his arm. The SS men seize Schweyk and lead him off.
SCHWEYK good-naturedly, on leaving: I only hope you won’t be disappointed when you do. A lot of my customers, when they get a dog they’ve been particularly keen on and have turned the place upside down for, they don’t much care for it any more.
BRETTSCHNEIDER to Mrs Kopecka, who has come to again: Mrs Kopecka, you are the victim of certain conflicts between certain factions of the Gestapo and the SS, enough said. However, consider yourself under my protection, I shall be back shortly to discuss the matter with you in private. Exit.
MRS KOPECKA staggering back to the bar, where she ties a drying cloth around her bleeding forehead: Anyone like a beer?
KATI looking at Schweyk’s hat, which is still hanging over the table where the regulars sit: They didn’t even let him take his hat.
CUSTOMER: He’ll not come back alive.
Enter young Prochazka, sheepishly. He is horrified to see Mrs Kopecka’s blood-stained bandage.
YOUNG PROCHAZKA: What happened to you, Mrs Kopecka? I saw the SS driving away—was it the SS?
CUSTOMERS: They hit her over the head with a truncheon because they said the Chalice was mixed up in the black market.—Even Mr Brettschneider of the Gestapo spoke up for her, or else she’d have been arrested.—They’ve taken one fellow away.
MRS KOPECKA: Mr Prochazka, the Chalice is no place for you.
Only true Czechs come here.
YOUNG PROCHAZKA: Honestly, Mrs K., I’ve felt terrible since I last saw you, and I’ve learned my lesson. Can’t you give me a chance to make up for it?
Mrs Kopecka’s icy look makes him shudder, and he creeps out, crushed.
KATI: The SS are jumpy too because yesterday they pulled another SS man out of the Moldau with a hole in his left side.
ANNA: They throw enough Czechs in.
CUSTOMER: And all because they’re having a bad time of it in the East.
FIRST CUSTOMER to Baloun: Wasn’t that your friend they took away?
BALOUN bursting into tears: It’s my fault. It all comes from my gluttony. Time and again I’ve asked the Virgin Mary to give me strength and shrivel up my stomach somehow, but it’s no use. I’ve got my best friend in such a mess they’ll probably shoot him tonight, and if not he can thank his stars and it’ll be first thing tomorrow.
MRS KOPECKA putting a slivovitz in front of him: Drink that. Crying won’t help.
BALOUN: Bless you. I’ve broken things up between you and your young man, and you’ll not find a better one, it’s only that he’s weak. If I’d made the vow you asked me to maybe it wouldn’t all look so black. If only I could make it now, but can I? On an empty stomach? Oh God, where will it all end?
MRS KOPECKA goes back to the bar and begins to rinse glasses again: Put a penny in the piano. I’ll tell you where it will end.
A customer puts a coin in the player piano. It lights up and a transparency shows the moon over the Moldau as it flows majestically away into the distance. As she rinses her glasses Mrs Kopecka sings the ‘Song of the Moldau’:
The stones of the Moldau are stirring and shifting
In Prague lie three emperors turning to clay.
The great shall not stay great, the darkness is lifting.
The night has twelve hours, but at last comes the day.
For times have to change. All the boundless ambitions
Of those now in power will soon have been spent.
Like bloodspattered cocks they defend their positions
But times have to change, which no force can prevent.
The stones of the Moldau are stirring and shifting
In Prague lie three emperors turning to clay.
The great shall not stay great, the darkness is lifting.
The night has twelve hours, but at last comes the day.
INTERLUDE IN THE HIGHER REGIONS
Hitler and General von Bock, known as ‘the Killer’, in front of a map of the Soviet Union. Both are over life size. Martial music.
VON BOCK
Excuse me, Herr Hitler, your new offensive
Is costing thousands of tanks, bombers and guns, and they?
??re expensive.
On top of that, men’s lives: well, all the troops call me a bleeder
Meaning just that I obey my leader
But if you think Stalingrad’s a pushover, I tell you you’re mistaken.
HITLER
Herr General von Bock, Stalingrad will be taken
I’ve told all my people that we’re winning.
VON BOCK
Herr Hitler, the winter is almost beginning
Just imagine the snowdrifts soon as the blizzards blow around here.
We would do better not to be found here …
HITLER
Herr von Bock, I’ll round up the peoples of Europe like so many cattle
And the Little Man shall salvage my battle.
Herr von Bock, you are not to let down the side.
VON BOCK
And my reinforcements?
HITLER
Will be supplied.
7
Cell in a military prison with Czech prisoners who are waiting for their medical. Among them Schweyk. They wait stripped to the waist, but all are pretending to have the most pitiful illnesses. One, for example, lies stretched out on the ground as if dying.
A BENT MAN: I’ve seen my lawyer and got some very reassuring information. They can’t put us in the army unless we want to go. It’s illegal.
MAN ON CRUTCHES: Then what are you going around bent double for if you don’t expect to be put in?
BENT MAN: Just in case.
The man on crutches laughs ironically.
DYING MAN on the ground: They wouldn’t risk it with cripples like us. They’re unpopular enough already.
SHORT-SIGHTED MAN triumphantly: They say in Amsterdam a German officer was crossing one of those things called a gracht, a bit on edge round eleven at night, and he asked a Dutchman what time it was. All the Dutchman did was give him a solemn look and say ‘My watch has stopped’. He walked on unhappily and went up to another, and before he had a chance to ask the man said he’d left his watch at home. The officer’s supposed to have shot himself.
DYING MAN: He couldn’t stand it. The contempt.
SCHWEYK: They don’t shoot themselves as much as they shoot other people. There was a young innkeeper in Vrzlov whose wife was deceiving him with his own brother, and he punished the two of them with contempt and nothing else. He’d found a pair of her drawers in his brother’s ponycart, so he put them on the dressing table thinking it would make her ashamed. They had him certified incompetent by a local court, sold his pub and ran away together. He was right to this extent, though: his wife told a girl friend she’d felt a bit uncomfortable about taking his fur-lined winter overcoat with her.
BENT MAN: What are you here for?
SCHWEYK: Black market. They could have shot me, but the Gestapo needed me as a witness against the SS. I was helped by the quarrels among the bigshots. They pointed out to me that I’m lucky with my name, because it’s Schweyk with a ‘y’, but if I spell it with an ‘i’ that makes me of German extraction and I can be conscripted.
MAN WITH CRUTCHES: They’re even taking them from the long-term prisons now.
BENT MAN: Only if they’re of German extraction.
MAN WITH CRUTCHES: Or voluntary German extraction, like this chap.
BENT MAN: The only hope is to be a cripple.
SHORT-SIGHTED MAN: I’m short-sighted. I’d never recognize an officer so I wouldn’t be able to salute.
SCHWEYK: Then they could put you in a listening-post reporting enemy aircraft, it’s even better if you’re blind for that, because blind men develop very sharp hearing. There was a farmer in Socz for instance put out his dog’s eyes to make it hear better. So they’ll have a use for you.
SHORT-SIGHTED MAN desperately: I know a chimney-sweep in Brevnov—give him ten crowns and he’ll give you such a temperature you’ll want to jump out of the window.
BENT MAN: That’s nothing, in Vršovice there’s a midwife’ll pull your leg so far out of joint for 20 crowns that you’re a cripple for the rest of your life.
MAN WITH CRUTCHES: I had mine pulled out of joint for five.
DYING MAN: I didn’t have to pay anything. I’ve got a real strangulated hernia.
MAN WITH CRUTCHES: If you have they’ll operate you in Pancrac hospital, and where’ll you be then?
SCHWEYK gaily: Anyone listening to you lot’d think you didn’t want to fight for the defence of civilization against Bolshevism.
A soldier comes in and busies himself with the bucket.
SOLDIER: You’ve mucked up this bucket again. You can’t even shit properly, you foul lot.
SCHWEYK: We were just speaking of Bolshevism. Do you people know what Bolshevism is? The sworn accomplice of Wall Street that’s determined on our destruction under the leadership of the Jew Rosenfelt in the White House?
The soldier keeps fiddling with the bucket in order to hear more, so Schweyk goes on calmly: But they don’t know what they’re up against. Do you know the song about the gunner of Przemysl in the First World War, when we were fighting the Czar? He sings:
He stood beside his gun
And just kept loading on.
He stood beside his gun
And just kept loading on
When a bullet very neatly
Cut his hands away completely.
He didn’t turn a hair
Just kept on standing there.
He stood there by his gun
And just kept loading on.
The Russians are only fighting because they have to. They’ve no agriculture, because they’ve turned out the big landowners, and their industry’s hamstrung by their mania for levelling down and because the more thoughtful workers resent the managers’ high salaries. In other words there’s nothing to beat, and once we’ve beaten it the Americans will have missed the boat. Am I right?
SOLDIER: Shut up, Conversation’s not allowed.
He goes off angrily with the bucket.
DYING MAN: I think you’re an informer.
SCHWEYK cheerfully: Informer, me? No. It’s just that I listen to the German radio regularly. You ought to try it, it’s a scream.
DYING MAN: It’s not. It’s a disgrace.
SCHWEYK firmly: It’s a scream.
SHORT-SIGHTED MAN: That doesn’t mean you have to arsecrawl to them though.
SCHWEYK didactically: Don’t say that. It’s an art. There’s many a little insect would be glad to crawl up a tiger. The tiger can’t get at him, and he feels pretty safe, but it’s the getting in is the problem.
BENT MAN: Don’t be vulgar. It isn’t a nice sight when Czechs will put up with anything.
SCHWEYK: That’s what Jaroslav Vaniek told the consumptive pedlar. The landlord of the Swan in Budweis, a great ox of a man, only half filled the pedlar’s glass, and when the poor wreck said nothing Vaniek turned to him and said ‘Why d’you stand for that, you’re as much to blame as he is’. The pedlar just sloshed Vaniek a fourpenny one, that was all. And now I’m going to ring the bell and get them to get a move on with their war, my time’s valuable. Stands up.
LITTLE FAT MAN who has so far been sitting to one side: You are not to ring that bell.
SCHWEYK: Why not?
LITTLE FAT MAN authoritatively: Because things are moving quite fast enough for us.
DYING MAN: Very true. Why did they pull you in?
LITTLE FAT MAN: Because my dog was stolen.
SCHWEYK interested: It wasn’t a pom, was it?
LITTLE FAT MAN: What do you know about it?
SCHWEYK: I bet your name’s Vojta. I’m very pleased to meet you. He offers his hand, which the fat man ignores. I’m Schweyk, I don’t suppose that means anything to you, but you can shake my hand, I bet you’re not pro-German any more now they’ve got you in here.
LITTLE FAT MAN: I accused the SS of having stolen my dog, on the evidence of one of my servants, is that good enough for you?
SCHWEYK: Quite good enough. Back in Budweis there was a teacher who had a down
on one of his pupils and this pupil accused him of having a newspaper on the music stand while he was playing the organ in church. He was very religious and his wife had a lot to put up with because he had stopped her wearing short skirts, but after that they twitted him and teased him so much that in the end he said he’d even stopped believing in the Marriage at Cana. You’ll march off to the Caucasus all right and shit on old Hitler, only like the landlord of the Swan said it all depends where you shit on what.
LITTLE FAT MAN: If you’re called Schweyk there was a fellow who pushed up to me, a young man, as I was being brought in at the gate. He just managed to say ‘Ask for Mr Schweyk’ and then they got the gate open. He must still be standing around down there.
SCHWEYK: I’ll have a look. I’ve kept expecting that one morning there’d be a little bunch of people waiting outside the prison, the landlady from the Chalice, she wouldn’t want to be left out, and maybe a big fat man, all waiting for Schweyk, and no Schweyk there for them. Help me up, one of you fellows. He goes to the little cell window and climbs on the back of the man with the crutches to look out.
It’s young Prochazka. I don’t think he’ll be able to see me. Give me your crutches.
He gets them and waves them around. Then young Prochazka evidently sees him and Schweyk makes himself understood with broad gestures. He outlines a fat man with a beard—Baloun—and makes the gesture of stuffing food into one’s mouth and carrying something under one’s arm. Then he gets down off the man’s back.
What you just saw me doing probably surprised you. We had a gentlemen’s agreement, that was what he came for, I always felt he was a decent type. I was just repeating what he was saying, with all that business, so he’d see I’d got it. He probably wanted me to be able to march off to Russia with nothing on my mind.
Commands are heard outside, and marching feet, then a military band begins to play the Horst Wessel march.
DYING MAN: What’s going on? Did you see anything?
SCHWEYK: There’s a crowd of people at the gate. Probably a battalion marching out.
BENT MAN: That’s a dreadful tune.
SCHWEYK: I think it’s nice, it’s sad yet it’s got a swing to it.
MAN ON CRUTCHES: We’ll soon be hearing it a lot more. They play the Horst Wessel march whenever they can. Some pimp wrote it. I’d like to know what the words mean.