'What do you want?'
'Let me out,' he said in a voice which sounded as if he had nothing left to live for.
'Where to?' came the answer from the other side.
'To my office,' answered the unfortunate father, official, drunkard and libertine.
Laughter could be heard in the quiet of the passage, horrible laughter, and the steps went away again.
'It seems to me that that gentleman must hate you if he laughs at you like that,' said Svejk, when the despairing man sat down beside him again.
'A policeman like that might do a lot of harm when he gets angry, and when he gets angrier still he might do anything.
Just sit down quietly, if you don't want to hang yourself, and wait and see how things develop.
If you're an official, you're married and you have little babes, it's frightful, I must admit.
If I'm not mistaken you're probably convinced that they'll sack you from the office.'
'I can't say,' he sighed, 'because I don't remember myself what I was up to.
I only know that I got thrown out from somewhere and that I wanted to get back there to light a cigar.
But it started splendidly. Our departmental chief was celebrating his name day and invited us to a wine restaurant. Then we went to a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, a seventh, an eighth, a ninth .. .'
'Wouldn't you like me to help you count?' asked Svejk.
'I'm a bit of an expert.
One night I was in twenty-eight pubs. But, God's truth, I never had at the most more than three glasses of beer in any one of them.'
'In short,' continued the unfortunate subordinate of the departmental chief who had celebrated his name day in such magnificent style, 'when we'd been in about a dozen different night dens we discovered we'd lost our chief, although we'd tied him with string and led him with us like a little dog.
And so we went to look for him everywhere and finally we all lost each other until in the end I found myself in one of those night cafes in Vinohrady, a very decent place, where I drank a liqueur straight out of the bottle.
What I did afterwards I can't remember. I only know that when they brought me to the police station here two policemen reported that I was drunk, had been behaving immorally, had hit a lady, taken down somebody else's hat from the peg and cut it in shreds with my penknife, chased away the ladies' orchestra, accused the head waiter in front of everyone of stealing twenty crowns, smashed the marble slab at the table where I was sitting and intentionally spat into the black coffee of a stranger at the next table.
I didn't do anything else. At least I can't remember having done so. And, believe me, I'm a decent, intelligent man who hasn't a thought for anything except his family.
What do you say to that?
I'm certainly not a hooligan!'
Svejk made no reply but asked with interest: 'Did you have much trouble smashing that marble slab or did you do it at one go?'
'At one go,' answered the intelligent gentleman.
'Then you're for it,' said Svejk pensively.
'They'll prove to you that you coached yourself for it with intensive training.
And that stranger's coffee which you spat into, was it with rum or not?'
And without waiting for an answer he explained: 'If it was with rum, then it'll be worse for you, because it's more expensive.
In the court they reckon up every item and add them together so that it amounts at least to a crime.'
'In the court ... ' the conscientious paterfamilias whispered dejectedly and, hanging his head, lapsed into that unpleasant state in which a man is devoured by the reproaches of his conscience.
'And do they know at home that you're in gaol,' Svejk asked, 'or will they wait till it's in the paper?'
'Do you think it will be in the paper?' was the naive question of the victim of the name day party of his departmental chief.
'Why, it's a dead certainty,' was the frank answer, for Svejk was never one to conceal anything from others.
'All the newspaper readers will get a great kick out of what you did.
I also like to read that column about drunks and their escapades.
Not long ago at the pub The Chalice one of the guests didn't do anything more than break his own head with a glass.
He threw the glass up into the air and then stood underneath it.
But they carried him off and the very next morning we read it in the papers.
Or in Bendlovka I once slapped an undertaker's mute and he slapped me back.
To restore peace between us they had to arrest us both, and at once it was in the afternoon paper. Or when that Councillor smashed two cups in the cafe The Corpse, do you imagine they spared him?
It was immediately in the newspapers the day after. All you can do is to send a correction to the papers from gaol saying that the information published about you has nothing to do with you, and that you're no relative of the person of that name and have no connection with him.
And you must write home and tell them to cut your correction out of the paper and keep it, so that you can read it when you've served out your sentence. 'Aren't you cold?' asked Svejk, who was full of compassion when he saw that the intelligent gentleman was shivering.'
This year the summer has turned very cold.'
'I am done for,' sobbed Svejk's companion.
'I've lost my promotion now.'
'You certainly have,' Svejk agreed readily.
'And if they don't take you back in to the office after you've served out your sentence I don't know whether you'll find another job so quickly, because anyone at all you wanted to work for, even if it was a skinner, would require from you a certificate of good conduct.
No, a moment of debauchery like what you've indulged in costs you dear. And will your wife and children have anything to live on while you're sitting in gaol?
Or will she have to go and beg and teach the babes all sorts of vices?'
A sob could be heard: