"They've robbed me, they've robbed me, help, open, for Christ's sake, open."
And then they all came rushing in and called the staff warder and Sergeant-Major Repa.
We all said with one voice that he had gone mad, that the day before he gorged far into the night and guzzled everything up.
But he just wept and kept on saying:
"Surely there must be some crumbs left somewhere."
And then they started looking for the crumbs and couldn't find any because we were quite clever too.
What we had not been able to guzzle ourselves we sent by rope-post up to the second storey.
They couldn't prove anything on us, although that stupid fool kept on with his:
"But surely there must be some crumbs left."
The whole day he ate nothing and looked carefully to see whether anyone ate or smoked anything.
And at lunch the next day again he didn't touch his rations, but in the evening the rotten potatoes and cabbage seemed to appeal to him, only he didn't pray as much as he did when he used to tuck into his ham and eggs.
Then one of us somehow got some fags from outside, and then he began talking to us for the first time, asking us to give him a puff.
But we didn't give him anything.'
'I was afraid you'd give him a puff,' remarked Svejk.
'That would've spoiled the whole story.
You only find noble actions like that in novels, but in the garrison gaol in such circumstances it would be sheer lunacy.'
'And you didn't give him the blanket treatment?' someone asked.
'We didn't think of it.'
Then a discussion began in hushed tones as to whether he should have had the blanket treatment or not.
The majority were for it.
The conversation gradually died out.
They were falling asleep, scratching themselves under their armpits, on their chests and on their bellies-at those points in their underclothes where the lice congregated most.
They went to sleep, drawing the lice-ridden blankets over their heads, so that the light of the paraffin lamp shouldn't disturb them ...
At eight o'clock in the morning they called Svejk to go to the office.
'On the left-hand side of the door leading into the office there's a spittoon and they throw fag-ends into it,' one man informed Svejk.
'And on the first floor you'll pass another one.
They don't sweep the passages till nine o'clock, so something may still be there.'
But Svejk disappointed their hopes.
He never came back to no. 16.
The nineteen pairs of pants made various deductions and conjectures about him.
A freckled soldier belonging to the Landwehr who had a very lurid imagination spread the news that Svejk had shot his captain and would be led away the same day to the drill-ground at Motol for execution.
10
Svejk Batman to the Chaplain
1
SVEJK's odyssey began anew under the honourable escort of two soldiers with fixed bayonets who had to conduct him to the chaplain.
His escort were men who complemented each other.
If one was lanky, the other was small and tubby. The lanky one limped with his right foot and the small tubby one with his left.
Both served behind the lines because sometime before the war they had been totally exempted from military service.
They walked solemnly alongside the pavement and from time to time looked sideways at Svejk, who strode in the middle and saluted everyone he saw.
His mufti and the military cap he got when he joined up had got lost in the garrison stores. Before they discharged him they had given him an old military uniform which had belonged to some pot-bellied fellow who was taller than him by a head.
As for the trousers three more Svejks could have got into them.
An endless succession of baggy folds from his feet up to where his trousers reached over his chest involuntarily evoked the admiration of the spectators.
A vast tunic with patches on the elbows, covered with grease and dirt, dangled around Svejk like a coat on a scarecrow.
His trousers hung on him like a circus clown's costume.
The military cap, which they had also changed in the garrison gaol, came down over his ears.
Svejk answered the smiles of the spectators with a sweet smile of his own and the warm tender look of his good-natured eyes.
And so they marched to the chaplain's apartment at Karlfn.
The first of the two to speak to Svejk was the small tubby one.
They were just at that moment in Mala Strana down under the arcades.
'Where do you come from?' asked the small tubby one.