'I'm thirsty,' said Svejk.
The lanky one and the small tubby one exchanged glances.
'We might drop in somewhere for a quick one,' said the little fellow, feeling he could count on the lanky one's consent, 'but somewhere where it won't attract attention.'
'Let's go to Kuklfk,' Svejk suggested. 'You can put your rifles in the kitchen there.
The landlord, Serab ona, is a Sokol 1 and you don't need to be afraid of him.
'They play the violin and the accordion there,' continued Svejk, 'and tarts come in and various other members of good society who aren't allowed in at the Represent'ak.'
2 The lanky one and the small one exchanged glances once more and then the lanky one said:
'Very well, then, let's go. It's still a long way to Karlfn.'
On the way Svejk told them various stories, and they arrived at Kuklfk in a good mood and did exactly as Svejk had advised.
They put their rifles in the kitchen and went into the bar, where the violin and accordion filled the room with the strains of the popular song:
At Panlmic there's a hill And on that hill there stands A lovely row of trees ...
A young lady who was sitting on the knees of a jaded youth with smoothly parted hair was singing in a hoarse voice:
'I had a girl lined up and now another's pinched her.'
At one table a drunken sardine-hawker was asleep.
He woke up from time to time, struck the table with his fist, stuttered out:
'It's no good', and fell asleep again.
Under a mirror behind the billiard table sat three other young ladies who shouted at a railway guard:
'Young man, stand us a glass of vermouth.'
Near the orchestra two people were quarrelling about whether Marka had been caught the previous night by the patrol or not.
One of them saw it with his own eyes and the other maintained that she had gone to bed with a soldier at the hotel U Valsu.'
By the door a soldier was sitting with a number of civilians and telling them how he had been wounded in Serbia.
He had a bandaged arm and his pockets were full of cigarettes they had given him.
He said that he couldn't drink any more, but one of the company, a baldheaded old man, kept on offering him something:
'Have another, soldier.
Who knows if we'll ever meet again.
Shall I get them to play something for you?
Do you like "The Orphan Child" ? ' This was the bald-headed old man's favourite song, and sure enough presently the violin and accordion started to wail it out, while tears came into his eyes and he started to sing in a tremulous voice:
'When it grew to wiser years, it asked about its mamma, it asked about its mamma .. .'
From the other table somebody said:
'Stop it, can't you?
Go and stuff it up! String yourself up on a hook! Get to bloody hell with your orphan child!'
And as a final trump the rival table began to sing:
'To part, to part, It breaks my heart, my heart .. .'
'Franta,' they called to the wounded soldier when they had outsung and drowned the 'Orphan Child', 'leave them and come and sit with us.
They can go to hell. You come and bring the cigarettes here.
You won't amuse those mugs.'
Svejk conjured up memories of the time when he often used to sit here before the war. The police inspector, Drasner, used to raid the place and the prostitutes were scared of him and made up songs about him full of double-e11tendres.
He remembered how once they sang in a chorus:
When Drasner made his raid Marena wasn't afraid.
In all the hullaballoo She'd knocked back quite a few. Just at that moment who should have come in but the terrible and ruthless Drasner himself, accompanied by his men.
It was like shooting into a flock of partridges. The plain-clothes police herded all the people together in a bunch.
And Svejk found himself in it too, because with his usual bad luck he had said to Inspector Drasner when he was asked to show his papers:
'Have you got permission for this from police headquarters?'
Svejk also remembered a poet who used to sit there under the mirror, and in the general uproar of Kuklfk amidst the strains and sounds of the accordion used to write poems and recite them to the prostitutes.
On the other hand Svejk's escort had no such reminiscences.
For them it was a quite new experience and they began to like it.
The first who found complete satisfaction here was the small tubby one, because people of his type tend to be not only optimists but epicures.
The lanky one struggled with himself for a short time. And just as he had already lost his scepticism, so he now began gradually to lose his self-control and the rest of his good sense also.
'I'm going to have a dance,' he said after his fifth beer, when he saw how couples were dancing the 'Slapak '.
The little one abandoned himself completely to dissipation.