You're m-m-making a mistake.'
Svejk lifted the chaplain and propped him up against the wall.
The chaplain lurched from side to side and rolled over on him saying: 'I'm falling on you! 'Falling on you,' he repeated with an idiotic grin.
Finally Svejk managed to press the chaplain to the wall, where in this new position he started to doze again.
Svejk woke him up.
'What can I do for you?' said the chaplain making a vain attempt to drag himself along by the wall and sit on the floor.
'Who are you, anyhow?'
'Humbly report, sir,' replied Svejk, pushing the chaplain back against the wall once more, 'I'm your batman, Your Reverence, sir.'
'I haven't got any batman,' said the chaplain with an effort, making another attempt to fall on to Svejk. 'And I'm not a Reverence.
'I'm a pig,' he added with the sincerity of a drunkard.
'Let me go, sir, I don't know you.'
The little tussle ended in a complete victory for Svejk. He took advantage of it to drag the chaplain down the stairs into the carriage entrance, where the chaplain tried to stop him from dragging him into the street.
'I don't know you, sir,' he kept on saying to Svejk during the struggle.
'Do you know Otto Katz?
That's me.
'I've been with the archbishop,' he shouted, clinging to the gate in the carriage entrance.
'The Vatican's interested in me, do you understand?'
Svejk dropped the 'humbly report, sir' and spoke to the chaplain in very familiar tones.
'Drop it, I tell you,' he said, 'or I'll bash your flipper.
We're going home and no more nonsense.
Just shut up.'
The chaplain let go of the door and rolled over on to Svejk:
'Well, let's go somewhere, but I won't go to U Suhu.' I've got debts there.'
Svejk pushed him and carried him out of the carriage entrance and dragged him along the pavement in the direction of his home.
'Who is that gentleman?' asked one of the spectators in the street.
'He's my brother,' answered Svejk.
'He got leave and came to visit me. He was so happy that he got drunk. You see he thought I was dead.'
The chaplain, who caught the last words, hummed a tune from an operetta which no one would have recognized, rose up and addressed the spectators:
'Whoever of you is dead must report to Army Corps headquarters within three days so that his corpse can be sprinkled with holy water.' And he lapsed into silence, endeavouring to fall nose-first on the pavement, while Svejk held him under the arm and dragged him home.
With his head thrust forward and his legs trailing behind and dangling like those of a cat with a broken backbone, the chaplain was humming to himself:
'Dominus vobis cum - et cum spiritu tuo.
Dominus vobiscum.'
When they reached the droshky rank Svejk propped the chaplain against the wall and went to haggle with a droshky driver about his transport.
One of the drivers said he knew the gentleman very well, had had him as a passenger once and wouldn't ever take him again.
'He spewed over everything,' he stated bluntly, 'and didn't even pay for the ride.
I drove him for more than two hours before he found where he lived.
Only after a week, when I had been to see him at least three times, did he give me anything and then it was only five crowns for all that.'
After long haggling one of the drivers agreed to take them.
Svejk returned to the chaplain, who was sleeping.
Someone had removed and carried off his bowler (for he generally went about in mufti).
Svejk woke him up and with the help of the driver got him to the droshky.
Once inside the chaplain fell into a state of complete torpor.
Mistaking Svejk for Colonel Just of the 75th infantry regiment herepeated several times:
'Don't be angry, old chap, if I call you by your Christian name.
I'm a pig.'
At one moment it seemed that the jolting of the droshky on the cobbles was bringing him to his senses.
He sat up straight and began to sing a snatch of an unknown song.
Perhaps it was only his fancy:
'I recall that lovely time When he rocked me on his knee We were living in those days At Merklin near Domazlice-e-e.'
After a while he fell again into complete torpor. Then turning to Svejk he winked an eye and asked: