And afterwards you have to haggle with them about the fee.'
And so they met in the hall. One, the representative of the Lord for the Catholic civilians of Vdovice, the other, the representative of God on earth for the military authorities.
Altogether, however, it was nothing more than a dispute between a civilian and a soldier.
When the vicar asserted that the field altar did not belong to the sofa, the chaplain declared that in that case it belonged all the less to the vestry of a church which was attended only by civilians.
Svejk made various remarks to the effect that it was an easy job to fit up a poor church at the expense of the army authorities. He pronounced the word 'poor' in inverted commas.
Finally they went to the vestry of the church and the vicar handed over the field altar in return for the following receipt:
Received a field altar which accidentally found its way into the church at Vrsovice.
Chaplain Otto Katz
The famous field altar came from the Jewish firm of Moritz Mahler in Vienna, which manufactured all kinds of accessories for mass as well as religious objects like rosaries and images of saints.
The altar was made up of three parts, liberally provided with sham gilt like the whole glory of the Holy Church.
It was not possible without considerable ingenuity to detect what the pictures painted on these three parts actually represented.
What was certain was that it was an altar which could have been used equally well by heathens in Zambesi or by the Shamans of the Buriats and Mongols.
Painted in screaming colours it appeared from a distance like a coloured chart intended for testing colour-blind railway workers.
One figure stood out prominently - a naked man with a halo and a body which was turning green, like the parson's nose of a goose which has begun to rot and is already stinking.
No one was doing anything to this saint. On the contrary, he had on both sides of him two winged creatures which were supposed to represent angels. But anyone looking at them had the impression that this holy naked man was shrieking with horror at the company around him, for the angels looked like fairy-tale monsters and were a cross between a winged wild cat and the beast of the apocalypse.
Opposite this was a picture which was meant to represent the Holy Trinity.
By and large the painter had been unable to ruin the dove.
He had painted a kind of bird which could equally well have been a pigeon or a White Wyandotte.
God the Father looked like a bandit from the Wild West served up to the public in an American film thriller.
The Son of God on the other hand was a gay young man with a handsome stomach draped in something that looked like bathing drawers.
Altogether he looked a sporting type. The cross which he had in his hand he held as elegantly as if it had been a tennis racquet.
Seen from afar however all these details ran into each other and gave the impression of a train going into a station.
What the third picture represented was quite impossible to make out.
The soldiers always argued about it and tried to solve the enigma.
One even thought that it was a landscape from the Sizava valley.
But underneath it was the inscription in German:
'Holy Mary, Mother of God, have mercy on us.'
Svejk deposited the field altar safely in the droshky and seated himself next to the driver on the box.
The chaplain made himself comfortable inside the droshky with his feet on the Holy Trinity.
Svejk chatted with the driver about the war.
The driver was a rebel. He made various remarks about the victory of the Austrian forces such as:
'They made it hot for you in Serbia', etc.
When they crossed the customs point the official asked them what they were taking with them. Svejk answered:
'The Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary together with the chaplain.'
Meanwhile on the parade ground the march detachments were waiting impatiently.
And they had waited a long time. for they had had to fetch the sports cup from Lieutenant Wittinger and then the monstrance, the pyx and other accessories of the mass, including a bottle of sacramental wine, from the Brevnov monastery. from this one may conclude that it is no simple matter to celebrate a drumhead mass.
'We muddle along as we can,' said Svejk to the driver. And he was right.
For when they reached the drill-ground and were at the platform with the wooden framework and table, on which the field altar was to be placed, it turned out that the chaplain had forgotten the server.
Before it had always been an infantryman who served, but he had preferred to get himself transferred to telephones and had gone to the front.
'Never mind, sir,' said Svejk,
'I can manage that too.'
'But you can't serve?'
'I've never done it,' answered Svejk, 'but there's no harm in having a shot.
Today there's a war on and in wartime people do things which they never dreamed of doing before.
I'll manage to cope with that stupid "et cum spirittt tuo" to your "dominus vobiscum ".
And I think it's not very difficult to walk around you like a cat round hot porridge, and wash your hands and pour wine out of the flask ... '
'All right,' said the chaplain, 'but don't go and pour me out any water.
Better put wine in the other flask too.
As to the rest I'll always tell you whether you have to go to the right or to the left.
If I whistle once very softly that means go to the right. Twice means to the left.