And you don't need to drag the missal about much.
It's great fun really.
Got stage fright?'
'I'm not frightened of anything, sir, not even of serving.'
The chaplain was right when he said: 'It's great fun really.'
Everything went like a house on fire.
The chaplain's address was very brief.
'Soldiers!
We have met here, so that before we go to the battlefield we may incline our hearts to God, that he may grant us victory and keep us safe and sound.
I won't detain you long and wish you all the best.'
'Stand at ease!' shouted an old colonel on the left flank.
A drumhead mass is called a 'drumhead' mass because it comes under the same rules as military tactics in the field.
During the long manoeuvres of the armies in the Thirty Years' War drumhead masses were apt to be extremely lengthy too.
In modern tactics, where the movements of armies are rapid and brisk, drumhead masses must be equally rapid and brisk.
And so this one lasted exactly ten minutes and those who were close by wondered very much why the chaplain whistled during it.
Svejk quickly mastered the signals. Now he walked to the right of the altar and now he was on the left; and he said nothing else but:
'Et cum spiritu tuo.'
It looked like a Red Indian dance round a sacrificial stone, but it made a good impression, for it banished the boredom of the dusty melancholy drill-ground with its avenue of plum trees behind and its latrines, the odour of which replaced the mystical scent of incense in Gothic churches.
Everyone enjoyed themselves immensely.
The officers standing round the colonel were cracking jokes with each other and so everything was as it should be.
Here and there among the rank and file could be heard the words: ' Give me a puff.'
And from the companies blue clouds of tobacco smoke rose to heaven as from a burnt offering.
All the N.C.O.s started smoking when they saw that the colonel himself had lit a cigarette.
At last the words
'Let us pray' were heard. There was a whirl of dust and a grey rectangle of uniforms bowed their knees before Lieutenant Wittinger's sports cup, which he won for 'Sport-Favorit' in the Vienna-Modling race.
The cup was filled full and the general opinion in the ranks of the chaplain's manipulations \vas: 'He's swilled it all right!'
This performance was repeated twice.
After that once more:
'Let us pray', whereupon the band did its best with the Austrian national anthem.
Then came 'attention' and 'quick march'.
'Collect all this stuff,' said the chaplain to Svejk, pointing to the field altar, 'so that we can take it all back where it belongs!'
So they drove off with their droshky, returned everything like good boys, except for the bottle of sacramental wine.
And when they were home again and had told the unfortunate droshky driver to apply to the regimental command for payment for the long drive Svejk said to the chaplain:
'Humbly report, sir, must a server be of the same confession as the man he's assisting?'
'Of course,' answered the chaplain, 'otherwise the mass wouldn't be valid.'
'Then, sir, a great mistake has been made,' said Svejk.
'I'm a man without confession.
It's always me that has the bad luck.'
The chaplain looked at Svejk, was silent for a moment, then patted him on the shoulder and said:
'You can drink up what's left in the bottle of sacramental wine and imagine that you've been taken back into the bosom of the Church.'
12
A Religious Debate
It happened that for whole days at a time Svejk never saw the man who had the cure of army souls.
The chaplain divided his time between duties and debauchery and came home very rarely; when he did he was filthy and unwashed like a mewing tom-cat when it makes its amorous expeditions on the tiles.
When he came back, if he was able to express himself at all, he talked to Svejk for a bit before falling asleep. He spoke of lofty aims, inspiration and the pleasure of meditation. Sometimes too he tried to speak in verse and quoted Heine.
Svcjk and the chaplain celebrated one more drumhead mass for the sappers, to which another chaplain had been invited by mistake, a former catechist.
He was an extraordinarily pious man, who stared at his colleague in amazement when he offered him a sip of cognac out of the field-flask which Svejk always carried with him for religious functions of this kind.
'It's a good brand,' said Chaplain Katz.
'Have a drink and go home.
I'll do the job myself, because I need to be in the open air. I've got a bit of a headache.'