And the good soldier Svejk sang with him.
In the military hospital two men were longing for extreme unction an old major and a bank manager who was an officer in the reserve.
Both had got bullets in the stomach in the Carpathians and lay in adjoining beds.
The officer in the reserve considered it his duty to have extreme unction administered to him, because his superior officer was longing for it too. He regarded it as a breach of discipline not to have it.
The pious major did it out of calculation, imagining that a prayer could cure an invalid.
However, the night before the extreme unction both of them died, and when in the morning the chaplain arrived with Svejk, both the officers lay underneath a sheet with black faces, like all those who die of asphyxiation.
'We were making such a splash, sir, and now they've gone and spoilt things,' Svejk grumbled, when they told them in the office that these two no longer needed anything.
And it was true that they had made a great splash.
They had driven there in a droshky. Svejk had rung the bell, and the chaplain had held in his hands the bottle with the oil, which was wrapped up in a table napkin. He solemnly blessed all the passers-by with it and they took off their hats.
There were not many of them, it is true, although Svejk tried to make a tremendous row with the bell.
One or two innocent street urchins ran behind the droshky, and one of them seated himself behind, whereupon his comrades broke out in unison:
'After the carriage, after the carriage!'
And Svejk rang the bell, the droshky driver hit backwards with his whip, in Vodickova Street a woman concierge who was a member of the congregation of the Virgin Mary trotted after the droshky and caught up with it. She received a blessing on the way, made the sign of the cross, spat and shouted:
'They're driving like Jehu with the Lord!
It's enough to give you T.B.!' after which she returned breathlessly to her old place.
It was the droshky driver's mare which was most worried by the sound of the bell. It must have reminded her of something that had happened in the past, because she continually looked behind and from time to time tried to dance on the cobbles.
And so this was the great splash which Svejk talked about.
In the meantime the chaplain went into the office to settle the financial side of the extreme unction and calculated to the quartermaster sergeant-major that the army authorities owed him one hundred and fifty crowns for the consecrated oil and the journey.
Then followed a quarrel between the commandant of the hospital and the chaplain, in the course of which the chaplain hit the table several times with his fist and said:
'Don't imagine, captain, that extreme unction is gratis.
When an officer of the Dragoons is ordered to go to the stud farm for horses, they pay him subsistence too.
I am really sorry that these two did not live to get their extreme unction. It would have been fifty crowns more.'
In the meantime Svejk waited down in the guardhouse with the bottle of holy oil which aroused genuine interest among the soldiers.
One expressed the view that this oil could be used very successfully for cleaning rifles and bayonets.
A young soldier from the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, who still believed in God, asked them not to talk about these things and not to bring into discussion the mysteries of the sacrament. We must, he said, live in hope, like Christians.
An old reservist looked at the raw recruit and said:
'Nice hope that a shrapnel tears off your head!
They've pulled the wool over our eyes.
Once a deputy from the Clerical Party came to our village and spoke to us about God's peace, which spans the earth, and how the Lord did not want war and wanted us all to live in peace and get on together like brothers. And look at him now, the bloody fool!
Now that war has broken out they pray in all the churches for the success of our arms, and they talk about God like a chief of the general staff who guides and directs the war. from this military hospital I've seen many funerals go out and cartfuls of hacked-off arms and legs carried away.'
'And the soldiers are buried naked,' said another soldier, 'and into the uniform they put another live man.
And so it goes on for ever and ever.'
'Until we've won,' observed Svejk.
'And that bloody half-wit wants to win something,' a corporal chimed in from the corner.
'To the front with you, to the trenches! You should be driven for all you're worth on to bayonets over barbed wire, mines and mortars.
Anyone can lie about behind the lines, but no one wants to fall in action.'
'I think that it's splendid to get oneself run through with a bayonet,' said Svejk, 'and also that it's not bad to get a bullet in the stomach. It's even grander when you're torn to pieces by a shell and you see that your legs and belly are somehow remote from you.
It's very funny and you die before anyone can explain it to you.'
The young soldier gave a heartfelt sigh.
He was sorry for his young life.
Why was he born in such a stupid century to be butchered like an ox in a slaughterhouse?
Why was all that necessary?
A soldier, who was a teacher by profession and seemed to read his thoughts, observed:
'Some scientists explain war by the appearance of sun spots.
As soon as a sun spot like that appears, something frightful always happens.
The conquest of Carthage ... '
'To hell with your learning,' the corporal interrupted him.
'Go and sweep the room instead. Today it's your turn.
What the hell do we care about any bloody sun spots?
Even if there were twenty of them I wouldn't buy them.'