Svejk´s Budejovice Anabasis

 

‘Excellent. And you didn´t happen to ask them for  example how many men there would be in a regiment and how they were distributed?’

‘No, I didn´t ask that because I knew it by heart ages ago.’

‘And so you´re perfectly informed about the composition of our army?’

‘Of course, sargeant.’

And the sargeant now played his last Trump, looking around triumphantly at his gendarmes:

‘Do you speak Russian?’

 

The author makes in this chapter an exact tracing of any sergeant of any army: a character with self -esteem by clouds and an egotism even above.

After the first contact, Sergeant Flanderka was boasting of his insight and research method and throws his deduction that Svejk is a Russian spy:

 

‘Did you heart that? He doesn´t speak Russian! He´s a cunning one! He´s confessed everything except the most important thing. Tomorrow we shall send him to the district officer in Písek. Criminology depends on shrewdness and Good manners. You saw how I drowned him in a flood of questions. Who would have thought that of him? He looks so stupid and idiotic, but it´s just with people of his kind that you need to have all your wits about you. Now lock him up somewhere and I´ll go and write a report about it.’

 

And the interrogation continues ...

 

    ‘Are there pretty girls in Russia?’

     ‘You can find pretty girls all over the world, sergeant.’

 

And it will continue…

From my Borstal

LDR

 

The Good Soldier Svejk AND HIS FORTUNES IN THE WORLD WAR.- Jaroslav Hasek.- Penguin Books, London, 1973 (Translation from the Czech by Cecil Parrot with the original illustrations by Josef Lada)