THE JAIL
on the table, the portions for Dušek, Hedrich, Budi, myself. Papa Declich cut up the bread. The soup contained barley, pieces of flour as big as a child's fist, unchopped vegetables and a few scraps of meat. And a horrible lot of pepper.
I tasted it;—it burnt my tongue. I could not manage it.
"Tell me, why is there so much pepper?" I asked Hedrich.
"Because the head cook is a Russian prisoner, some sort of Asiatic; he is fond of it like that, and then a man has to keep on drinking and never quenches his thirst" declared our barber with good-humoured indignation.
"So a Russian prisoner is head cook here?" I asked Dušek.
"Yes, an imprisoned Russian. Or a Russian prisoner, it comes to the same thing," laughed Dušek; "what do you expect? Austria. To everything that human understanding cannot grasp, this word Austria forms a key and an explanation."
They were cursing in the room. "Food for cattle", "hog-wash", "this ought to be reported on parade", "send a specimen to the War Ministry", "Feed Papritz with it, the beast"—and the plates were flung with the greater part of their contents of soup back on to the kneading-board.
"That's not fit to eat", remarked Dušek resignedly, and he pushed his dish aside. "We must wait till the evening, and then we will eat our fill. I have discovered that it is quite enough for a man to eat once a day."
Budi and Hedrich also pushed their plates aside. Papa Declich drew them up to him, fished out the scraps of meat, cut them up, salted them and ate them with bread. He liked it,—an Istrian stomach.
"What is the second course?" I asked, looking at the thick yellowish semi-liquid in the second dish.
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