Thus the long-serving gunner Eibenschütz had married, too – an indifferent woman, as anyone might have seen. It grieved him to give up his uniform. He had no liking for civilian clothes, he felt rather like a snail constrained to abandon the house which it has built out of its own saliva, that is to say out of its own flesh and blood, a quarter of a snail’s life long. But much the same happened to other comrades. The majority had wives: from error, from loneliness, from love – who is to say which! All obeyed their wives: from fear and from chivalry and from habit and from dread of loneliness – who is to say which! But, in a word, Eibenschütz left the army. He doffed his uniform, his cherished uniform; he abandoned the barracks, the cherished barracks.

Every long-serving non-commissioned officer is entitled to a position. Eibenschütz, who came from the small Moravian town of Nikolsburg, had for long endeavoured to return to his homeland as a bailiff or a lawyer’s clerk since he was, thanks to his wife, compelled to leave the army, his second and perhaps his actual Nikolsburg. But at that time neither bailiffs nor lawyer’s clerks were needed anywhere in Moravia. All Eibenschütz’s applications were turned down.

Then, for the first time, he was seized with a real rage against his wife. And he, an artilleryman who had endured so many manoeuvres and superiors, made a solemn resolve that, from then on, he would be firm towards his wife; her name was Regina. She had fallen in love with him one day in his uniform – five years ago to be exact. Now, after she had seen and possessed him on many a night, naked and without uniform, she demanded of him civilian clothes, and a position, and a home and children and grandchildren, and the Lord knows what else!

But rage was of no avail to Anselm Eibenschütz after he had received the news that the post of an Inspector of Weights and Measures was going in Zlotogrod.

He demobilized. He abandoned the barracks, his uniform, his comrades and friends.

He travelled to Zlotogrod.

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