All Quiet on the Western Front. Erich Maria Remarque
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Название: All Quiet on the Western Front
Автор: Erich Maria Remarque
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Изобразительное искусство, фотография
Серия: Dead Reckoning
isbn: 9781682474501
isbn:
...serve out all the rations. we can do with them.
it doesn’t cost you anything! anyonewould think the quarter-master’s store belonged to you!
you be hanged!
yes, we did have heavy losses yesterday...
5
today is wonderfully good. the mail has come, and almost every man has a few let-ters and papers. we stroll over to the meadow behind the billet.
on the right side of the meadow a large common latrine has been buiLt, a roofed and durable construction.
we want something better.
scattered about everywhere are separate, individual boxes for the same purpose. we move three together and sit down com-fortably. and it will be two hours before we get up again. kropp has cards and we play a game of skat.
anyone seenkemmerich lately?
he’s up atst. joseph's. aflesh wound tothe thigh...
...a goodblighty.
6
joseph behm would not allow himself to be convinced. kantorek did everything but call him a coward. in the end kantorek won the argument...
kropp, mu ̈ller,and I decided togo see kemmerich this afternoon. kropp looked up from a letter.
kantorek had been our schoolmaster, a stern little man in a grey tail-coat, with a face like a shrew mouse. it is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.
kantorek sends you all his best.
won’t youjoin up,comrades?
I wish he was here.
7
naturally we couldn’t blame kantorek for this. he, like thousands of others, were convinced that they were acting for the best, in a way that cost them nothing. and that is why they let us down so badly.
...strange to say, behm was one of the first of us to fall. he got hit in the eye during an attack, and we left him lying for dead.
for us lads of eighteen they ought to have been mediators and guides to the world of maturity. the idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and more humane wisdom...
...but the first death we saw shattered this belief. we had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs.
that afternoon we heard him call and saw him crawling about in no man’s land.
because he could not see, and was mad with pain, he failed to keep under cover, and so was shot down.
8
we pack up kemmerich's things and go to the hospital to see him.
not so bad...but I have a damned pain in my foot.
when I was asleep someone stole my watch.
I always told you that nobody should carry as good a watch as that.
how goes it, franz?
we look at the foot of the bed and, as the orderly has already told us, franz has lost his leg.
mu ̈lleris about to say something about it, but I stop him by a little kick in the shin.
9
it strikes me that these nails will continue to grow like lean fan-tastic cellar-plants long after kemmerich breathes no more.
we have brought your things, franz.
will you take them with you, then, franz?
I think of when we left home. at the train station, franz’s mother wept continually. she made me prom-ise that I would take care of him at the front...
he looks ghastly, yellow and wan. in his face there are already the strained lines that we know so well, we have seen them now hundreds of times.
I cannot bear to look at his hands, they are like wax. under the nails is the dirt of the trenches. it shows through blue- black like poison...
death is working through from within.
kemmerich has a pair of english soft yellow leather boots.
mu ̈lleris delightedat the sight of them. his own boots do not fit him perfectly, and he gets blister after blister.
...but how can a man look after anyone in the field?
put them under the bed.
10
kemmerich doesn’t want to. they are his prized possessions.
we talk a little more and then take our leave. I promise to come back in the morning. mu ̈ller talks of doing so, too. he is thinking of the boots, and knows the orderlies will grab them as soon as he is dead.
we get hold of an orderly outside and ask him to give kemmerich a dose of morphia.
I think of the letter I must write tomorrow to kemmerich’s mother. I am freezing. I could do with a tot of rum.
won’t you leave them with us? out here one can make some use of them.
cheerio,franz.
you only attend to officers properly!
if we were to give morphia to everyone we would have to have tubs full...
do us this favour.
well,all right.
do you think...?
done for.
damned shit! The damned shit!
we started back to our camp.
11
all the older men are linked СКАЧАТЬ