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:
17
an hour passes. the hospital orderlies go to and fro with bottles and pails. one of them glances at franz, and then walks away. they are waiting. they want the bed.
his lips have fallen away, his mouth has becomelarger, his teeth stick out and look as though they were made of chalk. the flesh melts. the forehead bulges more prominently, the cheekbones protrude. the skeleton is working itself through.
the world should pass by this bed and say: “this is franz kemmerich, nineteen and a half years old. he doesn’t want to die. let him not die.”
in a few hours it will be over.
so you may still.
there are splendid artificial limbs now, you'd hardly know there was anything missing.
look here though, these fingers...
18
suddenly kemmerich groans and begins to gurgle.
we are by kemmerich’s bed...
...he is dead.
I collect kemmerich’s things and untie his identification disc. behind me they are already hauling franz on to a waterproof sheet.
outside the door I am aware of the darkness and the wind as a deliverance.
one operation after another since five o’clock this morning. there have beEn sixteen deaths. yours is the seventeenth...
you can give my boots to mu ̈ller. if you find my watch send it home.
where isthe doctor? where is the doctor?
come quick! franz kemmerich is dying!
...there will be twenty altogether.
19
I breathe as deep as I can and feel the breeze in my face, warm and soft as never before. thoughts of girls, of flowery meadows, of white clouds suddenly come into my head. my feet begin to move forward in my boots, I go quicker, I run.
I breathe the air deeply. the night lives, I live. I feel a hunger, greater than comes from the belly alone.
I give him the boots. we go in and he tries them on. they fit well.
he roots among his supplies and offers me a fine piece of saveloy. with it goes hot tea and rum.
müller stands in the doorway of the hut waiting for me.
the night crackles electrically, the front thunders like a concert of drums.
20
reinforcements have arrived. some of them are old hands, but there are twenty-five men of a later draft.
for the recruits kat produces a tub of meat and haricot beans.
seenthe infants?
for breakfast we had turnip bread, lunch turnip stew, and for supper turnip cutlets and turnip salad.
next time when you come with your mess-tin have a cigar or a chew of tobacco in the other hand, get me?
great guts, kat, how did you come by that?
I traded ginger three pieces of para-chute silk for it.
in civilian life Katczinsky is a cobbler, but he understands all trades.
we couldn’t do without katczinsky. he has a sixth sense. it’s a good thing to be friends with him, as kropp, haie westhus, and I are.
long time since you’ve had any-thing decent to eat, eh?
21
kropp talks to an artilleryman who has been some time in this neighborhood.
we are just dozing off when the door opens and kat appears, carrying two loaves of bread under his arm and a blood-stained sandbag full of horse-flesh.
for example, they once moved us toward the front, into what was a small dark fac-tory. there are beds in it, or rather bunks, made with a couple of wooden beams over which wire netting is stretched. the wire netting is hard, and there is nothing to put on it. our water-proof sheets are too thin. we use our blan-kets to cover our-selves.
kat takes haie westhus and goes off to explore. they find a horse box and return with arms full of straw.
now we might sleep if we weren’t so terribly hungry.
is there a canteen anywhere abouts?
is there a what? there’s noth-ing to be had here. you won’t find so much as a crust of bread.
cut somewood.
we’ll have to starve until sup-plies arrive.
22
kat knows the way to roast horse-flesh so that it’s tender. it shouldn’t be put straight into the pan, that makes it tough. it should be boiled first in a little water.
this is kat. he finds everything. if it is cold, a small stove and wood, hay and straw, a table and chairs. but above all food.
we have settled ourselves outside on the sunny side of the factory. there is the smell of tar, of summer, and of sweaty feet. an air battle is going on overhead. kropp washes his socks and kat lets off a mighty fart.
we discuss many subjects; after a while we get on the subject of himmelstoss, our old drill sergeant.
it is uncanny; one would think he conjured it out of the air.
every littlebean must be heard as well as seen.
23
tjaden has a special grudge against himmelstoss. tjaden wet his bed at night in his sleep. himmelstoss maintained that it was sheer laziness and invented a method worthy of himself for curing tjaden.
that’s the uniform.
...then how does it come that he's such a bully as a drill sergeant?
surely himmelstoss wasa very different fellow as a postman...
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