Эрих Ремарк - All Quiet on the Western Front / На Западном фронте без перемен. Книга для чтения на английском языке

I feel as if this is all going on for hours. Every time I make a slight movement there is a threatening growl; I lie still and try again. The minute I get hold of my gun, my hand starts to tremble. I press down against the ground and think it out: pull the gun out, shoot before he can get at me, and get the hell out as quickly as possible.

I take a deep breath and calm myself. Then I hold my breath, jerk up the revolver, there is a shot and the mastiff lurches aside, howling, I make it to the door of the shed and tumble over one of the geese, which was flapping out of the way.

I make a grab while I’m still running, hurl it with a great swing over the wall and start to scramble up myself. I’m not quite over the wall when the mastiff, which has come to itself again, is there and jumping up at me. I drop down quickly. Ten paces away from me stands Kat with the goose in his arms. As soon as he sees me, we run for it.

At last we can get our breath back. The goose is dead, Kat saw to that in a moment. We want to roast it straight away, before anyone realizes what has happened. I fetch pots and some wood from the huts, and we crawl into a small, deserted shed that we know about and which is useful for things like this. We put up a thick covering to block the only window hole. There is a makeshift cooker there – an iron plate lying across some bricks. We light a fire.

Kat plucks and draws the goose. We put the feathers carefully to one side. We want to use them to stuff two small pillows, with the motto ‘Sweet Dreams Though the Guns Are Booming’ [154] Sweet Dreams Though the Guns Are Booming – Спокойно спи под грохот орудий on them.

The barrage from the front can be heard as a dull humming all around our hideout. Firelight flickers on our faces, shadows dance on the walls. Airmen drop bombs. At one point we hear muffled screaming. One of the huts must have been hit.

Aircraft roar. The ratatat of the machine-guns gets louder. But our light can’t be seen from anywhere outside.

And so we sit facing one another, Kat and I, two soldiers in shabby battle-dress, roasting a goose in the middle of the night. We don’t talk much, but we have a greater and more gentle consideration for each other than I should think even lovers do. We are two human beings, two tiny sparks of life; outside there is just the night, and all around us, death. We are sitting right at the edge of all that, in danger but secure, goose fat runs over our fingers, our hearts are close to one another, and time and place merge into one – the brightnesses and shadows of our emotions come and go in the flickering light of a gentle fire. What does he know about me? What do I know about him? Before the war we wouldn’t have had a single thought in common – and now here we are, sitting with a goose roasting in front of us, aware of our existence and so close to each other that we can’t even talk about it.

It takes a long time to roast a goose, even when it is young, and there is plenty of fat. And so we take turns. One does the basting, while the other gets a bit of sleep. Gradually there is a wonderful smell all around us.

The noises from outside all merge into one another, become a dream which disappears from the waking memory [155] waking memory – недремлющая память . Half asleep, I watch Kat as he lifts and lowers the basting spoon. I love him; his shoulders, his angular, slightly stooped frame [156] angular, slightly stooped frame – угловатая, согнувшаяся фигура – and then I see woods and stars behind him, and a kindly voice says words to me that bring me peace, me, an ordinary soldier with his big boots and his webbing, and his pack, who is making his tiny way under the sky’s great vault along the road that lies before him, who forgets things quickly and who isn’t even depressed much any more, but who just goes onwards under the great night sky.

A little soldier and a kindly voice, and if anyone were to caress him, he probably wouldn’t understand the gesture any more, that soldier with the big boots and a heart that has been buried alive, a soldier who marches because he is wearing marching boots and who has forgotten everything except marching. Aren’t those things flowers, over there on the horizon, in a landscape that is so calm and quiet that the soldier could weep? Are those not images that he has not exactly lost, because he never had them to lose, confusing images, but nevertheless of things that can no longer be his? Are those not his twenty years of life?

Is my face wet, and where am I? Kat is standing in front of me, his gigantic distorted shadow falls across me like home. He says something softly, smiles and goes back to the fire.

Then he says, ‘It’s ready.’

‘OK, Kat.’

I shake myself. The golden-brown roast is glowing in the middle of the room. We get out our folding forks and pocket-knives and carve ourselves off a leg each. We eat it with army-issue bread [157] army-issue bread – солдатский хлеб that we dip into the gravy. We eat slowly and enjoy it to the full.

‘Like it, Kat?’

‘Great. How about you?’

‘Great, Kat.’

We are brothers, pressing one another to take the best pieces. When we have finished I smoke a cigarette and Kat has a cigar. There is a lot left over.

‘Kat, how about us taking a bit over to Kropp and Tjaden?’ ‘Right,’ he says. We cut off a chunk and wrap it up carefully in newspaper. We were planning to take the rest back to our billets, but Kat laughs and just says, ‘Tjaden.’

I agree that we’ll have to take it all. So we make our way to the hen-run prison to wake up the pair of them. Before we go we pack away the feathers.

Kropp and Tjaden think we are a mirage. Then they get stuck in. Tjaden is gnawing away, holding a wing with both hands as if he were playing a mouth organ [158] mouth organ – губная гармоника . He slurps the gravy out of the pot and smacks his lips. ‘I’ll never forget you for this.’

We walk back to the huts. There is the great sky again, and the stars, and the first streaks of dawn, and I am walking beneath that sky, a soldier with big boots and a full belly, a little soldier in the early morning – and beside me walks Kat, angular and slightly stooping, my pal.

The silhouettes of the huts loom over us in the dawn light like a black and welcome sleep.

There are rumours of an offensive [159] offensive – наступление . We go up the line two days earlier than usual. On the way we pass a school that has been shelled to bits. Stacked up two deep all along its front is a wall of brand-new, untreated, whitewood coffins. They still smell of resin, pine, the forest. There are at least a hundred of them.

‘That’s a fine preparation for an offensive,’ says Muller in surprise.

‘Those are for us,’ growls Detering.

‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ Kat snaps back at him.

‘You’ll be lucky to get a coffin at all,’ grins Tjaden, ‘they’ll just use a tarpaulin to wrap up that target-practice dummy you call a body, you wait and see.’

Other men make jokes as well, uncomfortable jokes, but what else can we do? Obviously the coffins really are for us, of course. Arrangements are always efficient where that sort of thing is concerned.

Up ahead of us there is a rumbling noise all around. On the first night we try and get our bearings. Because it is still relatively quiet we can hear the transports on the move behind the enemy lines, rolling forwards, without a break, well beyond dawn. Kat says that they are not going back, just bringing in troops. Troops, munitions and guns.