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

I get up wearily and look out of the window. Then I take one of the books and flick through it to try and read. I put it aside and take up another one. There are passages in it that I have marked. I look through it, flick through the pages, take out more books. There is already a pile beside me. Others join it, more quickly now – single sheets of paper, exercise books, letters.

I stand silent in front of them, as if I were on trial.

Dispirited.

Words, words, words – they can’t reach me.

Slowly I put the books back in their places on the shelves.

It’s over.

I leave the room quietly.

But I don’t give up yet. Although I don’t go and sit in my room again I tell myself by way of comfort that a couple of days aren’t the be-all and the end-all [204] the be-all and the end-all – конец и начало всего . I’ll have time afterwards – later on, years of it – for all this. Meanwhile I go and visit Mittelstaedt at the barracks and we sit in his room, which has an atmosphere I don’t like, but which I am used to.

Mittelstaedt has a bit of news for me which galvanizes me at once. He tells me that Kantorek has been called up for the Home Guard [205] Home Guard – ополчение, отряд местной обороны . ‘Just think of it,’ he says, and fetches a couple of good cigars, ‘I come straight out of the military hospital and walk right into him. He sticks out his hand and squeaks, “Well, if it isn’t Mittelstaedt, how’s it going, my boy?” I give him a stare and I tell him, “Home Guardsman Kantorek, duty is duty and pleasure is pleasure [206] duty is duty and pleasure is pleasure – дружба дружбой, а служба службой , you of all people should know that, guardsman! Stand up straight when you speak to a superior.” You should have seen his face! A cross between a pickled gherkin and a dud shell! He had another little go at being familiar. This time I bawled him out even harder. Then he brought up his big guns and asked me confidentially, “Would you like me to arrange for you to take the school-leaving exam under the special regulations?” He wanted to remind me, see? Then I got really angry and thought I’d do a bit of reminding too. “Home Guardsman Kantorek,” I said, “two years ago your sermonizing drove us all to enlist; Josef Behm as well, and he didn’t really want to go. He was killed three months before he would have been conscripted. Without you, he would have waited until then. Now: dismiss! I shall be speaking to you again.” It was no problem getting myself assigned to his company, and the first thing I did was take him down to the stores and make sure his kit is really special. You’ll soon see.’

We go out on to the parade-ground. The company has fallen in. Mittelstaedt has them stand at ease [207] stand at ease – команда «вольно» , and inspects them.

Then I spot Kantorek and have to bite my lip to stop myself laughing. He is wearing a kind of faded blue battle-dress tunic. There are great dark patches sewn on to the back and the sleeves. That battledress must have belonged to a giant. The frayed black trousers make up for it, though; they only reach halfway down his calf. Then again, his boots are more than big enough, ancient beetle-crushers with tumed-up toecaps [208] ancient beetle-crushers with turned-up toecaps (разг.) – негнущиеся допотопные чёботы c загнутыми носами , still laced at the side. By way of compensation his cap is too small, a dreadful, grubby, miserable little scrap of cloth. The whole picture is pitiful.

Mittelstaedt stops in front of him. ‘Home Guardsman Kantorek, do you call those buttons polished? You never seem to learn. Far from satisfactory, Kantorek, far from satisfactory —’

Inwardly I am roaring with delight. At school Kantorek used to criticize Mittelstaedt in exactly the same tone of voice: ‘Far from satisfactory, Mittelstaedt —’

Mittelstaedt continues his disapproving comments. ‘You ought to take a lesson from Boettcher, his turn-out is an example, you might learn something from him.’

I can scarcely believe my eyes. Yes, Boettcher is there as well, Boettcher, the school janitor. And he really is exemplary. Kantorek shoots me a look as if he would like to eat me alive. But I just grin harmlessly right at him, as if I haven’t recognized him at all.

How stupid he looks with his little cap and his uniform. And once upon a time we used to be terrified of a creature like that, when he was perched on the teacher’s chair and prodding us with his pencil while we were learning the French irregular verbs that were not of the slightest use to us later on in France. It’s still barely two years ago – and now here is Home Guardsman Kantorek, with all the mystique rudely stripped away, bow-legged, with arms like pot-handles, his buttons badly polished and looking ridiculous, a quite impossible soldier. I can’t reconcile him with that threatening figure at the front of the class, and I would really like to know how I would react if this miserable scarecrow were ever allowed suddenly to ask me, an old soldier, ‘Baumer, give me the imperfect of aller [209] aller (фр.) – ходить …’

For the moment, Mittelstaedt has them practise skirmishing. For this he graciously appoints Kantorek platoon leader.

Thereby hangs a tale. In skirmishing, you see, the platoon leader always has to be twenty paces ahead of his men; so if the order comes ‘At the double, about turn!’ [210] At the double, about turn! – Кругом, марш! the skirmishing line just has to about face, but the platoon leader, who is now suddenly twenty paces behind the line has to rush forward so that he gets twenty paces in front of the men. That makes forty paces altogether at the double. But hardly has he got there when the order comes ‘At the double, about turn!’ and he has to belt forty paces across to the other side as quickly as he can. In all this the group merely carries out a few steps and a leisurely about face, while the platoon leader is rushing about like a fart in a colander. The whole manoeuvre is one of Himmelstoss’s tried and tested recipes.

Kantorek can’t expect anything else from Mittelstaedt, because he once made sure that he failed the end-of-year exams and was kept back a year, and Mittelstaedt would be daft not to make the most of this opportunity before he is sent back to the front. Perhaps you really do die a bit more easily if the army gives you a chance like that just once in a while.

Meanwhile Kantorek is scurrying backwards and forwards like a stuck pig. After a while Mittelstaedt tells them to stop, and he begins the terribly important exercise of crawling. Holding his rifle in the regulation manner, Kantorek drags his incredible shape on his elbows and knees through the sand right in front of us. He is panting heavily, and that panting is music to our ears.

Mittelstaedt encourages him by offering Kantorek-the-Home-Guardsman comforting quotations from Kantorek-the-School-master. ‘Home Guardsman Kantorek, we are fortunate to be living in a time of greatness, and so we need to pull ourselves together and learn to overcome misfortunes.’

Kantorek spits out a dirty scrap of wood that has managed to get in between his teeth and sweats.

Mittelstaedt leans down to him and assures him with great fervour, ‘And in the face of trivialities we must never lose sight of the greater experience, Home Guardsman Kantorek!’

I’m only surprised that Kantorek doesn’t explode with a great bang, especially since they now move on to PE, during which Mittelstaedt does a wonderful Kantorek imitation by grabbing hold of the seat of his trousers during an exercise on the horizontal bar, so that he can lift his chin up straight over the bar itself, all accompanied by a constant flow of pearls of wisdom. That’s exactly what Kantorek used to do to him in the old days.