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

The soldiers from Saxony stop playing – a bit of shrapnel has hit the piano. We are pretty well ready too, and we arrange our withdrawal. After the next impact two men sprint the fifty-odd yards to the dugout with the saucepans full of vegetables. We watch them disappear.

Another shot. Everyone ducks, and then two men trot off, each with a pot of excellent coffee, and reach the dugout before the next shell lands.

Kat and Albert grab the piece de resistance [237] piece de resistance (фр.) – главное блюдо, гвоздь программы : the big dish with the piglets, now roasted and golden-brown. There is a howling noise, they bob down briefly, and then tear across the fifty yards of open ground.

I cook four last potato pancakes – I have to take cover twice while I’m doing so – but it does mean another four pancakes for us, after all, and it’s my favourite food.

Then I grab the plate with the great pile of pancakes and press myself against the door of the house. There is a hiss, a crash, and I dash out, clutching the plate to my chest with both hands. I am nearly there when there is a whistling noise and it is getting louder, so I leap up like a deer, skid around the concrete wall while shrapnel pounds against it, and fall down the steps into the cellar; my elbows are skinned, but I haven’t lost a single pancake and I didn’t even upset the plate.

We start the meal at two. It lasts until six. Until half past we drink coffee – officers-only coffee from the supply dump – and as we do so, we smoke officers-only cigars and cigarettes, also from the supply dump. On the dot of half past six we begin supper. At ten we throw the pork bones out of the door. Then we have rum and brandy, once again from the thrice-blessed supply dump, and once again long, fat cigars with bands. Tjaden insists that only one thing is missing: a few girls from one of the officers-only knocking shops.

Later still that evening we hear a miaowing [238] miaowing – мяуканье . A little grey cat is sitting in the doorway. We coax it in and give it something to eat. While we are doing that we get peckish again ourselves. We go to bed still chewing.

But we have a terrible night. The food was too rich and too greasy. Fresh sucking-pig has a lively effect on the guts. There is a continuous to-ing and fro-ing [239] to-ing and fro-ing – взад-вперед in the dugout. There are always two, three men at a time sitting around outside with their trousers down, cursing. I’m up nine times myself. At about four in the morning we set a new record: all ten men, the guard detail and the visitors, are squatting outside.

Burning houses stand like torches in the night. Shells thunder down and make their impact. Columns of munitions trucks roar down the road. The supply dump has been ripped open on one side. In spite of the shrapnel, the drivers move in like a swarm of bees and steal loaves of bread. We don’t bother to stop them. If we were to say anything, the most that would happen is that we would get a good thumping. So we take a different line. We explain to them that we have been detailed to guard the supplies, and since we know where everything is, we offer them the tinned stuff and swap it for things we haven’t got. What difference does it make? Everything will be shot to pieces in a day or so anyway.

We fetch bars of chocolate for ourselves from the supplies and eat them whole. Kat says chocolate is good when you’ve got the runs.

Nearly two weeks pass with eating, drinking and taking it easy. Nobody bothers us. The village gradually disappears under the shelling, and we have a good time. As long as just a small part of the supply dump is still there, we don’t care what happens, and what we would really like to do is to end the war here.

Tjaden has become so genteel that he only smokes his cigars halfway down. He explains in a superior fashion that this is the style appropriate to his breeding. Even Kat is cheerful. His first words in the morning are ‘My man, fetch the caviare and the coffee!’ We have all become amazingly upper-crust, everyone takes everyone else to be his valet, addresses him in an aristocratic manner and issues orders. ‘Kropp, the sole of my foot is a little itchy; kindly be so good as to remove that louse.’ And with that Leer stretches his leg out to him like a prima donna, and Albert grabs it and pulls him up the stairs. ‘Tjaden!’ – ‘What?’ – ‘You may stand at ease, Tjaden, my good man, and kindly note that the response is not “What?” but “Yes sir, right away, sir.” So we’ll try again. Tjaden!’ Tjaden makes what is by now his automatic response, and once more quotes the famous line from German literature indicating which part of his anatomy he would like kissed.

At the end of a further week we get orders to withdraw. The good times are over. Two large trucks come to fetch us. They are already piled high with planks of wood, but Albert and I stack our four-poster with the blue silk canopy up on top, together with the mattresses and a couple of lace coverlets. Inside the bed, at the head end, we both have a sack full of best quality provisions. We keep running our hands over them; the salamis, the tins of liver pate, the canned food and the boxes of cigars gladden our hearts. All the men have similar sacks with them.

In addition to this, Kropp and I have salvaged two red plush armchairs. They are on the bed, and we lounge in them as if we were in a box at the theatre. The silk cover of the canopy billows out above us. Each of us has a long cigar in his mouth. And so we survey the landscape from on high.

In between us is a parrot cage that we found to keep the cat in. We have brought the cat with us, and it is inside the cage, lying in front of its dish and purring.

The trucks roll slowly along the road. We sing as we go. Behind us the shells are sending up great spurts of earth from the village, which has now been abandoned completely.

A few days later we are sent out to evacuate a district. On the way we meet the escaping locals, who have been ordered to leave. They are carting their bits and pieces away with them on barrows, in prams and on their backs. Their figures are bowed, their frees full of misery, despair, haste and resignation. The children hold on to their mothers’ hands, and sometimes an older girl will be looking after the smaller ones as they stumble forwards, forever turning to look behind them. A few of them are carrying pitiful little dolls. They all pass us by in silence.

We are still in marching order, because the French are not likely to shell a village when their people are still there. But a few minutes later there is a screeching in the air, the earth shudders, men scream out – a shell has smashed into our rear-guard. We dive apart and throw ourselves on to the ground, but at that very moment I feel how that tenseness slips away from me, the tenseness that usually makes me do the right thing instinctively when I’m under fire, and the thought ‘You’re done for’ [240] You’re done for – Тебе конец jerks into my head with a choking, terrible fear – and the next minute a blow like a whiplash cuts across my left leg. I hear Albert scream – he was right by my side.

‘Get up, Albert, run!’ I shout, because we are lying without any cover in the open.

He stumbles to his feet and runs. I stay at his side. We have to get over a hedge. It’s taller than we are. Kropp grabs hold of the branches, and I get him by the leg, he screams, but I give him enough leverage and he hurtles over. In one movement I get over after him, and land in a pond behind the hedge.

Our faces are covered with pondweed and slime, but it is good cover, and we wade out until we are up to our necks. When a shell comes howling across we duck our heads under the water.