Hedi Kaddour - Waltenberg
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- Название:Waltenberg
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- Издательство:Vintage
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- Год:2009
- ISBN:нет данных
- Рейтинг книги:3 / 5. Голосов: 1
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Waltenberg: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация
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Waltenberg
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Certainly, in the episode which concerns us, the dragoons have no other role than to act as a column whose function is to disrupt the enemy’s rear, since up to this point it is the enemy who have performed all the strategic breakthroughs, but the dragoons spur their mounts with hopes of achieving glory with the benefit of surprise and the help of Saint George before they fall back to a position south of the Marne.
Max emerges from the Blue Dwarf, muttering denials as he goes, it’s complicated, got to believe in the war not in fairy tales, remain cool, stay angry enough to shoot some fellow in the eye and cool enough to steer clear of all the bloody stupidity, the return of superstition, the salmagundi of religions, the talapoins, what’s stopping me believing that the Hun chops children’s hands off? I honestly never wanted to do anything like that, what man would, and if that stupid old sod is so keen to believe it that’s because he’d like to do it himself, eye-for-an-eye, ear, hand, vendetta, he’s got a son who might die, die trying to prevent the Hun chopping children’s hands off, he dreams that his son will at least have died doing that, sometimes I almost believe it myself, that’s not what I mean, why is that old man angry with me for not believing the same thing as he does? Max has resumed his soldier’s quick march, he beats time to each group of words with his index finger, that old fool cannot believe what he believes he can make other people believe, if I tell him I don’t believe it, then the game’s up.
Max stares at his finger.
He marches on. Ahead of him he sees a woman pushing a pram without a baby; in it she has put a gramophone and she is singing ‘O such a waste, to lose your life when you’re a woman, alas and still young’ to the tune of ‘O sole mio’, which emerges from the horn.
The woman with the pram isn’t asking for money, she does not stop and ask for money. Max catches up with her. There’s a saucer next to the gramophone. They both walk on under the chestnut trees of the rue Royale. The song is about a woman who was a victim of the Germans, ‘such a waste’ and ‘lose your life’, an English victim, Miss Cavell, Edith Cavell of Norfolk, who served as a nurse in Belgium; the Germans shot her, they shot a nurse whom they accused of helping English and French soldiers to escape; a firing squad for a nurse. Every newspaper reported it, Miss Cavell is proud and strong, hers will be an exemplary death, but, the newspaper says, she falters, her knees buckle, she faints.
The German officer commanding the firing squad empties his pistol into her head. L’Excelsior, a quality Paris paper, knows everything, sees everything, publishes a full-page artist’s impression. On the page opposite there is another topical ditty, this one to be sung to the tune of ‘The Girl from Paimpol’, the ninth stanza runs:
Punish the brutes who did this deed!
Avenge a heroine pure in heart and creed.
She was a saint, she is divine
And dwells in heaven above, where heroes shine!
A thought is also spared for heroes in the first ditty, another stanza set to ‘O sole mio’, which has these manly words: ‘but it’s so fine to have the chance when you’re a man to die for France’, which are intended to avenge Miss Cavell. Max does not believe the stories printed in the papers but he drops a coin in the saucer. The young woman looks up at him:
‘Now that he’s dead, I’ve got to earn my living.’
Max walks faster to warm up, it strikes him as funny, the church of the Madeleine behind him, the song the woman sang, arrant nonsense, truth, talapoins, he walks past the red curtains hanging at the windows of Maxim’s, hundreds of sandbags piled high, directly ahead of him are the Obelisk and the National Assembly, he’s in the rue Royale then the Place de la Concorde, the sandbags, the cold wind blowing from the Seine, ‘O sole mio’.
That’s what a cavalry charge is, just a murmur of horses’ hooves, a steady trot to begin with, then three hundred paces a minute, but not for long, to allow the riders in the rear to form up as and when they emerge into the clearing, with the enemy at six hundred metres.
The dragoons are much more than the sum of their history, according to Regulations they are a modern weapon, a group moulded into a weapon by force of discipline. They have the training, months and months of training, on ranges and in barracks, mounted drills daily, sessions of dressage, sessions of ground work, endless jumps, plus all the different exercises involving targets, rings, butts, dummies and, worst of all, the wooden quintain which spins vertically and has a weight which whips round and catches you in the back if you don’t duck fast enough after hitting it, splendid sight.
And at least three times a year, they go through their paces in public, for a public thrilled to see its army, the riders are proud to be on show, keen to get the better of the spinning wooden effigy they call the Hun, the subalterns looking round, eyes hidden under the visors of their helmets, some for what might be on offer for that evening, others for a future wife, she would have to be pretty, of course, and come with a dowry of at least 1,200 francs in non-transferable government bonds, the Republic has made that the compulsory threshold: no wife for an officer if she comes with less than 1,200 francs. In 1885 permission was given for bonds to be replaced by an equivalent investment income from publicly quoted companies.
A young girl of good family glimpsed in the stands might be checked out the following day in church, or promenading on the mall, by a young officer in uniform, sheathed sabre held in the left hand, metal tip of the scabbard fore and sword-knot aft, all as discreet as you like, but the thrust of the scabbard and the swing of the sword-knot are unambiguous.
Add the special passes granted to those ‘whose duty is to maintain the good name of the dragoons with the town’s fair s ex ’, fair sex , note, not those marriageable girls who keep their shifts on when they take their weekly all-over wash, because it’s not done to undress completely, girls who shut their eyes when they change their underwear and cross themselves, never look at their navels, mammals with braided hair who wear corsets, contrivances designed to confine the bosom, clamp the buttocks, brace the stomach and keep the flesh safe from unmentionable pleasures and enervating joys, when you wear such scaffolding you might as well forget you’ve got a body at all.
As for the town’s fair sex, Captain Jourde would say when addressing the regiment’s new lieutenants, those middle-class ladies in their sleepy provincial backwaters have no equal, especially once they’re married, Seyne, a brother officer, could put us right on that score but as it happens he’s not here this afternoon, the lady wife of a notary, yes, a notary’s wife, don’t laugh, the message hasn’t got through to you junior officers, if you set your sights on actresses, dancers, horsy girls, women who want you as trophies, on the flighty side, you’re obviously doing it all wrong. Who can say how earthbound the flightiest girl can get when she decides she wants to be respected? I know what I’m talking about, one wrong move on your part and it’s ‘what you do take me for?’, then again actresses will cost you a pretty penny, and if they pay their way then get out quick because they’ve fallen for you, they’ll write to your parents. The notary’s wife knows very well that what she’s doing is wrong, but she’s doing what she dreamed of doing the moment she saw you, which was long before you saw her.
The wife of the man of law makes a first-rate look-out, she can see everything coming a mile off, yes, I grant you, a fast woman will do anything, that’s the truth, but she goes about it in a cool sort of way and more often than not — even after you’ve lived together for a couple of years — she isn’t really very enterprising and will refuse to do what you think she is ready to do precisely because she knows you think she’s ready to do it. But your notary’s wife is all blushes, boldness, keenness, enterprise, and an inescapable mouth, Dutilleux! Don’t you laugh when an old hand serves you up truth as naked as Eve, nobody ever told your lawyer’s wife that where love is concerned nothing is off limits but she already knows, forbidden fruit is exactly what she wants, she’s always known it, so make hay. One day these lawyers’ wives will want to give lesbianism a try and when they do they’ll drop you like hot bricks. So here’s to notaries’ wives, gentlemen, and to those who service them between the lotus hours of five and seven o’clock and have a damned good time doing it.
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