"Mikhail Evstafiev. Two Steps From Heaven " - читать интересную книгу автора

times a day, tried not to touch anything. His thin, pale lips twisted in
disgust at the sight of the diarrhea-drained soldiers, his face mirrored
distaste toward the illnesses which broke out in the company, his
evenly-parted hair, clean fingernails and flawlessly white collars spoke
eloquently of his disapproval of the common soldiers and certain
non-too-clean officers.
Formerly tanned lads, bursting with rude health would quickly become
listless, thin, their faces a greenish hue when they succumbed to amebic
dysentery or some other local bug. They lost weight visibly, dehydrated by
the dysentery.
Reveille-toilet-physical
exercises-toilet-breakfast-toilet-lineup-toilet-political
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round the clock kept everyone chained to the vicinity of the latrine, even
the sick did not venture from this vital object to a distance from which it
would not be possible to reach the latrine faster than a spook's bullet.
The troops forgot everything on earth, took no pleasure in anything.
Even the grandpas were so exhausted by constant "shit hemorrhages" that they
stopped harassing the rookies. Junior sergeant Titov, who liked to pump
lead, flexing his ready for demobilization biceps and triceps, and
gunlayer-operator PFC Prokhorov - a bark and troublemaker, and sergeant
Panasyuk, spent their days sitting glumly in the smoking room, because it
was closest to the latrine. All in all, though, suffering diarrhea was
preferable to turning yellow and being shunted off to hospital with
hepatitis.
The only officers in the company who did not catch the bug were
Chistyakov and Morgultsev. Zhenka was certain that God was looking after him
and keeping him safe from illness and death in battle, because he had been
carrying a small icon in his pocket for two years now. His mother had
sneaked the icon into his case just before he left home. Zhenka discovered
the icon en route, did not throw it away but secreted it just in case, with
his documents, and thus managed to carry it through customs and across the
border unnoticed. Nemilov once caught Zhenka with the icon, read him a
homily, but refrained from reporting him. Actually, the God who was
supposedly looking after Zhenka slipped up once; Zhenka ate a jar of
home-made jam, sharing the same spoon with a KGB officer who hailed from the
same parts as he. The KGB man succumbed first, went all yellow, the
hepatitis gathered strength, and a week later Zhenka followed him into the
infectious diseases hospital. In fact, Zhenka was a dyed-in-the wool
atheist, and cursed by God and His Mother so frequently, that the ears of
the Holy Family must have burned so much it was a miracle that the wrath of
God did not descend on the senior lieutenant's unit.
Morgultsev, company captain, considered himself a total unbeliever. He
had never stepped across the threshold of a church and did not believe in
miracles. He kept himself safe with garlic. He would eat a whole head of
garlic before lunch. Zhenka had nothing against a bit of insurance on the
side through garlic, but that made forays into the goods depot a problem.
Zhenka went there whenever he could in order to entertain members of the
female sex in the Soviet Army. He would play the guitar and sing. Amorous