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

cursing his replacement with every name he can think of, but the moment the
guy arrives he'll treat him like a china doll. We've been through all
that..."
Chistyakov did not go to dinner. He threw a tin can against the floor
with all his strength:
"... so the microbes inside will drop dead!" Then he polished off a
0.75 bottle of vodka and sat at the table, smoking, blowing smoke through
his nostrils and confiding bitterly to the sardines floating in the tin can.
Finally, after baring his soul, he declared: "... a cow stands on a bridge
and shits, and man lives and dies just like that..." When Sharagin turned up
Zhenka, quite drunk, said: "Look, you like writing down all sorts of crap.
So I'll tell you the paradox of the Russian soul: steal a crate of vodka,
sell it, and then spend the money on drink."
"Lay off." Sharagin stretched out on his bunk, thinking about writing a
few lines home.
"What's the date today, Zhenka?"
"The forty-fourth of April."
"There's no such thing."
"Yes there is."
"In April," retorted Sharagin who had not touched a drop of alcohol
either yesterday or today, "there are thirty days."
"I was supposed to be replaced in April. And until my replacement
arrives, it'll stay fucking April!"

Despite his bad mood and the vodka, despite his avoidance of duty and
short-distance sorties from the camp, Chistyakov was the first when it came
to combat duty, and infected others with his attitude. Ready for war.
"Now that everyone's run out of shit, it's time to get down to
business, " he barked at the "elephants." 'And I don't want to hear another
fucking word about someone not feeling well," he bellowed left and right.
Zhenka shone like a lamp in anticipation of battle, the risk, the fury
of combat. It's not frightening for an officer to die in battle. What is
frightening or, rather, it would be a shame, to catch a bullet or shell
fragment from some stupid act.
The soldiers' lot was no bowl of cherries, either. They waited to be
demobbed no less keenly, they'd spent a year and a half plugging away
without discharge or leave, but, unlike the officers, they had no choice and
could not show their displeasure. Chistyakov barked at everyone, testing the
livers of the "elephants" with his fist.
"A whack on the liver is as good as a mug of beer!"
Chistyakov was all afire to go to war, went around as if in a haze,
forgot all about his replacement, cleaned his rifle, got his gear together,
honed his combat knife.
"I sure don't envy the spooks," remarked Pashkov, shaking his head.
"Where'd he suddenly get all that energy?" He was checking out the fixings
of the machine gun on the turret of an armored vehicle.
"Why are you so glum, Sharagin?"
"I had a bad dream..."