"Джон Пассос. One Man's Initiation: 1917 (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

groups laughing and talking in voices pitched shrill with excitement. In the
brown light of the wharf, full of rows of yellow crates and barrels and
sacks, full of racket of cranes, among which winds in and out the trivial
lilt of the Hawaiian tune, there is a flutter of gay dresses and coloured
hats of women, and white handkerchiefs.
The booming reverberation of the ship's whistle drowns all other sound.
After it the noise of farewells rises shrill. White handkerchiefs are
agitated in the brown light of the shed. Ropes crack in pulleys as the
gang-planks are raised.
Again, at the pierhead, white handkerchiefs and cheering and a flutter
of coloured dresses. On the wharf building a flag spreads exultingly against
the azure afternoon sky.
Rosy yellow and drab purple, the buildings of New York slide together
into a pyramid above brown smudges of smoke standing out in the water,
linked to the land by the dark curves of the bridges.
In the fresh harbour wind comes now and then a salt-wafting breath off
the sea.
Martin Howe stands in the stern that trembles with the vibrating push
of the screw. A boy standing beside him turns and asks in a tremulous voice,
"This your first time across?"
"Yes. . . . Yours?"
"Yes. . . . I never used to think that at nineteen I'd be crossing the
Atlantic to go to a war in France." The boy caught himself up suddenly and
blushed. Then swallowing a lump in his throat he said, "It ought to be time
to eat."
"God help Kaiser Bill!
O-o-o old Uncle Sam.
He's got the cavalry,
He's got the infantry,
He's got the artillery;
And then by God we'll all go to Germany!
God help Kaiser Bill!"
The iron covers are clamped on the smoking-room windows, for no lights
must show. So the air is dense with tobacco smoke and the reek of beer and
champagne. In one corner they are playing poker with their coats off. All
the chairs are full of sprawling young men who stamp their feet to the time,
and bang their fists down so that the bottles dance on the tables.
"God help Kaiser Bill."
Sky and sea are opal grey. Martin is stretched on the deck in the bow
of the boat with an unopened book beside him. He has never been so happy in
his life. The future is nothing to him, the past is nothing to him. All his
life is effaced in the grey languor of the sea, in the soft surge of the
water about the ship's bow as she ploughs through the long swell, eastward.
The tepid moisture of the Gulf Stream makes his clothes feel damp and his
hair stick together into curls that straggle over his forehead. There are
porpoises about, lazily tumbling in the swell, and flying-fish skim from one
grey wave to another, and the bow rises and falls gently in rhythm with the
surging sing-song of the broken water.
Martin has been asleep. As through infinite mists of greyness he looks
back on the sharp hatreds and wringing desires of his life. Now a leaf seems