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

"Say, these women here get my goat."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, I was at the Olympia with Johnson and that crowd. They just
pester the life out of you there. I'd heard that Paris was immoral, but
nothing like this."
"It's the war."
"But the Jane I went with . . ."
"Gee, these Frenchwomen are immoral. They say the war does it."
"Can't be that. Nothing is more purifying than sacrifice."
"A feller has to be mighty careful, they say."
"Looks like every woman you saw walking on the street was a whore. They
certainly are good-lookers though."
"King and his gang are all being sent back to the States."
"I'll be darned! They sure have been drunk ever since they got off the
steamer."
"Raised hell in Maxim's last night. They tried to clean up the place
and the police came. They were all soused to the gills and tried to make
everybody there sing the 'Star Spangled Banner.'"
"Damn fool business."


Martin Howe sat at a table on the sidewalk under the brown awning of a
restaurant. Opposite in the last topaz-clear rays of the sun, the foliage of
the Jardin du Luxembourg shone bright green above deep alleys of bluish
shadow. From the pavements in front of the mauve-coloured houses rose little
kiosks with advertisements in bright orange and vermilion and blue. In the
middle of the triangle formed by the streets and the garden was a round pool
of jade water. Martin leaned back in his chair looking dreamily out through
half-closed eyes, breathing deep now and then of the musty scent of Paris,
that mingled with the melting freshness of the wild strawberries on the
plate before him.
As he stared in front of him two figures crossed his field of vision. A
woman swathed in black crepe veils was helping a soldier to a seat at the
next table. He found himself staring in a face, a face that still had some
of the chubbiness of boyhood. Between the pale-brown frightened eyes, where
the nose should have been, was a triangular black patch that ended in some
mechanical contrivance with shiny little black metal rods that took the
place of the jaw. He could not take his eyes from the soldier's eyes, that
were like those of a hurt animal, full of meek dismay. Someone plucked at
Martin's arm, and he turned suddenly, fearfully.
A bent old woman was offering him flowers with a jerky curtsey.
"Just a rose, for good luck?"
"No, thank you."
"It will bring you happiness."
He took a couple of the reddest of the roses.
"Do you understand the language of flowers?"
"No."
"I shall teach you. . . . Thank you so much. . . . Thank you so much."