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

"Don't flash a light there. It's Boche planes."
Outside the night was cold, with a little light from a waned moon.
"See the shrapnel!" someone cried.
"The Boche has a Mercedes motor," said someone else. "You can tell by
the sound of it."
"They say one of their planes chased an ambulance ten miles along a
straight road the other day, trying to get it with a machinegun. The man who
was driving got away, but he had shell-shock afterwards."
"Did he really?"
"Oh, I'm goin' to turn in. God, these French nights are cold!"



The rain pattered hard with unfaltering determination on the roof of
the little arbour. Martin lolled over the rough board table, resting his
chin on his clasped hands, looking through the tinkling bead curtains of the
rain towards the other end of the weed-grown garden, where, under a canvas
shelter, the cooks were moving about in front of two black steaming
cauldrons. Through the fresh scent of rain-beaten leaves came a greasy smell
of soup. He was thinking of the jolly wedding-parties that must have drunk
and danced in this garden before the war, of the lovers who must have sat in
that very arbour, pressing sunburned cheek against sunburned cheek, twining
hands callous with work in the fields. A man broke suddenly into the arbour
behind Martin and stood flicking the water off his uniform with his cap. His
sand-coloured hair was wet and was plastered in little spikes to his broad
forehead, a forehead that was the entablature of a determined rock-hewn
face.
"Hello," said Martin, twisting his head to look at the newcomer. "You
section twenty-four?"
"Yes. . . . Ever read 'Alice in Wonderland'?" asked the wet man,
sitting down abruptly at the table.
"Yes, indeed."
"Doesn't this remind you of it?"
"What?"
"This war business. Why, I keep thinking I'm going to meet the rabbit
who put butter in his watch round every corner."
"It was the best butter."
"That's the hell of it."
"When's your section leaving here?" asked Martin, picking up the
conversation after a pause during which they'd both stared out into the
rain. They could hear almost constantly the grinding roar of camions on the
road behind the caf© and the slither of their wheels through the mud-puddles
where the road turned into the village.
"How the devil should I know?"
"Somebody had dope this morning that we'd leave here for Soissons
to-morrow." Martin's words tailed off into a convictionless mumble.
"It surely is different than you'd pictured it, isn't it, now?"
They sat looking at each other while the big drops from the leaky roof
smacked on the table or splashed cold in their faces.
"What do you think of all this, anyway?" said the wet man suddenly,