"Hemingway, Ernest - Across the River and Into the Trees" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hemingway Ernest)

УIТve got a shovel in the trunk and weТve got chains. Wait till you see where weТre going after we leave Venice,Ф
УDo we go all the way in this car?Ф
УI donТt know. IТll see.Ф
УThink about your fenders, sir.Ф
УWeТll cut the fenders off like the Indians do in Oklahoma. SheТs over-fendered right now. SheТs got too much of everything except engine. Jackson, thatТs a real engine sheТs got. One hundred and fifty ponies.Ф
УIt certainly is, sir. ItТs a great pleasure to drive that big engine on the good roads. ThatТs why I donТt want anything to happen to her.Ф
УThatТs very good of you, Jackson. Now just quit suffering.Ф
УIТm not suffering, sir.Ф
УGood,Ф said the Colonel.
He was not, either, because just then he saw, beyond the line of close-bunched brown trees ahead, a sail moving along. It was a big red sail, raked sharply down from the peak, and it moved slowly behind the trees.
Why should it always move your heart to see a sail moving along through the country, the Colonel thought Why does it move my heart to see the great, slow, pale oxen? It must be the gait as well as the look of them and the size and the color.
But a good fine big mule, or a string of pack mules in good condition, moves me, too. So does a coyote every time I ever see one, and a wolf, gaited like no other animal, gray and sure of himself, carrying that heavy head and with the hostile eyes.
УEver see any wolves out around Rawlins, Jackson?Ф
УNo, sir. Wolves were gone before my time; they poisoned them out. Plenty coyotes, though.Ф
УDo you like coyotes?Ф
УI like to hear them nights.Ф
УSo do I. Better than anything, except seeing a ship sailing along through the country.Ф
УThereТs a boat doing that over there, sir.Ф
УOn the Sile canal,Ф the Colonel told him. УSheТs a sailing barge going to Venice. This wind is off the mountains now and she makes it along pretty good. ItТs liable to turn really cold tonight if this wind holds and it ought to bring in plenty ducks. Turn to your left here and weТll run along the canal. ThereТs a good road.Ф
УThey didnТt have much duck shooting where I came from. But there was plenty of it in Nebraska along the Platte.Ф
УDo you want to shoot where weТre going?Ф
УI donТt believe so, sir. IТm not much of a shot, and IТd rather stay in that sack. ItТs a Sunday morning, you know.Ф
УI know,Ф the Colonel said. УYou can stay in the sack until noon if you want.Ф
УI brought my repellent. I ought to sleep O.K.Ф
УIТm not sure youТll need it,Ф the Colonel said. УDid you bring any K-rations or Ten in One? TheyТre liable to eat Italian food, you know.Ф
УI brought a few cans to help out and a little stuff to give away.Ф
УThatТs good,Ф the Colonel said.
He was looking ahead now to see where the canal road joined the main highway again. There he knew that he would see it on a clear day such as this was. Across the marshes, brown as those at the mouths of the Mississippi around Pilot Town are in winter, and with their reeds bent by the heavy north wind, he saw the squared tower of the church at Torcello and the high campanile of Burano beyond it. The sea was a slate blue and he could see the sails of twelve sailing barges running with the wind for Venice.
IТll have to wait until we cross the Dese River above Noghera to see it perfectly, he thought. It is strange to remember how we fought back there along the canal that winter to defend it and we never saw it. Then one time, I was back as far as Noghera and it was clear and cold like today, and I saw it across the water. But I never got into it. It is my city, though, because I fought for it when I was a boy, and now that I am half a hundred years old, they know I fought for it and am a part owner and they treat me well.
Do you think thatТs why they treat you well, he asked himself.
Maybe, he thought. Maybe they treat me well because IТm a chicken colonel on the winning side. I donТt believe it, though. I hope not, anyway. It is not France, he thought.
There you fight your way into a city that you love and are very careful about breaking anything and then, if you have good sense, you are careful not to go back because you will meet some military characters who will resent your having fought your way in. Vive la France et les pommes de terre frites. Libertщ, Venalitщ, et Stupiditщ. The great clartщ of the French military thinking. They havenТt had a military thinker since du Picq. He was a poor bloody Colonel, too. Mangin, Maginot and Gamelin. Take your choice, Gentlemen. Three schools of thought. One; I hit them on the nose. Two; I hide behind this thing which does not cover my left flank. Three; I hide my head in the sand like an ostrich, confident in the greatness of France as a military power and then take off.
Take off is putting it very cleanly and pleasantly. Sure, he thought, whenever you over-simplify you become unjust. Remember all the fine ones in the Resistance, remember Foch both fought and organized and remember how fine the people were. Remember your good friends and remember your deads. Remember plenty things and your best friends again and the finest people that you know. DonТt be a bitter nor a stupid. And what has that to do with soldiering as a trade? Cut it out, he told himself. YouТre on a trip to have fun.
УJackson,Ф he said, Уare you happy?Ф
УYes, sir.Ф
УGood. Shortly, we are coming to a view that I want you to see. You only have to take one look at it. The entire operation will be practically painless.Ф
I wonder what heТs riding me for now, the driver thought. Just because he was a B.G. once he knows everything. If he was any good as a B.G. why didnТt he hold it? HeТs been beat up so much heТs slug-nutty.
УThereТs the view, Jackson,Ф the Colonel said. УStop her by the side of the road and weТll take a look.Ф
The Colonel and the driver walked over to the Venice side of the road and looked across the lagoon that was whipped by the strong, cold wind from the mountains that sharpened all the outlines of buildings so that they were geometrically clear.
УThatТs Torcello directly opposite us,Ф the Colonel pointed. УThatТs where the people lived that were driven off the mainland by the Visigoths. They built that church you see there with the square tower. There were thirty thousand people lived there once and they built that church to honor their Lord and to worship him. Then, after they built it, the mouth of the Sile River silted up or a big flood changed it, and all that land we came through just now got flooded and started to breed mosquitoes and malaria hit them. They all started to die, so the elders got together and decided they should pull out to a healthy place that would be defensible with boats, and where the Visigoths and the Lombards and the other bandits couldnТt get at them, because these bandits had no sea-power. The Torcello boys were all great boatmen. So they took the stones of all their houses in barges, like that one we just saw, and they built Venice.Ф
He stopped. УAm I boring you, Jackson?Ф
УNo, sir. I had no idea who pioneered Venice.Ф
УIt was the boys from Torcello. They were very tough and they had very good taste in building. They came from a little place up the coast called Caorle. But they drew on all the people from the towns and the farms behind when the Visigoths over-ran them. It was a Torcello boy who was running arms into Alexandria, who located the body of St. Mark and smuggled it out under a load of fresh pork so the infidel customs guards wouldnТt check him. This boy brought the remains of St. Mark to Venice, and heТs their patron saint and they have a cathedral there to him. But by that time, they were trading so far to the east that the architecture is pretty Byzantine for my taste. They never built any better than at the start there in Torcello. ThatТs Torcello there.Ф
It was, indeed.
УSt. MarkТs square is where the pigeons are and where they have that big cathedral that looks sort of like a moving picture palace, isnТt it?Ф
УRight, Jackson. YouТre on the ball. If thatТs the way you look at it. Now you look beyond Torcello you will see the lovely campanile on Burano that has damn near as much list on it as the leaning tower of Pisa. That Burano is a very over-populated little island where the women make wonderful lace, and the men make bambinis and work day-times in the glass factories in that next island you see on beyond with the other campanile, which is Murano. They make wonderful glass day-times for the rich of all the world, and then they come home on the little vaporetto and make bambinis. Not everyone passes every night with his wife though. They hunt ducks nights too, with big punt guns, out along the edge of the marshes on this lagoon youТre looking across now. All night long on a moonlight night you hear the shots.Ф He paused.
УNow when you look past Murano you see Venice. ThatТs my town. ThereТs plenty more I could show you, but I think we probably ought to roll now. But take one good look at it. This is where you can see how it all happened. But nobody ever looks at it from here.Ф
УItТs a beautiful view. Thank you, sir.Ф
УO.K.,Ф the Colonel said. УLetТs roll.Ф