"Hemingway, Ernest - Green Hills of Africa" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hemingway Ernest)

'Of course, if you {like} to do it. Tell me, what do you really think
of Rilke?'
'I have read only the one thing.'
'Which?'
'The Cornet.'
'You liked it?'
'Yes.'
'I have no patience with it. It is snobbery. Valery, yes. I see the
point of Valery, although there is much snobbery too. Well at least you do
not kill elephants.'
'I'd kill a big enough one.'
'How big?'
'A seventy-pounder. Maybe smaller.'
'I see there are things we do not agree on. But it is a pleasure to
meet one of the great old {Querschnitt} group. Tell me what is Joyce like? I
have not the money to buy it. Sinclair Lewis is nothing. I bought it. No.
No. Tell me to-morrow. You do not mind if I am camped near? You are with
friends? You have a white hunter?'
'With my wife. We would be delighted. Yes, a white hunter.'
'Why is he not out with you?'
'He believes you should hunt kudu alone.'
'It is better not to hunt them at all. What is he? English?'
'Yes.'
'Bloody English?'
'No. Very nice. You will like him.'
'You must go. I must not keep you. Perhaps I will see you to-morrow. It
was very strange that we should meet.'
'Yes,' I said. 'Have them look at the lorry to-morrow. Anything we can
do?'
'Good night,' he said. 'Good trip.'
'Good night,' I said. We started off and I saw him walking toward the
fire waving an arm at the natives. I had not asked him why he had twenty
up-country natives with him, nor where he was going. Looking back, I had
asked him nothing. I do not like to ask questions, and where I was brought
up it was not polite. But here we had not seen a white man for two weeks,
not since we had left Babati to go south, and then to run into one on this
road where you met only an occasional Indian trader and the steady migration
of the natives out of the famine country, to have him look like a caricature
of Benchley in Tyrolean costume, to have him know your name, to call you a
poet, to have read the {Querschnitt}, to be an admirer of Joachim Ringelnatz
and to want to talk about Rilke, was too fantastic to deal with. So, just
then, to crown this fantasy, the lights of the car showed three tall,
conical, mounds of something smoking in the road ahead. I motioned to Kamau
to stop, and putting on the brakes we skidded just short of them. They were
from two to three feet high and when I touched one it was quite warm.
{'Tembo,'} M'Cola said.
It was dung from elephants that had just crossed the road, and in the
cold of the evening you could see it steaming. In a little while we were in
camp.
Next morning I was up and away to another salt-lick before daylight.