"James Van Pelt - O Tannebaum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pelt James Van)

asked me to call Gina. He sat next to me in the trench; I'd found out earlier in the day
that we were twenty miles south of Verdun. German trenches weren't a hundred
yards to the east, but you couldn't see them. Broken spirals of barbed wire, torn up
dirt, a busted ambulance were all I could see. Night had fallen, and it had gotten very
cold. A sentry walking by, head low, broke through a layer of fresh ice that had
formed over the mud, so every step crackled, then squished. We had to pull our feet
back to let him pass. The soldier's boots made a silly little squeaking sound when
they pulled free.
Humphrey laughed. He was tired and scared, an eighteen year old Brit with a downy,
blonde moustache and blood-shot eyes. He laughed at the ridiculous sound though,
and then he started telling me about his family and his girl friend, Gina. He talked for
an hour, low and passioned and non-stop. He made me swear to contact her if he
didn't make it home.
"It's Christmas," he said, and he didn't say anything about where we were or what
we were doing. He leaned his head against his gun and shut his eyes and by the light
of the winter moon told me about Christmas in Lancashire, where he was born. I
wish you could have heard his voice, kind of low and broken. He was a lot more
down than you. "They're roasting chestnuts," he said. "And eating quince pudding,
and telling each other stories. My Uncle Charles will bring out a cask of stout--he
makes it himself--and they'll tap it open. He'll pour pints all around. Charles and Aunt
Edna will be pie-eyed and toasting to the King's good health. Gina will be with
them." Humphrey paused for a long time at that. No other sounds up and down the
trenches, just cold, milky light pouring down on us, and the air like ice razors
pressing against our cheeks. Finally, he breathed, "Oh, Gina, my good girl, my black
eyed girl."
"Do they sing carols?" I asked. It had been a good day for me. Everyone clapped
me on the shoulder. Ruddy faced fellows, mostly young, like myself, like you.
"Merry Christmas, old sport," they'd say. "Separated from your company, are you?
Good thing you Yanks are in it now," and they'd offer me stiff shots of warm
brandy from hip flasks that suddenly appeared.
"Yes," said Humphrey. "They sing 'O Christmas Tree.'" and he started to sing it,
very softly, and I could tell he was crying. His voice, clean and clear, carried in that
icy air, and it seemed like the only sound in the world, all tied up in the night sky and
the moon and the barbed wire, and when he got to the part that goes, They're green
when summer days are bright; they're green when winter snow is white, his voice
cracked and he could go no further.
It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life: Humphrey slumped down in the
bottom of the trench, lost and far from his home, from his Gina, the marvelous
dark-eyed Gina who was hanging popcorn strings on a Christmas tree in a fire-lit
room surrounded by Humphrey's parents and sisters and brothers and Uncle
Charles and the homemade stout a million miles away.
And the echo of Humphrey's Christmas carol still rang in my ears, and I realized it
wasn't an echo. It was the same tune, but the words had changed. Humphrey looked
up too. He canted his head to one side and listened. Clear, so clear, as if the singer
was in the trench with us, we heard a voice singing Humphrey's song. It sang, "O
Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum . . ."
Humphrey hopped up then, and so did I, and looked across the no man's land. A
face looked back. A German face under a pointy helmet, and he waved a tiny, white
handkerchief at us. Humphrey dug into his back pocket and waved his own
handkerchief. I don't know who climbed out of the trench first, the German or