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

Howe and Randolph moved up and they all sat at the same table.
"Fortune of war?"
"Oh, the war, what do you think of the war?" cried Martin.
"What do you think of the peste? You think about saving your skin."
"What's amusing about us is that we three have all saved our skins
together," said one of the Frenchmen.
"Yes. We are of the same class," said another, holding up his thumb.
"Mobilised same day." He held up his first finger. "Same company." He held
up a second finger. "Wounded by the same shell. . . . Evacuated to the same
hospital. Convalescence at same time. . Rйformй to the same depфt behind the
lines."
"Didn't all marry the same girl, did you, to make it complete?" asked
Randolph.
They all shouted with laughter until the glasses along the bar rang.
"You must be Athos, Porthos, and d'Artagnan."
"We are," they shouted.
"Some more champagne, madame, for the three musketeers," sang Randolph
in a sort of operatic yodle.
"All I have left is this," said the withered woman, setting a bottle
down on the table.
"Is that poison?"
"It's cognac, it's very good cognac," said the old woman seriously.
"C'est du cognac! Vive le roi cognac!" everybody shouted.
"Au plein de mon cognac
Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Au plein de mon cognac
Qu'il fait bon dormir."
"Down with the war! Who can sing the 'Internationale'?"
"Not so much noise, I beg you, gentlemen," came the withered woman's
whining voice. "It's after hours. Last week I was fined. Next time I'll be
closed up."
The night was black when Martin and Randolph, after lengthy and
elaborate farewells, started down the muddy road towards the hospital. They
staggered along the slippery footpath beside the road, splashed every
instant with mud by camions, huge and dark, that roared grindingly by. They
ran and skipped arm-in-arm and shouted at the top of their lungs:
"Auprиs de ma blonde,
Qu'il fait bon, fait bon, fait bon,
Auprиs de ma blonde,
Qu'il fait bon dormir."
A stench of sweat and filth and formaldehyde caught them by the throat
as they went into the hospital tent, gave them a sense of feverish bodies of
men stretched all about them, stirring in pain.


"A car for la Bassйe, Ambulance 4," said the orderly. Howe got himself
up off the hospital stretcher, shoving his flannel shirt back into his
breeches, put on his coat and belt and felt his way to the door, stumbling
over the legs of sleeping brancardiers as he went. Men swore in their sleep
and turned over heavily. At the door he waited a minute, then shouted: