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

She added a few large daisies to the red roses in his hand.
"These will bring you love. . . . But another time I shall teach you
the language of flowers, the language of love."
She curtseyed again, and began making her way jerkily down the
sidewalk, jingling his silver in her hand.
He stuck the roses and daisies in the belt of his uniform and sat with
the green flame of Chartreuse in a little glass before him, staring into the
gardens, where the foliage was becoming blue and lavender with evening, and
the shadows darkened to grey-purple and black. Now and then he glanced
furtively, with shame, at the man at the next table. When the restaurant
closed he wandered through the unlighted streets towards the river,
listening to the laughs and conversations that bubbled like the sparkle in
Burgundy through the purple summer night.
But wherever he looked in the comradely faces of young men, in the
beckoning eyes of women, he saw the brown hurt eyes of the soldier, and the
triangular black patch where the nose should have been.





Chapter III


AT Epernay the station was wrecked; the corrugated tin of the roof hung
in strips over the crumbled brick walls.
"They say the Boches came over last night. They killed a lot of
permissionaires."
"That river's the Maine."
"Gosh, is it? Let me get to the winder."
The third-class car, joggling along on a flat wheel, was full of the
smell of sweat and sour wine. Outside, yellow-green and blue-green, crossed
by long processions of poplars, aflame with vermilion and carmine of
poppies, the countryside slipped by. At a station where the train stopped on
a siding, they could hear a faint hollow sound in the distance: guns.


Croix de Guerre had been given out that day at the automobile park at
ChГlons. There was an unusually big dinner at the wooden tables in the
narrow portable barracks, and during the last course the General passed
through and drank a glass of champagne to the health of all present.
Everybody had on his best uniform and sweated hugely in the narrow, airless
building, from the wine and the champagne and the thick stew, thickly
seasoned, that made the dinner's main course.
"We are all one large family," said the General from the end of the
barracks . . . "to France."
That night the wail of a siren woke Martin suddenly and made him sit up
in his bunk trembling, wondering where he was. Like the shriek of a woman in
a nightmare, the wail of the siren rose and rose and then dropped in pitch
and faded throbbingly out.