All Quiet on the Western Front / На Западном фронте без перемен. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Эрих Мария Ремарк

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he looked into the cooking-pot. ‘Those beans look good.’ Ginger nodded. ‘Cooked in fat, with meat, too.’

      Our lieutenant looked at us. He knew what we were thinking. He knew a lot of other things as well, because he had come to the company as an NCO[18] and grown up with us. He took the lid off the pot again and had a sniff. ‘Bring me a plateful as well. And give out all the rations. We can do with them.’

      Ginger made a face. Tjaden danced around him.

      ‘It’s no skin off your nose![19] He acts as if the supplies depot[20] was his own personal property. So get on with it now, you old skinflint, and make sure you don’t get it wrong —’

      ‘Go to hell,’ spat Ginger. He was beaten – this was simply too much for him – everything was turned upside down. And as if he wanted to show that he just didn’t care any more, he gave out half a pound of ersatz honey per head, off his own bat[21].

      It really is a good day today. There is even mail, nearly everyone has a couple of letters and newspapers. So we wander out to the field behind the barracks. Kropp has the round lid of a big margarine tub under his arm.

      On the right-hand edge of the field they have built a huge latrine block, a good solid building with a roof. But that is only for new recruits, who haven’t yet learned to get the best they can out of everything. We want something a bit better. And scattered all around are small individual thunder-boxes with precisely the same function. They are square, clean, made of solid wood, closed in, and with a really comfortable seat. There are handles on the sides so that they can be carried about.

      We pull three of them together in a circle and make ourselves comfortable. We shan’t be getting up again for the next couple of hours.

      I can still remember how embarrassed we were at the beginning, when we were recruits in the barracks and had to use the communal latrines. There are no doors, so that twenty men had to sit side by side as if they were on a train. That way they could all be seen at a glance – soldiers, of course, have to be under supervision at all times.

      Since then we’ve learnt more than just how to cope with a bit of embarrassment. As time went by, our habits changed quite a bit.

      Out here in the open air the whole business is a real pleasure. I can’t understand why it was that we always used to skirt round these things so nervously – after all, it is just as natural as eating or drinking. And perhaps it wouldn’t need to be mentioned at all if it didn’t play such a significant part in our lives, and if it hadn’t been new to us – the other men had long since got used to it.

      A soldier is on much closer terms with his stomach and digestive system[22] than anyone else is. Three-quarters of his vocabulary comes from this area and, whether he wants to express extreme delight or extreme indignation, he will use one of these pungent phrases to underline it. It is impossible to make a point as clearly and as sufficiently in any other way. Our families and our teachers will be pretty surprised when we get home, but out here it’s simply the language that everyone uses.

      Being forced to do everything in public means that as far as we are concerned, the natural innocence of the business has returned. In fact it goes further than that. It has become so natural to us, that the convivial performance of this particular activity is as highly valued as, well, holding a cast-iron certainty of a hand[23] when we are playing cards. It is not for nothing that the phrase ‘latrine rumour’[24] has come to mean all kinds of gossip; these places are the army equivalent of the street corner or a favourite bar.

      Just at the moment we are happier than we would be in some luxuriously appointed lavatory, white tiles and all. The most a place like that could be is hygienic; out here, though, it is beautiful.

      These are wonderfully mindless hours. The blue sky is above us. On the horizon we can see the yellow observation balloons[25] with the sun shining on them, and white puffs of smoke from the tracer bullets[26]. Sometimes you see a sudden sheaf of them going up, when they are chasing an airman.

      The muted rumble of the front sounds like nothing more than very distant thunder. Even the bumble bees drown it out when they buzz past.

      And all around us the fields are in flower. The grasses are waving, cabbage whites[27] are fluttering about, swaying on the warm breezes of late summer, while we read our letters and newspapers, and smoke; we take our caps off and put them on the ground beside us, the wind plays with our hair and it plays with our words and with our thoughts.

      The three thunder-boxes are standing amid glowing red poppies.

      We put the lid of the margarine tub on our knees and that gives us a solid base to play cards. Kropp has brought a pack. After every few hands we have a round of lowest score wins’. You could sit like this for ever and ever.

      There is the sound of an accordion coming from the huts. Every so often we put the cards down and look at one another. Then someone says, ‘I tell you, lads…’ or: ‘It could easily have gone wrong that time…’ and then we are silent for a moment. There is a strong feeling of restraint in us all, we are all aware of it and it doesn’t have to be spelt out. It could easily have happened that we wouldn’t be sitting on our boxes here today, it was all so damned close. And because of that, everything is new and full of life – the red poppies, the good food, the cigarettes and the summer breeze.

      Kropp asks, ‘Have any of you seen Kemmerich again?’

      ‘He’s over at St Joseph,’ I say.

      Muller reckons that he got one right through the thigh[28], a decent blighty wound[29].

      We decide to go and see him that afternoon.

      Kropp pulls out a letter. ‘Kantorek sends his regards.’

      We laugh. Muller tosses his cigarette away and says, ‘I wish he was out here.’

      Kantorek was our form-master at school, a short, strict man who wore a grey frock-coat and had a shrewish face. He was roughly the same size and shape as Corporal Himmelstoss, the ‘terror of Klosterberg Barracks’. Incidentally, it’s funny how often the miseries of this world are caused by short people – they are so much more quick-tempered and difficult to get on with than tall ones. I have always tried to avoid landing up in companies with commanders who are short – usually they are complete bastards.

      Kantorek kept on lecturing at us in the PT lessons until the entire class marched under his leadership down to the local recruiting office and enlisted. I can still see him, his eyes shining at us through his spectacles and his voice trembling with emotion as he asked, ‘You’ll all go, won’t you lads?’

      Schoolmasters always seem to keep their sentiments handy in their waistcoat pockets; after all, they have to trot them out in lesson after lesson. But that never occurred to us for a moment at the time.

      In fact, one of our class was reluctant, and didn’t really want to go with us. That was Josef Behm, a tubby, cheerful chap. But in the end he let himself be persuaded, because he would have

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