Читать книгу Invictus онлайн

27 страница из 70

His behaviour began to be affected: he withdrew into himself. He became more and more quarrelsome and grumpy. Sometimes, when people asked him why he wasn’t at war, he would tell them stories he made up at the moment. He said he was waiting for being called to the front to some of them. Or that he was about to leave the following month. To others, that he was about to embark from Messina or that any more soldiers were needed. Time passed, and, at the end of July 1941, Ture was still in the fields harvesting with his father.

After a time, most people began to disbelieve these excuses, and many others, who learned the truth, accused him of being a coward, of bringing dishonour to their village. And even if they did not spit such contempt in his face for fear of getting a few punches in the jaw, they talked behind his back everywhere: at the mill, the haberdashery, the grain stores.

Ture would hear this chatter, and it would eat away at his pride, but when he got home in the evening, he would look his brothers and sisters in the eye, and the thought of these evil tongues soon disappeared. For this reason, he worked even harder. He felt that he owed to fate, then he busied himself with many more tasks than his father gave him daily.